The Representation of Transgressive Love and Marriage in English
Renaissance Drama
Manisha Mukherjee
Department of English McGill University, Montreal November, 1996
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This study explores the presentation of transgressive, affective and erotic relationships in a selected group of early modem plays as those relationships relate to the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexuality expressed in religious and sewlar tracts. The depictions of illicit love and sexuality in these plays reveal problematic social and moral issues inherent in the construction of the English
Renaissance ideal of love and marriage. Not only do the dramatists reveal the tension between transgressive and normative love and sewality, but they do so through the use of aesthetic forms that transgress conventional dramatic structure.
This dissertation contends that the unconventional dramatic representation of transgression functions as a cognitive mode for the audience in their understanding of the practical social reality associated with the abstract ideality of love and marriage. Focussing on a selected plays of English Renaissance dramatists
William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Francis Beaumont. John Fletcher.
Thomas Heywood, John Ford, and hoanonymous playwrights. I suggest that the dramatists refuse to condemn or condone the transgression. Rather, they endow it with meaning. and Mile not rescinding the ideal love and sexuality, offer possible ways of accommodating it. Résumé
Cette étude analyse la présentation des relations transgressives, affectives et érotiques dans un groupe choisi de pièces du début de l'époque moderne dans la mesure où elles ont un rapport avec l'idéal du mariage et de la sexualité qui s'exprime dans les traités religieux et laïques à la Renaissance anglaise. L'illustration de I'amour et de la sexualité illicites dans ces pièces révèle les problèmes d'ordre social et moral inhérents à la construction de l'idéal de I'amour et du mariage à la Renaissance anglaise. Non seulement les dramaturges révèlent la tension entre I'amour et la sexualité transgressifs et normatifs, mais ils le font par l'emploi de formes esthétiques qui transgressent la structure dramatique classique. L'auteur de cette thèse soutient que la représentation dramatique et non conventionnelle de la transgression fonctionne sur un mode cognitif pour que le public comprenne la réalité sociale pratique qui se rattache à l'idéal abstrait de I'amour et du mariage. En se concentrant sur certaines pièces de la Renaissance anglaise écrites par William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Heywood. John Ford et deux dramaturges anonymes, l'auteur est porté à croire que les dramaturges refusent de condamner ou de cautionner la transgression. En revanche, ils lui donnent un sens et même s'ils ne révoquent pas l'idéal de I'amour et de la sexualité, ils proposent divers moyens de l'accommoder. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowiedgements
Introduction
1 Matrimony is Hie, Holy Order of Me: The Fissured ldeal of Love and Sexuality
2 Premarital Love and Courtship: The Issue of Choice
3 Sexual Love: Exculpation in Legal Marriage
4 Marriage: An Obstruction to Love
5 ldeal Wedded Love: The Problem of Divided Mind and Body
Conclusion
Bibliography Acknowledgements
Iwould like to express my gratitude to my thesis director Professor Leonore
Lieblein for agreeing to guide this project. She has been a mentor in the truest sense of the mrd. matever perspicuity my prose and my argument have achieved is due in large measure to her high academic standard. 1 am grateful for having the privilege of working under her kind and scholarly supervision. I would like to thank
Professor Michael Bristol for reading this work before I was quite fit to be seen. and
Mering helpful suggestions and encouragement I wish to express my gratitude to
Professor Katherine Shaw for her constructive criticism and generous uffering of her knowiedge. I am grateful to Professor Abbott Conway for introducing me to Middle
English devotional literature and helping me to understand the doctrinal aspect of
Christian spiritualîty. The preparation of the manuscript owes rnuch to the computer skills. intelligence and patience of my young friend Cathy Eugene. and I thank her.
My special thanks to my friends Martha Slowe, Mark Christmanson and Zarin
Ahmed for their helpful and encouraging cornments at various stages of my work-in progress. I would like to express my gratefulness to rny friends and staff of the
McLennan library who have offered me their sincere help on numerous occasions
Uiroughout the period I have been working on this thesis. This endeavour could not have been accomplished without the unwavering support and encouragement d my husband Professor Barid Mukherjee, and my appreciation is more than I can Say.
Finally I dedicate this work to the memory of my parents from whorn I have inherited my love for the boundless wonderland of words. Introduction
This study explores the presentation of transgressive affective and erotic relationships in a selected group of early modem plays as those relationships relate to the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexuality expressed in religious and secular tracts. The depiction of illicit love and sexuality in these plays reveals problematic social and moral issues inherent in the construction of the English
Renaissance ideal of love and marriage. Not only do the dramatists reveal the tension between transgressive and normative Iûve and sexuality. but they do so through the use of aesthetic forms that transgress conventional dramatic structure.
This use of an unconventional form in turn forces the audience to internalize the tension between transgression and norm that is being represented. That is, the incongruity of the form in which the plays are presented requires the audience to play an active role in building an understanding of the play's content. By experiencing this tension, the readerlspectator is thus enabled to participate in the redefinition of the ideal of erotic and affective love.
The English Protestant definition of marriage as a conjoint state that is both secular and sacred led to an internally fissured ideal of marriage and love. The moral theologians acknowledged sexuality as amoral and secular and validated erotic love within the lawfulness of permanent monogamous heterosexual union.
As social reformers, the Protestant divines wrote against the custom of arranged 3 marriage and advocated individual freedom of choice and love in the selection of a marriage partner. Simultaneously, they recommended elaborate guidelines for making the right choice of partner and for proper behaviour in courtship and premarhl love. But amoral and secular sexuality only entered the scheme of holy matrimony and ideal wedded love. The uneasy compromise of secularlamoral and sacredmoral that underpinned the English Protestant definition of marriage created a gap between the abstract ideality of love and marriage and their experientially cornplex psychical and social context.' The plays analyzed in my thesis reveal the problematic social and moral issues inherent in the ideal. which were eschewed by the moral theologians in their writings on love and marriage.
The diversity with which love and sexuality are presented in the English
Renaissance drama has been an area of critical disquiet. Scholars and critics often point to an incongruity between the formal design and the thematic content of the plays representing love and marriage? The critical approach that attempts to classify the representational diversity of love and marriage within drarnatic genres often appears unsatisfactory.
Those who take the view that conventional genres are adequate for the analysis of these incongruities approach the representation of love and marriage in terms of the literary conventions, genre and mood of the particular period3 Much of the traditional scholarship has expressed concem with the lack of moral clarity in thematic content and with the unconventionality of artistic form of these plays.
Critical views that emphasize indeterminaacy of meaning and incongruous dramatic 4 fom arise from a failure to recognize the open-ended nature of the plays as part of the dialectical process of representation. Nonetheless. I have found many proponents of such views very helpful. The works of Alfred Harbage. Leonora
Brodwin. Henry Hitch Adams and Peter Ure are particularly pertinent to the present enquiry because the major foci of their critical studies concern domestic love relationships.
In Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, Harbage uses a non-synchronic critical approach in his treatment of the representational diversity of the
Renaissance plays of love and marriage. He proposes two interpretive categories to view the whole spectrum of representation of affective and erotic love. "The popular drama," writes Harbage. "dwells most persistently upon the charm of courtship. dignity of wedded love, and the power of familial affection. When we cal1 it romantic, we should recognize that its romanticism is in accord with the most progressive ethical thinking of the English Renaissance. In comparison, the coterie drama is archaic and rea~tionary.'~Moreover. Harbage contends that the "archaic" and "reactionary" coterie drama is rnorally "perverse" and "deviant." However, notions that Harbage invokes in order to analyze the dramatic representations of love and sexuality are. in fact, rival ideologies of love and marriage representing two dfferent orders of life. What Harbage calls "popular" or "publicff is synonymous with Shakespeare as the upholder of the English Protestant doctrine of love and marriage. Harbage argues that "coterie" drama throws Shakespearean assumptions into relief by constant reference to their negative; it is "anarchetype," 5
"dissident," and represents a "medieval." "aristocratic" "antibourgeois" view towards love and marriage. Despite his contention that the drama of the "private" theatres
(as opposed to public theaires) deals with transgressive, affective and erotic love,
Harbage adrnits that the two rival traditions share the same moral purpose.
However. he points out that in spite of the fact that the dramas of both private and public theatres are against sin, they differ in their modes of presenting the shared moral:
The popular drama endorsed the code of sexual rectitude in a way that the coterie drama did not. . . . Although both bodies of dramas endorse chastity. only the popular plays are chaste.'
According to Harbage, the use of "perverse" and "deviant" themes of love and sexuality in private theatre creates ambiguity in the plays' meanings and makes it difficult to determine when transgression is being "condemned" and Men it is being
"condoned." For example, in the portrayal of adultery, "if a cuckold husband is a jealous or rnercenary old citizen, his de's ingenuity in deceiving him is viewed wiih approva~."~For Harbage. the problematic issues of marriage and sexuality seem to belong to a scheme of abstract moral absolutes. I would argue that what he considers an "approval" of an adulterous wife is simply the author's emphasis on the complex social context of the moral transgression of adultery. Furthermore, the assumption that Shakespeare espouses the English Protestant ideal of love and marriage involves a failure to recognize the various levels of tension between transgressive and normative love and sexuality in his plays. Unlike Harbage. Leonora Brodwin in Elizabethan Love Traaedv does not view the divergence in the representation of love and sexuality in the English
Renaissance drama in terms of moral or social binaries. She considers the tragic representation of transgressive love and sexuality a Iiterary achievement that refieds the cultural change brought on by the Protestant ideal of love and marriage and by the new learning of the Renaissance:
Flowering at that juncture, between medieval and modern world. Elizabethan love tragedy reflected the past and future crosscurrents of a culture at its crisis to reveal as nowhere else the full variety and confusion of love attitudes to which the modern world is hei~~
Brodwin argues that the Renaissance ideal of "wedded love" is the product of a broad cultural movement towards a new type of idealized love relationship between two companionate equals. Unlike Harbage's two moral absolutes. Brodwin suggests a new category, 'hrIdIy love,'' Midi is comprehensive enough to include ideal and transgressive love and sexuality. However, Brodwin uses two other literary conventions in addition to 'hrldly love" as analytical tools in her discussion of the wide range of representations of love in the Renaissance tragic dramas.
These two additional conventions are "Romantic" and "Courtly."
Just as Harbage finds that the dramas of the private theatres are problematic in that they are both chaste and unchaste, Brodwin points to a similar confusion through her use of interpretive categories that are based in different love conventions, such as the three mentioned above: The rnost important of these [confusions] is that concerning marriage and adultery. We have seen how it came about that in the Elizabethan period the essentially adulterous Courtly Love should have manifested itself in the form of apparent innocents who wished to marry, mile essentially conjugal Worldly Love should have appeared in terms of seemingly experienced adulterers.*
Brodwin's concern with the inappropriate use of literary convention reveals the moral and aesthetic binaries that underlie her new analytical category of "worldly love." Furthermore. Brodwin does not explain why the representation of worldly love (which is synonymous with ideal wedded love) must be in tragic dramatic mode and not in comic mode.
Other scholarly efforts to contain the divergent representations of affective and sexual love within a strict structural schema have also failed to accommodate the whole spectrum of diversity. A case in point is Henry Hitch Adams' contention that the representation of immoraVillicit love and sexuality in the domestic drarnasg of the period are actually part of moral pedagogy:
Their tales of murder, rebellion, seductions and infidelity served the same purpose as the example of the sermons preached every Sunday in every parish church. 'O
Adams is concerned about the social context of transgressive love and crimes of passion. In fact. he argues that the representation of transgressive love and sexuality functions as a moral "exemplum" in which the play's plot follows a homiletic structural scheme of sin, discovery. repentance. retribution, and expectation of divine mercy. Moreover, unlike Harbage, Adams does not consider 8 the presentation of illicit and immoral love and sexuality aesthetically offensive because the play has a didactic purpose. Thus, by using "domestic tragedy" -with its strict homiletic design- as a sub-genre and by viewing transgressive affective and sewal love as theological sin rather than as a violation of the social codes and sexual noms of the secular order, Adams fails to perceive any incongruity between dramatic form and subject matter in the domestic tragedies of love and rnarriage.
A more balanced view of the domestic tragedies of love and marriage is found in Peter Ure's critical analysis of the "marriage plays." Ure de-emphasizes the homiletic aspect of the domestic tragedies of sexual infidelity and betrayal of vows of love and marriage. He contends that marital conduct. both ideal and transgressive, is at the core of the domestic tragedies of love and marriage:
For Mile it is a code of marriage that lies at their basis, the tragedies could not have occurred without that order being disturbed by aberration of one or other partner.' '
Ure's emphasis on the notion that the aberration and transgression can occur only in relation to an implicit a rior ri normative definition of love and marriage is in contrast with the view that emphasizes the monologic didacticism of the domestic tragedies. But in Ure's understanding illicit sexuality is unquestionably culpable and violation of love and marriage vows are ahnrays immoral. The inclusion of these notions in his critical approach means that the amoral psycho-semal aspects of the dramatic narrative remain unexplored. The socio-historical and feminist perspective of recent revisionist scholarship
Mers new analytical categories, which illuminate the problematic representation of transgressive love and sexuality. Catherine Belsey emphasizes the privileged status of the Renaissance drama as a cultural form that explores "certain constraints, the plurality of meanings, including the unacknowledged meanings in circulation in the culture of which they form a part."12
Belsey's emphasis on the historical specificity of the meaning of love and marriage Mers a socio-political perspective on the representation of transgressive erotic and affective love. In her gender-specific critical analyses Belsey describes the tragedies of unconventional love and sexuality as the portrayal of rebellion on fernale protagonist' part against the constraints of normative love and against the institution of marriage. But Belsey's view that transgression is synonymous with subversion and tragedy leaves the problematic issues of unconventional aesthetic form and its meaning unaddressed. In her discussion, Belsey is interested neither in the dramaticform per se; nor in any religious moral implication of transgression in the tragedies of love and mariage. Thus, she remains unconcerned with the issue of disjunction between formal design and thematic content. However. like
Brodwin and Harbage, Belsey also points to a paradoxical pattern in the representation of love and marriage:
Meanwhile, by an odd loop of reasoning, spiritualized marriage becomes intelligible as an essential state of being wtiich transcends the letter of law. Romantic love, free and unconstrained, does not necessarily confine itseif to couples who are legally at liberty to rnany. Mena legal marriage is loveless, and thus no marriage at al1 . . . the same force which stabilizes the institution of marriage can paradoxically be invoked to authorize and stabilize an adulterous union of minds and bodies.13
Belsey here seems to identify a logical tension in the role that is played by transgressive love in these texts. The romantic transgressions are somehow subversive of the ideal permanent monogamous sexuality, yet they compete with that ideal for legitirnacy within the institution of rnarriage. Belsey sheds a great deal of light on gender and erotic politics'4 in the representation of love and marriage.
But her habit of viewhg transgression only in the dualistic political terms of subversion and surveillance renders her approach insufficiently cornpre hensive and it can not account for the heterogeneity of transgressive affective and erotic love.
Jonathan Dollimore, in his provocative treatment of Renaissance tragedy. contends that the tragic representation of sexual transgression is a subversion of various power relations, such as the political, familial, gender. class, and religious- power relations that are constitutive of the dominant social order of the period.15
His critical approach, in which transgression, subversion and tragedy are viewed as inseparable, is not comprehensive enough to deal with the divergent representation of erotic and affective love in these plays. However, Dollimore makes the sense in which transgression is subversive seern less radical.16 He points out that in Jacobean drama, subversive transgression is not an attempt to escape from the existing structure of normative love and sexuality. He uses the phrase "subversive reinscription" in describing the nature of transgressive sexuality 11 in Jacobean drama. Alfhough the new definition suggests that subversion through transgression is less radical, it remains too specific for use as a conceptual tool with which to approach the complex diversity with which love and semality are represented in the English Renaissance drama.
A more comprehensive revisionist critical approach to the representation of transgressive love and sexuality can be found in Michael Bristol's discussion of the socio-political role of theatre and playhouse in Renaissance England. Bristol applies "carnival" and "heteroglossia" as tools of interpretation in his study of
Elizabethan drama. He argues that the Elizabethan playhouse is an heteroglot institution and that it consequently produces disjunctive and ephemeral aesthetic foms.17 These forms function effectively as a fom of cultural work in which specific aspects of the social relations of production may be interrogated critically.
Furthemore, Bristol suggests that l'festive misrule" or transgression should not be viewed in terms of the polarities of subversion and surveillance, but as an activity which accommodates both.18 This view of transgression as a material form, and an a-social, non-formal cognitive experience is helpful in attempts to understand the non-absolute secularity of transgressive love and sexuality in the Renaissance drama.
Drama, as a primary historical document, not only reflects and presents cultural change. but also participates in the process of actively generating and containing that change. It has been discussed as such by Mary Beth Rose in The
Expense of Spirit. As a revisionist scholar, Rose examines the diversity of the presentations of love and sexuality in Renaissance drama in relation to the appropriateness of the various forrns. Rose argues that mile various dramatic forms contend to represent changing attitudes towards love and sexuality. numerous subgeneric forms often operate within the same play also - usually at different plot levels. In her scheme, the four dramatic forms "romantic comedy. satire or city wmedy, tragedy and tragic-comedy" are understood to be capable of projecting problems arising from the cultural changes concerning love and marriage in post-Reformation ~ng1and.l~For Rose, Elizabethan rornantic comedy is an idealized expression of the English Renaissance normative view of love and sexuality. and city comedy or satire is a sort of inferior sibling of true comedy because it deals with lust and illicit sexuality. She contends that mile Jacobean tragedy "serves its complex function of articulating the need for a future by destroying the past and mourning its disappearance." tragi-comedy is a form in which constituent elements embody and articulate the process of cultural change between past and futures2' However. the specific moral premise that underlies
Rose's interpretive categories of "private and public" is not adequately comprehensive for the complex heterogeneity that exists in the representation of love and sexuality in the Renaissance drama:
Once again this point becomes clear frorn examining the tragic representation of sexuality, in wfiich no further development takes place [Mer Duchess of Malfi, 161 31. Either the scrutiny of the private life becomes increasingly involuted, focusing on corruption and extremes, as in the depictions of female villainy and incest in the Chanaeling (1622) and 'Tis Pi- She's a Whore (1629); or the portrayal of endurance and suffering bewmes increasingiy static, as in The Broken Heart (1629).''
What Rose considers "involuted and "villainy" is in fad a more radical and cornplex exploration of the ideal of love and sexuality that is part of the English Renaissance heterodox discourse on love and marriage.
Arnong the critical views I have discussed so far I detect two major critical approaches to the representation of love and sexuality in the English Renaissance drama: those that accept a necessary and harmonious link between the formal design and thematic content of the play, and those that consider the aesthetic forrn part of an ideological explanatory system of a particular historical moment. In the first view (whose proponents include Harbage, Adams, and Rose), the cornedies represent normative love and marriage, hilethe tragedies of transgressive love and sexuality are viewed as "exempla" of immorality and deviancy. However, the representations of love and marriage in city comedy or satire are understood to present the lesser and imperfect ideal of love and marriage. The second group
(Belsey, DoIlimore, Bristol) is not primarily concerned with the theological moral issues concerning ideal love and sexuality or with unconventionality of dramatic form.
Since both groups discuss the representation of transgressive love and sexuality synonyrnously with irnmorality, subversion, and tragedy. it is important to clarify the meaning of transgression. 1s transgression coterminous with irnmorality and hence tragedy in the representation of love and marriage in Renaissance 14
drama? Is comedy then synonymous with the social and moral ideals of love and
sexuallty? And. finally, do normative and transgressive love exist as unnegotiable
moral absolutes in the context of secular social reality? I contend that the critical
view that sees a necessary link behnreen a particular dramatic form and
transgression is untenable, Mile the critical view that considers transgression
solely as a morally reprehensible act is unsupportable. This thesis argues that the
transgressive-normative tension built into the representation of love and marriage
participates in the dynamics of the cultural changes occurring in the period. The
cornplex process of this participation cannot be reduced to just one aspect (moral
or political) without considering othen, including the social. economic. spiritual, and
sexual.
By presenting various sorts of transgression simultaneously in narratives of
love and marriage, the plays studied here succeed in simultaneously contesting. questioning, rescinding and endorsing the conventional ideal of sexuality. The acknowledgernent of affective and erotic love as both secular/amoral and
sacredlmoral lies at the core of the diverse representations of transgressive love and sexuality. It is against the play's silent a priori norm of love and sexuality that the transgression takes place. The representation of transgressive love is an aesthetic mode of cognition used by the dramatists to explore the limits of the secular social reality of the English Renaissance ideals of love and marriage. By revealing the synonymity between immorality and amorality the plays redefine the moral norm of ideal love and marriage. In doing so, they show that their 15 unconventional representations of transgressive affective and erotic love do not need to be discussed in terms of moral absolutes. Instead, the representation must be viewed as a tension between transgressive and normative love and marriage.
This tension enables the plays to function as tools by which episternological noms are altered (since the plays' unconventional forms force the spectators to participate in a process of untangling the tension between the transgressive and normative love they represent). Furthermore. the presence of this tension in the representation of love and marriage enables the readerlaudience to perceive that the moral binaries through which ideal love and marriage are being presented are in fact non-absolute and negotiable.
The post-Reformation period in England was the historical moment in which affective and erotic love was thoroughly contained (and constrained) within the newly elevated notion of "holy matrimony" and "wedded love." Protestant moral theologians put forth the notion that rnutual love and freedom in the choice of a maniage partner were the foundations of happiness in a permanent monogamous marriage. Nonetheless, acknowledgement of the importance of choice and love as part of the conventional scheme of marriage created problematic marital situations in a society where arranged maniages were, for social and pecuniary reasons. still preva~ent.*~Since the divorce debate polarized opinion within the Church of
England. the moral theologians did not advocate divorce and remarriage as a solution to unhappy marital situations, but remained silent or advised patience. In other words. the incompatibility of the ideal state of marriage and love and the 16 practical modality of conduct by which it was to be achieved remained
unacknowledged in the authoritative monologic narrative of instruction put forth by the Protestant divines. Jacobean playwrights, on the other hand, in their dialogic dramatic narratives gave materiality to the unacknowledged problematic issues
innerent in the ideal of love and marriage.
The O.E.D. has defined transgression as an "ad of trespassing. violation of
law. duty. cummand. and an act of disobedience." Etymologically, the word implies
impurity or religious defilement, disruption. disobedience. or injustice. The meaning of sin depends on the opposites of these terms, or on purity, sanctity. order. obedience, and justicen The polarity of sin and its opposite is related to the inner ambivalence of the sacred itsetf. The Greek word "hagios" which means
consecrated. pure and holy, is also used in the opposite sense of impure, desecrated and damned. This built-in polarity of meaning points to the non- absolute nature of the sacred and to the consequently relative sphere of ethics and morals. In the Old Testament. the words used for transgression generally deal with human relations. And it is from the Old Testament that the word starts to denote trampling on the rights of another and going beyond the set limits." In other words, the word "transgression" implies limit. violation, rebellion. sin and consequent punishment. It is neither homologous nor monolithic.
In my analyses of the selected plays of various genres. I shall explore the relative nature of transgression as revealed through both the successful and the defeated protagonists of dramatic narratives of love and marriage. I intend to show 17 in my critical analyses that there is a lack of concordance in the closure of each play and consequently an indeterminency arises in the rneaning of each of the plays. That is. at the play's ending the author reveals details that are irreconcilable with the overt moral meaning of the play, but simuItaneously suggests an alternative interpretation that can comprehend al1 of the play's content. This built-in incongruity enables the audience to understand the non-ebsoluteness of the moral reprehensibility of transgressive love and sexuality.
My critical approach to the divergent representation of love and sexuality is informed by Michel Foucault's definition of transgression, Pierre Bourdieu's social theory of "doxa," and Bertolt Brecht's dramatic theory of "epic theatre" and
"alienation effect," though the appropriateness of my use of these three theorists to underpin a single theoretical approach is not entirely obvious. While Foucault.
Bourdieu and Brecht share certain concerns, they write from dÎfferent disciplines and clearly differ in their overall projects and on the issues that ultimately motivate their efforts. My treatment of these theorists is by no means exhaustive. However,
I seek to highlight and make use of the common political and intellectual ground they do share as part of my own critical approach.
The word "lirnit" plays an important part in Foucault's definition of transgression. In his view. transgression and limit are dependent on one another for their very being. The act of transgression "has its entire space in the line it crosses," he explains. That line (or limit), meanwhile, cannot exist if it is "absolutely 18 uncrossable." Without a limit, transgression cannot occur. And without the notion that there is something exceeding or beyond the limit. the limit itself cannot be.
Foucault further suggests that a limit can only exist in the moment of its transgression; that it has "no Ife of its own outside of the act that gloriously passes through it and negates it." In this same moment is contained the full being of transgression, which exhausts its nature when it crosses the limit, knowing no other life beyond this point in the. Clearly, however, this moment is also an opening into that which the limit seeks to exclude. Transgression. then, both defines the limit and forces the limit "to open up ont0 the limitless . . . to find itsetf in what it excludes. . ."
That transgression plays this dual role of tracing and negating the limit means that it should not be construed as an act that is directly antagonistic to ethics. Unlike the relationship of "black to white or the prohibited to the lawful."
Foucault explains, "transgression does not seek to oppose one thing to another."
Transgression is not simply "violence" in the "divided world" of ethics; it is the moment in which a limit is both reiterated and ~pened.~'
Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social reality or "sense of lirnits" can be used to elucidate the notion that the interplay of limits and transgression is a dynamic through which cultural norms are reworked. Bourdieu explains that an epistemological apparatus produces the naturalization of a socio-cultural system that is relative: Every established order tends to produce (to very different degrees and with very different means) the naturalization of its own arbitrariness. Of al1 the mechanisms tending to produce this effect. the most important and the best concealed is undoubtedly the dialectic of the objective chances and the agents' aspirations, out of which arises the sense of limits. commonly called the sense of reality, i.e. the conespondence beONeen the objective classes and the internalized classes, social structures and mental structures, which is the basis of the most ineradicable adherence to the established order. Systerns of classification which reproduce, in their own specific logic, the objective classes. i.e. the divisions by sex, age, or position in the relations of production, make their specific contribution to the reproduction of the power relations of which they are the product. by securing the misrecognition, and hence the recognition. of the arbitrariness on which they are ba~ed.~~
Bourdieu refers to this cognitive experience as "doxa." Doxa is a state of cognition
in which the natural and social worlds appear self-evident. In this state, reproduction of the social mrld proceeds through political instruments that ensure imrnediate adherence of the world of tradition to a natural world that is understood to be self-evident and undisputable. This is a naturalization of arbitrariness and results in a sense of limits that is commonly called the sense of reality. In this doxic state, epistemology (of secular reality) is "a dimension of political power because it imposes the construction of established social reality." Bourdieu explains the process through which the arbitrary social order is naturalized:
Owing to the quasi-perfect fit between the objective structures and the internalized structures which results from the logic of simple reproduction, the established cosrnological and political order is perceived not as arbitrary, as one, Le. as one possible order among others, but as a seîfevident and natural order which goes without saying and therefore goes unquestioned .27
Within such an established social order, language, myth and art (as discourses that both constitute and express reality) partake in the process through which reality's
"selfevidence" is reinforced. As Bourdieu puts it, in the doxic state "self-evidence" of the world is reduplicated by the instituted discourses about the world in which the whole group's adherence to that self-evidence is affirmed. This state of unjarring knowledge is not immutable; however. Bourdieu distinguishes doxa from orthodoxy and heterodoxy, in which it is understood that different and even antagonistic beliefs may CO-exist. Bourdieu exploring the relation of doxa to the 'Yield of
The truth of doxa is only ever fully revealed when negatively constituted by the constitution of field of opinion, the locus of the confrontation of competing discourses. . .
It is by reference to the universe of opinion that the complementary class is defined, the class of that which is taken for granted, dom, the sum total of the theses tacitly posited on the hitherside of al1 enquiry. which appear as such only retrospectively, Men, they corne to the suspended practical~~.~~
The very awareness of doxa as a priori knowledge that is "tacitly posited hitherside of al1 enquiry" indicates that this is a state of relativized cognition. In this field of opinion, one of the competing discourses assumes the status of a norm or orthodoxy that is wntested by transgression or heterodoxy. Bourdieu explains Mat sparks this contestation:
The practical questioning of the theses implied in a particular way of living that is brought about by "culture contact" or by the political and econornic crises correlative with class division is not the purely intellectual operation . . . The critique vuhich brings the undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation, has the condition of its possibility objective crisis. which in breaking the immediate fit between the subjective structures and objective structures. destroys self-evidence practical~~.~~
The objective social crisis. then. can induce an epistemological break in the structure of doxa and. consequently. in that which is norm or ideal. But the introduction of heterodoxy through transgression does not imply that order is sornehow overthrown or that epistemological chaos ensues. Instead, it reveals that there are social and historical limits governing what may be articulated and by
It is when the social world loses its character as a natural phenomen that the question of the natural or conventional character of social facts can be raised. It follows that the would-be most radical critique always has the limits that are assigned to it by the objective condition^.^'
In their antagonistic tension, transgressive expressions (blasphemies) and normative expressions (euphemisms) not only function as censors of the inadmissible but also serve as a point of entry through which the inadmissible is adrnitted into the field of discourse. Bourdieu explains that the delimitation of the universe of discourse is not only the delimitation of the field of the thinkable; it is also the delimitation of the unthinkable;
as if euphemism and blasphemy, through which the expressly censored unnamable nonetheless finds its way into the univene of discourse, conspired in their very antagonism to occult the "aphasia" of those who are denied access to the instrument of the struggle for the definition of reality3*
In Bourdieu's view, then, the tension between transgression (blasphemy) and norm
(euphemism) functions as a cognitive mode that creates discursive space in the field of opinion by giving voice to an absent or silent presence. Foucault's description of the reiationship between limit and transgression appears to have some affinity with Bourdieu's vision of this tension:
Perhaps it is like a flash of lightning in the night which . . . gives a dense and black intensity to the light it denies, which lights up the night from the inside. from top to bottom, and yet owes to the dark the stark clarity of its manifestation . . . the flash loses itseif in this space it marks with sovereignty, and becomes silent now that it has given name to obsc~rit~.~~
The idea that transgression or deviation functions as a cognitive mode in dramatic representation can be supported by Brecht's theory of epic theatre and its attendant "alienation effect" Brecht emphasizes the need for the "alienation effect" in al1 understanding. For Brecht. when one accepts anything as self-evident one gives up any attempt to understand: "When something seems the most obvious thing in the world it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given u~."~~Moreover. Brecht advocates the view that theatre is a site where incongruous representation of human behaviour in fad reveals the non- absoluteness and consequent alterability of social norm. He also contends that drama is an arena where conflicting points of view are presented in order to allow the audience to participate experientially in the cognitive state of the non-absolute social reality:
Epic theatre is chiefly interested in the attitudes which people adopt towards one another. wherever they are socio-historically significant (typical). It works out scenes where people adopt attitudes of such a sort that the social laws under which they are acting spring into sigM The concem of the epic theatre is thus erninently practical. . . , Human behaviour is show as alterable; man himself as dependent on certain political and economic factors and at the same time as capable of alternating thernmJ5
Brecht's aesthetic theory that emphasizes the importance of dialectical social relation and critical cognition in the fictional representation, makes it possible to view the plays of transgressive love and marriage with a new perspective.
Moreover. that Brecht does not suggest primacy of form over function adds a practical dimension to fictional literature. Although Brecht unlike Bourdieu sees artistic production in terms of class or group interest. he acknowledges a need for mediation between the conditions of artistic production and artistic reception. Both
Brecht and Bourdieu suggest that this mediation takes place at the cognitive leveL3=
These theoretical perspectives provide the basis of my critical methodology.
My critical approach to the plays. meanwhile. is through their social and historical context. This method does not presuppose a binary opposition between "literature" 24 and "history." That is, "history" is not viewed as a transparent or objectively knowable source of knowledge that is helpful for an attempt to clarrfy an opaque literary text. Instead, my socio-historical critical approach treats literature as part of history. The fictional texts are as much a context for history and material life as history is a context for those texts. The relation of history and literature is not a hierarchical one in which literature passively reflects historical facts that make up external reality. Rather, the inter-relation between "history" and "literature" produces a cornplex textualized universe in which Iiterature participates in the historical processes through which social reality is f~rrned.~~The dynamics of this process as they conœm love and marriage (in a particular historical period) are the focus of my uitical analyses of the plays at hand. I have used moral and religious writings on the subject of love and marriage not in order to prove or affirm my analyses of the plays. Instead, these wïtings are construed as an aspect of cultural history that expresses the dominant view on love and marriage. In fact, I have used the writing of the moral theologians of :ho period to create an intertexual field in which to situate the plays. I shall examine the rnanner in which a dramatic text might interrogate, contest, aRim and reject the dominant view of love and marriage through the representation of a variety of transgressive situations. and will provide a perspective on the complew of the historical moment. Moreover, contrary to the popular notion that these plays do not conform to generic expectations because of the incongruity of their formal design and thematic conted. I propose that this disjunction is part of the cognitive aspect of an aesthetic form that enables the play to function as an epistemological tool in exploring the secular and sanctified ideality
of love and marriage.
Perhaps the English Renaissance drama's artistic "unconventionality" and
"impurity" have something in cornmon with current notions of the "postmodern."
Jean-François Lyotard's use of the term emphasizes the cognitive aspect of the
"postmodern" as an aesthetic category of analysis. Lyotard emphasizes the
inseparability of form and meaning and suggests a more comprehensive use of the
term through his inclusion of polarities:
The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts fonnard the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies the solace of good forms . . . that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentabie. A postmodern writer is not govemed by pre-established rules. and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgement, by applying familiar categories to the text or the work. Those rules and categories are what the work of art itseif is looking for.38
This excerpt implies that the postmodern. likes Augustine's "one time" includes
past, present and future in a non-static or continuous senseS3' This frees
"postmodern," as a category of creative art. frorn the constraints of specific
historical norms and aesthetic codes. But this delimitation of the aesthetic
wnstraints of fom is not soleiy in the interests of an enjoyment of variety and does
not render unconventionality an end in itsetf. Instead, Lyotard defines "postmodern" as an aesthetic fom that is simultaneously a mode of cognition. In other words, the
unconventional dramatic form of the plays can be viewed as a new way of 26 atternpting to present the unrepresented while simultaneously suggesting the conceptual limitlessness of the unrepresentable.
My first chapter, Matnmonv is hie. holy order of /He:The Fissured ldeal of
Love and Sexuality, examines the writings of prominent moral theologians on love. rnarriage and domestic Me. These writings were considered authoritative. The authors of the selected "domestic conduct books" and "marriage treatises" emphasize the exultant status of marriage and wedded domestic life as the highest order of earthiy living in these declarative and imperative narratives. Even though marriage was not considered an inviolable Church sacrament at this tirne. the
English Protestant divines did not regard marriage only as a civil contract that could be easiiy dissolved by mutual consent. In fact, in order to stress the inviolability or non-sacramental covenant of marriage, they emphasized the sanctified nature of marriage by defining it as both secular and sacred.
English Protestant moral theologians acknowiedged that sexuality was amoral and secular. Yet they wrote elaborately about the proper social codes and the moral norms of conduct that should accompany ideal love and the ideality of love and sexuality. It was the moralized, spiritualized and legalized affective and sexual love whose validity was recognized without deprecation. Furtherrnore. the theologians advocated freedom in the choice of a partner in marriage to ensure harmony and happiness of permanent marriage and in order to reform the custom of arranged marriage for economic and social gain. But choice was defined within strict social and moral constraints and there was an accompanying emphasis on the 27 necessity of parental consent in the marriage of one's choice. Thus. the ideality of love and sexuality was not commensurate with the socio-moral imperatives of domestic reality.
The dichotomy built into the basic tenet of the English Protestant marriage carried the potential for contestation between love (private) and law (public and ceremonious) for control over the meaning of marriage. The synonymity of marriage with moralized, spiritualized, rnonogamous, affective and sexual love was not an uncomplicated ideal.
The authors of the selected domestic conduct books did not look upon proper marital sexuality disfavour. They differentiated ideal marital love and sexuality from "lust" and 'Yornication." the latter two being synonymous with adultery. In their discussion of love and marriage, chastity was valorized as the highest matrimonial virtue. It is worth noting, however, that in the Protestant order of moral virtues, chastity did not refer only to a lack of physiological defilernent or to virginity. lnstead the moral theologians defined chastity as lawful monogamous marital sexuality and fidelity in conjugal affective love. Although chastity is a moral absolute of marriage. it is not an a priori virtue where the lawfulness of marriage is concemed. The cornplex definition of chastity renders it an a posteriori active and individual virtue which makes marriage holy. English Protestant discourse concerning marriage and sexuality allows the individual man or woman to be responsible for the holiness of the married state, which in turn requires adherence to the proper psycho-sexual codes and socio-moral norms of love and marriage. 28
Emphasis was on the individual responsibility to render marriage and love holy; this required strict adherence to the prescribed social codes and moral norms, which canied the potential for transgression and for consequent relativization of the ideal.
The relation behrveen authoritative writings on marriage and sexuaiity and the representation of affective and erotic love in the dramas of the period has been discussed by the critics, but their views concerning the nature of this relation Vary widely. In my approach this relation is viewed as the tension between the ideal and its transgression. It has already been pointed out that an incommensurable gap between the definition of the ideal of love and marriage and the prescribed modality of conduct by which it was to be achieved rneant that the ideal was inherently fissured. And the interstices between ontology and the ethics of ideal love and marriage hence became the sites where much of the representation of heterogeneous transgression of love and sexuality occurs. Also, in relation to the writings of the moral theologians on the subject of love and marriage, the dramas of the period now appear, in Bourdieu's terms, to be an arena for the heterodox struggle of language groups - a struggle in which various ideologies are articulated from different points of view and compete for the status of norm or authoritative discourse.
In the second chapter, Premarital Love and courts hi^: The Issue of Choice,
I explore the nature of the tension between transgressive premarital love and sexuality. My discussion of A Midsummer Niaht's Dream and A Chaste Maid in
Chea~sidewill focus on the cornic resolutions of problematic situations concerning 29 premarital love and courtship, since these resolutions necessitate violations of sorne of the social codes and moral norms of ideal premarital love, courtship and marriage. In both plays, the young lovers who triumph in love and marriage are absolved of their transgressive disobedience against parental command in matters of love and choice of marriage partner.
In A Midsummer Niaht's Dream, the transgression of filial duty is exonerated, and the necessity of parental consent in marriage is finally ignored. Also, through the complex characteristics of the young lovers, some violations of the proper code of conduct in premarital love and courtship are accommodated through rectification of the transgressor's conduct within the conventional scheme of love and marriage.
However, although a wide range of transgressions is negotiated. the ideality of chaste premarital love courtship remains uncompromised in the play's narrative of marriage based on romantic love and individual choice.
In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the dramatic tension between arranged marriage for pecuniary and social gain and marriage of individual choice and romantic love is presented as part of the norm of marriage and sexuality. The young lovers' chaste romantic love in spite of various transgressions of social codes and moral norms of ideal marriage and sexuality is rewarded in marriage.
Middleton does not use such inversion conventionally, as it is used in satire, so that it can be discarded when the right order is restored at the resolution of the play.
The play's comic resolution - with Moll's rnarriage to Touchwood Junior and Tim's rnarriage to a whore - only partially restores the order of ideal love and marriage 30 because 1 absorbs its own inversion at the same time. 1 argue that A Chaste Maid in Cheaoside uses multiple plots of transgression in order to question the conventional ideality of marriage and sexuality. Middleton, by focusing on the importance of amnesty and the beneficial utilitarian aspect of some transgression, suggests the non-absoluteness and negotiability of both the normative and the transgressive. The play's depiction of unconventional marriage and sexuality questions the moral absolutes and also foregrounds the view that holds the individual-rather than an a ~rioripremise of marriage-responsible for the
"holiness" of matrimony.
In the third chapter, Sexual Love: Exculpation in Leaal Marriaae, I discuss
Shakespeare's Measure For Measure, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The
Maid's Traaedv, and John Ford's 'Tis Pitv She's a Whore. I show, in my critical analysis of Measure For Measure, that in transgression of social codes and moral norms of sexuality Shakespeare explores juridical aspects of private vows of marriage. Also. the dramatic narrative presents a host of contending orders of sexuality and life in general, including religious and secular celibacy, single life of promiscuous sexuality, love and marital union without legal sanction, and exploitative sexuality. Lawful marriage is presented here not only as a sentence for the transgressors but also as an act of atonement legally required for clemency.
In my view, this double role of lawful maniage means that transgressions are being accommodated within the moral norm of lawful marriage. Furthermore, I suggest that the play silently posits the lawful heterosexual monogamous married Me as the 31 only nom of erotic desire and earthly living by pointing out that the comic resolution of marriage not only includes transgressors of ideal codes of sexuality but also includes the virtuous bachelor Duke and the prospective nun. In the critical analyses of The Maid's Tra~edvand 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, I argue that the dramatists challenge the ideality of lawful marriage as the only paradigm of premarital chaste love. In both these plays lawful mariages take place in order to conceal and continue premarital unchaste love.
In chapters four and five, I examine the psycho-social and moral problerns inherent in an ideal of permanent marriage that is synonymous with monogamous affective and erotic love. As a group, these plays deal with the theme of adultery and the consequent disintegration of lawful marriage. But the dramatic representations Vary widely, from betrayal of marriage by true romantic or erotic love and impermanent sexual or affective love outside marriage, to purely technical adultery that results from enforced marriage in the face of an earlier betrothal.
In chapter four, Marriaoe: An Obstruction to True Love. I discuss three tragedies of adulterous love: Arden of Faversharn, A Warnina for the Fair Women and Women Beware Women. In these analyses, I examine the conventional notion that adultery is synonymous with lust and that it is thus an absolute and unabsolvable sin. I contend that the portraya1 of chaste adulterous love challenges the simple notion that adultery is an abstrad moral alternative to ideal wedded love.
The plays' depictions of illicit love and sexuality facilitate the audience's understanding of illicit erotic desire not as immoral but as amoral. This suggests 32 that the representation of transgression functions as a cognitive mode for the audience in their understanding of the practical social reality associated with the abstract ideality of love and marriage.
In chapter five, ldeal Wedded Love: The Problern of Divided Mind and Bodv,
I examine three plays depicting irremediable problematic situations concerning chastity or absolute fidelity of affectivelerotic love: A Woman Killed with Kindness,
The Enalish Traveller, and The Broken Heart. In exploring the cornplex social and moral context of adultery, these plays seem to suggest that the possibility of a separation between body, mind and spirit is inherent in the highest moral virtue chastity. Also, the various betrayals of vows of love and marriage in the plays present a contestation between private and public love and law over the clairn of permanency. Acknowledging the apparent distinction between active and passive transgression, I contend that the plays suggest that if chastity is the underpinning of permanent marriage. which in turn is synonymous with absolute fidelity of affective and sexual love, any infidelity (passive or active) will lead to an irreparable tragic solution. Endnotes Introduction
1. Chilton Latham Powell. Enalish Domestic Relations 1487-1653 (New York: Russell 8 Russell, 1972), 13-37; Robert Mitchel. "English Marriage and Morals 1640-1700: Issues and Alternatives," diss., McGill Univ, 1985, 1-1 9; Alan Macfarlane, Marriaae and Love in Enaland: Modes of Reproduction 1300-1840 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, l986), 140-173; Jack Goody. The Development of the Fami- and Marriaae in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) pp. 157-82; Lawrence Stone, The Familv. Sex and Marriaae in Enoland 1500-18OQ (Penguin Books, 1977). 28-36, 93-144.
2. 1 discuss the writings of the moral theologians in Chapter One.
3. T.S. Eliot, Elizabethan Essavs (New York: Haskell flouse. 1964). 7-20. Eliot suggests that Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists have taken too much freedom in their use of literary conventions and this created confusion in meaning. He also claims that these muddlings of convention are actually the result of the dramatists' aim of attaining complete realism. Una Ellis Femor, The Jacobean Drama (London: Methuen & Co., 1936). pp. 1-4, 31. 33, 38. 39. Fermor emphasizes in her discussion that the dramas of the period are highly individual and cannot be considered as a unified, integrated Mole. However, although Fenor acknowldeges that there is a lack of coherence and consistency in English Renaissance plays, she believes the spread of Machiavellian materialism as the cause of a mood of spiritual despair in the period. This despair in turn is seen as the source of much of the unconventionality of the dramatic representation of this time. Madeleine Doran. Endeavors. of Art: A studv of Fom in Elizabethan Drarna (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1954) 353-370. Doran contends that many sixteenth century and Jacobean tragedies lack coherence or are hesitant in their emphases. The results of this inattention. she suggests, are ambiguity of ethical implication and disjointedness of f0rm.M.C. Bradbrook. Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tra~edv(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935) p. 35. Bradbrook attempts to explain the lack of structural congruity in English Renaissance drama:
The Elizabethan dramatists could hardly have fitted al1 the ingredients of the play into a strictly logical framework of events. They were expected to supply so much more than a contemporary miter and to incorporate so much non-dramatic material into their plays . . .. The material was as heterogeneous as that of a revue, and the lesser writers did not achieve much more unity than the writer of revue does to- day.
4. Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Tradition (New York: Macmillan. 1952). p. 222.
5. Ibid, p. 190.
6. Ibid, p. 190.
7. Leonora Leet Brodwin, Eleabethan Love Traqedv 1587-1625 (New York: New York University Press, 1971). p 6.
8. Ibid, p. 30.
9. Andrew Clark. Domestic Drama: Survev of the Oriains. Antecedents and Nature of the Domestic Plav in Enaland 1500-1640, (Salzburg: Universitat Salzburg. 1975), p. 26. Clark provides a cornprehensive discussion of domestic plays as a dramatic genre. According to Clark. "domestic drama" includes a plot or adion based on historical fact, English in origin. Although the subject-matter is taken from familiar and recent events. a sensational crime or murder usually remains at the center. Secondly, dornestic drama uses a realistic setting taken from nature and "ordinary" or everyday Me. Thirdly, unlike court plays, domestic drama uses a humble or "common" hero and characters drawn from the middle or lower classes. Fourthly, domestic drarna is primarily concerned with personal and private relations, especially those pertaining to the family and the institution of marriage. Fifthly, a serious treatment of subject matter is often indicated by the presence of a moral element (variously named as homiletic. "didactical." "ethical interest." etc.). Finally "domestic drama" generally uses realistic techniques of presentation.
10. Henry Hitch Adams, mglish Dp~iiesticor. Homiletic Traaedv (New York: Columbia Univ Press 1943). p. 6. Although the features enumerated by Clark (see note 9) are considered as basic characteristics of domestic drama, the first and almost standard definition of domestic tragedy is provided by H.H. Adams. "A (domestic) tragedy." writes Adams, is "a tragedy of the common people, ordinarily set in the domestic scene. dealing personal and family relationships rather than wi-th large affairs of state, presented in a realistic fashion, and ending in a tragic or othe~nkeserious manner." Furthermore, Adams insists on the presence of homiletic pattern in the structural design of domestic tragedy.
11. Elizabethan and Jacobean Drarna: Critical Essavs bv Peter Ure, ed. J.C. Maxwell (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 1974), p. 146. Ure argues in his article "Maniage and the Domestic Drama in Heywood and Ford" that the plays must be read as "something less unscrupulously forrnalized than mere versions of homily." He emphasizes the dramatic qualities of the plays and points out that the playwright is concerned uvith more complex problems than either the treatise-uwiter. homilist or pamphleteer. Ure does not deny the influence of didactic literature on domestic plays but puts the issue of moral intent in a broader perspective. He suggests that the dramatists have the right to be judged. first and foremost. as dramatists and not as theologians.
12. Catherine Belsey, "Desire's Excess and the English Renaissance Theatre: Edward Il, Troilus and Cressida, Othello." in Erotic Politics, ed. Susan Zimmerman (New York: Routledge, 1992). p. 86. Also see Catherine Belsey, The Subiect of Traaedv: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London: Metheuen 1985) Preface X.
13. Belsey, The Subject of f raoedv, p 21 0.
14. Susan Zimrnerman. Erotic Politics: The Dvnarnics of Desire on the Enalish Renaissance Sta~e(New York: Routledge, 1992). p. 57. 1 have found Zimmerman's view of "eroticism" helpful in my critical analyses of the English Renaissance plays representing love and sexuality. Although she acknowledges the importance of semal politics, her focus is on the dynamics of desire in the representation of affective and erotic relationships. Zimmerman explains why "eroticism" should be considered as a distinct category of analysis; "The inter- subjective realm of desire connects to the public, political domain; the English Renaissance stage foregrounds the multiple possibilities of this conjunction. shapes each in terms of a dynarnic that is available to critical scrutiny." In fact, she proposes that a theoretical framewurk should be established in wtiich sexuality and eroticism - as intersubjedive and social phenomena - can be studied historically. Zimmerrnan's more comprehensive view of the relationship between gender and sexuality is akin to my view. The terms "gender" and "sexuality" have often been used interchangeably in literary scholarship. Zimmerman argues against the inseparability between these two terrns. She suggests that sexuality is in oblique relationship to gender not coextensive with it. She quotes Gayle Rubin in pointing the problem one might incur by viewing gender and sexuality inseparably: "Feminism is the theory of gender oppression. To automatically assume that this makes it the theory of sexual oppression is to fail to distinguish between gender, on the one hand, and erotic desire on the other."
15. Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Traaedv: Religion. lm the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contempories (Brighton, Sussex Harvester Press, 1984). p. 4. Dollimore acknowledges the disjunction in the formal design of Jacobean drama. But he argues that the incongruent combination of "realistic" and "conventional" techniques is part of a strategy of evasion of official persecution. 16. Jonathan Dollimore, "Subjectivity, Sexuality. and Transgression: The Jacobean Connection." in Renaissance Drama as Cultural Histow: Fssavs from Renaissance Drama 1977-1 987, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990), p. 339. Dollimore, in his discussion of "inversion" as dramatic strategy, emphasizes that social change, contest and struggle in part are made possible in part by contradiction and are focused internally through the representation of deviancy in English Renaissance Plays.
17. Michael Bristol. Çarnival and Theater: Plebeian Culture and The Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (London: Metheuen. 1985) pp. 19- 25. 122-124. Historically Carnaval is the Shrovetide festival prior to Lent. culminating in Shrove Tuesday with a final 'Yarewell to flesh": "Carne Vale". The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin described "the battle behrveen Carnival and Lent" as the moral economy of the pre-capitalist market place. and interpreted art as the liberating spirit of the Carnivalesque. Carnival thus became synonymous with popular culture. The concept of heteroglossia of early modern culture, developed by Bakhtin as a cacophony of cornpeting languages. was like festive confusion of the market place. Bakhtin daims out of this interaction of voices a monological literary language would emerge triumphant. but not without carrying the marks of linguistic struggle. By extention. the notion of heteroglossia has been applied to Renaissance dramatic texts as sites of dialogic meaning, where elite and popular discourses or official and marginal accents complete with each other and interpenetrate. Michael Bristol applies the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin to early modern London. arguing that the world of Carnival or festive misrule contained a counter- culture that influenced dramatic writing of the period. Bristol also discusses the complex reality of dramatic heteroglossia:
The play house is not simply a theater in which a literary heteroglossia is performed, but an actual heteroglot institution in which the exchange of experience crosses every social boundary, and the diversity of speech type traverses the genres of literature and of authoritative discourses. . . Poetic language, rhetorical ornament and classical learning are compelled to share communicative space with vernacular speech and with vernacular misrepresentation of high culture. This is a virtual and immediate form of heteroglossia. . . The theater is the site of experimental institution - making, purposefully antithetical to any aesthetic program that seeks to create a unlied and comprehensive language for the interpretation of social complexity.
For the definitions of "Carnival" and "Heteroglossia" see, New Historicism and Renaissance Drama, Edited and lntroduced by Richard Wilson and Richard Dutton (New York: Longrnan, 1992), pp. 227-229.
18. Bristol, Carnival and Theater, pp. 52, 212-3. Bristol explains this process by suggesting that festive misrule can be viewed as a unified critical activity that seeks to restrain al1 radicalization from below in the fonn of individual deviation from socially accepted noms. All radicalization from above. meanwhile is restrained in the form of departures from traditional and customarily tolerated patterns of governance.
19. Mary Beth Rose. The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in Enalish Renaissance Drama. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 5-6.
20. Ibid, p. 46-47.
21. Ibid, p. 177.
22. A detailed discussion of these issues is to be found in Chapter one of the present project.
23. "Transgression." Oxford Enolish Dictionarv, 1989 ed.
24. "Sin," New Catholic Encvclopedia, 1967 ed.
25. Michael Foucault. Lanauaae. counter-memory. Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977). 33-36.
26. Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). p. 164.
27. Ibid, p. 167.
28. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of "field of opinion" and its relation to doxa is among the main features that distinguish Bourdieu's theory of power and knowledge frorn that of Michel Foucault Both Foucault and Bourdieu hold that power is diffuse and often concealed in broadly accepted and unquestioned ways of understanding the world. Unlike Foucault, who takes the view that knowledge can be completely reduced to political and economic power, Bourdieu understands knowledge and power to be interhMned but not inseparable, and emphasizes the symbolic power of "doxa." According to Bourdieu, "doxa" sets limits upon cognition through a misrecognition of arbitrariness as sekvident nature. But Bourdieu concedes the possibility of a break in "doxa" through contact with other cultures or through class struggle. He thus allows for the revelation of the arbitrariness of doxa and for a consequent process of questioning and pushing doxa's limits. The dominated class attempts to expose the arbitrariness, in his scherne, Aile the dominant classes have an interest in defending the integrity of "doxa." In short, the passage that links the field of opinion to "doxa" provides space for a dialectic process through which new norms can be legitimated without discarding the old ones completely. For Foucault, knowledge is produced by practices of discipline and surveillance that are used for social control. Foucault rejects the idea that knowledge or tnith can exist outside the network of power relations. His insistence on the inseparability of knowledge and economidpolitical power excludes the possibility of the critical knowledge that can arise in Bourdieu's scheme through the dialectical process of the 'field of opinion." For Foucault, there is no knowledge that can speak the truth to power, exposing domination for what it is and therefore enabling effective resistance to it. The recognition of arbitrariness is not possible in Foucault's world, since this recognition wuld be inseparably linked to domination and power. That is, if recognition is knowledge, it can only corne with domination for Foucault, and Mile revolutionary changes in the power structure may be possible, no transformation through the transference of old and new can take place. In Bourdieu's scheme the possibility of the recuperative moment of the dialectic cancels tha radical negativity of the transgressive act. hile in Foucault's scheme of power and knowledge transgression affirms the limit, but should not be understood to partake in a dialectical interaction. That is, it does not involve any transference between old to new truths.
29. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theorv of Practice,
30. Ibid, p. 168-69.
31. Ibid, p. 169.
32. Ibid. p. 170.
33. Foucault. Lanauaoe. Counter-memoy. Practice, p. 35.
34. Bertolt Brecht. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964). p. 71.
35. Ibid. p. 86.
36. See Randal Johnson, introduction, The Field of Cultural Production, by Pierre Bourdieu (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993) 1-25. 37. My views are informed. . by the writings of Catherine Belsey. "Literature, History, Politics" in New Historicism and Renaissance Drama (London: Longman, 1992) 33-44. See also Critical Practice (London: Methueun, 1980), 56-90; Stephen . . Greenblatt, Renaissance Seif-fashionina from More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, l98O), pp. 2-9; Jean E. Howard, ''The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies," in New Histor icisrn and R enaissance Dramq (London: Longman, 1992) 19-32; Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Traaedy: Religion. Ideoloav and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1984). pp. 9-1 9.
38. Jean-François Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowiedae (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 9, 81.
39. Saint Augustine, The Confessions of St. Auaustine, Trans. E. B. Pusey, D. D (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1953) Book 11, pp. 251-277. According to Saint Augustine present is the only measure of time. He defines the "present" claiming that past and future can only be thought of as present. Past must be identified with memory, and afterall, future with expectation. Memory and expectation, meanwhile, are both belong to present activities. Thus, there are three times in "present": a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future. Chapter One
The Fissured ldeal of Love and Marriaae
"Marriage,"writes John Milton in The Doctrine and Disci~lineof Divorce, "is a covnant, the very beeing whereof consists, not in a forc't cohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfained love and peace."' Milton insists that tnie love is not only the essence of marriage, but also its primary purpose. '*The proper and ultimate end of marriage is not copulation. or children," he writes, "... but the full and proper and main end of marriage, is the communicating of al1 duties both divine and humane, each to the other, with utmost benevolence and affe~tion."~The English Renaissance discourse of love and marriage reaches its culmination in Milton's radical polemics on divorce. That is, love between man and wornan is acknowledged as the main constituent of a conjugal union rather than its procreative and sexual function. In their article entitled "The Puritan Art of Love,"
William and Malleville Haller point out that the teachings of the English Protestant moral theologians concerning love and marriage exerted an important influence in shaping Milton's view on love and marriage. The ideal pattern of love and marriage, which had been advocated by the Protestant divines three or four generations before the publication of Milton's divorce tract, is explained by the
Hallers as "based upon traditional Christian morality, vitalized for popular imagination in terms of the English Bible, and adapted to the new conditions in which men were having to ive."^ 41
The "new conditions" of post-Reformaüon England were fraught cultural conflicts. Historical studies of the period4 show that England underwent major changes in al1 aspects of its national life - extraordinaiy dernographic growth. price inflation, the opening of the land market that resulted from the dissolution of the monasteries, and significant increase in litigation, foreign trade. and other commercial activities, along with wide expansion in educational opportunities. Also, as Rose points out, "it was a time when, in a hierarchical society, the economic potential and definitions of gender, social class, and status were perceived as provocatively fluid."'
Scholars and historians studying the domestic life of the period and the relations between the sexes have also demonstrated convincingly that the institution of marriage enjoyed a considerable rise in prestige in post-Reformation
~ngland.~After the break with Rome, the new English Church (formed 1534-1 559) accepted some of the tenets of marriage propagated by Luther, Calvin and other
Protestant reformers on the continent Mile retaining much of the apparatus of the
Cathoiic medieval one, including the ecclesiastical courts. Although the English
Church denied the status of sacrament to marriage, it did not support the continental Protestant doctrine of divorce. But the rejection of sacramental status did not relegate marriage to the merely secular. In fact, since the solernnization of a marriage by a priest was required for the validity of the marriage by the ecclesiastical courts (which had jurisdicüon over al1 matrimonial affairs), the English 42
Church appears to have made an uneasy compromise between the Protestant theory and the Catholic practice.7
The Protestant moral theologians exhibit their awareness of this uneasy compromise in their writings on marriage, sexuality and domestic relations. They agreed on the nonsacramental status of marriage, but insisted that it was not a mere civil covenant. They belaboured the issue of sanctity in marriage by emphasizing its divine ordination. The English Churchts unequivocal acceptance of the other major Protestant tenet of sacerdotal marriage granted new socio-moral prestige to the institution of marriage. The sacerdotal marriage. which is the central tenet of Protestant Christianity, considers matrimony as part of the ordinary life of the ordinary people of the world. Furthermore. it proclaims that the fullest reaches of religious experience must be totally available to just such ordinary people living ordinary lives8
Aiso associated with this idea was the Protestant Christianity's repudiation of celibacy as the highest state of perfection on earth. Even though marriage was included in the seven sacraments, the Catholic Church adhered to the sensual conception of the marriage whose purpose was the procreation of children and a remedy for concupiscence. The English Protestant Church's rejection of celibacy. which according to the Catholic scheme constituted the highest moral virtue of virginity, and simultaneous acknowledgement of the sanctity of marital sexuality. prompted the Protestant theologians to redefine chastity in terms of matrimony. In the writings of the moral theologians. the acknowledgrnent of the valid. and not undesirable, status of sexual desire in a marital union was always counterpoised by an emphasis on the affective and the spiritual aspects of wedded love. These writings which idealized marriage as a sanctified heterosexual union, without stressing the avoidance of fornication or even the procreation of children, emphasized a third reason for marriage. Archbishop Cranmer added this third reason with two ancient Catholic reasons for maniage in the Book of Common
Praver (1549) which is formulated as "mutual society, help and cornfort, that one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.'"
The domestic condud books'0 and marriage treatises give a clear idea of the relationship between love and marriage in early modem England. In the Boke of
Matrimonve (1564), Thomas Becon states the nature and purpose of the English
Protestant marriage:
(Matrimonye) an hie, holye order of Me, ordayned not of man, but of God, yea and that not in this sinneful world. but in paradyse that most joyful garden of pleasure: which hath ever ben had in great honor and reverence among al1 nacions. Wherein one man and one woman are coupled and knit together in one fleshe and body in the feare and love of God, by the free lovinge, harty and good consente of them both to the entent that they two may dwel together, as one fleshe and body of one wyl, and mynd in al1 honesty, vertue and Godliness, and spend their lyves in the equal partaking of al1 such thinges, as God shall send them with ~hankesgevynge."
Becon's definition points to the exalted status of marriage as a "holy order" which includes the monogarnous heterosexual union of bodies and minds. Children are the proper result of this union. but they are not the prime reason for it. In Becon's definition, the natural or biological aspect of the marital union is counterbalanced by the importance given to that which is affective and spiritual.
Bewn uses the Anglo-Saxon word 'bdlocke" in explaining the nature of the covenant implied in marriage:
Wedlocke is the lawfull knotte and unto God an acceptable yokynge together of one man and one woman with the good consent of them both, to the intent they maye dwell together in frendeshipe and honestye, one helping and cornfortynge other, eschuynge uncleannesse. and bringynge children in the feare of ~0d.l~
Marriage is an individual pledge wfiich is made voluntarily, not only to the conjugal partner but also to the law and to God. Becon further explains that in German, the word "wedlock stands for "lad' or "statute." and in Latin, it is called "conjugum" which ties it directly to the English word "joyninge," or "yokinge" together.
'Therefore," he vwites, "wedlocke is a covenant, a coupling or yokynge together."13
Becon does not attribute any mystery to the joining. It is a mutual covenant to carry the burden "as when two oxen are coupled under one yoke, beare or draw together like burethenne and wayghte."14 Thus, by using both the German and the Latin meanings of "wedlock." Becon explains the English meaning as a legal joining or covenant in mutual love and equal partnership. Despite the emphasis on the spiritual aspect of marital union. the meaning of the word wedlock, in Becon's discussion, is well grounded on secular and domestic reality.
Although the authors of the various domestic conduct books and marriage treatises are unequivocal in their acknowiedgement of the secular status of the instiion of marriage, they are emphatic in stating its singular position: "Marriage," writes William Perkins in Christian Oeconomie (1609). "of itselfe is a thing
indiRetent and the Kingdom of God stands no more in it, then meats and drinks; yet
it is a state in setfe, farre more excellent. then the condition of single life"''. After discussing three private traditional reasons for the preference of the married state to the single life (remedy for solitariness, relief of concupiscence. and procreation).
Perkins states the importance of the public reason for marriage:
God gave a large blessing unto the estate of marriage. saying. "increase and multiply and fiIl the earth" . . . Marriage was made and appointed by God himseif. to be the fountaine and seminarie of al1 other sorts and kinds of Me. in the Commonwealth and in the ~hurch.'~
One finds that marriage is defined increasingly in relation to society, the church. and the state; and an increasing emphasis is placed on the spiritual and socio- political aspects not only af the institution of maniage but also of conjugal and other familial domestic relations.
In Godlv Forme of Householde Government (1612). John Dod and Robert
Cleaver acknowledge, as does Perkins, the importance of the procreative function of marriage for its utilitarian purpose which serves privatelpublic spheres of domestic life. Dod and Cleaver explain how the institution of marriage can serve these purposes:
If they (children) bee wel and vertuously brought up. God is greatly honoured by them, the Commonwealth's advanced and parents and al1 other, fare better for them . . . he that hath married a Me, shall more easilie enjoy the healthfull pleasures, and profitable comodities of the present life. For in trouble, the one is a cornfort to the other: in adversitie, the one is refreshing unto the other: yea, and al1 in their life, the one is a helpe and succour to the other.17
In an ideal marriage, the private and worldly benefits fulfill the spiritual and public goal of marriage. In Domestical Duties (1626), William Gouge admits, like Perkins. that marriage is not sacred in itseB. Simultaneously, he states that it is an institution through which the population not simply increases, but does so as a
"legitimate brood," and "distinct families." which "are the seminaries of cities and commonwealth". Furthermore, Gouge also emphasizes the altruistic and sacred purposes of marriage by writing. 'Wat in the world the Church by an holy seed might be preserved and propagated."'8
Since marriage is a civil covenant. Daniel Rogers in Matrimonial1 Honour
(1642). states that the meaning of the "solemne sacredness" of marriage does not refer to any static spiritual purity. Rogers explains that the sacredness of secular marriage is acquired by keeping conjugal relations "chaste" and "undefiled" from semal or affective infidelity. In Rogers' definition, the all-encompassing beneficial utility renders the institution of marriage as the very being of civilized social living:
Marriage is the preservative of chastity, the seminary of the commonwealth, seed plot of the Church, pillar (under god) of the world, right hand of Providence, supporter of lawes, states, orders, offices, gifts and services: the glory of peace . . . Ife of the dead, solace of the living, the ambition of virginity, the foundation of Counteries, Cities, Universities, succession of families, crownes and kingdomes, yea (besides the being of these) its welbeing of them being made, and whatsoever is excellent in them, or any other thing, the very furniture of heaven (in a kinde) depending thereupon. lg
Rogers has attributed the hnio major virtues of Catholic order (chastity and virginity) to the Protestant mariage. In order to elevate the moral status of marital sexuality he has defined rnarriage as the ideal socio-sexual paradigm of earthly living.
The authors of these conduct books. in their atternpt to establish marriage which includes sexuality as the highest state of earthly living. always denounce single life as the source of much evil. Becon attributed the responsibility of the abused state and low esteem of the institution of marriage to the Roman Catholic
Church:
But amonge al1 these adversaries and enemies of Matrimonye, Romanishe Bishoppe . . . maye not be passed over with silence: whiche . . . hathe moste filthely corrupted, mangled. defiled al1 the misteries of God. of his holy worde, and blessed sacramentes: yet the moste holy state of godly matrimony hathe he moste vilely and most wickedly abused. and caste downe and made almoste of no reputation. No Turke, no Jewe. no Saracen. no Infidell, no Ethnyeke, no heathen, no Miscreant, no, no Devill hath anytime so vilely and so wickedly taughte and written of his blessed state of honourable wedlocke: as thys wicked Bishop of Rome and his adherents have done.*'
If Becon's diatribe against celibacy and its advocate "the Bishop of Rome" appears a little extreme, the comrnents of Perkins concerning this issue do not show any more restraint: "the commandment of the Pope of Rome. whereby he forbiddeth marriage of certaine persons, as namely, of clergiemen. is merely diabolica~."~'
Gouge even goes so far as to suggest that it is a sign of mental impairment of 'the 48
Pope of Rome1'to link chastity only with celibacy, "hereby the way note the dotage of our adversaries, who thinke there is no chastitie, but of single persons: whereupon in their speeches and writings they oppose chastitie and matrimonie one to another, as ho contrarie^."^^ Although the comments of the English moral theologians were a little extreme, they had good grounds for their statements. In their effort to establish the honour of marriage as the highest virtuous living of the earthly life, the English Protestant divines were working against a long-established
Christian tradition which valorized celibacy and continence as the signs of the superior moral gifts.
The early Church fathers were almost unanimous in their condemnation of marriage, and even when the purity of it was acknowiedged, it was with a tone of apology or deprecation. The words of St. Paul, "it is better to marry than to burn." were commonly used by the Protestant theologians to justify the elevated status of marriage. But the status of marriage as the purest state of earthly living, was fought back by the Catholic Church in the proclamation of the Council of Trent. The proclamation anathematized those who clairned that the "marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and it is better to marry and not more blessed to remain in virginity, or celibacy than to be ~nited."~~
There were differences of attitude on this issue even within the Church of
England. Anglican divines who extolled marriage in their treatises and semons regarded it more as a kind of necessary evil for the propagation of the race.
Richard Hooker, for example, speaks of single life as a thing more angelical and 49 divine than married lifd4 The Puritans, on the other hand. as C.L. Powell has pointed out, regarded marriage rather as an honourable and natural society of man and woman of which children were the proper result but not the prime cause. But the Puritans. were also inheritors of the long established Christian distrust of sexual desire, and it was not without an uneasy tension that they were able to accommodate both "honourable" and "natural" in their definition of holy matrimony.
Thus, in their effort to establish an exalted status for marriage without ignoring its basic biological purpose, they always added an equal or superior emphasis upon the spiritual aspect and companionate partnership of the marital union.25 However, both the Puritan and the Anglican divines constantly spoke of marriage in relation to society. the Church and the state, that made the definition of the English
Protestant marriage quite complex and multifaceted.
Most domestic conduct books of early modern England cover a wide range of issues concerning love, marriage. domestic relations, and household government. I shall concentrate only on their views on the issues which will facilitate an understanding of the nature of transgression in the dramatic representation of love and marriage in the plays of the period. Since the dramatic narratives of the selected plays which I analyse deal with the problematic issues concerning the freedorn of choice in the selection of a marriage partner, premarital love, courtship and adulterous love, I have limited my examination of the conduct books to these issues. These same Protestant divines who supported the elevated status of marriage also acknowiedged sexuality as naturai and amoral. but they were careful not to reduce the status of marriage rnerely to a civil wvenant of heterosexual union for bioiogical reasons. In other words, in order to include sexuality in the manied state. which was the "highestl' and "holy" order of Ife, the theologians were required to redefine "holiness" and "purity." In the medieval scheme of moral virtues. a vow of chastity led to the optimum of the moral virtues: virginity. After the Reformation. since the married state was competing with celibacy for the status of the highest order of life, the Protestant theologians had to establish marriage. marital love and sexuality as morally equivalent to celibacy, if not superior.
Perkins maintains that sexuality is amoral and natural, but in the context of marriage. it can acquire holiness, "And it is a thing of its own nature indifferent; neither good nor bad; and so Paul numbereth it amongest indifferent things (1. Cor.
1.29)." In fact, on the grounds that sexuality is indifferent. Perkins repudiates the daim of the moral superiority of celibacy:
They think this secret coming together of man and wife to be filthiness. This was the sentence of Syricius, that filthie Pope of Rome; who determined that marriage was uncleannesse of flesh . . . yea and after that marriage was condemned by them. some began to detest and hate women . . . and Council of Trent is of the same judgement for whereas it opposeth marriage and chastitie; it plainly determineth that in marriage there is no ~hastitie.~~
Perkins not only contends that the low esteem of rnarriage in the Catholic Church is due to the deprecatory notion of sexuality and the consequent rise of misogamy, 51 he also claims that there is no opposition between marriage and chastity. In the implied assumption of the closure of the last sentence. Perkins has silently appropriated the old meaning of chastity into the new definition of marriage; this rneaning does not exclude sexuality. Since chastity. in the Catholic order of things, is synonyrnous with virginity or celibacy, then marriage is considered as the moral binary of chastity. In his contention that there is no opposition between marital sexuality and chastity, Perkins is actually defining chastity as a marital virtue. He emphasizes the individual responsibility and the active aspect of chastity as a virtue in marriage: "This coming together of man and Me, although it be indifferent, yet by the holy usage thereof, it is made holy and undefiled action" (Hebr. 13.4).
Marriage is honourable arnong al1 and the bedde undefiled.*'
Perkins, like other Protestant moral theologians who acknowledged the validity of matrimonial sexuality, insists on its distinctions from lust by elaborating on proper conduct and restraint in conjugal love and Me. He recommends moderation and temperance because "even in wedlocke excess in lusts is no better than plain adulterie before God .... lmmoderate desire even betweene man and wife is fornicationn.** Moreover, Perkins reminds his readers that the duteous sexual love of marriage is only one aspect of ideal wedded love which calls for the conjugal couple to share "their (conjugal couple's) goods, their counsel, labors, for the good of thernsel~es."~~
In addition to the need of proper sexual desire, and conduct. Perkins emphasizes the importance of the proper nature of conjugal affection: An holy kind of reioicing and solacing themselves each with other, in a mutual declaration of the signes and tokens of love and kindness . . . This reioycing and delight is more permitted to the man, than to the wornan; and to them both, more in their young years, than in their old age?0
Perkins does not explain why he is privileging young men over young women and bars both old men and women from the recomrnended enjoyment of proper conjugal affection. In other words, he does not seem to perceive any incongruity between the hierarchied modality of affective conduct and the ideality of the companionate marriage and mutuality of love.
William Whatley, in A Bride Bush (1619). also affirms the validity of marital sexuality by stating, "that it is a principal1 meanes of living purely in this state. to enjoy it moderately and holily". He further elaborates on the rules concerning sexual. affective. domestic. spiritual affairs and proper management of the household in order to emphasize the importance of proper conduct in transforming marriage into a holy state of ~iving.~'Whatley emphasizes the importance of chastity as a matrimonial virtue which represents a lawful monogarnous heterosexual love. He insists that marital sexuality is different from lust and fornication found in adultery represents. Furthemore, Whatley argues that adultery is a "capital1 crime" and is not merely private transgression. He explains the built-in multilevel offenses in the act of adultery:
[a violation of] "Commandment of God, the lawes of their countery, the light of their conscience, covenant of their marriage, honour and safety of their body and sou1 . . . to offend God, disobey the magistrate, scandalize the Church . . . and al1 this for the attainment of a short, momentary, impure. brutish, and sensual pleasure; or for the satisving of a foolish, sinfull, shamefull, unreasonable and unbridled passion, which will never be satisfied: for always lust will prove the more tyranicall. by how much it is more yielded intoe3*
Adultery is not merely a private transgression of unregulated desire, but also an act which causes disruption in the social, moral and religious order of domestic reality.
Whatley exhorts his reader on how to stay away from "the burning fier" of unregulated passion by living rightly through prayer, vocation, hard work, ternperance in diet, avoidance of bad places, dalliance. and proper enjoyment of matrimonial sexuality). Whatley emphasizes that premarital sexual purity is needed for the marital chastity:
[those Mo] have polluted thernselves by whoredome before their entrance in this estate . . . shall find that marriage will more hardly make them honest after their entrance . , . wherefore those that have been stained with uncleannesse before. must purifie themselves from that defilement, by frequent confessing and heavily bewailing before God, their former lewde behavior, else marriage will never prevaile to containe their desires within ~om~asse.~~
Chastity and lust are now moral binaries of ideal marital sexuality. That is, lust is synonymous with adultery and must be differentiated from the ideal marital sexuality. The potential for a problematic situation, which could arise from the conflict between human psychological impulses or desires and their social obligations to premarital sexual purity and postmarital sexual and affective fidelity, remained unacknowiedged in the discussion of ideal sexuality. The explanation of the excessive importance attached to the value of chastity, especially of female
chastity, lies in the fact that in a patrilinear propertied society, it was necessary that
there should not be any legal doubts about the legitimacy of the heirs to property
and title. Whatley warns that marital infidelity will not only "overthrow the orderly
society of a commonwealth." but also "it will transforme men into the savage
rudenesse of bruit creatures. where no young almost can know his sire?
Gouge in Domestical Duties defines chastity as "that vertue whereby parties
rnarried, keepe their bodies from being defiled with strange flesh"; and. despite the
fact that he considers adultery as an equal sin for both the husband and wife. he
elaborately points out that the Me's infidelity causes more "inconveniences":
Though the ancient Romans and Canonists have aggravated the fault in this kinde (adultery) farte above the mans, . . . yet I see not how that difference in the sinne can stand with Tenour of Gods word. I denie not but that more inconveniences may follow upon the womans defauk than upon the mans; as, greater infamy before men, worse disturbance of the family, more rnistaking of legitimate. or illegitimate children, with the like. The man cannot so well know which be his own children. as the wornan; he may take base children to be his own children, and cast the inheritance upon hem; and suspect his owne to be basely borne. and so deprive thern of their patrimony. But woman is freed from all such mistakings?
Even though Gouge acknowledges that "in regard of the breach of wedlocke, and
transgression against God, the sinne of either partie is alike," female adultery is
considered more serious than male because of its socio-economic implications which might disadvantage the husband. Thus adultery for the wife is not only an abstract theological sin but also an offense against the husband and, consequently. a transgression against the patriarchal order of society, the state and Church.
However, Gouge is not alone in expressing a discrepant view on adultery.
Perkins states that although a man's exoneration is possible through repentance and the de's willingness to forgive, because of the need for husband's protection from financial burden of illegitimate heirs. the woman's mere repentance will not exculpate her:
The husband to avoid the imputation of having an heire in bastardie, is to make relation to the Church of the repentance of the adulteresse: or to acquaint some certain persons therewith . . . that may take notice of a child conceived in adultery, whom afteward he may lawfully put off as none of hi^.^^
Rogers. in Matrimonial1 Honour, discusses the meaning of chastity under
"joint duty of rnarriage" and states that it "is so real1. so essentia I an attribute, that the absence thereof quite destroys the being thereof'. Like his predecessors, he explains the paramount importance of chastity as a woman's virtue: "the wife is sheepish, or shrewish, or the like; but the comfort is, she is chast, there is no comfort in it, that she is fayre, rich personable or well bred."37 The difference behrveen ideal wedded love and lust depends on chastity, Rogers explains:
. . . closeness and entirenesse of spirit, such as the marryed couples ought to embrace, cannot subsist in multitude: the first number two, are enough to grow into one flesh: and love will vanish into lust, baseness and brutish cornmones, if the bridle were let loose into manifolde copu~ation.~~ Finally, chastity is defined as a totalizing marriage virtuel which requires unqualrfying fidelity of both affective and sexual love of the conjugal couple:
So they, as I have began wi-th the duty of love (which must be the first, and inward cement of couples for whats Christ al1 worth l it be broken?) I say, as love is the inward band of preserving, because the outward action followeth the affection: so now, I proceed with chastity, which is the main Charter of Love, and the patent thereaf, evidencing that the heart loves entirely, because the bodies are kept from pollution.3g
The writings of the English moral theologians on marriage and chastity, so far as I have discussed, reveal that the rejection of the a rio ri sacredness of "holy matrimony" has brought "chastity" and "holiness" into the field of discourse or opinion. The authors of the domestic conduct books have defined ideal love and sexuality in terms of chastity and holiness by using secularldomestic and spirituallreligious language but not without jarring. That is to Say, the legitimization of amoral natural sexuality in the scheme of holy matrimony takes place through a trajectory of moral. legal and spiritual oppositions. The new ideal of rnarriage and love required strict adherence to the guidelines of proper conduct of sexual and affective love. Thus any love relationship that did not conforni to the rules of proper conduct was considered illicit and sinful. However, despite the Protestant theologian's distrust of sexual desire, sex, in the context of marriage, is held to be
"holy and undefiled," thus granting consummated erotic love a distinct prestige. In other words, the acknowledgement of the alternative to ideal love and sexuality made the contestation and exploration of meaning possible. In the English 57
Protestant order of things. the non-static view of sandity or holiness opened up new discursive space for love, sexuality and marriage. Sexual love. with its elevated prestige in the scheme of the Protestant marriage. becarne an important subject worthy of epistemological enquiry of the secular writers of imaginative literature.
1 shall argue in my critical analyses of selected plays that the dramatists. in their representation of heterogeneous patterns of love and marriage. are actually exploring the meaning of newly established tenets of holy matrimony and the attendant code of proper sexual and affective conduct.
The new definition of chastity as the highest matrimonial virtue did not only refer to physiological purity or sexual monogamy but also accorded a paramount importance to the purity of mutual affection. The emphasis on mutual affection as the prime constituent of marriage required that its purityiimpurity be defined in the wntext of the conjugal domesticity of the Protestant patriarchal nuclear family. In
MiIton's divorce tract. this basic aspect of English Protestant marriage discourse was carried to its farthest limit. "VVhere love cannot be," writes Milton, "there can be left of wedlock nothing. but the empty husk of an outside rnatrim~n~."~~After stating the indispensability of love in true marriage, Milton goes on to explain the nature of this love and gives priority to the spiritual and psychological aspects of love over the physical; "[in marriage] whereas the solace and satisfaction of minde is regarded and provided for before the sensitive pleasing of the body".41 ln an exegetical passage on St. Paul's dictum, 'lit's better to marry than to burn" (which has often been quoted to support the second end of marriage. remedy for 58
incontinence), Milton rejects the traditional interpretation which refers "burning" to
concupiscence. He reinterprets, staüng that this burning is. "Certainly not the meer
motion of carnall lust. not the meer goad a sensitive desire; God does not
principally take care for such cattell." The non-sensuous nature of this desire
Milton then establishes on the ground of its original purity, "What it is then but that
desire which God put into Adam in Paradise before he knew the sin of
incontinence". This purity of love, explains Milton, refers not only to non-
sensuousness but also to rationality and cognition. ',The desire and longing to put
off an unkindly solitariness by uniting another body, but not without a fit soule to his
in the cheerful society of wedlock. . . . But this pure and more inbred desire of joining to it self in conjugal1 fellowship a fit conversing sou1 (which desire properly
call'd love) 'is stronger than death, ' as the spouse of Christ thought; 'many waters
cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it. '142 On this basis. Milton asserts that the purpose of marriage is to remedy not incontinence but to remedy spiritual and mental loneliness. By reinterpreting St. Paul's dictum, Milton is able to dissociate the notion of sin from marriage which is considered as a holy order according to the Protestant doctrine.
Henry Smith. in A Pre~arativeto Marriaae (1591), explains that marriage is called "conniugium" to show the love which should be between man and woman. and "which signifieth a knitting or joining together." Smith goes on to explain the importance of love in marriage, "that unlesse there be joyning of harts, the knitting of affectio together, it is not marriage indeed, but in shew & name, and they dwell in a house like two poysons in a stomack. & one shall ever be sick of the other.""
Smith was not alone in his warning against the miseries of marriage if it is not founded on mutual affection. "Their hearts," writes Whately, "must be united as well as their bodies. else their union will prove more troublesome than be imagined.
Love is the life and sou1 of marriage, without which . . . it is a most miserable and uncornfortable society, and no better than living death"." Although the Protestant marriage discourse reaches its culmination in Milton's divorce tract, similar views were expressed by the Protestant divines over a period of approximately one hundred years. In their sermons, marriage treatises and conduct books the divines gave guidance and advice on how to achieve the ideal state of "holy matrimony" and avoid the miseries of marriage. Ffty-two years before the publication of
Doctrine and Discipline, those works stressed the importance of love in marriage.
The tract-writers seemed to be aware of the miseries of a marriage which becomes a living death and attribute the cause ta the contemporary social practice of enforcedlarranged marriage. Becon writes elaborately about the results of enforced marriages:
This kinde of marrying hath ever bene detested . . . and not without a cause. For when they corne once unto the perfection of age, and see other whom they could finde in theyr harte to fansie and love better, than many of them beginne to hate one another . . . curse theyr parentes even unto the pitte of hel for the coupling of them together. Than seeke they al1 means possible to bee divorced one from another, what frowning, ovenniharting, scolding, and chiding, is there betweene them, so that the Mole house is filled full of those tragedies one into the toppe . . . what a wycked and hellyke life is this! The baser sorte of people seek this unquiet life, that is used among the gentilrnen and theyre wywes . . . Then go home, and if any thinge (bee it never so Iytle) displeaseth thern. streight they are together by the eares with their wives, so that shortly after the mole Towne is in a rore . . . mat is the orygnall cause of al1 these tragicall and bloudy dissencions. but only the covetous affection of those parentes Miche for lucres sake so wickedly bestow theyr children in theyr youth and yoke them with such as they cannot favoure in theyr age . . . the couetous affection of rotten gentleman, which for lucres sake many these children before they corne unto any perfect knowledge either of the selves, or other, is one occasion. Why holy wedlocke is so little esteemed nowe a days so large a window openned into whoredome and adultery."
In a similar reforrnist vein Dod and Cleaver write against the practices of arranged marriage:
This is most unnatural and crull part. for parents to seIl their children for gaine and lucre, and marrie them when they list. and to whom they list, without good liking of their children, and so bring thern into bondage. And therefore if parents shal force and compell their children to marrie contrary to their and liking: then the sorrowful childre rnay not Say, they have maried them: but forever they have marred and undone them. And therefore to the end that marriages may be perpetuall, loving and delightful, betwixt the parties: there must and ought to bee a knitting of hearts, before striking of hand~.~~
80th Becon and Dod and Cleaver attribute the reasons for abusive and unhappy marriage situations to the current practice of enforced marriage of children for the purpose of pecuniary gains by the parents. Moreover. Becon contends that the 61 unhappiness of forced marriage does not only increase moral evils like whoredom and adultery, but also leads to social disorder because the conjugal strife of the upper class might encourage the "baser sort of people" to behave in a similar fashion. Although they al1 agree that the social custom of enforced marriage is the main impediment to achieving the ideal wedded love, they are not unaware of the inexplicability of human affection. "As there is no affection" writes Thomas Gataker,
"more forcible; so there is none freer from force and compulsion. The very offer of enforcement turneth it oft into hatred. There are secret links of affection, that no reason can be rendered of: as there are inbred dislikes that can neither be resolved, or re~onciled.'~~However, in spite of its inexplicable nature, mutual love was recommended as a remedy not onlyfor social and moral evils, but, also, for the proper foundation of marriage. Like sexuality, the acknowledgment of affection as the valid foundation of ideal marriage requirec! chastening of affective love.
For the English Protestant divines, the task of accommodating affective love, both pre-marital and wedded, vvithin the constraints of the definition of "holy matrimony" was not accomplished vinthout creating contradictions and incongruities in the tenets of the ideal, especially because of the association of irrationality with human affect which can result in capricious and arbitrary desires. The tract-writers always emphasized the spiritual and ethical aspects of wedded love in order to downplay the romantiderotic. Since "Wedlocke is made of two loves." Smith commands that "they [the conjugal couple] must love God before they can love one another," because "as their love increaseth toward him, so it shall increase to each other". He warns men especially of the dangers of conjugal love. "least the pleasure of his wife should drawe his heart from God". It is wife's duty to protect the godliness of husband's love because "in Deut. 13. the wife which did draw her husband frorn God, is condemned to dye . . ."". Smith in trying to establish the importance of spiritual love, as a constraining element of the sensuous affection of wedded love, reveals himsetf as an inconsistent promoter of his own ideas. His definition of wedded love as "thankfull vertue" implicates senses in the ideal love:
wouldest thou learne how to make thy match delightfull? Salomon said. "reioyce in her love continually . . . . Love is called the thankfull vertue. because it rendereth peace, and ease, and comfort to him that makes of her.49
Smith was not the only one who was making contradictory statements regarding the nature of the ideal love. In discussing the "properties" of ideal love.
Whately divides them into two categories: spiritual and matrimonial. He then elaborates by explaining that one should not love one's spouse because of "the face, favour, portion. proportion, beauty, dowry, nobility," but for the "good wil and pleasure of ~od."~~Moreover, to impress upon the readers the unconditional nature of this love, he refers to the scriptural commandment:
We find not in scriptures that precept, husbands love your wkes, and wives your husbands, limited with any such conditions as this. l they be thrfty, if they be discreete. if they be patient, or the like. but simply and absolutely if they be your own. love them?
Whately has not only elirninated any physical or material stimuli. but has also disassociated the much praised socia Wdomestic virtues from the foundation of ideal love. Thus, free from the relative sphere of the senses. unchangeable and unconditional spiritual love which aims only at the everlasting salvation paradoxically becornes the ontological premise of the non-sacramental secular marriage covenant. Whately appears ambivalent about any deprecation of the carnallnatural in his statement of the multi-faceted benefit of love in marriage:
Love seasons and sweetens al1 estates; love breaketh and composeth al1 controversies; love ovemileth al1 passion . . . it is in a word the king of the heart, which in Wom it prevaileth. to them is marriage itset! indeed, viz. a pleasing combination of two persons into one home, one purce, one heart, and one flesha5'
Moreover. Whately incorporates camality into the ideal love with a small cautionary admonition that "conjugal relations should not be warmed alone with such carnell
A similar incongruity is present in the recornmended guidelines on how to achieve ideal wedded love in holy matrimony. VVhately insists that the only solid foundation of married love is obedience to God "who enjoins it upon husband and wife". However, although he urges married couples not to love for physical beauty or personal qualities, he acknowledges the importance of beauty and virtue in sustaining the quality of conjugal love:
The wife also must love her husband. not only or chiefly because hee is a proper man, of good meanes, and of good parentage. kind to her . . .; but hee is her husband. and God . . . hath told women that they ought 54 to be lovers of their husbands. . . . A little farther. in the same book. Whately endorses the same qualities for the betterment of wedded love:
Every married couple must uphold in their hearts a good conceite and opinion of each other . . . The husband must think well of his Me, she of her husband, further than the apparent evidence of ill- deserving carriage, shall even inforce them to the contrarie . . . For man and wife to have somewhat an over-good opinion of each other; for him to think her, not only more comely, handsome, beautifull, but also more loving, more dutifull, more submissive, more trustie. than perhaps shee is (making her vertues carry a greater shew to his eye. by looking upon them through the spectacles of love) and for her to account him . . . more proper, and hansome bodied. well favoured . . . .55
AIthough the ideal love must be unfeigned and should have foundation in the mind,
Whately recommends a selfdeluding quality which is negative because associated with eye and imagination to achieve the ideal wedded love. Even though the eye and the imagination by themselves are considered untrustworthy and dangerous in matters of heart because they can impede the working of reason. Whately does not hesitate to ignore the negative aspects for a positive end:
. . . man and wife to be made so mutually blind the liking each other, as not to be able to see some things that are amisse each in other, and to see things that are out of order, in as little a proportion and shape as may be; this betwid hem two, is doubless and praiseworthy b~indness.~~
Whately is not concerned here that his approval of "blindness" or unreason in the scheme of ideal wedded love has relativised the moral qualities of love. In other words, deception and falsehood are not absolutely bad. They are wrong only in an illicit situation or for an illicit purpose. It is the lawfulness of love in marriage which makes these qualities "praiseworthy," Mile an illegal and irnproper amorous situation will make hem rnorally wrong. Moreover, like married sexuality, affection of the married couple must not be shared by any other and requires absolute fidelity even in thought and intention:
No neighbour, no kinsman, no friend, no parent. no child should be neare and deare unto the husband as his wife, nor to her as her husband . . . The love of married must be singular. and must not have even inclination of having anothermS7
These stringent codes of affective conduct are prescribed "to limit lust, and keepe desire compasse" and to transform marital affection into a pure love wbich will resemble the love of Christ and the Church.
Among the divines whom I have been discussing, only Rogers explains unhesitatingly the mixed nature of the ideal love; mixed because of the potential for redemption in nature:
. . . That by conjugal1 love, here, I meane not only Christian love. a grace of God's spirit: (for marriage borders much what upon nature and flesh) nor yet a camell and sudden flash of affection corruptly enflamed by concupiscence: (rather brutish then hurnane) but a sweete compounde of both, religion and nature, the latter being as the materiall, the former as the formall cause therof; properly called marriage love?
In other words, the spiritual aspect of ideal love purifies and redeerns the sensuous aspect of affection and thus becomes a combination of spirituality and reformed carnality. There is no ambivalence in Rogers' emphasis on the inviolable and uncapricious nature of the ideal love. He explains that married love:
is not an humour raysed suddenly in a pang or thoade of affection. ebbing and flowing; sometymes when the parties are set upon the state abroad, among Company and strangers, where they woulde acte a part for their credit; (for family and place where the live ought to be their true stage of action).
This "love of couple," Rogers continues, "is no union of imagination. mixture. nor yet bare affections. but an effect of divine institution, between two. not to be dissolved till death. except uncleanness divorced itIl .59
By connecting a notion of love as whimsicallerratic with a view of the stage as a public space where deception and feigning takes place in the portrayal of love.
Rogers establishes the sanctity of the domestic arena as the proper place for true love. Through the creation of a new private space for true love, Rogers is tacitly dissociating the new ideal from the various existing love traditions (such as the
Neo-platonic, the courtly. and the Petrarchan). The ephemerality of other unions of love is due to their sensuous foundations ('imagination'. 'mixture1. 'bare affection1),while the inviolability of the ideal affective bond is attributed to the divine dispensation. Rogers is not concerned with the question of how the institution of marriage, without its sacramental status, can dispense the mystique of an inviolable affective bond behnreen the conjugal couple.
However, the ideal wedded love is not only transient and ontologically inseparable from true marriage, but is also the foundation of the conjugal ethics of 67 dornestic life (which constitute the holy order of marriage). The "two." write Dod and Cleaver. "cannot become one flesh lawfully, when ther wanteth the union and coniunction of the heart, the true natural mother of al1 marriage d~ties."~' For
Gouge love and duty are synonymous: "under love al1 other duties are comprised: for without it no duty can be perfomed.'"' In his attempt to eschew any connotation of capriciousness and irresponsibility with the ideal love, Gouge has made love and duty inseparable. Like his fellow divines. Gouge is not concerned with the problematic issues associated with the inseparability of aesthetics and ethics of erotic and affective love.
Since the theologians could not advise divorce and re-marriage as a remedy for marital discord. they emphasized the importance of freedom of choice and mutual love in the selection of marriage partner that would strengthen the conjugal bond of non-sacramental rnarriage. Both the Hallers and Powell have pointed out that before Milton. divorce was never discussed as a remedy for marital unhappiness. The Puritan divines avoided taking an explicit stand on divorce and remarriage as a remedy for marital discord. Powell attributes the reason for their not taking a stand on this issue to their lack of both political and ecclesiastical power. Marriage was under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Church of England. and on the issues of divorce and remarriage, the Anglicans preferred the Catholic tradition to that of the continental reformers. Both Puritan and Anglican divines. however, focused on the practice of enforcedlarranged marriages as the main cause of marital unhappiness. 68
Despite the repeated proclamation of the importance of ideal wedded love the English Protestant theologians show great concem about the unhappiness of discordant marriages. Since men were required to love their wives and since the miseries of marriage "Come from the vices and disorders of one's own yoke fellow," both Puritan and Anglican tract-writers agreed that it was important to choose 'Yit help meet" to prevent matrimonial diswrd and achieve happy wedded love. But this concession of free choice in the scheme of 'holy rnatrimony' did not refer merely to a romantic choice for the emotional fulfillment of two individuals. Instead, the idea of freedom of choice in selecting a marriage partner was promoted primarily as a cognitive remedy for the marital unhappiness. "lt is necessary," writes Smith. "to learne one another's nature well, and one another affections and one another infirmities because ye must be helpers, and ye cannot help, unless ye know the disease." In order to achieve concord in marriage, cognition must guide affection because "Al iarres, almost which do trouble this bond, do rise of this, that one doth not hit the measure of the others heart."62 This cognitive aspect of choice validates eventually the notion of the premarital beginning of ideal wedded love.
In order to acquire the ideal state of wedded love and remedy the contrary-death- like situation, Whately recommends that love should be "matchmaker as well as mat~hkee~er."~~In spite of Gouge's emphasis on the ethical aspect of ideal wedded love, his suggestion as to how to keep marriage from not being
"asundered" or "unglued" implies indirectly the idea of affective choice of a 69 marriage partner: "If at first there be a good liking mutually and thoroughly settled in both their hearts of one another," he says, "love is to continue in them for ever.~'~
However, when Smith mes, "hee must choose his love, then hee must love hys ~hoice.'~'hee' here does not refer to an individual who is free of sociallmoral, economic and parental restraint to select a marriage partner of his free will.
Moreover, as we shall see later, the freedom of choosing is fettered by strict guidelines on how to make the proper and right choice. In other words, 'choice' enters into the scheme of the Protestant 'holy matrimony' with specific guidelines for the right choice and warnings against the 'unfit' or 'unapt matches."
Furthemore, the subject of choice is discussed in tandem with the issue of parental consent in marriage. The Puritan and the Anglican divines both, unequivocally assert that parental consent is needed for the validity of a marriage contract, thus imposing a serious limit on the marriage of individual choice. When the divines speak of 'choice', they actually mean the freedom to make the right selection of a spouse who will be a 'meet'lrfit' help of yoke fellow. Like sexuality and affection, they define the quantity and quality of fitness the utilitarian purpose of making married lovefduty unburdensome.
Regarding the selection of a marriage partner, Dod and Cleaver explain:
"And seeing that election or choice, is nothing else, but to take a thinge meete and convenient to the end it is prepared for. therefore everie one that rnust chuse. ought to regard the end, and knowne what thing is convenient for it - he be wise and discreete? Smith insists al1 marital strife is the result of unfitness and "a wife 70 cannot helpe well, unless she be meete." He then goes on to explain that because of this ideal 'Yitness", the married couple is called "paires, that is like as a paire of glous, or a paire of hose are like; so man and wife should be like, because they are a paire of friend~."~~However, Smith must have had a very different meaning of friendship in mind men he discussed the relation of husband and Mein the context of managing and running the family. Since ''the man is to his de." he stipulates, "in the place of Christ to his Church," it is recommended "that she should regarde his will as the Lordes will". Moreover, because "she sinned first, therefore she is humbled most, and ever since the daughters of 'Sara' are bound to cal1 their husbands Lords, as Sara called her husband, that is, to take them for their Lords, for heads 8 governo~rs.'"~
Thus, the divines' recommendation that godliness and fitness are the two main qualities to look for when selecting a marriage partner was not without qualification or inconsistency. Dod and Cleaver suggest six important points as the signs of godliness. For men, good name or report or character (which excludes swearing, whoring, dissembling, dishonesty, deceit and covetousness) is important.
Don and Cleaver advise reading the various looks and rejecting those that are proud, angry and wanton because they "bewray the proud, angrie, wanton nature."
"Modest countenance" and 'lvornanly shamfastness" in a maid are important since they are signs of a future "chast Me." Although they acknowledge that talk or speech "is the mirrour and messenger of the mind . . . by the words one shall be justified to be wise, foolish, sober"; they also commend silence as the best virtue for woman and proclaim "open mouth hath much uncleannesse" [for w~rnan].~~
Also, sober attire, good Company and religious upbringing, must be taken into account as part of the godly qualities of right choice. However. Dod and Cleaver show great concern about the possibility of deception, trickery and blandishment
in selecting a marriage partner for love, and recomrnend the need for long careful observation to ascertain the genuineness of the prescribed godly qualities of prospective partners:
al1 these properties are not spied out at three or foure commings and meetings of the parties, for hypocrisie spun with a fine thread, and non are often so deceived as lovers. He therefore Mich will knowe al1 his wives qualities: or she that will perceive her husbands dispositions, 8 inclinations, before either be married to them, had neede to see one the other eating, and walking, working, and playing. and talking, and laughing and chiding too: or else it rnay be. the one shall have with the other, lesse than he or she looked for. or more than they wished for."
The tract-witers seem not to have been concemed with the ambiguity in their advice. On the one hand, they suggest that the choosing of a marriage partner must guard against the possibility of the deceptive snare of love and on the other allow that even in an ideal conjugal relationship there should be a conscious fostering of self-delusion "through the spectacle of love." Moreover. they do not suggest how this elaborate observation to ascertain the verity of godliness will take place between prospective marriageable man and woman Men"silence" or "closed mouth" and "shamfastness" are recommended as ideal qualities for maids. 72
Like godliness, fitness is an equally if not more important criterion for choosing a spouse. The quality of fitness is emphasized because 'unfitness' was regarded as the source of al1 marital discord. Also, since the wife was defined as
"helpmeet," Smith claims that the suitability to help depends on fitness: "it is not enough bee vertuous, but to bee suitable. . . . Even godly couples do iaree when they are married, because there is some unfitness between them which makes oddesl'." For marital concord, the matching of individual character traits are more important than general godly qualities. Thus, for reasons of practicality, ideal virtuous qualities become relative in the scheme of "holy matrimony" and "happy wedded love." In order to emphasize the paramount importance of the quality of
'Yitnessimeetness" in achieving marital accord, Smith makes Yitness" a precondition of ideal affection. ''for if they be not like, they will not ~ike".'~In establishing the golden rule of ideal love and marriage, Smith does not discuss the possibility of dislikes between those who are alike, nor the likings behiveen two unlikes, which provide a major theme in the representation of love and marriage in the plays of the period. In discussing the nature of highly cherished "aptmatches", the tract-writers stress the ideal of equality in choosing a marriage partner. They advise that there should be equality of godliness, social rank and economic status, age and education.
Although the writers wam men repeatedly against the attraction of woman's beauty when selecting a prospective Me, they acknowledge that husbands are less likely to stray from beautiful wives, and thus that the Me's beauty can function as a preservative of man's chastity. In the following interlocutory passage, Rogers implicitly endorses beauty and persona1 charm as equally important (like godliness, portion, rank) for the "aptrnatches":
Many have said as you Say, If I may have state sufficient, no bodily blemish shall trouble me. Another, if I can get a religious Me, one hunred pounds will content me as well as three. If I may marry one who I love, I care not for portion, but alas poor green heads, before a few years be over your heads, when you have summed off, and licked up the upper sweet of your marriage your thought goe to work, 1 have deserved portion, and religion and beauty to;. . . Then your unstaid eye fasten upon others, whom you see to exceed you in portion. birth, sweetness of nature, feature, and the like. . .73
The hypothetical regrets of the male marriage partner are used here in order to validate indirectly corporeal qualities as part of the ideal "apt match." Rogers. perhaps, does not realize that the mixed ideal of corporeal and spiritual led to various other matches which could be simultaneously 'apt' and 'unapt'. I shall show later in my analysis of the plays that the newly created space. on either side of a demarcation line between suitable and unsuitable, is appropriated by the playwights of the period as the site of transgression in love and rnarriage.
Sirnilarly, although the writers denounced the practice of enforced marriages for "lucre sake," their recognition of dowry as a secondary yet important element revealed the mixed nature of the ideal "apt match." They denounced matches based solely on the consideration of wealth and status, yet the issue of dowry or marriage portion in selection of a marriage partner remained unrepudiated. 74
"Money," advises Rogers, "wil keep love warme and freedom from the distraction
of poverty will leave a man and wife freer to express their love towards each
~ther".'~Because of the spiritual as well as material goal of the ideal love and
marriage, the Protestant divines wndemned both fortune seekers and those foolish
enough to wed poverty, prettiness, or even virtue without money or property. Thus
Rogers advised men to choose a godly woman wSthfive hundred pounds over an
ungodly one with eight hundred. He admitted the financial loss was not negligible.
but that a good companion would be worth the difference. By acknowledging the
expedient and equitable role of money, the writers tried to harmonize spiritual and worldly motivations and assumed godliness and virtue to be accornpanied by a
good portion in marriage. In their discussion, however, they did not consider the
possibility of the ungodliness of rnoney, which might not be an unmixed blessing,
in the ideal love and "apt matches" I shall show later in my analysis of particular
plays that the dramatists focused on this built-in tension between love and money
in the representation of love and marriage.
Like godliness and money, the "sacred quality of equality" regarding age and
rank does not fare any better under close scrutiny. "Equalitie" writes Gouge, "in yeers maketh maried persons more fit for procreation of children, for a rnutuall performance of marriage duties each to other, and for making their Company and societie every way more happie".75 This rule can be flexible if the "excess of age be on the husband's part." Gouge attributes the reasons for justification of this inequality to man's superior physical as well as mental power: "according to the 75 ordinarie course of nature a man's strength and vigour lasteth longer than a woman's, it is very meet the husband should be sornewhat elder than his Me, because he is an head, a governour. a protector of his Me." Although Gouge admits that some inequality of age is no hindrance to the valid foundation of ideal marriage, he warns strongly against marriages of unequal ages motivated only by lust and greed. Gouge contends that both aged men and women marry younger than themselves for lust and when they cannot live up to the sexual expectation,
"the young ones finding the societie of aged folkes to be burdensome, and irksome unto thern, soon begin to loathe the same and therby cause more grief and vexation". Conversely. Gouge daims that the young are more likely to marry "those who with age begin to decrepit, and unfit to be married, hoping that they will not long live, but that with little trouble they shall purchase much dignitie or riches. & afteer a Mile be free again."76 Gouge tries to be fair in trying to warn both young and aged against the perils and exploitation of "unapt matches." What he eschews in his discussion is the fact that similar if not exact "vexations," "griefs" and
"mischiefes" of lust and greed can be and often are present in the marriages of equal age partners. Moreover, Gouge is not concerned here with the capricious nature of love which does not guarantee marital concord only to the matches of couples equal in age.
In choosing a marriage partner, fitness of rank and state is stressed unequivocally yet, like godliness and marriage portion, the recommended criteria of equality concerning rank and state are not only not without qualifications, but are 76 inconsistent. Perkins commends the practice of choosing a marriage partner of equal rank and state as proper and decent. 'The Nobleman, the free-man, the gentleman, the yeoman. & Co.," he says, "should be ioyned in societie with them, that are of the same or like condition with themselves, and not othenvîse". Later in the same passage, he expresses a covert wish to make marriages of unequal rank legally forbidden because this "unfit" choice has the potential for "confusion and disturbance in families. and other orders of men."" Here Perkins avoids not expressing too overly his disapproval of an affective bond between a man and a woman of different ranks and states. Such a bond, he fears, might cause the breakdown of the social, political and familial hierarchy of the established order.
Thus the private affective choice of a marriage partner must be in accord with the prescribed rules protecting "other [public] orders of men." I shall show later that much dramatic tension centers around this constraint on the rank and status of mates.
Gouge explains without any subtlety why he disapproves of marriages of unequal estate and wealth. He daims that a poor woman married to a rich man is like "his maid-servant" and living in "bondage" rather than in matrimony. The converse is even worse because it has the potential to overthrow the order. In the case of a rich woman marrying a poor man:
she will looke to be the master, and to rule him: So as the order Wich God hath established will be cleane perverted: and the honour of marriage laid in the dust. For wtiere no order is, there can be no h~nour.~* Gouge warns both man and woman against any inclination to marry above their
'estate' and 'degree', but he elaborates on his advice for men:
Great portions make many women proud, daintie, lavish, idle and carelesse; a man were much better, even for helpe of his outward estate, to mary a prudent, sober thriftie, carefull dillli ent, though wi-th a small portion, then such an one.7
In an ironic way, the responsibility of rnaintaining order and honour in marriage falls on the woman who is supposed to be the weaker vesse1 and morally and physically inferior to men. Moreover, in Gouge's examples of the plights of marriages of unequal wealth, any economic empowerment, by birth or by marriage, of women in conjugal relationships is not only discouraged but labelled as "perverting the order."
Yet Gouge's long list of recornmended qualities for a suitable wife to compensate for the loss of not choosing a woman who has a large portion and many faults does not exclude portion; it only recommends a small one. Toward the marriages or affective bonds between members of the highest and lowest classes, Gouge shows vehement disapproval. Like Perkins, he expresses more explicitly his wish to regulate individual private affection by civil authority:
. . .[when] men of great authoritie and abilitie make with meane women, yea their owne maids many times, and those of the lowest ranke, their kitchen maids . . . [or when] women of noble bloud, and great estate, make with their servingmen. . . . It is to be said that such marriages are not simply unlawfull, the rule of the civil law giveth a good answer, "alwayes in marriage not only what is lawfull, but what is honest and meet, is to be con~idered.~~ By giving "what is honest and meet" equal importance (foreshadowing Milton's
definition) to "lawfulness" of marriage. Gouge creates paradoxically a space for the redefinition of marriage. In other words, legal bond is not the only requirement for the validity of maniage; it must be qualified by the presence of the moral and social criteria of 'Yitness."
Rogers tries to show some moderation in his discussion of "aptness" or
"fitness" of matches. He concedes that the "aptness" or equality of marriage partners cannot be in "arithmetical proportion" and explains that "dissimilitude in the sarne kind is not the same as disproportion in kinde". Thus, Rogers does not judge
"one unequal to another in birth, because the fashion of the one is a little lower." but consideres it unequal 'Men gentle marry base; noble, honorable. worshipfull marry ignoabie."*' Rogers' moderate view allows women to cross the rank and wealth lines of apt matches for men's advantage:
It fals out that some impaire or cracke of braine lessens the repute of a Gentleman well descended: this disableth his hopes of any great marriage. Shall one defect inferre a worse, a deprivall of marriage wtiolly? no verily. a woman much inferior to him in birth and meanes. or yeers. should yet be thought a very good. yea apt match for such an one, and that with re utation and honour to her humility, if she be faithfull.* P
The virtue of chastity can reward a disadvantaged woman with the honour of marrying a gentleman moron. Similarly, a woman with a small marriage portion may marry a wealthy man who needs a second wife to take care of his children of a previous "venture" and can rectify her economic defect by "love and painfulness." While wman's defect of honour and wealth can only be remedied by her love and chastity; man's defect of honour, Rogers daims can be "recompenced" with wealth and state. Even though it is important that the partners should be roughly of the same social standing, stress is placed on things other than birth and blood (namely on wealth, education, penonality, godliness); and, it is not discouraged to trade off birthlrank against wealth. Moreover, by not linking lineage with honour, Rogers endows middleclass men of newfy-earned wealth with honour. Rogers expresses ewsperation at the idea of various possible unhappy unequal matches, despite the fact that the prescription for an ideal marriage requires the important quality of equality:
Why should a country plaine man affect the neatness of a nice citizen? . . . were not a country woman bred for a Farme, more equall? . . . Why should a low bred one affect a brave gallant? or a poore one wealthy? Why should a meek and gentle one, defile himself with a shrewish spirit?83
Here Rogers is unable to acknowledge the mystery and uniqueness of love, which might defy the rational and utilitarian guidelines recommended for choosing an ideal rnarriage partner. However, the agonizing dilemma arising from his intolerance of the capricious nature of love, which leads to unequal matches, is resolved by sanctrfying the condition of equality and stressing that one must pay "due penance for violating the sacred condition of equality." In other words, to form a conjugal bond or rnarry one who is "unequal" is considered to be both social and moral transgression. This "sacred condition of equality" with its relativised criteria and 80 gender-related inconsistencies did not go unquestioned by the dramatists of the period.
