UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
1-1-1995
Promoting the nation: The rise of ethno-nationalism and early modern drama
David Elwood Phillips University of Nevada, Las Vegas
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Repository Citation Phillips, David Elwood, "Promoting the nation: The rise of ethno-nationalism and early modern drama" (1995). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 3006. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/g79s-3qwt
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PROMOTING THE NATION; THE RISE OF ETHNO-NATIONALISM AND EARLY MODERN DRAMA
by
David E. Phillips
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
English
Department of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas August 1996
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UMI Microform 9700417 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeh Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © 1996 David E. Phillips Ail Rights Reserved
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The dissertation of David E. Phillips for the degree of Ph.D. in English is approved.
/ r-: Chairperson, EVelyn Gkjowski, Ph.D.
Examining Committee MemWr, Richard L. Harp, Ph.D
n
Examining Committee Member, Charles C. Whitney, Ph.D.
Gradual Faculty Representative, Elspeth N. Whitney, Ph.D.
Dean of the Graduate'^oflege, Ronald W. Smith, Ph.D.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas August 1996
11
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT
Most political scientists locate the rise of ethno-
nationalism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. English ethno-nationalism is developed throughout
that period through a xenophobic identification of racial,
religious, and national others. This study examines how
Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson, and Thomas Middleton promote English ethno-
nationalism through the use of stereotypes, especially the
collection of stereotypes known as the Black Legend of
Spain. Chapter one outlines the theory and psychology of
ethno-nationalism, laying the foundation for subsequent
chapters devoted to specific plays, including Kyd's The
Spanish Tragedy, Marlowe's The Jew of the Malta,
Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Jonson's The Masque of
Blackness and The Masque of Beauty, and Middleton's A Game
At Chess.
Ill
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...... i ü
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... V
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1
CHAPTER 2 THE SPANISH TRAGEDY: THOMAS KYD AND THE CRISIS OF PORTUGAL ...... 26
CHAPTER 3 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE'S THE JEW OF MALTA: DEMON JEWS AND AMBITIOUS SPANIARDS ...... 54
CHAPTER 4 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE: LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD ...... 91
CHAPTER 5 BEN JONSON'S THE MASQUE OF BLACKNESS AND THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY: QUEEN ANNE AND THE POLITICS OF SUBVERSION ...... 132
CHAPTER 6 THOMAS MIDDLETON'S A GAME AT CHESS: CHECKING THE SPANISH THREAT ...... 172
CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION ...... 209
REFERENCES ...... 222
IV
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work would not have been possible without the
emotional and material support of Teresa Lynn Phillips, who
has helped me in more ways than she can possibly realize. To
her I owe a debt that can never be repaid. I am grateful to
those who read this work in its early stages and made
important suggestions and recommendations: Richard Harp,
Charles Whitney, and Elspeth Whitney, all of the University
of Nevada, Las Vegas.
I would especially like to thank two very special
scholars and teachers, individuals whose enthusiasm for
literature and dedication to their profession have inspired
me in my scholarship and teaching. Thanks to Evelyn Gajowski
of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for her friendship,
guidance, advice, and support throughout my undergraduate
and graduate years. And thanks to Denny Berthiaume of
Foothill College, who long ago motivated me to enter the
teaching profession.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The concern with a threat posed by foreigners can be
found in English drama throughout the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. At the beginning of the second act of
Shakespeare's Richard II, for example, John of Gaunt describes
England as
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise.
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war.
This happy breed of men, this little world.
This precious stone set in the silver sea.
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house.
Against the envy of less happier lands.
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this
England.
(II.i.40-50)*
England, set apart from the rest of the world, is for Gaunt an
Eden, a fortress, able to repel the threat of foreign invasion
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with its geographic features— its cliffs that serve as walls,
and seas that function as moats. Critical interpretations of
Gaunt's apotheosis to England are expressed in a variety of
ways. Humanist critics such as Tillyard, Campbell, and Goddard
saw the history plays as expressions of Shakespeare's concern
with universal truths and morality, for "behind the disorder
of history Shakespeare assumed some kind of order or degree on
earth having its counterpart in heaven. Richard is, in this
view, the serpent in the Garden of Eden, an evil that must be
purged, for with him on the throne, England is a land "bound
in with shame, / With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds,"
a land that "was wont to conquer others" but now "hath made a
shameful conquest of itself" (II.i.6 1 - 6 6 ) Though not a
literal foreigner, Richard serves as an allegorical invader,
a moral threat that must be crushed for order to be restored
later by Henry V in his campaign against literal foreigners—
the French.
Old historicist critics, on the other hand, tend to see
much of the drama of the period as a reflection of dominant
religious, political, or economic ideologies of the time. To
them. Gaunt's speech reflects the patriotic "spirit of the
age.The hint of foreign invasion repelled in his speech by
the walls and moats reflects the typical Englishmen's view of
the power England wielded in the late sixteenth century and
recalls the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Foreign powers, the
threat of foreign invasion, and foreign characters in general
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were used by the playwrights to contrast undesirable
characteristics to more desirable ones, possessed, of course,
by the English. For example, the Welsh in Henry TV, Part One,
are portrayed as barbarians, capable of a "beastly shameless
transformation" (I.i.44) of the dead, while Henry IV
represents English compassion through his extension to Hotspur
of an offer of forgiveness (V.i). Likewise, the Dauphin's
decision to slaughter the luggage boys in Henry V — "as arrant
a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offert" (V.vii.2-
3)— stands in sharp contrast to Henry's order that "in our
marches through the country there [France] be nothing
compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for; none
of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language"
(III.vi.113-117) .
More recently, however, cultural materialist and new
historicist critics point out that the playwrights were
actively engaged in interrogating a dominant ideology to
promote emergent, often oppositional, religious, economic, or
political ideologies. Jonathan Dollimore argues for the
subversive power of drama by reminding us how a play like
Richard II could serve as opposition drama— Essex's use of
Richard II in staging revolt and Elizabeth's comment after the
rebellion that "I am Richard II. Know ye not that?"^ In this
view, Richard II represents not a battle between good and evil
or an expression of patriotic sentiment, but a play that
suggests an alternative to Elizabeth's reign and a cure for
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the serious economic problems England faced in the 1590s®.
G.K. Hunter, for example, calls the Elizabethan history play
a "genre involving both warmth of identification with the
nation and the national story and also a colder analysis of
political behaviour." ’’ The plays function to idealize as well
as criticize. This shift toward viewing drama as subversive
discourse, as an active participant in shaping the culture,
has led to a renewed interest in foreign characters in the
plays. Previously, foreign characters were seen to fulfill a
mimetic function, reflecting a one-to-one relationship between
the narrative and empirical reality (as in the case of the old
historicists) *. Thus, foreign characters reflected the actual
traits of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Frenchmen,
Germans, Italians, Danes, and Spaniards: Frenchmen were
effete, Germans and Danes drunkards, and Spaniards cruel,
lecherous, greedy, and proud. Today, however, many cultural
materialists and new historicist critics recognize that
foreign characters can serve a diegetic function, that is,
they appear in the drama to promote the "articulation of
fictional events in a narrative structure."* As such, the
focus shifts from the mimetic to how characters can be used to
promote or criticize specific dominant ideologies. *°
The following study is located in this tradition of
cultural materialism and new historicism. It examines how a
number of playwrights writing between 1587 and 1624 employed
stereotypes to diegetically promote or subvert dominant and
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emergent ideologies. Sixteenth-century England was not, as
E.M.W. Tillyard would have it, a period in which "every
activity within the realm" was "governed to the last fraction
by the influence" of some "master-sphere. "" It was a time
when conflicting religious, political, aesthetic, and economic
ideologies vied for influence and power at court and on the
popular stage. Not everyone in England at this time was
happily practicing Protestantism, penning Petrarchan poems
while practicing capitalism. There were in circulation any
number of conflicting ideologies, ideologies that were
supported, criticized, and re-shaped. Raymond Williams argues
that in "authentic historical analysis it is necessary at
every point to recognize the complex interrelations between
movements and tendencies both within and beyond a specific and
effective d o m i n a n c e . As such, attention must be paid not
only to a period's dominant ideologies, but also to those
emergent and residual ideologies that are in competition with
or transform the dominant. This study attempts to do just
that. By drawing on literary, political, and sociological
theory I examine how Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and
Middleton employ well-established cultural stereotypes to
construct specific types of foreign characters who serve to
promote or subvert dominant or emergent ideologies. These
playwrights interrogate a number of geo-political, aesthetic,
or local economic ideologies circulating in sixteenth-century
England. Of special importance is how the playwrights promoted
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or subverted these various ideologies as related to the
concept of ethno-nationalism.
The term ethno-nationalism has been borrowed from
political scientists and ethno-psychiatrists who employ it as
an umbrella term to include those political and psychological
processes that are common to ethnicity and nationalism.^ Some
of these common processes are a collective proper name, an
association with a specific homeland, a sense of solidarity,
and an insistence on genealogy and presumed descent ties. I
employ the term throughout this study not in opposition to the
term nationalism, but as a complement to that term to describe
a much more fluid type of group identification. Nationalism
can be defined as "an ideological movement for attaining and
maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a
population deemed by some of its members to constitute an
actual or potential nation. The most common elements of a
nation include a well-defined historic territory; a community
of laws and institutions "with a single political will," which
implies the existence of a common regulating agent; a sense of
legal equality among the members of the community with open
access by all members to certain legal and political rights;
and a "measure" of common culture and civic ideologies that
"bind the population together."'® This model of a nation can
be seen, then, as a legal or institutional community, "whose
members are united, if not made homogeneous, by common
historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions."'®
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Ethnie groups, on the other hand, while sharing a concern
with common culture, tend to place a greater emphasis on the
role of common myths of descent that can recognized in one or
more cultural differences like religion, customs, language, or
institutions. In addition, ethnic groups are not as closely
tied to institutions and particular traditions as they are to
a sense of shared community of birth and native culture. The
latter is essential to the psychology of an ethnie, or ethnic
group. The group is seen as a type of family, but a uniquely
individual family with its own concept of its place in world
politics, of class, religion, occupations, and ideologies."
This need for an identification with a "dependency group"
springs from an individual's "sense of weakness and inadequacy
[and] reactivates the tendency— so clearly observable in early
life— to idealize the leader or parent as omnipotent and to
extract, from him or her, power and perfection."'* In addition
to a psychological function, these groups tend to fulfill a
sociological need to differentiate themselves from other,
distinctive ethnies. This need to differentiate is especially
strong in times of crises: prolonged periods of warfare or
conquest, exile and enslavement, the influx of immigrants, and
religious conversion. During these times, groups typically
exaggerate the ways in which they differ from others in order
to denigrate that other and set themselves up as superior.'*
A cursory examination of England in the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries indicates that many of the
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requisite elements of an ethno-nationalist group were present.
Myths of descent, historical memories, and a culturally
distinctive language were actively being promoted by the
writers of the period, including Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare,
and Raleigh.^* The state-sanctioned Anglican Church, which
located itself in direct opposition to the universal claims of
Rome, and such institutions as parliament and the English
justice system were attempting to set England apart from other
ethnic groups in Europe. A common name for the inhabitants of
England was being promoted. A specific homeland, as contained
in Gaunt's description of England above, with very real
geographical features and borders did exist. A sense of
solidarity was evident, especially during times of crisis, for
example, the attack of the Spanish Armada and the public
anxiety over the proposed Spanish Match. And sense of
genealogy and presumed descent ties were evident in a renewed
interest in the Anglo-Saxon myth of descent, which traced
English origins back to the Germanic tribes.^' However,
England still more closely resembled an ethnic group than a
nation, as the culture was much more fluid than static.
Religious groups continued to compete with one another for
dominance; emerging economic models challenged older, more
medieval forms; political factions clashed over the issue of
imperialism; and oppositional cultural ideologies (what
constituted beauty, for example) were emerging. One group that
played a major role in helping to establish a clearer sense of
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national and ethnic identity were the playwrights. They
achieved this primarily by employing negative stereotypes to
set English interests in opposition to less desirable foreign
powers or to point toward internal political or economic
problems.
One way to establish differences between groups is
through the process of labeling. Labeling refers to that
process whereby certain individuals are stereotyped as
deviants by a dominant ethno-nationalist, group.^ In the
study of the sociology of deviance, labeling occurs primarily
in the societal reaction model, which maintains that "deviance
is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a
consequence of the application of rules and sanctions to an
'offender'.'"® In other words, the dominant or native group
stigmatizes certain behavior in the other as deviant in order
to maintain control over that individual or group. But one may
be labeled not just for certain behavior, but also on the
basis of such external racial and cultural markers as skin
color, language use, surname, dress, hairstyle, etc. For
example, in sixteenth-century England Puritans would have
labeled the Catholic observance of mass as deviant, pointing
perhaps to the priest's manipulation of host and wine as the
outward symbols of that deviance. Sometimes, as in the case
just cited, labeling occurs simply to distinguish one set of
religious beliefs from another, but more often than not,
labeling occurs primarily to justify punishing or
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exterminating the "deviant." Spanish officials in Toledo in
the mid-sixteenth century, for example, persecuted and
eventually executed hundreds of Erasmian alumbrados (the
illuminated ones)^ because they associated them with the
Erasmian and Lutheran reform movements. To them the group's
appeal for Church reform was viewed as evidence of their
deviance, even though in England the alumbrados would have
been considered by the majority of most Protestants as typical
Spanish Catholics.
Labeling plays a major role in the dramatic
representation of three stage characters in the drama of the
sixteenth and seventeenth century— the Jew, the Moor, and the
Spaniard. Previously, critics have tended to treat the three
groups separately, focusing on the typical stereotypes
associated with each.^ In the first three chapters of this
study, I will depart somewhat from this tendency to separate,
and argue instead that in some cases the representation of the
stage Jew, Moor, and Spaniard is so closely related because in
the minds of most audiences of the period the three groups
were often interchangeable. Evidence to support this view can
be found in an examination of Spain's period of convivencia
(coexistence), in the portrayal of the Spaniard by Italians
during the sack of Rome in the early fifteenth century, in the
English pamphlet literature that circulated during the siege
of Antwerp, and in the later pamphlet literature, written
primarily by Puritans, of the 1620s.
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During Spain's period of convivencia, which lasted
roughly from the early thirteenth century through the late
fifteenth, Jews, Moors, and Christians often shared "a broad
culture that blurred racial prejudices.'"® Even when two of
the three groups, Christians and Moors, went to war, they did
so, as argued one thirteenth century writer, "neither because
of the law [of religion] nor because of the sect that they
hold to,"" but because of the conflict over land. Even at the
height of the Reconquest, Christian Catalan scholars composed
philosophical tracts in Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish, sometimes
including Christians, Jews, and Moors in the same dialogues.®*
Though this somewhat peaceful coexistence between Jew, Moor,
and Christian would come to an end in Spain with the expulsion
of the Jews in 1492 and later with the Moors in 1609, in the
minds of many Europeans the three groups had lived together
for so long that they began to share similar traits. This is
evident in the characterization of the Spaniards by Italian
writers after the 1527 sack of Rome. Hispanicists Sverker
Arnoldsson and Philip Wayne Powell argue that the Italian was
primarily responsible for helping to forge the link between
Jew, Moor, and Spaniard, that was later employed by English
pamphleteers. Arnoldsson points out that the Italians made the
association because of the "age-long mixture of Spanish with
Oriental and African elements, plus the Jewish and Islamic
influence upon Spanish culture." As a result, this "motivated
the view of the Spaniards as a people of inferior race and
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doubtful orthodoxy."®* Powell points out that the Jewish and
Moslem blood among Spanish soldiers in Italy "was held by some
writers to explain the barbarities committed in Rome and
Prato, especially the despoliation of churches and other
religious buildings. The epithet ^marrano' (crypto-Jew) was
often hurled as an insult at Spanish soldiers in Italy. "®°
During the siege of Antwerp these same connections
between Jew, Moor, and Spaniard were promoted by English
pamphleteers. In the 1591 The Coppie of the Anti-Spaniard, the
anonymous writer accuses the Duke of Parma's forces of Judaism
and apostasy, and in A Discourse of the Usage of the English
Fugitives by the Spaniard (1595), the author, known only as
L.L., pointed out that in the Low Countries, the Spanish are
the "most base, wicked, proud, and cruellest nation that
liveth, pagans at heart, or Moors."®' Later, preachers and
pamphlet writers with a Puritan bent also made the same
connection, especially during the period that James was
actively pursuing a marriage between Charles and the Spanish
Infanta. Preachers warned their congregations with scriptural
and historical citations against "matches with idolaters and
especially with Spanish idolaters."®® In his Second Part of
Vox Populi, exiled Puritan Thomas Scot has one of his
characters, the Duke of Hyaz, declare that "it may be they
[the English] hate us for the same cause, that France,
Germany, Italie, and the rest of the Countries of Europe, for
that many of us are discended of the Moorish race."®® If one
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group was continually demonized throughout this period it was
the Spaniard, especially through a collective body of
stereotypes that later became known as the Black Legend.
The term leyenda negra, or Black Legend, was coined in
1912 by Spanish journalist Juliân Judierias to describe what
Hispanicists had long perceived as a stereotype of the Spanish
that portrayed them as cruel, greedy, deceitful, and
lecherous.* Juderlas argued that the negative representation
of the Spaniard, which he claimed developed during the revolt
of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century with the
publication of such documents as the Apologia of William of
Orange and the Relaciones of Antonio Pérez, was in numerous
ways responsible for many of the foreign policy decisions of
most of the world's nations since that time.®® While most
Hispanicists agree that the legend can be traced to sixteenth
century Europe, and many concede that it has been responsible
for the world's perception of Spain as the home of ignorance
and bigotry, an "intellectual wasteland incapable of taking
its place as a modern nation,"®® few agree as to where the
legend originated. Italy, Germany, the Low Countries, the New
World, and England have all been offered as sites where the
first occurrence of the legend appears, but as Walter Maltby
points out, there is a problem in arguing how Italian and
German sources would have been known to the English as few
were translated and even fewer available. The best that can be
said then of the origins of the legend is that they were
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multiple."
What is known, however, is that English pamphleteers and
playwrights during the sixteenth and seventeenth century
employed various aspects of the legend to demonize Spain.
Ironically, one the earliest writings that may have
contributed to the stereotype of the cruel Spaniard came from
a Spaniard, the missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas. In his
early 1542 account of Spain's conquest of the New World,
Brevissima Relacion de la Destruccion de las Indias, Las Casas
told the story of a Spanish conquistador, who— running low on
food supplies during a hunting expedition— slaughtered the
children of a native family in order to provide a meal for his
starving dogs. Hispanicists since have questioned many of Las
Casa's stories, pointing out that he probably wrote his work
to convince officials at home to shift jurisdiction of the
native Americans from secular control (the conquistadors) to
ecclesiastical (Las Casas and his priests) . English writers of
the period, however, failed to see Las Casa's political
agenda, and a major aspect of the legend entered England
through the 1583 translation of the friar's stories entitled
The Spanish Colonie, or Brief Chronicle of the Actes of the
Spaniards in the West Indies.®*
The greed of the Spaniard was also well chronicled in the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Raleigh reported in
his 1591 account of The Last Fight of the Revenge that in "one
island called Hispaniola they [the Spaniards] have wasted
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thirty hundred thousand of the natural people in the search
for gold."®* It was no different in Europe. During the siege
of Antwerp a story, attributed to Raleigh, is told by Hakluyt
of a wealthy merchant of Antwerp, who, during the Spanish
siege there, "besought them [the Spanish soldiers] to spare
him and his goods, being a good Catholic and one of their own
party and faction." The soldiers, however, refused and
"answered that they knew him to be of a good conscience for
him self, but his money, plate, jewels, and goods were all
heretical and therefore good prize."'"’ There seemed to be no
limit to which the Spaniard would go in his quest for wealth.
Even the Church was involved in the quest for riches. John
Foxe observed that of the three sorts of men "most principally
be in danger of these Inquisitors," the most valued by the
Dominicans were "those that be greatly rich for the spoil of
their goods.'"*
Along with a lust for gold, the Spanish were also
depicted as men incapable of controlling their lust for
female, and in some cases male, flesh. Late sixteenth-century
politically motivated pamphlets told stories of how wives,
daughters, and sons in the Low Countries were routinely raped
by troops serving under the command of the notorious Fernando
Alvarez de Toledo Alba. For example, George Gascoigne, in his
1576 pamphlet The Spoil of Antwerp tells of the "barbarous
cruelty, insolence, rapes, spoils, incests, and sacrileges"
that were practiced there by Alba and the soldiers under his
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command/"
What is most evident in this series of narrative or
historical events is how ethno-nationalistic sentiment is at
the core of the creation and dissemination of the Black Legend
texts. Labeling the Spaniard a demon could justify any number
of national enterprises. De Las Casa's writings were often
cited by English writers as a motive for English colonialism,
as only the English could save the native Americans from the
barbarous cruelty practiced upon them by Spain; Spanish
galleons were fair game for English pirates as the prizes they
carried were the ill-gotten result of Spanish greed; John Foxe
and other clergymen would use various aspects of the legend to
vilify Catholicism and promote Protestantism; and Leicester
and others could argue that Elizabeth must take a more active
role in affairs in the Low Countries by pointing to the rape
and pillage committed there." In each case, the stereotypes
of the Black Legend were used to create an alien other, a
foreign threat to be feared and resisted at all costs. On the
stage it was no different, for Jew, Moor, and Spaniard were
used there too to promote or interrogate ethno-nationalistic
sentiment.
In the chapters that follow I explore how Jews, Moors,
and Spaniards are labeled and how each function to promote or
subvert ideologies that reflect ethno-nationalistic concerns.
In Chapter two, 'The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kyd and the
Crisis of Portugal," I explore Kyd's use of Black Legend
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stereotypes in the first masque and in the murder of the
Spanish court in the second masque to argue that Kyd is
drawing his audiences' attention to a need for England to
intervene in the political affairs of Portugal and Spain that
were being played out on the Iberian Peninsula during the
production of the play. References to Moors and negative
stereotyping in the play justify Hieronimo's actions at the
end of the play and serve as a form of English wish-
fulfillment in eliminating England's political enemies. As
such, Kyd promotes a dominant political ideology in which
England's national interests are upheld at the expense of
Spain.
In chapter three, "Christopher Marlowe's The J ew of
Malta: Demon Jews and Ambitious Spaniards," I explore
Marlowe's use of Jewish and Spanish stereotypes in his
characterization of Barabas and Martin Del Bosco to argue that
Barabas represents a composite figure of a Sephardic Jew.
Especially relevant is Barabas' use of the Spanish language,
his conversa (converted Jew) practices, and allusions to
alleged atrocities committed by Jews in Spain, including
poisonings and the crucifixion of children. The appearance of
Barabas and Martin Del Bosco in the play reveals Marlowe's
awareness of the complex geo-political struggle being played
out in the Mediterranean region between Turk and Spaniard and
suggests a condemnation of Spanish expansionism and the
promotion of English imperialism.
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In "William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: Living
in a Material World," chapter four, I explore Shakespeare's
use of Jewish stereotypes in light of two economically related
events of the 1590s: the rise in grain prices and the siege of
Cadiz. Unlike Kyd and Marlowe, who employ stereotyping to
promote dominant political ideologies, Shakespeare in The
Merchant of Venice uses stereotypes, specifically those of the
period most often associated with Jews, to subvert an ideology
based on profit. Shakespeare plays on his audience's knowledge
and expectations of Jews to reveal that all the characters in
the play are obsessed with profit and gain to the detriment of
social relations that include friendship, marriage, and child-
parent relations. Ethno-nationalism is being promoted in the
play through this subversion of a dominant economic ideology.
Subversion is also examined in Ben Jonson's The Masque of
Blackness and The Masque of Beauty. In these two court
entertainments stereotypes are used by Jonson at the request
of Queen Anne, who offers, through her representation of her
court as Ethiopians, a critique of a dominant aesthetic
ideology as well as an attack on the notion that a woman's
sexuality is to be feared. However, Jonson, the consummate
court poet, recognizes how Anne has introduced subversion and
very carefully contains the emergent views promoted by the
queen in order to shift the attention of the masques back to
James and his imperialistic views. Like Shakespeare, Jonson
relies on his audience's awareness of stereotypes to critique
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dominant ideologies, but like Kyd and Marlowe, he is
ultimately concerned with containing subversion to promote a
sense of English nationalism and superiority.