If disobeying the laws of equality of rank and estate is considered to be an act of sacrilege, then breaking the laws of a proper degree of consanguinity is not only a moraVsocial transgression but, according to Perkins, also renders a marriage a "meere nullitie." Of Christian Oecnornie's 145 pages, Perkins devotes thirty to an exegetical discussion of the scriptural cornmandment which states "no man shall corne neare to any flesh of his flesh: or to the kindred of his flesh (Lev. 18.6)," and advocates exogamy in the selection of conjugal partner. His definition of "kindred" refers to hivD sorts: consanguinity and affinity. And the ensuing elaborate guidelines for explaining the complex meaning of kindred, actually turn out to be exhaustive prohibitive laws that deal with the proper distance of blood and affinity between marriage partners. This wide range of negative rules essentially states that one may marry al1 except rnernbers of the nuclear family and al1 those. including uncles and aunts. nephews and nieces, in the ascending and descending generations. At marriage the couple became 'one blood.' Thus a man is forbidden from marrying the same range of wife's kin as his own blood relatives.84 The pre-Reformation
Catholic rules of prohibition were even wider. although dispensations were easily available, for a price, from the ~hurch.*' Perkins, following other Protestant reformers. acknowledges Y not approves the lawfulness of the rnarriages of first and second cousins without any priestly dispensation. 81
Perkins also states two other conditions as equally important for the essential 'Yitness" of a marriage partner. Firstly, one must make sure of the biological firntess for the procreative sexuality of the partner (unprocreative sexuality such as homosexuality is an abomination). Secondly, Mile choosing a
'"fit" partner, one must ensure that the prospective candidate is free frorn any previous betrothal to another person, because the bond of promise makes the betrothed person a husband or a I shall contend in my critical analyses of the plays that the dramatists of the period tried to expand this space, which is restricted to only what was considered proper, by presenting transgression of these conditions in their drarnatic narrative of affectivelsexual love. Also, I shall argue
Uiat the Protestant divines' simultaneous advocacy of exogamy (blood relation) and endogamy (social and economic relation) problematized the idea of Yitness" in selecting a marriage partner.
So far, 1 have been discussing the nature of mutual love and freedom of choice in seleding one's marriage partner as defined by the Protestant theologians.
Premarital love and freedom to select one's marriage partner entered the scheme of 'holy matrimony' as a pre-requisite of the ideal wedded love. But freedom of choice turned out to be fettered with biologically and socio-economically restrictive guidelines which were part of the ideology of the hierarchical structure or new order of family and marriage. Furthemore. there is something paradoxical in the tract- writers' discussion of the subject of choice (Men selecting a marriage partner) in tandem with the issue of the importance of parental consent in the marriage of their 82 children. The Protestant moral theologians condemn the custom of enforced rnarriage and advocate the need of the child's voluntary consent, but do not suggest any curtailment of parental authority over the child's marriage. In marriage, the consent of the child is an "absolute necessite," state Dod and Cleaver. "For," they
Say, "if eyther partie bee urged. constrained or compelled. by great feare of their parents. or others. by threating of losse of preferments, of health. of limmie of life
- of any such other like. or by any other violent manner of dealing whatsoever - to yeeld their promise clean contraire to the motion of good liking of their hearts.
This kind of promise, as it does not bind the partie to keepe it." They tecommend that it is proper to break this sort of promise, "so it ought to be frustrated and broken by the parents thernse~ves."~~In the case of forced consent. Dod does not grant the party involved the right to break the promise. The assumption is that the deception and enforcement used by one party against the other is perceptible only to the parents of the victim. hence. their intervention is needed to occlude the
"unapt matches." Dod and Cleaver believe that unreason was an improper quality of ideal love. Thus. they were unable to acknowledge that voluntary mutual consent of the prospective conjugal couple can be given irrespective of rationalitylirrationality of love.
Although the tract-writers advised the parents to use "good meanes" to get children's free consent. they were unanimous in emphasizing the importance of parents' consent for the legitimacy of a marriage contract The historians of the period have pointed out that the importance of the parental authority in matters of love and marriage, and the childs powerlessness, were ernbedded in the structural hierarchy oof the nuclear patriarchal family. In the writings of the Protestant divines, the hierarchical formation of the family was reinforced by the repeated use of the farnilylstate and familylchurch analogies. "Gad has given them power," declared Dod and Cleaver, "to deny consent to their children." The power to give or not give consent was in the parents, not in the children. The reason for this absolute intractable authority was based on the premise that "children beeing the principal1 partes of their parents goods, are no lesse in their power and authority, to give and bestowe, than the test are."88 Here the absoluteness of parental authority was established by counterpointing children's powerlessness like the
"rest," Le. wives and servants. Dod and Cleaver in their advocacy of voluntary consent of the child in the subject of enforced marriage curiously reinforced parental power for the inviolability of 'holy matrimony':
al1 such testirnonies and examples do plainly prove, the great interest, power, and authority that parent's have in bestowing their children, and their consent is needed to the sixe former points, whereof, we have spoken, doth make so sure a Contract, as cannot be loosed and untied, by any authorities under hea~en.~'
Perkins explains the nature of consent in two categories: that of each (man and woman) and of their parents. He allows the right to refuse consent to the party
(man) on three occasions: firstly, a forced espousal by fear of a "resolute" and
"constant" man, and secondly, an error in the "person" when known will nullify the contract. Although a righffully mistaken identity would void the consent, citing 84 scriptural ewmple (Gen 29.23.30) of Jacob's mistake concerning Rachel and Leah,
Perkins does not grant the nullity of the contract The inherent ambiguity of this rule has the potential for creating a problematic conjugal problem in a strict monogamous system of love and marriage. The third occasion is regarding the error of quality of the person (woman). Perkins explains that. [ifl "in the espousal she was taken for virgin and later found out to be with a child by another," the covenant becornes nuIl and void. Except for the third condition which concerns the quality of a person, the conditions for consent which can void a contract are no! unqualified. In other words, only a "resolute" and "constant" man deserves to be free from a forced espousal, and a contract can be valid without consent in a case of mistaken identitygO
Perkins. in fonulating these rules, does not take into account that in reality his qualified injunctions might lead to various morally and technically problematic conjugal situations. However, these built-in incongruities in the rules of the ideal do not go unnoticed by the dramatists of the period. Indeed, many playwights participate in the process of redefinition of the ideal by focussing on problematic situations concerning love and marriage which arise from the ambiguity of these rules.
Moreover, Perkins seems to be most emphatic in asserting the powerlessness of the children. "Children" writes Perkins:
have not the power over thernselves. but are under the government. and the disposition of their parents. Therefore the covenants which they make, are not made and appointed of God, and those which God maketh not. are in deed and truth none at alLgl
Also, he condemns "private contracts" with the severest words, pointing out their transgressions on various levels: ". . . private contracts, that are made without free and lawfull consent of parents, are not only unprofitable and unlawfull, but by the law of God meere nu~lities."~~Perkins seems to be asserting that not only should one's private affectivelsexual conduct be sanctioned by religious authority, but it should also benefit economic and civil order. His stern stands on parentlchild relations and clandestine contracts without parental consent are in accord with the ideology of the Protestant patriarchal nuclear family.
Smith explains the dependent state of maidenhood, stating that since God substituted the role of father and brought Eve to her husband. the father must offer his daughter unto the husband. Although Smith insists that parental consent cannot be bought, he agrees that one should play for "deflowering a virgin" to her father in proportion to the level of esteem of her virginity; yet, it still remains under a father's absolute discretion to allow or forbid the marriage. According to his statement, the daughter and her virginity are the father's property, but that the price of the personallprivate virtue of her virginity is determined by externaVpublic and relative criteria. Though Smith tells his reader that the vow must be kept between a "freeman" and 'Yreewoman." he adds. "if a virgin makes a vow, it should not be keept unlesse her father approve it."'' Since the daughter exists as a property of her father. she does not have the freedorn to give hersetf. so it is required that someone must give her in marriage.
Smith also reminds one that, as in the case of Samson, the parent's consent has priority over the child's affective choice. Since the father is not only in the position of God but also is the source of economic security and moral teaching,
Smith wams the prospective rebel, "will you take your father's money and will you not take his instruction". Moreover, he reminds his readers to honour their parents by not disobeying their wish, so that the order can be perpetuated. For the benefit of reproducing a patriarchal hierarchial structure of the family. one should not set an example of dissent or rebelliousness. "therefore honour thy parents in this. as thou wouldest that thy children should honour thee."94
Gouge agrees with other divines in affining the position of subjection of the children to their parents. But he provides the child with some recourse against absolute parental authority in the matters of love and marriage by granting power to the Magistrate (civil authority) to resolve parenffchild conflict over a marriage decision. However. this recourse must be taken only in the proper context and not by casting of 'mat subjection which he oweth to his parents." But "if" writes Gouge,
necessity require that the childe be married. and his parent adde wiifulness to negligence, and will not be moved at al], neither by humble suit of his childe, nor by the earnest solicitation of any friends, meanes may be made to the Magistrate (who in God's place over the parent as well as over the child) and what the Magistrate doth in that case is as good as a warrant to the childe as if the parent had done it.= 87
This "meanes" of toppling a parent's authority should be used, adds Gouge. "if a parent be an idolator [which includes Catholic], Heretic. or Atheist, and will not yeeld this childe be married to any but to one of his profession and disposition."96
Gouge. here. appears to support the religious exogamy of non-Protestant children.
Also, he reiterates the warning of Smith and others that to rnarry without the parents' consent is not only a transgression of defiance of God's image in parents. but it is also morally equivalent to robbing one's goods. He goes further. in his admonitory statement. by putting the punitive burden on the woman who cannot be a lawful Me, in spite of having children. without the parents' consent.
Unlike his predecessors, Rogers does not assert the absolute necessity of parental consent. Although he agrees that marriage "ought not to bin done; without parents' consent, yet being done must availe." He explains that because "consent is not so essential to marriage as some other things are, that the non-concurrence thereof should dissanull it," however, he reminds the reader that "in a moral1 and meetway, it is necessary that marriage be attempted with consent of parents."97
Moreover, Rogers disagrees with the law which gives parents absolute power over children (under Roman law and advocated by the Calvinist theologian Jean Bodin).
Rogers pleads his case on the grounds that parenthood includes nurturing. loving. caring and other responsibilities besides natural life giving (which make the child parents' property): "The providing for their children al1 meanes of support. education. either education or machinal, help them to Arts. stocks Trades which is lent to their dnidges". In a paradoxical way, these acts of nurturing not the acts of 88
natural lifegiving entitle parents to advise and counsel children in the affairs of
marriage. Even if the parent cannot provide the partner of their liking. "yet this must
not cause them to give up their authority to their children to marry as they list,
against the rules mentioned" for apt matches.'*
At the same tirne Rogers admits that not al1 parents are fit to guide their
children in making proper choice of a partner. By ernphasizing the importance of
obedience to the rules of "apt matche" while selecting one's marriage partner
Rogers avoids the issues of parentlchild conflict and disruption of the social/moral
order. In other words. according to Rogers the conflict between parent and child
in matters of love and marriage will not occur and order will remain undisrupted if the guidelines of proper choice are adhered to in selecting a marriage partner.
The social historians of the period have pointed out that the authority of
parents and their power of coercion of their children increased from the sixteenth century onwards." This development is generally attributed to the interest of absolute monarchy in supporting the authority of fathers of families, as well as the vogue of the principles of Roman law and the ideas of antiquity. The Protestant divines alluded to the Roman law regarding the "parental power" which covered the
person and the property of children. grandchildren and other descendants.
Children were unable to bind themselves by contracts. chiefly those involving loan and marriages. In a contrary way, in the Middle Ages the Church had diminished parental authority by recognizing the validity of marriages contracted by the
"children of the family" without their parents' consent provided that the boys were thirteen and a half and girls eleven and a hatf years old. This was because. from the twetfth century, the Church had held marriage to be a sacrament which the spouses administered to themselves by the exchange of consent. At the same time it also considered disobedience to one's parents to be a grave sin. especially since clandestine mariages without witness and consent of parents often caused perjury. bigamy, etc. Being aware of the abuses of this practice. the Council of Trent (1545-
63) made it mandatory that the exchange of vows must take place in the presence of a priest after the banns had been published. but continued to consider marriages contracted without the parents' authorisation as valid:
One should not doubt that when they do take place with the free consent of the contracting parties they are true and perfect marriages, as long as the Church has not annulled them; and, consequently they should with good reason be condemned - as in fact, the Holy Synod wndemns them under pain of anathema - who deny that these (marriages) are true and perfect; and are al1 those wbo falsely assert that marriages entered into by children of a family without their parents' consent are null. and it depends on the parents whether they are or are not perfect.'OO
This edict of the Council of Trent expressed disapproval of marriages without parental consent. but confirmed unequivocally the Church's authority over that of parents on the issue of validity or annulment of rnarriage. Moreover, the importance of parental approach as part of the requirement of lawfulness of marriage was rejected on the ground of 'Yallen condition" of human cognitive faculties. In other words, marriage's sacramental status implies an a priori inviolable lawful bond not subjected to any relative qualities. In addition, by equating the gravity of filial 90 disobedience with that of any proclamation not in accord with the Church's position, the edid was trying to substitute its own authority over that of the parents. To the
Protestant theologians, this stand of the Catholic Church expressed in the edicts of the Council of Trent was scandalous and disagreeable.
The Protestant divines, both Puritans and Anglicans, considered the consent of the parents to be as essential to the marriage as the consent of the bride and bridegroom. They based their attitude not only on the traditional marriage practices of Western society, but also on a passage an epistle to the Corinthians in which
Saint Paul. taking cognizance of this tradition, leaves the father free to marry his daughter or to keep her as a virgin (1 Cor 7.36-8). The main point of difference between the Catholic Church and the supporters of parental authority (that included
Protestants and some Catholics) was tied in, in principle, the sacramental character of the exchange of consent, expressed in words spoken in person. even if it is love that leads to this. "'*' In other words. the Council of Trent's edict approved that inviolability and legitimacy can be dispensed by the mutual vows spoken in person (which has the potential of allowing the "unapt matches" w-thout parental consent to take place lawfully). The rejection of sacramental status and the simultaneous emphasis on the absolute necessity of parental consent for the lawfulness of marriage by the English Protestant theologians created a new kind of problem concerning love and marriage. Even though the non-sacramental status freed the Protestant marriage from the a priori premise of inviolability of the vows of consent in marriage. a new set of guidelines were formulated in order to attribute 91 permanency to the secular covenant of marriage. The dramatists of the period often focused on the line of demarcation between old and new condition required for inviolability of marital bond.
The post-Reformation Protestant definition of the family, which was often described as the basic social and economic unit both for church and state, complicated the Protestant discourse of marriage and love. Political ideology is subtly woven into the spiritual and moral premises in formulating the code of condud for family relations. Specifically. the consistent comparison of marriage to the church and state draws out the equation among spiritual. public, and private realms. Also, this equation is supported by analogking the husband to God and the
King. wife and children to the Church, and, family to the kingdom and comrnonwealth. Because of the built-in complexities of the three strands of the analogy, marriage is defined as the foundation or "seed-plot" of the family, which is in turn the foundation of the state, society and the cosmos. Family is "a little church" and "a little commonwealth." The very titles of the popular treatises reveal the cornplexities of the discourse. In the new Reformation Protestant order of things, rnarriage is not only a social institution but also is a calling/vocation which requires the performance of duties appertaining to one's place in the family, and in turn. to the society at large and the political system.lo2 Because the family is a school for good Christian, law-abiding citizens of the commonwealth (or loyal subjects for the king), the proper goveming of the household becomes an important subject in the marriage treatises. Thus, the family government must be based on 92
the principle of authority and subordination. "A familie," defines Perkins, "is a
natural and simple society of certaine persons, having mutuall relation one to
another, under the private government of one. These persons must be at least
three; because hrvo cannot make a society. "'O3 The "one" in this case signifies
husband and father and the subordinations of wife and children to the "one" is
almost an universal postulate in the writings of other divines too. It is assumed that
the household (family) government should properly correspond to the patriarchal
pattern that is traditional in Western philosophy from the time of ~ristotle.'~~
Although the Protestant divines repeatedly use the familylstate analogy for
patriarchal justification of obedience to political authority, their description of proper
government of the family is not merely an illustration of how one should regard the
state. In fact. it is an analogy with a rnultidimensional complexity. Moreover. in the familylstate analogy, the superiority of the state over the family (that is the
publiddomestic opposition) is underrnined by the very terms of the analogy which
sought to create. articulate and sustain such a hierarchy. A part of the complexity
of this analogy lay in the religious dimension of its usage. The church had a vested
interest in patriarchal hierarchy based on scripturally authorised subjection to the father.lo5 The two fundamental texts of Christian doctrine in this sphere are,
"Honour thy father and mother that thy days may be long (Exod 22: 12). and epistle
to the Ephesians (5:22 to 6:9) in which the father's role and authority are
established: %ives submit yourselves to your own husbands and unto the Lord. . . .
Children obey your parents in the Lord . . . servants be obedient to them that are 93 your masters . . . as to the Lord." The husbandlfather is head of the family
(household) as well as of the conjugal unit. This divinely sanctioned parental authority is used in the plural; though in effect it refers to paternal authority since wornen were regarded as being morally inferior to men. Nevertheless, parents are to be objects of 'Year and dread," and parental anger is equal ta God's wrath, "when they are angry with thee, God is angry with thee." Bishop John Hooper vigorously expounded the duty to obey one's sovereign by deriving it from the obligation to obey one's parents: 'Year is due unto God, kyng, to parents, to al1 others (by) whome we holpe in bodie or soule, and so is in honour due likewyse. Therefore sayeth the lawe. fere God. honoure the kyng, honoure father and mother.11106
These commandments strengthened indirectly the socio-economic structure of the new order of the Reformation English Protestantism.
Family is the basic social and economic unit for both church and state. And since the family was regarded as a state in miniature, the Protestant divines made constant cornparisons between domestic and political authority and duties. In fact, they &en used the language or principles of one domain to describe the other.lo7
Thus, the father was called a sovereign over the household. and the king was desuibed as the father of the people. In the patriarchal irnagery of the time, kings and heads of families, like God, were al1 seen as fathers. Moreover, Jean Bodin and many Calvinist theologians emphasized the political aspect of the father's authority in the family (perceiving hirn as a sovereign ruling over subjects).
Furthermore, this political dimension which was implicit in the definition of family 94 was a way of secularizing the institution of marriage. In other words, if authority and relations within the family were seen as political and secular, then the marriage, upon which the family was based, might logically be considered to be a civil rather than a sacramental affair.lo8 Conversely, the Commonwealth was also described as a family: the king was assigned the authority of a father, to whom the subject owed not only obedience, but filial love and loyalty. Hence, the king's power over his people was as natural and unimpeachable as the father's over his Me, children and servants. Because political order was coterminous with that of the family, the tract-writers argued that the great states and empires resulted from nothing more cornplex than enlargements of households; hence political authority is natural. On the basis of the transposed authorities, political, domestic and spiritual, the
Protestant divines insisted that the role of the head of the family must be honoured, even if a particular individual does not merit respect. Gouge asserted unhesitatingly the necessity of unquestioned obedience irrespective of the qualities of the person in the role of authority: "though an husband in regard of evil qualities may cariy the Image of the divell, yet in regard to his place and office, he beareth the Image of God: so doe Magistrates in the Commonwealth, Ministers in the
Church, parents and Masters in the farni~~."'~~Thus, the image of husbandlfather legitimized the power of the state by using the argument that obedience was due to the God, to the reigning king "simply because he is in power," and to the father sirnply because he is a father. Consequently, any rebellion against the father constituted treason and heresy. Callaghan points out that even though parental 95
benevolence might support the rationale for unqualified authority it would be wrong
to even attempt to justify the obvious obligations required in terms of filial duty:
. . . if the children may upon any pretext that can be imagined, lawfully rise up against their father, cut him off, 8 choose any other whome they please in his roorne; and if the body for the weale of it, may for any infirmtie that can be in his head, strike it off, then I cannot deny that the people may rebell, controll, and displace, or cut of their king at their owne pleasure, and upon respects moving them.' 'O
Even though the passage is about filial duty, the three analoyical levels of family,
body and kingdom are used here to provide additional support to royal authority.
In spite of these wamings, domestic revolt against parental authority concerning the
issue of marriage received much attention in the representation of love and
marriage in the plays of the period.
Also, the familylchurch analogy was central to the post-Reformation religious
unity and to the unity of church and state. "A family," writes Gouge, "is a little church, and a little commonwealth, whereby tryall may be made of such as are fit for any place of authority, or of subjection in Church or Commonwealth. Or rather
it is a schoole wherein the first principles and grounds of government are
learned.""' Gouge is quite explicit about the effectiveness of expounding political doctrine in the home. Moreover, the growing denunciation of priestly celibacy as an ideal state of life in the writings of the Protestant divines, elevated the status of the family, marriage and raising children. Perkins expresses his enthusiasm about this new aspect by proclaiming that "these families wherein this service of God is 96 performed, are as it were, little churches, yea even a kinde of Paradise upon earth."'12 Also, the familial head, in this same period, begins to perform some of the tasks that had previously belonged to the priesthood. In other words. fatherhood is transformed into a religious office with its duties and its obligation prescribed in the writings of the divines. As the authority of the priests was reduced, the authority of lay household heads was correspondingly elevated in importance and the family's importance was emphasized as the central unit of both church and state. About the child's status in the Reforrnation English Protestant family, Charles and Katherine George contend that "the child can perhaps be said to have lost somewhat in social and independence." They contribute this lessening of status of the child to the diminished importance of the Reformation Church's institutional role in society. Aiso, the Georges point out that in the Roman Catholic system. the Church was so important that the child was encouraged to find in it a focus of loyalty which was superior even to the family in its force to command allegiance. The child was free to choose the areas of calling, whether worldly or spiritual. St. Thomas Aquinas specifically granted to a minor the right to enter a religious order. A marriage could take place with or without parental consent and be solemnized by a priest with or without their approval. In the English Protestant order of things there was no institutional resource for the expression of rebellion against parental a~thorit~."~Indeed, any act of disobedience was regarded as one of the most serious crimes. However, despite the recommended modality of conduct which require unquallied obedience in the various familial relations 97
(husband/wife, parentlchild. mastedservant), domestic rebellion or disobedience.
principally over the issue of marriage, was a major theme in the representation of
love and rnarriage in the dramas of the period.
Dympna Callaghan attributes this domestic rebellion to the unsound
definition of family which uses a faulty analogy between family. state and church.
"It is," explains Callaghan, "the essential difference between family and states that
creates rnany problems of analogy and hence some of the problems for official
ideology in which family and the state yoked together. On a practical level. for
example. obedience to the head of state is simply of a diifferent order from
obedience to a husband or parent. God and other authority figures like kings and
magistrates were sufficiently distanced for people to believe that they should be
obeyed simply because they held office. But it was far more difficult to give
credence to the idea that an often offensive individual should be honoured as the
rightful representative of God and King in the close proximity of domestic circurnstances. Also, for Callaghan. the ideology of the patriarchal nuclear family is at the root of the domestic rebellion which occurs over the issue of
marriage:
Marriage is the institution by which patriarchal power reproduces itseff . . . If paternal authority did not oversee a marriage. then the purpose of marriage. the transfer of power from one male to another, would be underrnined. Children Mo married without their father's consent underrnined the ability of the entire system of social relations to reproduce itsetf."' 98
Taking my cue from Callaghan, I wish to emphasize both my awareness of the
ideological complexity of affective and erotic transgression and rny belief that its
multiple modes do not wnform to any single kind. Moreover, the acknowledgement
of legitirnacy of rornantic/sexual love and choice. however chaste and restricted. in
the Protestant doctrine of marriage created confiict with the recommended modality
of conduct as dictated by the ideology of the Refomation Protestant patriarchal
nuclear family. Hence, many of the affective and semal transgressions that are
represented ocwr in the interstices of ontology and ethics of the English Protestant
marrïage doctrine. The ideal is an internally fissured category and, because of its
mutability, there are many possible variations: this helps to explain why delineations
of it on the level of evaluation and representation, differ markedly. In relation to the
writings of the Protestant moral theologians on the subject of love and marriage, the
dramas of the period appear as an arena where heterodoxic views of love and
marriage are articulated and the hegemonic view is contested.
However. the specific nature of the complexity with which transgression is
presented in particular dramas remains to be discussed. Why are particular
transgressions selected over others for inclusion in the plays? Furthermore. what
are the bases on which selected transgressions are arranged in multiplicity or in juxtaposition within a play? These variations can often be seen as the contending
approaches to the new social reality of post-Reformation England. The dramatists'
dissimilar reasons for taking issue with the new ideal of love and marriage
determine the configuration of transgression in the dramatic narrative. 99
Furthermore, I shall show in my analyses that the dramatists. by using a mixed dramatic technique and an unconventional form simultaneously contest and affirrn the hegernonic ideal of love and sexuality. Endnotes
1. John Milton, Corndete Prose Works of John Milton. vol. 2, ed. Eamest Sirluck (New Haven: Yale UP. 1959) p. 254.
2, Ibid., 465.
3. William and Malleville Haller, 'me Puritan Art of Love." Huntinaton Librarv Quarterly 5 (1941 -42): 1-9. See Kathleen M. Davies, "Continuity and Change in Literary Advice on Marriage", in Marriaae and Sociehr: Studies in the Social History of Marriaoe. ed. R. B. Outhwaite (London: Europa. 1981): 55-80. Davis argues that there is no appreciable difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes towards marriage. See also Mary Beth Rose. The Expense of Spirit, pp. 3-5,13-21, 29-32.
4. Lawrence Stone, The Familv. Sex and Marriaae in Enaland 1500-1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), Part 1. Ch. 1. Ch. 2; Christopher Hill. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionarv Endand (London: Secker and Warburg, 1964); and, The World Turned Upside Dom (Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1975); William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938); Alan Macfarlane. Marriaae and Love in Emland (New York: B. Blackwell, 1987); Louis B. Wright. Middleclass Culture in Elizabethan Enaland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1935).
5. Mary Beth Rose. The Expense of S~irit(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 44.
6. Chilton Latham Powell, Enalish Domestic Relations 1487-1653 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1917), Ch. 2.4; Lawrence Stone. The Familv. Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. See also Charles H. George and Katherine George. The Protestant Mind of the Enalish Reformation 1570-1640 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). 265-289. and Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 166-167. These authors often quote the writings of the English Protestant divines to support this view.
7. Powell, English Domestic Relations, 19-27; Robert Michel. "English Marriage and Morals 1640-1700: Issues and Alternatives". diss.. McGill University, 1986, pp. 15-16.
8. George & George, The Protestant Mind of the Enalish Reformation, 264- 265.
9. Stone, 101. 10. The origin of the domestic condud book in England cannot be accurately ascertained. These books appeared with increasing frequency from the early sixteenth century and often went into many printings. Although the first books are of foreign origin. an earlier interest in domestic affairs is evidenced in England by writings on morals, and manners. This interest was perhaps one of the causes for the translation of continental works. During an approdmately one century (1528- 1633). over thirty works wre published that dealt extensively with the duties of the Meand husband within their domestic vuorld. Over half of these works were issued in more than one edition. The sources of these treatises included the Bible, the Classics, and Church Fathers. Desiderius Earsmus, Henry Bullinger and literature and general morality were among the later sources of these works. Both C.L. Powell and L.B. Wright point out that these books were written from the middle- class point of view and expressed the ideal of the rising mercantile class. In its most complete form. a book of this type contained four principal subjects: (1) discussion of the marriage state from religious and secular standpoints. (2) the legal elements involved in contracting matrimony. (3) mutual relations of husband and wife, (4) the government of the family. including housekeeping, the upbringing of children, the management of servants. and general household economics. With a few exceptions, most of conduct books were by Puritan preachers. These men were greatly influenced by humanistic learning of the Renaissance and were intellectual heirs to the continental reformation.
11. Quoted in Powell. p. 126. Powell points out to us that no one seems to have made any attempt to ascertain the dates of Thomas Beconfs various works. The earliest extant edition of the Boke of Matrimonv seems to be that contained in his Worckes, published in 1564. In 1562 however, the Boke of Matrimonv had already been published as a work of 115 folio pages.
12. Thomas Becon, The Christian State of Matrimonv (London: 1542). Ch. 2. This book was also published under the title The Golden Book of Matrimonv and had several printings between 1541-1 575.
13. Ibid, Ch. 2.
14. Ibid, Ch. 2.
15. William Perkins, Christian Oconornie, or household government. (London: 1609). Ch. 10. 111. This book was originally written in Latin in 1550 and was translated into English by Thomas Pickering in 1609. Perkins was mentioned by Milton in his first divorce tract.
16. Perkins, Ch. 3, 11-12. 17. John Dod and Robert Cleaver, Godly Fone of Householde Government. (London: 161Z), 154, 157.
18. William Gouge, Domestical Duties. (London: 1626). Treatise 2, PT. Il 208-209.
19. Daniel Rogers, Matrimonial1 Honour. (London: l942), Ch. 1, 7. It is important to note Rogers was an Anglican divine (a rninister of the Church of England). There is less emphasis on the exegesis of scriptures in his book. The book is most notably free from scriptural references and also from allusions to the classics and the church fathers. On the whole, his less pedantic and more embellished prose style distinguishes his work from other conduct books of our study. He seems to dwell more on the subject of parental consent to child marriages or contracts of marriage. Another striking feature of the book is that it does not discuss divorce and the annulment of marriage at all.
20. Quoted in Powell. Boke of Matrimonv in Worckes, PT. 1, ccccclxxv. In the "preface" of The Christian State of Matrimonv, Becon denounces bachelorhood claiming that "singlemen" are promiscuous and easily violate the social norm and moral codes of sexuality:
Another sorte of wifeless people there are .... Only for pleasures sake, because they maye more freely run at corners, deflower rnaidens, Currupt wives, defile widows, live in al1 kind of Carnall voluptuousness. For so longe as they be Themselves.
21. Perkins, Ch. 2, 15.
22. Gouge. Treat. 2, PT. 2, 216.
23. Powell, 122.
24. Quoted in George, The Protestant Mind of the Enalish Refonnation 1570- 1640,266.
25. Powell, 119-1 25.
26. Perkins, Ch. 10, 111-1 12.
27. Ibid., Ch. 10, 112-113.
28. Ibid., Ch. 10, 113-114. 29. Ibid., Ch. 10, 121-122.
30. Ibid., Ch. 10, 122-23.
31. William Whately, A Bride Bush. (London: 1619). Ch. 1, 13. It is interesthg to note that Whately defines marriage as a "calling" that provides lawful, useful and profitable works for both body and soul.
32. Ibid., Ch. 1.. 6.
. Ibid., Ch. 1, 7-8.
34- Ibid., Ch. 1, 3.
35. Gouge, Treat 2, PT. 2, 216-21 9. Although Gouge starts his discussion of chastity by pointing out the importance of "al1 manner of purity in sou1 and body." he quickly adds that the greater emphasis must be given to the body.
36. Perkins, Ch. 10, 118-1 19. Perkins here also suggests that although adultery breaks the marital bond, the marriage may continue if the innocent part (meaning the husband) consents to reconcile and dwell together still.
37. Rogers. Ch. 8, 164.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 168.
40. The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, 256.
41. Ibid., 246.
42. Ibid., 251.
43. Henry Smith, A Pre~arativeto Marriaae (London: 1591), 56.
44. Whately, Ch. 3, 31.
45. Becon, Preface.
46. Dod & Cleaver, 322.
47. Thomas Gataker. A Good Wife God's Gift, 9-1 1.
48. Smith, 55-57. 49, Ibid., 74.
50. Whately, Ch. 3, 32.
51. Ibid., 33.
52. Ibid., 35.
53. Ibid., 36.
54. Ibid., 32.
55. Ibid., Ch. 6,70.
56. Ibid., 71.
57. Ibid., 38.
58. Rogers, Ch. 7, 150.
59. Ibid.
60. Dod & Cleaver, 116.
61. Gouge, Treatise 2, Pt. 2, p. 225.
62. Smith, 59.
63. Whately, 31. It is interesting that although Whately acknowledges the importance of premarital love as the basis of happy marriage', he only discusses wedded love.
64. Gouge, Treat. 2, PT. 1, 57.
65. Smith, 63.
66. Dod & Cleaver, 146.
67. Smith, 33.
68. Smith, 63-65.
69. Dod & Cleaver, 98-1 05.
70. Ibid., 106.
71. Smith, 31-32. 72. Ibid., 32.
73. Rogers, Ch. 3, 65.
74. Ibid., 66.
75. Gouge, Treat. 2, PT. 1, 188.
76. Ibid., Treat. 2, PT. 1, 190-1 91.
77. Perkins, Ch. 5, 64.
78. Gouge, Treat. 2, PT. 1. 190.
79. Ibid.
80. Gouge, 190-1 91.
81. Rogers, Ch. 3. 61-63.
82. Ibid., 63.
83. Ibid., 68.
84. Perkins, Ch, 5, 24-55.
85. Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times, 47.
86. Perkins, Ch. 5, 54-59.
87. Dod & Cleaver, 1 17.
88. Ibid., 132.
89. Ibid., 133.
90. Perkins, Ch. 6,71-73.
91. Ibid., 76.
92. Ibid., 76.
93. Smith, 46-47.
94. Ibid., 47.
95. Gouge, 450. 96. Ibid, 450.
97. Rogers, 71.
98. Ibid, 72-73.
99. George & George, 289-294. See also, Flandrin. 130-140. and Stone. 113-1 36.
100. Flandrin. 130.
101. ibid, 130-134.
102. George 8 George. 275-276.
103. Perkins, Ch. 1, 2.
104. George 8 George. 276.
105. Dympna Callaghan, Wornan and Gender in Renaissance Tra~edy, (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. 1989). p, 17.
106. Ibid.
107. George & George, 275, see also. Robert Mitchel. Enolish Marriaae and Morals, pp. 5-6.
108. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of Saints (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 185-186, 183-196.
109. Quoted in The Protestant Mind of the Enalish Reformation 1570-1640, p. 279.
110. Callaghan, 19.
111. Gouge. Treat 1. 18.
112. Perkins, Ch. 8, 8.
113. George & George, 289.
114. Callaghan, 18.
115. Ibid., 21. Chapter Tm
Premarital Love and courts hi^: The Issue of Choice
The miseries of enforced marriage and the importance of freedom of choice in the selection of a marriage partner were constant and recurring themes in the plays representing love and marriage during this period. This issue was complicated by the niles and prohibitions wnceming (the suitability/unsuitability of) the choice of a marriage partner and the absolute necessity of parental consent to the marriage. The issue was also problematized by the lack of a general consensus among English Protestant theologians on this subject.
In A Midsummer Niaht's Drearn (1595) and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
(1613). to take two examples. the drarnatic tension centers around the issue of freedom of choice. But by using such dramatic techniques as multiple plots, dialogic narrative. and irregular generic form. the plays reveal the non-absoluteness of the ideal and also, through the process of silent contestation, redefine the norm of love and marriage. In fact, the comic resolution of affective and erotic love does not necessarily result from the adherence to the prescribed ideal code of conduct; and similarly, as we shall see in Chapter three, the tragic end does not necessarily result from defiance of this code. Indeed, a strict obedience to the rules does not guarantee triumph in love and happiness in marriage while. conversely, transgression operates often as an effective apparatus to achieve success in courtship and marriage. Given the cornplexity of these works and the enorrnous
range of critical approaches that they Mer. a definitive and comprehensive reading that engages al1 or even most of the transgressive themes. represents a task
beyond the scope of rny research. Thus I shall limit my analysis to the specific
issues of this enquiry.
Michael Bristol has pointed out that the potential for a problematic situation
is actually embedded in the English Renaissance ideal of love and marriage:
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. marriage is characterued by a high degree of structural ambiguity that affects the procedures or courtship and the selection of partner, as well as the relative ability of bride and groom to sustain a relationship that conforms reasonably wll to the standard of the community. It is precisely these communal standards that give rise to the most intensely complicated situations, because the prospective couple is likely to be confronted with several different systems of conflicting imperatives. First, the choice itsetf and the initiative for that choice are govemed by parental authority and filial obedience. However, there is also strong sentiment for the conflicting "rule" of mutual desire and preference and although these two imperatives are not antagonistic in principle, the possibility for conflid is present in virtually every partnership. Confiict between parents and children is likely to be wmpounded and intensified by efforts to conform to various socially inscribed rules and prohibitions that affect the suitability of a particular match.'
I propose that the conflict of competing imperatives was not the only aspect of marriage that had a built-in possibility for transgression. In Shakespeare's plays especially, some debate exists regarding such problematic issues as the extent of parental authority and the child's freedom of choice in the selection of marriage partner. Though this debate is not sharply polarized within the playç, it fissures the imperatives and provides some space to negotiate transgression within the ideal.
The centrality of the theme of love and marriage to William Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Niaht's Dream has been acknowledged in most of the critical scholarship. Indeed, the traditional readings of the play. focusing on the festive and harrnonious celebratory closure. view it as "light entertainment and pure comedy" of romantic love and marriage.* Modem critics. however. are more likely to view the play "as a complex and exacting work of art and an extraordinary synthesis of materials which in itself is challengingly di~erse."~A revisionist reading, in Louis
Montrose's articlel'A Midsurnmer Night's Dream and Shaping Fantasies of
Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form", points to an undercurrent of discord and threat which might topple the harmonious celebratory closure. Montrose argues persuasively that the play's joyous festivity contains a sinister underside:
Regardless of authorial intention, Oberon's blessing of the marriage bed of Theseus and Hippolyta evokes precisely what it seeks to supress: The cycle of sexual and familial violence, fear .... Thus. sedimented within the verbal texture of A Midsummer Niaht's Dream are traces of those recurrent acts of bestiality and incest, of parricide, uxoricide, filicide and suicide, that the ethos of romantic comedy would e~ade.~ On the other hand Rose. in her more formalistic approach to English Renaissance drama, is not concerned with any subversive underside of Elizabethan romantic comedy. In her view, such comedies deal with semal love and marriage symbolizing the ongoing life of society in a spiritually integrated co~mos.~Referring to Montrose's article. Rose presents her view of Elizabethan comedy. which emphasizes the centrality of idealized love and marriage:
Although recent scholarship has been carefully dissecting the ideological program that sustains this comic syndrome, pointing to the various subversions of its unity and the complex qualifications of its ideals, no analysis has disputed that the multileveled idealization of marriage is a powerful informing presence in Elizabethan cornedy?
In the case of A Midsummer Night's Dream Montrose's emphasis on the ideology of power politics and Rose's emphasis on the aesthetic form are not mutually exclusive. I propose that the representations of deviancy and subversion are part of the process by which the "multileveled idealization of marriage" is presented in the play. Also. the play's thematic teleology of amendment makes it possible to accommodate the transgressive erotic and affective conduct within the norm of love and marriage.
The ideality of love, courtship and marriage is presented in the
TheseusIHippolyta segment of the opening scene. ~riitolin his book Carnival and
Theater contends that the appropriation of an "idealised space and time" for the 111
noble couple has empowered them with an authoritative position in the scherne of
the play:
The lord and lady whose marriage is celebrated are clothed in identities derived from classical Iiterature. Following the practice of their real-life Renaissance contemporaries, they create a mythologically distant and idealised space and time for themselves to occupy. As images of antiquity, their meaning is already established and iconographically codified. From within this perfected space and time, the characters Theseus and Hippolyta create an authoritative discourse that matches the language of constituted authority in the dramatist's own society7
In other words, the English Renaissance ideal of love. courtship and marriage is
presented as an unquestioned ideality through a Theseus-Hippolyta episode.
Theseus' opening address to Hippolyta expresses his impatience with the waiting
period before the "nuptial hour": ''This old moon wanes. She lingers rny desires, 1
Like to a stepdarne or dowager 1 Long withering out a Youngman's revenue" (1.1.3-
s).~Although Theseus expresses impatience with the slow movernent of time which
is delaying the pleasure of his conjugal union, he does not express any wish for
sexual union before the appointed "nuptial hour." Indeed, in spite of his eagerness
Theseus not only adheres to the right conduct of a virtuous bachelor, but also
respects the ideality of chaste premarital love as a prelude to holy matrimony.
Hippolyta matches his eagerness for the wedding as she reflects on the sanctified
aspect of rnarriage: "Four nights will quickly dream away the time; 1 And then the moon, like a silver bod New bent in heaven, shall behold the night I of our 112 solemnities" (1-1.84 1). Solicitous of the heavenly blessing that the new moon will mediate. Hippolyta emphasizes the sanctity of marriage by focusing on its divine ordination. The view of sacred but secular state of marriage as the highest order of Me. has been allowed to assume a normative status in the play. This view not only remains unquestioned (since none of the feuding lovers are allowed to reject mariage and its ideal code of affective and erotic conduct), but it also operates as a centripetal hamon~ingforce for the play's various transgressive and contentious themes and subplots of love and marriage. Again. at the play's end. in Oberon's and
Titania's propitiatory benediction (V. 1. 387-406) of the newiyweds. the apriorism of the hegemonic view of maniage is reinforced through cosmic and supernatural end~rsement.~
The ideal marriage is a true love match. and Theseus has observed proper gender specific courtship conduct: "Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with rny sword, 1 And won thy love doing thee injuries; 1 But I will wed thee in another key. 1 With pomp. with triumph. and with revelling" (1 .1.16-19). Theseus and Hippolyta's successful and ideal courtship is the limit against which various episodes of affective and erotic transgressions take place.'' However. although A Midsummer Niaht's Dream admits a range of transgressive conducts into its dramatic narrative by its significant seledion of limits at which transgressions are allowed to take place. it resists some of the extreme implications of the unconventional view that will question the basic ontological premises of the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexuality. 113
Egeus' invocation of the death sentence to discipline his daughter not only introduces the contemporary social issue of enforced marriage versus freedom of choice but also brings into focus the attendant debate conceming the extent to which parents should control marriage:
. . . And, my gracious Duke, Be it so she will not here, before your Grace, Consent to marry with Demetrius, I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: As she is mine. I may dispose of her; Which shall be either to this gentleman, Or to her death, according to our law. (1.1.3844)
The oppressive ultimate parental authority claimed by Egeus is in accord w.th the extreme view advocated by Perkins and other Protestant moral theologians.
However. in light of the play's comic resolution, this view is used more as a rhetorical strategy to set the dramatic tension in motion than as a nonnegotiable limit. Indeed, as Egeus seeks the higher public authority of Duke Theseus to settle a parenVchild conflict, the play is tacitly allied with the moderate position advocated by Rogers and presents a more complex view of Hermia's filial disobedience. 11
Theseus, in his admonitory advice to Hermia states the reasons for advocating absolute parental power over child:
What Say you, Hermia? Be advis'd, fair maid. To you your father should be as a god: One that compos'd your beauties, yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in wax By him. imprinted, and within his power To leave the figure, or disfigure it. (1-1 -46-51 )
Although the text of Theseus' cautionary counselling reinforces Egeus's extreme view on the issue.'* given Hermia's ultimately successful love and marriage it serves only to heighten our sense of the seriousness of Hermia's defiant conduct.
In fact, Shakespeare uses Theseus' very act of admonition as a moral arbitrator in private and familial conflict to put forth tacitly patriarchalist views of marriage family.13 However, although Theseus supports Egeus' authority over Hermia, he equates life of perpetual virginity with death by offering Hermia death or life as a nun as punishments for disobedience. Nevertheless. Egeus' seeking of political sovereign's counsel in the matter of private familial affairs endows the political authority with superior social and moral power. In fad. Theseus' empowerment with social and moral authority to intervene into parent-child conflict helps to avert the fuller implications of Egeus' extreme orthodoxie view on filial disobedience and makes a unified harmonizing closure possible for the multileveled and contentious themes and plots. Also, since at the denouement Hermia's exculpatory triumph is not rendered by her penitent acquiescence to the ideal conduct demanded by
Egeus and Theseus but rather by the rectification of Demetrius' affective transgression of inconstancy to his betrothed true love. the extremely orthodox text that has been used by Egeusmeseus to indict Hermia of transgression remains unexamined and irrelevant. Furthermore, Mile Egeus' silence after his appeal is overruled by Theseus (4.1.176-84) negates any possible dissension between the 115 authority of the family and that of political sovereign, Theseus' bidding the young loven to many in the same royal wedding implies a conciliatory amendment of the law by his unquestioned social and moral authority.
The play's containment of fuller and complex implications of unwnventionality even extends so far as to have contesting views put forth by the characters involved in the various love intrigues. Theseus, in his effort to convince
Hermia to marry the man of her father's choice, points out the equality of rank and status of the rival suitors (1.1 52). But both Egeus and Theseus ignore the moral defect of inconstancy in Demetrius "who made love to Nedar's daughter. Helena"
(1.1 .lO8). Not only is Demetrius' moral defect not considered an impediment to his suitability by the enforcing authority but its serious consequence, Helena's tragic situation as a troth plight bride, is diffused by Egeus's accusation of Lysander of false love with which he has stolen his daughter's heart:
. . . And, my gracious Duke, This hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child. Thou, thou Lysander, thou hast - given her rhymes, And interchang'd love-tokens my child: Thou hast by moonlight at her window Sung. With faining voice verses of feigning love
.S.. With cunning has thou filch'd my daughter's heart. Turn'd her obedience (which is due to me) To stubborn harshness.... (1.1.26-37) Il6
The emphasis on deceit (or 'Yeigning") in Egeus' wndemnatory speech is in accord with the hegemonic conventional view in which romantic love, because of its sensuous foundation, is considered an unsuitable basis for sanctified domestic conjugal love. But by allowing Egeus to ignore Demetrius' betrayal of Helena's love while disapproving of Lysander for his wooing of Hermia. the play not only silently undermines the correctness of parental judgement, but also questions the a priori presumed immorality of romantic love.
A Midsummer Niaht's Dream is set in motion by the issue of parental authority over a child's freedom of choice in the selection of a marriage partner. But the play does not follow a simple movement of overcoming obstructions set for the young lovers by their corrupt willful elders.14 On the contrary. both Egeus and
Theseus, even though they are not corrupt, remain irrelevant to the play's central dramatic action. They reappear only in act four after the lovers have sorted out their confusion of true and false love and have paired themselves their respective tnie loves. Also, the play presents an unconventional view on the issue not only by denying the parent or sovereign any coercive means through which to stop the young lovers. but also by allowhg the lovers the freedom to escape successfully. Thus. ironically, the condemned lovers. while making plans to escape, appear more as active agents than passive helpless victims of parental oppression: Lys. A good persuasion; therefore hear me, Hermia. I have a widow aunt, a dowager Of great revenue, and hath no child - From Athens is her house remote seven leagues And she respects me as her son. There, gentie Hermia. may 1 marry thee, And to that place the sharp Athenian law Cannot pursue us. If thou lov'st me then Steal forth thy father's house tomorrow night. . . . Her. 1 swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow. . . . In that same place thou hast appointed me, Tomorrow truly will I meet weththee. (1.1. 161-178)
Lysanderis plan to run away from Athens with Hermia is not motivated by an unregulated passion to be united with his beloved secretly and unlawfully. In fact. he asks Hermia to elope with him in order to go to a place of dfferent socio-legal jurisdiction where they can be married lawfully. Hermia agrees to Lysander's proposal not rnerely to escape from the death sentence or "the livery of a nun," but to prove the constancy of her love. The play presents a contesting view of the young lovers' offense through their awareness of a social order in which they are not considered violators of social codes and moral norms. The future possibility of a lawful recognition of their present state of transgression relativises both the limit
(Athenian law) and transgression (selection of marriage partner on the basis of romantic love). Aiso, it undercuts the serious implication of an extreme orthodoxie view of their transgression. Shakespeare, by permitting the young lovers the freedom of not accepting the sentence of their transgressive love and courtship, allows the thematic focus of the play to shift from the issue of enforced marriage 118 versus freedom of choice in selecting a marriage parbier to its attendant theme of trueichaste romantic love and courtship as a prelude to holy matrimony and happy wedded love. This narrative strategy allows the dramatist in a combined move to open up a space for radical critique and to contain that space in Theseus' benign but absolute authority to amend the law. Thus the dramatic narrative of unconventional love and courtship that seemed initially ta offer a radical perspective. in the end foregrounds the conventionality of the moderate view in the play's discourse of love and marriage.
Unlike many of his contemporaries. Shakespeare does not allow any dramatic character involved in problematic affective or erotic relations to remain in an unchallenged passive ideality without confronting ethical choices in A
Midsummer Niaht's Dream. Nor does he permit any downward slide into a spiral of transgression by denying characters the freedom to choose or reject the right conduct. By providing a chance for redemption through rectified conduct, a mixed space of both transgressive and normative behaviour is created. Although from the play's beginning Hemia and Helena's unwavering constant love is juxtaposed with
'Yeigning" and inconstant love of Lysander and Demetrius respectively. for the final triumph of their love and courtship not only must the men rectify their transgressive conduct. but the women must also deliberately choose to remain constant and chaste under tempting provocation to premarital love. Lysander is constant and true in his love for Hermia and, since betrothed true love is a prelude to ideal 119 wedded love. he does not consider it improper to invite Hermia to share the sarne bed for resting:
One turf shall serve as pillow for us both; One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one truth...... I mean that my heart unto yours is knit. So that but one heart we can make of it: Two bosoms interchained with an oath. So then, two bosoms and a single troth. Then by your side no bed-room we deny; For lying so, Herrnia. I do not lie. (2.2.46-5 1 )
For Lysander betrothed Vue love gives sanction to premarital sexual love between contracted lovers. Hermia refuses Lysander's enticing suggestion and points out the impropriety of premarital incontinence but without doubting his true love:
But. gentle friend. for love and courtesy. Lie further off. in human modesty; Such separation as may well be said Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a rnaid. (1.1 1.55-58)
As Hermia resists Lysander's suggestion, the conventional implication of elopement and filial disobedience in matters of love and marriage is subtly contested. Indeed,
Hermia's adherence to proper maidenly sexual conduct in spite of their betrothed love allows the spectator to accommodate her other transgressions within the play's nom of love and marriage. Lysandefs un protesting cornpliance with Hermia's wish silently reinforces the conventional view that advocates the importance of premarital 120 virginity, but not without claiming the validity of premarital love and courtship in the scheme of holy matrimony. In other words. at the final triumph of their love and courtship MenTheseus ovemiles Egeus' appeal. Hemia's various transgressions. which include filial disobedience. elopement. and murderous jealous rage against her friend. are overlooked or negotiated within the norm of premarital love because of her constancy and chaste sexual conduct.
Similarly, the happy resolution of the Helena-Demetrius' problematic love episode is achieved not only by rectification of Demetrius' transgression of inconstancy but also by Helena's learning to love rightly in spite of her constancy.
The problematic nature of Helena-Demetrius' love intrigue is stated by Lysander early in the play:
Demetrius, l'II avouch it to his head, Made love to Nedar's daughter. Helena. And won her souk and she, sweet lady. dotes. Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, Upon this spotted and inconstant man. (1.1.106-110)
60th Demetrius and Helena are described as less than ideal in their premarital betrothed love. Mile Demetrius is guilty of a lack of cornmitment to Helena,
Helena herseif is culpable for the impropriety of her excessive love. But at the play's comic closure, a happy resolution of Helena-Demetrius' problematic love 121 episode is achieved as their respective defects are rectified and the couple learns to love properly.
Constancy is not presented as an a priori virtue in A Midsummer Niahtfs
Dream since Helena's doting love is not left unquestioned. Helena rationalizes
Demetrius' rejection of her dotage by wncluding that, "love looks not the eyes, but with the mind I . . . nor hath Love's rnind of any judgement taste (1-2.234-36).
And since Helena considers hersetf as fair as Hermia, she blames Demetrius for lack of judgement in rejecting her. A few lines later. in the same monologue
(1 -2.226-52).Helena's decision to inform Demetrius of Hermia's flight by betraying her friend's confidence (". . . I to enrich my pain 1 To have his sight thither and back again"), reveals the incongruity between her thoughts and action. Her doting love and Demetrius' inconstancy are presented silently as equal imperfections. There is something paradoxical about Helena's deviant love. Although Helena is the innocent victim of the evil social custom of enforced marriage and of broken betrothal. in the play's comic resolution her triumph in love and marriage is made possible because her active doting love prevents her from remaining in a passive unmixed virtuous state. As both a victim of Dernetrius' transgression of ideal conduct in love and an active transgresser of the proper conduct of premarital love.
Helena's character has an incongruity through which A Midsummer Nioht's Dream focuses on some contradictions inherent in ideal of love, courtship and marriage.
Moreover, in light of the play's happy ending of successful love. courtship and marriage. Helena's deviant acts are used as rhetorical strategies to posit the 122 conventional view and silently rescind the extreme heterodoxic implications in the play-
Helena's happiness does not require reciprocation of her love. She implores
Demetrius, after being told that he does not love her, to allow her to stay in his presence even if it rneans she will suffer abuse:
The more you beat me. I will fawn on you. Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me strike me, Neglect me. lose me; only give me leave. Unworthy as I am, to follow you. What worser place can I beg in your love - And yet a place of high respect with men - That to be used as you use your dog7 (2. 1. 204-210)
The unconditional and servile nature of Helena's love is expressed through a parodic use of divine love rhetoric." However, her lack of concern for the highest virtue of a maid's love in the context of worldly wedded love is revealed in
Demetrius' reprimand:
You do impeach your modesty too much To leave the city and commit yourself lnto the hands of one that loves you not. To trust the opportunity of night And the il1 counsel of a desert place With the rich worth of your virginity. (2.2.14-1 9) 123
Demetrius' reprimand not only points out the dangers of her impulsive and irresponsible conduct but also reminds her that the importance of semal purity as the highest quality in the premarital love and courtship which is only validated as a prelude to holy matrimony. Helena's love is of a different sort. Seeking passive self-effacement through her beloved ('70die upon the hand I love so well," 2. 2.