Chapter five, "Thomas Middleton's A Game At Chess:
Checking the Spanish Threat" shifts the focus of the study
back to the Black Legend. Middleton's play, I argue, openly
subverts James's pro-Spanish policies, especially the proposed
Spanish Match between Charles and the Spanish Infanta as well
as the problem posed by Catholicism in England. The play
serves as an excellent example of how a playwright can promote
a specific political agenda through the use of drama in
general, but more specifically, of how such anti-Spanish
stereotypes as ambition, pride, greed, lust, and violence can
function to promote that agenda.
This study concludes with a summation of the major points
raised throughout by each playwright along with some thoughts
on how the Black Legend continued, and continues, to inform
religious, political, aesthetic, and economic ideologies.
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Notes
1. William Shakespeare, Richard II, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, 3d ed., ed. David Bevington (London: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1980).
2. E.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays. London: Penguin, 1962), 21. Lily B. Campbell also assumes a universal truth to be at work in the histories of Shakespeare: "he is not merely a poet but a great poet, the particulars of his experience are linked in meaning to the universal of which they are a representative part" (Shakespeare's "Histories: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy [San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Publications, 1947], 6).
3. Harold Goddard compares proper rule to that of a gardener who "by submitting himself to the creative forces of nature, but checking them where they grow excessive or unfruitful, becomes a creator himself" (The Meaning of Shakespeare, 2 vols. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951], 1:160).
4. See, for example, E.M.W. Tillyard's Elizabethan World Picture (1941; reprint. New York: Vintage Books, 1961); Cumberland Clark Shakespeare and National Character: A Study of Shakespeare's Knowledge and Dramatic and Literary Use of the Distinctive Racial Characteristics of the Different Peoples of the World (London: Hamlin, 1932); and Richard Vliet Lindabury, A Study of Patriotism in the Elizabethan Drama (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1931).
5. Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, 2d ed. (Durham: Duke UP, 1993), 23. For a more detailed treatment of the relationship between Richard II and the Essex rebellion, see Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), chapter 5.
6. Jean Howard makes a similar point when she notes that "the stage plays themselves participated— through the representation of theatricality— in the cultural production of gender and class difference and in the production of cultural "centers" and "margins" (The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England [London: Routledge, 1994], 15).
7. G.K. Hunter, "Religious Nationalism in Later History Plays," in Literature and Nationalism, Vincent Newley and Ann Thompson eds., (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1991), 88. The volume contains several excellent articles on the function of nationalism and foreigners in literature from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. Included there are articles on Shakespeare and the Welsh, Byron and nationalism, and Protestant writers and Irish nationalism.
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8. For example, see Clark, Shakespeare and the National Character; C.N. Greenough, "Characters of Nations," in Collected Studies by Chester Noyes Greenough, ed. W.A. Abbot (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Cooperative Society, 1940); J.G. Bartley, Teague, Shenkin and Sawney: An Historical Study of the Earliest Irish, Welsh and Scottish Characters in English Plays (Cork: Cork University Press, 1954).
9. A.J. Hoenselaars, Images of Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: A Study of Stage Characters and National Identity in English Renaissance Drama, 1558-1642 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP), 246 n. 9.
10. Joan Rees supports this view by pointing out that Shakespeare may have modified his sources for Owen Glendower in Henry The Fourth, Part One to more accurately reflect the rebellious nature of the Welshman in the play (Welshwomen desecrating corpses) but later softened the image of the wild Welsh with his representation of Fluellen in Henry The Fifth in order to promote unity of kingdom ("Shakespeare's Welshmen," in Literature and Nationalism, 22-40).
11. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, 8.
12. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 121. Throughout this study I employ the terms dominant and emergent when referring to specific religious, political, aesthetic, and economic ideologies. These terms are borrowed from Williams and defined as follows: A dominant ideology is generally that which is the most powerful, typically associated with the ruling or hegemonic social or economic class. An emergent ideology, however, is one in which "new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships are continually being created" (123).
13. In what follows, I been influenced by the excellent work of Walker Connor, "Nation-building or Nation-destroying?," World Politics 24 (1972): 319-55, "When is a Nation?," Ethnic and Racial Studies 13 (1990): 92-103; A.D. Smith, National Identity (1991; reprint, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991), "War and Ethnicity: The Role of Warfare in the Formation, Self-images and Cohesion of Ethnic Communities," Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 (1981): 375-97, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, 2d ed. (New York: MIT Press, 1966); and Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) .
14. Smith, National Identity, 73.
15. Ibid, 10.
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16. Ibid, 8.
17. Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Us and Them: The Psychology of Ethnonationalism (New York: Brunner and Mazel Publishers, 1987), 8. The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) "has a membership of approximately 300 psychiatrists, most of whom are organized in the form of a number of working committees. These committees direct their efforts toward the study of various aspects of psychiatry and the application of this knowledge to the fields of mental health and human relations" {Us and Them, v ) . See Us and Them, 141-147, for additional information on GAP committees and membership.
18. Ibid, 7.
19. E.H. Erickson, "Ontogeny of Ritualization," in Psychoanalysis: A General Psychology, ed., R.M. Lowenstein, A. Solnit and M. Schur (New York: International Universities Press, 1966), 22.
20. Richard Helgerson provides evidence to support the argument that writers of the period actively sought to promote a national language, a language that would provide explanations (myths of descent) as well as justification (historical memories) for England's emerging political and economic position {Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994], Introduction.
21. See Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons and Anglo-Saxons (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1982), especially chapter 3.
22. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders : Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1963), 2.
23. Ibid, 9.
24. The Alumbrado movement (the illuminated ones) was founded in Toledo in 1510 by the reform-minded Franciscan sister Isabel de la Cruz. The group, following in the footsteps of the reformer Cardinal Cisneros, advocated a renewed interest in clerical education, chastity, and morality, as well as a closer personal relationship with God through scriptural interpretation and prayer. The movement was branded a heresy and persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition in the 1520s on the mistaken belief that it was associated with the more radical reform movements of Erasmus and Luther. For a more detailed study of the movement, see J.C. Nieto, Juan de Valdes and the Origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1970), 42-59 and De Lamar Jensen, Reformation Europe (Lexington: B.C. Heath, 1981), 168-69.
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25. See, for example, Elliot H. Tokson, The Popular Image of the Black Man in English Drama, 1550-1688 (Boston: Hall, 1982); Anthony Gerard Barthélémy, Black Face, Maligned Race: The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne (Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1987).
26. Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985), 1); see also Kamen, Inquisition and Society, 2-5; John Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe, 1400-1700 (London: Routledge, 1988), 2-40; Jane S. Gerber, The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (New York: The Free Press), 1-89); and Allan Harris Cutler and Helen Elmquist Cutler, The Jew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 88-97.
27. As quoted by Americo Castro, The Structure of Spanish History (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1954), 221.
28. The Catalan philosopher Ramon Llull (d. 1315) composed a dialogue in Arabic in which a Christian, a Moor, and a Jew appeared. In addition, political links between groups were common, as in the case of the Poem of the Cid, where a Castilian noble transfers his services from the Christians to the Muslim ruler of Saragossa (Kamen, Inquisition and Society, 2).
29. Sverker Arnoldsson, La Leyenda Negra: Estudios sobre sus origenes (Gdteborg: Gdteborgs Universitets Arsskrift, LXVI, 1960), 22-23.
30. Philip Wayne Powell, Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 46.
31. L.L., A Discourse of the Usage of the English Fugitives by the Spaniard (London: Thomas Scarlet for John Drawater, 1595), 2 0 .
32. Marvin Arthur Breslow, A Mirror of England: English Puritan Views of Foreign Nations, 1618-1640 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970), 64.
33. Thomas Scot, The Second Part of Vox Populi, or Gondomar appearing in the likeness of Matchiauell in a Spanish Parliament, wherein are discovered his treacherous and subtile Practices To the ruine as well of England, as the Netherlands. Faithfully translated out of the Spanish Coppie by a well-willer to England and Holland, 2d ed. (London: N. Okes and J. Dawson, 1624).
34. I am indebted to the following sources for my description of the Black Legend: Walter Maltby, The Black Legend in England (Durham: Duke UP, 1971). Julian Juderias, La Leyenda Negra, 4th
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ed. (Barcelona: Casa Editorial Araluce, 1917); Arnoldsson, La leyenda negra: Estudios sobre sus origenes; K.W. Swart, "The Black Legend during the Eighty Years War," in Britain and the Netherlands, Volume 5: Some Political Mythologies, ed. J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossman (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975); Philip Wayne Powell, Tree of Hate; Charles Gibson, ed. The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and the New (New York: Knopf, 1971); Lewis Hanke, "A Modest Proposal for a Moratorium on Grand Generalizations: Some Thoughts on the Black Legend," The Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (February, 1971) : 112-127; and Benjamin Keen, "The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities," The Hispanic American Historical Review, 49 (November, 1969): 703-719.
35. William's Apologia is contained in A Declaration and Publication of the Prince of Orange. Contayning the cause of his necessary defense against the Duke of Alba (20 July, 1568) (London: N.p., N.d), and in A supplication to the Kings Maiestie of Spayne, made by the Prince of Orange, trans. T.W. (London: Henry Middleton, 1573). See Maltby, The Black Legend in England, 145 n. 6, for additional information on these documents. Antonio Pérez's Pedacos de Historia, o Relaciones, assy llamadas por sus Auctores los Peregrines is credited by Juderias as playing a major role in spreading the Black Legend, though Maltby argues that the document, published in Spanish, probably had little effect on English attitudes. See Juderias, La Leyenda Negra, 266 and Maltby, The Black Legend, 88-91.
36. Juderias, La Leyenda Negra, 20.
37. See Maltby, The Black Legend in England, 5-8.
38. I do not intend in this study to defend the actions of Spain during the period under consideration. The most virulent anti- Spanish writings of the period were composed by individuals in response to specific historical events, events that likely did occur. Though those events may have been highly embellished in order to serve a particular political or religious agenda, the fact remains that the Spanish, like the Europeans in general, did commit serious crimes, especially in the New World. In this study I am primarily interested in how five English playwrights used stereotypes to promote or subvert specific political, religious, aesthetic, and economic ideologies, not in whether or not the stereotypes are true. Readers interested in a defense of Spain's actions during the period should consult Arnoldsson, Powell, or Keen. These three writers work hard to prove that Black Legend stereotypes are based primarily on fictional events.
39. Sir Walter Raleigh, The Last Fight of the Revenge, in Selected Prose and Poetry of Sir Walter Raleigh, Agnes Latham, ed. (London: University of London Press, 1965), 342.
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40. Richard Hakluyt, The Principle Voyages, Traffigues and Discoveries of the English Nation, 12 vols. (Glasgow; James MacLehose and Sons, 1904), VII:52.
41. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 8 vols., Stephen Reed Cattley, ed. (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1839), IV:451.
42. George Gascoigne, The Spoil of Antwerp, Faithfully reported by a true Englishman who was present at the same (London: Richard Jones, 1576) , 43.
43. Religious and political uses of the Black Legend are well documented. The very fact that Spain was perceived by Protestants of the period as the defender of Catholicism earned it undying hatred, and attacks on the Church often included attacks on Spain. The writings of John Foxe and Thomas Scot provide numerous examples of this use of the legend. Political uses of the legend occur as early as 1556, when during the reign of Mary, John Bradford warned that Spanish interference in English political affairs would prove disastrous, especially when the moral laxity associated with Philip's court was taken into account (The Copye of a Letter, sent by John Bradforth to the right honorable lordes of the Fries of Arundel, Darbie, Shrewsburye, and Pembroke, declaring the nature of the Spaniardes, and discovering the most detestable treasons which thei have pretended moste falselye agaynste our moste noble Kingdome of Englande [London: N.p., N.d.]. Later, in 1585, English actions in the Low Countries were justified by the anonymous writer of A Declaration of the Causes Moving the Queen of England to give aide to the Defense of the People afflicted and oppressed in the Lowe Countries, 1585, together with an Addition to the Declaration, touching the Slanders published of her Majestie. Given at Richmourn the first of October, 1585. In that document Queen Elizabeth argues that her involvement in the Low Countries was precipitated by Philip's counselors, "men more exercised in wars than in peacable government, and some of them notably delighted in blood as hath appeared by their actions." For additional examples of how the Black Legend was used to promote political and religious agendas, see Maltby, The Black Legend in England, 29-88; and Powell, Tree of Hate, 60-92.
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THE SPANISH TRAGEDY: THOMAS KYD AND THE CRISIS OF PORTUGAL
England has always experienced problems with immigration
and foreigners. After a series of armed invasions that racked
the country came to an end in 1066, legal immigration became
a fact of life for most Englishmen. Immigrants from France,
northern Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, as well as
Jews from throughout Europe, settled peacefully and, for the
most part, were accepted by the native inhabitants. While the
Jews were later banished by Edward I in 1290, other immigrant
groups were quickly absorbed and within several generations
became just as native as the older generations of Englishmen.'
In the mid fifteenth century and beyond, however, as England
gradually shifted from an agrarian to a mercantile-based
economy, many of the Europeans who were once welcomed were
viewed with increased suspicion. This was especially true in
sections of England where market economies were emerging and
competition for foreign and domestic markets was fierce. In
London, for example, a statute was passed in 1484 that imposed
restrictions on foreign businessmen, particularly in their
employment of foreign workmen or apprentices.^ The situation
26
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reached a crisis in 1517 when a group of London apprentices
rioted and attacked French and Flemish artis a n s .^ The
underlying motive that contributed to the riots was the
frustration that many native apprentices faced when trying to
rise to the level of master in guilds flooded with foreign
workers. Attacks such as the 1517 incident would routinely
occur throughout the sixteenth century, especially when the
country found itself in the midst of economic hardship or
confronted with the prospect of war. The foreigner quickly
became the scapegoat that was blamed for economic hardships
and feared in association with the prospect of foreign
invasion.
Between the years 1582 and 1592, London again faced a
serious immigration problem. Throughout this ten year period
Elizabeth had reluctantly agreed to provide a point of entry
for Dutch Protestants who faced increased persecution and
death at the hands of invading Spanish soldiers. But any
sympathy for the Dutch began to change by 1592 as the new
immigrants were viewed with suspicion by those who saw them as
threats to the economic stability of England. As one observer
put it,
these strangers who came hither in these times of
trouble abroad the better to enjoy the free exercise
of their consciences are so extraordinarily favoured
that some are grown to great wealth. Some of them
convey beyond the seas the commodities of this
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realm, whereby the prices of divers things are
increased and the Queen deceived in her custom.*
The situation became so serious that the Privy Council finally
ordered Sir Henry Killigrew to
make inquisitions how many strangers of every nation
use handicrafts that are not allowable in the City
and suburbs, where they inhabit, what occupations
they use, how many both men and women they keep in
their houses, how long they have been in the realm,
to what churches they record, and whether they keep
any English born in their houses.^
Justification for this sixteenth-century version of alien
registration was provided by officials who argued that they
wanted to protect the immigrant from English artisans and
apprentices who might attack him, but there may have been
another, more political reason why officials wanted to know
the location of all foreigners in London— in times of crisis
they could be rounded up more efficiently. Previously
foreigners had been linked to economic problems, but by 1592
another, more ominous enemy threatened England— Spain. The
foreigner was now feared for his ability to attack the nation
from within and became more suspect than ever.
Spain's attack in 1588 mobilized England as never before.
Armies were formed, ships were built, spies were employed, and
pamphleteers chronicled the threat posed by Spain. While these
traditional aspects of material and ideological nationalism
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were employed, another, equally powerful, agent of propaganda
was put to its fullest use. That agency was the public stage,
and one of the earliest playwrights who used his drama to
promote English nationalism was Thomas Kyd. In his Spanish
Tragedy, Kyd plays upon his audience's fears of foreigners in
general and Spain in particular. His play serves not only as
the prototype for the genre of revenge tragedy during the
period, but also as the model for the construction of an
alien, specifically Spanish other that would be utilized for
years by the playwrights who followed him.
Kyd's own uneasy relationship with foreigners can be
traced to a Dutch churchyard in London, where on April twenty
second, 1593, the first written or printed libels against
foreigners appeared. That libel declared the following:
Doth not the world see that you, beastly brutes, the
Belgians or rather drunken drones, and faint-hearted
Flemings; and you, fraudulent fathers, Frenchmen, by
your cowardly flight from your own natural
countries, have abandoned the same into the hands of
your proud, cowardly enemies, and have by a feigned
hypocrisy and counterfeit show of religion placed
yourselves here in a most fertile soil under a most
gracious and merciful Prince; who had been con
tented, to the great prejudice of her own natural
subjects, to suffer you to live here in better case
and more freedom than her own people?
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Be it known to all Flemings and Frenchmen, that it
is best for them to depart out of the realm of
England, between this and 9th of July next. If not,
then to take what follows. For there shall be many
a sore stripe.
Apprentices will rise to the number of 2336. And all
prentices and journeymen will down with Flemings and
Strangers.®
While the familiar complaint of the economic competition posed
by the Dutch is present here, another element has been added.
Foreigners are now accused of cowardice in the face of their
"proud" enemies,7 a clear allusion to Spanish military actions
in the Low Countries. It is also significant that in addition
to the French and Flemings, all "Strangers" are suspect,
reinforcing the popular view that perceived, from 1588 onward,
that all foreigners are potential economic and military
enemies.
Nearly two weeks later, on May 5th, another libel, this
one in the form of a ballad, was discovered posted in the same
Dutch churchyard. It read in part that
You, strangers, that inhabit in this land.
Note this same writing, do it understand.
Conceive it well, for safeguard of your lives.
Your goods, your children, and your dearest wives.*
On May 11th, the Privy Council instructed their officers to
make search and aprehend everie person so to be
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suspected. . .to make like serch in anie the
chambers, studies, chestes, or other like places for
al manner of writings or papers that may geve you
light for the discoverie of the libellers. . .And
after you shall have examined the persons, if you
shal finde them dulie to be suspected and they shal
refuze to confesse the truth, you shal by
aucthoritie hereof put them to the torture in
Bridewel, and by th' extremetie thereof . . .
draw them to discover their knowledge concerning the
said libells.’
On 12 May, 1593, the playwright Thomas Kyd was arrested and
held prisoner for his suspected role in producing anti-alien
libels. He was later held over for additional questioning for
possessing "vile hereticall Conceiptes denyinge the diety of
Jhesus Christe.""’ Kyd later confessed that the "hereticall
Conceiptes" belonged to his one-time roommate Christopher
Marlowe, but often overlooked by Marlowe critics in their mad
dash to provide evidence to sustain the "myth of Marlowe" is
that officers of the Privy Council moved so quickly to single
out Kyd as a suspected writer of anti-alien literature. Their
quick action seems to indicate that Kyd may have been well-
known in London for expressing anti-alien sentiments, if not
for actually writing some of the pamphlets that were in
circulation during the period. While Dutch immigrants were the
primary targets of the anti-alien sentiment, the real force
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responsible for the wave of immigration remained unreachable.
It was not Elizabeth, her counselors, or the Dutch themselves
who were to blame for the immigrants being in London. The real
culprit in the eyes of most of the public was Spain.
Though the threat of invasion had been laid to rest with
the defeat of the Armada in 1588, Spain could still cause
considerable problems for England, as her overwhelming desire
for world conquest that precipitated the immigration problem
would reveal. This fear of Spanish world domination and how it
could be stopped is a major theme in Kyd's The Spanish
Tragedy. The play, then, functions as a site of contestation
for the political controversies which England faced during the
years 1584 through 1588. In addition, Kyd argues in the play
for a more proactive English stance toward Spain, especially
on the Iberian Peninsula where Spain was flexing its muscle in
an attempt to maintain control of its once great competitor in
the New World, Portugal. Kyd promotes this ideology primarily
through the representation of Spanish and Portuguese others in
the first masque and in the second where he points toward the
need to employ the aid of Morocco to restore control of
Portugal to the Portuguese.
Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy has been the subject of intense
criticism by scholars throughout the twentieth century. Early
in this century source and influence scholars such as F.S.
Boas and Percy Simpson thought Kyd's play important primarily
for his use of such Senecan conventions as ghosts, madness.
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and revenge, or in how the play influenced a generation of
playwrights who followed." Other critics, such as A.H.
Thorndike and Fredson Bowers, studied the play in order to
gain an insight into sixteenth-century England's concern with
the issue of revenge versus justice.Bowers pointed to
Hieronimo's vindicta mihi speech as an indicator of the
conflict in the play between divine justice and mortal
revenge. With divine justice "heaven will be revenged of every
ill, / Nor will they suffer murder unrepaid" (III.xiii.2-3)."
However, divine justice demands patience, patience Hieronimo
lacks, "for mortal men may not appoint their time"
(III.xiii.5). Hieronimo chooses to "strike, and strike home,
where wrong is offered thee" (III.xiii.7), and for that
decision, according to Bowers, he must die at the end of the
play.
In addition to revenge, critics were also concerned with
character motivation. For Philip Edwards and Charles and
Elaine Hallet, for example, the important question was what
motivated each of the characters in the play to act as they
do." Andrea seeks revenge for the weakest of reasons: "for a
fair death in the field."'® Bel-Imperia's motive is traced to
her gender "since women were noted for their vengefulness in
Elizabethan life."'® And Hieronimo is driven to seek revenge
for his son's death. Though Hieronimo is the only character
who is somewhat justified in seeking revenge "there is hardly
a doubt that, mad or sane, [he] was a villain to the English
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audience at the end and was forced to commit suicide to
satisfy the stern doctrine that murder, no matter what the
motive, was never successful. The violence at the end of
the play was especially troubling to these critics who
characterized it as "a mad act, an act of cruelty and of
waste, and one dramatically calculated to differentiate the
justice of nature from the earthly or heavenly justice."'* In
this view, the play functions as a warning to the audience to
avoid personal revenge and let the agents of God, i.e., the
state, restore order to the community.
What these critics failed to see, however, was how
closely the play was related to the international political
situation of the period. Early historicists such as Joseph
Schick and Arthur Freeman pointed out a number of features of
the play that directly reflected the conflicts between
Portugal, Spain and England in the sixteenth century.'* Great
rivals in the New World and in the Mediterranean, Portugal and
Spain had enjoyed an uneasy peace since a papal decree had
divided the New World between the two in the fifteenth
century.-" In 1578, however, that situation changed with the
death of Portugal's king Don Sebastian at the Battle of
Alcazar, where the Portuguese were stopped in their attempt to
conquer Morocco. Sebastian's brother Henry, "the Cardinal
King" and last heir of the house of Viseu, ruled until his
death in 1580, when Philip II of Spain asserted his own
dynastic claim to the throne and appointed his nephew viceroy
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of Portugal. But the annexation of Portugal did not occur
without conflict. Don Antonio, Prior of Crato, attempted to
seize the throne, but was easily defeated within four months
by the Duke of Alba at the battle of Alcantara. In 1582 Don
Antonio, with the aid of mercenary forces composed of Moors
Dutch soldiers, again fought Philip for the throne of Portugal
at the Battle of Terceira where Antonio's forces were soundly
defeated. From 1582 onward, Antonio constantly sought aid in
launching another offensive against Spain, living for a short
time in London where he petitioned Elizabeth for support. He
was not alone in urging action against Spain, however, for as
early as 1580, immediately following Philip's annexation of
Portugal, Richard Topclyffe warned that "if King Philip have
Portugal, with his West Indies and with their East Indies, he
might. . . embrace and crush the world: Therefore it behoveth
his equals to lame him of one of those arm. Hakluyt, in an
attempt to draw England in the dispute, pointed out that "the
poor oppressed prince and people of Portigale doe watche
nighte and day when to finde a convenient occasion of
defection."^ Finally, in 1589, English forces, under the
command of Drake, launched an invasion of Portugal at Peniche.
The plan was to march forces overland toward Lisbon while
Drake's navy circled around to the south to meet them at
Lisbon's port. The plan to take Portugal relied entirely on
the assumption that Portuguese citizens would throw their
support to the invading forces to help overcome the superior
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Spanish forces. The hoped for Portuguese uprising never
occurred, and Drake was forced to withdraw. Spain was now
firmly in control of Portugal, and England watched uneasily as
Spain began to consolidate its power on the Iberian Peninsula
and in the New World.
Andrea's allusion to the "late conflict" between Portugal
and Spain (I.i.15) places the action of the play sometime
between 1578 and 1580-82 when the Hispano-Portuguese wars were
conducted.“ In addition, the description of the battle which
occupies part of I,ii suggests the Battle of Alcantara, where
Antonio's forces were routed by Alba's on 24 August 1580 and
Philip's claim to Portugal's throne was solidified. Other
allusions to the Hispano-Portuguese conflict in the play
include the mention of Tersera (Terceira) in I-iii-82, the
fact that Portugal in the play is governed by a viceroy, and
the King of Spain's allusion to the power he has obtained
through his conquest of Portugal: For as we now are, so
sometimes were these, / Kings and commanders of the western
Indies" (III.xiv. 6-7)-■* Kyd's use of the Hispano-Portuguese
conflict as the central action of his play was meant to appeal
to English hatred of Spain during the period and a fear of
Spanish expansionism, for Spain's desire for world domination
had long been a source of anxiety for many Englishmen. Spain's
success in the New World, especially their gold mining
operations, frightened many in England, as evidenced by
Richard Hakluyt's observations that Spanish expansionism could
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only be stopped if the gold supply was cut off. For "take away
his treasure [and] his old band of soldiers will soon be
dissolved, his purposes defeated, his power and strength
diminished, his pride abated, and his tyranny utterly
suppressed.Writing later, Raleigh would note a similar
relationship between gold and Spanish world domination: "by
the abundant treasure the Spanish King vexeth all the princes
of Europe, and is become in a few years from a poor King of
Castile the greatest monarch of this part of the world, and
likely every day to increase. "-®
While it is certainly true that Kyd is concerned with the
political situation on the Iberian peninsula in The Spanish
Tragedy, he goes beyond simply echoing English fears in the
play and moves toward the suggestion that England has defeated
Spain and Portugal in the past and can do so again. However,
before Kyd can present that argument, which he will do in the
first and second masques, he must first develop audience
sympathy for Hieronimo and Bel-imperia in order to justify the
acts they will commit at the end of the play. He accomplishes
this by utilizing several stereotypes commonly associated with
Spain of the Black Legend— Spanish cruelty, mixed bloodlines,
and lust.
The stereotype of the cruel Spaniard is developed early
in the play when the Portuguese Viceroy laments the fate of
his son Balthazar, for surely "they [the Spanish] have slain
him for his father's fault," even though that act "were a
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breach to common law of arms" (I.iii.46-47) . For in Spain, he
continues, "They reck no laws that meditate revenge"
(I.iii.48). The cruelty imposed upon captured prisoners by the
Spanish was a well known element of their national character,
revealed by Spain's 1564 treatment of the band of French
Huguenots who attempted to settle in Florida without Spain's
permission. Hakluyt recounts in his 1587 Principle Voyages,
that each and every "naked and sheeplike creature of God,"
including the women and children, were captured and hanged on
the beach under a sign which read: "I do not this as unto
Frenchmen, but as unto Lutherans and Pirates."^ Later, in the
Low Countries, Spain was accused of mistreating Dutch
prisoners of war. Holinshed observed that "the Spanish in the
Low Countries began to deal roughly with the people and
harried the inhabitants with all manner of spoil and
injury."-* Finally, Emanuel van Meteren provided a first-hand
account of the cruelty of Spanish soldiers in the Low
Countries:
Manifestly thus it appeareth in the sight of God and
all the world, what impiety, malice, mischief, and
cruelty the Pope and Spanish King hath with foxlike
subtlety and lionlike force practiced against the
nobles and states of the Low Countries, infringing
their ancient privleges, breaking fidelity in
contracts, violating the bonds of amity, oppressing
all integrity of loyal subjects and faithful
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servants of God, seeking to make havoc of high and
low, rich and poor, young and old, with more than
Turkish tyranny in those dominions most
intolerable.^
Here van Meteren plays on the well-known stereotype of the
cruel Spaniard to blame him for all the ills found in the Low
Countries, but he makes his point even stronger by emphasizing
the relationship between the Spaniard and the Turk. His
allusion would be all too clear to a sixteenth-century reader:
Spaniards are just as cruel as Turks because the bloodlines of
the two are so closely related.
Spain was strongly criticized by English writers of the
period for its long association with Moors and Jews.
Sixteenth-century Englishmen were well aware of the history of
Spain and its once official policy of religious toleration.
Until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Moors, Jews, and
Christians often lived side-by-side in convivencia.^° Although
religious toleration in Spain had ended officially with the
expulsion of the Jews in 1492, sixteenth-century English
writers (especially those with strong Puritanical leanings)
continued to promote an association between Catholic Spain and
"pagan" cultures by employing such labels as "Romish Babylon
and Spanish Periander" when referring to Spain. Kyd's own
reference to Spain's mixed religious and racial background
occurs with Hieronimo's explanation of what the first knight
in the masque represents. He is King Stephen, who captured
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Portugal and "Enforced the king, then but a Saracen, / To bear
the yoke of the English monarchy." His use of the word
Saracen, a nomadic people of the deserts between Syria and
Arabia, is here used to point toward the mixed bloodline of
the inhabitants of the peninsula.
Kyd also plays on the stereotype of a Spaniard consumed
with lust who will stoop to any means to satisfy his sexual
desires. Drake's chaplain claimed that in the New World "the
poisonous infection of Popery" is spread wherever the Spanish
go, infecting every village and town "not only with whoredom,
but the filthiness of Sodom, not be named among Christians."**
William of Orange wrote in 1573 that in the Low Countries the
Spanish rape "honest women and young maidens, while pregnant
women are butchered in the streets" by the Spanish soldier who
"gives himself over to all kinds of unnatural vices"** The
stereotype of Spanish lust is supported by Kyd through
Balthazar's complicity in murdering Horatio to obtain Bel-
imperia and Lorenzo's role as panderer of his sister. Though
Balthazar is Portuguese, an English audience of the period may
not have made a distinction for Portugal was then under the
control of Philip.** In addition, the Spanish King declares
early in the play that "Spain is Portugal, / And Portugal is
Spain" (I.iv.32-33), a statement which would efface any
distinction between the behavior of a Portuguese noble and a
Spaniard. Finally, as in the pamphlet literature, lust and
violence are joined when Lorenzo declares to Balthazar that he
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can obtain his sister for the Portuguese prince, for "Where
words prevail not, violence prevails; / But gold doth more
than either of them both" (II.i .108-109). Spanish greed and
lust go hand in hand, much as they were perceived to do in the
New World.
Kyd employs these anti-Spanish stereotypes to establish
sympathy for Hieronimo and Bel-imperia and to justify their
actions later in the play— actions that promote English
nationalism at the expense of the destruction of the Spanish
Court. A glimpse of this concern with promoting English
nationalism is found in first masque. Early on in the play
(I.iv), Hieronimo stages for the amusement of the Spanish king
and his guest, the Portuguese ambassador, a "pompous jest" in
which three knights take the crowns of three kings and then
hold them captive. The Spanish King and the Portuguese
ambassador "sound not well the mystery" (139) of the masque,
and Hieronimo explains that the first knight was "English
Robert, Earl of Gloucester, / When King Stephen bore sway in
Albion," who invaded Portugal and "enforced the king, then but
a Saracen / To bear the yoke of English monarchy" (140-146).
The second knight "was Edmund, Earl of Kent in Albion," who,
like Robert before him, "took the King of Portingale in fight"
(152-155). The final knight represented "brave John of Gaunt,"
who "with a puissant army came to Spain, / And took our King
of Castile prisoner" (165-167).
Early critics of the play found great historical problems
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with the first masque, faulting Kyd for his inaccuracies.* In
1967, however, Arthur Freeman argued for a link between the
masque and the popular history of the period when he pointed
out that Kyd's version of England's activities on the
peninsula closely matched one recorded by John Sharrock in his
1585 The Valiant Actes and Victorious Battailes of the English
Nation. Sharrock reported that John of Gaunt conquered Spain
and married off his daughters to the Spanish and Portuguese
Kings.* If Kyd knew this history, and there is no reason to
assume that he did not, then the masque takes on special
significance as it serves to argue the case for English
intervention in Iberian politics. The play, then, is "not only
retrospective, but also proleptic," providing the basis for a
political reading of the play as English destiny, for "by
means of the masque, Kyd reveals to his English audience its
destiny as conqueror of Catholic Spain."* Moreover, through
Kyd's association of Spain and Moor in the masque, he alludes
to the need for Turkish assistance if England can expect to
succeed in its quest to restore Don Antonio to the throne of
Portugal.
England and Morocco had enjoyed a trading and quasi
political relationship since 1548 when the first English
traders landed in Morocco.” This on-again, off-again
relationship depended largely on the ruling faction in Morocco
at the time, as rulers often shifted their trading interest
from Spain to England depending on their own domestic needs.
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In 1578, however, Morocco was in desperate need of English
trade goods as it geared up to defend itself from an impending
Portuguese invasion. In the years leading up to the battle,
Leicester convinced Elizabeth to trade saltpeter and timber in
Morocco in exchange for the lucrative commodity salt. Morocco
needed saltpeter to support munitions and timber for the
construction of galleys. Portugal was stopped in their
invasion attempt at the Battle of Alcazar, where King Don
Sebastian was killed. More important for English and Moroccan
relations though was the death of two important Moroccan
rulers and political rivals, Moulay abd el-Malek and Moulay
Mohammed el-Mesloukh. Their deaths ushered in a new period of
peace in Morocco under a single ruler. With this new period of
peace came a renewed interest in English trade. In 1581
Elizabeth instructed Sir William Cecil to license John Symcot
to trade timber and saltpeter with Morocco. Leicester was a
major proponent of this alliance, urging the Moroccans to use
the timber for the construction of galleys to be used against
Spain. In 1585 a trading charter between England and Morocco
was officially established. During these years Don Antonio of
Portugal was actively lobbying Elizabeth for support in an
attempt to invade Portugal, but Elizabeth, busy as she was
with affairs in the Low Countries put him off. Finally, in
1589, Elizabeth was ready to support an invasion attempt only
after the Moroccan ambassador, Mushac Reiz, offered her one
hundred ships and 150,000 ducats to be used to aid the
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invasion cause.* If Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy was first
performed no later than 1588 or early 1589*, then his
allusion to an association between Moors, Spain, and Portugal
takes on a new political significance. Kyd is here using the
stage to argue for English intervention in Portugal with the
assistance of the Turks. This occurs in the second masque.
Hieronimo provides the argument for the second masque,
"Soliman and Perseda," to the actors as he assigns roles:
. . . The chronicles of Spain
Record this written of a knight of Rhodes:
He was betrothed, and wedded at the length
To one Perseda, an Italian dame.
Whose beauty ravished all that her beheld.
Especially the soul of Soliman,
Who at the marriage was the chiefest guest.
By sundry means sought Soliman to win
Perseda's love, and could not gain the same.
Than gan he break his passions to a friend.
One of his bashaws whom he held full dear;
Her had this bashaw long solicited.
And saw she was not otherwise to be won
But by her husband's death, this knight of Rhodes,
Whom presently by treachery he slew.
She, stirred with an exceeding hate therefore.
As cause of this slew Soliman;
And to escape the bashaw's tyranny
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Did stab herself; and this the tragedy.
(IV.i.108-126)
Balthazar is assigned the role of Great Soliman, the Turkish
Emperor; Lorenzo is to play the Knight of Rhodes; Bel-imperia
is cast as Perseda, the wife of the knight; and Hieronimo
becomes the murderous Bashaw.
This second masque has been the focus of intense debate
by critics since Boas. The masque was especially troublesome
for humanists and Christian humanists alike who sought to
explain how an Elizabethan audience would react to the
multiple murders that occur in the playlet, for if Hieronimo
is the hero here, then revenge is privileged above divine
justice.^ But if Kyd's agenda is to promote English
nationalism (as he makes clear in the first masque) then the
violence in the second masque can be justified, for it points
toward the annihilation of Spain and the chance for English
victory on the Iberian peninsula. Frank Ardolino has observed
that Hieronimo's prediction that "Now shall I see the fall of
Babylon, / Wrought by the heavens in this confusion"
(IV.1.195-96) represents "symbolically the defeat of Spain in
the historical context of Protestant-Catholic rivalry of the
late 1580s.Likewise, Eugene Hill also sees politics at
work in the second masque, and tends to read the characters as
possessing a politicized allegorical significance/” In his
view Bel-imperia is equated with Elizabeth. She is not
motivated by gendered irrational revenge or madness, nor does
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she serve as an agent that precipitates the "fall" of an older
generation, but represents England's desire to rid itself of
its mortal enemy.
Although Hill and Ardolino are essentially correct in
their political reading of the second masque, especially the
allegorical significance of Bel-imperia as Elizabeth, they
tend to read the play as Kyd's appeal to his audience's post-
Armada nationalist sentiment, for both place the date of the
first performance after 1588. What they tend to ignore,
however, is that Kyd, the playwright and enemy of foreigners
in London, is advocating foreign intervention on the peninsula
before the Spanish have a chance to solidify their position in
Portugal and launch an attack on England from Lisbon.” His
play serves as a warning to his audience to take action
against Spain before it can take action against them. That he
advocates this type of pro-active stance toward Spain is
revealed by dating the play pre-Armada and focusing on a
different politicized allegory revealed through Kyd's use of
Moors in the masque.
The action in the masque reveals Kyd's concern with
Iberian politics and England's need to intervene. Bel-imperia
as Perseda kills Balthazar, which represents England
controlling Portugal as well as Spain attacking Morocco.
Hieronimo, as the Turkish Bashaw slays both Lorenzo, the
Catholic Knight of Rhodes, and the Spanish King to portray the
destruction of Catholic Spain by an ally of England. The point
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made in the masque is that unless England acts to enlist the
strong support of Morocco for another attack on Portugal,
Spain can never be defeated. Castile, innocent though he might
seem to most critics, must die in order for the plan to
succeed and the political climate to change. Kyd is arguing in
the second masque, even more forcefully than in the first, for
Morocco to play a major role in the politics of the peninsula,
a role they would later fail to play when the promised support
for Drake's invasion did not appear. Morocco had every reason
to aid the English in the defeat of the Spanish-Portuguese
alliance, as they greatly feared Spanish invasion and
desperately needed English goods if they were to keep Spain at
bay. Kyd's play reveals to his audience what would happen if
England and Morocco became allies, an alliance that would free
England and Morocco of the fear of Spanish invasion. Kyd knew
only too well what a foreign presence in England could lead
to.
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Notes
1. V.G. Kiernan, "Britons Old and New," in Immigrants and Minorities in British Society, ed. Colin Holmes (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978), 23-40.
2. Kiernan, "Britons Old and New," 29.
3. A. Abram, Social England in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1909), 6-7.
4. Acts of the Privy Council, ed. J.R. Dasent (London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1900), XXII:506. Hereafter referred to as A.P.C.
5. A.P.C., XXII:506.
6. A.P.C., XXIV:200.
7. Spaniards were routinely characterized by pamphleteers as excessively proud. This stereotype became a major component of the Black Legend. This and additional elements of the legend will be developed in later chapters. For additional examples of Spanish pride, see Walter Maltby, The Black Legend in England (Durham: Duke UP, 1971), 58, 64, 92, 94, 106, 110, 112, 123.
8. John Strype, Annals of the Reformation during Queen Elizabeth's happy reign (London: Edward Symon, 1731), IV:168.
9. A.P.C., XXIV:222.
10. Harlein MS. 6848, fols. 187-189, as quoted by Arthur Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 26.
11. See F.S. Boas, "Introduction," in The Works of Thomas Kyd (London: Clarendon Press, 1901); F.S. Boas "Introduction" in Shakespeare and His Predecessors (1896; reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 19 69). Boas set the tone for a generation of critics who studied Kyd primarily for his contribution to Shakespeare and other playwrights who wrote revenge tragedy. He argued that Kyd drew heavily from Latin classics, particularly Seneca, as evidenced through his uses of Latin phrases, especially in Hieronimo's lamentation scene in the second act. For the critics who followed Boas in investigating Kyd's contribution to Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, see Percy Simpson, "Annual Shakespeare Lecture," in The Theme of Revenge in Elizabethan Tragedy (London: Proceedings of the British Academy, 1935) ; Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1959); C.L. Barber, Creating Elizabethan Tragedy: The Theatre of Marlowe and Kyd, ed. Richard P. Wheeler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) ; and
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Philip Edwards, Thomas Kyd and Early Elizabethan Tragedy (London; Longman, Green and Co., 1966).
12. A.H. Thorndike called the play "a distinct species of the tragedy of blood . . . a tragedy whose leading motive is revenge and whose main action deals with the progress of the revenge" {Tragedy [1908; reprint. New York: Cooper Square, 1965], 125). Fredson Bowers later expanded that definition and called the play a "general type of the tragedy of revenge [in which] the catastrophes brought about by a human or divine revenge for an unrighted wrong . . . need not necessarily constitute the main plot" (Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642, 64).
13. All quotes from The Spanish Tragedy are from Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, 2nd ed., ed. J.R. Mulryne (1989; reprint, London: A&C Black; New York: W.W. Norton, 1991).
14. See Philip Edwards, Thomas Kyd and Early Elizabethan Tragedy (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1966); and Charles A. and Elaine S. Hallet. The Revenger's Madness: A Study of Revenge Tragedy Motifs (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980). "Tragedy," according to Edwards, "in this age begins and ends with the idea of retribution: the belief that every deed is a pendulum, that every crime has its punishment" (10). Like Bowers, Edwards also sees revenge motivating the characters in the play, especially Bel-imperia, who moves from Bowers' status of woman as cultural and literary stereotype to that of an Eve-like figure who instigates the "fall" of the Spanish kingdom. In another break with Bowers, Edwards argues that when it comes to the question of Hieronimo's guilt, "there can be no question that the audience is on his side" (38). The Hallets justify character motivation in the play by focusing on generational conflicts. An older generation— representatives of divine justice— the Spanish court, is pushed out of the way by a younger generation— Bel- imperia, Lorenzo, and Andrea— a "disruptive element which serves to undermine the present rulers and, in its manipulation of them, to render them impotent" (136). Again, as in Bowers and Edwards, Bel-imperia comes in for the most criticism: she is a Medea or Pandora-like figure, "a compulsion [who] introduces thoughts of chaos into the world which the King of Spain has just order"; she contains "the power of Proserpine" (144); and she represents "a reminder that the order of nature (not Heaven) lies behind the madness" (154).
15. Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 66.
16. Ibid, 67.
17. Ibid, 82.
18. Hallet, The Revenger's Madness, 158.
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19. Arthur Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Joseph Schick, ed., "Introduction," in The Spanish Tragedy (1898; reprint, London: Dent, 1907).
20. For a more thorough treatment of the political situation among the Spanish, Portuguese, Turks, and English, see R.B. Wernham, After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe, 1588-1595 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984), 107-130.
21. Richard Topclyffe to the Earl of Shrewsbury, 16 March 1579/80; Talbot MSS.F.f.377. As quoted by E.M. Tenison, Elizabethan England (Warwick: Issued for the Author, 1933), 63.
22. Richard Hakluyt, Divers Voyages Touching the Discouerie of America and the H a n d s Adaicent (London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1582), 82.
23. Schick "Introduction," The Spanish Tragedy.
24. Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems, 51-54. Freeman observes that in popular Elizabethan usage "Indies" meant mainland as well as islands. "Plausibly, Kyd is alluding to the turn of events which put all of Portugal's colonies in the hands of Spain" (52).
25. Richard Hakluyt, A Discourse Concerning Western Planting, ed. Charles Deane (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1877) , 59.
26. Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana, in Sir Walter Raleigh: Selected Prose and Poetry, ed. Agnes Latham (London: The Athlone Press, 1965), 116.
27. Richard Hakluyt, The Principle Voyages, Traffiques & Discouerie of America and the Hands Adiacent, 12 vols. (Glasgow: James MacLeohose and Sons, 19 04), IX:109.
28. Holinshed quoted by Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England (London: George Sawbridge, 1579), 353.
29. Emanual van Meteren, A True Discourse Historicall of the succeeding governours in the Netherlands and the ciuill warres there begun in the yeere 1565, trans. Thomas Churchyard and Richard Robinson (London: Matthew Lownes, 1602), 54.
30. John Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe: 1400-1700, (London: Routledge, 1988), 1-12; Jane S. Gerber, The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 59-90; Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 1-5.
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31. Francis Fletcher, The World Emcompassed by Sir Francis Drake (London: Nicholas Brown, 1628), 109.
32. William of Orange, A Supplication to the Kings Maiestie of Spayne, made by the Prince of Orange, trans. T.W. (London: Henry Middleton, 1573), 12.
33. In his dating of the play, Eugene Hill points out that English sympathy for Portugal had waned during the period, especially since the Portuguese failed to support Drake's mission to reestablish King Antonio at Lisbon in 1586 (Eugene D. Hill, Senecan and Vergilian Perspectives in The Spanish Tragedy," ELR 15 [1985]: 152).
34. Boas called the masque "curiously inaccurate . . . [for] there is no reason to suppose that Robert of Gloucester was ever in Portugal," {The Works of Thomas Kyd, 34). Philip Edwards thought the masque a problem and questioned where Kyd could have possibly gotten "his rosy account of the English triumphs in Iberian lands," (as quoted by Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems, 31). And William Empson called it "childlike, unreality" and speculated that "members of the audience . . . would be content to take it as charming," {"The Spanish Tragedy," English Critical Essays: Twentieth Century, 2nd ser., ed. Derek Hudson [Oxford: Oxford UP, 1958], 31).
35. Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems, 55-56.
36. Frank Ardolino, "Corrida of Blood in The Spanish Tragedy: Kyd's Use of Revenge as National Destiny," in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 1, eds. J. Leeds Barroll & Paul Werstine (New York: AMS Press, 1984), 41.
37. See Jack D'Amico, The Moor in English Renaissance Drama (Tampa: University of Southern Florida Press, 1991).
38. The hoped for Turkish assistance to regain control of Portugal did not arrive, however, as the Turks were pressured into withdrawing their support of the English by Philip II. See R.B. Wernham's "Failure in Portugal" in After the Armada.
39. The date of the action of the play has been placed by Schick as somewhere between 1578 and 1580-82 ("Introduction," The Spanish Tragedy). The date of the first performance is somewhat more problematic. The traditional termini for the play lie in the range somewhere between 1582 and 1592. The play could not have been performed prior to 1582, as the Battle of Terceira, alluded to in I.iii.82, occurred in July-August, 1582, and 1592 is the latest date the play could have been performed. Henslowe's diary confirms a performance in that year. A date later than 1584 seems somewhat likely if we consider T.W. Baldwin's argument that the Pedringano scene is based on events detailed in a "Letter of
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Estate," in which it was alleged that Leicester used a similar device to rid himself of a tool villain and that the stage direction requiring Portugal's Viceroy to fall to the ground (I.iii) indicates an English contempt for the weakness of the Portuguese who refused to aid Drake in his 1589 invasion attempt. But that stage direction could just as easily indicate the ease with which the Portuguese could be defeated and is used by Kyd to argue for an easy victory there. Additional evidence to refute a post-Armada date is also present, for there are no references to the Armada, and the rather shrill tone associated with Kyd's almost constant references to the threat of Spanish/Portuguese world domination indicate the type of anxiety and fear present in most pre-Armada pamphlet literature. I tend to place the date of the play, then, as somewhere between 1584 and 1588. See Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems, 71, 74; Hill, "Senecan and Vergilian Perspectives . . . ," 151.
40. Bowers labeled Hieronimo a "dangerous, blood-thirsty maniac" (Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 71), and the Hallets argued that "there is no reason for it— it [the multiple murders] is a mad act" {The Revenger's Madness, 158). Especially troublesome for critics is the murder of Castile. Simpson attributed it to Hieronimo's madness: "timed or ill-timed, [it] is the central cause of Hieronimo's failure" {The Theme of Revenge in Elizabethan Tragedy, 9).