244), she is unable to assume responsibility for her own action, though doing so would free her from continual suffering.
Helena's unconventional love is paradoAcal. She is abject and servile in her love, but follows her lover with active deliberation, and defends her unconventional conduct with a radical critique of unfair gender specific rules of ideal courtship:
Ay, in the temple, in town, the field, You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius! Your wrongs do set a scanda1 on rny sex We cannot fight for love, as men do; We should be woo'd, and not made to woo. (2. 2. 238-42)
The credibility of Helena's radical critique of traditional prescriptions of courtship and love is undercut by her own irrational act of following a man who has rejected her love. In other words, Helena cannot exculpate herself of her improper maidenly conduct by criticizing the conventional social code and moral norms of courtship.
Nevertheless, the unfaimess of gender-specific rules of courtship is acknowiedged 124 through Helena's problematic love although the issue remains subordinated to the central theme of proper conduct in rnatters of love, courtship and marriage.
Since the validity of premarital love and courtship is acknowledged in the scheme of holy matrimony, cognizance of gender-specific rules for proper conduct in love and marriage is required of the young lovers. Thus, although Helena's improper conduct has created much confusion and disorder, many of the threatening implications of her deviant conduct are averted by her decision to leave the feuding lovers in the woods. As a result, extreme unconventional and transgressive solution of the problem can be avoided in the play. By going through a transformation Helena leams to love properly before becoming successful in love and marriage:
To Athens will I bear my folly back, And follow you no further. Let me go: You see how simple and how fond I am. (3. 2. 31 5-19)
Helena decides to leave her lover physically without renouncing her love for him.
Indeed, her decision to leave the rival suitors and friend reveals detached but active love. Moreover, Helena leaves "a foolish heart" behind wÏth Demetrius, allowing the play to accommodate rectfiable transgressions within a non-absolute ideal of love, courtship and marriage. However, despite the problems concerning her premarital love, happiness and success cornes to Helena through the intervention of Oberon, the King of the fairies. Although the Titania-Oberon subplot concems the problems of conjugal Me, it serves as an instrument by which a happy solution is found to the problems in the premarital love relationships of the main plots. In fact, the Oberon-Titania segment connects inseparably with the main plot both structurally and thematically, in that it affirms the importance of right choice and proper conduct both in premarital and conjugal love.
While making secret plans in hopes of correcting the deviant conduct in which Titania indulges as a result of her affection for the changeling,I6 Oberon overhears Demetrius' rejection of Helena's love. His decision to help Helena by correcting Demetrius' wrong love coincides with his own personal project of rectwing Queen Titania's improper conduct. By the use of a magic charm and with the help of his lieutenant, Puck, Oberon succeeds in correcting Demetrius' mistake as well as Titania's. Oberon reminds Titania of her conjugal duty âfter her deviant conduct has been corrected:
Now thou and I are new in amity, And will to-morrow midnight, solemnly. Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly. And bless it to al1 fair prosperity. There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be Wedded, with Theseus, al1 in jol!ity. (4.1.86-91 ) 126
Thus. the importance of true premarital love and happy conjugal love is affirmed by the supernaturals as the foundation of worldly domestic order of living.
In the wmic closure of A Midsummer Niaht's Dream, the parodic staging of
Pyramus-Thisby's tragedy of love serves an admonitory purpose as well as an entertaining one. The successful lovers, as well as the aristocratic viewers vvho would have watched the happy love story, witness the violent and tragic
implications of romantic love. The Pyramus-Thisby episode is a presentation of the risks and hazards of idealised rornantic love and of the oppressive nature of parental authority in the selection of marriage partner. As a result. it is a rejection of the notion that the happy resolution of a problematic love and marriage will occur without the protection of a benevolent providence. However, in A Midsumrner
Niaht's Dream the intervention of the supernaturals in a problematic human situation not only averts the tragic consequences of transgressive conduct but also makes the happy ending possible through a rectification of the conduct. At the same time, in his selection of the particular transgressions that take place in the play. the dramatist avoids some of the extreme implications of moral and sexual heterodoxy. Inclusion of these implications would have allowed dialog ic engagement with views that challenge the ideals of love and marriage established in the opening exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta. 127
The absence of any overt authorial point of view in the plays of Thomas
Middleton, has caused a recurrent critical concern about the unconventionality of the author's dramatic art Critical scholarship has emphasized frequently the moral ambiguity in Middleton's representation of problematic situations of love, sexuality and marriage.17 But little attention has been paid either to the precise context and setting in which Middleton places this moral ambiguity or to the exact manner in which the absence of authorial message is expressed in the thematic and formal design of his plays' representation of love and marriage. Traditional reading of
Middleton's cornedies and tragedies of love and marriage primarily emphasizes the malicious satire that focuses on the corruption of marriage and sexual love through lust and greed for wealth and rank. In fad, in wntrast to such Jacobean dramatists as Ben Jonson, John Marston and Thomas Dekker. Middleton is often singled out as one wtio expresses an irreverent and cynical view of love and marriage in his dramatic works.18 The critics persistently seem to ignore the epistemological dimension in Middleton's representation of transgressive marriage and sexuality.
In other wrds. the traditional critical view has failed to acknowledge that the plays' aesthetic fons also function as a cognitive mode in exploring the moral and ethical absolutes of the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexuality.
Only recently has Jacobean City Comedy's contribution to English
Renaissance sexual discourse been acknowledged.lg Stating the difference between the social contents of Elizabethan rornantic comedy and that of Jacobean
City comedy, Rose comments convincingly: In its representation of love and sewality, Elizabethan romantic wmedy is not concerned with the problematic enactment of social and sexual roles within the institution of marriage. Rather, it concentrates on the complexities of eros, dramatised as the sexual desire seeking and finding futfiIlment in the heroes' successful resolution of the process of courtship. In contrast Jacobean City comedy brings to the light of representation precisely those dissociations and contradictions in English Renaissance sexual ideology which rornantic comedy evokes but seeks to reconcile and contain."
It is interesting that although Rose acknowledges Jaco bean comedies' participation
in the contemporary discourse of love and marriage. her critical analysis of some
individual plays, especially Middleton's, is not in accord with her general overview
of the genre. In her analysis of Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside she focuses on the corrupt sexuality in various subsidiary plots, and thus the central plot
of the successful marriage based upon individual choice and chaste pre-marital
love, is eclipsed. Moteover, Rose does not perceive Middleton's portrayal of sexual
transgression as an aesthetic mode that explores the moral ideality of love and
marriage. She focuses only on the perversions of marriage and sexuality in the
play without pointing out its utilitarian ethical dimension: "Middleton's chaste maid
is the starkest example of city comedy's general view of eros-as-lust and lust-as-
Coppelia Kahn. in her recent article "Never Thoroughly Tried: Whores.
Virgins and Wives in the Plays of Thomas Middleton." has taken a more morally 129
non-judgemental critical approach towards Middleton's plays. She perceives moral
ambiguity as part of the structural device through which Middleton's examination of
the ideality of marriage and sexuality is carried out in the play. Kahn argues
persuasively about this wvert agenda in Middleton's presentation of a socially and
sexually transgressive order:
The playwright contrives this ambiguity through lavish use of binarism - multiple devices of contrast and opposition - especially with women . lnvoking a setf- evident dichotomy betwen whores and chaste women, he then conflates and confounds the terms of that opposition; chaste wife and whore, or virgin and whore, change places. . . By suggesting that the same woman can assume the social identity of either a chaste woman or a whore, he puts the question both ways not just 'How can you tell a chaste woman from a whore?' but also 'How can you tell a whore from a chaste woman?' Thus he upsets the very categories by vvhich 'woman' is constituted.**
Although Kahn focuses on Middleton's concern with the cognitive limits of ethical
absolutes, the gender-specific focus of her critical analyses leaves out the play's
examination of the problematic conternporary social issues regarding arranged
marriage and those of individual choice and love. Middleton's dramatic
representation of problems relating to socio-sexual ethics must be viewed as part
of his exploration of the ontological aporias of the English Renaissance ideal of
marriage and sexuality. 130
As we have seen, English Protestantism considers marriage both secular and holy. Sexuality within marriage is acknowledged as not only legitimate and desirable but also as the highest and holiest order of Me. But since the sanctified status of Protestant marriage is not established by a sacrament of the Church. which confers upon it an a rio ri inviolable abstract sacredness. the meaning of
"holy" in a temporal domestic conjugal context becomes synonymous w*th newiy constituted ideal socio-senial condua Perkins and other moral theologians do not attribute an a rior ri sacredness to Protestant marriage and sexuality. They insist that by "holy use" the secular and amoral nature of marriage and sexuality become sacred. By rnaking the individual responsible for the sacredness of marriage. they not only rescind the unquestioned notion that matrimony is holy, but also render it possible to define "holy" in the temporality of secular dornestic life.
In the English Protestant order of things amoral and secular sexuality not only aquired a moral ideality within the lawfulness of marriage. but also gained a spiritual aspect by becoming a legitimate part of the "highest and holy order of Me."
It was through an ethical trajectory that the ontological transformation of sexuality took place. An elaborate code of proper senial conduct was formulated by the
Protestant divines in order to moralize and spiritualite the amorality and secularity of sex. Ironically, the very rules that constitute the moral ideality of affectivs and sexual love simultaneously illegitimized not only all other sexual and affective relations outside marriage, but also any deviant conduct within marriage. This 131 polarised rnultifaceted hegemonic ideal itself carried the alterity that it tried to exclude from the dominant culture by an al1 encompassing ethics of sexual and affective love.
Middleton, by presenting a confusion of moral binaries of affective and sexual love in his works, not only focuses on the flexibility of moral norms but also reveals the arbitrariness of the constituted ideal code of conduct. For Middleton, this cognitive awareness does not have to imply any epistemological chaos or moral disorder, but is an acknowledgement of a non-absolute and mixed moral vision of
English Renaissance secular social reality. In reference to Kahn's argument. I propose that Middleton does not try to undermine the ideality of chastity or elevate the immorality of whoredom through his presentation of the moral implicit in the possibility of confusing whoredom with chastity. In fact, his transposed social identities of chastelunchaste reveal the non-absoluteness of sexual and moral ideals and engage the audience in considering some basic questions concerning the meaning of holiness in a secular context. Does the institution of marriage guarantee an uncontaminable static state of purity? Is the moral epithet of chaste automatically received by husband and wife because of the legal and sanctified mantle of matrimony? In Middleton's plays, especially A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, these questions are balanced antithetically by another set of questions which focus on the individual's responsibility to act righteously in order to avoid transgression of social codes and moral norms of sexuality and marriage. Thus, the play's 132 diswune on marriage and sexuality succeeds in foregrounding both the ideal and the transgression as negotiable and not unmixed without an overt authorial message.
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside's central theme is the opposition between marriage based on individual choice and romantic love and enforced marriage for social and economic gain. Yet scholars have persistently exhibited a blind spot where this theme is concerned. In light of the play's main plot. concerning the successful chaste romantic love and marriage of Moll Yellowhammer and
Touchwood Junior. both Rose's and Kahn's insightful analyses of the play seem to suffer from the error of taking a part for the whole. Although the play's theme of marriage. children and family was pointed out quite early by and Ruby ~hatterji.~~ it is often viewed as minor and inconsequential given Middleton's representations of sexual perversion and moral depravity, which are assumed to be the play's main and only then~e.~~The lack of critical focus on A Chaste Maid in Cheapside's central structural theme of chaste. premarital romantic love and marriage can perhaps be attributed to Middleton's unconventional aesthetic principles. As
Leanore Lieblein has suggested:
. . . Because of the mixed dramatic technique, on the surface at least, the idealised conventions of romantic drama, the different but equally stylised conventions of satiric comedy, and the psychological realism might have worked at cross p~r~oses.~~ 133
Indeed, this use of mixed dramatic technique has allowed the dramatist to present
transgressive love, sexuality and marriage without affirming or rejecting the
conventional ideal. The different critical approaches to the play (Rose's "eros-as-
lust," Kahn's "mntrived moral ambiguity." Richard Horwich's "marriage through an
economic prism")26 Draw attention to the formal design through which Middleton
explores the moral and ethical absolutes of marriage and chastity in Cheapside's
secular domestic conte*. Moreover, the play's use of general amnesty silently
accommodates the various transgressions. In other words, the radical critique of
the cornipt social practice of enforced maniage. that seemed to present an extreme
transgressive perspective. at the end foregrounds a socially acceptable heterodoxy
of marriage and sexuality.
The implied oxymoron in the play's title, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, foreshadows the transgressive/norrnative tension of the play. In the context of the
play's multiple plots, each representing various transgressions of marriage and
sexuality, the success of Moll Yellowhammer and Touchwood Junior's chaste
romantic love and marriage functions as a structural center. The play's various
other plots of transgressive marriage and sexuality render it possible for the young
lovers' chaste love to succeed in marriage. Indeed, the final unequivocal
acknowledgement and approval by Cheapside's sinners of the virtuous Moll
Yellowhammer and Touchwood Junior's love and courtship does not only unm the disconnected plots, but also affirms the play's central theme of love and marriage. 134
In the play's thematic structure, "Cheapside" and 'The Goldsmith's Shop" not only set the topographical boundaries of dramatic actions, but also help the dramatist to explore love and sexuality in the world of commerce. The play'7 opens with Yellowhammer's MeMaudlin berating her daughter, Moll, for being a dull
When I was your youth, I was lightsome And quick two years before I was married. You fit for a knight's bed! Drowsy-brow'd, dull-eyed, drossy spirited! (1.1.10-13)
Her mother disapproves of Moll's chaste maidenly manner:
When I was of your bord, he [my dancing teacher] miss'd me not a night; I was kept at it; I took delight to learn. And he to teach me; pretty brown gentleman. He took pleasure in my Company; But you are dull, nothing comes nimbly for you: You dance like a plumber's daughter and deserve Two thousand pound in lead to your marriage. And not in Goldsmith's ware. (1 .l.16-23)
In this opening scene, Middleton's joining of private and domestic space w-th commercial and public space allows the dramatist not only to speak of social value
(light vs. dull) in terms of commercial value (gold vs. lead), but also of social activity
(dancing) in terms of professional activity (plumbing). Moreover, this overlapping of domestic and commercial space also enables Middleton to establish money's ubiquity in the play's dramatic narrative without any dominant authorial point of 135 view. The domestic setting of the Goldsmith's shop provides tangibility to the dichotomy between marriage and sexuality that the play explores. Indeed. it is against this confusion of domestic and commercial values. that various transgressions of love and marriage take place.
Maudlin. in her opening speech of chiding. describes Moll's ideal maidenly mien and chaste deportment as undesirable and deviant In cornparison to Moll, she describes her ouvn premarital sexually attractive manner as a recommended model for success in love and marriage. By Cheapside's yardstick Moll's chaste demeanor is appraised as not only awkward. but also as unprofitable for the upwardly mobile Yellowhamrner family. Maudlin's promotion of improper maidenly conduct allows Middleton to present the unconventional view that seductiveness is not socially or morally deviant. However, Middleton does not use inversion as it is conventionally used in satire. That is, he does not use it only to discard it when the right order is restored at the final resolution of the play. The play's comic ending with Moll's marriage to Touchwood Junior and Tim's marriage to a more only partially restores the order.
Unlike her mother, Molk father appreciates his daughter's chaste maidenly conduct and corrects bis Me's use of the word "errors":
To bring the word in fashion for her faults Or cracks in duty and obedience? Term'em e'en so, sweet wife. As there is no woman made without a flaw, Your purest lawns have frays and Cambrics bracks. But 'tis a husband solder of al1 cracks. (1.1.33-37)
Yellowhammer views Molk "dull" appearance as an acceptable imperfection of her ideal sexual purity, which is worth two thousand pound and a titled husband. While
Yellowhammer expresses an empirical and pragmatic attitude toward perfection,
Maudlin reveals her medieval scholastic view of marriage and chastity. For her. chastity is the a rio ri virtue of the married state, which absolves al1 premarital transgressions. In the dramatic presentation of Cheapside's love-marriage and sexuality, the Yellowhammers' opposing views are posited as the play's discursive limits.
The play paradoxically balances the theme of corrupt social practice of enforced marriage with marriage of romantic love of individual choice. Indeed, the play by allowing Yellowhamrner to remain ignorant both of Mol1 and Touchwood
Junior's final success in a rnarriage of chaste romantic love and of the deception involved in Tim's marriage to an unchaste poor woman, the plays simultaneously resists and allows the extreme implications of corruption of parental authority.
Although this ignorance appears to be in part satiric, it is also a part of the play's
"no point of vied' formal design and thematic teleology of amnesty. In the representation of transgressive sewality and marriage this balancing of views does 137
not imply that the play is uncritical of the corruption of parental authority. But in
locating the critical perspective in three different transgressive discourses -
Yellowhammers, Tim, and Moll, Middleton, in one stroke. opens up a space for a
radical critique and contains that space in Yellowhammer's greedy but pragmatic
sense of compromise, which allows hirn to accept the consequences of his own
action with good humour.
Yellowhammer's inquiry about Sir Walter's arriva1 (1.1.39-45) sets in motion the play's central plot which deals with the contemporary social issue of the evils
of arranged marriage. While the Yellowhammers are eager to see the arranged
marriage of their daughter to Sir Walter Whorehound, they seern to be more flattered by their son's proposed marriage with the Welsh gentlewoman who is "by
her red hair and other rank descriptions to be his landed niece brought out of
Wales" (1.1 4-2).Since the proposal of Yellowhammers' son's match has been
initiated by Sir Walter. they regarded it as the recognition of their elevated social status.
As we have seen, the moral theologians of the period spoke vehemently against the evil practice of arranged marriage for "Lucre's sake." But their condemnations primarily were addressed to the landed aristocratic and rural-feudal sections of the society and excluded the newiy ernerging urban bourgeoisie.28 At the same time they recognized the importance of money and social rank as facilitators of ideal love and marriage. In the presentation of Moll's and Tim's 138 arranged marriage for money, land and social rank by the Cheapside citizen
Yellowhamrner. Middleton explores the transformation and distortion of an old aristocratic social custom in a commercialized bourgeois society. A Chaste Maid in Chea~sidestarts with the abuse of parental authority in which the child's freedom of choice in the selection of a marriage partner is sacrificed in favour of money and social rank. Nevertheless. the play does not focus only on the Yellowhammers' avarice in the sordid arranged match they arrange for their children. In fact. by allowing the Yellowharnmers finally to accept. both Moil's and Tim's marriage Ath good humour despite the fact that they have been duped, the play resists the view that their abuse is an inflexible and unpardonable depravity.
Unlike Maudlin, in whose view sexual morality is subordinate to the appearance of social respectability, Yellowhammer seems to value property and money as the highest measure of respectability. His middle-class mercantile attitude allows him to accept unhesitatingly the hierarchies of social ranks. but not without emphasizing the superiority of economic status. Middleton, unlike many of his contemporaries, maintains a strict authorial impartiality in his satiric portrayal of different characters of various socio-economic class (1 .1 A20-33). The citizen
Yellowhammer corrects Sir Walter's aristocratic decorum of courtship by stating that
"honour," and 'Yaithful servant" are improper for "the daughter of the freedom."
Moreover. he asks his wife to salute the Welsh gentlewoman, who is the alleged niece of Sir Walter, after hearing about the height of the mountains she owns and 139 will as dowry bring into her maniage with their son. If Sir Walter - as an aristocrat who belongs to the landed gentry - reveals hirnself to be a corrupt and deceitful man in this meeting, citizen Yellowhammer does not fare any better by exposing himself as a dupe because of his greed and acquisitiveness. However, this balancing of the satiric butt allows the play to present Yellowhammer's transgression of greed without condemning or condoning him. By presenting him as an active agent of transgression regarding matters of his children's marriage as well as an ignorant victim of Sir Walter's socio-sexually compt scheme of economic exploitation, the play resists the fuller extent of Yellowhammer's wrongdoing.
Moreover, by positing the play's transgressive critique of enforced marriage both in Yellowhammer's corrupt economic gain and in Sir Walter's econornic and sexual depravity, Middleton opens up an extremely immoral socio-economic and sexual discursive space. but closes off partially the sexual misderneanor in Sir Walter's defeat. In Cheapside not only the ideal is non-absolute and mixed. but transgression is also relativised by negotiable social consensus.
The dramatic tension between the themes of enforced marriage and rnarriage based on individual choice is set in motion as Touchwood Junior enters the scene and reveals his determination to win Mol1 from the rival suitor of her parents' choice:
Touch. Jun. (Aside) My knight, with a brace of footmen. Is corne, and brought up his ewe-rnutton to find A ram at London; l must hasten it, Or else peak O 'famine; her blood's mine, And that's the surest. Well, Knight, that choice spoil Is only kept for me. (1 .l.134-38)
Although Touchwood Junior expresses his desire in physical and material food imagery, and not in the language of the Petrarchan or courtly love tradition, he asserts that chaste premarital conduct is important for their marriage of rornantic love:
Moll. Sir?
Turn not to me. Till thou rnayst lawfully; it but mets Touch.Jun. My stomach, which is sharp set already. (1.1.1 39-41)
The portrayal of Touchwood Junior's chaste premarital conduct, juxtaposed with Sir
Walter's lust and immoral sexual conduct, is not a simple endorsement of ideal premarital love and courtship. Indeed, Touchwood Junior's chaste love does not turn out to be an unmixed ideal, since it includes filial disobedience, deception, elopement, theft of the family jewelry, and initiating the adulterous relation of Lady
Kix and his brother Touchwood Senior to defeat his rival. Nevertheless, the young lovers are praised for their unmatched virtuous conduct in the resurrection scene
(5.4). The relationship of Moll and Touchwood Junior contains not only in their chaste love, but also their transgressive social conduct. By making the transgressive sexuality between Touchwood Senior and Lady Kix a condition of 141
success of the chaste love in rnarriage of Touchwood Junior and Moll, the play not
only diffuses the moral binarism, but also contests the view that advocates unmixed
socio-moral ethics of sexuality.
Middleton in A Chaste Maid in Chea~sideis not concerned with any abstract
or metaphysical quality of ideal affective and erotic love. Rather, Middleton seems
to be looking into love and marriage in a temporal domestic context. Moreover.
Middleton's "no sides" aesthetic principle and empirical mode of inquiry do not
permit him to present any virtuous or chaste character untested. In the play world
of Cheapside there is no assumed ideality or depravity for any dramatic character.
The signification of the ideal or transgressive epithets chastelunchaste,
honestldishonest rnust be commensurable with the concrete evidence suggested
by the character's will and conduct.
Touchwood Junior's chaste love is not merely a passive, virtuous affection for Moll. This is evident in his decision to order the wedding ring with a strategy
calculated to expedite his suit to Moll by exploiting father Yellowhammer's trust.
Thus, his romantic courting is simultaneously chaste and deceitful:
Yell. Have you w.deness of her finger. Sir?
Touch.Jun. Yes, sure, I think 1 have her measure about me. Good faith, 'tis down; I cannot sho't you, I must pull too many things out to be certain. Let me see: long, and slender. and neatly jointed; Just such another gentlewoman that's your daughter, sir. Yell. And, therefore, Sir. no gentle wornan.
Touch-Jun. I protest I never saw two maids handed more alike. (1.1.1 77-82)
It is not only his chaste love but also his pragrnatic attitude that does not prevent hirn from resorting to false pretence, clever tricks, semal transgression of others. as well as the brave adof wnfronting the rival in a duel. that finally brings hirn the triumph in love and rnarriage. It also allows him to avoid becoming a tragic hero of missed opportunities like Orgilus of The Broken Heart, and saves Moll from the tragic fate of Clare Harcop in The Miseries of Enforced Marriage or of Aspatia in
The Maid's Traoedv.29
The play has a covert social agenda concerning the hegernonic guideline that insists on the "sacred quality of equality" in rnatters of love and marriage.
This agenda is introduced through the brief and seemingly simple difference of opinion between Yellowhamrner and Touchvmod Junior. Ironically, Yellowhammer, in spite of his desire to elevate his family to titled rank, expresses his view that social rank is unalterable because it stems from birth lineage. But for Touchwood
Junior. looks and rnanners as well as birth constitute the identity of social rank.
Touchwood Junior's appreciation of Moll. "the daughter of the freedom." as gentlewoman is a dramatic strategy for normalizing the transgressive choice.
However, even though it was desirable that the partners should be of the same social standing. the moral theologians like Whately. Gouge and Rogers placed 143 emphasis on things other than birth and blood, namely on wealth. education, personality, godliness, and did not disapprove of those who traded off birth and rank against wealth.
By endowing money with both maleficent and beneficent attributes Middleton manages to ignore some extreme implications of social and sexual heterodoxy Mile focusing on others. Indeed. the play's multiple transgressions are connected by money. Yellowtiammer's greed for money makes him arrange marriages for his children wrongly. For him. socio-sexual morality is subordinated to beneficial power of money, which can exculpate sexual immorality. When Allwit informs hirn that Sir
Walter is not only "an arrant whoremaster" who also maintains another man's wife as his mistress, but also has produced bastards (4.1.208-1 5). Yellowharnmer finds the report shocking but not abominable enough to cancel the plan of his daughter's marriage to Sir Walter. Instead, his economic pragmatism. which disposes hirn to acknowledge money as the important element of life and marriage, allows him to overlook Sir Walter's immoral sexual conduct provided he behaves chastely after marriage:
The knight is rich, he shall be my son-in-law No matter, so the More he keeps be wholesome My daughter takes no hurt then; so let them wed. l'II have him sweat well ere they go to bed. (4.1.247-50) Moreover. Yellowhammer's resolution not to consider premarital sexual transgression as an impediment to holy matrimony and happy wedded love is justified by his personal experience, which adds a new dimension to the problem of premarital sexuality:
Well, grant al1 this, Say now his deeds are black. Pray. what serves marriage but to cal1 him back? I've kept a More myseif, and had a bastard By Mistress Anne, in anno - I care not who knows it; he's a jolly fellow. 'Has been twice warden; so may his fruit be, They were but base begot, and so was he. (4.1 .240-46)
Yellowhammer's secular view of marriage and procreation means that he does not consider premarital or adulterous sexuality irredeemably transgressive. Since he is not concerned with any eschatological scheme of life. he believes that one can compensate for illegitimacy and baseness of birth through material success.
Yellowhammer's view of illicit sexuality and bastardy presents a radical heterodoxic critique of the ideal of premarital chaste sexuality as a prerequisite for happy wedded love. But the play presents a traditional view of premarital sexuality in
Touchwood Junior's conduct and counterbalances Yellowhammer's radical heterodoxic view. The play's comic resolution. in which Touchwood Junior's premarital chaste love triumphs in lawful marriage. is a silent rejection of
Yellowhammer's and Sir Walter's view of illicit sexuality and bastardy simply as 145 matters of economics. This does not, however, occur without accommodating of premarital sexual impurity within Cheapside's nom of lawful marriage and sexuality.
Middleton, through representation of various transgressive marital situations, questions the moral absoluteness of the meaning of chastity in the domestic ewnomic context of marnage. Do husband and wife become chaste because they have entered the sanctified institution of marriage? Or does marriage simply legalize heterosexual union of two people who are responsible for making their marriage holy or unholy by their own affective and sexual conduct? In other words, how inflexible is the demarcation line between holy and unholy, chaste and unchaste. in the context of temporal socio-moral reality of Cheapside. However, although A Chaste Maid in Cheapside depicts divergent unconventional marital situations (that raise various questions concerning marriage and sexuality), the fuller and tragic implications are de-emphasized by not focusing on the psycho- moral aspects of these situations, Mile revealing the beneficent and utilitarian aspects of money and sex
The segment of the play's narrative dealing with the Allwits and Sir Walter, presents a complete inversion of hegemonic ideal of marriage, sexuality and family.
Mistress Allwit bears Sir Walter's children in exchange for a cornfortable life, and she seems to be at ease the adulterous arrangement without any emotional or moral conflict. Her husband, Allwit, in exchange for a life of luxury and material cornfort, has abrogated not only his biological right and responsibility to procreate 146 but also his authority as head of the household, which cornes with the socio- economic responsibility of the "husband'TYather." In fact. Allwit boasts of his aberrant pattern of marriage and family:
7is the Knight Hath took that labour out of my hands I may sit still and play . . . I Iive at ease He has both cost and torment. (1. 2. 50-54)
Allwit's view of marriage and family is part of the rhetorical strategy through wtiich
Middleton examines the constituted socio-sewal ideal of marriage without endorsing transgressive or immoral conduct. But this segment appears
. paradoxical in the light of the final comic resolution, when Sir Walter is punished by being sent to debtor's prison, and Allwit's family remains intact. Although the Allwit segment presents an extremely deviant marital situation, the serious implications of this transgressive situation (which includes homicide or crime of passion, marriage break-up, destitution of the children), are avoided by not attributing any affective bond within either the married or adulterous relationship. In a curious way, if the lack of love makes the mole episode sordid, it is precisely their unemotional and professional attitude to Iife and dornestic relationships that renders it possible for the Aliwits to pick up the shell of their marriage and keep on going. Moreover. by locating the radical heterodoxic perspective in the married couple of economically disadvantaged and socially inferior rank as well as in a wealthy 147 aristocratic bachelor, the play undercuts the radical sexual transgressiveness of the
Allwits' rnaniage. In fact, by allowing the bachelor Sir Walter's transgression though promiscuous sexuality to remain unpardonable, the play endorses the conventional view of the single man as semally deviant and enemy of married man.30
Marriage had been defined as a remedy for whoredom and fornication; the
Allwits' is used for economic reasons as a cover for promiscuous and illicit sexuality. The play goes so far as to present a happy and socially congenial religious Christening ceremony for Mrs. Allwit's child, who is considered both by her legal father Mr. Allwit and her biological father Sir Walter as illegitimate, aithough the Allwits' neighbours think the child looks like Mr. Allwit. The Allwits' marriage presents a radical critique of the conventional view that bastards are evil and economically burdensome. However, the play both supports and departs frorn the conventional view of illegitimate children. since both Sir Walter and Yellowhammer take responsibility for their illegitimate children but rnaintain a difference of status between the bastards and the children of their lawful marriages. It is Sir Walter's money that is the root of Allwit's aberrant marriage and adultery; and precisely it is
Sir Walter's lack of money that finally ends their transgressive situation and becomes instrumental in bringing success to Moll and Touchwood Junior's chaste love and marriage. 148
Two more plots of problematic marital sexuality are presented as instrumental for the young lovers' chaste love to succeed in marriage. Touchwood
Senior explains to his wife why they should "live awhile asunder" because "our desires are both too fruitful for our barren fortunes" (2. 1. 8-9). For Touchwood
Senior, lawful marital sexuality has becorne problematic in spite of his chaste wife.
Middleton seems to be ewloring the traditional notion of marital sexuality, which defines it as a remedy of concupiscence and a way to produce a "legitimate brood" in the wntext of the concrete socio-economic imperatives of domesticity. Despite their conventional marriage. Touchwood Senior and his wife agree not to have any sexual relations for fear that producing more children would further increase their poverty. For Touchwood Senior, his excessive libidinous fertility is a source of
"beggary" even though it occurs within his lawful marriage. In a long speech. he not only expresses his appreciation of his wife's cornpliance with his plan of living separately and denying themselves their lawful sexual love. but also justifies his decision as an expression of ideal marriage:
I hold that wife a most unmatched treasure That can unto her fortunes fix her pleasure And not unto her blood: This is like wedlock; The feast of marriage is not lust but love And care of the estate. (2. 1. 47-51)
In contrast to Allwit's decision to have a family and comfortable life by allowing his wife to be an adulteress. and denying himsel any affective or sexual 149 love for his wife, Touchwood Senior finds a different remedy for his problem of poverty. Because of his fear of poverty he imposes celibacy on his Me. But a little later in the same passage. after Mrs. Touchwood Senior leaves. Touchwood Senior boasts of his special gift of libidinous fertility and considers himself lucky that he has never had to provide for any bastard. rendering his view of ideal wedded love and the immorality of lust self-serving and exploitative (1 1.1.52-60). Moreover, in the light of his encounter wkh the country wench who bore his child (1 1.1.65-1 14), the conduct of Touchwood Senior's He, who acquiesces in her husband's wish to live separately in order to avoid lawful marital sexuality, presents an unconventional view of chaste marital love. Indeed, Touchwood Senior's appreciation of his wife's willingness to abstain sexually silently reveals his own inability to take responsibility for his sexual conduct. Moreover, he does not seem to view his own immoderate sexual desire as immoral or transgressive but simply as inconvenient and burdensome. The Touchwood Seniors' conjugal situation presents a radical critique of the hegemonic ideal of marriage and wedded love. The juxtaposition of
Touchwood Senioh marital continence and his unregulated illicit sexuality contains the aberrant marital sexuality within the economics of domestic Me. but not without questioning the self-effacing obedience of the ideal Me.
If the lack of money is the root of Alht and Touchwood Senior's transgressive marriages and sexuality. the abundance of money is the cause of sexual infidelity in Lord and Lady Kix's marriage. Both Allwit and Touchwood
Senior have abdicated their lawful sexuality and their biological right to procreate 150 in order to irnprove their economic status. Similarly, for the upperclass Lord and
Lady Kkmoney is the enabling condition of fertility and adultery is the guarantee of marital stability. In the Kix episode, Middleton is exploring not only the socio- e~nomicbut also the biological limits of the ideal wedded love. The impregnation of Lady Kix by Touchwood Senior as a medical service provided in exchange for money, presents a complex transgressive critique of the conventional ideal of marital sexuality. The implication of immorality of the episode is de-emphasized by locating the critical perspective in Lord Kix's physiological deficiency and the couple's economic and affective need. For Touchwood Senior. it is not simply for lust or money but an expedient act to help his brother to be successful in his chaste love and marriage, because Kiks heir will disinherit his rival Sir Walter of his family wealth and consequently will disquai-fy him as Moll's suitor. By presenting a dimension of altruistic and practical expediency to the Kix-Touchwood Senior episode, the play allows the audience to consider sexual transgression as a part of the utilitarian ethics of secular and temporal social reality of Cheapside. Middleton does not present these transgressive segments as disjointed intrigues. Instead. they are indispensable to the main plot of chaste love and marriage. The play thus resists the view that morality is unmixed and absolute.
Against these various sewally transgressive and socially problematic marriages, Moll and Touchwood Junior's constant affective love and impeccable sexual conduct in courtship is presented. The economy of the unembellished 151 language of the lovers' brief meetings in public de-emphasizes the sense of immorality that their secrecy, filial disobedience. and deception might provoke.
Indeed. that Touchwood Junior starts his wooing by ordering the wedding ring indicates that Middleton tacitly Mrms the conventional ideal of chaste premarital love as a prelude to happy marriage and wedded love.
Touchwood Junior is not only an ardent and chaste lover but is also an active agent who controls his own destiny in love and marriage. Indeed, after the botched plan of their marriage he refuses to resign to "hard fate" by finding cornfort in Moll's virtuous promise. "1 am ever thine although we part forever" (3. 1. 47), or by accepting the finality of his rival Sir Walter's proclamation that the Touchwood brothers are "losers" (3. 1. 58). It is his keen awareness of temporality combined with secular pragmatism that allows him to act more effectively without losing time.
In order to defeat his rival Sir Walter as Moll's suitor he does not hesitate to persuade his brother to father Lady Kids child, though it involves adultery on both sides:
In the mean space. lose you not time, sweet brother; You have the means to strike at this Knight's fortunes And lay hirn level with his banker out merit; Get but his wife with child, perch at tree-top And shake the golden fruit into her lap; About it, before she weep herself to a dry ground. (3. 3. 8-13) A 52
In Cheapside's social reality Touchwood Junior cannot depend solely on chaste love or physical courage to be a winner in love, marriage. and life. In his plan to oust his rival he persuades his brother to help him in carrying out an unethical scheme of exploitation of the Kixes which includes cuckoldry and adultery and receiving money on false pretext. But in the light of the comic resolution. the immorality of his unconventional device is difFused. In fact. it is by the beneficial instrumentality of the immoral unconventional conduct that Molk tragic fate of death or being a wife in a loveless marriage is averted. Moreover. it helps not only the conjugal reunion of the Touchwood Seniors and brings happiness and concord in the Kixes' marriage, but also rnakes the continuation of the Allwits' marriage possible. By locating the collapse of moral binaries in the beneficial altruistic aspects of transgressive conduct, the play suggests that socio-sexual ethical imperatives are negotiable. In other mrds, Cheapside's pragmatic utilitarian ethical irnperatives for biological and economical survival help to deterrnine the morality and immorality of an action.
The final success of chaste romantic love and marriage is made possible when the Touchwood brothers use lying and bribery to exploit Yellowhammer's trust and gullibility. At the final dénouement in the resurrection scene (5.4), right order is partially restored in the chaotic disorder of Cheapside society. Middleton's unusual use of the "new comedyV3' convention of resurrection allows the play to present the old sinners as actively participating in establishing or validating a new marriage-order marked by chaste romantic love of individual choice. Touchwood Senior as the keynote speaker of the mock funeral eulogy for Moll and Touchwood
Junior emphasizes their true love and describes Moll as "the true chaste monument
of her living name" (5.4.12). In other words, it is through her own conduct that her
name. irrespective of its a priori connotation," has acquired its true meaning which
refers to a virtuous and chaste maid. Touchwood Senior in his speech to the
assembled transgressors pleads for the chaste quality of the young couple's pre-
marital love as the main reason why they deserve to be united in marriage:
There was no want of anything of life To make these virtuous precedents man and Me
I cannot think there's any one amongst you In this full fair assembly. maid. man or wife. Whose heart would not have sprung with joy and gladness To have seen their marriage day. (5. 4. 19-25)
The unanimous acknowledgement of chaste romantic love as the main criterion for
the othenvise suitable pair in rnaniage, and argument that the "virtuous" pair should
not have been denied the approval of parents. endorses the hegemonic view of the
miseries of enforced marriage for "Lucre's sake" versus marriage of individual
choice and mutual love. But by endowing the transgressors with the power to affirm
the importance of chaste love, Middleton in one move has diffused the moral
binarism and made the sinners eligible for an amnesty in the play's discourse.
Moreover. the scene allows Middleton to let the audience at large be aware of the
gap between the spoken ideality of tragic or comic love and the concrete rnateriality of mixed conduct which entails its defeat or success. 154
Furthermore, by allowing Yellowhammer to loin the assembled community
and confess how he has been duped for his greed. the play reveals his pragmatic
attitude of compromise which makes the comic closure possible. He accepts both
Tim's poor unchaste wife and Molk husband of her choice and love. Although the
play's thematic and formal design balances Yellowhammer's deserved punishment
in his son's marriage with the gratuitous victory of the daughter's rnarriage, the
audience at large have witnessed that he may have been defeated in Moll's
marriage too. However, the play's presentation of Yellowhamrner's sad but good-
humoured confession of his defeat and acceptance of his children's marriages,
allows the audience to view the Yellowhammers' abuse of parental authority in arranging th1eir children's marriage for economic gain and social status not simply
as an act of uncompromisable vice, but as a part of their growth through
experiential learning.
Because Tim's marriage to a more presents a radically transgressive critique of the ideality of pre-marital chastity as a requirement for marital chastity,
Middleton has been criticized for his outrageously non-moral stand.33 But by presenting this heterodoxic idea as the result of various transgressions. such as Sir
Walter's deceptions. Yellowhammer's greed, the Welsh gentlewoman's false pretence, and not as Tim's own choice of romantic love with the knowledge of her unchaste pre-marital sexuality, Middleton undercuts the immoral implication of the radical heterodoxy. Nevertheless, the conventional view of ideal pre-marital sexual 155 purity is rescinded in the play when the Yellowhammers and the community celebrate Tim's marriage to Sir Walter's cast-off mistress together with Moll-
Touchwood Junior's marriage of chaste love. Furthermore, the marriage vows of
Moll and Touchwood Junior foreground the play's position conceming the issue of marriage and chastity:
Hands join now. but hearts forever, Which no parents' mood shall sever;
You shall forsake al1 widows, wives, and maids; You, Lords. Knights, gentlemen. men of trades; (5.4.34-37)
The marriage vows emphasize that marital chastity is not a static virtue but also an active state which requires active choice of individual responsibility and cannot either be conferred externally or remain static once being transferred from a pre- marital state of purity to marriage.
If the Moll-Touchwood Junior's love and marriage is not an unqualified affirmation of a conventional ideal, Tm's maniage to the Welsh gentlewoman is not an endonement af an unconventional heterodoxy of love and sexuality. In fact. the representation of Tim as a university student and obedient son presents a parody of medieval scholastic view of life, while the representation of Touchwood Junior's success in love and Me foregrounds the seventeenth century's empirical and utilitarian philosophy of life. However. although Tim's marriage to an unchaste 156 woman presents a transgressive critique of the social custom of enforced marriage, by locating the critical perspectives both in Tim's unquestioned obedience to parental choice and the Welsh gentlewoman's false pretence, the play presents the heterodoxy within the orthodoxy of the hegemonic view on the issue of absolute necessity of parental consent in the selection of a marriage partner.
The play's teleology of amnesty helps to bring about the comic resolution of the potentially tragic affective and sewal transgressions. By focusing on the beneficial utilitarian aspect of some transgressive conduct, Middleton is perhaps asking his audience to view the holy and unholy, and the chaste and unchaste, not through a priori moral binaries only, but also through specific and concrete a posteriori experientiality. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside through its various plots demonstrates the negotiability and non-absoluteness of both the ideal and the transgressive. Money. which appeared in the beginning to be at the root of al1 socio-semal transgressions, can be deemed to have a beneficial harmonizing force in bringing some order to the disorderly society of Cheapside at the end of the play.
Although, for the moment Cheapside's transgressors with the exception of Sir
Walter are granted an amnesty, the concrete details of each episode resist any fortuitousness of their present happiness. Indeed, even the miracle at the resurrection scene is brought about by conscious individual endeavour which reveals a secular trajectory of mixed socio-moral conduct. The play affirms the institution of marriage viithout its assumed synonymity with "holy" or "chaste." As 157 the marriage vow implies, it is the responsibility of the conjugal couple to make marriage "defiled" or "undefiled." As in A Midsummer Niaht's Dream, and A Chaste
Maid in the Cheapside the underlying orthodox social nom and moral code needed to be transgressed in order to form a happier society of love and marriage. Endnotes
1. Michael Bristol, Carnival and Theater; Plebeian Culture and The Structure of Authority in Renaissance Enaland (New York: Methuen, 1985). p. 163.
2. John Dover Wilson. Shakespeare's H~DDVComedies (London: Faber and Faber. 1962). pp. 184-220. About the play Wilson writes, "if not the loveliest. it is certainly the happiest, of al1 the Happy Comedies - which a wedding play should ber';C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Studv of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (New York: Meridian Books, 1958). pp. 119-162. Barber emphasizes the view of the play as a pageant honouring a noble wedding. Northop Frye, Anatomv of Criticism: Four Essavs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). p. 287. Frye suggests the play's strong affinity with court masque.
3. Anne Barton, The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 21 7.
4. Louis A. Montrose, ''A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form", in Rewritin~the Renaissance. Eds. Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986). 77.
5. Mary Beth Rose. The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in Enalish Renaissance Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1988). pp. 41-42.
6. Ibid., 12.
7. Bristol, Carnival and Theater. p. 173.
8. My Shakespeare quotations throughout this chapter are taken from The Arden Shakes~eare.ed. Harold F. Brooks (London: Methuen. 1979).
9. See my discussion on Bourdieu's theory of " doxa" in Introduction. p. 18- 20.
10. Scholars and critics point to the reference of a different kind of courtship in which Hippolyta was won by force. For an important discussion of Theseus and Hippolyta's violent and coercive courtship and Shakespeare's use of the myth of Amazone as part of the patriarchal norm of courtship; see Louis Montrose. "A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture", Rewritina the Renaissance pp. 70-72. 11. See my discussion in chapter Il pp. 95-97. Also. Charles H. George and Katherine George, The Protestant Mind of the Enalish Reformation 1570-1640 (Princeton. Princeton University Press. 1961 ). 289-294.
12. 1 have discussed this point in Chapter 1, pp. 84-86. Also see Marilyn L. Williamson, The Patriarchv of Shakespeare's Comedies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986). p. 147.1 have noted in chapter I that protestant theologians Perkins. Smith and Gouge advocated fathers' absolute povver over children's lives. Williamson points out an interesting aspect of the father-child relation in patriarchalism. Quoting from Jean Bodin's Commonweale, she explains that the subsewience and obedience of the wife to her husband corne as a result of a lawful contract. Mile the power of the father over his children is natural ("The power of the Father over his children is the only natural power").
13. Gordon J. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thouaht: The Authoritarian Familv and Political Speculation and Attitudes Especiallv in Seventeenth Century Enaland (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1975), pp. 7. 146-158. Although the authority of the patriarchal ruler cornes from the biblical injunction to honour one's father and mother, patriarchal theory of political obligation was more fully developed in the seventeenth century. Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, published posthumously. is regarded as the central text elucidating patriachalist doctrine. Filmer advocates divine right absolutisrn on the ground that the political order of Stuart England had evolved from the family. Magistrates. he reasoned, were therefore entitled to the same filial obedience that children owed to their fathers. These political arrangements. then, are divinely sanctioned. Filmer supports his argument by tracing al1 legal authority back to the divinely bestowed fatherly power of Adam. In Filmer's patriachalist theory the identification of familial and political authority is of paramount importance and denies the distinction between state and society:
If we compare the natural duties of a father with those of a king, we find them to be al1 one, without any difference at al1 but only in the latitude or extent of them. As the father over one family. so the king, as father over many families, extends his care to preserve, feed. clothe, instruct and defend the Mole cornmonwealth. His wars, his peace. his courts of justice. and al1 his acts of sovereignty, tend to preserve and distribute to every subordinate and inferior father, and to their children, their rights and privaleges-.
Patriarcha, Ed., Peter Laslett (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1949), p. 63.
14. For comments on Shakespeare's modified use of "new comedy" convention, see Madeleine Doran, Endeavors of Arts (Madison: U of Wisconson P. 1954). 150-182; George E. Rowe, Jr., Thomas Middleton and New Comedy Tradition (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. 1979). 13-14, 17: Alexander Leggatt, Citizen Comedv in the Aae of Shakes~eare(Toronto: U of Toronto P. 1973). 4, 151-52.
15. For the use of divine love rhetoric in contemporary Iiterature see John Donne's Holv Sonnets: Divine Meditations.
Batter my heart. Three person'd God; for you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, O'erthrow mee, 'and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn, and make me new. Il like and usurpt towne, Fo' another due, Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end, But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue. Yet dearely 'l love you'. and would be loved faine, But am betrothetd unto your enemie: Divorce me, 'untie, or break that knot againe. Take me to you, imprison me, for I Except you' enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever Chast. except you ravish me. (no. x)
16. The recent feminist scholarship offers an interesting critical perspective to Titania-Oberon marital discord and reconcilement. Titania's transgression is not a simple act of neglecting her conjugal duty because of her excessive maternal Joy with the changeling. She in fact. defends her love for the child by alluding to a different kind of affective bond (2. 1. 123-7). About the threatening implications of this bond and the consequent transgression of ideal marital conduct, Valerie Traub writes:
The chagelling boy. child of Titania's votress not only of her female order, but of female oriented erotic bond, is an object of maternal exchange between women. In inverting the gendered relations of the homosocial triangle, Ttania not only "effiminizes" the boy, but usurps patriarchal power. The child is the manifest link of a prior, homoerotic affection between women that doesnft so much exclude Oberon as render him temporalily superfluous. (Traub 1992)
However, disobediant Titania regains her proper wifely demeanor through vengeful mischievous acts of Oberon.
17. T.S. Eliot, " Thomas Middleton," Elizabethan Essavs (New York: Haskell House, 1964). 89. Eliot finds Middleton the most impersonal of the Elizabethan dramatists. Moreover. "He [Middleton] has no point of vieWn/',writes Eliot. "is neither sentimental nor cynical; he is neither resigned, nor disillusioned, nor romantic; he has no message. He is merely the name which associates six or seven great plays". Una Ellis-Ferrnor, The Jacobean Drama: An lnterpretation (London: Methuen, 1936). 128-129. Ellis-Fermor daims that "Middleton's comedies do not preach-neither do his tragedies. And as he appears to have no rigid moral theory, so has he few theories, rigid or otheWse, of art." L.C. Knights, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1937). 217. Knights suggests that Middleton's comedies are simply comedies of intrigue. "and they yield little more than the pleasure of a well-contrived marionette show---they present neither thought, nor an emotional attitude to experience, nor vividly realized perceptions. They stake al1 on action, and that which made thern successful on the stage makes them rank low as literature".
18. Brian Gibbons. Jacobean Citv Comedv: A Studv of Satiric Plavs bv Jonson. Marston and Middleton (London: Rupert Hart Davis, 1968). 29-30, 151 -1 55. Gibbons acknowledges (unlike L.C. Knights) that City Comedy's representation of moral and social corruption is a significant reflection of developments in the political and economic life of the age. In fact, he suggests that the City Comedy through its stylized characters and satiric-didactic schema aims to emphas ire the vices of city life. However, Gibbons also finds that the playwrights are becoming increasingly ambivalent "towards the skilful, ruthless materialist who knows how to manipulate capital and the technicalities of the la*. M.C. Bradbrook. The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedv (London: Chatto 8 Windus, 1962). 44-45. About the themes of Middleton's City Cornedies Bradbrook writes, 'The most popular theme is the successful marriage hunt for the prize of a rich widow; a spendthrift succeeds, while his rivals are married off to courtesan by some deceiving trick. To this kind belongs the main work of Middleton and Marston." Alexander Leggatt, Citizen Comedv in the Aae of Shakes~eare(Toronto: Toronto University Press. 1973). 151-1 52. Leggatt contends that English Renaissance satiric Comedy is mainly concerned with social relations in their most material form - sex and marriage. money and property. He does not find moral ambivalence in these plays. lnstead he suggests that in their urgent concern for the material side of life, the plays in fact exhibit a social morality that is a morality of property and possession. Richard HoMnch. " VVives Courtesan, and the Economics of Love in Jacobean City Comedy," Comparative Drama, 7 (1973). 291-309. HoWch claims that hedonistic pleasure and "creative wit" have replaced standards of morality in Middleton's comedies. Compared with other dramatists of the period (Marston. Dekker, Heywood), Middleton seems to treat marriage in an irreverant and cynical fashion: "Though romantic and idealistic marriage are made in Middleton's comedies. they are subordinated in interest and importance to the financial trickery and double-dealing which now occupy the main plot and are themselves relegated to the subplot....." Furthermore. Horwich contends that the representations of marital relations are often "characterised by a sort of regulated warfare which leaves little room for affection or cooperation, not to speak of love...." Also see Arthur C. Kirsch. Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia. 1972). pp. 75-95.
19. Recent scholarship has added a new perspective on the genre's depiction of corrupt city life. For revisionary views of the purposes and concerns of Renaissance satiric city comedy. see Susan Wells, "Jacobean City Comedy and The ldeology of the City." English Literary Histow, 48 (1981). 37-60. Using Mikhail Bahktin's concept of "market place" rnetaphorically Wells argues that city comedy's satiric representation of various social and moral themes in fact, fuses traditional festive rural values of the carnival with emerging urban values of trade and commerce. She explains how this fusion of different social spaces takes place within an aesthetic form: "But a writer who like Middleton or Marston was interested in using the values of festive space as a tool for asking questions had to open a dramatic space for these values even that space existed only between parentheses". Thus "accumulation and greed, extensions or distortions of norm of commercial relations of city, are "naturalized" into some harmony w'th the norms of the festive market place. Bracketed within contexts of moral ambiguity or licensed festivity, the commercial rogues of these plays allow the exchange relations of the city full entry into the arena of communal celebration." In fact, Wells provides an explanation for the incongrous and unconventional happy endings of Middleton's satiric comedies that disregard conventional morality. Also, Theodore B. Leinwand, The Citv Staaed: Jacobean Comedv. 1603- 1613 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press. l986), 18-51, Leinwand de- emphasizes the traditional view that City Comedy simply represents moral corruptions of city Me. Following Belsey's critical method, he suggests an epistemological dimension of the plays. "The radical critique" of the age that Gibbons finds in City Cornedies is not in their satire of or even their ambivalence toward greedy merchants and idle gentry. lnstead it is in their self-conscious staging of the clearly inadequate roles and types Londoners tolerated for the purposes of identifying one another. Leinwand emphasizes the historical context of social roles and daims that by focusing on the sexual and monetary economics at the foundations of al1 city roles, city comedy allows its audience a glirnpse of their own prejudice and assumptions." Also, one of the reasons R.B. Parker finds the comic resolution of A Chaste Maid in Chea~sidemorally unsatisfactory is Tim's marriage to Sir Walter's cast off mistress. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, viii-lix
20. Mary Beth Rose, The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexualitv in Enalish Renaissance Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1988). 43.
21. Ibid., 47-48.
22. Coppelia Kahn. "Never Thoroughly Tried: Whores. Virgins and Wives in the Plays of Thomas Middleton", Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 32 (1993) 4.
23. Ruby Chatterji, "Theme, Imagery, and Unity in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside", Renaissance Drama, 7 (1965), 105-126. Chatterji, following S. Schoenbaum, ephasizes the centrality of the theme of rnarriage and family that is reflected in repeated "house" references throughout the play.
24. See R.B. Parker. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. (London: Methuen, 1969). Introduction, Xlii. Also. Brian Gibbons. Jacobean City Comedv, 163-166.
25. Leanore Lieblein, "Thomas Middleton: The Evolution of a Dramatist". Diss. The University of Rochester. 1969, 131.
26. Rose. Expense of Spirit, 47-48, Kahn. "Whores. Virgins and Wives". 2. Homich, "The Economics of Love", 266.
27. My Middleton quotations are al1 from the Revels edition of A Chaste Maid of Cheapside, ed.. R.B. Parker (London: Methuen, 1969).
28. See Chapter 1. 74-78.
29. For a detailed discussion of John Ford's The Broken Heart see Chapter W. See Chapter III for Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Maid's Traaedv. For a short discussion of George Wilkins' Miseries of Enforced Marriaae, see Chapter Five.
30. See Chapter Il pp. 42-43. 1 have mentioned that the Protestant theologians, in their attempt to establish the moral superiority of married life and fatherhood (heterosexual monogomous sexuality), spoke of bachelorhood and single men as morally deviant and sexually promiscuous. Richard Levin, The Multiple Plot in Enolish Renaissance Drama. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). p. 198-199. Levin contends that the primary plot traces an almost perfect comic conflict.