41. Frank Ardolino argues for strong connections to anti-Spanish sentiment in general and specifically to religious plays like Foxe's Christus Triumphans, in which the "tragedy of Babylon- Spain's fall and the comedy of Protestant England's defeat of the Catholic Antichrist" is realized ("'Now shall I see the fall of Babylon': The Spanish Tragedy as Protestant Apocalypse," Shakespeare Yearbook 1 [Spring 1990]: 99).
42. In Hill's view Bel-imperia as Perseda represents a Christian Princess, who is besought on all sides by pagan elements (represented by Balthazar as Soliman). He then equates Bel- imperia (whose name is glossed by most critics as beautiful empire) with Elizabeth, especially since Andrea requests of Revenge that she be placed in the underworld with those who died for love— those "vestal virgins and fair queens" (IV.v.22). The murder of Balthazar at the hands of Bel-imperia/Elizabeth, then, represents the symbolic defeat of the Portuguese-Spanish league. Hieronimo's murder of Lorenzo, and later Castile, ensures that the league is completely destroyed, for the childless King of Spain laments that "the whole succeeding hope / That Spain expected after my decrease" (IV.iv.203-204) has been completely wiped out ("Senecan and Vergilian Perspectives . . . ").
43. Garrett Mattingly points out that Lisbon was crucial to Spain's success in launching the Armada against England. It served as the primary point from which the Spanish fleet was
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supplied and launched. In The Spanish Tragedy Kyd may be taking the side of Drake, who continued to appeal to Elizabeth long after his failure in Portugal to attack again, or at least to set up a blockade of Lisbon {The Armada [1959; reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988}, 187-89. This view is also supported an anonymous pamphlet dated May 30, 1588, in which the writer describes how the Spanish are fortifying Lisbon, how many ships are assembled (including ship names, tonnage, armament, and manpower), and how many troops are ready to embark on an expedition to attack England (A True Discourse of the Armie which the King of Spaine cauled to be assembled in the Hauen of Lisbon, in the Kingdome of Portugall, in the yeare 1588, against England, trans. Daniel Archdeacon [London: John Wolfe, 1588]).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE'S THE JEW OF MALTA: DEMON JEWS AND AMBITIOUS SPANIARDS
Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, so the legend has
been handed down, once shared a writing chamber in London.
There, as Thomas Kyd would later testify, the two playwrights'
papers were "shuffled" together, leading authorities to
believe that Kyd had written the "monstrous opinions" that
were discovered there.* Those "monstrous opinions" included
statements such as "the beginning of religion was only to keep
men in awe," and "that Christ was a bastard and his mother
dishonest."2 six days after Kyd's arrest, Marlowe was ordered
to appear before the Privy Council to answer questions about
the writings found in his chambers. He promised to remain
available for further questioning and was released. Ten days
later he was killed in a tavern brawl.^ But more than papers
may have been "shuffled" together in that shared writing
chamber. Ideas as well could have been combined*, especially
since each playwright used dramatic characters to promote
English nationalism. While Kyd argued for English intervention
on the Iberian Peninsula, Marlowe turned his attention further
to the south, to the island of Malta and the power struggles
that were played out there between Spaniard and Turk in the
54
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mid sixteenth century. In addition to their concern with
international affairs, the playwrights also shared an immense
popularity with sixteenth-century audiences.
Marlowe's The Jew of Malta was wildly popular throughout
the 1590's, performed 36 times under Henslowe from 1592*
through 1597, quite often with Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and
Spanish Comedy.^ The play was especially popular in 1594 when
it was revived during the time that anti-Semitic sentiment ran
high after Elizabeth's personal physician Roderigo Lopez had
been executed for attempted murder. Indeed, an audience of
1594 would have been struck by the similarities between
Barabas and Dr. Lopez, who was described as
a perjured murdering traitor, and Jewish doctor,
worse than Judas himself, undertook to poison her,
which was a plot more wicked, dangerous, and
detestable than all the former. . . The bargain was
made, and price agreed upon, and the fact only
deferred until payment of the money was assured; the
letters of credit for his assurance were sent, but
before they came into his hands, God most
wonderfully and miraculously revealed and prevented
it.7
The stereotyping at work in the description of Lopez reflects
a number of stereotypes used by Marlowe to characterize his
Jew in The Jew of Malta. Lopez, like Barabas, has a cruel
streak, is greedy, and is duplicitous, all characteristics
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that were associated with Jews and Spaniards during the
period. For just as Kyd employed stereotypes to demonize his
characters, Marlowe would do much the same in order to attack
Jew and Spaniard alike. Politics and power are at the heart of
the play, especially the power and politics associated with
England and Spain. Marlowe promotes an ideology that condemns
Spanish expansionist policy in the Mediterranean world and
promotes English imperialism by demonizing the Spaniard
through his representative, Barabas, the Jew of Malta.
The play has received little critical attention since the
mid nineteenth century, and what attention the play has
received has been in how it serves as a source for
Shakespeare's more popular Merchant of VeniceJ The
relationship between Barabas and Shylock is often examined to
determine how much Shakespeare borrowed from Marlowe in
creating Shylock: both are Jews, both are aliens, both have
daughters who convert to Christianity, both wish their
daughters dead, both exhibit "Jewish" physical characteristics
(red hair and long noses), and both represent "typical" Jewish
personality traits: greed, cruelty, and duplicity.’ Other
studies have focused on the relationship between Barabas and
Shylock to argue that Shakespeare borrowed from Marlowe,
either to create a more sympathetic portrayal of the Jew,'" or
to criticize a particular aspect of the culture." One wonders
that if Shakespeare had not written The Merchant of Venice
whether Marlowe's play would be studied at all.
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Those critics who have written about The Jew of Malta
exclusive of The Merchant of Venice view Barabas in a number
of ways. He has been described as "consummately vicious," his
downfall linked to the tradition of biblical characters who
themselves suffer the fate they've planned for others. The pit
into which Barabas falls at the end of the play is compared to
a hellmouth associated with "murder and treachery," an image
apt "for depicting the nature of sin," and appropriate in the
eyes of a sixteenth-century audience for "Jews and to those
engaged in financial fraud."” In this view Marlowe simply
takes the basic structure of a morality play in which Vice is
held up to derision by the other characters in the play and
justly punished in the end, to warn those in the audience not
to follow Barabas' example. In this respect, most of Marlowe's
plays can be made to fit this model: Faustus represents Pride,
the consequences of which are damnation, Edward II represents
Lust, and Barabas is Greed, who loses all he owns and holds
dear, including his daughter and his life. His death in the
pit then allegorically represents eternal damnation in hell.
Critics who follow this line of reasoning generally
ignore the topical allusions in Marlowe's plays— Faustus's
commentary on the failings of humanism, the Machiavellian
aspects of Mortimer and Isabella, and the hypocrisy of
Ferneze. These are simply examples where the overreaching
Marlowe depicts "man's illimitable capacity for achievement or
his tragic status in a universe that had no care of him."”
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Humanist readings such as these tend to gloss over the
political and social issues being debated in Marlowe's plays,
using them instead as examples of how those who reach beyond
their limits suffer the consequences of that ambition.
While the type of criticism outlined above tends to gloss
over the political implications of Marlowe's drama,
historicist-minded critics see politics and power as the
central issues in Marlowe's works. In Marlowe can be found
"important political implications, though generally they [the
plays] remain dramatic art rather than political documents."*
Marlowe relies upon his audience's knowledge of politics to
construct his characters as he does and move the drama along.
A knowledge of Machiavellian politics, for example, is
essential to an understanding of what motivates Mortimer in
Edward II and Barabas in The Jew of Malta. Marlowe uses
Machiavelli in The Jew of Malta to deliberately expose "the
Christian hypocrisy" at work in the play, "particularly in the
context of orthodox Christian condemnation of Machiavelli."
That is, by making Barabas so unbelievably evil, Marlowe
"shields him from the moral opprobrium that a more believable
character guilty of more credible crimes would deserve." The
play's irony is directed not at Barabas, but at Ferneze "whose
professed theory of the universe is Augustinian, but whose
practice conforms to a Machiavellian Realpolitik view of the
world."” Ferneze's final words in the play, then, are highly
hypocritical. Ferneze asks "due praise be given, / Neither to
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Fate nor Fortune, but to Heaven" (V.v. 130-131) * for the
rescue of Malta. But it was Machiavellian plotting on the part
of Ferneze and Barabas that led to the overthrow of the Turks.
From the very beginning of the play, when Ferneze seizes upon
the idea to strip the Jews of their wealth to pay tribute to
the Turks, to the end, when Barabas's schemes go awry and lead
to the accidental recapture of the city, all of the dramatic
action in the play has been governed by Machiavellian
politics, not the divine hand of God.
While political gain is the end toward which all the
characters in The Jew of Malta aspire, greed is what drives
the action of the play:
Barabas's own desire for gold, so eloquently voiced
at the start and vividly enacted in the scene in
which he hugs his money bags, is the glowing core of
that passion which fires all the characters.”
Thus, Barabas represents "not the exception to but rather the
true representative of his society,"'* a society consumed by
commercial and political gain. His excessive greed is a Jewish
stereotype, but a stereotype that is used by Marlowe to expose
the greed that pervades the entire culture. Greed drives
Ferneze to ignore the previous requirements to pay the Turks
their tribute money, to strip Barabas of his wealth, to deal
with Spain, and to demand a ransom for Calymath. Del Bosco is
driven by greed by persuading Ferneze to refuse to pay the
tribute, for unless Ferneze breaks his ties with the Turks,
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Del Bosco cannot unload his rich cargo of slaves in the
Maltese marketplace: "But to admit a sale of these thy Turks,
/ We may not, nay, we dare not give consent, / By reason of a
tributary league" (II.ii.21-23) . Even the Friars are driven by
greed, for they argue not over who will convert Barabas, but
who will receive the large dowry he promises to bring with
him:
In Florence, Venice, Antwerp, London, Seville,
Frankfort, Lubeck, Moscow, and where not.
Have I great debts owing; and in most of these
Great sums of money lying the banco.
All this I'll give to some religious house,
So I may be bapiz'd, and live therein. (IV. i.74-79)
Unlike a morality play, this is not greed for its own sake,
but greed for the sake of power, and every character in the
play, with the possible exception of Abigail, is concerned
with power: Ferneze wants to retain it, Barabas wants to
control it, and both Spain and the Turks want to acquire it.
While historicist-minded critics are correct in pointing
out how power and greed function in the play, none take the
next step: to explain how power and greed in the play function
to inform an ideology circulating in the culture at large. For
just as Malta is the actual site of contestation for the
characters in the play, historically it was a site of
contestation for those nations that wished to expand their
powers in the Mediterranean region— Morocco, Spain, and
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England.
Malta was an important strategic post for trading and war
in the mid sixteenth-century. The island was controlled by the
once powerful Knights of Rhodes who emerged in the twelfth
century as "Hospitallers" to European pilgrims in Jerusalem.
The order was composed of nobles from throughout Europe who
saw their mission as defending the Christian world against the
Turks. As with Ferneze's knights in Marlowe's play, they were
also driven from Rhodes to Malta in 153 0, where they formed
their last and strongest outpost. Originally England had
supported their cause, but after Henry VIII's break with the
Church, support began to wane. Yet some English support
continued, especially after the unsuccessful Turkish attempt
to gain control of the island in 1565. Afterwards England
conducted something of an "ideological campaign" against the
Turkish "aggressor," viewing Malta's status as directly
related to England's in the region.” Though Malta in the play
is threatened by Calymath and his Turkish forces, the arrival
of Martin Del Bosco signifies the real threat to the island
for an English audience. Though Marlowe is historically
accurate here (Spain did attempt to aid the Maltese in their
defense against the Turkish invasion of 1565) , Martin Del
Bosco does more than simply conform to Marlowe's attempt to be
historically accurate. The Spaniard represents a specific
political idealogy, an ideology that the English abhorred and
feared— Spanish imperialism.
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Del Bosco does not arrive on the scene primarily to offer
aid to the Maltese. As "Vice-Admiral unto the Catholic King,"
his first reason for being in Malta is to traffic in human
merchandise: "Our fraught is Grecians, Turks, and Afric Moors"
(II.ii.7,9). The connection between Spain and Catholicism is
clearly established here perhaps as a reminder to the audience
of how Catholic Spain conducted itself in its quest for world
domination. The scene also serves to recall for the audience
the stories that circulated in England after the publication
of Bartolemé De Las Casas' 158 3 Brief Chronicle of the Actes
of the Spaniards in the West Indies.There Spain enslaves
the inhabitants of the New World in a quest for gold.
Tellingly, immediately he announces why he is in Malta, Del
Bosco and Ferneze discuss gold (25-40). Afterwards Del Bosco
stakes claim to the island of Malta on behalf of the king of
Spain. All three elements of Spanish imperialism well known to
an English audience are present in this scene: claiming the
land in the name of the Catholic King, exploiting the
inhabitants, and taking gold. Though it could be argued that
Martin Del Bosco functions simply as yet another element of
greed or power at work in the play, the allusion to Spanish
slavery and Catholicism in the scene point to a specific form
of power— the power associated with Spain's threatened
conquest of the known world.
But the real threat to Malta and, indirectly, to England,
appears in the character of the wealthy Jew of Malta, Barabas.
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Critics since the late nineteenth century have searched for a
source for Marlowe's Barabas. The late nineteenth-century
Austrian scholar Leon Kellner proposed Joao Miques as a
possible model for Barabas. Miques, an exiled Portuguese Jew
led a group of 500 Jewish emigrants from Italy to
Constantinople in 1555. Miques, who later latinized his name
to Joseph Nassi, appears in histories of the period as advisor
to Selim II, Sultan of the Turks, and later as first Duke of
Naxos, finally ending his successful political career as
Governor of the Cyclades Islands in the Aegean region.The
problem with Kellner's argument, however, is that he never
reveals how Marlowe could have learned of Nassi.^ Though
accounts of Nassi are contained in Foglietta's De Sacro
Feodere in Selimum Libri Quattuor or in Famiano Strada's De
Bello Belgico, Foglietta's description is little more than a
character sketch containing little detail, and Strada's
account was published years after Marlowe's death.”
A second model for Barabas was presented by Mr. C.F.
Tucker Brooke in 1922.” Brooke's candidate was David Passi,
who was active in Italy during Marlowe's lifetime. Passi
served as a sometime spy for the Sultan as well as the
Venetians. Marlowe could have come in contact with Passi
during the period when he worked as a spy for Elizabeth, since
Passi maintained strong ties with English secret service
agents. There is no evidence to suggest a meeting between the
two though. And connections between Barabas and Passi are few:
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both are Jewish, both are represented as liars, and both aided
the Turks in their attempted overthrow of Malta in 1565,
(Passi was said to have aided in the construction of models of
Crete and Malta in preparation for an invasion of the two
islands). While Passi's career may suggest Barabas in a very
general way, specific links between the two are absent: Passi
never ruled an island, nor was he ever a great merchant.
In 1962 Arthur Freeman argued that Barabas was more than
likely based on the medieval stereotype of the Jew. Freeman
focuses primarily on the counting house scene in act one to
support his argument. In this scene (I.i) Barabas's "Bags of
fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, / Jacinths, hard topaz,
grass-green emeralds, / Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,
/ And seld-seen costly stones" (I,i,25-28) suggest the use of
a medieval lapidary common to medieval miracle plays in which
Greed catalogs his wealth in great detail.” While Marlowe may
or may not have known about Nassi or Passi, he would surely
have been familiar with just such an oral tradition of Jewish
stereotypes circulating in the culture. The use of the
specific stereotypes of cruelty, greed, and duplicity suggest,
however, that in addition to oral tradition Marlowe may have
had a very specific type of Jew in mind, one with strong
connections to Spain. Barabas could be a Sephardic Jew.
Various Christian stereotypes of Jews can be traced
through the medieval period to the early Church Fathers and
their views on Jews as agents of evil. Jerome (c. 331-420)
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maintained that the Antichrist would be born from Jewish stock
and of a virgin, in a parody of Christ.” Anti-Jewish
sentiment continued to develop throughout the medieval period,
especially in Northern Europe. In 1096 large numbers of Jews
were murdered by the followers of the crusader Emicho of
Leningen, and probably also by local inhabitants of Mainz,
Cologne, Speyer and Worms.” in 1215 the Fourth Lateran
Council of the Roman Church produced guidelines on Christian
conduct towards Jews in order to reduce social contact between
the two groups. With the development of legislation designed
to single out the Jew as a unique and undesirable member of
the community came the development of stereotypes by which
Jews could be identified. During the period physical
portrayals of Jews often depicted them with swarthy skin, dark
hair, and a hooked nose. In some Christian art Jews were even
given diabolical attributes, such as horns and a horribly
distorted countenance, solidifying the link between Jew and
anti-Christ.” By the late sixteenth century a number of
occupational and behavioral stereotypes had also been
established. Many Christians associated Jews with two major
professions, money-lending and medicine. As such, Jews were
often labeled cruel and greedy for their practice of charging
interest on loans, and, especially during periods of natural
disaster, of poisoning water supplies, managing to escape
death themselves through use of magic or greater hygiene, as
Jewish bathing customs were viewed with suspicion by most
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Christians. In addition to these, Jews were also accused of
participating in the ritual murder of Christian children and
of a political duplicity unrivaled until the publication of
Machiavelli's writings.
Marlowe draws upon several of these medieval stereotypes
in creating Barabas. For example, in the oft produced play.
The Resurrection of Our Lord (circa 1530-1560) , the
association between money and Jew is reinforced by the
character Caiaphas, who tried to conceal Jesus's resurrection
by bribing the guards at his tomb who spread the false story
that the disciples had stolen the body and invented the story
of a resurrection.” In the now lost The Jew (1579), Jews were
"usurers," and represented "the greediness of worldly
choosers" who were justly murdered in the end.* Marlowe,
too, emphasizes the greed of his Jew. The play opens with a
prologue spoken by Machevill in which we learn that he will
"read a lecture here in Britain" of the "tragedy of a Jew, /
Who smiles to see how full his bags are cramm'd; / Which money
was not got without my means" (Prologue 29-32) . We first meet
Barabas in his counting house, where he pours over his wealth,
lamenting that he must busy himself with counting "paltry
silverlings" when he would much rather count "Bags of fiery
opals, sapphires, amethysts" and gold, "metal of the purest
mould" (I.i.25,20).
Barabas's link to usury, another occupation often
associated with Jews, occurs when he brags to Ithamore that
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through usury he was able to fill "the gaols with bankrupts in
a year," "with young orphans planted hospitals," "made some or
other mad," and cause "now and then one [to] hang himself for
grief, / Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll / How I
with interest tormented him" (II.iii.198-203). Marlowe draws
upon the stereotype of the greedy Jew again when Abigail,
under pressure from her father, enters the nunnery in order to
retrieve the hidden treasure there. In a bizarre scene in
which daughter and wealth elide, Barabas borders on idolatry
in his praise of his daughter and his gold:
O my girl!
My gold, my fortune, my felicity.
Strength to my soul, death to mine enemy!
Welcome the first beginner of my bliss!
O Abigail, Abigail, that I had thee here too!
Then my desires were fully satisfied:
But I will practise my enlargement thence:
O girl! O gold! O beauty! O my bliss!
(II.i.50-57)^'
The distinction between his gold and his daughter is
intentionally left ambiguous so that we, along with Barabas,
are confused as to who or what is being praised. Is his
daughter the beginner of his bliss, or the gold? The line
"that I had thee here too" seems to signify that gold is
strength to his soul, death to his enemy, but by having
Barabas first speak of his daughter in the opening line of
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this passage, it remains unclear just who or what is felicity,
hence an example of how Barabas' parental love is overshadowed
by his greed.
The stereotype of the cruel Jew is best utilized by
Marlowe in the scene where he and Ithamore attempt to outboast
each other's cruel accomplishments. Barabas tells Ithamore
that "I sometimes go about and poison wells," and "Being
young, I studied physic, and began / To practise first upon
the Italian" (II.iii.181,186-187) . Here Marlowe draws upon
occupational stereotype of the Jewish physician who practices
medicine only in order to kill Christians. The stereotype of
the Jewish physician who kills with poisons occurs twice more
in the play with the murder of the nuns and again in Barabas's
plot to murder Ithamore and Bellamira. Barabas tells Ithamore
that he will kill the nuns with "a precious powder that I
bought / Of an Italian in Ancona once, / Whose operation is to
bind, infect, / And poison deeply" (III.iv.69-72). Later,
Barabas reveals in an aside that the flowers he has given to
Bellamira and Ithamore have been poisoned: "The scent thereof
was death; I poison'd it" (IV.iv.60). The most telling example
of Barabas' cruelty, however, occurs in the murder of his own
child, Abigail.
Jews were continually accused throughout the medieval and
early modern periods of murdering children. In England, the
first reported occurrence of the crime occurred in 1144 with
the murder of William of Norwich." According to the
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chronicler Thomas of Monmouth, young William was killed by
Jews who were involved in an international conspiracy that
required that a Christian child be killed each year so his
blood could be used to make Passover bread. In 1475 another
ritual murder was alleged to have occurred in the German city
of Trent. There the body of a child named Simon was found in
the cellar of the Jewish tenant Samuel. The physician summoned
to examine the body, Giovanni Mattia Tiberino, testified later
at Samuel's trial that the boy had been ritually tortured and
then killed as part of some elaborate religious ceremony."
Barabas's murder of Abigail contains strong echoes of these
ritual murders. First, she is his daughter, his child, and
second, her murder is associated with religious, albeit
Catholic, ritual: she has left him and pledged herself to the
local nunnery, and for this "disgrace," Barabas tells
Ithamore, she must be killed: "Now shalt thou see the death of
Abigail" (III.iv.63).*
Along with a cruel streak traced to their activities as
usurers and physicians, Jews were often singled out for their
duplicity, the roots of which could be traced back to the
Jews' association with Judas. Judas's well-known betrayal of
Jesus was the primary evidence used to label Jews duplicitous
as well as greedy and cruel. Christian scripture leaves no
doubt that Judas's act was one of betrayal— a betrayal
prompted by silver. Matthew, Mark and John all refer to Judas
as a betrayer, while in Luke Jesus' question associates Judas
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with betrayal: "'Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with
a kiss?'" (Luke 22:48). In addition, Marlowe's choice of names
for his Jew is highly significant as it links Barabas with
another well-known Jew, the biblical Barabbas. In all four New
Testament accounts of Jesus's arrest and persecution, the
story is told of how the crowd, when given a choice between
releasing Barabbas or Jesus, chose to release the former. This
Barabbas is described as "notorious" (Matt. 27:16); an
"insurrectionist" who had committed murder" (Mark 15:7); a
"murderer" thrown into prison for a "certain insurrection made
in the city" (Luke 23:19); and a "robber" (John 18:40).
Barabbas of the Christian scriptures is a close match for
Marlowe's Barabas.
In addition to scripture, Marlowe could easily have drawn
upon popular entertainment for his construction of Barabas the
Jew. Judas was routinely portrayed in the Corpus Christi plays
as a red bearded demi-devil bent beneath the weight of his
bags of silver, closely followed by a devil to remind the
audience of the relationship between the two." Numerous
ballads also described Judas "the Jew" in less than flattering
terms. In The Ballad of Judas Iscariot Jesus sends Judas to
Jerusalem with thirty pieces of silver to buy food. Along the
way, Judas is persuaded by his sister to sleep with "his head
in her lap." When he wakes, his sister and the thirty pieces
of silver are gone. Desperate to replace the lost money, Judas
strikes a bargain with a "rich Jew named Pilate" to sell Jesus
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for the same amount of money he had lost to his sister. Judas,
Jews in general, and even Pilate the Roman are all
condemned."
Barabas practices similar duplicity in The Jew of Malta.