31. Alexander Leggatt in Citizen Comed~in the Aue of Shakespeare. pp. 142-143, following Northop Frye, explains the basic pattern of New Comedy as an intrigue in which a young man plots against an old one to gain money. the girl of his choice. or both. This pattern of New Comedy is associated with Plautus and Terence' tradition of comedy. However. the motifs of "rival wooer", and domestic themes of "jealous husband" and "Griselda figures" are new additions to this pattern of cornedy from the ltalian Renaissance comedy. Leggatt finds that Middleton's City Cornedies adhere closely to some of the essential features of New Comedy. including the presentation of financial trickery and conflict of age and youth in the depiction of confrontations between young gallants and middle-aged or elderly citizens. Leggatt wntends that Middleton's skiltful use of the New Comedy pattern has provided A Chaste Maid in Cheapside with structural unity and a successful comic vision. Madeleine Doran also suggests that the structural basis of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is New Comedy tradition. Doran. Endeavors of Art. 154-1 55. R.B. Parker finds that the structure of A Chaste Maid is Cheapside does not adhere closely to the New Comedy pattern. "The serious ambiguities of value in the play". wites Parker. "are resolved theatrically, not morally. by the trick of the resurrection scene; and purely literary nature of the solution is emphasized by crediting it surprisingly to Susan and following it with the anticlimax of Tim's marriage." George E. Rowe, Jr. Thomas Middleton and The New Comedv Tradition. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979). . ROM argues that Middleton uses the New Comedy tradition in an uncharacteristic rnanner. His plays superficially appear conventional but paradoxically do not develop in traditional ways. He contends that in A Chaste Maid is Cheapside, Middleton has presented a New Comedy form without any real meaning because its comic structure lacks the pattern of spiritual and natural rebirth. He considers the work's resurrection scene a complete departure from New Comedy tradition since in New Comedy "the Mythical event celebrated is rebirth not death..." Furthermore, since al1 kinds of contradictory relationships between foms and their respective contents exist in the play. the play's wrld is a wrld of games that have no substance. In Jacobean City Comedv. Brian Gibbons claims that Middleton employs New Comedy tradition with some modifications that produce more satisfying drama (and a reordering of the characteristic elements). See Brian Gibbons. Jacobean City Comedv. p. 164.
32. Both Parker and Rowe, Jr. find appropriateness and ambivalence in the use of the name "Moll" for Yellowharnmer's daughter. For Parker, Mary would have been a more appropriate name than "Moll" for the Chaste maid, since the former emblamatizes chastity Mile the latter is favourite name for whore. See, RB. Parker, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, p. liii, note no. 4 and G. Rowe, Jr. Thomas Middleton, 132.
33. Horwich, "Love in Jacobean City Comedy," pp. 304-305. Howch contends that Middleton's attitude toward love and marriage is quite different from contempories like Thomas Dekker and John Marston. "Middleton's Courtesans", writes Homich. "are indeed courtesans, not innocent girls mistaken for fallen women, and they marry to be reclaimed. but these cheerful and mettlesome women are never reforrned by marriage. only enriched. and remain throughout superior to every respect to the fools who marry them." Chapter Three
Premarital Sexual Love: Exculpation in Leaal Marriaae
Measure For Measure (1604) has traditionally been classified as one of
William Shakespeare's "problem @ays."' N. W. Bawcutt explains that "the term
became widely current, though its precise rneaning and appropriateness or
otherwise to the plays as a group has been much debated."* However. Bawcutt
adds that the universal assumption has been that the problems in question are al1
ethical and moral. The dominant critical view until the 1960s considered the play
a Christian allegory, a triumphant assertion of the overcoming of temptation and
moral relativism by Christian virtues or the triumph of love over lawS3This kind of
religious interpretation, as Anne Barton points out, "is unactable without drastic
cutting and distortion of individual roles. "4 Moreover, such readings avoid dealing
with the problematic socio-moral issues of sexuality which the play addresses.
Also. the critics and scholars. in order to emphasire the appropriateness of the
wmic closure af the play, need to ignore the realistic "seamy setting" and the moral
ambiguity of the Duke's action.
Recent scholarship has suggested alternative readings, emphasizing the
manipulative sinister side of the Duke's power, and the subversion from below of
an oppressive official order. Jonathan Dollimore offers an insightful critical
approach to the play in his article ''Transgression and Surveillance in Measure For Measure." Dollimore. in his discussion,shifts the focus of the problem from rnorality and ethics to power and authority:
The transgressors in Measure For Measure signify neither the unregeneracy of the flesh. nor the ludic subversive carnivalesque. Rather. as the spectre of unregulated desire. they are exploited to legitimate an exercise in authoritarian repression?
Dollimore's view provides an important insight in Our understanding of the play's structural complexity. He suggests that the play's representation of diverse episodes of sexual transgression are not ends in themselves (amoral and asocial portrayals of sexuality). but are used to foreground the play's covert political message. I agree with Dollimore that the various problematic episodes of unregulated erotic desire are neither endorsements nor rejections of the transgressions. But, Dollimore's view, which emphasizes only the political purpose of the portrayai of the transgressive sexuality. appears too exclusive. and leaves rnuch of the problematic sewality of the dramatic narrative unaddressed.
Moreover. in spite of the announcement of four marriages at the closure. Measure
For Measure does not belong to the group of Shakespeare's comic plays of love. and the play's unconventional thematic content resists the generic representation.
Scholars with a socio-historical approach to Jacobean drama have pointed out that the inclusion of sexuality in the representation of love and marriage has produced a disjunction between content and form. Indeed. sexuality. as discourse in a dramatic representation, brings with it a plethora of attendant issues that complicate love and maniage. In Measure for Measure, these issues are inflected Minsuch oppositions as lust and continence, and chastity and promiscuity. The critical view that emphasizes the play's incongruous form, fails to see the extent to which Shakespeare's plays irrespective of genre represent erotic desire as constituted within a complex and contradictory socio-moral point of view.
By referring to some recent critical works, Jean Howard explains this problematic aspect of Shakespeare's plays:
... These plays are not solely concerned with the mythic realm of man's timeless and collective existence. as Frye has suggested; nor, as Barber has argued. are they related to larger culture simply as dramatic transformation of the ritual of Elizabethan holiday; rather, they are inextricably bound up with the contradictions and discontinuities of the Elizabethan culture matrix, sometimes meditating or harmonizing conflicts and merely reflecting them. Consequently, rather than problem-solving mechanisms that express turbulence only to tame it, even the festive cornedies frequently function as problem-posing structures that produce aesthetic experiences marked as much by rupture and discontinuity as by the serene harmonization of contradictory elements?
Foilowing Howard, I contend that Measure For Measure's discordant generic representation of sexuality and marriage offers a mode of cognition. The play's portrayal of unregulated erotic desire explores the consi! ur;tion of ideal sexuality by confusing its moral and legal binaries. The play deliberately severs the generic constraints of representation and through an unconventional aesthetic form succeeds in negotiating deviant semal conducts within the matrix of norm.
Furthemore, the play's depiction of transgression of the established social code and moral norm of sewality, actually, focuses on the problematic issues 169
inherent in the ideal of sexuality in which the moral and legal are synonymously
defined. Measure for Measure raises some basic questions concerning moral
ethics of English Renaissance ideal sexuality; for example. can transgressive
sexual conduct be justified for a utilitarian purpose? Since the discordance
between the form and thematic structure of the play is concemed with the moral and
legal issues of sexuality and marriage. it is worth considering the degree to which
Shakespeare's presentation of the immoral and the illicit does. in fact, explore the
English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexual love that the play is representing.
The irreconcilable contradiction inherent in the English Renaissance hegemonic ideal of sexuality and its inseparability from lawful marriage had problematized the sema1 narratives in the dramas of the period. The English
Protestant marriage doctrine not only rejected the sacramental status of marital union. but also approved the validity of affective and sexual love in the scheme of holy matrimony without deprecation. However. although the Protestant moral theologians. acknowledged the amorality of the biological nature of sexuality, they insisted that it could acquire holy status by its proper use within marriage. In their writings, they not only repudiated the assertion that celibacy and virginity were morally superior, but they also claimed equal moral status for chaste marital sexuality. Also. the distinctness of ideal sexuality was defined by differentiating it from lust and emphasizing the proper desire and right conduct of conjugal love.
Moreover. in their effort to elevate marriage to the highest order of worldly living, 170 these writers denounced single life as sexually deviant. They did not consider
religious or secular single life of semaI abstinence as a desirable mode1 of ideal chastity. The writings of the Protestant theologians on marriage and sexuality
reveal that it is through the trajectory of moral. legal and spiritual absolutes that amoral and secular sexuality entered scheme of holy matrimony.
Catherine Belsey explains the dynamics of the transformation of meaning which inheres both in marriage and sexuality:
Marriage rnakes desire [erotic] legitimate. brings it within the bounds of propriety and orthodoxy. on condition. of course. that it is suitably heterosexual. non-incestuous and duly based on consent. The Law of the Father. the order of meaning, backed by the law of the land, cornes to differentiate increasingly systematically. increasingly solemnly. between love and lust. propriety and licence. natural and unnatural passion. and in each case the privileged term becomes incorporated into the meaning of rnarriagem7
Indeed, sexuality. which is legalized. moralized and domesticated by heterosexual marriage. becomes the constructed norm. However. synonymity of the moral and the legal in the construction of ideal sexuality was problematized by the overlapping jurisdictions of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities in matrimonial affairs. Even though marriage was considered a civil contract. it also was a spiritual and divine ordinance and a seminary of the Church and Commonwealth. In Measure For
Measure Shakespeare appropriates the confusing juridical aspect of the
Renaissance ideal of sexuality and marriage in his depiction of sexual transgressions. The moral and legal ideality of married sexuality is presented as 171
both the limit against which transgressions take place and as the stress point of
resistance to illicit and immoral sexuality. The play's moral ambiguity concerning
sexuality and rnarriage, in fact, reveals the incomrnensurability between the
prescribed rules of ideal socio-sexual conduct and the unregulated individual
sexual proclivity which finally becomes commensurable within the legality of
marriage. It can be argued that the play's problematic moral issues reside in the
gap be-en the abstract ideal of sexuality. and the concrete manifestation of the
fissure of that ideal by individual will and desire.
In agreement with Kathleen McLuskiels cornplaint8 about the traditional
scholarship of Shakespeare's plays. I contend that the play must be viewed as a
sum-total of different dramatic techniques and divergent views of sexuality, a
mixture that resists the view of the play an undisrupted religious allegory. Also, the
play should be viewed neither as a morally ambiguous nor a "problematic dark
comedy" because of its multiple transgressive sexual narratives. Instead, 1 argue that the play uses the representation of promiscuous, illicit. and clandestine
sexuality. exploitative abstinence and continence in order to foreground lawful
monogamous mariage as the only paradigm of sexuality. At the sarne time it gives a chance to premarital sexual transgression to be redeemed by the lawfulness of marriage.
Shakespeare's contemporary Jacobean dramatists, in their portrayal of transgressive sexuality and rnarriage, &en emphasize both the lack and the excess of money as the root of problematic socio-moral situations. Although Shakespeare 172 does not ignore the role of money, he focuses on problems concerning law and individual wellas the sources of transgressive sexual conduct. Measure For
Measure's multiple plots of transgressive sexuality include Claudio and Juliers secret spousal and antenuptial fornication. Lucio's promiscuous sexuality and illegitimate children, Angelo's improper and exploitive sexual desire for lsabella and rejection of betrothed Mariana for the loss of her dowiy. and the Duke and Isabella's deviant chastity. These are rectified in the play by lawful marriage. Thus, marriage is presented as a corrective measure for sexual transgression or deviancy as well as an act of atonement that is required for clemency by the law. Immoral and illicit sexuality is negotiated within the lawful and holy state of matrimony without changing the law. While the Duke is exercising his authoritarian manipulative power as an omniscient providence to so Ive his su bjects' private matrimonial problems. the play is designing the ideal (patriarchalist) sovereign in him. At the end of the play the Duke, as an ideal sovereign. is not only a "scholar. soldier and statesman" but is also going to become a family man wi-th a Me. The play's discourse has posited an ideal composite character of a ruler by negating his roles of ineffectual ecclesiastical and impersonal civil authority. This ruler is to be a strict enforcer of law but not without compassion, and one who obeys the same socio- sexual order that he imposes on his subjects. Shakespeare. by depicting the confusion of moral and legal issues, not only attempts to emphasize their non- absoluteness. but also reveals that the constituted norm of sexuality is constitutive of the moral and the legal reality of sexuality. The implied legalism of the play's title foreshadows the importance of law - civil and ecclesiastical and established custom and tradition - in its representation of sexuality and marriage. The opening scene presents the legal and moral limits against which the sexual transgressions of the Viennese society take place. The
Duke chooses Escalus as an adviser to Angelo for his knowledge and experience in using law
Since I am put to know that your own science Exceeds. in that, the lists of al1 advice My strength can give you. Then no more remains But that, to your sufficiency. as your worth is able, And let thern work. The nature of our people, Our city's institutions, and the terms For common justice. y'are as pregnant in As art and practice hath enriched any That we remember. (1.1.5-1 3)'
The Duke wants to restore order in Vienna by enforcing law strictly and judiciously, since, because of the laxity of law for fourteen years. the city's social and moral corruptions have escalated. For him, the law is not a simple impersonal abstract code of conduct which exists outside the social reality of the people it is enforced upon. On the contrary, he reminds Escalus that the law is part of the established custom and tradition of the society, and administration of the law must take into account the nature of the people. The Duke's cornmendation of Angelots virtuous character, when he selects him to be deputy in his absence. is used to foreshadow the cornplexity of the moral and legal absolutes of sexuality that is represented in the play: . . . For if our virtues Did not go forth of us. 'twere al1 alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But like a thrifty Godess. she determines Herseif the glory of a creditor. Both thanks and use. (1.1.36-41)
Virtue must not only remain private and personal, but should be altruistic and
utilitarian. This definition of virtue and ideal justice functions as the underpinning
of the transgressivelnorrnative tension in the play's narrative of sexuality. Angelo
is a "corrupt deputy"10 who represents strict impersonal civil law. However, the fuller implications of the extreme transgressive critique of Angelots dramatic
character as a strict law enforcer are resisted by the play's use of the literary device of "disguised niler"." Shakespeare's modified use of this literary device does not allow the Duke to leave the country. As a disguised Friar. the Duke listens to the confessions of his subjects and uses the knowledge to correct the problematic situations of love and sexuality. Furthermore, the Duke's disguise as a friar brings hirn close to the transgressors and teaches him to individuate and concretize the moral and legal transgression of sexuality not simply as an abstract theological vice or defiance of civil law. He learns that the enforcement of law, both civil and moral, must take into account the specific social and individual context of the transgression. The Duke participates in the dramatic actions of the play by appropriating the ecclesiastical authority of a friar. But at the final comic resolve, his civil authority and power is focused in his effective and judicious use of law to 175
remedy the potentially tragic socio-moral complexities of sexual transgression.
However. in the last scene, the Duke emerges as an ideal sovereign by learning
from both Angelo's commitment to enforce law strictly, and the Friar's
wmpassionate omniscience. In the denouement, the play rescinds both the Friar's
and Angelo's discourses and presents the Duke as an ideal patriarchalist sovereign
who is not only a loving and strict authoritarian father, but also the one who corrects
and regulates his subjects' private socio-sexual Ife.
The dramatic tension between law and sexuality in the play is set in motion
by the news that Claudio has not only been arrested for fornication and "getting
Madam Julietta with child" (1-2.65) but also that he will be beheaded within three
days. The introduction of Claudio by brothel keeper Mistress Overdone to her
clients. promiscuous city gallant Lucio and his associate bawd Pompey. is used as
a dramatic strategy to intensfy the theme of sexual corruption of Vienna rather than
to focus on the seriousness of Claudio's sexual transgression (1. 2. 55-104).
Indeed, the play uses Claudio's sentence of death for pre-nuptial fornication (which
is legally irregular, but not immoral) to reveal the more serious and complex socio-
moral transgressions of the sexuality of different classes of Viennese society.
VVithin a few lines of the announcement of the news of Claudio's arrest, the
audience learns that his sexual transgression is very different from lechery,
although he pleads guilty for taking too much liberty with the law by postponing the public consecration of his conjugal union:
Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract I got possession of Julietta's bed. You know the lady; she is fast my wife, Save that we do the denunciation lack Of outward order. This we came not to Only for propagation of a dower Remaining in the coffers of her friends, From whom we thought it meet to hide our love Till time had made them for us. But it chances The stealth of our most mutual entertainment Wth character too gross is writ on Juliet. (1. 2. 143-153)
Claudio and JulieYs conjugal sexuality is neither illicit nor immoral. Clandestine marriage was considered legal but undesirable by authority.'* because of its disruptive socio-economic potential. But since their conjugal sexuality was founded on mutual love and pre-contract. Claudio cannot be convicted of any immoral condud. The view that Claudio's transgression is neither illicit nor immoral is borne out by the Duke's order to rectrfy Juliet's social disgrace by public sanctification of their union ("she. Claudio. that you wrong'd, look you restore." 5.1.523). The
Duke's granting a pardon to Claudio by asking him to correct Juliet's state of public shame accomodates the moral and legal aspect of his transgression for which he was sentenced to death by Angelo within normative sexuality, Mile the strict enforcement of law remains unchanged. Both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities
(Angelo and the FriarlDuke) had previously ignored the honourable intention of
Claudio's private sexual conduct. Although Juliet is happy in her private life and accepts her pregnancy with joy. their concern with money brings public shame to her. Her situation is unlike Mariana's and Kate Keepdown's: Mariana has been rejected by her betrothed for monetary reasons and lives an unhappy joyless Ife; 177
and Kate Keepdown has been abandoned by her conjugal partner, Lucio, and lives
a life of dishonour and poverty. There is something paradoxical about the nature
of Juliet's shame. Her pregnancy, which is the result of her private affective and
sexual love, is considered a punishable offense by both civil and ecclesiastical
authority. Juliet, in her conversation with the FriarlDuke, speaks of their true love
and commitment:
Duke: Love you the man that wrong'd you?
Juliet: Yes, as I love the woman that wrong'd him.
Duke: So then it seems your most offenceful act mutually comrnitted?
Juliet: Mutually.
Duke: Then was your sin of heavier kind than his. (2.3.24-28)
By allowing Juliet to daim not only the equal responsibility of their love and transgression but also to take "shame with joy," the play occludes the aphasia of the condemned victims of privately contracted marital union.
Claudio's sexual transgression, for which he is condemned to death by civil law, focuses on the ambiguous moral and legal aspects of the contemporary social pradice of "spousal" or matrimonial contracting l3The overlapping authority (civil and ecclesiastical) over matrimonial affairs and semality not only problematized the enforcement of law but also the nature of transgression. The custom of conjugal union by means of spousal was considered somewhat irregular, though not unusual. However. this type of marital union was always regarded with disfavor by 178 the civil authority and was the cause of much legislative dispute. But the issue became more problernatic with the increasing limitation of the ecclesiasticai court and the wi-dening of the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate. Marriage, by means of spousal de ~raesentiwas recognized by both Church and State. "Spousal" whether de praesenti or de futuro, did not confer all the physical rights. However, if sema1 relations took place the contract became indissoluble and it was regarded as irregular but valid. In Elizabethan and Jacobean England the old law on clandestine marriage remained in force for both Catholics and Protestants. After the Council of Trent, English common law regarding clandestine marriage diverged completely. But free and unforced consent still formed the basis of matrimony, even in unwitnessed unions, provided that both parties would swear to the marriage (in
Catholic Europe Church wedding became the rule). However, in England, the subjects of secret spousal or clandestine marriage. in spite of their irregular validity, was problematized by the civil courts of law.14
The opposing views of spousal and clandestine marriage are presented through various characters in the play. Claudia's friends and denizens of the city's district of ill-repute confuse the moral and legal aspects. and they find the sentence unreasonably severe for the offense of fornication. Moreover, Claudio not only consider himseif not guilty of immorality for getting Juliet vvith child but also considers his sentence as tyranny of law enforcement "for a name" by the new deputy (1.2.55-160). In the light of the play's comic resolution of various problematic episodes of sexual deviancy, the Claudio-Juliet episode of transgressive sexuality is used as both a centrifugai and a centripetal dramatic
strategy to reveal other complex psychic and social problems of sexuality rather
than as a serious moral or legal offense which deserves the death sentence.
However. although Claudio's sexual relation with Juliet is presented as a
rninor culpability, his cowardice and lack of stoic quality is portrayed as a
reprehensible moral defed which he must overcome before the Duke pardons him
in the last scene. His cowardliness impels him not only to seek his sister's help but
also to exploit her female sexuality knowing she has renounced sexuality and
chosen a life of religious chastity for his freedom.
Claudio: I prithee. Lucio, do me this kind service: This day my sister should the cloister enter. And there receive her appreciation. Acquaint her with the danger of my state: Implore her in my voice. that she make friends To the strict deputy: bid herser assay him. I have great hope in that. For in her youth There is a prone and speechless dialect Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art When she will play with reason and discourse. And well she cm persuade. (1.2.166-1 76)
The use of equivocal words "Prone". "more". "play" gives away that Claudio counts
on his sistei's provocative sexuality as part of the rhetoric of persuasion to gain his freedom. In this speech not only he reveals his exploitative desire but also exhibits
cornpiete disregard for her choice of a difFerent order of Ife and sexuality. Claudio's
death sentence for fornication presents a radical critique of law and authority; the serious implications of this radical critique is undercut by revealing Claudio as a passive but willing corrupter of law in his exploitation of his sister's affection and 180 sexuality. However. the Claudiollsabella/Angelo episode explores the moral and legal absolutes of sewality in the play. Isabella's confrontation with Claudio over
Angelo's proposition to set Claudio free from his death sentence in exchange for her virginity reveals an unbridgeable difference in their views regarding sexual morality. Claudia's secular view of life does not recognize any spiritual transcendence of life through death. Since death is not a promise for eternal life to him. he wants to cling to his material life at any expense and form:
Claudio: Death is a fearful thing.
Isabella: And shamed life a hatefu
Claudio: Ay, but to die. and go we know not where;
Claudio: The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To matwe fear of death.
Isabella:
Claudio: Sweet sister, let me Iive. What sin you do to Save a brother's life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far That it becomes a virtue.
Isabella: . . . 0,you beast! 0, faithless coward! O dishonest wretch! Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice? Is't not a kind of incest, to take life From thine own sister's shame? VVhat should I Think? (3.1.115-140) 181
The brother-sister dialogue exhibits conflicting views of sexuality. At the core of this insoluble difference lies the irreconcilable contradiction of the English Renaissance ideal of sexuality. For Claudio's non-spiritual secular view of life the use of sexuality for a necessary though worldly cause is not sinful. Since there is no spiritual after-life Claudio is not only ready to accept any form of worldly Me, but also fails to understand Isabella's view of sexuality as an abstract personal virtue for spiritual purpose. For Isabella's otheworldly order of virtue. both Angelo and
Claudio are guilty of exploitative utilitarian sexuality. While Angelo's transgression is concerned with the immorality of unrestrained desire and exploitation of authoritative power. Claudio in his relation with lsabella is guilty of the immorality of the amoral view of sexuality.
By presenting these opposing views, the play raises some fundamental questions conceming the moral ethics of the English Renaissance ideal sexuality.
Does a good cause justify the sinfuVimmoral ad? In other words, can transgressive sexual conduct be justified for its utilitarian purpose? Moreover. by allowing lsabella to accuse Claudio of potential incest, the play introduces the issue of another serious sexual transgression. Protestant moral theologians condemned and forbade any conjugal union which broke the laws of the proper degree of consanguity. However, by allowing the Duke to intervene in Claudio-lsabella's conflict of sexual morality the play simultaneously negates the extreme transgressive critique, and accommodates it within the norm by adding an altruistic aspect to the secular utilitarian view of sexuality. 182
A contrasting presentation of extreme heterodoxic sexuality concerning the violation of the laws of the proper degree of consanguinity can be found in John
Ford's 'Tis Pi& Shets a Whore (1630). The portrayal of Giovani and Annabella's affective and erotic love is used simultaneously to emphasize the amorality of erotic desire, and to focus on the problematic aspect of the free choice in the selection of a conjugal partner for romantic love. Giovani's unregulated desire for his sister which not only violates the socio-sexual code of ethics but also disrupts the very order of the family and the society presents a challenge to the conventional view of sexuality. But unlike lsabella of Measure For Measure, Giovani's sister
Annabella, does not reproach her brother and expresses her own repressed desire for him. Annabella loves her brother truly and marries Soranzo on the advice of her father and the Friar, thereby legitimizing her pre-marital pregnancy. Unlike
Measure for Measure. 'Tis Pitv She's a #ore sirnultaneously questions the ideality of non-incestuous lawful ananged mariage and reveals incestuous love as amoral and secular. The Giovanni/AnnabellalSoranzo relationship not only challenges the absoluteness of the moral ideality of marriage as non-incestuous heterosexual monogarny, but also it explores the lirnit of freedom in selecting an affectedlsexual partner. Moreover, unlike Measure For Measure, the play lacks an omniscient patriarchalist civil authority like the Duke and a balance between chaste and unchaste characters to avert or negotiate the tragic endings of extreme heterodoxy.
Unlike Ford in 'Tis a Pitv She is a Whore, in Measure For Measure
Shakespeare does not allow his dramatic characters to remain in an unalterable state of static transgression without psychical and moral conflict 60th tragic victims and triumphant winners must actively choose or reject righteous conduct. Isabella's unmixed view of ethical absolutes does not allow her to yield to Angelots proposal of illicit and immoral sexuality in exchange for her brother's pardon. An aquiescence to the suggested scheme of action would create an epistemological chaos in her moral universe: "Mercy to thee would prove itsetf a bawd 1 'Tis best that thou diest quickly" (3.1 -148). In the same scene within a few lines. she agrees to wmply with the Duke's plan. By allowing lsabella to agree to participate in the
Duke's plan for altruistic purpose without sacrificing her personal virtue, the play relativizes the absolutes of moral ethics. In other words, the Duke's use of "bed trick"15 to deceive Angelo for altruistic purposes is a negotiable transgression within the play's scheme of non-absolute and mixed virtues:
Duke: . . . by this is your brother saved. your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the compt deputy scaled. The maid will I frame, and make fa for his attempt. If you think well to carry this as you may, the doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof. What think you of it? (3.1 -253-9)
Isabella, who has refused vehernently her brother's plea tu yield to Angelo's proposal, agrees readily to participate in the Duke's plan: "The image of it gives me content already, and I trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection" (3.1.260-
61). Isabella's willing agreement with the Duke's plan requires her to state publicly that she has lost her virginity to Angelo to Save her brother's Ife without disclosing her complicity in the deceitful bed trick: Isabella: . . . the vile conclusion I now begin w-th grief and shame to utter. He would not, but by gift of my chaste body To his concupiscible intemperate lust, Release my brother; and after much debate went, My sisterly remorse confutes mine honour, And I did yield to him. But the next morn betimes. His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant For my poor brother's head. (5.1. 98-105)
The passage presents a severe view of the authoritarian exploitation of
power and, simultaneously. resists the serious implications of the critique by
making it a part of the corrective remedy for various problematic situations.
Indeed. by allowing lsabella to accept public shame temporarily to help Mariana,
the play's discourse of sexuality rejects silently the view of optimum virtue as
reclusive, personal asexual purity.
If Isabella's otheworldly sexual chastity is not depicted as an ideal,
Mariana's chaste and passive sexuality does not fare any better as a worldly
ideal. For Mariana, triumph in love and marriage does not came Mile she
remains in a passive unmixed state of virtue. Like Isabella, she willingly agrees to participate in the Friar/Duketsplan and leaves the "moated grange." Mariana
not only agrees to the deceit of substituting herself physically for lsabella to be successful in her own love and marriage, but she also does not hesitate to deceive Angelo with her words in order to help Claudio:
Isabella: Little have you to Say When you depart from him, but. soft and low, "Remember now my brother."
Mariana: Fear me not (4.1.67-70) Mariana is introduced as a victim of the social custom of matrimonial contracting which involved money. Unlike Juliet, and Claudio, although she was contracted to Angelo, there was no physical consummation. Because of the lack of consummation she became a victim of broken betrothal for the loss of her dowry. It is ironic that through an illicit sexual relation (or bed trick) chaste
Mariana wins in love and marriage, when the play's overt project concerns with the theme of illicit sexuality and establishment of ideal sexual order through strict enforcement of law. Because of the complexity of her transgression, she becomes a non-entity in the eyes of law:
Duke: Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife!
Lucio: My lord. she may be a punk; for many of them are neither maid. widow nor wife.
Mariana: My lord, I do confess I ne'er was married; And I confess besides, I am no maid. (5.1.179-86)
According to Lucio her unclassifiable sexuality leaves her outside the legalized/moralized arena of domestic sexuality and therefore "a punk". Mariana's situation presents a radical critique of premarital chastity through confusion of the moral I legal polarities of ideal sexuality. In fact. this has confounded the very construction of t'woman" which is conterminous with the categories of social and sexual roles. But the radical heterodoxic critique is negated when the Duke I Friar intervenes in the situation. Mariana triumphs in her love and marriage neither through her passive chastity nor for her active transgression, but by learning to accept a mixed state of virtuelvice, ideaVtransgression as the norm of worldly order of things. Her growth in experience and knowledge through transgression has made her true constant love for Angelo unrelentingly active:
Mariana: O my dear Lord, I crave no other, nor no better man.
Duke: Never crave him, we are definitive.
Mariana: Gentle my I'ge - [kneeling]
Duke: You do but lose your labour. Away Ath him to death.
Mariana: Isabel! Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me; Hold up your hands, Say nothing: l'II speak all. They Say best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad. So may my husband. O Isabel! Wll you not lend a knee? (5.1 -42344)
Mariana's pleading results in lsabella's forgiving Angelo. In fact, in her act of forg iveness lsabella takes responsibility for her own secu lar sexuality. However.
~arian6sproblematicsexuality wuld only be transformed into a normative marriage with the intervention of the Duke as civil and moral authority.
Angelo is introduced in the play's semial narrative as the Duke's deputy who was chosen for his private Iife of austere moral discipline. He is appointed by the
Duke to enforce strict law to correct sociaVmoral corruptions in Vienna. Both the virtuous sovereign and the lecherous citizen of Vienna are unanimous in their opinion of his sexual continency:
Duke: .. . Lord Angelo is precise. Stands at a guard with envy, scarce confesses That his blood flows, or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see If power change purpose, what Our seemers be. (1.3.50-54)
Lucio: .. . Lord Angelo; a man whose blood Is very snow-broth, one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense. But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge VVith profits of the mind, study and fast. (1.4.57-61)
This hyperbolic prernise of Angelo's chaste personal life is used to focus on the dissimulative and potentially abusive aspect of restrained sexuality and strict discipline. The excessive reputation of sexual continence. is. in fact, used as the very limit against which he is tested as an authoritarian law enforcer. as well as a private citizen. who has broken his spousal because the conjugal union did not take place. In Angelo's view of sexuality, love and lust are synonymous rather than oppositional. Thus in Angelo's eyes. Claudio and Juliet (although they truly love each other) are regarded as "lecher" and 'Yornicatress" because of their prenuptial sexual relation. Mer lsabella leaves him pleading for her brother's Me, Angelo, in a long monologue, expresses his psychic-moral conflict elicited by his desire for her in a long monologue:
Angelo: From thee: even from thy virtue? VVhatls this? mat's this? Is this her fault, or mine? The ternpter, or tempted, who sins most, ha? Nor she, nor doth she tempt; but it is I ...... That modesty may more betray our sense than woman's lightness? ...... Dost thou desire her foully for those things that make her good?
O cunning enemy, that to catch a saint. with saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on To sin loving virtue. (2.2.162-183)
Angelo's dualistic sensibility remains at the root of his predicament. The experiential reality of his desire for a nun is not commensurate with his view of erotic love. This erotic desire of Angelo, who is a man of strict continence, for
Isabella. a nun in her habit signifying her chaste sexuality of heavenly order, is an inexplicable experiential reality. In other words, the experience has caused an epistemological chaos in his moral vision by blurring the polarized binaries of cognition (sacredlprofane, virtuelvice. civillrelig ious). Angelo does not share
Lucio's view that sexual love is amoral, Nor does he share with CIaudio and Juliet the notion that it is moral and good. Instead, Angelo considers sexual love immoral and sinful. His unregulated desire and dualistic sensibility, combined with his position of power as a civil law enforcer, makes him a sexually exploitive and a wilfully corrupt deputy. In his next meeting, Angelo asks Isabella's sexual favour in exchange for her brother's pardon. Beiiig unable to integrate sexuality within his 189
scheme of virtues, he rationalires his compt and exploitative sexual demand as an
act of fair bargaining for her brother's life (2.4.63-64).
Angelo offers a complex and unconventional critique of ideal sexuality. He
is introduced as a man of extreme continence and strict discipline who is expected to be an ideal law enforcer in extirpating sexual corruptions in the city of Vienna.
But, in the course of the play Angelo not only yields to improper erotic desire for
lsabella but also he exploits the power of his socio-legal public status as a deputy
rnagistrate, to gratfy privately his unregulated erotic desire. Although the fuller
implications of Angelo's deviant sexuality are resisted by the Duke's intervention, the revelation of the gap between Angelo's public and private images leads the audience to question the moral and legal absolutes of ideal sexuality. Moreover.
in the light of the final comedic closure that is manoeuvred by the Duke, Angelo's extrerne transgression can be viewed as a dramatic strategy to endorse lawful
marriage as the only paradigm of sexuality which does not exclude monogamous
premarital sexuality.
lndeed, the play uses the portrayal of Angelo's corrupt sexuality and abuse of civil authority to explore the moral and ethical righteousness of civil authority dealing with the problematic matrimonial (affective and sexual) situations of the private citizen. In a similar fashion, Lucio's promiscuous sexuality and irreverence for the political sovereign are being used to examine the secular amoral view of sexuality and the scope and responsibility of the exercise of both moral and legal authority by a secular-political sovereign. Lucie and his associates in the sex Vade find Claudio's arrest under Angelo's new proclamation to be too severe and irrational because of its contrariety to natural reproductive sexuality. Since. in nature, procreation is synonymous with sexuality without moral or legal sanction, moral and legal binaries are irrelevant:
Escalus: How would you live, Pornpey? By being a bawd? What do you think of the Trade, Pompey? Is it a lawful trade?
Pompey: If the law would allow it, sir.
...... Does your worship mean to geld and splay al1 the youth of the city? (2.1 -221-228)
In a long conversation with FriarIDuke, Lucio pleads for leniency of law for
Claudio not on moral grounds but on ground of amorality:
Lucio: A little more levity to lechery would do no harm in him.
Duke: It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it. .... Lucio: ... but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put dom. (3.2.94-99)
Duke: Why should he die, sir?
Lucio: Why? For filling a bottle with a tun-dish. l would the Duke we talk of were returned again: this un genitured agent will unpeople the province with continency...... The Duke, I Say to thee again would eat mutton on Fri days. He's now past it; yet. and I Say to thee, he would mouth with a beggar though she smelt brown bread and garlic, Say that I said so. Farewell. Duke: No might nor greatness in mortality can censure 'sape. Back- wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? (3.2.165-1 83)
Although Lucio expresses much Gare about Claudiots punishment for lechery and tries to deernphasize the seriousness of the offense. he does not defend him on the ground of his clandestine marriage and mutual love. Neither does he show any wncem for Juliet's sociaVmoral dishonour in spite of her true love for Claudio.
Indeed. because of his amoral secular view of sexuality, he avoids responsibility for his own bastard sons and breaks his promise to marty the mother of his sons,
Kate Keepdown (3.2 191-197). Although the play reveals the serious social implications of Lucio's sexual conduct and the Duke compels him to marry Kate
Keepdown, Lucio's behavior is not totally negated but accommodated within the normative married sexuality. Lucio's transgression challenges but finally is used to explore and to endorse the English Renaissance ideal sexuality which is synonymous with marriage. Shakespeare. by depicting the confusion of moral and legal issues, not only attempts to emphasize their non-absoluteness, but also reveals that the norm of sexuality is constructive of the moral and legal reality of sexuality.
Despite his radical heterodoxic view of sexuality, Lucio's disapproval of single life is in accord with the hegemonic orthodoxy that condemns single life as a source of rnuch social evil and as a morally inferior state of living to that of married life.16 Lucio's slanderous remarks about the Duke's private socio-sexual 192 conduct are also politically audacious. But the serious implication of his political outrageous view is balanced by the conventionality of his notion about bachelorhood as sewally deviant In the light of the comedic end. Lucio's remarks seem to be used by the play as dramatic strategy to make the Duke aware of the vulnerability of his chaste but imperfect state of bachelorhood. Lucio is not only pardoned by the Duke for "slandering the sovereign," but also his slander functions silently as a positive force in the Duke's decision to leave his single life and enter the holy state of matrirnony. The notion that the celibate ruler should enjoy any priviledged position where rnarriage and sexuality are concerned is negated when the Duke's marriage takes place with three other rnarriages of unchaste premarital love. Moreover, the Duke's decision as a civil authority to grant pardons to Lucio.
Angelo and Claudio in exchange for their atonement by marriage alongside his own marriage proposal to lsabella negates the view that law-enforcing civil authority must be impersonal. Also, the traditional court ideal of a political sovereign who is a scholar, soldier and statesman has enlarged in its scope by the inclusion of a domesticated loving family man with wife and future children into its ideality.
Consequently, this new domestic dimension of the political sovereign validates his authority over the private domestidfamilial space of his subjects. The play's heterogeneous sexual transgressions, finally, endorse lawful marnage as the totalizing paradigm of sexuality. but not without accommodating premarital sexuality and prenuptial conjugal union within the matrix of norm. 193
The role of a political sovereign in the private matters of his subjects' marriage and sexuality may be contrasted with its treatment in Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Maid's Traaedv (161 0). Traditionally, the play has been subjected to harsh criticism for its decadent subject matter.17 In it the subject of enforced marriage at the command of a political sovereign and resultant broken betrothai is given an extreme heterodox implication in the play. The dramatic conflict between love and honour in this play is set in motion by Amintor's willing obedience to the King's mnmand that he marv Evadne who is the King's mistress and dishonour his previous betrothal to Aspatia. Thus, Aspatia's tragedy as a troth- plight bride is caused not only by her betrothed lover's betrayal in breaking the pre- contract of their marriage, but also by the King's desire to continue his immoral sexual love with respectability. Unlike the Duke in Measure for Measure, the King as a political sovereign in The Maid's Traaedv is guilty of illicit sexuality and of abusing the institution of marriage. Furthermore, in Measure for Measure the
Duke's intervention in his subjeds' problematic broken betrothals and in other forms of their sexual misconduct restores the normative order of love and sexuality. In contrast, in The Maid's Tragedv the King's own immoral sexuality and selfish misuse of royal power and authority are presented as an extreme heterodox limit against which other transgressions take place. Indeed, Beaumont and Fletcher do not allow the patriarchalist politicai sovereign to remain above reproach.
Amintor's obedience to the King makes him guilty of contemplating regicide as well as making him guilty of betraying a betrothed love. The enforced marriage 194 of Amintor-Evadne, which takes place "to make sin more honourab~e."'~challenges the English Renaissance ideal of marriage as an exalted and holy order of life, while questioning the absoluteness of the political sovereign's authority over his subjects' private affective and erotic lives. Furthermore, in Evadne's faithf ulness to her illicit lover the King and her refusal to sleep with her husband. vue are presented with a fuller and more complex critique of enforced marriage in a society where love and marriage have becorne synonymous. Unlike Bianca of Thomas
Middleton's Women Beware Women and John Webster's Vittoria of The White
Devil, Evadne kills her illicit lover inorder to be a true wife to her lawful husband.
Indeed. in their treatment of Evadne's transformation from a wMul transgressor of ideal love and rnarriage into a remorseful and penitent Me,
Beaumont and Fletcher reinscribe the traditional view of marriage and sexuality.
Unlike A Midsummer Niaht's Dream, The Maid's Traaedy presents us with an extremely evil situation concerning not only the custom of enforced maniage. but also of the notion that marriage itsetf is holy. Furthermore, Beaumont and Fletcher criticize the absolute authority exercised by the political sovereign over his subjects' private lives. But the deviancy of affective and erotic conduct is seen to be irredeemable in the play. as Beaumont and Fletcher present their critical perspective through opposed characters who embody passive virtue (Aspatia-
Arnintor) and active depravity (Evadne-King) respectively. Nonetheless. a radical and transgressive space - one that is both political and erotic - is opened in the play's narrative. This occurs Men a reformed Evadne commits regicide to atone 195 not only for sexual transgression but also for having committed a wrong against the honour of her husband and her brother, both of whom have rejected her and condemned her to death. Ultimately, however, when the right order is restored at the play's tragic closure, the transgressive erotic space is closed off, Mile the political space is negotiated as part of a restoration of the right order.
In spite of the representation of radical transgressive conduct in The Maid's
Traoedv, the parameters of normative love and sexuality ultimately remain uncompromisable absolutes. There is sornething very inflexible and oppressive about the play's representation of transgression. Dramatic characters are allowed to act in obsequious obedience to a corrupt and abusive authority, while acts of defiance are permitted for lust, revenge and depravity. By depicting characters who are either adive and collusive or passive and uncornpromisingly virtuous, the play fails to suggest any possibility for comic resolution through rectified conduct. The
Maid's Traoedv, like Measure for Measure and 'Tis Pitv She's a Whore, depicts the confusion of moral and legal issues of love and sexuality in order not only to emphasize their non-absoluteness, but also to reveal that the social norm of love and sexuality is constructive of the moral and legal reality of marriage. Endnotes
1. According to Emest Schanzer, the term "problem play" was first applied to All's Well that Ends Well, Measure For Measure, Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet, by F. S. Boas in Shakespeare and His Predecessors. Schanzer mentions that Boas not only claims that these plays present "highly artificial societies; whose civilization is ripe unto rottenness" but also they are so exceptional in theme and temper that these plays cannot be called comedies or tragedies. Schanzer also speaks of W. W. Lawrence's suggestion in Shakespeare's Problem Comedy-that the problematic situations or relationships in these plays actually concern ethical issues. For a detailed discussion and various definition of Shakespeare's "problem plays", see, Ernest Schanzer, The Problem Plavs of Shakespeare:A Studv of Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, Anthonv and Cleopatra (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1963). Introduction. 1-9. 1 have found Schanzer's definition quite similar to my own understanding of Measure for Measure's problematic moral and generic status. The definition of the Shakespearian problem play which Schanzer suggests is: "A play in which we find a concern with a moral problem which is central to it, presented in such a manner that we are unsure of our moral bearings, so that uncertain and divided responses to it in the minds of the audience are possible or even probable." Futhermore, Schanzer claims that in opposition to Boas, Lawrence. and Tillyard. he does not mark off the problem play from the comedies and tragedies as a separate type. Since a particular mode of presenting moral problems distinguishes the problern play, both comedies and tragedies of Shakespeare can belong to this category. See also, Peter Ure, Shakes~eare:TheProblern Plavs (London: Longmans. Green, 1961), p. 7.
2. N. W. Bawcutt, ed., Introduction. Measure for Measure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1%Il), p. 43.
3. J. W. Lever, ed., Introduction, Measure for Measure (London: Methuen. 1965). Ivii. Lever points out that follwing G. Wilson Knight's view of the play (The Wheel of Fire, 1930, chap. iv) scholars like Roy W. Battenhouse, Nevill Coghill, and R. W. Chambers gave a religious interpretation of the play. According to this religious view, Measure for Measure is a Christian allegory in which the Duke takes the role of the deputy of God on earth. Lucio is seen as the eternal adversary and thus functions as Satan; lsabella represents the sou1 of man, elected to be the Bride of Christ.
4. Anne Barton, The Riverside Shakes~eare(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 545. 5. Jonathan Dollimore, ''Transgression and Surveillance in Measure for Measure," Political Shakes~eare:Essavs in Cultural Materialisrn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). p. 84.
6. Jean E. Howard, 'The Difficulties of Closure: An Approach to the Problematic in Shakespearian Comedy", Comedv from Shakespeare to Sheridan: Chanoe and Continuity in the Enalish and European Dramatic Tradition. Eds. A. R. Braunmuller and J. C. Bulman. (Newark: University of Delware Press, 1986). pp. 114, 126, note no. 6.
7. Catherine Belsey, "Desire's Excess and the English Renaissance Theatre: Edward Il, Troilus and Cressida. Othello", Erotic Politics. p. 96.
8. Kathleen Mcluskie, "The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare: Kina Lear and Measure for Measure", Political Shakespeare: Essavs in Cultural Materialism, eds. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1985). p. 88. "ln traditional criticism," writes McKluskie, "Shakespeare's plays are seldom regarded as the sum of their dramatic devices."
9. Al my Shakespeare quotations in this chapter are from the Arden edition of Measure for Measure, ed. J. W. Lever (London: Methuen, 1965).
10. The story of the corrupt magistrate who misuses law in order to gratrfy his own lust, (represented by the Angelo-lsabella segment), exists in many versions and in different languages. G. B. Giraldi Cinthio's novella "Epita" in Hecatommithi (1565) is considered the ultimate source of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. However. J. W. Lever suggests that Measure for Measure is much closer in structure to George Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra in which Whetstone drew from Cinthio's novella. In al1 other versions of "Epita", the lsabella or Cassandra character does sleep with the unjust magistrate in order to Save the Ife of her brother (in some stories it is her husband who is in danger). Madeleine Doran has pointed out the essential differences of Measure for Measure from al1 other versions. Firstly, lsabella is an aspiring nun and does not yield to Angelo. Secondly, there is the addition of Mariana character as Angelo's old betrothed who substituted for lsabella in bed. Thirdly, the Duke in disguise engneers the entire denouement. He orders Angelo to marry not lsabella but Mariana. The changes Shakespeare has introduced indicate that the goal of his play differs from tha?of the source. See. Madeleine Doran, Endeavor of Arts, pp. 386-389. Measure for Measure, Ed., J. W. Lever, Introduction, xxxv - xiiv.
11. Like that of the "Corrupt Magistrate" the motif of "Disguised-Ruler appears frequently in folklore. These stories corne in various forms and al1 concern monarchs who secretly go abroad amongst their subjects and correct wrongs and 198 abuses. Despite the frequent use of the highly principled and reforming disguised ruler as a character in Elizabethan comedies, Shakespeare seerns to have been the first to use this feature in a frame plot. Unlike other contemporary uses of the "Disguised Ruler" motif, in Measure for Measure the Duke himseff devises the deceptive scheme of travelling abroad with the purpose of observing the corruptions in Vienna and Angelo's conduct as deputy rnagistrate. Furthermore, as Bawcutt points out, Shakespeare alone provided the Duke with a friar's disguise which enables him to observe actions unrecognized. See N. W. Bawcutt, ed. Introduction, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 12-24. Brian Gibbons, ed. Introduction. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991), pp. 15-16. About Shakespeare's use of Disguised-Ruler motif, J. W. Lever's view also has been helpful to my analysis: "...The legend of the Disguised Ruler", writes Lever, "had become a flexible literary device. It served for romance, for light comedy, for popular 'exposures' of low life and, ... for a more critical, self-wounding expression of social malaise. In its most serious form it confirmed the central humanist concept of royal authority.... These familiar notions, and the Disguised Ruler Therne itself, acquired fresh topicality with the accession of James 1." For a more detailed discussion on this point, see Measure for Measure, ed. J. W. Lever, Introduction, xliv - li. Also. I have found Marilyn Williamson's suggestion concerning the use of the "disguised-ruler" device particularly helpful for my own critical approach. "The play", writes Williamson. "of the disguised ruler represents the patriarchy in its attempts to control or at least observe sexuality. usually in the Young. In some plays decadent sexuality becomes a rnetonymy for social corruptions; in others parents disguise themselves to spy on the courtship or sex life of their children. For the purposes of this discussion, I will conflate parents. rulers, and husbands as authority figures who disguise themselves. The common element is the need to observe and possibly control one's subjects' or one's children's sexuality." Williamson sees the Duke in Measure for Measure as an authority figure who meddles directly in the sex lives of subjects no way related to him. Williamson's use of Michael Foucault's theory of sexuality (History of Semality) in her interpretive analyses of Shakespeare's comedies has provided some valuable insight for my own critical approach to Measure for Measure. See, Marilyn Williamson, The Patriarchv of Shakespeare's Comedies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1986). pp. 74. 178-1 83.
12. See Powell, Enalish Domestic Relations. pp.3-4, 16. Also, Chapter 1. pp. 88-89.
13. Lawrence Stone, The Familv. Sex and Martiaae in Enaland 1500-1800, pp. 30-33. Alan Macfarlane, Marriaoe and Love in Enaland, pp. 299-301; Margaret Loftus Ranald, Shakesoeare and His Social Context (New York: AMS Press, 1987), pp. 8-10. The first step in the matrimonial contract was called a spousal. There were two main types of spousals, de futuro and de preaesenti. Spousals de futuro were merely promises of future marriage made by or for the two chief parties involved. These promises could be broken for any just and reasonable cause by either party. Spousals de preaesenti were vows made similarly to the de futuro but in the present tense and were in effed though not in name, marriage itself. They could be broken only by death and by entrance into holy orders. No form of spousal gave permission for cohabitation, and betrothed couples who lived together prior to a marriage ceremony laid themselves open to punishment by the church; yet their union was recognized as a valid marriage by both Church and state. Thus, it was possible to contract an irregular but legal marriage without the sanction or intewention of either civil or ecclesiastical authority.
14. C. L. Powell reminds readers of literature of the period that private spousal was as legally binding as the church wedding. However, because of the great diversity of spousal practices and the secrecy with which private spousals might be made. disputes concerning spousals and maniage were subject to a great latitude of interpretation and. consequently. were also subject to confusion (this was true despite the church's sole authority over matrimonial affairs and administration by local court or priests). See Powell, Enalish Dornestic Relations, pp. 13-19. Lawrence Stone points out another complication concerning secret spousal that arose after the Reformation in England from 1563. The Catholic Church required the presence of a priest for a valid marriage. The Anglican Church neither recognized this Catholic requirement nor took any rneasure of its own to stop private spousal. However, both the Anglican priests and the laity slowly started to regard the church wedding as the key ceremony. But the civil lawyers who ran the courts continued to recognized spousals that were made before vvitnesses as valid marriages. See, Stone, The Familv. Sex and Marriaae. pp. 30-31. I have discussed the complexity of this issue in chapter 1, pp. 88-89.
15. The substituted bed mate (bed-trick) is an ancient motif of folklore and romance. In English Renaissance drama specifically, the bed-trick is usually used as a plot convention by which wives reclairn truant husband or women force reluctant men to fulfil promises of marriage. Marliss C. Desens discusses the various critical approaches to the bed-trick in English Renaissance drama. Desens contends that the critical consensus shows that the bed-trick is viewed as an ungraceful plot device which is used by the English Renaissance dramatists (including Shakespeare) for the resolution of plot complications without consideration of psychological reality. However, Desens in her discussion points out some critical views in which the bed-tricks' dramatic usefulness is emphasized but she finds too often "historical theatrical" context is ignored. Although I have found Desens own suggestion which proposes to focus on the cultural context of the convention is helpful, her critical perspective is too broad for my critical approach. The critical view of "bed-trick" as an arbitrary plot device by which dramatic problems are set up or resolved seems to me quite tenable as a critique of the convention of "bed-trick". However, such a view of the "bed trick seems to miss the notion that in Shakespeare's use of the "bed-tri&" refiects and participates in an effort to explore and resolve contemporary social problems that were arising frorn the practice of "spousal". I have argued in my analysis that a confusing social and legal issue concerning matrimonial contracting underlies Shakespeare's use of the "bed-trick" in Measure for Measure. Critics seem to overlook the fact that Claudio and Juliet were made husband and wife by de oreaesenti contract, while the mariage contract between Angelo and Mariana seems to have been a case of spousal de futuro. However, any de futuro contract turned into marriage and became as indissoluble as a de preasenti contract if sexual relations took place between the betrothed couple. A further aspect of the law surrounding spousals connect the bed-trick with religious tradition - with the biblical story of Jacob's marriage to Lea in particular. For a discussion of this aspect see chapter 1. pp. 82- 83. Marliss C. Desens, The Bed-Trick in Enalish Renaissance Drama: Explorations in Gender, Sexuality, and Power (Newark: University of Delaware Press. 1994), pp. 1-19, 39-92. See also, Madeleine Doran, Endeavours of Art, p. 368, J. W. Lever, ed., Introduction, Measure for Measure, p. lii.
16. See. Chapter 1, pp. 42-44.
17. Irving Ribner, Jacobean Traaedv: The Quest for Moral Order (London: Methuen, 1962) p. 17. Ribner argues that though the characters represent absolute stances. they have "no real positions", merely varieties of pretence. "The popularity of such dramat'. writes Ribner. "may signal the decline of tragedy of moral intensity." Also see, Robert Ornstein, The Moral vision of Jacobean Traaedv (Westfort: Greenwood Press, 1960), p. 179 and L. C. Knights, Drama and Society in The Aae of Jonson (Penguin Books, 1937). p. 36. Knights expresses some of the most extremely harsh critical views about the play. "The moral problem". writes Knights. "merely gives an additional fillip to the emotions, and provides the maximum nurnber of piquant situations .... each of the tragedies and tragi-comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher is a series of cunningly contrived situations to exploit, not to explore and express, emotions; and that is decadence." Arthur C. Kirsch, Jacobean Dramatic Pers~ectives(Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1972), p. 47, Kirsch reaffirms the old judgement of Coleridge and Eliot in his clairn that Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are "parasitic and ~~Athoutinner meaning." However, I have found Howard and B. Norland's view of the play, which emphasises the complexity of the social context quite helpful to my analysis. Norland wntends that ''The Maid's Traaedy exposes the paradoxical mores of Jacobean society by distortion and artifice that distance the analysis as they make it more pointed. By creating representative attitudes towards love and honour and developing their implications to the extreme Beaumont and Fletcher place the contending values of their society in bold relief." See Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. The Maid's Traoedv, ed., Howard Norland (Lincoln: University of Nabraska Press, 1968). Introduction, XV. The following quotation of the play is from this edition.