His political duplicity is revealed to the audience
immediately when in the prologue Machevill says that "he
[Barabas] favors me" (prologue 35). By linking Barabas to
Machiavelli, Marlowe counts on an audience's preconceived
notions of how politics will function in the play. Though many
in the audience would certainly have not read Machiavelli,
most were familiar with the name and the basic tenets of a
political theory that held the end always justifies the
means," Barabas's own use of this theory is employed early in
the play when he plots to seek revenge against Ferneze by
having his son Lodowick murdered at the hands of his friend
Mathias. The means to the end of revenge for Barabas even
includes pandering his own daughter:
Barabas: Daughter, a word more: (aside to her) kiss
him, speak him fair.
And like a cunning Jew so cast about.
That ye be both made sure ere you come out.
Abigail (aside to him): 0 father, Don Mathias is my
love !
Barabas (aside to her): I know it: yet I say, make
love to him [Lodowick].
(II.iii.239-243)
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Later in the play, Barabas' duplicitous nature is revealed
again in his plot to murder the nuns, murder the friars (see
below), murder Ithamore, and conspire against Ferneze to
permit the Turks to sack Malta. This last act deserves a
closer examination as it effectively links two common Jewish
stereotypes, greed and duplicity.
Immediately after Barabas feigns death by drawing on his
physician's knowledge of sleeping potions, he vows to "be
reveng'd on this accursed town; / For by my means Calymath
shall enter in" (V.i.62-63). True to his word Barabas trades
knowledge of Malta's fortifications for the price of the
governorship of Malta. Once Malta falls under the control of
Calymath and the rest of the Turks, however, Barabas turns
against him and attempts to sell the city back to Ferneze:
Barabas: What wilt thou give me. Governor, to
procure
A dissolution of the slavish bands
Wherein the Turk hath yok'd your land and you?
What will you give me if I render you
The life of Calymath, surprise his men.
And in an out-house of the city shut
His soldiers, till I have consum'd 'em all with
fire?
What will you give him that procureth this?
(V.ii.77-84)
Barabas's constant refrain "what will you give" points to the
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greed with which he is consumed and emphasizes his political
duplicity as he moves from one side of the political fence to
the other with the greatest of ease. The point is driven home
when Barabas himself makes the connection between greed and
duplicity; "Thus, loving neither will I live with both, /
Making a profit of my policy" (V.ii.114). But his greed and
duplicity are his two great faults, leading, as they do, to
his eventual downfall.
While Barabas is stereotyped as cruel, greedy, and
duplicitous, it is significant that another group was often
characterized in the same manner. This group posed the
greatest threat to Malta in the play as well as to England of
the period. That group was represented not only by Martin del
Bosco, but also by Barabas, for the Spaniard of the period and
the Jew of the play share remarkable similarities. In
addition, Barabas's use of Spanish, his travels before
arriving in Malta, and his converso (converted Jews) practices
all suggest a strong Spanish connection and the possibility
that Barabas is modeled on a Sephardic Jew.
Spanish cruelty was well documented throughout the early
modern period. Pamphlet after pamphlet contained atrocities
Spain committed in the New World and on the continent. In
their conquest of the New World, Spanish soldiers
entered into Towns, Boroughs, and Villages, sparing
neither women with child, neither them that layed
in, but that they ripped their bellies, and cut
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pieces, as if they had been opening of lambs shut up
in their fold. They took little souls by the heels,
ramping them from their mother's dugs, and crushing
their heads against the cliffs. Others they cast
into the river laughing and mocking, and when they
tumbled in the water they said, now shift for
thyself, such as one's corpse. They put others
together with their mothers and all they met to the
edge of the sword. They made certain Gibbets long
and low, in such sort, that the foot of the hanged
touched in a manner the ground, every one enough for
thirteen in honor and worship of our Savior and his
twelve Apostles (as they used to speak) and setting
to fire burned them all quick that were fastened."
This description bears a striking resemblance to the
accusations leveled against the Jews in England and Germany as
well as the murder of Abigail by Barabas. Children are
ritually tortured and killed in association with some
religious practice.
The Spaniard was also well-known for his greed.
Especially suspect was the Spanish clergy. Samuel Purchas
collected a number of stories that revealed the "true" intent
of the clergy, many of which (so he claimed) came directly
from honest priests who traveled with the Spanish
Conquistadors. One Father Jeronimo Benzos described
monks which perpetrate those things openly by
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day-light, which others would be ashamed to do by
night. And a Franciscan publicly preached, that
there was neither Priest, nor Monk, nor Bishop in
India, worthy the name of a good man. For they had
given themselves to covetousness, and still went to
the wealthy countries, and avoided the poorer. For
these words he was apprehended, and carried to
Guatemala. I have also heard Priests discoursing
together, that they came out of Spain into India for
gain, and nothing else.”
Though there is a long popular literary tradition that links
greed with the clergy, the description of Spain here is much
like Barabas's use of religion in persuading Abigail to
convert so that she can rescue the gold he has hidden in his
house, now a nunnery. Additionally, a link between false
religion and greed also occurs in Barabas's false conversion,
as he converts only to retain his wealth and power.
Finally, the Spaniard was suspect in matters political,
for it was documented that his word could not be trusted. If
is was not bad enough that the Spanish cleric would lie to
acquire wealth, it was even worse when the Spanish politician
did not keep his word. Sir John Hawkin's tale of his defeat in
1568 at San Juan de Ulua provides one such example of a lying
Spaniard. His flagship badly damaged in a storm, Hawkins was
forced to put in at San Juan de Ulua for repairs. Hawkins knew
that a large flota from Spain would anchor in the same port
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within five days, but the damage to his ship was so great that
he had little choice but to risk a confrontation with
superior Spanish forces. When the Spanish arrived, Hawkins
discovered that he had the Spaniards outgunned. The newly
arrived Spanish viceroy, Don Martin Enriquez, recognized his
disadvantage and struck a deal with Hawkins that neither side
would attack, permitting Hawkins finished his repairs and
peacefully depart. However, during the dinner hour later that
day, the Spanish launched a "sneak" attack and Hawkins barely
escaped with his life. Though both sides later reported that
one had deceived the other. Hawkin's account would have
carried more weight with an English public.Barabas's own
political machinations and double-dealing with Calymath and
Ferneze, as well as Del Bosco's advice to Ferneze to break his
word with Calymath, mirror the type of duplicity for which the
Spaniard was well know.
Besides sharing common stereotypes, Barabas and the
Spaniard also share a similar language. His use of Spanish in
the play strongly suggests a Spanish background. In the second
act, when Abigail retrieves the hidden gold from his former
house, Barabas exclaims "Bueno para todos mi ganado no era"
(II.i.39). Later, in the same scene, Barabas praises his
wealth by declaring "Hermoso placer de los dineros" (II.i.67).
These phrases, "My earnings were not good for all" and
"Beautiful pleasure from money," help link Barabas not only to
Spain, but also reinforce the greed stereotype. Though Barabas
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also speaks Italian in the play, it is debatable whether an
audience of the period would have made a distinction between
the two languages, the two being so similar in syntax and word
choice.* Marlowe clearly intends Barabas to be perceived as
a foreign other at this point, and his alien status is later
emphasized during the interview with Ithamore when he tells of
his various travels— travels that would be consistent with the
route traveled by a Sephardic Jew after the diaspora in 1492.
On March 31, 1492, Los Reyes Catolicos Ferdinand and
Isabella gave the Jews of Spain until the thirty-first of July
to convert to Christianity or leave the country." The edict
of expulsion came as little surprise: a movement toward that
end had been steadily building since the anti-Jewish riots of
the early fifteenth century in southern Spain. In 1412 Jews
were denied the right to hold public office; in 1476 the
Cortes of Madrigal passed legislation requiring Jews to wear
distinctive clothing; in 1480 the Spanish Inquisition was
formed to deal with the problem of converses and moriscos
(converted Moors); and in 1492 local expulsions began in
Toledo and Seville. Though figures vary greatly, somewhere
between 100,000 and 250,000 Jews were forced to leave Spain by
July 31, 1492, many seeking refuge in nearby Portugal and the
Papal States. Most lived peacefully in Italy in exile until
1497 when a series of expulsions began. Naples expelled its
Jews in 1497; Apulia and Calabria in 1510; and in 1569 all
Jews living in the Papal States, with the exception of Rome
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and Ancona, were expelled. In this dispersion of the
Sephardim, Jane Gerber observes, "two separate branches of the
group began to form." One, a smaller branch, went to western
Europe where they were "primarily crypto-Jewish."" The other
branch fled to the Mediterranean and the Balkans.
Prior to his purchase of Ithamore, Barabas says that he
" learn'd in Florence how to kiss my hand / Heave up my
shoulders when they call me dog, / And duck as low as any
bare-foot friar" (II.iii.23-25). In addition he "studied
physic, and began / To practise first upon the Italian"
(II.iii.186-87). Spanish Jews were openly welcomed by papal
authorities after the expulsion: "about half the Jewish
population of Rome in the early sixteenth century had
originated in Spain, Portugal, or Sicily."* This policy of
tolerance came to an end with Paul IV, who in 1553 declared
the Talmud sacrilegious and blasphemous, and forbade its
ownership or use. Hebrew books and manuscripts were burned in
Rome, Bologna, Florence, and Venice. In 1555 Paul issued a
bull. Cum Nimis Absurdum, which called for the establishment
of ghettos in the papal territories. Fearing the institution
of an Inquisition based on the Iberian model, thousands of
Jews fled the Papal states and sought refuge in North Africa
and the Mediterranean isles." Barabas's reference to
persecution in Florence may indicate that before living in
Malta, he once resided in Florence, but fled there during
Paul's rule.
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Further evidence to suggest that Barabas may be a
Sephardic Jew can also be found in his conversation with
Ithamore. As Gerber points out, one smaller group of Sephardim
settled in western Europe and became crypto-Jews. An allusion
to this group occurs when Barabas recounts his travels with
Charles V when "as an engineer, / And in the wars 'twixt
France and Germany . . . / Slew friend and enemy with my
stratagems" (II.iii.191-94) . Later, he entered the world of
banking where "with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, / And
tricks belonging to the brokery, / . . . fill'd the goals with
bankrupts in a year" (II.iii.196-198). His occupation in a
brokery suggests a possible connection with the Low Countries,
where a small number of Sephardic Jews settled and set up a
lucrative banking trade." While it is unlikely that Marlowe
would have known about the division of the Sephardim, he
probably knew about them in general. This would explain why
Barabas shares the traits of a Mediterranean as well as a
western European Sephardic Jew. This view can be also be
supported through an examination of Barabas's knowledge of
converso practices.
Conversion of the Jews was a major priority of the
Spanish clergy prior to the expulsion. Thousands of Jews
converted in name only during the early fifteenth century
anti-Jewish riots in an attempt to save their lives and
property. Though many converted, few sincerely adopted the
Christian faith, choosing to remain in Jewish neighborhoods
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and to continue to observe Jewish religious customs. These
converted Jews (conversas) represented a major problem for
ecclesiastical officials in Spain, and their existence
eventually led to the formation of the Spanish Inquisition in
1480. Though the Inquisition was initially charged with
rooting out and punishing insincere conversas, later its
activities extended further into the realm of social control
as the supply of conversas began to dwindle." Conversas were
most often accused of "practicing their Jewish religion in
secret while outwardly affecting sincerity in the Catholic
faith.""
Barabas exhibits a number of these conversas practices in
The Jew of Malta. He persuades Abigail to convert to
Christianity, "for religion / Hides many mischiefs from
suspicion" (I.ii.290-291). Here Marlowe not only plays on the
popular stereotype of Jewish duplicity, but also points toward
the reasoning Ferneze used to justify the seizure of all of
Barabas's wealth, for Ferneze used much the same argument in
threatening Barabas with forced conversion in order to obtain
his property. Later, Lodowick is told by Barabas that "I know
your lordship would disdain / To marry with the daughter of a
Jew: / And yet I'll give her as many a golden cross, / With
Christian posies round about the ring" (II.iii.299-302),
suggesting again the belief that conversas affected conversion
through outward appearance. Finally, Barabas's feigned
conversion, meant to deceive Jacomo and Barnadine, suggests
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converso practices. Barabas's encounter with the two friars,
however, extends beyond simple comedy based on clerical
stereotypes, and points toward some of the Inquisitional
practices that were used against conversas.
What little the English public knew about the Spanish
Inquisition came mostly from travel literature and from the
pulpit. English travelers or sailors unlucky enough to find
themselves in the hands of the Spanish Inquisition were
subject to any number of tortures. Thomas Skinner, in his
translation of Montanus's A Discovery and playne Declaration
of sundry subtill practises of the Holy Inquisition of Spain,
wrote that the Inquisition was responsible for the
monstrous racking of men without order of law, the
villainous tormenting of naked women beyond all
humanity, their miserable death with pity or mercy,
the most reproachful triumphing of the Popish
Synagogoge over Christians as over Paynems and
Ethnics . . . ought surely . . . to move us to
compassion."
Detention and torture at the hands of the Inquisition was
used, so most Englishmen thought, primarily to force one to
convert to Catholicism, or (more likely) as an excuse to seize
the accused goods and money. Foxe observed that of those in
greatest danger of being detained by the Inquisition were
"they that be greatly rich for the spoil of their goods.
Foxe drives the point home with the story of one Nicholas
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Burton, who was seized in 1560 by the Inquisition during a
commercial venture to Spain. After fourteen unsuccessful days
of attempting to convert Burton, he was taken to Seville and
there burned. Foxe prints the story, he claims, so all might
"know the extreme dealing and cruel ravening of these Catholic
Inquisitors of Spain, who, under the pretended visor of
religion, do nothing but seek their private gain and
commodity, with crafty defrauding and spoiling of other men's
goods.
This dynamic of forced conversion and confiscation of
goods is at the heart of the confrontation between Ferneze and
Barabas early in the play. Ferneze gives Barabas two options:
to relinquish half his wealth to the state or to "straight
become a Christian" (I.ii.77). Barabas's violent protest that
he "will become no convertite" (I.ii.86) would be consistent
with a Jew who had fled Spain, choosing exile over conversion,
while Ferneze's practice of unfairly confiscating Barabas's
property smacks of the type of Inquisitional practices
described by Foxe. A better example of the relationship
between conversion and confiscation can be found in Barabas's
relationship with the friars. Here, he agrees to convert and
plays one against the other as they vie for his wealth. Though
neither Barnadine or Jacomo is identified as such, one surely
represents the Dominicans and the other the Franciscans. While
Marlowe plays here on the stereotypical greed of friars, he
also points toward the Inquisition's concern with wealth, as
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the friars were reputed by English pamphleteers to be the
primary leaders of the Inquisition."
Perhaps the most telling evidence to support a link
between Barabas and Spain, however, comes with the accusation
leveled against him by Friar Jacomo. Abigail reveals to
Bernardine in a deathbed confession that Barabas was
responsible for the deaths of Lodowick and Mathias. After a
brief anti-cleric remark that she died a "virgin too; that
grieves me most" (III.vi.41), Bernardine tells Jacomo that
Barabas has done "A thing that makes me tremble to unfold"
(III.vi.48). Jacomo responds, "What, hath he crucified a
child?" (III.vi.49). The usual means by which Jews were
thought to have killed children was through beatings,
poisonings, or drowning. English tradition especially tended
to focus on these two types of murder. But Jacomo's guess
indicates a Spanish source. In 1468 and again in 1491 Spanish
Jews were alleged to have ritually murdered Christian children
by crucifixion. In the city of Segovia in 1468, the converso
Bishop Juan Arias Davila, is reputed to have punished sixteen
Jews for the ritual crucifixion of a Christian child. Later,
in 1491 in La Guardia, six conversas and as many Jews were
said to have crucified a Christian child, cut out its heart,
and attempted to create a magical spell to destroy Christians.
The story was given wide circulation in Spain during the
period, making its way into print in 1492, the year of the
expulsion of the Jews." The story was published in England
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in 1585 in A Tragicall Historié of the troubles and Civile
warres of the lowe Countries, otherwise called Flanders
Jacomo, and Marlowe too, clearly have this model of a Spanish
Jew in mind here.
Marlowe, as did Kyd before him, used stereotyping to
demonize the Spaniard in order to advocate increased English
international presence, a stance Elizabeth was reluctant to
take during the 1590s when an economic crisis was her primary
concern. While Marlowe is not calling for armed intervention
in the Mediterranean area, he does draw his audience's
attention to an ideology that had begun to emerge in the mid
sixteenth century with the explorations of Drake and Hawkins
and the publication of Richard Hakluyt's A Discourse
Concerning Western Planting, Diverse Voyages Touching the
Discoverie of America and the Llands Adiacent, and The
Principle Voyages. That ideology called for England to put an
end to Spain's global expansionism, for if Spain was permitted
to continue in its quest for world domination, the world could
become a place much like Marlowe's Malta— a land where
cruelty, greed, and deceit are openly practiced.
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Notes
1. Kyd denied in two letters to Sir John Puckering that he had anything to do with the writings (Douglas Cole, "Appendix A," in Christopher Marlowe and the Renaissance of Tragedy [Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995]).
2. Cole, "Richard Baines' Note, Appendix B," in Christopher Marlowe and the Renaissance of Tragedy.
3. Cole, Christopher Marlowe and the Renaissance of Tragedy, 10- 11.
4. A number of scholars have discovered linguistic similarities between Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and The Jew of Malta. M.C. Bradbrook notes shared phrases: Kyd's "The hopeless father of a happless son" (IV.iv.84) to Marlowe's "The hopeless father of a happless Jew" (I.ii.316) (Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy [Cambridge, 1952], 159); Susan E. Joy also points out a number of similar phrases. For example, Bel-Imperia's response to Horatio that her servant Pedrigano is trustworthy— "No, he is as trusty as my second self" (II.iv.9)— is echoed by Barabas's invitation to Ithamore, his servant, to "Come near, thy master's life / My trusty servant, nay my second self" (III.iv.14-16) ("The Kyd/Marlowe Connection," N&Q [September 1986]): 338-339).
5. Though critics generally agree that the play was written sometime between 1588— the allusion to the Duke of Guises' death on December 23, 1588 in the prologue— and before May, 1593— the date of Marlowe's death— there agreement breaks off. Henslowe mentions in his diary that he saw a performance of The Jew of Malta on 26 February, 1592, but as Henslowe fails to put his customary "ne" opposite his entry to indicate a new play, the play could have been performed earlier (John Bakeless, The Tragical History of Christopher Marlowe, 2 vols. [Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964], 2:329). The best that can be said, then, in dating the play is that The Jew of Malta was first performed sometime between 1589 and 1592.
6. Documents of the Rose Playhouse, ed. Carol Chillington Rutter (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984), 24; Neil Carson, A Companion to Henslowe's Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), s.v. Jeronimo. Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy was a close second with 29 performances.
7. David Katz, Jews in the History of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 91; Bernard Glassman, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Without Jews: Images of Jews in England, 1290-1700 (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1975), 57-58.
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8. Only eighty-nine articles or book length studies were published on The Jew of Malta between 1817 and 1974. Of those, nearly a quarter focused on the connections between Marlowe and Shakespeare (Marlowe Criticism: A Bibliography, comp. Lois Mai Chan and Sarah A. Pedersen [Boston: G.K. Hall, 1978], 121-128. Though Marlowe criticism has flourished in the past twenty years. The Jew of Malta still receives a disproportionate amount of critical attention.
9. See, for example, A. Fitz-Hugh, "The Jew of Malta and the Jew of Venice," University of Virginia Magazine 38 (April 1895): 288- 94; J.E. Charlton, "The Jews of Christopher Marlowe & Shakespeare: A Contrast," Methodist Review 93 (May 1911): 443-47; Arthur Kreisman, "The Jews of Marlowe and Shakespeare," Shakespeare Newsletter 8 (1958): 29; and Margaret Hotine, "The Politics of Anti-Semitism: The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice," N&Q 38 (March 1991): 35-38.
10. This "kinder, gentler" version of the Jew can be found in Warren Smith, "Shakespeare's Shylock," Shakespeare Quarterly 15 (Summer 1964): 193-99. Smith argues that Shakespeare's Shylock "was created to compete with Marlowe's play. The Jew of Malta, in pandering to a wave of anti-Semitism greeting the arraignment and execution for treason in 1594 of Elizabeth's Jewish physician. Roderigo Lopez, becomes untenable upon examination." Edgar Rosenberg, "The Jew in Western Drama," New York Public Library Bulletin 72 (September 1968): 442-491, argues that Shakespeare is much more sympathetic primarily in how he treats the father/daughter relationship from that portrayed in Marlowe's play. Maurice Charney, "Jessica's Turquoise Ring and Abigail's Poisoned Porridge: Shakespeare and Marlowe, Rivals and Imitators," Renaissance Drama, New Series 10 (1979): 33-44, points out that Shakespeare borrows from Marlowe, but only in reaction to Marlowe's characterization of Jews.
11. Alan C. Dessen, "The Elizabethan Stage Jew and Christian Example: Gerontus, Barabas, and Shylock," Modern Language Quarterly 35 (June 1974): 231-245, argues that Shakespeare is not concerned so much with creating an anti-Semitic Jew as he is in using the Jew to criticize Christian behavior as an example for a Christian audience; J.B. Thompson, "The Modification of Stereotypes in The Merchant of Venice," English Studies in Africa 26 (March 1983): 1-11, points out that Shakespeare breaks stereotypes for both Christian and Jewish characters in order to expose the problems with money, justice, law, and mercy in the culture.
12. Catherine Brown Tkacz, "The Jew of Malta and the Pit," South Atlantic Review 53 (May 1988): 51. Through a series of comparisons between the play and Old Testament stories in which divine retribution is ironically exacted upon those who plot the downfall of others, Tkzcz argues that the play's conclusion.
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often dismissed as melodramatic ending, is in "reality the apt demise of a hardened sinner: the one who tormented others financially and who has suffered throughout the course of the play from the self-inflicted wound of avarice" (55). Tkacz falls into line here with a number of previous critics who argue that Barabas is the representative of evil on the stage, meant to serve as an example to others to avoid following in his footsteps. See also Douglas Cole, Suffering and Evil in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1962); G.K. Hunter, Dramatic Identities and Cultural Tradition: Studies in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1978); and James H. Sims, Biblical Allusions in Marlowe and Shakespeare (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966).
13. A.L. Rowse, Christopher Marlowe: His Life and Work (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 20.
14. Claude Summers, Christopher Marlowe and the Politics of Power (Salzburg: Inst. f. Engl. Sprache u. Literatur, 1974), 189
15. Ibid, 195.
16. All quotes from The Jew of Malta, Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays, ed. J.B. Steane (19 69; reprint, London: Penguin Classics, 1986).
17. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 204.
18. Ibid, 203.
19. Simon Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986), 170. The complete history of Malta and the Knights of St. John is contained in Alison Hoppen, The Fortification of Malta: By the Order of St. John, 1530-1798 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979).
20. Bartolomé de Las Casas, The Spanish Colonie, or Brief Chronicle of the Acts and Gestes of the Spaniards in the West Indies, called the New World for the space of xl. yeares, trans M.M.S. (London: William Brome, 1583). Walter Maltby claims that this work influenced generations of anti-Spanish writers (The Black Legend in England), 12-28.
21. Leon Kellner, Restoring Shakespeare: A Critical Analysis of the Misreadings in Shakespeare's Works (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1925). Kellner cites a number of similarities between Barabas and Nassi to support his argument. First, Barabas, like Nassi, had some contact with Germans and French. During his interview of Ithamore to determine if the Moor is the type of villain he seeks, Barabas admits that "in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, / Under the pretence of helping Charles the Fifth, /
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Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems (II.iii.192-194). Kellner maintains that here Marlowe is thinking of Nassi's political and financial connections with French and German courts. Second, early in the play Barabas boasts of his wide- ranging trading alliances with Spain, Greece, Arabia, Egypt, and the New World (I.i.1-50). Nassi also enjoyed a reputation as an international trader, explaining perhaps his rapid advancement under Selim II. Finally, Barabas manages by the end of the play to acquire the governorship of Malta, just as Nassi had managed to rise to power over Naxos.
22. John Bakeless, The Tragical History of Christopher Marlowe, 1:346-343, does provide a list of sources that could support Kellner's supposition that Barabas is modeled on Nassi. Bakeless argues that Marlowe could have drawn on a number of contemporary descriptions of Nassi, including Contarini's 1572 History of the War between Turks and Christians, Francisco Balbi de Corregio's 1568 Verdadera Relacion (another account of the war), or Francois Belleforest's Cosmographie Universelle, in which Nassi is mentioned in passing as a rich merchant. But Bakeless fails to prove how Marlowe could have come in contact with either Contarini or Corregio's texts, let alone read them, for there is no reliable evidence that Marlowe could read either Italian or Spanish. Bakeless argues that Philip Lonicer's Chronicorum Turcicorum (1584), which was a source for Tamburlaine, could have been used to construct Barabas, but Lonicer mentions only that Nassi had aspired to become king of Cyprus. No mention is made of Nassi's German/French connections or his vast economic holdings. The best Bakeless can finally offer is that perhaps Marlowe heard about Nassi from popular stories that were circulating in London.
23. Originally published in Latin, Famino (also spelled Famiano) Strada's, De Bello Belgico decas prima, ab excessu Caroli V . . . (Rome: Sumptibus Hermanii Scheus, typis Ludouici Grignani, 1637), would have been available too late for use by Marlowe, as would the 1650 translation of Strada's work. De Bello Belgico: The History of the Low-Country warres written in Latine by Famianus Strada, trans. Sr. Rob. Stapylton (London: H. Moseley. 1650).
24. C.F. Tucker Brooke's letter in The Times Literary Supplement, June 1922.
25. Arthur Freeman, "A Source for The Jew of Malta," N&Q (April 1962): 139-141. Freeman suggests that Marlowe is borrowing lines from Jonathas the Jew in the fifteenth century miracle play The Sacrament. In addition. Freeman points out that Marlowe's use of the line "Infinite riches in a little room" (I.i.37) was borrowed from the early sixteenth-century play The Four PP, in which the line "here lyeth muche rychesse in lytell space" can be found.
26. Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: Harper, 1994), 74-76.
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27. Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe: 1400-1700, 14-15.
28. Ibid, 23.
29. Glassman, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Without Jews, 64.
30. Sidney Lee, "Elizabethan England and the Jews," Transactions of the New Shakespeare Society (1887-1900): 143.
31. These lines are perhaps the most obvious example of Shakespeare borrowing from Marlowe. Shylock, we are told by Solanio, wanders the streets of Venice crying "'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! / Fled with a Christian! 0 my Christian ducats! / Justice! The law! My ducats and my daughter!'" (II.viii.15-17).
32. For the complete story of William, see The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, by Thomas of Monmouth, ed. Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1896). The most well-known literary account of the murder is contained in Chaucer's The Prioress's Tale.
33. Geschichte des zu Trient ermordeten Christenkindes in R. Po- chia Hsia, "Christian Ethnographies of Jews in Early Modern Germany," in The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After, ed. Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H. Williamson (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994), 224-226.
34. A strong Kyd connection can be found here also. In The Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo declares "Now shall I see the fall of Babylon / Wrought by the heavens in this confusion" (IV.i.195- 196). Marlowe's "Now shalt thou see the death of Abigail" seems borrowed from Kyd, especially if it is remembered that Hieronimo is referring to the fall of the Spain, the defender of the Church of Rome, commonly referred to during the period as the "Whore of Babylon." It is possible that Marlowe is making the same point, for in killing Abigail along with the nuns, Barabas is striking out against the Church, much as did Hieronimo.
35. Katherine Lee Bates, The English Religious Drama (1893; reprint. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966), 21.
36. Paul Franklin Baum, "The Medieval Legend of Judas Iscariot," PMLA 21 (1916): 483.
37. Summers, Christopher Marlowe and the Politics of Power, 40.
38. Las Casas, The Spanish Colonie, 6.
39. Samuel Pulchas. Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes. 20 vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1906) , XVII:299.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90
40. The complete account of Hawkins's encounter with the Spanish is contained in Hakluyt, Principle Voyages, X:64-74.
41. Barabas exclaims during the confrontation with Ferneze "Corpo di dio" (Italian for Body of God). The Spanish for this is cuerpo de dios. The syntax is exactly the same and the pronunciation is quite similar.
42. Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe, 11-40; Gerber, Jews of Spain, 115-144; Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain, 6-17.
43. Gerber, The Jews of Spain, 146.
44. Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe, 66.
45. Ibid, 66-69.
46. Ibid, 93-104.
47. Ibid, 11-40; Gerber, The Jews of Spain, 91-144; Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain, 18-99.
48. Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain, 12.
49. Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus, A Discovery and playne Declaration of sundry subtill practises of the Holy Inquisition of Spain (London, 1568), Aii.
50. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 8 vols., ed. Stephen Reed Cattley (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1839), IV:451.
51. Ibid, VIII:513.
52. Maltby, The Black Legend in England, 34-35.
53. Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain, 16; Maltby, The Black Legend in England, 34.
54. A Tragicall Historié of the troubles and Civile warres of the lowe Countries, otheirwise called Flanders, trans. Thomas Stocker (London: John Kyngston, 1583), 11:44.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 4
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE: LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD
The years between the first performance of Marlowe's The
Jew of Malta and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice were
tumultuous. The war with Spain was taking its toll, both in
terms of economics and in manpower. Elizabeth levied forced
loans in 1591 and 159 6, raised rents on crown lands, and
authorized privateering, a form of licensed piracy that
permitted English ships to prey on the Spanish fleet. Between
1589 and 1593 alone, 17,800 men were sent abroad to fight in
France and the Low Countries. Most returned after their
military service only to face unemployment and an uncertain
future.' By the beginning of 1596 the situation had grown even
worse. Lord Howard and the Earl of Essex were actively
lobbying Elizabeth to send more troops to aid France's Henry
in his attempt to retain Calais, and a shortage of grain in
England was becoming a serious problem. By April, 1596 Calais
had fallen to the Spanish, grain prices were increasing, and
Essex and Howard were petitioning Elizabeth to consider
raiding Spanish ports, raids she would later sanction in June
of that same year in an attempt to raise more money. It was
during this year of economic and political instability that
91
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Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice was first performed, a
play that exploits the fear of outsiders in order to levy
criticism against a culture obsessed with profit.^
Traditionally, critics have called Shakespeare's The
Merchant of Venice a play about love and money. Love,
specifically Christian love, is represented primarily by
Antonio, who willingly puts his life on the line for his
friend Bassanio, and by Portia, who extends Christian mercy
towards the villain in the play by sparing his life. Money, on
the other hand, is represented by the usurious Jew, Shylock,
who threatens the stability of the world of love with his
plots to take Antonio's life as forfeit for non-payment of a
loan. Once the villain has been vanquished in the fourth act,
order is restored in the fifth, and the romantic couples pair
off to live happily ever after in the enchanted world of
Belmont.^ What these critics tend to overlook, however, is
Shakespeare's humanization of Shylock, especially in the "Hath
not a Jew" speech (III.i.55). If Shylock is meant to represent
the typical evil usurer of Biblical and popular literary
culture, then why does Shylock seemingly plead for the
audience's sympathy? Critics have attempted to answer this
question by pointing out that the play does not criticize Jews
as much as it criticizes Christian hypocrisy.
More recently, however, the focus of many critics has
shifted from this binary view of bad Jew and good Christian or
bad Christian and good Jew toward one in which Shakespeare
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uses the play to criticize his culture in general, and its
obsession with money in particular.* These critics read the
play against the background of Elizabethan culture to argue
that Shakespeare promotes a subversive ideology though his
focus on the characters' obsession with obtaining and
retaining wealth, whether they are Jews or Christian. As such,
Shakespeare is "mirroring both the myths by which the age
reads itself [acquisition of capital] and the anxieties those
myths could not entirely dispel [the need to label and
exclude]."* By focusing as he does on the outsider Shylock,
Shakespeare directs our attention inward, to emerging
ideologies related to gender, nation, and race and how these
ideologies are constructed and reinforced.’ The play also
exposes the terrible price to be paid for the acquisition of
wealth: family dissolution, the threat of death, potential
loss of friendship, and the potential failure of marriage.* In
keeping with this focus on cultural constructions and
subversive ideology, the remainder of this chapter will
examine how Shakespeare appropriates images of the foreigner
and subverts those images in the "Hath not a Jew" speech and
the trial scene in order to criticize a dominant ideology
based on the acquisition of personal wealth.
By late 1596 many of the stereotypes typically associated
with the comic or dangerous foreigner had been well
established. Portia's catalog of her suitors serves as one
example of how Shakespeare relied on an audiences' knowledge
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of foreign stereotypes. In Portia's description of the
suitors, Scots are frugal, Germans are drunkards, and
Neapolitans have a strange obsession with their horses
(I.ii.39-90). These foreign characters appear in the play
primarily to serve a comic turn, as revealed by Shakespeare's
decision to include in Portia's list of suitors the Englishman
Falconbridge, "the young baron of England" who "hath neither
Latin, French, nor Italian" and whose clothing is equally
inadequate, for he "bought his doublet in Italy, his round
hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behavior
everywhere" (I.ii.6 8 - 7 5 ) Essentially harmless, these foreign
characters serve as objects of laughter as well as introduce
the casket plot. But Portia's remarks also reaffirm "the basic
autonomy of her world, its kinship with what is most like
it,"‘“ and hints at her concern with materialism and wealth,
for her "mockeries deal primarily with the external
manifestations of style; as she judges others, [so] she
reveals herself."" That self will be further developed in her
encounter with two other foreign characters, Morocco and
Aragon.
External appearance plays a significant role in how
Portia treats the Prince of Morocco. Though he later proves to
be little more than a braggart, concerned only with impressing
her with his feats as a warrior and lover (sustaining the
stereotype of the black man as both violent and virile) ,
Portia's immediate reaction to the announcement of his arrival
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is based on what she thinks his skin color will be; "If he
have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil,
I had rather he should shrive me than wive me" (I. ii. 128-130) .
For her, the thought of marrying a black man is far more
frightening than joining the legions of Hell.’’ Her concern
with the external (his dark complexion) appears twice again in
her conversations with him. First, in response to his request
that she not mislike him for his complexion, she replies that
. . . if my father had not scanted me
And hedged me by his wit to yield myself
His wife who wins me by that means I told you.
Yourself, renowned Prince, then stood as fair
As any comer I have looked on yet
For my affection.
(II.i.17)
Her pun on fair (which he is not) and her inclusion of him
with the other suitors comically described in her conversation
with Nerissa previously, reveals her disdain for the Prince,
as does her parting comments once he has chosen the incorrect
casket: "A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go / Let all of
his complexion choose me so" (II.vii.78-79).'* Besides moving
the casket plot along (the audience learns that the golden
casket does not contain Portia's picture) his appearance also
points toward a concern with a foreign other— the Moor— often
associated with Spain. But here, as with Kyd's Bashaw and
Saracen or Marlowe's Ithamore, the Moor in The Merchant of
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Venice is not to be taken as a serious threat to the social
order, for we know, based on what he says about himself before
choosing, that he cannot possibly be the one who will marry
Portia. His description of himself reveals his vanity, a flaw
that will lead to an incorrect choice: "As much as I deserve?
Why that's the lady! / I do in birth deserve her, and in
fortunes, / In graces, and in qualities of breeding"
(II.vii.31-33). His complexion, both external and internal,
prove him not to be the "correct" husband for Portia.
The other foreigner with stronger Spanish connections is
the Prince of Aragon. Here Shakespeare plays upon the popular
stereotype of the proud and vain Spaniard; however, on closer
examination, his pride and arrogance are simply pretense.
Hakluyt noted the same when he compared the Spaniard
unto a drone, or an empty vessel,which when smitten
upon yieldeth a great sound and that afar off; but
come near and look into them, there is nothing in
them: or rather like the ass which wrapped himself
in a lion's skin and marched far off to strike
terror into the hearts of the other beasts, but when
the fox drew near he perceived his long ears and
made him a jest unto all the beasts of the forest.
In like manner, we, (upon peril of my life) shall
make the Spaniard ridiculous in all Europe, if with
piercing eyes we see into his contemptible weakness
in the West Indies,"
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Shakespeare's Prince of Aragon conforms to this description of
the typical Spaniard, especially during his deliberations when
choosing a casket:
I will not choose what many men desire.
Because I will not jump with common spirits
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.
(II.ix.30-32; emphasis mine)
His pride sets him above the common sort and prevents him from
associating with coarser folk. His vanity is revealed in his
choice of caskets: he rejects gold because he will not
associate himself with "the fool multitude that choose by
show" (25) and lead will not serve because it is not "fair"
enough. He finally settles on silver to "assume desert" (50) .
Like Morocco, Aragon is not to be taken seriously. He is not
Kyd's Spanish King, who invades neighboring Portugal, nor does
he pose the same type of sexual threat as does Lorenzo in
pandering his sister. Marlowe's Del Bosco comes in the name of
the Catholic King and threatens Spanish imperialism. But
Aragon is simply one of the many "deliberate fools" who "When
they do choose, / They have the wisdom by their wit to lose"
(II.ix.79-80). He is a comic Spaniard, a close cousin to Don
Adriano de Armado in Love's Labor Lost:
His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his
tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait
majestical, and his general behavior vain,
ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too
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spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too
peregrinate, as I may call it.
(V. i.9-14) '*
While the initial appearance of Morocco and Aragon on the
stage might have evoked some sense of anxiety in the audience,
the way the two characters are later undercut and held up as
comic stereotypes shifts the emphasis from them to Portia and
her condemnation of the two suitors, reflecting her concern
with external appearance and material wealth. The message to
the audience is that they, too, should not judge by outward
appearance, for while stage Moors and Spaniards are
traditionally violent and threatening characters (at the very
least they are disruptive, like Ithamore) , this Moor and
Spaniard pose little or no danger. But there is a foreigner in
the play who seemingly does pose a very real threat to the
stability of the mercantile world in which the play is set, a
character with whom almost every other has some contact, and
like Aragon and Morocco is constructed by the playwright
primarily from available literary, popular, and topical
stereotypes. That foreigner is Shylock, the Jew.
Shylock appears in The Merchant of Venice for any number
of reasons. First, the character is necessary dramatically,
for without the bond plot and a villain, none of the other two
plots (the rings or casket) can develop. Another reason has to
do with sources. One of Shakespeare's possible sources for the
play, II Pecorne, includes a Jewish usurer." But what he does
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in the play, how he promotes an ideology embraced by the other
characters, is tied closely to how Shakespeare constructs his
character. Drawn from literary, religious, and topical
sources, Shylock is a composite Jew who is later humanized in
order to evoke audience sympathy and to focus attention on the
fact that differences between Jew and Christian are not as
great as they initially appear.
Shakespeare sets the play in Venice primarily to
introduce Shylock. Besides serving as the perfect setting in
which to promote a mercantile theme, Venice also provides
Shakespeare the opportunity to focus on the exotic by
introducing such characters as Morocco, Aragon, and Shylock,
for in London of 1596 it was highly unlikely that one would
encounter Moors, Spaniards, or Jews. Jews were especially
rare. Expelled from England in 1290, they were forbidden under
penalty of death to set foot in the kingdom.” Small groups of
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, especially after 1492, could be
found in England, but these conversas were discreet concerning
their religion, most giving an outward show of conformity by
joining the Church of England while continuing to secretly
practice Judaism. As many as thirty-seven families of conversa
origin may have lived in England in 1536 and are thought to
have played a major role in helping Henry VIII search for the
biblical precedent on which he could justify his divorce from
Katherine of Aragon." Whether or not Shakespeare actually
knew any of the descendants of the conversa community is
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unknown. In any case, however, the type of Jew portrayed by
Shylock in The Merchant of Venice would have not existed in
Shakespeare's London.
In Venice it was a different story. The English knew from
travel literature that in Venice lived large numbers of Jews
who openly practiced their religion and conducted daily
business with Christians.” There were, however, severe
restrictions placed on the Jews by Venetian officials, and
some of these show up in Shakespeare's construction of
Shylock. For example, Jews in Venice were required by law to
wear clothing that identified them as Jews. Shylock's "Jewish
gaberdine" is perhaps an example of this type of special
clothing. Also, Jews were restricted to the business of
loaning money at interest and taking pawn. Shylock's only
means of earning a living is by making loans at interest.
Finally, Jews in Venice were confined at night to designated
neighborhoods (ghettos) and were not permitted to socialize
with Christians. Here Shakespeare deviates from historical
fact, as Shylock's house is not located in a ghetto and he
dines with Bassanio. Perhaps this is simply a slip on
Shakespeare's part, or perhaps the location of Shylock's house
and dining practices provide a subtle clue to the audience
that differences between Christian and Jew are not as vast as
might be suspected.’” In any event, Jews in Venice were quite
common and could have been expected to appear in a play set
there.
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Apart from his sources and what he knew about Venice,
Shakespeare may have chosen a Jew as his villain based on
literary precedent. The appearance of a Jewish villain can be
traced back to the biblical stories of Herod, "the slayer of
children and aspiring Christ-killer in disguise," Judas, "the
original businessman," and the "vulgar Jewish faceur" who
forced a reed filled with vinegar between Christ's lips.’' On
the English stage, Jews began to appear as early as the
medieval mystery and cycle plays, generally in the guise of
Judas, Caiaphas, and various Jewish extras who accused,
persecuted, scourged, dragged, and taunted Christ.” Many of
these cycle plays were still performed during Shakespeare's
time, especially the Coventry mystery cycle, revived in
1579,” from which he could have borrowed some of Shylock's
character traits.
Perhaps the greatest dramatic contribution to
Shakespeare's Shylock, however, would have come from
Christopher Marlowe's Barabas in The Jew of Malta. Marlowe and
Shakespeare both employ a usurious and treacherous Jew, a
daughter who "betrays" her father, an absent wife (Shylock and
Barabas are both widowers), legal and political expediency in
separating the Jew and his money, a sidekick servant,
Christian wooers of the Jewish daughter, and the well-known
ducats/daughter confusion. In addition to these, Marlowe's Jew
is alluded to in The Merchant of Venice when Shylock is
referred to as "the stock of Barabas" (IV.i.294).”
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In addition to a literary tradition that portrayed the
Jew as villain, Shakespeare would also have known the old
legends that associated Jews with wealth and usury. The
original Jewish businessman was, of course, Judas, who sells
Christ to the Romans for thirty pieces of silver. In 1215 a
connection between Jews, wealth, and usury was given official
sanction by the Fourth Lateran Council of the Roman Catholic
Church, which placed severe restrictions on social and
business relations between Jews and Christians:
Ideally the only dealings allowed would be economic
transactions between specialized merchants and
traders of the two communities. There should be no
sexual relations between partners of differing
religions. Jews were not to employ Christians or
hold any king of public office which would give them
authority over Christians. In addition, Jewish
worship was to be restricted.”
A number of these edicts are violated in The Merchant of
Venice: Shylock's daughter Jessica elopes with the Christian
Lorenzo, though Shakespeare is careful to point out that she
has been converted, "I shall be saved by my husband. He hath
made me a Christian" (III.v.18-19); and Shylock has a
Christian servant, albeit briefly, in Launcelot, who decides
to flee from his master Shylock, the "very devil incarnation"
(II.ii.27). Again, as with Shylock's place of residence, these
social interactions between Christian and Jew suggest a
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closer, more personal, relationship between the two groups
than simple business dealings would permit.
Christian scripture could have provided Shakespeare with
additional references to link Jews with evil, as evidenced by
Launcelot's reference to Shylock as the "devil incarnation."
With their Protestant focus on biblical texts, average
theatergoers could have associated Launcelot's statement with
any number of New Testament passages. In John 8:44 Jesus says
to the Jewish Pharisees that "ye are of your father, the
devil." In Matthew the Jewish religious leaders willingly
acknowledge their complicity in the crucifixion: "His blood be
on us, and on our children" (27:25). Finally, many sixteenth-
century preachers condemned Jews by quoting scripture out of
context,” as they did frequently with Paul in Romans, who
accused those who "knew God," but did "not glorify Him as
God," of being "filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit,
malignity; [they were] whisperers, backbiters; haters of God,
insolent, haughty, boastful; inventors of evil things;
covenant-breakers; with natural affection, unmerciful" (1:29-
3 2 ) Though Paul was not condemning Jews in the letter, his
words were often used to do so. Protestant authorities, as
well, reinforced the connection between Jews and evil: Luther
warned the Christian world that "next to the devil thou has no
enemy more cruel, more venomous and violent than a true
Jew.
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Examples of anti-Semitism that mirror biblical and
popular stereotypes of Jews can be found throughout The
Merchant of Venice. Early in the play, Antonio rails against
Shylock for his attempt to justify usury:
Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
0 what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
(I.iii.94-99; emphasis mine)
Here Antonio draws on many established stereotypes that
associated Jews with evil: the link between Jews and the
devil, the charge that Jews are "evil things," and an allusion
to Judas, whose duplicity was traditionally proven in his
betrayal of Christ. Later in the scene, Shylock recounts how
Antonio has treated him in the past:
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances.
Still I have borne it with a patient shrug.
For suff'ranee is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog.
And spet on my Jewish gaberdine.
And all for the use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help.
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Go to, then, you come to me and you say,
"Shylock, we would have moneys"— you say so.
You that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold!
(I.iii.103-116)
In this representation, which Antonio readily admits is true—
"I am as like to call thee so again, / To spet on thee again,
to spurn thee too" (I.iii.127-128)— Shylock is little more
than an animal, a "dog," and a "cur," fit only to be "spurned"
and beaten. Antonio alludes to the devil again through his use
of the word "dog," typically associated with evil.”
Finally, Shakespeare's construction of Shylock owes a
small debt to the alleged plot to assassinate Elizabeth in
1594. On 23 January of that year. Roderigo Lopez, the trusted
personal physician to Queen Elizabeth was accused by one
Emanual Louis Tinoco of being involved in a plot to poison the
queen. Elizabeth formed an official inquest headed by the Lord
Treasurer, Sir Robert Cecil, and the Earl of Essex to
determine if the charges were true. On 24 January, Lopez was
examined, and it was determined that "there was no matter of
malice, for in the poor man's house were found no kind of
writings of intelligences of which he was accused, or
otherwise that hold might be taken of him."*” There the matter
might have ended had it not been for the Earl of Essex. Essex
had previously enlisted the aid of Lopez in spying on the
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Spanish and Portuguese, but Lopez had angered Essex by
reporting any intelligence he had gathered first to Elizabeth,
and then to Essex. Essex appeared a fool at court when he
would later inform the Queen of matters which she already
knew. In addition, Lopez was alleged to have told Don Antonio,
the Portuguese pretender, what diseases Essex suffered from
and how he had been cured. Essex vowed revenge, and his
relentless pursuit of Lopez indicates just how far he was
willing to go to exact it. Essex pressed on with his own
investigation, and on February 5, Lopez was committed to the
Tower to be examined further by Essex. Finally, on February
28, Lopez was arraigned before a commission which consisted of
the Lord Mayor; the Earl of Essex; Lord Charles Howard, the
Lord Admiral; Lord Buckhurst; Robert, Lord Rich; Sir Thomas
Heneage, Vice-Chamberlain; Sir John Popham, Chief Justice of
the Queen's Bench; Sir Robert Cecil; and Sir John Fortescue,
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Sir Edward Coke, who conducted the case against Lopez,
referred to him as a "perjured murdering traitor and Jewish
Doctor, worse than Judas himself [who], undertook the
poisoning, which was a plot more wicked, dangerous, and
detestable than all the former." Lopez, "with blasphemous
oaths and horrible execrations, denied that he had ever had
speech with any person or any understanding at all of any such
matter," but he was convicted nonetheless, and "judgement
passed on him with universal applause." On June 7, 1594, Lopez
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was conveyed from the Tower of London to the Old Swan and then
to the prison of the King's Bench. At the gallows "Lopez
declared that he loved the Queen as well as he loved Jesus
Christ, which coming from a man of the Jewish profession moved
no small laughter in the standers-by.