18. Arnintor. What devil hath put it in thy fancy, then.to rnarry me?
Evadne. Alas, I must have one to father children, and to bear the name of husband to me, that my sin may be more honourable. (2. 1. 312-1 5) Chapter Four
Marriaae: An Obstruction to True Love
In the anonymous Arden of Faversham (1591), A Warnina for Fair Women
(1592). and Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women (1621). the central plots
of adultery and rnurder contest, exploit and redefine conventional notions of illicit
love. They seem tacitly to support lawful divorce and remarriage as remedies for
the problems of adultery. The tragic lovers unsuccessfully challenge the social
norms and moral codes of conventional love and marriage. Nevertheless, their failures reveal the non-absoluteness of the idealrty of permanent love and marriage
and suggest the possible negotiabiiity of the adulterous love into legal marriage.
The crucial problem with the lovers' struggles to reposition themselves in the
conventional domestic moral order, howver, lies in the power of the law to contain
and undermine the proposed alternatives. Domestic tragedy' is obviously an apt
genre for the exploration of the conventional notion of adultery. However, each of the works cited above implicitly suggests that its objective is neither the rejection
nor the endorsement of adultery. Instead, these plays aim to fulfill a need for the
redefinitions of ideal wedded love.
In the English Protestant order of things, as we have seen. heterosexual
rnonogamous marriage is not only the moral, social and legal paradigrn of love and
sexuality, but it is also the highest and holy state of earthly living. Although
marriage was not considered a sacrament, the inviolability of the conjugal bond was 203 not denied in English Protestant marriage doctrine. Unlike the continental reforrned churches, the Church of England did not define marriage as just a secular covenant that could be broken by mutual consent.* William Perkins explained the special status of the secular but sanctified rnarriage contract:
Marriage as it is publieke action, so it is after a sort a spirituall and divine ordinance. whereby it differeth from the contract: For the contract being merely civil. as it standeth by consent of man. so by the same consent. it may bee broken and dissolved. but with marriage it is other~ise.~
Also. the Protestant divines constantly emphasized that although marriage is a private. affective and sexual union of two individuals. it was also seen as the foundation of the ordered society, the commonwealth and the co~rnos.~However.
English Protestantism's rejection of the a priori inviolability of marriage (because marriage is no longer a sacred mystery), without accepting concomitant lawfulness of divorce and remarriage, created conflicts of values and attitudes regarding the ideal nature of permanent marriage and wedded love.
Indeed. divorce and remarriage did not only become contentious issues for ecclesiastical and civil authorities, but also within the Church of England. In
England. unlike in continental Protestant states. matrimonial affairs remained under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Since the views of the Church of England did not differ from those of the Church of Rome, the ecclesiastical court seldom implemented the newly introduced reforms and amendments of the old laws regarding divorce and rerna~ia~e.~Hence, the divorce debate polarized opinions within the Church of England. The Anglican and absolutist position argued for the indissolubility of
marriage on the grounds that since couples are joined by God (for the avoidance
of fornication and procreation), there is no remedy but patience for marital
discontent and unhappiness? The liberal position of the Puritans, which is familiar from Milton's divorce tracts, pushed the radical Protestant arguments for divorce to
their logical conc~usion.~
However, the Protestant reformers in early modern England were not
unanimous about the circurnstances under wtiich divorce should be granted. At one extreme. although Henry Smith was within the pro-divorce group he uncompromisingly rejected incompatibility as a valid ground for divorce:
If they might be separated for discord some would make a comoditie of strife; but nowe they are not best to be contentious, for this Law will holde their noses together, til weariness make them leave struggling, like two spaniels which are coupled in a chain, at least they learne to goe together, because they may not goe as~nder.~
Smith's remedy for marital discord ignores those miseries of incompatible conjugal relations vvttich were due to the lack of mutual love. Also. he is not concerned that disallowance of lawful divorce as a remedy for marital unhappiness does not stop unlawful severance of the conjugal bond. In general, however. the Protestant divines advocated divorce or annulment of marriage on grounds of adultery, and they recommended severe punishment for the offender and remarriage of the innocent partner. Adultery was viewed as a fom of theft, particularly the theft of the exclusive right to a partner's sexuallaffective love and cornpani~nship.~ 205
Furtherrnore, it was defined as the moral binary ("vice contrarie") of chastity.
Since it was a transgression whose moral offense concerned God and the eschatological scheme, adultery was dealt with by the ecclesiastical court until it came under civil jurisdiction in 1650. However, the divorce debate and the attendant issues of adultery and remariage remained unresolved and confusing from the period of Our study to the Revolution. C.L. Powell contends that since the
Protestant reformers failed to irnplement divorce and remarriage as lawful rernedies for unhappy and troubled marriages, they started to recommend preventive measures in order to avoid the miseries of marriage.l0 As we have seen, they wrote fervently against the contemporary custom of enforced marriage for pecuniary and social reasons and ernphasized the importance of mutual love and freedom of choice as preventive measures for incompatibility in marriage. The ideal love, which they considered to be the foundation of a permanent marriage, was a complex amalgam of affectivelsexual, ethical, spiritual and dornestic elements deemed to be necessary for maintaining the social order.
Dramatic tension in these plays arises from transgression of the parameters governing the choice of an ideal partner, such as the guidelines concerning rank, age, and economic status. Such tension is also centered on characters' failures to uphold the moral values of constancy, purity and infidelity or on immoral transgression. Hovuever, as I have indicated, I shall show that these plays allow for the negotiation of transgression within the ideality of premarital and sexual love, 206 thereby resisting an unmixed and absolute view of that ideal and simultaneously relativizing both transgression and the ideal.
Contrary to the hegemonic view that a secular but sanctified lawful marriage is the ideal paradigm of affectivelsexual love, the dramas of the period frequently present various types of adulterous relations and the disintegration of the conjugal bond. The portrayal of illicit love, betrayal of marriage, and the resultant murder and death in the Renaissance drama, is often viewed either as reflecting the moral and spiritual decadence of the period or as an expression of the perversion of an individual dramatist." I suggest, in contradistinction to this view, that much of the depiction of adultery and lust as the moral binary of chastity and true love can be regarded in terms of what Michel Foucault has called "the incitement to disc~urse."~~Theatrical representation of transgressive love has an important impact on the social constitution of marriage as an institution. The dramas often use their narratives of deviant love and marriage in order to question the social codes and moral norms implicit in the Renaissance ideal of marriage and love. By depicting illicit desire, the dramatists point to a possible alteration in the rneaning of the immoral; allowing the protagonists to remain unwaveringly committed in their adulterous love situations, the plays often confuse the moral binary of chastity and adultery. This alterable status of both chastity and adultery disallows the ideality of permanent monogamous love to rernain an a piori premise in the conternporary debate on divorce, remarriage and contributes to the consequent redefinition of holy matrimony. 207
I propose that these morally divergent and structurally complex narratives
focus frequently on the unresolvable dilemma which stems from the synonymity of
love and marriage in a society where divorce and remarriage are not permitted
except under specific circumstances. In fact, during the last decade of the sixteenth
century, the Anglican-Puritan debate on divorce and remarriage reached a
deadlock, and in 1597, the Canon of Convocation declared remarriages after
divorce i~legal.'~The chronological proximity to this date of the publication of the
two anonymous domestic tragedies of adultery and murder, Arden of Faversham
and A Warnina for Fair Women, is significant in that both plays depict adulterous
love, disintegration of marriage and deaths for both victirn and transgressors. In
both plays, the murder of a husband by his adulterous wife and her lover, who also
happens to be the husband's friend, is presented not as a crime of passion, but as an act of expediency to enable the adulterous lovers to unite lawfully.
Although there is a consensus that Arden of Faversham grows out of homiletic tradition, scholars disagree about the goal of the play. At one extreme is
H.H. Adams, who sees the play as a moral exemplum with an underlying ethical pattern of sin, discovery, punishment, repentance and expectation of divine mercy.I4 Andrew Clark, following Madeline Doran's view, is at the other extreme in his contention that Arden of Faversham is a dramatized sensational tale of adultery and murder.15 Moreover, it has often been pointed out that the lack of overt didactism and the use of journalistic realism create incongruity between the homiletic form and the sensationalist content of the play.16 It is not until recently that critics have viewed the play as focusing on the socio-sexual issues and complex interpersonal relationships of the love triangle. both marital and adulterous. Leanore Lieblein argues that the play's account of various transgressions places equal emphasis on the moral and social transgressions d the offender and the victim respectively:
Murder and lust are wicked, but so are avarice and cupidity. The counterpart to Alice's adultery is Arden's ruthless upward social mobility. The dramatist unmistakably links. by juxtaposing them, Alice's betrayal of her marriage with Arden's betrayal of his social responsibility l7
Catherine Belsey goes further by interpreting Alice Arden's transgressions of adultery and murder as a heroic act of rebellion against contemporary bourgeois social and sexual ethics. Belsey argues strongly that Alice. in her transgressions.
"rejects the metaphysics of presence which guarantees the social enforcement of permanent monogamy, in favour of free sexuality".'* Belsey's view of Arden of
Faversham's concern with the inherent problematic issues of the English
Renaissance ideal of marriage and love is convincing. However, since the adulterous lovers' goal is to unite permanently in lawful marriage. her view of Alice's transgression as an act of defiance against the marriage institution for free sexuality carries less weight.
Indeed. it is undeniable that the play lacks an unqualified moral point of view. its social universe reminds us of the inverted ideal order of Middleton's plays. But the absence of clear moral points of view in the presentation of such transgressions 209 as infidelity, excess of desire, revenge, murder and ruthless ambition of material success does not necessarily mean that amorality is approved in Arden of
Faversham's domestic world. In fact, the play uses the portrayal of tragic adulterous love, murder, and the consequent disintegration of the family to explore the social and moral absolutes of the English Renaissance ideal of love and rnarriage. Because the critics have failed to acknowledge the dramatist's covert social agenda, Arden of Faversham has repeatedly been criticized for the inadequate moral content which is incompatible with its homiletic formal design.
Alice's tragic defeat, both in life and love, does not make the play a moral demonstration of the evils of perverse or unregulated desire, nor does it transform the immoral conducts into a heroic tale of ideal rebellious love. Indeed, it can be argued that the anonymous dramatist uses both of these meanings overtly to foreground silently the play's covert social and legal agenda concerning marriage. adultery, divorce and remarriage. The unhappy, loveless and betrayed marriage of Alice and Arden occludes the ideality of the happy wedded love of a properly matched couple. In the failure of ideal married love to find a place in permanent marriage, the play asks what alternative Alice and Arden had to remedy their unhappy married life and to avert this tragic end. Moreover, the play's presentation of Alice's adulterous love as constant and true, neither undermines the ideality of chaste love nor condemns the betrayal of her marriage. But by confusing the moral binaries of marriage (chastity-adultery, love-lust) the play relativizes both the vices and virtues of marriage and forces the audience to consider some problematic 21 0
moral and ethical questions that are inherent in marriage's synonyrnity with
permanent monogamy.
The gist of the story given on the title page of the play emphasizes the moral
aspect in the narrative's ethical pattern of sin and retribution for Master Arden's
rnurder:
THE LAMENTA= BLE AND TRUE TRA- GEDIE OF M. AR- DEN OF FEVERSHAM IN KENT.
Who was mot? wickedlye murdered, by the meanes of his difloyall and wanton wyfe, who for the love fhe bare to one Momie, hyred two defperat ruf- fins Blackwill and Shakbag, to kill him.
Wherein is fhewed the great mal- lice and difcimulation of a wicked wo- man, the unfatiable defire of filthie luft and the fhamefull end of al1 murderers. ''
However, the play's focus on the secular social and economic context of the moral transgression belies not only the title's hyperbolic moral rhetoric but also the claim
in the epi~o~ue~~that the play has presented the simple and unembellished truth.
Indeed, the fuller homiletic emphasis on the psychology of evil (the ungodliness of
transgression of adultery and murder) is resisted by not allowing a single moral focus in this narrative of adulterous love and murder. The play's attempt to use
Alice and Mosby's relationship to emphasize the amoral nature of affectivelerotic desire undercuts the moral emphasis on the transgressive nature of the adulterous love. Also, by characterization of the transgressors not as unredeemably depraved but as victims of a greater social repression the play balances the portrayal of adulterous love and transgressive conduct.
Arden of ~aversharn~'opens with Arden's complaint about his Me's secret amorous conduct:
Love letters pass'd 'twixt Mosby and my wife, And they have privy meetings in town. Nay, on his finger did 1 espy a ring VVhich at our marriage day the priest put on. Can any grief be half so great as this? (1.15-1 9)
Unlike other plays such as A Warnina for Fair Women and A Woman Killed with
Kindness, which develop a similar theme of adultery and the breakdown of a marriage. Arden of Faversham presents a marriage already violated. The play's omission of Alice's earlier happy married life has the effect of rendering the depiction of her adulterous love not as immoral promiscuity but unregulated amoral desire. Moreover, it does not allow the play to focus on any other domestic misconduct except affective and sexual incompatibility to account for their unhappy marriage.
The rites and sanctity of marriage seem to have more significance to Arden than to Alice; yet. the play's emphasis on the social aspect of moral transgression is implied in Arden's response to his wife's marital transgression:
Ay, but to dote on such a one as he 1s monstrous, Franklin, and intolerable. Why. what is he?
A botcher, and no better at the first; Who by base brokage getting some small stock, Crept into service of a nobleman...... I am by birth a gentleman of blood. And that injurious ribald that attempts To violate my dear Me's chastity - For dear I hold her love, as dear as Heaven -
Shall on the bed which he thinks to defile See his dissevered joints and sinews tom. (1.2241)
Although Arden is sad to see their marriage ring (a symbol of the sanctified bond of marriage) on his me's lover's finger. he expresses more emotional outrage and violent anger about his Me's impropriety of choice in the selection of such a low- class paramour. For Arden. Mosby's conduct is threateningly offensive not only for his immoral relation with Alice but also because it signifies his defiance of the social and sexual codes of a stratified society built on blood lineage. Unlike A Warninq for Fair Women, Arden of Faversham's focus on the economic and social rivalry between the husband and the Me's paramour does not only resist the traditional homiletic pattern of warning ~iterature.~~but also adds a secular and social aspect to the moral transgression of adultery.
Arden's view of and response to his Me's adultery are paradoxical and suggest that he does not hold the conventional gender biased view of adultery. His violent rage as a dishonoured husband is not directed at his wife. Instead. the object of his anger is the audacity with which his rival has overstepped his allotted place in society. This unconventional reaction opens an unorthodox space that is contained both negatively and positiiely in the play's discourse on adultery and the indissolubility of marriage. Arden's response may be viewed as positive in that it has averted his possible slip into the gravely transgressive act of killing both his wife and her lover. Since the erring wife is forgiven beforehand by her chaste husband, meanwhile, Arden's unconventional reaction is also positive because it leaves open the possibility of a reconciliation between Arden and his Me. At the same time. his gesture rnay be viewed negatively, because Arden not only continues in his violated marriage, but also accepts his no-vvin situation by following
Franklin's advice and consequently falls victim to his Me's plan to remove hirn by murder.
The implied unconventionality of Arden's attitude to his adulterous wife receives endorsement from his friend's views of women, love and what is important in Ife. Franklin tries to comfort Arden by pointing out that inwnsistency is an axiomatic quality of woman's love ("that woman will be false and wavering," 1:21) and by reminding him of his material success in his recent acquisition of the Abbey land. He discourages Arden's jealous rage against Mosby and advises patience. restraint of jealousy and exhibition of endearment as remedy for his wife's misconduct:
To ease thy grief and Save her chastity Entreat her fair; sweet words are fittest engines To raze the flint walis of a woman's breast. In any case. be not tao jeal[i]ous, Nor rnake no question of her love to thee; But as securely, presently take horse, And lie with me at London al1 this term; For women when they may w'll not. But being kept back, straight grow outrageous. (1.45-53)
Franklin's remedies for Arden's marital problems are in accord with the moderate orthodoxy advocated by prominent moral theologians like Whately and ~o~ers.*~
That is, since there is no divorce, it is advisable that the husband should be patient and try to bear with his Me's misdemeanor. But in light of the tragic end of the play. Franklin's advice is used more as a rhetorical strategy to set the dramatic tension in motion Vian as a serious and effective solution to the marital problem of adu Itery.
However, this moderate view has allowed Arden to avoid a crime of passion by forgiving Aiice and being tnisting. But by depicting Arden's death both as an act of revenge by Mosby and as an expedience for the success of Alice's adulterous love, the play presents the moderate view as ineffectual and as destructive. Arden of Faversham harshly criticizes this rnoderate view of adultery taken by Arden.
Arden remains trusting and unsuspicious of his wife and her lover's intention in spite of their overt defiance of the social codes and moral norms of marriage and love. He even ignores Franklin's advice and shows his complaisance with his Me's wishes in bringing Mosby back to his house, which facilitates his own murder. The gravity of the irreparability of Arden's marital discord is not minimized by allowing him to remain unaware of the danger to his life and to try to forgive Alice's misconduct. In fact, a conflict of perspectives of this marital discord is expressed through
FranklinfArden's moderate conventional view and AlicelMosbyls extremely
unconventional view. The dramatist thus places Alice's extreme unconventional attitude that equates love. marriage and Ife and shows total disregard for the
inviolability of the sanctified marriage bond beside Arden's moderate conventional view wtiich calls for compromise because sanctified marriage is perceived as
indissoluble.
Hovuever, by its tragic end, the play rejects moderation as well as orthodoxy.
In the negation of both extreme and rnoderate orthodoxy, the play is silently asking for a unorthodox remedy of marital discord. The tragic end for both the innocents and the transgressors invites the audience to consider whether the necessity for
Arden's rnurder could have been avoided if legal divorce and remarriage were not disallowed as a remedy for adulterous marital problems.
Unlike Anne Sanders in A Warnina for Fair Women and Anne Frankford in
A Woman Killed With Kindness, Alice does not express my moral ambivalence about her illicit love:
Sweet Mosby is the man that hath my heart. And he [Arden] usurps it. having nought but th, That I am tied to him by marriage. Love is god, and marriage is but words, And therefore Mosby's title is the best...... Tush! VVhether it be or no he shall be mine, In spite of him, of Hymen. and of rites. (1.98-1 04) 216
Alice expresses no qualms about violating the social codes and moral norms of her present married state in order to pursue her love for Mosby. For her. the bond of love. which she lacks with her lawful husband, has a greater daim for conjugal union over the rites and solemn vows of her lawful marriage. Indeed. it is by being able to perceive her desire without any moral and legal restraints that Alice justifies her transgressive love as the nom and ideal. Thus, her marriage to Arden without any affectivelsexual and morallspiritual bond becomes only a legal obstruction to be removed for the success of her true love for Mosby in marriage.
In the play's portrayal of the evils of adultery. the private and public worlds of Faversham are revealed as places where people readily discard moral and social scruples for money. land and love. The covetousness for land, money. social position and revenge lead Mosby. Greene, Michael and Clarke not only to cooperate with Alice's plot of murder but also to approve her immoral act as right and pr~per.*~The dramatist's use of inversion of the normative moral order does not exculpate Alice of her moral transgression of betrayal and murder. but the portrayal of the interrelatedness of social and moral depravity points to the secular and domestic nature of Alice's moral transgression. The play's emphasis on the secular non-absolute nature of both ideal and transgressive love and marriage is borne out by Alice's character. After having been sentenced to death, she is repentant of her unfaithfulness to Arden without betraying her adulterous love for
Mosby (SC.18, 14, 33). In other words, although the inversion is discarded at the tragic end by the proper punishment of the transgressors, the play nevertheless allows Nice to remain constant to her transgressive love and thus presents adultery as a mixed vice.
Indeed, the incongruity between the dramatic characters' thoughts and actions has succeeded in rendering adulterous love neither as an unredeemable vice nor as an ideal virtue. This occlusion of the inherent and unquestionable "vice" of adultery has created a disjunction between the play's homiletic formal design and its moral content. Nice has stated clearly that love is her god and she has no moral pangs for betraying her sanctified marriage bond. But she does express unease and remorse about choosing a socially and morally inferior lover.
The heavens can witness, and the world can tell, Before I saw that falsehood look of thine; 'Fore I was tangled with thy 'ticing speech; Arden to me was dearer than my sou1 - And shall be still. Base peasant, get thee gone, And boast not of thy conquest over me, Gotten by witchcraft and mere sorcery. For what hast thou to countenance my love. Being descended of a noble house, And matched already with a gentleman Whose servant thou may'st be? And so farewell. (1.194-204) ...... *....*...... Ay, to my former happy Ife again, From title of an odious strumpet's name To honest Arden's wife, not Arden's honest wife. Ha, Mosby, 'tis thou hast rlled me of that, And made slanderous to al1 my kin. Even in my forehead is thy name engraven. A mean artificer, that low-born name. (8.71-77)
Alice not only teminds her adulterous lover that his inferior social class makes him unworthy of her love, but also reminds him that her husband is morally superior since he is a chaste married man. Thus, in spite of Alice1sradically unconventional view of love and maniage, her doubts about the honesty of Mosby's love and her disapproval of her own conduct complicate the play. As a result. Alice's unregulated passion can be disapproved while her adultery can be viewed as an offense that is not absolutely reprehensible in a permanent marriage.
Alice's idealized love is neither seff-effacing nor disinterested. Her chaste adulterous love is also devoid of spiritual quality. Indeed, her love is rooted in narcissistic seFlove which requires the constant physical presence and adoration from the beloved. It is her avarice for love (like Arden's cupidity for land) which allows Alice to justrfy the killing of her husband to enable Mosby to supplant him:
I shall no more be closed in Arden's arms, That like the snakes of black Tisiphone Sting me with their embracings. Mosby's arms Shall cornpass me, and were I made a star, I would have none other spheres but those. There is no nectar but in Mosby's lips; Had chaste Diana kiss'd him, she like me Would grow love-sick, and from her wat'ry bower Fling down Endymion and snatch him up. Then blame not me that slay a silly man Not ha%so lovely as Endymion. (14.148-58)
Nice does not hesitate to state that Mosby's superior physical attractions justify her transgression. and she avoids taking responsibility for her chaste or unchaste conduct. What remains implicit in her justification of transgressive conduct is the play's accusation of her failure to restrain her passion.
Indeed, the play's presentation of Alice's sexuality is paradoxical. The repeated agonizing attempts of Alice and Mosby to end their adulterous relation. and the subsequent reconciliations, are always presented without any immoral overtones. Another incongruous aspect of Alice's characterization as an
adulteress, which is absent in the source,25 belies the title's daim of Alice's
unredeemable Ackedness in murdering her husband for "the unsatiable desire of filthie lust." Contrary to the explicit suggestion in the title that murder is an extension of adultery, the play neither portrays Alice as a murderess without a
conscience nor the murder as an act of passion or wickedness. In fact, Arden's
murder is presented as an act of expediency for her to marry and love Mosby
lawfully. The repeated emphasis on Alice's wish for an alternative way of freeing
hersetffrom the permanent bond of marriage to Arden suggests implicitly that if she were allowed to divorce and remarry lawfully, Arden's murder would be unnecessary. Throughout the play her thought of Arden's death as a necessary condition for the success of her love for Mosby runs like a leitmotl:
And Mosby. thou that comes to me by stealth. Shalt neither fear the biting speech of men Nor Arden's looks. As surely shall he die As I abhor him and love only thee. ('l.13841)
Yet nothing could enforce me to the deed But Mosby's love. Might I without control Enjoy thee still, then Arden should not die. But seeing I cannot. therefore let him die. (1.273-6)
Nay, he must leave to live that we may love, May live, may love. for what is life but love? (10.92-93)
Each of these quotations is spoken after Alice conceives yet another way of killing her husband. Perhaps this is part of the play's attempt not to state that Alice is an 220 irrational passionate sexual deviant. While it is undeniable that her amoral vision of life is devoid of any theological or godly sense of morality, she is not devoid of a conscience of sewlar utilitarian morality. In these quotations. she appears to be a desperate woman who is trapped between an illicit unregulated passion and a permanent lawful rnaniage which requires total cornmitment of affective and sexual love to her husband. In the murder scene (SC. 14). by allowing Alice to stab the already wounded Arden, the play does not merely portray the evil of "lus" but also focuses on her desperate need to become a widow in order to unite with her illicit lover in a socially acceptable legal way. By permitting Alice to justrfy her transgression of murder to marry Mosby, Arden of Faversham presents a radical transgressive critique of the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and love. The play has posited its critical perspective both in Arden's moderate but conventional and Alice's radical unconventional views of marriage and wedded love. At the tragic end both views are rejected, but not without the dramatist's exploitation of this rejection to foreground the play's view. If divorce could have been a remedy for
Alice and Arden's unhappy marriage, it is suggested, the play's tragic end would have been averted. Moreover, the relativisation of the absolute vice of adulterous love in Alice's discourse allows the play to suggest its possible accommodation within an ideal of lawful marriage which permits divorce and remarriage.
I have already mentioned that the play's obvious moral purpose is undercut by its covert social agenda. This point is borne out more openly in the characterization of Mosby and in the depiction of his complex social and psycho- sexual relationship with both Alice and Arden. Unlike other plays of the period
dealing with adultery and troubled marriages such as A Wamino for Fair Women
and A Woman Killed With Kindness, Arden of Faversham presents Mosby's
immoral conducts in a larger socio-economic context. Here, class strife behveen the adulterous lover and the lawfully married couple is emphasized in order to point to the injustices of a strictly stratified society founded on blood lineage. In fact,
Mosby is not presented simply as a suitor for the love of Arden's wife. Unlike in the source,26 he is also portrayed as a predator who wants to usurp Arden's socio- economically privileged position. Reciprocally. Arden views Mosby's relations with his wife not just as an ungodly, immoral conduct but also as an audacious defiance of hierarchical social order. This tension. which is introduced early in the play. remains a dominant aspect of the play:
Master Arden, being at London yesternight. The Abbey lands whereof you are now possess'd Were offered me on some occasion By Greene. one Sir Antony Ager's men. I pray you, Sir, tell me are not the lands yours? Hath any other interest herein? (1. 292-7)
As for the lands, Mosby, they are mine, By letters patents frorn his majesty. But I must have a mandate for my Me; They Say you seek to rob me of her love. Villain, Mat makes thou in her company? She's no companion for so base a groom. (1.300-5)
The conversation presents Mosby as Arden's wmpetitor in economic as well as in affective/sexual spheres of his life. Arden views Mosby as a predator who by overstepping his defined social place is disrupting his privileged upper-class dornestic Me. It is Mosby's refusal to accept the superiority of Arden's social rank by birth that makes Arden humiliate Mosby further:
So, Sirrah, you may not Wear a sword: The statue makes against artificers; I warrant that I do. Now use your bodkin, Your Spanish needle, and your pressing iron, For this shall go w-th me. And mark my words, You goodman botcher, 'tis to you I speak: The next time that I take thee near my house, lnstead of legs, l'II make thee crawl on stumps. (1.310-1 7)
Arden's disaning Mosby of his ~word~~and his threat to maim him for intrusion upon his conjugal life, reveals implicitly his hostility and fear of Mosby's sexuality and changed social status. This socio-sexual tension is focused upon again in
Arden and Mosby's verbal and physical confrontation in scene 13, which consequently facilitates Arden's rnurder in the following scene. This time Arden's verbal assault in which he calls Mosby a "perjured beast" (81). Mosby retaliates by calling Arden a cuckold, "And yet no horned beast, the horns are thine" (82). which indicates Arden's defeat in their sexual rivalry.
Mosby's transgressive love is paradoxical because it is simultaneously daring and cowardly, sincere and suspicious, honest and deceifful. The play presents an unconventional critique of normative affective and sexual love, but by not allowing him to act honourably in his rivalry with Arden, it resists the fuller implication of the ideality of unconventional love. Also, by allowing him not only to resent and blame Alice for the wounds he received in an open fight with Arden (who 223 started the fight to proteci his de's honour), but also to kill Arden in a defenceless position by betraying his trust and gesture of friendship, the play resists to idealize his transgressive love. Furthermore, unlike George Browne of A Warnin~for Fair
Women, Mosby does not kill Arden to be w~rthyof Aiice's love, but to take personal revenge for humiliation: "lhere's for the pressing iron you told me of, [stabs him]"
(14.141). In pointing to the incongniities of Mosbys characterization, I do not mean to suggest that the play completely condemns him. In fact, the play definitely does not disapprove uf his unconventional social and sexual view of love and marriage.
But the juxtaposition of Mosby's conduct with that of Alice and Arden's produces an arnbiguous response to Mosby's unconventional view of love, marriage and life.
Mosby's social and moral heterodoxy is not an unmixed vice which necessarily propagates murder. However, in the light of the play's tragic resolution his heterodox view, expressed through his betrayal and distrust of friendship and love. is negated as well as used tacitly to present the play's view on adulterous love.
Also, the characterization of Mosby as an ambitious lower-class man who wants to advance himself materially by marrying Alice and as a distrustful lover who betrays his cornmitment to his beloved resists the fuller implications of unconventional love and sexuality. In a long monologue (8.144) Mosby reveals his plan to kill al1 the accomplices of Arden's murder in order to enjoy his social and ewnomic success as Alice's husband without any fear of losing his new position. In a convoluted way. Alice appears as an obstruction to his desire of enjoying material success:
l'II none of that, for I can cast a bone To make these curs pluck out each other's throat. And then I am sole ruler of mine own. Yet Mistress Arden lives; but she's myself, And holy church rites makes us two but one. But Matfor that 1 may not trust you, Alice? You have supplanted Arden for my sake, And w-ll extirpen me to plant another. 'Tis fearful sleeping in a serpent's bed. And I will clearly rid my hands of her. (8.3443)
The notion that trust and cornmitment are the bases of success in love and marriage bewmes an implicit focus in the play through Mosby's expression of doubt and distrust where Alice's ability to remain permanently faithful to him is concerned.
In other words, the play is suggesting a possible accommodation of adulterous love within the polymorphic meaning of a marriage which will allow divorce and remarriage, but this suggestion is not made without an effort to point to the psychological problem of trust in impermanent love and lawfully dissoluble marriage.
A more overtly didactic representation of the subject of adulterous love and the problem of lawful indissolubility of marriage is presented in A Warnina for Fair k~ornen.~~Like Arden of Faversham, A Warning for Fair Women follows a similar sequence of events that stem from the triangular situation of husband, wife and lover, and illustrates the evil effects of adultery and punishment of the malefactors through the interventions of Providence. The play's portrayal of the murdered 225 husband as an honest, godly citizen and - unlike Arden of Faversham, a model husband undeserving of his tragic fate, resists any diffusion of the moral focus of the narrative. A plethora of transgressions occur against George Sanders' domestic Me, which is posited as the normative limit. The dramatic tension of adulterous love that threatens the disintegration of an ideal marriage and family is set in motion by George Browne's love for Anne, the wife of George Sanders. To
Browne, as to Alice in Arden of Faversharn, love has become synonymous with life and marriage. He kills George Sanders to win Anne for lawful marriage, and also to be worthy of her love (1091-93).~~Although Browne is guilty of illicit love and murder, his morally and legally transgressive love is unwavering in its commitment to and respect for Anne. Browne. like Alice Arden, commits murder in order to make his love Iawful and in order to remain constant to his illicit love until his death.
In presenting this action, the play silently foregrounds a fuller and more complex implication of this unconventional love in a society where divorce and remarriage are not permitted.
Anne Sanders of A Warnina for Fair Women, unlike Alice of Arden of
Faversham, is presented more as a victim of the transgressions of othersJ0 than as an agent who has wiifully defied social codes and moral norms. Even though the play presents a happy and peaceful marriage and dornestic Me, Anne Sanders' domestic manners are not strictly in accord with the "conduct book's recommendations for an ideal Me. She is described as a fair and chaste woman who awaits her husband at the door of their h~use,~'and she is proud of being 226
Master Sanders' Me: "And I have even as good a husband of hirn/As anie wench in London hath beside" (702-3). But in spite of her chastity, her habit of sitting at the door makes her visibly tempting to gallants like Browne. Indeed, Browne is attracted to her because of her chaste-wife appearance at the door of her h~use.~*
Moreover, although she states she is 'hl1content my husband shal controule me," her dissatisfaction with her husband's econorny is not in accordance Ath the self- effacing ideality of a virtuous wife. In fact, she cornplains to her neighbour about her husband's impropriety in financial matters (which has stopped her from buying fancy apparel and other fineries), and this confiding renders her amenable to
Browne's desire to win her love through her neighbor Anne Drurie's manipulation.
Furthenore. there is neither depiction of Anne's intimate relationship with Browne nor psychological insight into her affective and erotic desire. Her willful complicity in adultery and murder is only revealed in her repentance speech. The dramatist's reticence in portraying Anne's extra-marital love relationship with Browne has been explained by Kathleen McLuskie as a formal problern. That is, how does one keep the balance between the spectacle of pleasure and its moral meaning? McLuskie contends that the anonymous author of A Warnino for Fair Women 'Yudged the issue completely, interspersing the narrative with a series of allegorical dumb- shows of lust and chastity. This old-fashioned and static mode of representation was an attempt to solve the problem of dramatuing Anne's sexuality in purely moral terms."" It is undeniable that this allegorical device is used to focus on the moral implications of Anne's adulterous love and her consent to the murder of her 227 husband. However, it permits the author to leave Anne's character undeveloped; she remains chaste Me, then a lustful adulteress. Indeed, by allowing her to describe her love for Brome as Wcked lust" in her penitential confession, the play negates the amorality of her erotic desire. Anne's adulterous love presents a conventional critique of adultery as an absolute vice. But by locating the critical perspective in Master Sanders' improper domestic conduct as well as in George
Browne's true romantic love, the play partially resists the conventional view of adultery as an irredeemable abstract theological sin. The play through Browne raises the possibility of absorbing Vue adulterous love in a happy marriage, if lawful dissolution of rnarriage is permitted. ******
In Middleton's Women Beware Women, central characters challenge the conventional social code and moral norm of sexuality. The tragic protagonists -
Leantio, Bianca. the Duke and Livia - unsuccessfully attempt to normalire their transgressive loves. However, unlike Arden of Faversham and A Warnina for Fair
Women, Women Beware Women does not follow a homiletic pattern in its presentation of adulterous love and the disintegration of a lawful marriage. This absence of homiletic forma1 design in a domestic tragedy enables the play to examine the absoluteness of marital chastity in the context of worldly domestic Me.
Moreover, Women Beware Women, unlike other domestic dramas of adultery, selects the Meof a love match to commit adultery and leave the marriage and the husband of her own choice; this selection reveals the non-absolute nature of 228
permissive romantic love and questions the synonyrnity of marriage with permanent
monogamous love.
I have already discussed that after the break with Rome, English
Protestantism acknowledged marital sexuality as party of the highest and holiest
living on earth. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the inclusion of sexuality in the
holy order of living without deprecation was not made without an elaborate set of
guidelines on how to love holily within a marriage. Indeed. the purity of sexuality was defined by its dissociation from lust which was regarded as the polar opposite of chastity. The practice of moderation and temperance was recommended for conjugal love because excessive desire was regarded as lust and adultery even in a marriage? This dichotomy inherent in the ideal sexuality - which acknowledged the validity of sexual love. but insisted on its use within the guidelines of proper desire - created problematic situations in domestic conjugal relationships. In other words. what the moral theologians ruled out of ideal of love and marriage became the problems of lust, adultery. betrayal and cuckoldry on stage. Also. in theatre. the experiential categories of love and sexuality often defied the abstract and inflexible binaries of theological morality. The dramatists, often by confusing the binaries of ideal love and marriage, reveal that the theological moral absolutes of vice and virtue were not always cornmensurate with the love and sexuality of secular domestic reality. lndeed the antagonistic tension between the absolute virtue and vice in the plays allows the possibility of an ideal of mixed virtues to enter silently into the field of discourse of love and marriage. 229
Women Beware Wornen presents a disquietingiy balanced exploration of the antagonisrn between ideal wedded love and adulterous lust. This play. like the other domestic tragedies I have already discussed, depicts the disintegration of a
lawful marriage by the wiie's adultery. While the main plot of the play portrays the breakdom of a lawful maniage of individual choice and romantic love, the subplot depicts how a lawful marriage of convenience is used to protect an illicit incestuous
love re~ation.~'
Women Beware Women's main plot of adultery and the disintegration of marriage uses a mixed moral context by connecting divergent socio-economic locales. Bianca's Venetian affluent but strict society is juxtaposed to Leantio's economically impoverished and sexually repressive middle-class society of
Florence and the politically powrful, walthy and sexually permissive society of the
Florentine court. In fact by not using a homogeneous socio-moral context. the play not only succeeds in pointing to the ubiquity of lust but also elaborates its qualitatively polymorphous nature. It is "black lust," "hot lust," "mere lust." "bold lust." Furthemore. the spectacle of lustful pleasures is placed in the house of the aristocratic Livia. who is infamous for her amoral permissive view of love and sexuality. and this succeeds in presenting unconventional love and sexuality outside the bourgeois socio-sexual morality. Livia's house is the setting for such sexual misconducts as the Duke's rape of Bianca. Hippolito's incestuous love for
Isabella. and Leantio's becoming Livia's paid lover. 230
In the opening dialogue of the play, Leantio states the reasons for his happiness and the benefits of marriage to a beautiful woman:
But beauty able to content a conqueror.
Whom earth could scarce content, keeps me in compass;
I find no wish in me bent sinfully
To this man's sister, or to that man's wife:
Now when I go to church. I can pray handsomely,
Not come like gallants only to see faces,
As if lust went to market still on Sundays. (1.1 -26-34)
For Leantio. having a beautiful wife is like wearing a talisman against illicit and improper desires. Despite the exaggeration, he believes in the traditional view of marriage as a rernedy for incontinence and that lust is a vice completely outside the bounds of wedded love. At the same time. he gives a hyperbolic description of his wife as an "unvalued treasure," vikiich reveals that their love match has violated the guidelines for an ideal "apt match." Against her parents' wishes. economically upper-class Bianca has married below her social class for love, and the bourgeois
Leantio has incurred an economic loss by marrying her for her beauty and love:
"little money sh'has brought me I View but her face, you may see al1 her dowry"
(1 -1.53-54). The potential of discordance in a marriage of unequal social and economic position is expressed by Leantio's mother: To draw her from her fortune - which no doubt,
At the full time, might have proved rich and noble -
You know not what you have done.
......
What ableness have you to do her right then
In maintenance fitting her birth and virtues?
Which ev'ry woman of necessity looks for.
And most to go above it; not confined
By their conditions, virtues, bloods. or births.
But flowing to affections, wills. and humours. (1 -1-59-70)
Indeed. the mother's view of her son's marriage is in accord with what Rogers describes as an "unapt As 1 have discussed above. English Protestant moral theologians in their writings, repeatedly advised men to disregard beauty or even virtue where there was not enough money or property. In the case of a rich wornan marrying a poor man, inequality meant "overthrow of order" in the conjugal relation. Moreover. the formula for an "apt match" became problematic by acknowledging the importance of the wifefs beauty in rnaintaining the husband's fidelity. However, in the light of Leantio's rnother's ineffectual presence and complete absence after Act III, her comments on the unsuitability of the Leantio-
Bianca love match can be deemed a rhetorical strategy to focus on the economic dimension of Bianca's adultery. In fact, the inherently problematic nature of a 232 match between individuals of unequal economic positions is exploited not only to heighten the dramatic tension between ideal wedded love and illicit erotic desire but also to explore the moral binarism of love and lust in the context of both in lawful marriage and adulterous union.
The play's portrayal of Leantio as a romantic lover and husband focuses on his selfantradictory view of love and marriage. Women Beware Women depicts
Leantio as an adventurous young man who courted Bianca passionately in Venice and eloped with her:
Leantio [aside]: lnto these arms at midnight: when we ernbraced
As if we had been statues only made for't,
To show art's life, so silent were our comforts,
And kissed as if ouf lips had grown together! (3.3.259-62)
In contrast to the intense sensuousness of his premarital love, in the bourgeois household of Florence. Leantio is portrayed as a newiy married man who wants to suppress his erotic desire for his lawful wife in order to love ideally in marriage.
Indeed, his decision to leave shortly after their marriage to give more attention to his business interests is in accord with the ideality of the hegemonic bourgeois sexual morality which frowned upon uxoriousness:
I could well wish myself where you would have me.
But love that's wanton must be ruled a Mile
By that that's careful, or al1 goes to ruin: As fitting is a govemment in love
As in a kingdom; where 'tis al1 mere lust
'Tis like an insurrection in the people,
That raised in self-will wars against al1 reason.
But love that is respective for increase
Is like a good king that keeps al1 in peace.
Once more farewell. (1.3.40-48)
Leantio not only refuses Bianca's eager entreaty for his conjugal Company but also supports his conduct by painting out that to acquiesce would be an act of unregulated passion or lust. Furthermore, in order to render his insensitive conduct conscionable, he stresses his economic responsibility to his wife (1 -3.40-55)and also emphasizes that procreative sexuality is the proper goal of wedded love.
However. the conventional view of ideal wedded love is contained negatively on
Leantio's retum, when he finds a changed Bianca who is sexually unresponsive to her husband. materially ambitious, and involved in a secret liaison with the Duke.
Indeed, Leantio's conventional view of wedded love is not only used to set the dramatic tension between marriage and adultery in motion but also to pivot the radical change of his character from an ideal bourgeois husband to a court cuckold and, finally, to the paid lover of the aristocratic ~ÏdowLivia.
Leantio never acknowledges the intense sexuality of his love, neither in dialogue nor while expressing his thoughts. Nevertheless, it is not only his 234 hyperbolic description of her beauty but also his pride which discloses his infatuation and erotic desire for his Me. Yet the infatuated Leantio also expresses anxiety at the irresistibility of Bianca's beauty, and at the possibility that it led him to love her improperly and discredit her chastity. A conflict is thus revealed between the desire and the moral imperatives associated with ideal marital sexuality. Indeed, the fact that Leantio is portrayed both as a chaste bourgeois husband and an illicit paid lover of a courtly lady. suggests that love and lust are not as mutually exclusive as the conventional view of ideal sexuality advocates.
Thus Leantio is perceived as both an honest husband and an impudent lecher.
Because of his flexible morality Leantio does not. like Master Arden of Arden of Faversham and Master Sanders of A Warnina for Fair Women, die only as a helpless innocent victim of his Me's adultery. Although disillusioned by Bianca's adultery, Leantio cornes to express a materialistic and moraily flexible view of love and marriage that is not incompatible with or unsuited to aristocratic Livia's code of love and sexuality. Leantio does not share with Master Arden an understanding of marriage as a sanctlied and indissoluble bond that calls for unconditional, permanent love. In attributing a very different view of marriage the play resists the fuller implications of the orthodox view of adultery. This conventional view would normally require Leantio to stay in an unhappy and miserable situation without remedy, or would result in his murder of Bianca or the Duke. In a curious way, it is his materialistic flexible morality that keeps him from staying in a passive asexual state of cuckoldry like Alluvit in A Chaste Maid in Chea~side.Nor is he able to keep 235 his relation with Livia totally utilitarian, Iike that of Touchwood Senior and Lady Kix in A Chaste Maid. It is his indiscreet boasting to Bianca about Livia's love which provides the immediate reason for his death. He is murdered by Livia's brother,
Hippolito, who kills him in a fight to protect his sister's honour. Hippolito, incited by the Duke, consequently helps to fulfil the Duke's plan of marrying Bianca lawfully once she is a widow. In Women Beware Women, Leantio's death is presented as the result of his impudent lecherous condud to the play's court society. even though the theatre audience knows that, like Master Arden and Master Sanders, he dies also as a wronged husband.
Thus. in Leantio's morally ambivalent but resilient dramatic character, the play presents both a conventional and an unconventional critique of lust. But the unconventional critical perspective is located both in his own flexible morality and in Livia's permissive immorality. thereby opening a complex transgressive space in the play's exploration of love versus lust and marriage versus adultery. At Leantio's death, the grief-stricken Livia expresses her love for hirn and condemns her brother
Hippolito severely, not only for the unjustifiable killing of Leantio, but also for his illicit clandestine relation with his niece. In this way the play partially closes off its radical transgressive space:
[to others] Run for officers,
Let him be apprehended with al1 speed.
For fear he 'scape away; lay hands on him,
We cannot be too sure; 'tis wiiful murder; You do Heaven's vengeance and the law just service -
You know him not as I do, he's a villain,
.-.
The reason! That's a jest Hell falls a-laughing at:
Is there a reason found for the destruction
Of our more lawful loves? And was there none
To kill the black lust 'Wxt they niece and thee.
That kept close so long? (4.2.54-67)
Livia's condemnation of Hippolito and exculpation of Leantio presents an unconventional view in which lust is not a qualitatively undifferentiated sexual vice.
In the context of the corrupt court, she makes qualitative hierarchical distinctions to claim that Leantio's love affair in exchange for money is less sinful than
Hippolito's violation of a proper degree of consanguity in his secret love relation with Isabella. Thus, it can be argued that in the light of Livia's relativized view of lust, the possibility of a comic ending for the non-ideal and impure love between
Leantio and Livia is not excluded.
If, in the characterization of Leantio. both an orthodox and a heterodox critique of lust and wedded love are presented, then in the characterization of
Bianca as the romantically-loved wife of Leantio and lusted - for concubine of the wealthy and powerful Duke, a transgressive critique of chaste love and ideal wifedom are expressed. The representation of Bianca as an intractable adulteress 237 without moral conflict is not oniy radical, but quite cornplex, cornpared to that of the other adulterous wives in the domestic tragedies of the period such as Alice Arden,
Anne Sanders, Anne FranMord, and Wincott's wife. Women Beware Wornen's unconventional structure, which combines domestic tragedy and conventional romantic comedy, makes it possible to explore the inherent problematic issues of domestic love and marriage within a secular and relativized scheme of morality.
The absence of a homiletic pattern of sin. discovery, repentance, punishrnent, and expectation of divine mercy renders it possible for this dramatic narrative to depict the evils of adultery and lust outside the abstract theological scheme of moral binaries. Indeed, the use of an unconventional structural design and the thematic exploration of the problems of an "unapt match" in this narrative on the evils of adultery, including lust, murder and the disintegration of a lawful marriage, has enabled the play to avoid an unmixed portrayal of the dramatic characters as evil or virtuous and, also, has allowed the author to remain non-judgemental.
Another transgressive critique of the Renaissance ideal of love and rnarriage is presented in Women Beware Women by the characterization of Bianca as a beautiful, vain and wilful young woman who pursues individual happiness in love and material success. Critics and scholars have commented repeatedly on the abruptness of the change in ~ianca.~~Contrary to the critical view that finds the changed Bianca incompatible with the Bianca of the opening scene, I propose that the potential for change is, in fact, foreshadowed in the opening scene. Leantio himself is not unaware of her possible capacity for restlessness and defiant 238 conduct: "Speak low, sweet mother / I pray do not you teach her to rebel 1 When she is a good way to obedience" (1.1.74; 74-75). In spite of her ideal wifely demeanor in the opening scene Men Leantio introduces her to his mother. she is a girl with a rebellious spirit who has married for love without her parents' consent and has left her family and birthplace. She ewresses her expectation that although she will have rnany adjustrnents to make to the penurious bourgeois household, the resulting happiness being with Leantio. the man she loves. will make it worthwhile:
Kind Mother. there is nothing can be wanting
To her that does enjoy al1 her desires.
Heaven and a quiet place with this man's love,
And I am rich as virtue can be poor. ... I have forsook friends, fortunes. and my country.
And hourly I rejoice in't. ... l'II cal1 this place the place of my birth now.
And rightly too: for here my love was born.
And that the birth day of a woman's joys. (1.1.125-41)
Even though it is undeniable that Bianca loves Leantio, the love which she daims will compensate al1 other material deficiencies of her domestic life is totally sensuous and lacks any spiritual quality. The excessive physical nature of her love is not only expressed by the fetishistic ritual of kissing, but also by her reluctance to let Leantio leave on business. Her sensuous love is neither self-effacing nor 239
dutiful. The idealistic self-renunciation of the above passage is belied when read
in conjunction with her inner thoughts after she has becorne the Duke's mistress:
. . . Yet my hap
To meet it here, so far from my birth place,
My friends, or kindred; 'tis not good, in sadness,
To keep a rnaid so strict in her young days;
Restraint breeds wand'ring thoughts as many fasting days
A great desire to see flesh stirring again. (4.1.28-34)
By allowing her to express dissatisfaction with the restrictive sexuality of her
premarital days with her Venetian farnily, the play not only resists presenting a view of Bianca as an obedient chaste maid, but also presents her romantic courtship and
elopement as a seif-aggrandizing act of sema1 love. In spite of the strong sensuousness of her love, unlike Alice of Arden of Faversham, Bianca is not the active initiator of her adulterous relation with the Duke. Nevertheless, her willingness to enter into an adulterous love affair with the Duke after being raped by him, is extremely unconventional. But this extreme unconventionality is partially balanced by allowing Bianca to watch and admire the Duke before the rape in the pomp and grandeur of the state procession. In other words, the fuller implication of the Dukets unregulated sewal desire is undercut by focusing on Bianca's narcissistic self love which is well gratified by the Duke's interest in her (1.3.1 01-5). un de ni ab!^, Bianca's adulterous conduct criticizes the conventional view of chastity 240
or ideal wedded love. But the critical perspectives are placed in the context of her
husband's lower econornic class and the adulterous lover's superior economic and
social position. Leantio's weaker socio-economic status is exploited by the Duke.
Consequently Leantio dies as a victim of his own greed and lust.
In this tale of love, marriage and adultery, the repeated mention of Bianca's
estrangement from her family. kin and birthplace points to the disconnectedness of the experiential reality of her love. In fact, using the theme of "strangeness" both
positively and negatively has covertly revealed the psycho-social tension of
Bianca's apparently intractable dramatic character. The transformation in the
meaning of the word from the opening scene where Bianca is first introduced and to the last scene of the play as she decides to die with the Duke corresponds to the
increasing gravity of her transgressive conducts. In Act 1, her separation from her
Venetian family and first appearance as an outsider to the Florentine bourgeois society are described as part of her ideal self-effacing heroic love. Bianca expresses her desire to overcome her spatial difference of being a stranger by adopting unqualrfjingly her husband's country and socio-economic milieu (1.1.1 13-
41). However. in Act 4, as the wealthy and powerful Duke's concubine, Bianca expresses her disapproval of the restrictive norms of premarital sexuality in the upper-class Venetian society. But. her criticism of her own family not only gives away a sense of inner isolation and. also. her silent wish for a more connected and non-estranged situation:
Bian. So now I thank you, ladies, I desire A Mile to be alone.
I Lady. And I am nobody,
Methinks, unless I have one or other with me.
'Faith my desire and hers ~illne'er be sisters.
Exeunt Ladies.
Bian. How strangely woman's fortune cornes about;
This was the farthest way to come to me,
All would have judged, that knew me born in Venice
And there with many jealous eyes brought up.
......
Yet my hap
To meet it here. so far off from my birth place,
My friends. or kindred;
l'II never use any girl of mine so strictly:
...If they be got in court.
l'II never forbid 'em the country, nor the court.
Though they be born i'th' country; they will come to 't
And fetch their falls a thousand mile about,
VVhere one would little think on 't. (4.1.18-40) 242
Bianca's soliloquy of her inner thoughts about love and life not only undenines her earlier idealisation of estrangement but also refers to its irrelevance to the matters of sexual morality. Moreover, at the tragic end, in her decision to commit suicide with the dying Duke, the word stranger and the theme of estrangement suggests a frightening, hopeless social unconnectedness: "What make I here? These are al1 strangers to me 1 Not known but by their malice, now th'art gone 1 Nor do I seek their pities" (5.2.206-8). Although Bianca remains unconcerned about the theological scherne of morality by not being repentant and asking for divine mercy, an inner psychological void of distrust and suspicion is created by her own acts of betrayal and ruthless affective inciifference; this brings her amoral socio-sexual conduct into the domain of the ethical morality of worldly Me.
Also, in the play's thematic structure the word "strange" has been used to connect the disparate intrigues of the sub and main plots in a relation of negative affirmation. A complex interaction is set up between the word "stranger," associated with Bianca's idealized married love as well as her adulterous love, and the opposed concepts of "affinity" and kinship which operate in the Hippolito- lsabella intrigue of the s~b~lot.~However, by allowing Livia's indulgent and casual view of love and sexuality to set the relation of illicit desire into motion, in both the
Duke-Bianca main plot and the Hippolito-lsabella subplot, the play reveals that two different social milieus have erotic and affective transgressions in common.
The Hippolito-lsabella-Ward love triangle depicts not only the evils of and arranged marriage but also the corrupt use of lawful marriage. lsabella wi'llingly 243
enters into an arranged marriage in order to continue her premarital (incestuous)
love relation w-th Hippolito. Isabella's apparently dutiful compliance with parental
wish does not make her any more virkious or any happier in her marriage, than the
defiant wilful Bianca who elopes with a stranger for rornantic love. However, even
if the immorality of lsabella and Hippolito's transgressive love can be viewed as part
of Florentine court society's permissive amoral attitude towards erotic desire, their
deliberate duping of the husband implies that they are dishonest and unscrupulous.
Similarly, Bianca's unsuitability to the Florentine bourgeois household. and her
estrangement from her familiar upper-class Venetian family and society, may be
viewed as a good reason for her unhappy marriage and consequent transgression
of adultery. However, her silent consent in her husband's murder and her plan to
kill the Duke's brother in order to be the sole inheritor of his wealth and rank reveals
her excessive greed.
Nevertheless. unlike the other domestic tragedies of the period that deal with
adultery, Women Beware Women depicts the relation between Bianca and the
Duke as mutually satisfactory and cornforting. Furthermore, by allowing Bianca to
remain absolutely committed to the Duke and to exhibit stoic courage by wanting to die with hirn, the radical heterodoxy of her conduct is contained positively. But this is not accomplished without a wanening of her conduct and a deadening inner
distrust. Bianca's love and marriage is depicted as transgressively criticizing ideal wedded love; but by locating the critical perspective in three different dramatic characters - the economically impoverished and sexually repressive Leantio. the 244 wealthy, powerful and sexually aggressive Duke; and the rich and sexually permissive aristocrat widow, Livia - the immorality of her conduct is de- emphasized. Moreover. Leantio's and Bianca's success in wealth and love temporarily averts the fuller implication of radical heterodoxy. Thus, the conventional view of lust and adultery stated earlier by Leantio and by the Cardinal as an absolute sin in the end appean as a negotiable transgression in the scheme of impermanent love and marriage.
Women Beware Women also presents an unconventional adulterous lover in the characterization of the Duke. The Duke violates the social codes and moral norms of sexual conduct not only because of his superior social and economic power, but also because of his amoral secular view of love and sexuality. The
Duke, in spite of his flagrant violation of the social code and moral norms of sexuality. and unlike the adulterous men in other domestic tragedies, remains unperturbed by any moral confiict resulting from the betrayal of male friendship. In fact. by not allowing any friendship between Leantio and the Duke, the play de- emphasizes the moral issue of the betrayal of male friendship in adultery.