It is unlikely that Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of
Venice primarily to capitalize on the Lopez affair, but he and
his audience certainly still could have had the Queen's ex
physician in mind, especially since Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
was in revival throughout the early months of 1596 and a
number of pamphlets were published between 1594 and 1596
recounting how "God had intervened" to thwart the attempted
assassination.” While there are no direct references to Lopez
in the play, the trial scene could be reminiscent of the Lopez
arraignment, especially in light of the comments offered by
the Jew-baiting Gratiano, who alludes several times to the
practice of hanging Jews, the method of execution suffered by
Lopez. When Portia asks Antonio what mercy he can render
Shylock, Gratiano answers "A halter gratis! Nothing else, for
God's sake" (IV.i.378), and later, after his forced
conversion, Gratiano tells the departing Shylock that "In
Christ'ning shalt thou have two godfathers. / Had I been
judge, thou shouldst have had ten more — / To bring thee to
the gallows, not to the font" (IV.i.397-399). Although
Gratiano's words could be a reference to the well-known legend
that Judas hanged himself, the setting in which his words are
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spoken could indicate a veiled reference to Lopez.
When Shylock enters the stage, he trails behind him a
number of stereotypes taken from literary, popular, and
topical sources. But Shakespeare's agenda is not simply to
make Shylock the center of derision in the play. He is there
primarily because of one very specific stereotype associated
with the Jew— an alleged obsession with wealth. And while
Shylock is certainly concerned with money, so too are most of
the other characters in the play, all of whom are Christians.
Shylock's ideological function, then, is to draw the
audience's attention to an obsession with material wealth, an
obsession shared by all the others. Material wealth is
privileged over love, family ties, marriage, and friendship.
As such, the play is highly critical of capitalism in the
Venetian society, but more, it is critical of the type of
obsession with material gain that was gaining prominence in
England in late 1596 and early 1597.
Beginning in mid 1595 and continuing throughout most of
1597, many regions of England faced the prospect of famine.
Several years of poor crop yields and an increase in grain
exports had led to inflated prices, rising in some cases from
"14 s. to 4 marks the quarter, and more."” Those who suffered
the greatest hardship were, of course, the poor and the city
dwellers. Ballads circulated complaining of the great "want
and scarcity of corn." In one, "a certain ballad . . . written
by Deloney . . . the Queen is brought in to speak with her
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people in very fond and undecent sort, and prescribeth orders
for the remedying of the dearth of corn."” While poor
harvests were the primary reason for the shortage of grain,
many in England blamed "rich farmers and ingrossers" for the
price increases. Popular sentiment was that the wealthy were
hoarding grain in order to keep the prices artificially high
and maximize profit. This was not only true with grain, but
also with other valuable commodities such as coal. An October
entry in The Acts of the Privy Council notes that "the price
of sea coals standeth at a very high rate to the great
oppression of the poor that are not able to furnish themselves
with wood." Blamed for these high coal prices were "some of
the richer sort of the town of Newcastle" who refused to work
the coal pits in order to inflate prices. Also to blame were
merchants who found more lucrative markets abroad where "great
quantities [were] transported to Rouen and other places beyond
the seas." The coal situation eventually became so desperate
that
The Mayor of Newcastle [was] ordered to cause one or
two of the chief coalmasters to be sent before the
Council who shall bring with them the covenant
wherein they are bound not to exceed a certain limit
imposed on them: and in the mean season to take
order that less quantity be transported out of the
realm.”
The council had to take action again in mid 1596, this time to
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quell an uprising in Oxfordshire, where between two and three
hundred men were alleged to be plotting to "rise up and pull
the corn out of rich men's houses."”
Finally, in July, 1596, Elizabeth was forced to
intervene, passing proclamations that called for a decrease in
grain prices; however,
in spite of the orders formerly made the price of
grain is still increased, and it most evident that
the ingrossing of the corn and forestalling of
markets by covetous men in buying great quantities
of corn out of the market at farmers' houses hath
been the cause of the dearth lately grown.”
In November corn exports were declared illegal, and "persons
of ability" were prohibited from breaking up their households,
"thereby leaving their hospitality and the relief of their
poor neighbors."” By the end of that year, piracy of ships
coming out of the "East Countries" was sanctioned, especially
if it were discovered that the cargo was bound for Spain.
Shakespeare was no stranger to these economic problems,
as evidenced by the following dialogue in Henry IV, Part One
(1596-97);
Second Carrier: Peas and beans are as dank here as
a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades
the bots. This house is turned upside down since
Robin Ostler died.
First Carrier: Poor fellow never joyed since the
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price of oats rose; it was the death of him.
(II.i.8-13)”
While Shakespeare is not this specific in The Merchant of
Venice, the play is generally critical of capitalism and its
associated social problems. For just as the grain farmers,
ingrossers, and coal merchants were accused of placing profit
above social relations, so too, Shylock and the other
"capitalists" in the play are guilty of the same crime.
The theme of commerce and money is introduced at the very
beginning of the play with Salerio and Solanio's questioning
of Antonio to determine why he is so melancholy. Salerio
guesses that Antonio is concerned with his ships at sea:
Your mind is tossing on the ocean.
There where your argosies with portly sail—
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood.
Or as it were the pageants of the sea—
do overpeer the petty traffickers
That curtsy to them, do them reverence.
As they fly by them with their woven wings.
(I.i.8-14)
Here Shakespeare focuses on how Antonio acquires wealth. But
with wealth in Venice comes the fear of losing the same, for
later Salerio tells Antonio that had he as many ventures
abroad as Antonio, he would constantly fret and worry about
the safety of his ships, even at church, suggesting a strong
association between Christians and wealth. Salerio would be
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reminded by the "holy edifice of stone" (I.i.30) of "dangerous
rocks, / Which touching but my gentle vessel's side / Would
scatter all her spices on the stream, / Enrobe the roaring
waters with my silks" (I.i.31-34). This obsession with
vigilance for one's wealth indicates just how tenuous the
commercial world is in Venice, a world "always requiring
vigilant defense.'"” Antonio replies that it is not his wealth
at sea that concerns him, for his "ventures are not in one
bottom trusted" (I.i.42). Solanio then guesses that Antonio is
in love, to which Antonio tersely responds "Fie, fie!"
(I.i.47). Solanio's guess reveals a great deal about the value
the Venetians place on wealth, for in many of Shakespeare's
comedies, melancholy is usually associated with a lovesick
young lover (Romeo and Orlando are the most obvious examples).
Here, however, love comes second to business, a theme which is
taken up by Bassanio later in the same scene.
Bassanio, greatly in debt to Antonio, tells his friend
that he has discovered a way to pay back the money he owes
him.With another loan from Antonio, he intends to try his
luck at Belmont where there
. . . is a lady richly left;
And she is fair and, fairer than that word.
Of wonderous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages.
Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued
To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia;
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Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece.
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos's strond,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
(I.i.161-172; emphasis mine)
Consistent with the views developed by Salerio and Solanio
earlier in the scene, here too, wealth comes before love, as
Bassanio resorts to the language of the marketplace in his
description of Portia. She is clearly a prize to be won, much
as Jason won the golden fleece, the image of which was
frequently used in the sixteenth century to signify the goal
of commercial enterprise and monetary profit/"
Even in Belmont itself, supposedly free from the material
concerns of the marketplace, characters are obsessed with
wealth. Bassanio, in keeping with his mercantile motive for
visiting Portia, seems to be in a great hurry to make his
choice of caskets as evidenced by Portia's request that he
"tarry; pause a day or two" (Ill.ii.l) before he hazards to
choose. She wants to "peize the time, / To eche it and to draw
it out in length" (III.ii.22-23) to prevent him from making a
hasty choice or to instruct him in making the correct choice:
"I could teach you / How to choose right" (III.ii.10-11). But
Bassanio is in a hurry and demands that Portia "let me to my
fortune and the caskets" (III.ii.39). She must be content with
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teaching him to "choose right" by reminding him of the power
of music:
And what is music then? Then music is
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow
To a new crowned monarch. Such it is
As are those dulcet sounds in break of day.
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear
And summon him to marriage. Now he goes.
With no less presence, but with much more love.
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem
The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
To the sea monster. I stand for sacrifice.
(Ill.ii.48-57, emphasis mine)
The point of her speech is clear. Music has power, power not
only to announce a monarch, but power to summon a bridegroom
(Bassanio) to marriage. Just in case Bassanio does not
completely understand the message contained in Portia's speech
(to pay attention to the song), she makes it perfectly clear
that she is sacrifice, the living embodiment of the
inscription on the lead casket: "Who chooseth me must give and
hazard all he hath" (II.ix.20). Finally, the song which she
orders sung while he makes his choice is designed to lead him
to choose wisely:
Tell me where is fancy bred.
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
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Reply, reply.
It is engendered in the eyes.
With gazing fed, and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy's knell.
I'll begin it— Ding, dong, bell.
Ding, dong, bell.
(III.ii.63-72)
Like any good investor, Portia is unwilling to take risks
without some sort of safety net. Her speech on music, her
allusion to the inscription on the lead casket, and the song
is that safety net. With this reading of the scene, then,
Bassanio's rejection of gold and silver in favor of the lead
"which moves . . . more than eloquence" (III.ii.106) is a
sham.
Immediately after making the correct decision, Bassanio
continues to employ the language of the marketplace when
claiming Portia as his. Even his praise of Portia's portrait
contained in the lead casket is linked to the Rialto: "Here
are severed lips / Parted with sugar breath; so sweet a bar /
Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs / The
painter plays the spider, and hath woven / A golden mesh t'
entrap the hearts of men" (III.ii.118-122). The words Bassanio
uses here in praise of Portia, as well as being highly
conventional and Petrarchan, are reminiscent of Salerio's
"silks and spices" (I.i). He doubts whether he has indeed
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gained the "golden fleece": "As doubtful whether what I see be
true, / Until confirmed, signed, ratified by you" (III.ii.147-
148). Bassanio's use of legal language here ("confirmed,"
"signed," "ratified"), as if Portia were a legal contract, is
in keeping with his character— the money obsessed fortune
seeker. Belmont, the golden world of love, becomes infected
with the mercantile concerns of Venice as revealed in Portia's
reply to Bassanio:
To wish myself much better, yet for you
I would not be ambitious in my wish
To wish myself much better, yet for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself,
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more
rich.
That only to stand high in your account,
I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends.
Exceed account. But the full sum of me
Is sum of something— which, to term in gross.
Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed.
(III.ii.152-159; emphasis mine)
Portia likens herself to a valuable commodity or investment
that can be trebled to increase Bassanio's account. She
continues to speak in materialistic terms when she gives
herself to him, relinquishing her authority over her body and
her goods:
Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit
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Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours
Is now converted. But now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants.
Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours, my lord's.
(III.ii.163-171; emphasis mine)
At Belmont, characters are just as obsessed with profit and
goods as those in Venice.
In Venice the theme of monetary acquisition developed in
the first act and at Belmont is sustained through the
elopement of Jessica, who robs her father Shylock and elopes
with the Christian Lorenzo. Jessica tells Lorenzo at her
father's house that she is "much ashamed of my exchange / But
love is blind, and lovers cannot see / The pretty follies that
themselves commit" (II.vi.85). The placement of these lines
immediately after her request that he catch the casket filled
with gold and jewels she has stolen from her father could
indicate that just for a second she harbors some remorse for
her betrayal, but just what she is ashamed of is made clearer
when she adds that she is embarrassed that Lorenzo sees her
disguised as a boy. She is not thinking of the "exchange" of
leaving her father, her home, nor even of abandoning her
Jewish faith, still less of her robbery, but simply of her
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"exchange" of clothes.
Even at the end of the play when we would expect the
characters' thoughts to turn to love, we find instead the same
obsession with wealth and Lorenzo's "muddy vesture of decay"
(V.i.64). It is not enough that Antonio has been saved, and
that Portia and Bassanio and Nerissa and Gratiano have been
reconciled. The economic order of the merchant world of Venice
must be restored also. And it is Portia and Nerissa,
traditionally the agents of love, who restore it. Portia tells
Antonio:
. . . you are welcome.
And I have better news in store for you
Than you expect. Unseal this letter soon;
There you shall find three of your argosies
Are richly come to harbor suddenly.
You shall not know by what strange accident
I chanced on this letter.
(V.i.273-279)
Nerissa gives to Lorenzo and Jessica "From the rich Jew, a
special deed of gift, / After his death, of all he dies
possessed of" (V.i.292-293). Antonio has been restored and
Jessica and Lorenzo provided for. Bassanio, too, has reaped
his reward, successfully playing Jason and obtaining the
object of his quest, Portia— the "golden fleece." But like
Jason, the acquisition of the golden fleece came at a price.
The price in The Merchant of Venice is the potential for
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Antonio's death, as Shylock the foreigner plays Medea to
Bassanio's Jason.
This continual undercutting of love by the introduction
of materialism is developed and sustained throughout the play:
in Antonio's preference for money over love, in Bassanio's
quest for the golden fleece, in Portia's obsession with making
the right match and quickly relinquishing control of her
wealth, in Jessica's betrayal of her father and marriage to
Lorenzo (one suspects that he would not be so quick to elope
with a penniless Jewess) , and finally in the need to secure
more wealth for Jessica through the conversion and
exploitation of her father. It could be argued at this point,
however, that the play's "real" theme, that of friendship over
money, is revealed during the trial scene, but even there,
mercantile values prevail.
Portia's hypocrisy and how money overshadows love in the
play is nowhere more apparent than in the trial scene. In her
"quality of mercy" speech she tells Shylock that
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power.
The attribute to awe and majesty.
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Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
(IV.i.183-191)
Here Portia argues that Shylock should show mercy toward
Antonio, for in doing so, he would be blessed. But mercy is
the farthest thing from Shylock's mind during this scene.
While Shylock's insistence on exacting the penalty of a pound
of flesh may seem cruel and unjust, it must be remembered that
he does not lack proper motivation. He "craves the law"
(IV.i.205) and has vowed previously to ruin Antonio:
I hate him for he is a Christian;
But more, for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
(I.iii.39-44)
Shylock's motives here are simply to eliminate a business
competitor, one who (if Shylock's words are true) threatens
his only means of earning a living, for without interest
Shylock's life ends. The Christians, as represented by Portia
on the other hand, claim that they are concerned with mercy,
but that mercy is noticeably absent at the end of the scene
when Shylock is left destitute and, worse yet, converted.^
Portia's concern with mercy is overshadowed by her desire to
bring about the financial ruin of the Jew, for with his fall
comes the financial elevation of Lorenzo, Jessica, Bassanio,
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Antonio, and indirectly, Portia. There seems little
distinction between Jew and Christian in this scene, a
difference effaced early in the scene with Portia's question,
"Which is the merchant here? And which the Jew? (IV.i.173).
Shakespeare's condemnation of financial gain at the
expense of others in the play is related to another
significant event that occurred in 1596, the sack of Cadiz.
After the demoralizing fall of Calais to Spain on April 16 of
that year, the Earl of Essex and the Lord Admiral, Charles
Howard, began to urge Elizabeth to undertake a renewed
campaign against Spain.^ Essex and the Lord Admiral were
surely disappointed at being held back from entering the
battle for Calais by Elizabeth, who refused to aid France
unless Henry agreed to relinquish control of Calais to England
if Spain were driven back. Henry vacillated until too late and
Essex and the Lord Admiral were left with an expensive fleet
fully manned and ready for battle. Also, Essex probably hoped
to recoup his financial losses after Calais, for immediately
after he was appointed joint commander of the fleet, he "threw
himself in the preparations with his customary vigor, running
himself still further into debt by investing heavily in the
venture."^ Elizabeth, however, was reluctant to commit
herself to yet another expensive campaign, but Essex and
Howard assured her that this expedition would yield hugh
profits.^ After several months of intense lobbying, Elizabeth
finally agreed to an attack on the Spanish port of Cadiz.
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The fleet left Plymouth on June 3, 1596, under the
command of the Earl of Essex and the Lord Admiral. On 20 June,
they arrived at Cadiz, where they destroyed two of Philip's
largest warships and captured two others. Although they missed
an opportunity to seize a rich merchant fleet containing goods
values at more than three million pounds, the expedition
yielded a rich haul. But Elizabeth saw little of the spoils of
Cadiz, for a great deal of the treasure was stolen by English
seamen despite the crown's attempt to control such dishonesty.
Elizabeth was furious and commented that the expedition had
been "rather an action of honour and virtue against the enemy,
and particular profit by spoil to the army, than profitable to
oneself."^ Elizabeth was especially angry with the
expedition's leaders, particularly Essex for his promotion to
knighthood of those whom Elizabeth suspected of robbing her.
Elizabeth took her revenge against Essex in two ways: first,
she saw to it that a pamphlet Essex had commissioned to
glorify his actions at Cadiz was suppressed, and second, she
took advantage of his absence and created Robert Cecil,
Essex's arch-enemy at court. Secretary of State.
Shakespeare may have had Essex and Cadiz in mind when
creating his Jew in The Merchant of Venice, particularly in
Shylock's "Hath not a Jew" speech. Essex and Howard certainly
fit the model of those who pursue personal gain at the expense
of others, since England languished in famine, while the two
sought personal honor and wealth abroad. But Shylock's appeal
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for understanding may be a veiled attack on Essex and Howard,
especially when pointed out how the two could have played a
major role in the 1596 revival of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta.
If The Jew of Malta promotes an ideology concerned with
the threat of Spanish imperialism, as argued in the previous
chapter, then the 1596 revival of the play by the Lord
Admiral's company on 9 January^ could indicate that the play
was being used to further Essex and Howard's attempts to
persuade Elizabeth to stage a military expedition on the
continent. Also, Shylock's speech could be an answer to
Essex's treatment of Dr. Lopez in 1594.^ The stark contrast
between the description of Lopez at his arraignment and
Shylock the Jew is nowhere more evident than in the "Hath not
a Jew" speech:
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions?— fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do
we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge! If a Christian wrong
a Jew, what should be his sufferance be by Christian
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example? Why revengeI The villainy you teach me I
will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better
the instruction.
(III.i.55-69)
While the speech serves primarily to provide justification for
Shylock's hatred of the Christians and motivation for his acts
against Antonio, the focus on how similar he is to the
Christians in the play supports the argument that Jew does in
fact equal Christian. In addition, this well-rounded portrayal
of Shylock here, in contrast to Marlowe's Jew and Essex's
Lopez, could not have been missed by the followers of Essex or
Essex himself were he in attendance at a performance.^ As
such, Shylock's speech becomes a direct attack on Essex's
anti-Semitism and an indirect attack on his obsession with
wealth.
Unlike Marlowe and Kyd, Shakespeare in The Merchant of
Venice relies on ethno-nationalistic constructions of foreign
characters to direct his audience's attention not outward
toward a dangerous other (Spain), but inward toward an
examination of self and a culture obsessed with profit at any
cost, including starvation and ill-timed and unprofitable
foreign campaigns. Shylock's greed and desire for gain is
mirrored in Bassanio's willingness to put his friend's life on
the line in pursuit of "the lady richly left." Lorenzo's
interest in Jessica is also motivated by greed, as is her
betrayal and robbery of her father. And Portia comes in for
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criticism as well through her insistence on stacking the
financial deck by choosing Bassanio as her husband and for her
unmerciful display of mercy at the trial scene. Read in light
of the economic and political problems of 1596, the play
promotes an ideology highly critical of money at the expense
of love.
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Notes
1. Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 489-490.
2. I date the first performance of The Merchant of Venice in late 1596 or early 1597 for three reasons. First, Salerio's "wealthy Andrew" is an allusion to the name of a Spanish ship (St. Andrew) taken at the raid on Cadiz in June, 1596 (William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Kenneth Myrick [1965; reprint. New York: Signet Classic, 1987], 139; David Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [London: Scott Foresman and Company, 1980], 257-58; G.E. Harrison, Shakespeare Under Elizabeth [New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1933], 118). Second, Shakespeare's concern with the problems associated with capitalism (especially the corn dearth and the expedition to Cadiz) would point to a late 1596 or early 1597 date. Finally, the play may have been staged not only to capitalize on the popularity of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, which was in revival in 1596, but also as an answer to the anti-Semitism in that play. Points two and three are addressed later in this chapter.
3. E.M.W. Tillyard, "The Trial Scene in The Merchant of Venice," Review of English Literature 12 (October 1961): 51-59, argues that Portia represents a form of Christian justice and mercy that attempts to save the souls of all in the play, including Shylock. Following this argument Barbara Lewalski in, "Biblical Allusion and Allegory in The Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare Quarterly 13 (Summer 1962): 327-343, points out that the play "is concerned to explore and define Christian love and its various antitheses," especially in the trial scene where Shakespeare develops the opposition between Old Law (Shylock) and New (Portia). Old Law is that of the Old Testament while New is that of the New Testament which stresses the principles of Justice, Mercy, Righteousness and Faith. Old Law is ultimately defeated through the conversion of Shylock at the end of the play. Herbert Bronstein in "Shakespeare, the Jews, and The Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare Quarterly 20 (Winter 1969): 3-10 also finds Christianity at work in the play. He sees the main theme of the play as "the ideal of unconditional love," in opposition to personal profit, i.e., Shylock's usury. Finally, Albert Wertheim, "The Treatment of Shylock and Thematic Integrity in The Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare Studies 6 (1970): 75-87, says that at the heart of the play is the notion that "ye cannot serve God and mammon." Portia leads all the characters away from the pursuit of material gain toward a deeper, "less overt," spiritual gain.
4. As early as 1952, J.W. Lever in "Shylock, Portia, and the Values of Shakespearian Comedy," Shakespeare Quarterly 3 (1952): 383-86, argued that although the play clearly pits love against usury, Shylock is defeated by commercial laws and customs that are hardly Christian. Sidney Finkelstein, "Shakespeare's
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Shylock," Mainstream 15 (June 1962): 26-42, points to Shakespeare's attempt to debunk the myth of the evil Jew by making Shylock more human, and argues that Antonio's sadness is caused by his reluctance to participate in the new merchant class obsession with wealth.
5. See especially Walter Cohen, "The Merchant of Venice and the Possibility of Historical Criticism," ELH: Journal of English Literary History 49 (Winter 1982): 765. Though Cohen tends to focus on how the play can lead to an understanding of the economic evolution of Venice, he also draws attention to how Shakespeare reflects historical and social economic problems in general.
6. Thomas Mosian, "Which is the merchant here? And which the Jew?: Subversion and Recuperation in The Merchant of Venice," in Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, ed. Jean Howard and Marion F. O'Connor (New York and London: Methuen, 1987), 197.
7. James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (Parkes Lecture) (Southampton: University of Southampton, 1992), points out that by situating the Jew "in terms of various cultural myths, as well as in the nascent discourses of nation, gender, and race," Shakespeare is exploring how cultural identities are constructed through an insistence on difference. Ironically, however, it is through this identification of difference that the boundaries are dissolved, pointing out that the terms we use to construct the other reveal our own feelings toward self. See also Frank Whigham, "Ideology and Class Conduct in The Merchant of Venice, Renaissance Drama as Cultural History: Essays from "Renaissance Drama," Mary Beth Rose, ed. (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1990): 487-509. Whigham argues that class distinctions and power relations are also exposed in the play through the exclusion of the other. The trial scene, in particular, "depicts Shylock's critical invasion of [the] preserve of power, ending in the clarification of social identity" through his exclusion. But in so doing, Shakespeare reveals just how tenuous and fragile the power relations in the world of Venice can be.
8. See Michael Ferber, "The Ideology of The Merchant of Venice," English Literary Renaissance 20 (1990): 431-64, who argues that the mercantile activity with which all the characters seem obsessed imposes on the concepts of friendship and generosity as well as on Christianity.
9. All quotes from The Merchant of Venice from William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Kenneth Myrick (New York: Signet Classic, 1987).
10. Walter Poznar, "Shylock and the Social Order," Centennial Review 26 (1982): 309.
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11. Whigham, "Ideology and Class Conduct in The Merchant of Venice," 492.
12. Carolyn Praeger points out that Portia's attitude to Morocco reflects a growing hostility to increasing numbers of African aliens in London during the late sixteenth century ("The Negro Allusion in The Merchant of Venice," American Notes and Queries 15 [December 1976]: 50-52).
13. Kenneth Myrick glosses "complexion" here as temperament, but given Portia's comments previously about the Prince's dark complexion, it seems clear to me here that Portia bases her opinion of him on skin color alone. Like all of the other Christians in the play she judges others according to the stereotypes to which they most closely conform.