Moreover, the Duke's offering of the captainship of the fort to Leantio reveals that his secular moral scheme deems it proper to compensate Leantio materially for the loss of his honour and his wife.
However. the Duke's offensively assertive illicit sexual desire is not an unmixed vice. In fact. his adultery is depicted as both lust and true love. By not allowing him to keep his love for Bianca a secret, or using her lawful marriage to 245
hide his illicit relations (like the King in The Maid's Traaedv or Sir Walter
Whorehound in A Chaste Maid in the Cheapside), the play shows that he is not a
lecherous man and is willing to take responsibility for his sexual conduct. In fact,
the Duke's uninhibited pieasure and pride in Bianca's Company resists the
conventional view that love and lust are mutually exclusive (3.2.78-1 00. 4.3.25-30.
5-2.1-3.8-13). Indeed, the Duke unhesitatingly decides to rnarry Bianca after being
chastised by his brother, the Cardinal, for his sin of adultery. Also, his decision to
marry Bianca questions the view of adultery as an absolute sin which can not be
accommodated in the lawfulness of wedded love:
. . . I have vowed
Never to know her as a strumpet more,
And I must Save my oath . . . .
Her husband dies tonight, or at the most . . . .
Then I will make her lawfully mine own.
Without this sin and horror . . . . (4.1.268-74)
In his fear of sin, the Duke adds murder to adultery and fares no better than does
George Browne, who is ungodly in his solution of the problem of adulterous love and indissoluble marriage. The need for a legal solution to the problem of adulterous love and discordant marriage is tacitly foregrounded. as Leantio's murder becomes necessary in order for the Duke's lover to become lawful. 246
There has been much critical disagreement about the exact role of the
Duke's brother in the play's moral s~ope.~~I agree with J. R. Mulryne's viewV4Othat the Cardinal, both in his bodily presence (with robe and candles) and in his sermon- like speeches, has been used to reveal the silent confrontation between conventional religious and the unconventional secular views of marriage and sexuality. His religious moralizing to his brother the Duke not only comes too late to make a significant change but also motivates the Duke to murder Leantio.
Through the Cardinal's objection to the Duke's marriage (4.3.1-23), the play finally states the official moral code of the immoral court society that Livia symbolizes.
However, the Cardinal's objection to the Duke's marriage, and his disapproval of his adulterous love affair, appears to be a rhetorical strategy to heighten the dramatic tension between the hegemonic nom and the unconventional transgression of love and sexuality. Moreover, Menthe Cardinal's objection is countered by the Duke and Bianca, the play succeeds in avoiding endorsement of the view adulterous love is an unnegotiable vice:
I taste more wrath in it, than I do religion,
And envy more than goodness. (4.3.27-28)
Sir. [Cardinal] 1 have read you over al1 this Mile
In silence, and I find great knowledge in you,
And severe learning; yet 'mongst ail your virtues
I see not charity written . . . Heaven and angels
Take great delight in a converted sinner;
Why should you then, a sewant and professor,
Differ so much from them? If ev'ry woman
That commits evil should be therefore kept
Back in desires of goodness, how should virtue
Be known and honoured?
Pray, whether is religion better served,
When lives that are licentious are made honest,
Than when they still run through a sinful blood? (4.3.55-67)
Bianca's use of the analogy of a reformed sinner and grace to counter the
Cardinal's objection to their marriage of impure love renders the defense argument convincing and makes her plea for exoneration undeniable. However. the contemporary issue of divorce and remarriage as a remedy for problematic love and unhappy marriage is also implicitly introduced to the audience. When the Cardinal confronts Bianca and the Duke, the sin of Leantio's murder remains conspicuously unmentioned in their dialogue. This exclusion sewes to raise the issue of the murder in the viewer's mind, thus forcing us to ask whether the indissolubility of marriage is truly a desirable moral ideal. Moreover, it can be argued that the play's antagonistic tension between secular immorafity - as epitomized by Livia - and 248 theological morality - represented by the Cardinal - has allowed the amorality of lust and adultery to enter the domestic morality of lawful n~arria~e.~'Furthermore. at the tragic end, while al1 the dramatic characters who were involved in love and marriage die for various reasons. the celibate Cardinal's uncompromising theological moral view of marriage and sexuality (5.3.222-25)does not offer any practical solution for the problematic social and sexual relationships. In fact. the
Cardinal's infiexible ideal directs attention to the need for a redefinition of love and marriage which must allow a lawful recourse to remedy the problems of impermanent worldly domestic love.
We have observed that some of the problems concerning love and marriage in Arden of Faversham, A Warnina For Fair Women and Women Beware Women, arise from the wnflict between individual proclivity and the inimical social context.
Despite the dissimilar plot structures the protagonists of these plays have the same goal in their respective love. The adulterous lovers wish their love to culminate in marriage and consider their prior lawful marital commitment with another hindrance to present love. Endnotes
1. For the standard definition of domestic tragedy see Introduction note no. 10. Broader and different emphases are to be found in Madeleine Doran's and Keith Sturgess' discussions of the genre. Doran acknowfedges the presence of a distinct ethical pattern in domestic tragedy, and notes that it is derived from the tradition of morality plays and homily. But she disagrees with Adams' view that dornestic tragedies are merely dramatized sermons. Doran sees the "intention" of the genre in a different light. She emphasizes that the plays were dramatizations of a class of stories that dealt with contemporary crime. As such, she held that they were seen as promising stage material much as "thrillers" are. In short, Doran's view of domestic tragedy provides a corrective to Adams' exaggeration of homiletic considerations at the ewense of artistic ones. Madeleine Doran. Endeavour of Art, pp. 142-147. Sturgess' definition, which takes into account the plays' thematic concern with "normal family relationships." offers a broader view of these dramas. "Domestic tragedy". writes Sturgess, "is a play with a sad end which seriously depicts crime and punishrnent in the lives of ordinary men. often dwelling on the disruption of normal family relationships." See Keith Sturgess. ed.. Three Elizabethan Domestic Traaedies(Penguin Books. 1969) Introduction, p. 14.
2. For a detailed discussion on this subject see Chapter 1. pp. 41-43.
3. William Perkins. Christian Oeconomie, p. 46.
4. Chapter 1. p. 41.
5. Chilton Powell. Enalish Domestic Relations, pp. 70-72.
6. Ibid. pp. 84-94. William Whately allows divorce in case of adultery. He talks of divorce for adultery referring to religious law of morality. Moreover. he recommends strongly pardon by the innocent spouse of the repentant trangressor. Whately suggests "only if the person is irreformable then they orderly manuer leave". A Bride-Bush, ch. 2. pp. 5-6. William Gouge also allows divorce for adultery and for separation due to difference of religious beliefs. But he does not elaborate on this subject and is not clear about the pardon of the repentant offender. Domesticall Duties. Part. 2. Treat 2, pp. 21 8-21 9.
7. The Hallers and Powell have pointed out that although Milton's The Doctrine and Disci~iineis considered revolutionary, it does not contain a single point that was not either previously advocated or actually in practice; certain principles only are ernphasized more than they had been before. However, Milton's chief contribution to the divorce debate is his famous argument in which he claims that " indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising in nature unchangeable, hindering and ever likely to hinder the benefits of conjugal society which are happiness and peace should be recognued as a just and sufficient cause for divorce." John Milton, The Prose Work of John Milton, ed., J. A. St-John (London: George Bell and Sons, 1890) vol. 1, p. 336.
8. Henry Smith, A Pre~arativeto Marriaae, pp. 90-91.
9. Thomas Becon explains the reason why adultery is considered a crime of stealing:
Now it is certaine that both parties maried, are but one body, and that (as Paul saith) the husband has no power of his owne body, but the Menether hath the power of her orne body, but the husband. Therefore who so cornmitteth adultery, the same taketh awaye, stealeth and robbethe the other of his owne body, even his principal1 and best good.
Thomas Becon, The Christian State of Matrimony. ch. 2.
10. Chilton Powell, Enalish Domestic Relations, pp. 84-94, Alan Madarlane, Marriaae and Love in Enaland, Part 5, ch. 10, Robert Mitchel Enalish Marriaae and Morals, Ch. 3, pp. 91 -165.
11 See M. C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Traaedv. pp. : Henry Adams, Enalish Domestic or. Homiletic Traaedv 1575 to 1642. pp. 183: Irving Ribner, Jacobean Traaedy. pp. 10.
12. Michel Foucault, The Historv of Sexuality, Trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978), vol. 1. Part one, Part two. pp. 349. In a chapter entitled "We Other Victorians", Foucault describes the familiar story of repression of sexuality that begins to develop at the start of the seventeenth century and reaches its full weight during the nineteenth century. He claims this repression is the work of a bourgeois morality that restricted sex to the home and conjugal family. lt establishes procreative the heterosexual monogamous married couple as the nom for al1 sexuality. Foucault explains that up to the end of the eighteenth century, three major codes of law govemed sexual practices; Canonical, Christian pastoral, and Civil law. The division between kit and illicit was deterrnined by each in its oum way. It was in this period the marriage relations were the most intense focus of constraints and under strict sun/eillance. However, Foucault points out that the repression of sex makes the mere fact of speaking about sex a transgression and thus provides an incitement to and justification for talking about sex In other words, censorship of discourses on sexuality and the taboo on maintaining sexual matters in certain relations are in fact, complementary to the explosion of discourse on sexuality. In Foucault's view repressive sexual codes open up the possibility of a Mole genre of discourses with the goal of removing sexual taboos and changing the lawç. This view of repressive codes of sexuality inforrns my critical approach to the representation of transgressive love and marriage in English Renaissance drama.
13. Chilton Powell, Enalish Domestic Relations, pp. 70-84. For the Anglican position of the divorce debate see, Edmund Bunny. Pf Divorce for Adulturie and Marrvina Aaaine (Oxford: 1610) John Dove, Bf Divorcement (London: 1601). Both Bunny and Dove in their sermons oppose remarriage after divorce. But William Perkins and John Rainalds approve of a second marriage for the innocent par-ty. For more details see, Charles and Katherine George, The Protestant Mind of the Enalish Reformation 1570-1640 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 271-272.
14. Henry Hitch Adams, Enqlish Domestic or Homiletic Traaedv 1575-1642 (New York: Columbia University Press. 1961)p. 103. Adams suggests that the playwright's reason for varying the source rnaterial is that he wishes to emphasize the ethical implication of the stories, "The entire construction of the play is that of a moral demonstration, and at every stage of the action, the hand of Providence can be discerned."
15. Madeleine Doran does not see the play as a moral exemplurn. Rather, she daims that the real interest of the playwright is to dramatize a sentimental tale of adultery and murder. Andrew Clark acknowledges that there are elements of conventional morality in the play but does find any consistent moral design or purpose. '7he Drama", writes Clark, "is equally, if not more so, an existing story, full of tension and suspense". Moreover, he claims that the play lacks full harmonious realization of its goal. Clark suggests that this disharmony is due to conflicting pull of aesthetic and moral interest. The story telling interest and the moral interests are never reconciled into one controlling purpose or mole. See, Madeleine Doran, Endeavour ofArt,pp. 143, 350 and Andrew Clark, Domestic Drama, vol. 1, pp. 147- 148. I believe that because both Doran and Clark do not recognize the centrality of the question of marriage and love, they find the play morally "inconsistent" and structurally "episodic". 16. Three Elizabethan Dornestic Traaedy. ed.. Keith Sturgess (Penguin books, l969), Introduction, pp. 23-24.
17. Leanore Lieblein, 'The Context of Murder in English Domestic Drama", Studies in Enalish Literature. 23 (1983). 181-86.
18. Catherine Belsey. The Subject of Traaedv, p. 134.
19. Three Elizabethan Domestic Traaedv, ed., Keith Sturgess. p. 55.
20. Franklin: Thus have you seen the truth of Arden's death.
As for the ruffians, Shakebag and Black Will,
Black Will was burnt in Flushing on a stage. Greene was hanged at Osbridge in Kent.
But this above the rest is to be noted: Arden lay murder'd in that plot of ground Which he by force and violence held from Reede; and in the grass his body's print was seen Two years and more after the deed was Done. Gentlemen, we hope you'll pardon this naked tragedy
For simple truth is gracious enough, And needs no other points of glozing stuff.
In the light of the epilogue, the title appears to be an hyperbole. The dramatist seems to be positioning the rneaning of the play somewhere between the hyperbole and litotes of the title and epilogue respectively. The profusion of morally pejorative words in the title (Wcked. disloyall, Wanton. Malice, d iscimulation, filthie lust) stands in sharp contrast to the ernphasis on the word "truth" (Epilogue, 1). which refers to unembellished representation of facts. Moreover. the title does not give any hint that there is a second narrative running throughout the play. one that's mentioned in the Epilogue. This shows Arden not as an innocent victim, but as a cruel avaricious landlord (Epilogue, 9-1 1). The juxtaposition of these two themes is unmistakenly the dramatist's effort to link Alice's failure to remain faithful to her marriage Arden's failure to fuîfill his social responsibility. 21. Ail my quotations of the play are from the Revels edition of The Traaedv of Master Arden of Faversham, edited by M. L. VVine (London: Methuen, 1973).
22. Keith Sturgess explains "warning Iiterature" as a popular didactic form in which the writers' intentions include reporting, moralizing, and titillation. Emphasizing the journalistic function of the plays at hand, Sturgess claims that domestic tragedy is properly seen as a sub-section of 'lvarning literature". The real or assumed authenticity of these plays is derived form topical stories and moral message is often presented by allegory. Three Elizabethan Domestic Traoedies, edited by Keith Sturgess. Introduction, p. 10.
23. Daniel Rogers does not recommend divorce and annulment. He laments the fate of couples who resorted to judlcial or private separations:
Those Mockdivorces so frequent in the wold, whereby couples separate from each others, some from bed, board, frorn house, and so farre, that one shire will not hold them.
Matrimonial1 honour, p. 158. For William Whatelyls view see note no. 6.
24. M. L. Wine points out the pervasiveness of moral and social corruptions of the play's universe. "As hurnan beings", writes Wne, "take on the value only of the market, properly to be bought and sold, the taking of life seems incidental; Arden is a universe without pity. To acquire land Arden banishes pity (xiii .27)as readily as "pitiless Black Will" would "for a crown murder any man (ii .12)...... To protect his property a "religious" man like Greene conspires to murder Arden (i.518) ...... To Susan's love too, the servant Michael would help to kill Arden and even "rid my elder brother away" to make the latter's farm his own (i.172-3)". For a more detailed discussion see, The Traaedv of Master Arden, ed., M. L. Wine, (London: Methuen, 1973),Introduction, Ixiv-lxv. Also see, Three Elizabethan Domestic Traaedies, ed., Keith Sturgess. Introduction. Sturgess finds that throughout the play there is a growing sense of Providence, and that the amorality of the characters is gradually replaced by the appearance of a moral scheme, which includes retribution. Arden's continual escapes, for example, were seen by the hired killers as evidence of God's intervention (ix, 143, xiv.31-2). However, Arden's death can be considered as retribution for the injustice with which he treats Reed, and seems to be a divine response to the latter's prayer for Arden's punishment. Similarly, the stubbornness of the blood stains, the snow storm and the bleeding corpse each help to jolt Alice into awareness of the moral order of the universe, though she previously rejected such a view of the universe. Although I have found Sturgess' view vefy helpful, I disagree with his suggestion that the play's tragic impact is blurred by the double interest of the play and attributes this to the playwright's too much focus on the social context.
25. M. L. Wine points out a particular change from Holinshed, where Alice is totally and unequivocally an evil woman, but by omitting Alice's revelry after Arden's murder the playwright exhibits a different conception of the character than the Chronicler.
26. In the source Mosby not only is uninteresting but hardly figures in the main action. All the schemes for murder are entirely Alice's. In fact. Holinshed does not present Mosby as an ambitious man; he is merely referred to as a former tailor of London and then "servant" of Alice's stepfather. sir Edward North. and as her lover. For the detailed reading in the source material see, The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham. ed.. M. L. Wine, Appendix II. pp. 148-163.
27. English common lawforbade the wearing of sword by anyone under the rank of gentleman. A properly well bom person or a gentleman (though not ranking among the nobility) were entitled to bear arms. See, Arden of Faversham, ed., M. L. Wine. SC. 1. notes to 31 1, 36.
28. There has been much scholarly work done to determine the exact authorship of A Warnina For Fair Wornen. But as yet due to insufficient evidence no one author has been attributed with certitude the authorship of the play. Charles Cannon suggests that it is wise to consider A Warnino For Fair Women an anonymous play. For a detailed discussion on the authorship debate see. A Warning For Fair Women: A Critical Edition. ed.. Charles Dale Cannon (Hague: Mouton. 1975). pp. 25-43. The primary source of A Wamina For Fair Women is Arthur Golding's A Brief Discourse, published anonyrnously in 1573 by Henry Bynneman, also the publisher of Holinshed's Chronicles in 1577. The long literary history of the Saunders murder culminated in 1599. twenty-six years after the event. with the appearance of a stage representation - the anonymous "A Wamina for Fair Women. Containing the most tragical and lamentable murther of Master George Sanders of London Marchant, nigh Shooters hill. Consented unto by his own Me, acted by M. Browne, Mistris Drewry and trusty Roger agents therin: with thier several ends" (S. R. 17 November 1599). See. Andrew Clark, Domestic Drama, vol. 1, p. 159.
29. Leonora Brodwin claims that the uniqueness of George Browne's character among the early literary adulterous lovers lies in the fact that he is the only male to remain dedicated to his love until his death. In this respect "he perhaps," Brodwin suggests, "anticipates the later masculine affirmation of worldy love which continues unabated from Shakespeare's Anthonv and Cleopatra to the end of the Jacobean period." See Leonora Brodwin, Elizabethan Love Tragedy, p. 194. Charles Cannon also finds Browne not without redeeming qualities though he is an adulterer and murderer. "Browne", writes Cannon, "is the creation of an author who, in dealing with character, justice, and morality has not taken the easy way our a complete denigration of the villan." Cannon points out that Browne atternpts bravely to protect Anne Sanders by refusing to reveal her complicity in her husband's murder. See A Warnina for Fair Women, ed., Charles Cannon. pp. 86- 87.
30. It is George Browne the newly arrived gallant wtio falls desperately in love with his neighbour and friend George Sander's wife and becomes deterrnined to win her as his wife with the help of mistress Drurie and the servant Rogers. Anne Sanders does behave properly by sending George Browne away when he atternpts to talk her as she sits as the doorstep of her house awaiting the return of her husband. However, she acquiesces to Brome's desire and to his plan as the will of God vuhich she thinks, is transrnitted through the soothsaying of Mrs. Drurie who is a surgeon and fortune teller. (lines, 670-756)
31. It is important to keep in mind that Henry Smith in A Preoarative to Marriaae wams the chaste wife against the impropriety of sitting outside the house:
... Wee cal1 the Wife, Huswife, that is housewife, not a street wife like Thamar ,.... a good wife keepes her house: Therefore Paule biddeth Titus to exhort women that they be chast, keeping at home . . . . And therefore Salmon depainting the Whore, setteth her at the doore, now sitting upon her stalls, now walking in the streets, now looking out the windowes, like curled lezabel, as if she held forth the glasse of ternptation, for vanitie to gaze upon.(79)
32. Browne's attraction to Master Sander's chaste wife is reminiscent of Angelots desire for chaste Isabella.
Bro- Yonder she sits to light this obscure street *...... So chaste her eies, so vertuous her aspect. As do repulse loves false Artilerie; Yet must I speake though checkt with scornful nay, Desire draws on, but Reason bids me staie,(344-52)
33. Kathleen Mcluskie, "Lawless desires well tempered", Erotic Politics, ed., Susan Zimmerman (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 114. 34. See Chapter 1. pp. 51-54. William Gouge suggests some remedies against adultery which will keep conjugal love pure. In order to prevent the sin of adultery he prescribes:
a diligent keeping of the heart (that lustfull thoughts proceed not from thence) of the eyes (that they wander not on the beautie or propernesse of any other like allwrements) of the eares (that they hearken not to any inticements os others) of the tongue (that it utter no unchaste and corrupt communication) of the lips (that they use no wanton daliance) of the feet (that they carry thee not too neare to the place where adulterie may be committed...
Domestical Duties, p. 221.
35. Unlike Arden of Faversham and A Warnina for Fair Women, Women Beware Women draws on Continental European rather than English sources. The main plot derives from semi-fictionalized ltalian history. which also provided John Webster with material for The White Devil. The sub-plot cornes from a French romance. The play has been criticized as a work less original than the Chanaelinq and as revealing a failure of artistic skill. T. S. Eliot found Women Beware Women somewhat tedious and stilted. But he praised the author's characterization of Bianca. complementing Middleton's special insight into female psychology. Other critics commented on the austere dramatic temper of the play. Una Ellis-Fermor has spoken of the play's "grimness" and "plainness". T. B. Tomlinson finds a "deliberate flatness of tone" that pervades the play. Tomlinson daims that because of its severely uncompromising temper the play's end is unsatisfactory. Samuel Schoenbaum has written of the play's "pitiless detachment". Although I find these critical comments provide some important insight in the understanding of the play, the contrality of Middleton's examination of the meaning of marriage and of its synonymity with permanent monogamous love remains unfocused in these critical viewç. See, Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women. Ed. J. R. Mulryne. The Revels plays (London: Methuen & CO . 1975). Introduction xlvii-li. All my quotations from the play are taken from this edition: T. S. Eiiot, Elizabethan Essavs, pp. 93-96: Una Ellis-Fermor, The Jacobean Drama, p. 138: T. B. Tomlison, A Studv of Elizabethan and JIcobean Traaedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964) pp. 158. 184: Samuel Schoenbaum. Middleton's Traaedies: A Critical Study (New York: 1955). p. 102.
36. See Chapter 1, pp. 69-78. 37. M. C. Bradbrook writes of the play as "a study in the progressive deterioration of character". But Bradbrook places more ernphasis on the change in Bianca's character. See, M. C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Traoedy, p. 224. Una Ellis-Fermor sees in Bianca that "hardening of the spirit under certain forms of shock or misery which Middleton portrays carefully." Una Ellis-Fermor, The Jacobean Drama, p. 142. Unlike these critics who view early Bianca favourably, Irving Ribner and Samuel Schoenbaum explain the change by regarding the early Bianca as deceptive and falsely virtuous. See, Irving Ribner, Jacobean Traaedv, pp. 144-45. Samuel Schoenbaum, Middleton's Tra~edies,p. 111. Also for further discussion see, Women Beware Women. Ed., J. R. Mulryne, Introduction. p. Ixv. In contrast to these views, Leonora Brodwin sees the change in Bianca's character as positive growth than deterioration. Brodwin contends that Bianca has accepted her defiler "with the hope that with him she might still achieve some goodness out of the ruins of her innocence." "And", writes Brodwk, "she has built well. converting the Duke's unholy lust into a love that desires the sanctity of marriage". Leonora Brodwin. Elizabethan Love Traaedv, p. 331.
38. J. R. Mulryne points out that R. B. Parker has noticed the repeated use in the text of the word "stranger". Women Beware Women. Ed.. J. R. Mulryne. p. Ixvii.
39. Card. Cease, cease; religious honours done to sin ...... Holy cerernonies Were made for sacred uses, nct for siriful...... Must marriage, that immaculate robe of honour, That renders virtue glorious. fair. and fruitful To her great master, be now made the garment Of leprosy and foulness ? Is this penitence To sanctrfy hot lust ? (4. 3. 1-23)
The Cardinal's speech has the air of orthodox moral authority. According to Inga-Stina Ewbank the Cardinal is an "omniscent judge" who "represents to the play's audience the unavoidable moral scheme they have ignored. Inga-Stina Ewbank, "Realism and Morality in Women Beware Women", Essa~sand Studies, xxii (1969). p. 61. However, others do not find the Cardinal's character and his speech satisfactory. Leonora Brodwh suggests that the Cardinal's moral "ideal is the result of' severe learning "completly divorced form experience." L. L. Brodwin. Elizabethan Love Traoedv, p. 330. David M. Holmes finds the Cardinal if not devious, definitely lacking in resolve. He describes the Cardinal as figure of "tractable shallowness" who " displays a weakness of character that renders him incompetent to deal with the Duke's hardened corruption. David M. Holmes. The Art of Thomas Middleton: A Critical Studv (Oxford: Clarendon Press, l97O). pp. 162-182.
40. Concerning the opposing critical views of the Cardinal, J. R. Mulryne suggests that the truth about the Cardinal's role may be that Middleton. Mile needing him as a mouth piece for morality, could not resist using him as yet another "outsider" who in the course of the play joins the society of compromise". Women Beware Wornen, Ed.. J. R. Mulryne. Reveals plays. p. Ixxiii. Although I have found Mulryne's view helpful, I am not sure about Mulryne's suggestion that the Cardinal joins the society of compromise. Nonetheless, Middleton has certainly used him to focus play's message of non-absoluteness of secular domestic morality.
41. The play's tension between the secular immorality and theological morality can be viewed in Pierre Bourdieu's term as the antagonistic tension between blasphemy and euphemism. See Introduction, pp. 21-22. Chapter Five
Married Chastitv: The Problem of Divided Mind and Bodv
In the tragedies of love and marriage, unrestrained passion promotes the violation of social codes and moral norms of ideal affective and senial love, and, by doing sol disrupts the conjugal society of lawfully married couples. One frequently finds as well that immoderate passion can motivate lovers to commit acts of murder and suicide in order to overcome the lawfully irresolvable social and moral predicaments. I have been arguing that the plays under discussion, in their representations of adulterous love, explore the moral absolutes of permanent love and maniage and attempt to accommodate the impermanence of love and marriage within the norm of secular domestic reality.
The tragic conclusions of Arden of Faversham, A Warnina for Fair Women, and Women Beware Women are in accord with and presented in relation to the
English Renaissance ideal of wedded love. We have seen that in the very portrayal of transgressive love and sexuality, each drama has opened up a space for the representation of resistance, although this resistance is necessarily punishable at the end of the plays. Nevertheless, because of the emergence of this space, transgressive love becomes comprehensible not only outside the polarities of morallimmoral but also as true love. However, the experience of amoral affective and sexual desire &en creates confusion of moral codes and social norms for the transgressors themselves. 260
The problems of conflicting interpretive social and moral categories of experience in adulterous love and ideal marriage are explored in Thomas
Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness (1607), in the same author's The
Enalish Traveller (1625). and in John Ford's The Broken Heart (1633). These plays. unlike Arden of Faversham, A Wamina for Fair Women, and Women Beware
Women, examine chastity, the highest matrimonial virtue, not only in terms of physical purity, but also in terms of the fidelity of affective and spiritual love. At the core of these plays' transgressive relationships lies the English Protestant concept of chastity, which underpins the ideal of permanent love and rnarriage.
In the medieval Catholic order of things a single life of celibacy was the holiest state of living and a vow of chastity led to the highest moral virtue - that of perpetual virginity. Post-Reformation English Protestantisrn acknowledged rnarried sexuality as part of the holy living on earth. However, in spite of this acknowledgement of sex as amoral and natural, the English Protestant theologians did not define marriage as a rnere civil covenant of heterosexual union for biological purposes of procreation and the relief of concupiscence. In fact. the Protestant divines in their effort to equate the ideality of marital sexuality to celibate Iife, emphasized the importance of companionship, chaste affective love, spiritual intimacy and love as duty of the conjugal couple. Thus, the new definition of chastity as the highest matrimonial virtue did not refer only to physical purity or sexual monogarny, but also accorded a paramount importance to fidelity in affection and spiritual love. In the context of this new definition of chastity, A Woman Killed 26 1
With Kindness, The Broken Heart, and The Enalish Traveller, by focusing on the problems of restoring violated marriage to the ideality of rnonogamous semal and affective love, question the norm of permanent marriage and love.
Heywood in A Woman Killed With Kindness presents an unconventional resolution of the problem of infidelity and permanent marriage by emphasizing the spiritual aspect of ideal wedded love. Traditionally the play has been considered as the finest example of Eluabethan domestic tragedy.' Its singularity is repeatedly attributed to the fact that for the first time in English drama an erring wife is treated compassionately without the extravagance and sensationalism of murder.
However, these praises have not been ~Mhoutqualification. Critics have commented on the play's lack of structural and thematic unity and on its inadequate characterization. Also, in spite of the obvious homiletic pattern, the play has been criticized for the absence of any moral insight in its conclusion.*
As Brian Scobie points out, however, since 1946 the critical scholarship on
A Woman Killed VVith Kindness has taken its direction from Freda L. Townsendts article "The Artistry of Thomas Heywood's Double Plots." Townsend argues convincingly that the play's main and sub plots are unified by the theme of the rewards of virtue and wages of sin.3 Unlike T.S. Eliot and many othersV4she does not find any ambiguity in the play's moral vision. Peter Ure endorses Townsend's claims for the thematic unity of A Woman Killed With Kindness in his article
"Marriage and Domestic Drama in Heywood and Ford." Emphasizing the paradox in the play's title, Ure finds that "kindness" is the unifying theme of the play.5 Mile 262
I have found Ure's view helpful in my understanding of the tragic irony of the title as an important part of the thernatic structure of the main plot, his contention that
"kindness" is the main thematic goal of the play appears to me limited.
I propose that it is the critics' failure to acknowledge the epistemological dimension in Heywood's representation of marital infidelity and of its unconventional resolution that has subjected A Woman Killed With Kindness to these criticisms of moral ambiguity, lack of thematic unity, and inadequate characterization. Critics have failed to view the play as a rnulti-leveled aesthetic form that is simultaneously a cognitive mode. The play is more than a tragedy of forbidden love, nor is it a dramatized sermon on marital infidelity or on the "erring woman." Furthermore, the possibility of viewing the play as an example of ideal Christian conduct is excluded despite the non-violent punishment and eventual forgiveness of an adulterous wife by her wronged husband? In fact, A Woman Killed With Kindness uses the tale of an adulterous liaison and the kindness of her wronged husband to question the moral absolutes of matrimonial love and the ideality of permanent marriage.
Unlike the plays of adulterous love we have already discussed, A Woman
Killed With Kindness does not contain any murder or violence. However, it has many other ingredients in common with Arden of Faversham and its special links with A Wamina for Fair Women are quite noticeable. Like A Warnin~for Fair
Women, the play starts with images of domestic happiness. The ideality of John and Anne Frankford's aptly matched marriage and the perfection of Anne's wifely virtues are stated by Sir Charles in the opening scene: Lord sir, in what a happy state live you; ..*...... You both adore each other, and your hands Methinks are matches. There is equality In this fair combination; you are both scholars, 80th Young, both being descended nobly. (1 :65-72)
The knight describes the perfection of Anne and Master Frankford's marriage by using social, economic and physical criteria. However, in spite of this emphasis on equality in their match, Anne is described as an ideal wife because of her self- effacing virtues of "meekness" and "patience" (137). Master Frankford speaks of his perfect wife and marital happiness in terms of material possessions:
...... But the chief Of al1 the sweet felicities on earth, 1 have a fair, a chaste, and loving wife, Perfection ail, al1 truth, al1 ornament. (IV:10-13)
In light of Frankford's ideal marriage, Anne's adultery has perplexed many critics.'
Anne's easy acquiescence to Wendoll's seduction and her cornpl icity in the secret liaison have repeatedly been cited as unmotivated. But as Andrew Clark points out,
Heywood is not without supporters of his characterization of Anne. Indeed, critics have defended Heywood not only by pointing out that Anne Frankford's fall is in accord with the tradition of a "sinning woman" but also by acknowledging the fictional credibility of her fak8
David Cook, like T.S. Eliot before himVgdoes not find the scene of Anne's fall improbable. Cook contends that "there is nothing mean or small about [Anne's] sin, 264 as there is about [Frankford's] virtue." Cook argues that the weaknesses in their marriage that leave it vulnerable result from the Me's inexperience and the absence of passion in the relation~hi~.'~Although Cook's analysis provides a plausible psychological reason for Anne's capitulation to Wendoll's seduction. it appears partial, since it ignores the issue of betrayal in Anne's adultery.
The reason for Anne's puuling act of adultery cannot be attributed to the fallible nature of woman and to her calmly affectionate marriage. It also is not attributable to her cold and cornplacent husband." In fact, the reason for her adultery lies in Anne's failure to understand chastity as the matrimonial virtue that includes both physical and spiritual love. Unlike the other literary adulteresses.
Anne. by consenting passively to Wendoll's illicit love. remains unaware of her own active betrayal of her marriage and expresses only spiritual concern about the violation of matrimonial love.
A Woman Killed With Kindness presents adulterous love as an unregulated passion. As the lovers yield to their illicit passion, the play focuses on the emotional complexity of this process, revealing the amorality of sexuality and ethical immorality of adultery. In scene vi, Wendoll in a long monologue tries to restrain his erotic desire for his friend's wife:
l'II drive away this passion with a Song...... I will forget her; I will arm myself Nat to entertain a thought of love to her; ...... O God! O God! VVith Mata violence I am hurry'd to rny own destruction. There goest thou, the most perfect'st man
..-...... *....**.. And shall I wrong his bed? A villain, and a traitor to his friend. (6.2-25)
Wendoll expresses sincere concern about the irnmorality of his desire because it
involves betrayal of Frankford's friendship. Unlike Falstaff of The Merv Wves of
Windsor, Wendoll does not casually plan to commit adultery for economic purpose.
Nor does he, like the Duke of Women Beware Women and George Browne of A
Warnina For Fair Women, think if Ming Frankford in order to love Anne lawfully.
Wendoll, like Giovani in Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, is caught between the
socio-moral imperatives of love and marriage and his individual proclivity which is
not in accord with the norms of love and sexuality.
In fa@ Wendoll does not perceive his submission to illicit passion as a willful
act of transgression, "The swift fates," he daims, "drag me at their chariot wheel"
(6O). In pleading insufficient will to resist a power beyond his control Wendoll
seems like a passive victirn who fails to take responsibility for his own actions.
Similarly, through her own action in the seduction, Anne skirts responsibility to
remain chaste and protect her husband's honour:
It is my husband that maintains your state; Will you dishonour him? I am his wife That in your power hath left his whole affairs; It is to me you speak? (SC. 6:121 -24)
Anne attempts to resist Wendoll's enticement by reminding him that his adulterous
love will dishonour her husband, who trusts and supports him financially. Anne 266
seems to think it is Wendoll's responsibility to behave properly so she can remain
chaste, protecting her husband's honour.
Anne expresses a dualistic view of body and spirit in her concem for the
spiritual union with her husband while yielding to a physical violation of her
marriage vows. In fact, Anne does not reject Wendoll's adulterous love as an
inherently evil desire. In the temptation scene Wendoll makes an impassioned
attempt to win Anne by stating that love and Me are inseparable to him. "Beggary,
shame. death, scandal, and reproach," he swears. "For you l'II hazard al1 - what
care I I For you l'II live, and in your love l'II die" (6.1 36-138). This time Anne admits that she is attracted to Wendoll by passion and pity. But she still tries to resist this
attraction by reminding him of the inseparable spiritual bond of her marriage. "The
love 1 bear my husband is as precious / As my soul's health" (6.14041). Mer being
assured of Wendoll's promise that secrecy will protect her husband's honour,
Anne's spiritual moral defense against adultery breaks down. "What shall I say,"
Anne explains, "my sou1 is wand'ring, and hath lost her way 1 O Master Wendoll. O"
(6.149-51). To Anne and her adulterous lover Wendoll's illicit love is not inherently
immoral. Its moral unacceptability depends only on the possible dishonour to her husband caused by the public knowiedge of her adultery. It is in the gap between the Iovers' public and private sense of honour by which the play succeeds in presenting illicit love as amoral. Unlike the adulterers and adulteresses of contemporary literature, Anne and Wendoll appear weak-willed rather than wilVul in their transgression. 267
The depiction of Anne and Wendoll's victimization by an illicit passion that
leaves the will impotent is used as a thematic strategy to explore the ethical and
spiritual absolutes of love and marriage. It can be argued that the portrayal of Anne
as a godly but weak-willed transgressor has made possible a theologically correct yet socially unconventional resolution of the problem of adultery.
AIthough Anne's fall is due to her weak will, after the discovery of her sin she
shows determination and endurance in her atonement. This leads to the
regeneration of her infected will and to her moral triumph in the reinstitution of her
marriage.12 Anne also learns to be actively chaste in her conduct. When Wendoll comes to express sympathy, for example, not only does she ask him to leave but she also accuses him as the tempter ("devil") who has destroyed her honour.
Unlike Alice and Bianca, Anne does not remain true to her adulterous love.
Nor does Anne, like Anne Sanders in A Warnincr for Fair Women, acknowledge her willing complicity in her illicit sexuality. Indeed, Anne Frankford's physical infidelity without any commitment of true love is part of the play's covert agenda for exploring the moral absolutes of chastity. Since Anne's adultery is without affective love, it has only defiled her physically. Thus she is able to restore
her marriage after purrfying the flesh by starvation and tears. Finally. Anne's divided sense of body and spirit is revealed through her self-inflicted death by stawation. milean ideal Me, Anne's adultery has invited much critical speculation. her unconventional treatment by wronged husband Master Frankford has fared no better critically. In fad. Master Frankford's merciful treatment of his adulterous wife has been called by critics a significant modification upon the contemporary dornestic tragedies of adu~ter~.'~Traditionally, Frankford's lack of violence and forgiveness of his penitent Mehave been viewed as manifestations of his Christian piety and theological moral vision. l4However, many recent critical enquiries have focused on the paradoxical nature of his kindness, since the adulterous wife dies in spite of the husband's merciful treatment. Such analyses not only find the conclusion of the play morally ambiguous. but also question the notion that
Frankford can be accurately described as an "unequivocally long-suffering and virtuous husband."15
It is undeniable that wronged husband Master Frankford's theological moral vision and emphasis on the spiritual aspect of matrimonial love allow hirn to reinstitute his marriage by forgiving his punished and penitent adulterous wife.
When Frankford discovers Anne's adultery, he restrains himsetf from exacting a physical revengeI6 because of his concern for the souls of the sinners:
O me unhappy, I have found them lying Close in each other's arms, and fast asleep. But I would not damn two precious souls Bought with my Saviour's blood and send them laden With al1 their scarlet sins upon their backs Unto a fearful judgement, their holives Had met upon my rapier. (13,4349)
The custom of dealing with adultery through a violent response is reflected not only
in Anne's expedation of physical punishment, but also in the response of Nicholas and Acton to Frankford's injury (1 7.16-22). But in the moment that Frankford discovers his wife's infidelity, the physical violence is averted because Frankford's primary concern is with the spiritual weifare of the sinners. Frankford also expresses his kindness by providing his fallen wife with al1 physical cornforts and allowing her to retain al1 of her material possessions. Nevertheless, he punishes his wife emotionally by banishing her from their home and denying her the presence of her children and husband.
Frankford's non-violent punishment of Anne and later forgiveness of his erring wife have been viewed as part of the play's homiletic design which includes sin. repentance, atonement and forgiveness. This emphasis on the homiletic import of the thematic structure makes Frankford appear to be not as a man of compassion but a "theological prig." Many of the paradoxical views17 about Frankford's conduct stem from the critics' failure to view Frankford as a man who does not understand the spiritual as a part of the corporeal, or a man who has a dualistic view of the body-mind relation. In spite of the excessive critical emphasis on the religious aspect of his character, Master Frankford is a worldly man who expresses his pridr in his materially successful life and marriage: How happy am I amongst other men ...... I am a gentleman, and by my birth Companion vvith a king; a king's no more. I am possessed of many fair revenues, SufFïcient to maintain a gentleman. Touching my mind, I am studied in al1 arts; ...... But the chief Of ail the sweet felicities on earth, I have a fair. a chaste, and loving wife, Perfection all, - al1 truth, al1 ornament. If man on earth may truely happy bel Of these at once possess'd. sure I am be. (4.1-1 9)
To the inventory of his personal and material accomplishments (birth, rank, rnoney, education), Master Frankford adds, with special emphasis, his ideal wife.
The words "ornament" and "possessed," used in Frankford's description of his perfect wife and marital happiness, reveal that Frankford understands the ideality of marriage only in material terms. It is through the tragic experience of a violation of his materially ideal marriage that Frankford learns to acknowledge the inviolable spiritual aspect of marriage. This is the realization which makes the unconventional resolution of the problern of adultery possible. However.
Frankford's complete forgiveness of and reconciliation with Anne take place only after Anne's repentance is made manifest in her approaching death, by starvation
(or mortification of the flesh). As a result, the play silently points to Frankford's fh e failure to accept the spirit as part of,body. Indeed, it can be argued that the non- sensuous nature of Frankford's reconciliation is a refusal to hold that Anne's 271 infidelity may be redeemable and that it points to the inflexible spiritual morality of matrimonial love. Moreover. Frankford's non-violent spiritual solution to the problem of adultery is poignant since it is without cost to Frankford who does not have to live with its consequences. Furthermore. while Master Frankford's unconventional treatment of his adulterous wife initially seemed to offer a radical perspective on adultery, ultimately Anne's death is a tacit endorsement of the conventional view that marital infidelity is an irreparable transgression.
In the context of social and moral ideality of permanent rnonogarnous marriage, A Woman Killed With Kindness offers spiritual reconciliation as a remedy for the problem of physical infidelity. However. when viewed in the light of the title's oxymoron which is repeated in the final lines of the play, this spiritual solution seerns to have been used by the author to reveal the inadequacy of spiritual love as a restoration of the corporeality of normative marriage. The tragic end of the play points to the protagonists' mind-body dualism, which makes them unable to accept the spiritual as part of the physical, or unable to accept the embodiment of spirit. Thus,the unconventional spiritual remedy of the problem of marital infidelity is also a critique of that remedy. In fact, the unease of the poignant and sad end of the play invites the audience to consider a more appropriate solution (perhaps of a social and legal nature) for the marital problems of domestic secular reality.
In the unconventional conclusion of A Woman Killed VVith Kindness, the adulterous Me's death immediately following her reinstatement by her husband as 272 wife and mother is appropriate in relation to Master Frankford's view of marriage and wedded love. In the light of the emphasis on infidelity as the root of the disintegration of an ideal maniage, one finds that in John Ford's The Broken Heart fidelity does not fare any better in averting the tragedies of love and marriage. In
The Broken Heart, it is neither unregulated erotic desire nor violation of moral norms that figure as the cause which brings tragic deaths to the lovers.
Nevertheless, strict adherence to ideal conduct of an affective and erotic love does not succeed in bringing a happy resolution and fails to prevent the tragic ending.
In the context of our preceding discussion, Ford's portrayal of ideal love and sexuality in The Broken Heart, by revealing the polymorphous nature of affective and sexual fidelity. questions its ideality as a moral absolute in matters of love and marriage.
It is undeniable that at an obvious level the evils of the contemporary social practice of enforced rnarriage lie at the root of the tragic developments of the various plots of the play.18 However, the view of The Broken Heart only as a tragedy of an enforced marriage wtiich valorizes the traditional virtues of stoic endurance, emotional restraint and courage, ignores the problernatic and ethical issues of ideal love and marriage the play is attempting to address. Rather, the theme of enforced rnarriage in conjunction with a broken betrothal is used to explore the moral and legal absolutes of love and marriage. Even though the play's central theme of enforced marriage for social and economic gain was not an 273
uncornmon subject in the domestic dramas of the homiletic tradition, Ford's use of revenge tragedy convention^^^ adds a new dimension to the issue.
An earlier play, The Miseries of Enforced ~arriaae~'(1607), emphasizes that
marriage with one partner after a pre-contract with another is simply adultery.
Although Penthea in The Broken Heart describes herseif as one who Iives in adultery because of her broken betrothal and enforced marriage, the two plays differ significantly in the manner and purpose of emphasizing this. Ford's use of the theme of enforced marriage in conjunction with the subject of broken betrothal as the central plot of a romantic court tragedy allows the play to go beyond the simple didactic purpose of condemning the evil social practice. In fact, by developing a conventional theme within an unconventional formal design Ford's play questions the inviolability of spiritual love and the indissolubility of lawful conjugal union. The
Broken Heart emphasizes the wnfliding social and moral imperatives of ideal love and marriage through the characteriration of Orgilus. who is a victim of a broken betrothal. But Orgilus remains passive in his suffering, unlike Clare Harcop of The
Miseries of Enforced Marriaae, Mariana of Measure for Measute and Aspatia of The
Maidts Traaedv.
As we have seen, the moral theologians of the period spoke strongly against the social practice of enforced maniage, and they advocated freedom of choice in the selection of marriage partners in order to avoid marital discord. They also emphasized the importance of mutual love and "apt match" as a ways of preventing 274
unhappiness in marriage, though they did not recommend divorce and remarriage as rernedies for an incompatible or unhappy rnarriage.21 Although legal marriage was the paradigm of ideal sexuality and a remedy for incontinence, "joining hearts" and "knitting affections together" were wnsidered important constituents of a happy marriage. John Dod and Robert Cleaver remind their readers that 'they canst become one flesh lawfully, when there wanteth union of the heart, the true natural mother of al1 marriage duties." William Whately gives a similar warning against marriage without love: "Their hearts must be united as well as their bodies, else their union prove more troublesome than can be imagined." Furthermore, the new definition of chastity emphasizes fidelity of affective as well as sexual love in marriage. Daniel Rogers explains that chastity is not only "that virtue whereby parties married. keepe their bodies from being defiled strange flesh," but also is "the main charter of love. thereof. evidencing that the heart loves entirely. because the bodies are kept from pollution.22 The requirement of purity of both affective and sexual love for the ideal happy marriage, in a society where enforced marriage was not uncommon and divorce was not legal, created conflicts of values and problematic love and marriage situations.
Most scholars agree that enforced marriage and its consequent unhappy marital situation in The Broken Heart is neither unconventional nor novel in the contemporary domestic dramas representing love and However, Ford's manner and milieu are vastly different from the previous treatments of this theme 275 of domestic drama pr~per.*~Ford, by using the romantic revenge convention to dramatize enforced maniage, makes a definite departure from homiletic tradition and succeeds in focusing on the ethical problems that arise from such a situation.
The play has been criticized for its "overloaded" plot and rnultiplicity of tragic characters which do not allow a single focus of audience ~~rn~ath~.*~Contrary to this view that finds an incongruity between the play's theme and its formal design,
l propose that the "overloaded" plot is a part of The Broken Heart's unconventional structural and thematic form. Ford's use of a group of interlocked episodes on tragic love and marriage succeeds not only in foregrounding the play's social agenda of condemning enforced marriage. but also of questioning the moral absolutes of ideal love and marriage by presenting the irresolvable ethical issues inherent in the ideal. Moreover, Ford's unconventional characterisations of both the victims and the aggressors involved in enforced marriage permits the play to reveal the disturbingly tragic but just consequences of the destruction of true love for social and pecuniary gain.
The dramatic context that is used for the development of the play's tragedy
is presented in Orgilus' opening dialogue with his father. It is revealed that Orgilus' betrothal of chaste love was broken by Penthea's enforced marriage to the wealthy nobleman Bassanes. Orgilus explains to his father the inviolable nature of their contracted love:
A freedom of converse, an interchange Of holy and chaste love, so fixed our souk In a firm growth of union. that no time Can eat into the pledge. We had enjoyed The sweets our vows expected, had not cruelty Prevented al1 those triumphs we prepared for, By Thrasus his untimely death. (1.1.29-34)
It is obvious that Orgilus is describing a spousal de ~raesenti.~~In the contemporary social and legal context, such spousals corresponded to a civil marriage contract and took the form of a rnutual plighting of faith and troth. preferably in the presence of a priest as witness. Sexual union was not forbidden after the spousal, although it was considered proper to wait for the public solemnization in the church as well. Orgilus. in his description of their chaste premarital love does not mention the fact that the ideal sexual conduct of the contracted lovers rendered their bond of love violable. In other words, it was
Penthea's sexual purity that permitted her brother to force her to marry a man of his choice.
Although at the tragic end of the play Orgilus dies as a protagonist of a romantic revenge tragedy, the play reveals that his defeat in love and life does not stem from any uncontrollable passion, but from what he admits were his social and economic disadvantages:
For lthocles her brother, proud of youth. And prouder in his power. nourished closely The memory of former discontents, To glory revenge. By cunning partly. Partly by threats. 'a woos at once. and forces His virtuous sister to admit a marriage With Bassanes, a nobleman in honour And riches, I confess. beyond my fortunes. (1.1 -39-46)
Ithocles' choice of Bassanes as Penthea's husband over her contracted lover focuses not only on the evil social practice of enforced marriage but also reveals that money and rank are important criteria of choice. This emphasis on the social and economic context of the botched love and marriage is borne out by Orgilus' comments to lthocles before he murders him:
Ithocles: Thou meanest to kill me basely?
Orgilus: 1 fore knew The last act of her life, and trained thee hither To sacrifice a tyrant to a turtle. You dreamed of kingdoms, did 'ee?
. . . Whiles Penthea's groans and tortures, Her agonies. her miseries. afflictions, Ne'er touched upon your thought. As for my injuries, Alas. they were beneath your royal pity. (4.4.26-37) lnstead of presenting Ithocles' murder as a crime of passion, the play presents it as an act of justice that avenges Penthea's suffering and Orgilus' personal humiliation for inferior social and economic rank, and thus emphasizes the social context of the tragedy of love and marriage.
Furthemore, Orgilus remains unwaveringly convinced of the indissolubility of the union of love in spirit despite his beloved's physical union with another man. Unlike the conventional passive literary victims of broken betrothal. Orgilus' refusal to accept his defeat in love and marriage brings out the problematic moral issues inherent in ideal love which calls for absolute purity of affective and sexual love.
In fact. Ford in The Broken Heart has added a new active socio-moral dimension to the conventional passive victim of enforced marriage by allowing Orgilus to reclaim Penthea as his wife of chaste love. Orgilus is not only a victim of the unjust social codes and ambiguous moral norms of his stratified society, but he is also an active agent who attempts to remedy his unfair defeat by not rejecting his beloved because of her physical impurity:
Beauteous Penthea, wedded to this torture By an insulting brother. being secretly Compelled to yield her virgin freedom up To him who never can usurp her heart, Before contracted mine. is now so yoked To a most thraldom. misery. (1.1.49-54)
Orgilus' statement describes the unhappiness of a loveless though lawful marriage.
The passage also implicitly establishes the claim of the inviolable bond of lover over the indissoluble lawful marital union. It is by separating Penthea's mind and body that Orgilus (like Master Frankford of A Woman Killed With Kindness) is able to claim inviolability of the union of chaste love. Furthermore. the cornplex psycho- sexual implications of the broken betrothal of ideal love is revealed men Orgilus no longer wishes to remain in a state of passive suffering:
Orgilus: Time can never On the white table of unguilty faith Write counterfeit dishonour. Turn those eyes, The arrows of pure love upon that fire. Penthea: Be not frantic. Orgilus: All pleasures are but mere imagination. Feeding the hungry appetite with steam And sight of banquet, whilst the body pines. Not relishing the real taste of food. Such is the leanness of a heart divided From intercourse of troth-contracted loves. No horror should deface that precious figure Sealed with the lively stamp of equal souls. (2.3.2441)
Orgilus, disguised as a scholar in the secluded royal garden, tells Penthea of the suffering of unsuccessful betrothed chaste love. But after being chastized by
Penthea for the impropriety of his wnduct Orgilus discloses his identity and insists that there is nothing dishonourable about his chaste love for her because the union of souls is indissoluble. He reminds her that because of his cornmitment to their chaste love and union in spirit, he lives a life without physical love. Furthermore, in order to win Penthea as his wife, he insists on the inviolability of their prior union
in spirit and he shows no concern about her present status as the legal uvlfe of
Bassanes.
The moral theologians of the period repeatedly stated that marriage is not a mere physical union to remedy incontinence. They ernphasized the importance of the spifitual and emotional satisfaction within the society of the conjugal couple.
The new definition of chastity did not only refer to sexual monogarny but also accorded paramount importance to the fidelity of affection.*' The play's depiction of a chaste Orgilus' pleading with Penthea who is already married to Bassanes to win her back as his Me, focuses on the conflictual aspects of the English
Renaissance ideal of chastity. It is due to Orgilus' emphasis on the spiritual aspect of ideal love that he considers Penthea his true wife permanently:
. . . Dear Penthea, If thy soft bosom be not turned to marble, Thou'lt pity Our calamities. My interest Confirms me thou are mine still...... *...... I would possess my wife. The equity of Very reason bids me. (2.3.61-72)
By emphasizing the spiritual nature of their former love and the proper moral wnduct of the lovers' present encounter, the play silently questions the binaries of the moral and legal absolutes of ideal love and marriage. Also, the former lovers' present encounter. in a changed social situation, focuses on the contending daims of spiritual bonds of chaste love and legal marriage for permanency. Orgilus' uncompromising conviction that their love is permanent renders his attempt to win
Penthea problematic, but not immoral or illicit. However, it can be argued that in the light of the final tragic resolution of the piay, Orgilus' view is used more as a rhetorical strategy. It focuses on the dichotomous ideality of the English
Renaissance love and marriage and it is used more to set the dramatic tension of the revenge tragedy in motion than as a serious solution to the problem of broken betrothal by an enforced marriage. The play presents a paradoxically balanced 281 dramatic portrayal of Orgilus as the victim of an enforced marriage. In his premeditated revenge on lthocles for forcing Penthea to marry Bassanes Mich, he says, has rendered him a "married bachelor," Orgilus is an unforgiving friend and a cruel avmger of his defeat in love and marriage. At the same time, by his support for and rejoicing in his sister's marriage of her choice and love, Orgilus reveals himself to be a propitious brother with a generous heart who is capable of transcending his own frustrations.
In a society where divorce and remarriage are not permitted. Orgilus, in spite of the ideal nature of his love, finds hirnself in a no-win situation. Since he cannot mariy his betrothed, he must remain unmarried because marriage with another (like
Scarborrow's marriage in The Miseries of Enforced Marriaae) would be considered as adultery and his children bastards. But unlike the conventional hero of a romantic revenge court tragedy,28 Orgilus is not guilty of illicit desire or of unregulated passion. One gets a clear notion of his conception of love, which is inseparable from marriage. from the bridai Song that he sings as an act of benedidion in his sister's marriage (3.4.70-81). The eleven-line Song has nothing to do with either courtly or platonic love themes: it describes the bourgeois ideal of happy wedded love.
Nevertheless, in Orgilus' character the play presents an unconventional critique of the victirn of broken betrothal as well as enforced marriage. But in the play's tragic end (which includes Penthea's suicide because of irresolvable moral 282 conflict, Ithocles' murder by Orgilus and his own suicide) this radical critique is rejected. If Orgilus' refusal to accept the indissolubility of Penthea's lawful marriage has brought death and destruction to Sparta's court society, then Penthea's passive acceptance does not bring happiness and conwrd. In fact, Penthea, in her attempt to remain acquiescent and faithful both in her spiritual union of chaste love with
Orgilus, and in her lawful conjugal union with Bassanes, faces an irresolvable moral dilemma and consequently loses her mind and body.
The Broken Heart's portrayal of Penthea's unhappy enforced marriage was not uncornmon in the contemporary literature. But Ford uses the theme of enforced marriage as an adjunct to the theme of a broken betrothal of ideal love and of individual choice, and this renders Penthea's more complex than her literary contemporaries. Moreover, when Penthea, as the lawfully married chaste wife of
Bassanes is allowed to face Orgilus' claim on her as his true wife, emphasis is successfully placed on the psychological aspect of her problematic moral and social situation. Furthermore, her characterization as the absolutely chaste and dutiful wife of an abusive and insanely jealous husband presents a conventional view of unhappy enforced marriage. Penthea's excessive concern with marital chastity impels her to reject al1 sensuous enjoyment. In her response to Bassanes' attempt to cheer her with a suggestion that they will go to court to greet her brother (which will provide her with an occasion of pleasure and happiness), Penthea discloses her renunciatory ideal of chaste conduct: Alas, my lord, this language to your handmaid Sounds as would music to the deaf. 1 need No braveries nor cost of art to draw The whiteness of my name into offence.
...... S..... My attires Shall suit the inward fashion of rny mind. To his offer that she "Rule me as thou canst wish," she responds:
I am no mistress. Whither you please. I must attend. All ways Are alike pleasant to me. (2.1.90-108)
In this conversation with her husband Penthea states her determination to adhere to the ideal wrfely virtue of chastity: purity in both body and mind. Also. she reveals herself as a virtuous self-effacing wife who lives in a relation of impassive obedience with her husband. In fact. in dutiful and self-effacing Penthea an ideal
Meis presented. But by allowhg her to be a victim of an enforced marriage and of a broken betrothal of love, the play reveals a problematic space between her ideal marital conduct and her improper marriage. However, the conventional critique of the ideal wife is negatively contained by not allowing Penthea to forgive a repentant lthocles and by letting her motivate Orgilus to his revenge of murder.
Also, in Penthea's seif-inflicteci punishment of death for adultery which she has not committed, the uncompromisingly idealistic critique of a chaste wife is rejected.
Indeed. the complex social wntext of virtuous Penthea's moral predicament focuses on the ethical issues concerning ideal love and marriage. The play emphasizes Penthea's uncornpromising marital chastity through the unconventional portrayal of Orgilus as a victim of broken betrothal vho refuses to accept his defeat in love, and through the depiction of the unhappiness of her marriage with Bassanes which was arranged by her brother for social gain.
However, Penthea's uncompromising virtue of chastity reveals the inner conflict of her unintegrated body and mind. Penthea's unexpected meeting with Orgilus in the royal garden (2.3) depicts her as an absolutely chaste wife of Bassanes:
Rash man, thou layest A blemish on mine honour, with hazard Of thy too desperate Me. Yet 1 profess. By al1 the laws of ceremonious wedlock. I have not given admittance to one thought Of female change, since cruelty enforced Divorced betwixt my body and my heart. Why would you fall frorn goodness thus? (2.3.52-59)
Because of her reverential acceptance of the indissolubility of the sanctified marriage, Penthea, in spite of her loveless marital union, attempts to maintain an absolute standard of honour. She chastises Orgilus and expresses moral indignation for his irnproper conduct. Moreover. she rejects Orgilus' plea unequivocally, and in a ceremonious ritual frees hirn of his vow of chaste love
(2.3.64-70). However, the reasons for her refusal reveal her abhorrence for the cornpromised ideality of her true love:
How, Orgilus, by promise I was thine...... A rape done on my truth. How I do love thee Yet, Orgilus. and yet, must best appear In tendering thy freedom...... Live, live happy, Happy in thy next choice...... Hear me, In a word IfIItell thee why. The virgin dowry which my birth bestowed 1s ravished by another. My true love Abhors to think that Orgilus deserved No better favours than a second bed. (2.3.77-103)
Penthea rejects the suit of her true lover, this is not on account of her faithfulness to her legal husband, but because of her belief in the importance of the sewal puriv in ideal love and marriage. Her emphasis on the physical purity of true love causes her to perceive herself as defiled in her legally arranged marriage. It is ironic that in the followîng scene (3.2.1 50-70) Penthea defends her honour against her husband's distrusffu I accusations of infidelity by stating her absolute marital fidelity. However virtuous Penthea. by considering hersetf both chaste and unchaste in her love and maniage, silently relativizes the absoluteness of the virtue of chastity.
Unlike other tales of broken betrothal in wntemporary drarnas, in the garden scene Ford in The Broken Heart presents a unique problematic situation in the portrayal of the Penthea-Orgilus broken betrothed love.*' However, the serious implications of the unconventional meeting are averted since the lovers do not transgress any social code or moral norm of conduct. They neither agree to carry out their love secretly nor plot to kill Bassanes to free Penthea from the permanency of lawful marriage. Indeed, the unconventional meeting of the lovers in the secluded royal garden functions as a central event in the development of their tragic end. The lovers' unconventional secret encounter allows the play to focus on its covert agenda which concerns the moral and psychical problems that are inherent in the virtue of continence and chastity.
Penthea starts losing her equanimity and moral righteousness as a chaste, dutikil Mejust after meeting with Orgilus. In a conversation with her brother, she expresses her wish to die because of the suffering of her violated conscience. She also describes her untenable moral position:
Ithocles: How does thy lord esteem thee?
Penthea: Such an one As only you have made me: a faith breaker, A spotted whore. Forgive me, I am one In act, not in desires. the gods must witness.
Ithocles: Thou dost belie thy friend.
Penthea: I do not, Ithocles. For she that's wife to Orgilus and lives In known adultery with Bassanes, 1s at best a whore. VVilt kill me now? (3.2.69-75)
Earlier in the play because of her unquestioned acceptance of the moral norm of the permanency of the physical union in a lawful marriage, Penthea rejected the daim of inviolability of her former union of affective and spiritual love. 287
But after being reminded by the chaste Orgilus about the inviolability of their spiritual union of true love, Penthea finds it morally unbearable to be Bassanes' wife. The phrases Penthea uses to describe herself were not uncommon in the domestic dramas that dealt the subject of enforced marriage. Clare and
William Scarborrow in The Miseries of Enforced Marriaae use similar epithets to describe their positions after his forced marriage. In this play. the notion that if one partner marries after a precontract another amounts to adultery. receives continual emphasis. However, in spite of these similarities, the two plays are quite different in their purposes and use of this theme. In The Miseries of Enforced
Marriaae the suicide of the former betrothed early in the narrative and infinite patience of an obedient wife who silently tolerates Scarborrods abusive behaviour of frustration and immoral prodigality rnakes Scarborrovr/s situation uncomplicated.
But in The Broken Heart, Penthea's predicament becomes more complex by
Orgilus' aggressive demand end bj her jealous husband's distrust. And. indeed. it is due to the complex context of this subject, that unlike The Miseries of Enforced
Marriaoe. The Broken Heart goes beyond the didactic purpose of denouncing the social custom of enforced marriage and explores the ethical issues which underlie the social and moral ideality of the permanency of love and marriage.
Penthea's paradoxical moral idealism of love and marriage lies at the root of the irremediability of her unhappy situation. She adheres uncompromisingly to the ideality of love and marriage, but unlike Shakespeare's and Midd!eton's successful heroines, accepts her brother's choice for her marriage partner with
passive obedience. Also, because of the absoluteness of her emphasis on the
physical purity of love and permanency of lawful marriage. she remains faithful to
her loveless marriage and rejects the man she truly loves. However, it can be
argued that hilethis excessive emphasis on physical undefilement has forced her
to live in an unhappy marriage. it has also freed her from the narcissistic
possessiveness of her beloved. In fact, unlike Mrs. Wincott in The Enalish
Traveller. Penthea not only forbids Orgilus her Company but also is able to request
him to marry another and be happy (2.3.89-94). Furthermore, in spite of her
personal unhappiness in a loveless marriage, she recommends continence and fidelity in marriage:
I have left me But three jewels to bequeath. The first is My youth, for though I am rnuch old in griefs, ...... *.. To virgin wives, such as abuse not wedlock By freedom of desires, but covet chiefly The pledges of chaste beds, for ties of love. Rather than ranging of their blood. . . (3.5.49-55)
Although Penthea's statement advocates marital fidelity without love. an extreme
conventional notion of chastity, the spectacle of a demented chaste wife on stage
undercuts her credibility. Moreover, her inflexible ideality of love and marriage is
not presented as a positive virtue in the play, since she starves herseff to death as
an act of penance for the sin of adultery which she has not committed. Nevertheless, her defeat in love and life does not undermine her virtuous conduct.
In fact, her tragic end points silently to the fact that the problematic situation of love and marriage cannot be remedied only by adhering strictly to the ideal marital conduct which requires an unquestioned acceptance of the inviolability of (affective and sexual) love.
Indeed. The Broken Heart presents its most extreme idealistic critique of the norm of inviolable love and rnarriage in the character of Calantha. Spartals princess Calantha actively pursues love in choosing lthocles as her marriage partner over Nearchus who is her father's choice as her marriage partner. But this active choice does not fare any better in the play than Pentheals passive acceptance of her enforced marriage.
The depiction of Calantha1sdefeat in love and life focuses on the problem
inherent in her notion of love and marriage considers permanency with ideality.
Penthea kills herself because of the irrevocably lost purity of her true love. but
Calantha decides to die with her dead betrothed lover because she cannot accept the impermanency of love:
Thus I new-marry him whose wife I am. Death shall not separate us...... Be such mere wornen, who with shrieks and outcries Can vow a present end to al1 their sorrows, Yet live to vow new pleasures and outlive them. They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings. Let me die smiling. (5.3.66-76) 290
Underneath Calantha's abhorrence of impermanent love and marriage, which will render her rnerely a natural and amoral woman, lies her understanding of ideal love as changeless and spiritual, and impermanent love as capricious and immoral.
Indeed. because she fails to perceive the impermanency of love and marriage as an unavoidable aspect of earthy love and Me, Calantha chooses to rnarry her dead lover and die with him. Unlike Middleton's Women Beware Women, in The Broken
Heart lovers lose in love and life. not for the transgression of any moral norms or social codes of love and sexuality but for their inflexible ideals. The defeat of the protagonists, who adhereds uncompromisingly to their conviction that absolute fidelity and perrnanency required in ideal love and marriage, raises questions about the ideality of the inviolable of love and marriage.
Broken love vows and the ideality of permanent marriage are addressed with even fuller transgressive implications in Thomas Heywood's The En~lishTraveller.
Although the prologuem announces the play's uniqueness because the playwright has foresaken the contemporary dramatic conventions. The Enalish Traveller has traditionally been viewed as an inferior remake of the author's successful earlier play, A Woman Killed With ~indness~'.Melville A. Clark summerises the likeness between the plays:
Both are domestic tragedies in prosperous middle-class English homes, and both hinge on the same sort of infidelity in a weak, rather than bad woman, with respect to a hero of uncornmon character. forebearing in his punishment, but by his own forbearance producing in the women, vacillating in sin as in virtuel the same result of overwhelming and extinguishing penitence."32 However. despite these resemblences Clark finds the The Enalish Traveller a pale and inferior cupy of the playwright's earlier masterpiece and in man respects it is a debased specimen of the genre.d
However. both T. S. Eliot and Norman Rabkin praise Geraldine as a virtutuous lover. He controls his passion and exhibits seif-restraint when he finds himself deceived by his betrothed lover and trusted frien~i.~~Iwing Ribner notes
Geraldine's likeness to Master Frankford "Mo is a model Christian gentleman."
"...the injured young Geraldine", writes Ribner, "like Frankford, never once thinks of taking any action against the woman and the friend who have betrayed hin~."~~
In fact, the critical views that consider Geraldine an innocent hero daim that the tragic episodes of love and marriage are part of the hero's moral education. And since Mrs. Wncott is the character through whom his education is affected, she assumes central fo~us.~~
Nevertheless, I find that the critics, in their condemnation of the "rotten core" or in their praise of the play's Christian moral scheme. remain unaware of the epistemological dimension of The Enalish Traveller's representation of various improper domestic relationships and transgressive conduct. I suggest that the elements of play that are emphasized by these critics are, in fact. part of the play's multi-leveled exploration of the moral absoluteness of the permanency of lawful 292
marriage and the sanctity of private vows of love and marriage. The play is not simply presenting a tale of an erring wife wi-th a theological scheme of virtue and vice. Nor does it portray only the problems of a loveless arranged marriage between partners of unequal age, and an innocent young man's moral education on love and sexuality.
Of course. it is undeniable that on an obvious level the play presents the tale of an adulterous woman. But Heywood's mixed dramatic conventions, which include satire, platonic love, and homily, along with the plethora of social and moral themes such as those of the broken betrothal. unapt match. and false friend, allow the play to question the ideality of permanent marriage - an ideality that is CO- extensive with the fidelity of the conjugal couple's affective and sexual love. In reference to the critical view that emphasizes The Enalish Traveller's moral depravity theme (where the domestic drama has been sophisticated in compliance with the tastes of the Drury Lane patron^),^' I suggest that the unconventional representation of an adulterous liaison is an attempt to focus on adultery as an act in which social relationships are betrayed and the domestic order disrupted. In fact. it can be argued that the immorality of the quadrilateral adulterous situation is part of an attempt of the victims of broken love to find a lawful remedy for the problem of a loveless unhappy permanent marriage and a chaste betrothed love.
The tension between adulterous love and lawful permanent marriage is set in motion with Master Geraldine's retum from travel, when he is taken in as the son 293
and cornpanion of wealthy Old Wincott. Mrs. Wincott and Geraldine are old
childhood friecds whose intended rnarriage was prevented by Geraldine's travels
and Mrs. Wincott's ananged rnarriage to Old Wincott. Unlike Frankford's ideally
matched happy marriage, the Wincott marriage is an unapt match between
individuals of unequal age. Their failure to produce an heir also contributes to Old
Wincott's unhappiness. Nevertheless. Old Wincott is as generous and
unsuspecting as either Master Sanders of A Warnina for Fair Women or Master
Frankford of A Wornan Killed With Kindness. Not only does he offer his friendship
and hospitality to Geraldine, who is the son of his neighbour, but also he is kind to
Geraldine's friend. Dalavill. In fact, Old Wincott's unqualified offer of friendship to
the man who was once his young Me's promised husband and chaste lover as well
as to a stranger sets the limit of trust against which the betrayals of love, marriage
and friendship take place.
In the opening scene both Mrs. Wincott and Geraldine profess their loyalty to Old Wincott in spite of their rekindled rnutual love:
Y.Ger. A villaine were here, to deceive such trust, Or (were there one) a much worse character. Wfe: And she no lesse, who either beauty, youth Tirne, place. or opportunity could tempt, To injure such a husband. (1. 31)
Because the lovers' chaste behaviour is motivated by Old WincoWs trust rather than
by concern for the sanctity of the marriage, the play tacitly focuses on the ethical
issues of domestic relationships and adultery rather than on theological virtue or sin. Geraldine, unlike Orgilus in The Broken Heart, does not attempt to win Mrs.
Wincott as his wife because of their intended marriage. Nor does he, unlike
Wendoll, try to seduce Mrs. Wincott Mile professing his respect for her husband's friendship and honour. However, in an ingenious proposal to Mrs. Wincott,
Geraldine suggests that they make a solemn vow to marry as soon as her husband dies, and in the interirn period they continue to love each other only affectively as brother and sister. Unlike Penthea in The Broken Heart, Mrs. Wincott not only acquiesces readily to her former lover's proposal, but also demands another vow from Geraldine to ensure herself of her future husband's chaste love:
Y.Ger. However let us love still, I entreat That neighbourhood and breeding will allow; So much the Lawes Divine and Humaine both, 'Twixt brother and a sister will approve; Heaven then forbid, that they should lirnit us VVish well to one another. ...*...-...... Y.Ger. Will you conferre your widow-hood on mee?
Wfe. Till that day corne, you shall reserve yoursetfe A single man; converse nor Company With any Woman, Contract nor Combine With Maid, or Widow; which expected houre, As I do wish not haste, so when it happens, It shall not come unwelcome; you hear all, Vow this (pp. 32-33)
The moral purily and social propriety with which Geraldine pleads their vows of love and future rnarriage (which give him present access to Mrs. Wincott's bedchamber at any hour of the night even before Old WncoWs death) are questionable and 295 ethically unsound. Nevertheless, the irregular secret vow of future marriage which emphasizes the platonic nature of their present love makes the improper
relationship between Geraldine and Mrs. Wincott appear honest and idealistic. In
light of the unhappy and tragic end of their relationship at the play's conclusion, this emphasis on the non-sensuous nature of the relationship appears to have been used more as a dramatic strategy to explore the moral absolutes of the private vow of affective love than as a morally correct rernedy for adulterous love and unhappy marriage.
Penthea, in The Broken Heart, is a victim of broken betrothal who rejects her true love and dies as a chaste wife in an unhappy arranged marriage. Mrs. Wincott. in a somewhat similar problematic situation. agrees to have an affective love relation with her former chaste lover Geraldine, in order to remain faithful in her lawfully indissoluble marriage. While Penthea's love for Orgilus is unseifish and renunciatory. Mrs. Wincott's exaction of a vow of fidelity from Geraldine and committing of adultery with his friend reveal the self-aggrandizing possessiveness and double standard of her affective and sexual love. Her failure to understand that the permanency of legal marriage is synonymous with the unqualified fidelity of affective and sexual love has made her unfaithful both in her marriage and in her secret liaison of affective love.
It is undeniable that The Enalish Traveller presents a strong critique of an unchaste wife. However. the gravity of her transgression is undercut by the play's 296 focus on the problematic social context of her transgressive relationships. Mrs.
Wîncott is a passive victirn of a broken promise of love. Like Penthea, she too has subsequently accepted an ill-suited arranged marriage:
I know your [Geraldine's] meaning. It was once voyc'd, that wee two should have Matcht, The world so thought, and many Tongues so spake, But heaven hath now dispos'd us other wayes; And being as it is, (a thing in me, Which I protest, was never wisht, nor sought) Now done, I not repent it. (p. 31)
Unlike Alice of Arden of Faversham, Mrs. Wincott becomes an adulteress in spite of her uncomplaining acceptance of her loveless marriage. Indeed. it can be argued that it is her husband's indiscreet generous hospitality and friendliness with young single men that puts their marriage in je~~ard~.~~Moreover, unlike Alice of
Arden of Faversham. Mrs. Wincott does not consider the permanency of lawful marriage to be synonymous with fidelity in affective and sexual love. In fact, her betrayals of lawful conjugal love and chaste adulterous love reveal her failure to understand that the permanency of marriage requires unqualified fidelity of body and mind from both conjugal partners. This point is borne out in the concluding section of the tale of her adultery. After the discovery of her infidelity with Dalavill.
Mrs. Wincott repents and dies quickly as atonement for her sin of the flesh.
However, in her death-bed letter she accuses Dalavill of enticing her into the sin, but commends Geraldine to her husband for his impeccably virtuous conduct. Her 297
high regard for Geraldine's conduct points to her failure to see the impropriety of the irregular affective love Geraldine initiated. In other words - like Anne
Frankford and Ann Sanders - Mrs. Wncott, in her repentance, acknowledges her
physical infidelity as an unabsolvable sin.
Unlike Orgilus' betrothed chaste love for Penthea in The Broken Heart, and
Wendoll's respect for Master Frankford's honour and friendship, Geraldine's vow of chaste love for Mrs. Wncott and regard for Old Wincott's trust and hospitality is not only psychologically complex but also morally ambiguous. In contrast to
Orgilus, Geraldine finds an unusual way to continue their love after being !old by
Mrs. Wincott that she does not regret the loss of her promised love and that she
has accepted her lot in an arranged marriage as Old Wincott's Me. Geraldine. in
his proposal to Mrs. Wincott of an irregular form of love - which allows them to continue their love chastely - is in fact counting on Old Wincott's early death.
"Your husband. to whom rny Soule doth wish 1 A Nester's age, so much he merits from me 1 . . . . Men cannot always live, specially I Such as are old and Crazed"
(22.1. ). Nevertheless, Geraldine's self-delusive notion of chaste love and true friendship, is revealed through his emphasis on the non-sensuous nature of their
secret love and intimacy.
Indeed, Geraldine's long self-pitying misogynistic diatribe condemning Mrs.
Wincott's adultery with his friend Dalavill is more ironic and tragic. As we find in the dramatic context of the discovery scene, his moral condemnations of Mrs. Wncott as an "unchaste impious woman" who has been false to true
conjugal love, as well as his condernnation of Dalavill as a "perjured traitor," cal1
into question his own moral righteousness:
Oh, what more wisth Company can I find, ...... Then the sweet contemplation of her beauty; ...... 'Tis a sweet lady, And every way accomplished: Hath mere accident Brought me thus neere, and I not visit her? ...... Sweet opportunity Offers prevention, and invites me too't: ...... The way unto her chamber frequently Trodden by me at mid-night, and al1 houres; How joyfull to her would a meeting be ...... My fiery love this darkness makes seeme bright And this path that leades to my delight. (P. 69)
In his decision to visit Mrs. Wincott in her bedchamber, Geraldine, Iike Wendoll, yields to his unregulated desire and breaks a promise made to his father to keep
awayfrom WÏncottts house. At the moment in which he yields to his unrestrained
desire for his beloved and violates the promise, Geraldine remains unaware of the
transgressiveness of his conduct. His inability to view his irregular form of affective
love as an adulterous liaison makes him appear more innocent and less corrupt
than the contemporary literary adulterer. It is in Dalavill's secret intrigue with Mrs. 299
Wincott that the play presents a conventional critique3g of the adulterer who has deceived both the lawful husband and the chaste lover physically.
The tragic resolution of the unconventional tale of adultery - presented in
Mrs. Winwtt's death caused by remorse and a stricken conscience - is in accord with the theological moral scheme and conventional literary treatment of an erring wife. Nevertheless, the cornplex social relationship of her adultery has succeeded in emphasizing those ethical issues of trust and betrayal that underlie the ideality of the perrnanency of love, marriage and friendship in secular domestic life. In light of the fact that Old VVincott does not know about Geraldine's secret relation with his wife. however. since he is also unaware of Geraldine's plan to rnarry her after his death, the play's comic resolution of a happy friendship behiveen Old Wncott and
Geraldine not only creates unease but also leaves the problems Endnotes
1. Thomas Heywood. A Woman Killed With Kindness. Ed., R. W. VanFossen (London: Methuen, :961) Introduction. W.xxvi. Van Fossen attributes the success of the play to Heywood's use of the middle-class English setting and the realistic treatment of everyday life and domestic activity. H. H. Adams expresses similar view and explains the play's uniqueness; "A Woman Killed With Kindness, Heywood's acknowledged masterpiece...... [is] the earliest of the extant plays to deal with a situation of farnily life divorced from the extravagance and sensationalism of murder....." molish Domestic or Homiletic Traaedy, p. 144. J. A. Symonds in his introduction to Merrnaid edition of Heywood voices similar opinion; "the play in which Heywood showed for once that he was not unable to produce a masterpiece is A Woman Killed With Kindness." Thomas Heywood, ed. John Addington Symonds, Mermaid edition. pp. xxvii-xxviii. Although Felix Schelling goes too far in his comment that "it is impossible to overpraise A Woman Killed Wth Kindness". his opinion that it is "one of the choicest of Elizabethan plays" has been echoed by other critics and scholars. F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), vol. 1. p. 337.
2. Negative evaluations of j4 Woman Killed With Kindness have been collected by R. W. VanFossen and can be summarized as 1. a failure to achieve unity in the double plot. 2. a failure to provide adequate motivation and development in the characters, and 3. a failure to present either a moral or a tragic treatment of worthy of a serious reader or audience. R. W. VanFossen, ed. A Woman Killed With Kindness. pp. xxvii-lviii.
3. Fred L. Townsend. "The Artistry of Thomas Heywood's Double Plots", PhiloIoaical Quarterly 25(1946): pp. 97-98.
4. T. S. Eliot's daim that the play lacks moral reality, ''that the [play's] interest is always sentimental, and never ethical. . . . Mrs. FranMord yields to her seducer. . . . her decline and death are a tribute to popular sentiment; not, certainly, a vindication of inexorable moral law."T. S. Eliot, Elizabethan Essa~s,p. 113. Irving Ribner suggests that the play states an explicit Christian moral position. However, unlike Shakespeare, ''the dramatist rnakes little attempt to relate his morality to any larger cosmic scheme." See Irving Ribner, Jacobean Traaedv, pp. 52, 59.
5. Peter Ure, "Marriage and The Domestic Drama in Heywood and Ford". En~lishStudies. vol. 32, 1951, pp. 200-21 6. Ure finds it striking how the underplot takes up the paradox of the drama's title. He explains the thematic similarity between the two plots: "Sir Charles must discharge the burden of moral debt which his enemy's kindness has laid no him; similarly, Mistress Frankford must find a way to replay with interest the kindness of Frankford after his discovery of her adultery."
6. See Thomas Heywood. A Woman Kiiled With Kindness. Ed. Brian Scobie. New Mermaids (London: A & C Black, 1985) pp. xxï-xxii. All quotations of #4 Wornaq Killed Wth Kindness are from this edition. Scobie argues that Frankford's unusual punishment of his adulterous wife is ai once more merciful and Christian and at the some time more severe in its moral assertation through being self-inflicted. "Frankford's kindness", wriles Scobie, "not only sears the conscience of his wife, but thereby compels her to accept responsibility for punishing her own deeds. Choosing her own punishment, she confirms the truth of the moral judgement as she understands it." Barbara J. Baines, Thomas Heywood (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984)p. 82. Barbara Baines also expresses some doubts about the ideality of Master Frankford's proper conduct:
Although the charity and forgiveness shown Anne by her injured husband are obviously honourable alternatives to the revenge that such a sin conventionally envoked, Frankford's conscious resolve to kill his wife with kindness and his final acknowledgements of having accomplished this morally questionable goal underscore the limitations of kindness or human charity in both plots.
7. See J. A. Symonds, Shakespeare's Predecessors in The Enalish Drama (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc, 1967, New Edition), p. 373. Symonds believes that Heywood muddled the central seduction scene and erred in handling Anne Frankford. "Heywood", writes Symond, 'Yails to realise her [Anne's] character completely, drawing, as elsewhere in his portraits of women, a dim and vacillating picture. She changes too suddenly frorn love for her newly wedded husband to a weak compliance with Wendoll." F. S. Boas, An Introduction to Stuart Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 182. claims "The chief weakness in the play is that Heywood makes no attempt to depict a wnflict of emotions in Mistress Frankford. She surrenders with merely a sigh to the enchantment of the seducer's tongue." For a summary of various opinions about Anne Frankford's fall, see Hallet D. Smith, "A Woman Killed With Kindness", gMIB, Llll (1938): 138-147. 8. See R. W. VanFossen, ed. A Woman Killed With Kindness. pp. xlvi-xlvii. VanFossen suggests that part of the explanation of Anne's sudden behaviour - the apparent lack of motivation "lies in the beliefs and practices of Heywood's time". Also see Madeleine Doran, bdeavors of Art. pp. 78, 234-238, 250-256. Akfred Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Tradition, pp. 205-206. Both Doran and Harbage defend the seduction scene in terrns of various traditions. However, according to Andrew Clark, one of the most convincing arguments has been offered by Hallet D. Smith, who relates Mistres Frankford's fall to the tradition of the sinning wife, as found in Elstred, Rosamund and Jane Shore. Andrew quotes Smith: [Heywood] "knew that the audience would not require a psychological analysis of the sinning woman, because she would be immediately recognized as belonging to a familiar type. . . . Therefore, he allowed Anne Frankford to fall almost automatically, to the distress of al1 modern critics (except Mr. Eliot)". Domestic Drama, vol. 1, p. 177.
9. T. S. Eliot, Elkabethan Essa~s,pp. 108-109. "It is unreasonable". writes Eliot, "to complain of A Woman Killed With Kindness that it is improbable that a woman who has Iived very happily with her husband and borne children should suddenly be seduced by a man Mohad been living in the house the whole time; we consider that the seduction is made extremely plausible."
10. David Cook, "A Woman Killed With Kindness: An Unshakespearean Tragedy." Enalish Studies. 45. (1964): 353-72.
11. Ibid, 355, 366. David Cook suggests that "between husband and wife there exists a steady, but altogether subdued, affection." Cook also finds Frankford acts coldly and wi-th complacency.
12. Andrew Clark claims that the punishrnent here should be "internal", through the growing awareness of guilt on the part of the sinner, is highly appropriate". Furthermore, Clark explains that "only Anne's deep contrition can discharge the mounting debt she feels to her husband and her conscience (Ure, p. 209), and lead to the poignant rnending of the broken contract with a sorrowful but cornpassionate Frankford." See Andrew Clark, nomestic Drarnâ. vol. I. p. 184. H. H. Adams contends that the play's homiletic design of sin, repentance, atonement and forgiveness is completed in Anne's punishment, penance and final forgiveness. Adams explains the eschatological meaning of Anne's punishment: "[Frankford] has not designed her punishment as an act of kindness to her in this world. but as a rneans to Save her everlasting sou1.... Frankford, in ordering her to live in solitude, allows her time for contemplation so that she may attain heaven." See H. H. Adams, Enalish Domestic or. Homiletic Tragedv. p. 151. 13. See C. L. Powell, Enalish Dornestic Relations. p. 204. According to Powell, Heywood may not have found an adequate solution to adultery, but the forgiving action of the husband that led to the unforced marital reunion reveals an entirely new attitude towards the adulterous wornan in the drama. Peter Ure. "Maniage and the Domestic Drama of Heywood and Ford". 32. (1951): 200-216 argues that the play is not so much exclusively homiletic in import, as Adams believes. but domestic. He points out that Heywood's focus on the happiness and grief of the marriage partners enables him to define this second rnarriage "as something new in kind, wrested from sorrow and penitenceM(p.21 0). See also M. C. Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (London: Chatto a Windus, 1955) p. 137. 1 have found Bradbrook's explaination of the unique generic status of A Woman Killed With Kindness, quite helpful for my critical approach to the play. Bradbrook contends that the conventional pattern of domestic tragedy is reversed to produce a most unconventional study of marriage not as a state but as a relationship. Thomas Heywood, /4 Woman Killed With Kindness. Brian Scobie. ed. p. xxi, following Madeleine Doran's view, points to the play's generic singularity:
/4 Woman Killed With Kindness differs from many if not al1 of the plays written within the domestic tragedy type by not being a dramatization of contemporary historical events, as were Arden and most of the plays that followed it. In other words. Heywood's work answers less to the demands either of didactic or topical interest than was usual witkin the sub-genre, although it is true that it shares with Adams' tragedies the domestic emphasis and the middle-class setting. . . . It is the tragic events, the sympathetic involvement with characters, that claim our attention, not the revelation of a homiletic pattern.
14. R. W. VanFossen, Ed. A Woman. . Killed With Kindness. p. mi. H. H. Adams, EEy. p. 151; F. S. Boas, Thomas Heywood (London: Williams 8 Norgate, 1950) p. 39. Irving Ribner, Jacobean Traoedy, p. 52.
15. See Andrew Clark, Pornestic Dramq, vol. 1, pp. 183-186; Brian Scobie, ed. A Woman Killed With Kindness. New Mermaids. pp. xxii-xxiv. David Cook "A Woman Killed With Kindness: An Unshakespearean Tragedy", p. 360.
16. Concerning Frankford's unusual response to his adulterous Me,Adams wites: 'Mile a deceived husband had the right to kill an adulterous wife, there was the feeling that" 'God will returne into their bosom the evill Mich thy have done'. This faith sustained the important Elizabethan doctrine that men should not for private reasons take. . God's revenge into their own hands." H. H. Adams. Enalish Domestic or Homiletic Traaea. p. 151. In fact. that Frankford's non-violent action runs counter to the customary punishrnent of adultery is supported by Anne's own expectancy of sudden death (XIII. 93-1 05). and her acknowledgement that it would be dishonourable of her husband to adopt any other course (XII!. 139-140). This notion is substantiated by the popular tradition of revenge in Elizabethan drama. which generaliy followed the ltalianate code of honour dernanding blood revenge. See F. T. Bowers. Uizabethan Revenae Traaedy 1587-1642 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940), pp. 8-14.
17. For opposing views of Frankford, see H. H. Adams, En~lishDomestic or Homiletic Traaedy. p. 156: "Frankford is normally so devoid of any natural emotion that he seems no man but a theological prig." Peter Ure, "Marriaae and the Domestic Drama of Heywood and Ford."p. 199. finds Frankford not only passionately compassionate to his dying wife but consistently kind and his final forgiveness is the final achievement of his virtuous Magnificence".
18. See Glen Blayney. " Convention. Plot. and Structure in the Broken Heart", Modem Philoloqy. LVI (1958). pp. 1-9. Blaney explains the reason for the misunderstanding of the play's meaning by emphasizing the social context of the play's tragedy love and marriage:
The Broken Heart might be described as a problem play, centrally depending for its structure and its statement of the romantic love upon the motives of betrothal and of marital enforcement in violation of a pre-contract of betrothal. And because most readers fail to see these motives. the play has been consistently misunderstood.
Peter Ure. "Marriage and the Domestic Drama in Heywood and Ford", p. 21 1, focuses on the theme of broken spousal or precontract. He rejects the critical view that emphas~esthe conflict between the world's opinion and heart's desire (which Havelock Ellis, Sherman and Sensabaugh read into the play). According to Ure the union between Penthea and Orgilus was not represented by Ford as a secret and unconventional mamage of souls."but as something", conforming very closely to a public and approved civil contract marriage Enforced or unduly "arranged" marriages were a feature of the time and were rewgnized by the makers of conduct books as a primary cause of matrimonial unhappiness." Also see John Ford, The Broken Hea& ed. Brian Morris. The New Mermaids. (London: A & Black, 1994). pp. mi-mcii. Morris is in strong agreement with Blaney and Ure. "The supremely evil act". writes Morris, "in The Broken Heart, is the enforcement of her [Penthea's] marriage wi-th Bassanes, and it's from this that the tragic events ensue. Structurally, the play is best seen as a study of the contemporary problem of the pre-contract and the enforced marriage." I agree with these scholars' view that the meaning of the play must be understood within the context of contemporary social customs and marriage practices. But I believe that to consider the play solely as representing the evils of enforced marriage or the suffering of a broken betrothal of true love is to ignore Ford's unconventional dramaturgy through which he examines the definition of chastity.
19. See Madeleine Doran. Endeavor of Art. pp. 130-131. Doran includes The Broken Heart in a group of Renaissance plays which are descendants of Thomas Kyd's The S~anishTraaedy. "Revenge figures"; daims Doran, in most of the plays. though not centrally in all. However, Brian Morris suggests quite correctly that "to label The Broken Heart as a revenge tragedy is to elect Orgilus as the protagonist. to subdue the greater part of the drama, and to falsify Ford's careful distribution of emphases. Revenge alone is not a sufficiently powerful dynamic." John Ford, The Broken Heart, ed.. Brian Morris. The New Mermaids. (London: A 8 Black. 1994). p. mi.
20. George Wilkins, The Miseries Enforced Marriaae 1607. (London: The Malone Society, 1964 Rpt). The play presents a problematic marriage situation that involves a forced marriage complicated by a broken contract. C. L. Powell points out that The Miseries of Enforced Maniaae, like Arden of Faversham, A Warning for Fair Women. and The Yorkshire Traaedv, deals with actual crimes recently comrnitted. See C. L. Powell. Enalish Domestic Relations. p. 199. no. 1.
21. See Chapter Il pp. 69-72.
22. See Chapter 1, pp. 52, 55, 59-69.
23. The Broken Hean, ed., Brian Morris. New Mermaids. p. mi-xxii. Morris points out that "The Problem of pre-contract and the betrothal had exercised Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure, the marriage theme is the subject of George Wiikin's The Miseries of Enforced Marriage. and many other plays between 1600 and 1630 deal with these topics".
24. Andrew Clark. Domestic Drama, p. 356. Clark mentions Peter Ure's claim that suggests a thematic continuity between the treatment of marriage in the regular domestic drama and Ford's Jhe Broken Hean. However, regarding the widely different manner and milieu of Ford's domestic tragedies Clark does not appear negative: "lt does serve to demonstrate not only the widespread reflection of the social habits of the time but also certain elements commonly associated with the genre become employed and absorbed by oiher kinds of drama." Clark also suggests that with John Ford domestic tragedy's merger vvith romantic tragedy is virtually complete.
25. T. S. Eliot, Elizabethan Essavs, p. 144. Eliot considers The Broken Heart superior to 'Tis Pitv She's a Whore but inferior to Perkin Warbeck. However. his praise of The Broken Heart is strongly qualified. "As for the play FeBroken Heaa itself". writes Eliot. "the plot is somewhat over-loaded and distracted by the affairs of unfortunate personages, al1 of whom have an equal daim on our attention; Ford overstains our pity and terror by calling upon us to sympathize now with Panthea. now with Calantha. now with Orgilus, now with Ithocles...."
26. See Chapter III. note no. 41, 42.
27. See Chapter 1. pp. 51-57.
28. Although Orgilus is the agent of the romantic revenge tragedy unlike other romantic revenge tragedy protagonists his action is not motivated primarily by unregulated passion. The motive of his revenge is Penthea 's marriage to Bassanes forced by her brother that broke their betothde of chaste love. As Sharon Hamilton points out that he "concentrates his frustrated energies on revenge. not on Bassanes. whom he considers unworthy of his malice. but on Ithocles." See Sharon Hamilton, "The Broken Heart: Language Suited to a Divided Mind". Concord in Discord: The Plavs of John FordJ586-1986. ed.. Donald K. Anderson, Jr. (New York: Ams Press. Inc. 1986). 171-1 91. Leonora Brodwin offers an interesting observation about Ford's unconventional use of revenge tragedy tradition:
It is neither through Calantha's broken heart nor Penthea's broken mind that the vitality of the courtly ideal finds expression, but through vengeful passion of Orgilus. In this latter day descendent of Marston's Antonio. the suffering of frustrated love so animate his purpose that his final movement into revenge...... seems to represent a "pattern" which has served heretofore to define a special category within the genre of revenge tragedy.
See Leonora Brodwin, Elizabethan Love Traaedy. p. 393-394. no. 16. 29. In Measure for Measure, Miseries of Enforced Marriaae, The Maid's Traaedy and A Midsummer N~aht- 1s Dream the male lovers break prior betrothal and become unfaithful to their chaste love. Except in A Midsummer Niaht's Dream, the lovers of broken betrothal do not meet after the changed social situation and have a chance to talk about their past love relationship. I believe Orgilus' meeting with the lady of his betrothed chaste love, who is now another man's Me, is part of the play's thematic strategy. lnother words, the private meeting of the lovers of broken betrothal is not presented merely to emphaize Penthea's proper conduct as the wife of another man. Nor is the purpose of the encounter is to focus solely on Orgilus' unregulated passion that motivates him to have a secret and illicit relation vvith Penthea. I propose that the meeting tacitly points to the fact that Penthea's ideal maidenly cornpliance, to the marriage arranged by her brother. is an act of transgression because it has made her unfaithful to Orgilus. Moreover. the scene succeeds to reveal directly to the audience the paradox inherent in the virtue of chastity. Furtherrnore, in this meeting, since both Orgilus and Penthea consider themselves chaste in their love, the play seems to raise the broader question concerning chastity - an active or passive virtue.
30. The Prologue
A strange play you are like to have, for know. We use no Drum. nor Trumpet, nor Dumbe Show; No Combate. Marriage. not so much to day, As Song, Dance, Masque, To bumbaste on a P lay; Yet these al1 good, and still in frequent use With our best poets; Nor is this excuse Made by our Author, as if want of skill Caus'd This defect; its rather his seife will: Will you the reason know? There have so many Beene in that kind, that Hee desires not any At this tirx in His scene, no helpe, no straine. Or flash that borrowed From an others braine; Nor speakes Hee this that Hee Would have you feare it, He onely tries of once bare lineswill Beare it; Yet may't afford, so please you silent fit, Some Mirth, some Matter, and perhaps some Wit.
All my quotations of the play are from Thomas Heywood's Dramatic Works (London, 1874) vol. 4. 3 1. See H. H. Adams. English Domestic or Homiletic Traaedv, p. 173. Adams claims that "The Enalish Travelfa is a far weaker play than A Woman Killed With Kindness." Adams elaborates on the lack of Heywood's artistic skill; "Heywood had begun to repeat himsetf. The play fails to hang together; the subplot vies for attention with the main story. In general, the characters are lightly sketched, and dialogue lacks color and brilliancy." F. S. Boas, Thomas Hevwoo4 (London: Williams & Norgate, 1950). p. 46, Boas contends that in The Enalish Traveller Heywood "presents a remarkable and enigmatic variant to the theme of A Woman Killed Wth Kindness." Peter Ure, "Marriage and the Domestic Drama in Heywood and Ford". Enalish Studies. mi. 1951, 200-16, points out some similarities between the two plays but argues that The Enalish Traveller lacks the intensity of the moral theme of A Woman Killed With Kindness since there is no familial reconciliation and the husband does not play any important part in the conclusion.
32. Melville A Clark, Thomas Heywood: Playwiaht and Miscellanist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 237.
33. Ibid. p. 238.
34. See T. S. Eliot, Elizabethan Essavs. pp. 11 1-1 16. Eliot praises both the plays for the portrayal of refined agony of betrayed love. But he finds Geraldine's suffering in The Enalish Traveller more poignant than that of Frankford's in A Woman Killed With Kindness. Norman Rabkin, "Dramatic Deception in Heywood's The Enalish Traveller", Studies in Enalish Literature. 1. 1961, 1-16, considers young Geraldine clearly the hero of the play and suggests that the main plot presents "his discovery of the truth, a discovery which the audience makes at the same time as he does. constitutes a moral education for him." According to Rabkin the secret betrothal of love and future marriage between Geraldine and Mrs. Wincott exhibits "an impressive self-restraint and concern for honour. . . - is thoroughly virtuous." In my analysis of the play I have argued against this view.
35. See Irving Ribner. Jacobean Tragedv. pp. 52, 55.
36. Norman Rabkin, "Dramatic Deception in Heywood's The Enalish Traveller", Studies in Enalish Literature. 1. 1961, 1-16. Barbara Baines, Thomas Heywood. pp. 120-130.
37. See Andrew Clark, Domestic Drama, vol. 2, p. 334. Also see Leonora Brodwh, Elizabethan Love TraaeQ. pp. 119-120. Brodwin in her discussion of The Enalish Traveller expresses strong disappointment with the author's changed attitude towards art and morality: Pandering to the Jaded imagination of an audience that required stimulation to sustain its interest, Heywood's own moral sensibility has hardened, his taste coarsened, his piety becorne rigid. Traveller in its necessary relation to A Woman Killed th Kindness, one can only sigh at the change.
For a different view on this issue, see Madeleine Doran, Endeavor of AG. p. 98-99. Doran suggests that it is difficult to judge the moral purpose of the plays written by "habitua1 moralizers like Dekker and Heywood. She daims they use the witty manipulation of situation at least as much for theatrical effect as for moral intention. "Heywood", writes Doran exploits a similar clever reversal of normal expectations in his two plays ( A Woman Killed With Kindness and The Enalish Traveller) in which an unfaithful wife dies from remorse at her unresewedly kind treatment."
38. See Chapter 1, pp. 46-48, note, 20.
39. The Critics are unanimous about the immorality of Delavill's conduct. Opinions Vary about the extent and nature of his depravity. While H. H. Adams finds Delavill as "personified vice", Irving Ribner and Peter Ure compare hirn with Wendoll and describe him as a false friend who betrays his generous about. Eventhough, Norman Rabkin condemns his adultery expresses some doubt the extent of his transgression since the audience is not told of his deception earlier in the play more explicitly. He attributes the defect to Heywood's inadequate artistic skill. Rabkin quotes R. G. Martin's view of Delavill in support of his own contention:
Heywood does not appear to have thought him out carefully beforehand... .He is so smooth a dissembler that there is reason to fear that he deceives the audience as well as Geraldine,..
Rabkin's charge about Heywood's failure to provide more direct information of Delavill's motivation cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, I disagree with R. G. Martin's suggestion of fortuitousness in the characterization of Delavill. In the analysis of the play I have tried to show that Delavill is part of a group of carefully conceived characters through whom Heywood explores the meaning of chaste love and permanency of lawful marriage. 310
Conclusion
The modem playvvright Samuel Beckett explains his "nosides" authorial point of view as part of the aesthetic principle of his fictional work in which thematic content is inseparable from the formal design:
I take no sides. I am interested in the shape of ideas. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine: "Do no! despair: one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume one of the thieves was damned." The sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters.'
Augustine, Beckett suggests, by balancing a non-positive description of a transgressor's fate with an antithetical commandment concerning another transgresser, has implicitly posited that the sinners are in a mixed moral state. In so doing, Augustine relativizes sin.
Beckett's "nosides" aesthetic principle of fictional representation resonates in the plays I have surveyed. These plays have repeatedly been criticized for the unconventionality of their fonal design and for the moral ambiguity of their themes.
My analysis has traced a cornplex pattern of tension between the conventional moral idea of love and marriage and that of immoral and illicit love and sexuality in plays of various dramatic forrns. The dramatic representations of love and marriage in the plays of my study concern themselves with the transgression as an immoral act that violates both conventional social codes and the moral norms of love and marriage. These representations also function as an amoral aesthetic mode of cognition through which these ideals are questioned. 31 1
The representation of transgression as both morally reprehensible and irreprehensible enables the playwights to foreground the plays' points of view by balancing wndemnation and condonation of immoral and illicit love and sexuality.
The narratives of the plays frequently reveal an untenable socio-semal and moral context against which the transgression occurs. The representation of the violation of proper social codes and moral imperatives of ideal love and sexuality points to the notion that the conventional ideal of love and marriage is not an irnmutable law.
In fact, the portrayal of illicit relationships reveals the amorality of a kind of love and sexuality that is usually deemed immoral. In other words, the spectacle of improper and illicit desire of love and sexuality allows the audience to understand the transgression not solely as an absolute abstract theological sin, but also as a non- absolute secular offence contingent on a specific social context.
The ideal of love and marriage advocated by moral theologians of the
English Renaissance period emphasized the importance of mutual love and absolute fidelity in affective and sexual love. These qualities were understood to underpin permanent and happy marriage. I have argued that the plays' depictions of immoral and illicit love have their roots in conflicting imperatives recommended in the writings of the Engiish Protestant divines, which were considered as authoritative guides to proper and ideal conduct in premarital and wedded love.
They defined ideal love and sexuality by generalized moral binaries, such as chastity-adultery, love-lust, constancy-promiscuity. In their attempt to ensure the 312 pemanency of marriage, which was no longer a Church sacrament but a sanctified secular covenant, they advocated the importance of love and freedom of choice in selecting one's marriage partner. They also insisted on the importance of parental consent for the child's mariage. In their writings they viewed lawful marriage as the totalizing paradigm of love and sexuality. But they expressed unconcern about the problematic situation of love and marriage which is irresolvable vvithin the theological scheme of absolute morality.
In discussing the conventional moral ideal of love and marriage advocated by the Protestant divines of the period, rny intention is not to undermine it but to understand it as the limit which bounded the transgressions represented in the plays. The moral theologians were learned men of their time and of their community. They considered themselves social reformers and founders of a new social and moral order. Their writings betray the tension between conflicting thoughts and ideas that were present in their time within their society. Sincere as they were. however. some of their tenets were not wholly adequate to the complex practical demands of historically bound dornestic love and sewality.
In their representations of love and rnarriage, the plays of my analysis reveal a transgressive-normative tension through which various deviant and improper moral actions are negotiated within the conventional ideal of love and marriage. It is. in a sense. a process in which the ideal is redefined by the transgressors. who have pushed the boundaries of ideal social codes and moral noms of love and 31 3 sexuality. Aiso, it is a contestation among the transgressors over the claim of their legitimization within the existing socio-moral ideality.
Transgressions of social norms and proper moral codes of premarital love and courtship are particularly evident in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's
Dream. and Middleton's A Chaste Maid in the Cheapside. The young lovers of both cornedies, in their triumphant love and marriages, tacitly exculpate their violations of filial duty and reject the socio-moral ideal of parental consent in the choice of a marriage partner. In A Midsumrner Niaht's Dream the inconstancy of premarital love is viewed as an absolvable transgression, Mile the traditional ideality of sexual purity in premarital love and courtship remains uncornpromised. In A Chaste
Maid in the Cheapside. the contrast between a marriage based on love and individual choice and an arranged marriage simultaneously affirms the ideality of chaste premarital love and negotiates premarital sexual impurity into the scheme of conventional marriage.
More complex and radical violations of social norms and moral codes of ideal sewality and marriage occur in the plays in which prernarital and wedded love are represented through tragicomedy and tragedy. In Measure for Measure the offenders of the ideal norm of sewality are allowed to exonerate themselves by lawfully marrying the victims of their respective transgressions. At the end, in allowing the comic resolution to include marriages of the sinning subjects and of their chaste sovereign with a prospective nun, the play endorses vvithout 314
qualification the traditional ideal of lawful marriage as the only paradigm of love and
sexuality. Through the dramatic cbaracter~ationsof Juliet. Mariana and the absent
Kate Keep-dom, however, the play simultaneously negotiates the transgression of premarital monogamous sexual love in the conventional scheme of holy
matrirnony.
The most radical transgression of conventional ideas of sexuality and marriage is found in Middleton's Women Beware Women. Through the use of mixed dramatic conventions, the play simultaneously conforms to and questions both normative and transgressive love and sexuality. In Leantio's defeat in love, marriage and life, the bourgeois ideality of the permanency of wedded love and happy domestic life are questioned. In Bianca's transformation from the ideal bourgeois wife of a romantic lovematch to a not unhappy illicit lover of the Duke to whom she remains unrepentantly constant, the play asserts the unconventional view that adultery and lust are amoral rather than immoral. That the tragic deaths are seen as just punishments for the transgressors is in accord with conventional morality. But the expediency of Leantio's murder, wtiich enables the Duke to rnarry
Bianca lawfully and sets the revenge plot in motion, tacitly questions the ideal of the indissolubility of lawful marriage.
A less heterodoxic pattern of transgression conceming the ideality of love as synonymous with the indissolubility of lawful rnarriage has been traced in the domestic tragedies of the homiletic tradition. Both Nice of Arden of Faversham and 315
George Browne of A Warnina for Fair Women are foiled in their attempts to rnarry their adulterous lovers. The defeat and punishment of the illicit lovers conform to the conventional view of adultery as a theological sin that wncerns abstract virtues.
But the adulterous loven' commitments to their love and their intentions to change their illicit relation into lawful marriage contest the traditional view of adulterous love as an unnegotiable and abstract theological sin. The fidelity to illicit love displayed by both Alice and George Browne affirms that adulterous love need not be destructive if it can be acc~mrnodatedwithin conventional morality through lawful divorce and remarriage.
An attempt to accommodate marital infidelity within the spiritualized permanency of married love is seen in Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with
Kindness. Unlike Middleton's Women Beware Women, A Woman Killed VVÏth
Kindness presents adultery as an act of unrestrained erotic desire bereft of affective cornmitment. The play presents an unconventional view of ideal rnarried love or chastity in Master FranMord's forgiveness and spiritual remarriage of the penitent adulterous wife. Master Frankford's unusual act of forgiveness is made possible because he assumes that there is a separation between his wife's body and her mind and because he emphasizes the notion that the spiritual union of ideal love and marriage is inviolable. Also, the lack of any affective bond between Anne
Frankford and Wendoll rnakes the negotiation possible to reconcile the transgression of adultery into the ideality of inviolable rnarriage. However, Anne's 316 self-inflicted punishment of death is a tacit endorsement of the traditional view of marital infidelity as uncompromisable within the conventional scheme of rnarriage and chastity.
A similarly unsatisfactory attempt to negotiate an irregular affective love within the permanency of lawful marriage is evident in Heywood's The Enalish
Traveller. In Mrs. Wincott's betrayal of her lawful marriage and of her vows of chaste but adulterous affective love, the play questions the inviolability of lawful marriage and secret love vows. Mrs. Wincott dies as an act of atonement for her betrayals and for her affective and sexual love. In her death the play rejects the possibility that an irregular chaste-affective love can become a morally and lawfully ideal marriage. The final resolution. wtiich affirrns the traditional view of female adultery as a sin absolvable only by punishment of death, appears unsatisfactory, since the male adulterers not only go unpunished but the husband remains ignorant of his friend's deception.
Through an unconventional use of the popular themes of enforced marriage and broken betrothal. John Ford contests the notion that a publicly sanctified marriage has a moral claim that is superior to that of chaste love in The Broken
Heart. The chaste Penthea's perception of herself as an adulteress foregrounds the claim of love over law, and of private over public. Penthea starves herself to death to atone for the transgression of adultery, but like Anne Frankford and Mrs.
Wincott, she is destroyed in both mind and spirit in her attempt to remain 317
uncomprornisingly chaste in both her present lawful marriage and in her past
spiritual union of chaste love.
In the same play. Calantha similarly chooses to wed and die with her dead
lover rather than choosing to live and reject the ideality of unchangeable love. In
the virtuous lovers' defeat in love, marriage and Me, the play is questioning social
codes and moral norms of ideal love and marriage. It is through the rejection of
inflexible ideals of permanent love and marriage that the play attempts to negotiate
impermanency within the normative love and marriage.
In light of these analyses of the plays, which find that both popular and coterie dramas reveal a tension behiveen the ideal and transgressive in their
representation of love and marriage, it is difficult to agree with Harbage's definition of popular plays as "chaste" and coterie as morally "perverse" and "deviant." I
believe it is the authors' selection of the particular social norms and moral ideals violated by characters that appeared more unchaste to Harbage than other choices would have. The plays simultaneously condemn and condone the transgressive
love and sexuality they represent. The drarnatists' use of representation of transgressive love and sexuality as a cognitive mode has allowed the plays to
participate in the process of redefinition that accommodates polymorphousness of the ideal. Endnote Conclusion
1. Alan Schneider, 'Waiting for Beckett: A Personal Chronical". Casebook on Waitina for Godot Ed., Ruby Cohn (New Grove Press, 1967), p. 51. Works Consulted
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