14. Hakluyt, A Discourse concerning Western Planting, 69.
15. William Shakespeare, Love's Labor Lost, in The Complete Works of Williams Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington (London: Scott Foresman and Company, 1980) .
16. Several native sources for The Merchant of Venice are often overlooked in the mad rush to link Shakespeare with the Italians. In one, the medieval folktale The Ballad of Geruntus, a Jewish usurer lends a Christian merchant a hundred crowns on the condition that if he can not repay the debt by a certain date, the Jew will cut a pound of flesh from the merchant's body. The complete ballad is contained in Mary Macleod Banks, ed., An Alphabet of Tales: An English 15th Century Translation of the Alphabetum Narrationum of Etienne de Besancon, Parts I and II (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1904-05).
17. Richard H. Popkin, "A Jewish Merchant of Venice." Shakespeare Quarterly 40 (1989): 330.
18. Daniels Prudhomme, "The Reformation and the Decline of Anti- Judaism," Cahiers Elisabethains 26 (1984): 4; Katz, Jews in the History of England, 15-48.
19. David McPherson, Shakespeare, Jonson and the Myth of Venice (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1990), 62-66.
20. See, for example, A.D. Moody, "An Ironic Comedy," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Merchant of Venice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970); Thompson, "The Modification of Stereotypes in The Merchant of Venice," 1-11; Whigham, "Ideology and Class Conduct in The Merchant of Venice"; or Derek Cohen, "Shylock and the Idea of the Jew." Jewish Presences in English Literature, ed. Derek Cohen and Deborah Heller (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990).
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21. Cohen, "Shylock and the Idea of the Jew," 21.
22. Ibid, 23-25.
23. Dennis Kay, Shakespeare : His Life, Work, and Era (1992; reprint, London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1992), 48.
24. See Charney, "Jessica's Turquoise Ring and Abigail's Poisoned Porridge, 33-44.
25. Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe, 16.
26. See, for example, Cohen, "Shylock and the Idea of the Jew," 24-28.
27. Sylvan Barnet, "Introduction," Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Merchant of Venice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), 5-6.
28. Quoted by Cohen in "Shylock and the Idea of the Jew," 29.
29. Ralph Nash, in "Shylock's Wolvish Spirit," Shakespeare Quarterly 10 (Winter 1959): 125-28, argues that the association between Shylock and dogs comes from the practice of hanging animals for "crimes."
30. My account of the Lopez affair is taken from G.B. Harrison, ed., The Elizabethan Journals: Being a Record of Those Things Most Talked of During the Years 1591-1603 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1955), 279-304.
31. See Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, 279-304.
32. Margaret Hotine observes that a pamphlet was published in late 1594 that retold the story: A True Report of Sundry Horrible Conspiracies to Have Taken Away the Life of the queenes Maistie (STC 7603). Also, Hotine points out that a "Spanish correspondent writing from London noted on 19 November 1594 that 'the books printing on Dr. Lopez' conspiracy are not out yet,' so some editions are likely to have continued into 1595" ("The Politics of Anti-Semitism 36).
33. My discussion of the Great Corn Dearth is taken from Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals (1595-1598), 39-158, and from Somerset, Elizabeth I, 490-491.
34. Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, 113.
35. Ibid, 52-53.
36. Somerset, Elizabeth I, 491.
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37. Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, 127.
38. Ibid, 148.
39. William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One, ed. Maynard Mack (1965; reprint. New York: Signet Classics, 1987).
40. Whigham, "Ideology and Class Conduct in The Merchant of Venice," 489.
41. Ibid," 490.
42. Robert Ornstein argues that "Portia can have no regrets about her treatment of Shylock because she knows him only as the monster of the courtroom. She did not witness Antonio's abuse of him; she was not present when Salerio and Solanio jeered at his misery. If Shylock spoke again at the trial of the indignities Antonio heaped on him, or if he gave in the courtroom the speech about the humanity of Jews he made to Solanio and Salerio, we would judge Portia's behavior differently" {Shakespeare's Comedies: From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986], 113). While that may be true of the characters in the play, we, as audience, have seen these things, and find it difficult, if not impossible, to overlook her cruelty when she refuses to extend toward Shylock the very mercy she had previously pleaded for him to show toward Antonio.
43. Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, 89-127; Somerset, Elizabeth I, 506-510.
44. Somerset, Elizabeth I, 506.
45. Elizabeth had previously committed to an expedition against Spanish ports in the New World in 1594. Under the command of Sir Francis Drake and John Hawkins the English had planned to attack Panama and other Spanish settlements in Central America, but Hawkins and Drake underestimated the strength of Spanish fortifications there and made little headway. Hawkins succumbed to disease at Puerto Rico, and Drake died of dysentery in January 1596. The survivors of the expedition eventually reached England, but the enormous wealth that had been promised Elizabeth amounted to a mere £4,205, a terrible return for Elizabeth's initial investment of £28,000 (Somerset, Elizabeth I, 506; Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, 83-100).
46. E.P. Cheyney, A History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth, 2 vols. (New York: P. Smith, 1948), 2:90.
47. Margaret Hotine observes that the Admiral's Men revived The Jew of Malta, performing the play eight times between 9 January and 21 June ("The Politics of Anti-Semitism," 38).
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48. Hotine argues that the Lopez incident was the primary reason why The Admiral's Men revived the play on 14 May, 1594, one month after the execution of Lopez ("The Politics of Anti-Semitism, 37) .
49. The uneasy relations between Essex and the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, who staged The Merchant of Venice, may provide additional evidence to support an Essex connection. After the death of Henry Carey, 1st Lord Hunsdon and Lord Chamberlain, the company fell under the patronage of his son, George Carey, 2nd Lord Hunsdon, and later (in 1597) Lord Chamberlain. Essex declared later in 1597, after his candidate. Sir Robert Sidney, was passed over for advancement to Lord Chamberlain, "that I had just cause to hate the Lord Cobham [George Carey] for his villainous dealing and abusing of me" (Somerset, Elizabeth I, 510). If this animosity between the two began in 1596, then Shylock's "Hath not a Jew" speech takes on additional significance as it could indicate that Shakespeare was playing politics, not only in the play, but with the staging of the play.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 5
BEN JONSON'S THE MASQUE OF BLACKNESS AND THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY: QUEEN ANNE AND THE POLITICS OF SUBVERSION
Kyd and Marlowe used ethnic stereotypes primarily to
support a dominant political ideology that urged England to
play a greater role in helping to eliminate the threat of
Spanish imperialism. Shakespeare, on the other hand, used many
of those same stereotypes to subvert a culture's dominant
economic ideology that stressed materialism at the cost of
social relations. Ben Jonson is also concerned with subversion
and promotion of ideologies in The Masque of Blackness and The
Masque of Beauty. In these two court performances, subversion
is evident primarily in the presentation of Queen Anne and her
court as black Ethiopians, a presentation that offers a
critique of the conventional views on female beauty and
sexuality to suggest alternative, emergent models. However,
Jonson, the consummate court poet, recognizes how subversion
is functioning in the masques and very carefully contains the
emergent views promoted by the queen and shifts the focus of
the entertainments back to the masculine— King James and his
imperialistic views. Like Shakespeare, Jonson relies on his
audience's awareness of cultural constructs created through
stereotyping in order to promote alternative ideologies, but
132
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like Kyd and Marlowe, he is ultimately concerned with
containing any subversion associated with those constructs in
order to promote a sense of English nationalism and
superiority.
On 6 January 1605 Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness
was performed in collaboration with Inigo Jones at Whitehall
in the old Banqueting House of Elizabeth. The Revel's book of
1605 reports that "on Twelfe Night The Queens Ma"" Maske of
Moures w'h Aleven Ladies of honno' to Accupayney her ma"' wTi cam
in great showes of divises w'h they sat In w‘h excellent
musik."' The idea for a masque in which Queen Anne and her
courtiers appear in blackface came, as Jonson reports in his
inductions to the Masques of Blackness and Beauty, from the
queen herself: "Hence (because it was her Maiesties will, to
have them Blackmores at first) the inuention was deriued by
me, and presented thus" ( 2 1 - 2 3 ) Shortly after the
performance of The Masque of Blackness, Anne commissioned
Jonson to write a follow-up masque: "it was her Highnesse
pleasure, againe to glorifie the Court, and command, that I
should thinke on some fit presentment, which should answere
the former, still keeping them the same persons . . . but
their beauties varied, according to promise" (2-7). That
masque was entitled The Masque of Beauty.
Traditionally, the Jacobean masque has been seen by
critics as an idealized representation of James, for the
monarch is the exclusive focus of the court entertainment.
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Stephen Orgel notes that the monarch is "always the center of
court productions" and becomes "in a physical and emblematic
way the centre as well. Along with an emphasis on James
comes a focus on his power and the hierarchy of the court. As
such, the masque reflects, reinforces, and quite often
reinvents the King's majesty and policies. These highly
idealized versions of reality helped efface the often harsh
political and personal reality which was the court of James
and Anne, serving as "elaborate and costly tools of
propaganda."4 The court masque, then, is highly conservative,
both in form and content, serving as little more than James's
attempt to promote an idealized vision of his court as well as
his political and personal self.
More recently, however, critics have questioned this
conservative view of the masque to suggest that Queen Anne may
have played a greater role than previously thought in using
the masque to promote her own subversive personal and
political agenda. Barbara Lewalski, for example, sees the
early Stuart masques as sites "for contestation about gender,
power, and status."^ Anne uses the masque to "subvert the
representation of James as exclusive locus of power and virtue
by means of texts and symbolic actions which exalt the power
and virtue of the Queen and her ladies— and by extension, of
women generally."* In the Masque of Blackness and the Masque
of Beauty, Anne draws attention to her politically
marginalized status at court by asking Jonson to represent her
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and her ladies as Africans. As such, blackness signifies her
alienation from court politics, much as Africans were
marginalized through their association with "alien cultural
practices and primitive energies.In Beauty, Anne acquires
political power, for the transformation of the black nymphs is
effected by their Queen, "the silver moon Aethiopia," thereby
emphasizing female power over male, placing Anne in a greater
position of power than James."
While Lewalski is certainly persuasive in pointing out
how Anne uses blackness to subvert the political status quo at
court, there are at least three other subversive reasons why
Anne may have requested Jonson to write a masque in which she
would first appear black {Masque of Blackness) and later be
transformed white {Masque of Beauty). First, the two masques
allowed for a greater focus on the extravagant and the exotic,
for Africa, as described in the travel literature of the
period, was thought of as a land of mystery and danger.
Second, Anne's request could be seen as her attempt to promote
an emergent ideology that equated blackness with beauty in
opposition to the dominant poetic trope that linked beauty
with red and white. Finally, blackness in the masque could
have been used by Anne to represent, as argues Lewalski, a
marginalized status, one based not on politics, however, but
on Anne's gender.^ Jonson, however, undercuts and contains
each of these acts of subversion to ultimately promote the
political power of James and return the focus to the
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masculine.
One reason Anne requested Jonson "to have them
Blackmores" was to place a greater emphasis on the exotic,
extravagant, and the alien. This is revealed in an examination
of the cost of the masque, as well as Jonson and Jones's sets,
costumes, and makeup. John Chamberlain, in a letter written to
Sir Ralph Winwood on 18 December, 1604, observed that "the
Queen hath. . . a great Mask in hand against Twelfth-Tide, for
which there was £3000 delivered a Month ago," and Zorzi
Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador in 1608, noted that in The
Masque Beauty "the wealth of pearls and jewels that adorned
the Queen and her ladies [was] so abundant and splendid that
in everyone's opinion no other court could have displayed such
pomp and riches.""' Jonson's descriptions of the stage and
scenery for the masques also reflects extravagance and
novelty. In Blackness a background landscape consisting of a
forest was fronted by an "artificiall sea [that] was seene to
shoote forth, as if it flowed to the land" (26-27). The sea
was constructed of long cylinders shaped like waves, "touched
with silver at the top [and] turned by pivots and cranks."'*
As well as simulated waves, the masque included six Tritons,
two Sea-maides "for song," and "two great Sea-horses (as bigge
as the life) . . . the one mounting aloft, and writhing his
head from the other" (38-40). In Beauty, the stage consisted
again of sea, this time with a floating island, "thereof was
a seate of state. . . divided into eight squares." Into these
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squares the sixteen "Masquers were plac'd by couples" over
which several arches were constructed to hold the eight
figures of Beauty, fronted with "little Cupids in flying
posture, waving of wreathes, and light" (165-176). The sets
were obviously meant to accentuate spectacle through the
inclusion of mythological figures and exotic locales.
Inigo Jones' costuming and makeup also emphasized an
exotic, alien world. In Blackness Oceanus was "presented in a
humane forme, the colour of his flesh, blue; and shaddowed
with a robe of sea-greene; his head grey; and horned. . . his
beard of the like mixt colour" (44-49) . Boreas in Beauty is
dressed in "a robe of Russet and White mixt, full, and bagg'd;
his haire and beard rought, and horride; his wings gray, and
full of snow, and ycicles" (13-15). Where Jonson and Jones
really outdid themselves, however, was in the presentation of
blackness in the two masques. Because Anne desired to appear
in blackface, Jonson chose to present the maskers in Blackness
as the daughters of "a river in Aethiopia, famous by the name
of Niger; of which the people were called Nigritae, now
Negro's: and are the blackest nation of the world" (18-19).^
In order to emphasize blackness in the masques, Niger appears
in "forme and colour of an Aethiope; his haire, and rare beard
curled, shaddowed with a blue, and bright mantle: his front,
neck, and wrists adorned with pear le, and crowned, with an
artifical wreath of cane" (50-54). The costumes of the black
nymphs attending Anne and the other royals consisted of a
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black lyre-shaped mitre headdress with two blue
spiral horns and aigrette between them. Bright blue
were the dresses in bright blue gown, with short
sleeves; skirts reaching to below the knees at the
sides, and cut away square above them in front
striped and boardered with yellow and gold; white
petticoat falling to ankels.'Bright blue stockings.
Golden shoes.
Anne and her ladies were dressed
alike, in all, without difference: the colours,
azure, and silver; upright in tresses, lyke Pyramids,> but returned on the top with a scroll and antique dressing of feathers, and jewells interlaced with ropes of pearle. And, for the front, eare, neck, and wrists, the ornament was of the most choise and orient pearle; best setting off from the black (72-78). While costuming and makeup were clearly intended to promote the exotic, another aspect of the masque on which the audience was meant to focus was the blackness of the participants. Jonson is clear on this when he observes that the "pearle" best sets off the blackness, as would the blue and gold of the costumes. Also, the use of wigs "curled upright in tresses, lyke Pyramids" and beards "curled, shadowed with a blue" makes it clear to the audience that these actors portray blackness as an alien, exotic other, but not, as a number of stereotypes Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139 circulating during the period suggested, one associated with the monstrous and the abhorrent. Although Africa was often described in positive terms, primarily for its association with fabulous riches, the inhabitants of the continent often were not. Africans were associated with physical ugliness, and great emphasis was placed on the characteristics of skin color, curly or woolly hair, thick lips, flat noses, thin legs, and in women, pendulous b r e a s t s .^ John Pory, in his translation of Leo Africanus's writings, called Africans "idolaters, of coulour black, with curled haire, very barbarus." Their color was something that was ugly and frightening, and most common men "were afraid to see Black Moores."'* Pory's sentiments concerning blackness are reflected in Dudley Carleton's comments on The Masque of Blackness: Their [the women's] Appareil was rich, but too light and Curtizan-like for such great ones. Instaed of Vizzards, their Faces, and Arms up to the Elbows, were painted black, which was Disguise sufficient, for they were hard to be known; but it became them nothing so well as their red and white, and you cannot imagine a more ugly Sight, then a Troop of lean-cheek'd Moors. The Spanish and Venetian Ambassadors were both present, and sate by the King in State; at which Monsieur Beaumont [the French ambassador] quarrells so extreamly, that he saith Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 0 the whole Court is Spanish. He [the Spanish Ambassador] put off Don Taxis, and took upon him El Senor Embaxadour, wherin he outstrip our little Monsieur. He was privately at the first mask, and sate amongst his Men disguised; at this he was taken out to dance, and footed it like a lusty old Gallantt with his Country Woman. He took out the Queen, and forgot not to kiss her Hand, though there was Danger it would have left a Mark on his Lips.'* Carleton's description represents a number of cultural assumptions about blackness. First, the ladies are an "ugly Sight," the blackness of their makeup not becoming them "so well as their red and white." Second, Carleton's use of the words "light and Curtizan-like" helps to establish a strong link between the complexion of the maskers and their sexuality. Finally, the "Danger" that the Queen's blackness would have left a mark on the Spanish ambassador's lips expresses the cultural assumption that the negative qualities associated with blackness were somehow contagious and to be avoided. One reason why blackness was considered ugly was its association with evil. Most sixteenth-century writers saw black skin as a punishment from God. George Best, who recorded Martin Frobisher's landfall in West Africa, traced the blackness of Africans to the "some natural infection of the first inhabitants of that Countrey, and so all the whole Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 1 progenie of them descended . . . with the same blot of infection." According to Best, this "infection" was a direct result of "the first orginall of these blacke men," who was Noah's son Cham. During the period when Noah, his wife, sons Cham, Shem, Japet, and their wives were confined in the Ark, God commanded them to "use contenencie, & absteine from carnall copulation with their wives." All the sons obeyed this command except "his wicked sone Cham," who thought that "the first child borne after the floud (by right & and law of nature) should inherit & possess all the dominion of the earth." Cham "used the company of his wife," and for his disobedience was punished by God, who caused him "to be so blacke and loathsome, that he might remaine a spectacle of disobedience to all the World. And of this blacke & cursed Cham came al these blacke Moores which are in Africa."'* Centuries before Best, however, Jerome, in a letter on sin and purity, wrote of blacks that "you are of your father the devil, and the lust of your father it is your will to do."'’ The dominant ideology of the period, therefore, held that black skin was both ugly and evil. But another, more positive, representation of blackness was emerging in the culture, one that challenged the belief that black was ugly and evil, for the typical Petrarchan conventions that equated beauty with red and white were by this time "stiffly conventional [and] freshness of complexion prompted no freshness of metaphor."^". This new view Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 2 associated blackness with beauty, and, as such, challenged the traditional association that linked beauty to red and white, an tradition in England that stretched back to the medieval period.-* In Middle English poetry, for example, the beloved's complexion is "ase rose that red is on ris; / With lilie-white leres lossum he is."^^ In Chaucer's House of Fame, Venus is described as "Naked fletynge in a see, / And also on hir hed, pardee, / Hir rose garlond whit and red" (133-135) In Renaissance love poetry, as Linda Woodbridge observes, "the mistress's red-and-white face was relentlessly emblazoned."^ Edward DeVere, in his "What Shepherd Can Express," says of his mistress that The lily in the field. That glories in his white. For pureness now must yield. And render up his right; Heaven pictured in her face Doth promise joy and grace. With this there is a red Exceeds the damask-rose Which in her cheeks is spread. Whence every favor grows.^ Spenser uses similar images of red and white: Her ruddy cheeks like unto roses red; Her snowy brows like budded bellamours; Her lovely eyes like pinks but newly spread; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 3 Her goodly bosom like a strawberry bed; Her neck like to a bunch of columbines; Her breast like lilies ere their leaves be shed.“ Finally, Sidney made extensive use of red and white in his blazons of Stella, who is the "Queen virtue's court," with a "front built of alabaster pure" and cheeks "mix'd red and white. While red and white were the dominant colors typically associated with beauty during the period, the color black was fast gaining popularity. This tradition of beauty and blackness can be traced back to the Song of Solomon: I am dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not look upon me, because I am dark, because the sun has tanned me. My mother's sons were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyard, but my own vineyard I have not kept. (1:5-6) During the sixteenth century a number of poets well versed in biblical texts also promoted black as an alternative to the standard red and white. Sidney uses black as well as red and white throughout Astrophel and Stella. In the description of Stella's eyes in "Sonnet 7," the poet takes the position that though black is typically associated with images of death ("this mourning weed / To honor all their deaths"), Stella's black eyes "doth make all beauties flow."^ Shakespeare uses Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 4 the color black extensively, especially in sonnets 127, 130, and 132.^ "Sonnet 127" contains the clearest example of how the convention of red and white is challenged by black: In the old age black was not counted fair. Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; But now is black beauty's successive heir. And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame. For since each hand hath put on nature's power. Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face. Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower. But is profan'd, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black. Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Sland'ring creation with a false esteem. Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe. That every tongue says beauty should look so. Shakespeare also equates black with beauty in his drama. He undercuts Philo's negative characterization of Cleopatra, her "tawny front" and "gypsy's lust" (I.i.6, 10), with Enobarbas's idealized description of Cleopatra as a Venus that "beggar'd all description."**’ Jonson also seems aware of this emerging alternative to red and white, for after Niger arrives in Blackness, he describes his daughters in terms of blackness and beauty: . . . Sonne to great Oceanus Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 5 Now honord, thus, With all his beautious race: Who, though black in face. Yet, are they bright. And full of life, and light. To prove that beauty best. Which not the colour, but the feature Assures unto the creature (99-108) Conscious of the cultural stereotypes that equate blackness with ugliness, Jonson takes great pains to argue to the masque's audience that inner beauty transcends outward appearance. Niger goes on to explain to Oceanus why his daughters are black. Their blackness, unlike Best's gloss of the biblical story of Cham in which blackness is a punishment, is a reward, a positive trait: In satisfying euery pensiue heart Of these my Daughters, my most loued birth: Who though they were the first form'd dames of earth. And in whose sparckling, and refulgent eyes. The glorious Sunne did still delight to rise; Though he (the best judge, and most formall cause Of all dames (beauties) in their firme hiewes, drawes Signes of his feruent'st loue; and thereby shewes That, in their black, the perfectst beauty growes; Since the fix't colour of their curled haire, (Which is the highest grace of dames most Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 6 faire) No cares, no age can change; or there display The fearfull tincture of abhorred Gray; Since Death her selfe (her selfe being pale and blue) Can neuer alter their most faithfull hiew; All which are arguments, to proue, how far Their beauties conquer, in great beauties warre; And more, how neere Diuinitie they be. That stand from passion, or decay so free (136-154). Niger tells Oceanus that his daughters are blessed to be black, a blessing conveyed by the sun himself. They will never show the signs of age (gray hairs), nor can "Death her selfe" ever alter "their most faithfull hiew," for once black, black they will remain. Their only fault is that they have listened to the words of some few Poore brain-sicke men, stil'd Poets, here with you [Who] have, with such envie of their graces, sung The painted Beauties, other Empires sprung; Letting their loose, and winged fictions flie To inflict all clymates, yea our puritie; As of one Phaethon, that fir'd the world. And, that, before his heedlesse flames were hurld About the Globe, the Aethiopes were as faire. As other Dames; now blacke, with blacke dispaire (155-164) Niger's daughters believe the words of these "Poore brain- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147 sieke" poets and demand transformation. Clearly, even though Jonson undercuts the notion that blackness is associated with ugliness (after all, the queen is appearing in blackface), whiteness is still the preferred color of choice, as revealed in the transformation that occurs later in Blackness and in The Masque of Beauty. Though Niger argues quite forcefully for an association between blackness and beauty as well as blackness and chastity, white is held in high esteem throughout the remainder of Blackness and Beauty. Niger's daughter's, having heard the words of the poets who privilege white and red, lament their condition: . . . fear, and care Possess'd them whole; yea, and beleeving them. They wept such ceaselesse teares, into my streame. That it hath, thus far, overflow'd his shore To seeke them patience: who have since, e'remore As the Sunne riseth, charg'd his burning throne With volleys of reviling: 'cause he shone On their scorch'd cheekes, with such intemperate fires. And other Dames, made queenes of all desires (168-176) Apparently his daughters do not see blackness in as positive a light as he. They curse the sun, believing that "other Dames" are desirable because of their white skin. Climate, especially the sun, was often thought to contribute to skin Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 4 8 color and psychological disposition. This explanation, often offered in conjunction with the Cham theory, was promoted throughout the period and well into the late seventeenth century. William Caxton held that "in this center of Ethiope the people ben blacke for the lite of the sonne; for it is so hot in their contre that it seemth that the earthe sholde breene. Even the curled hair of blacks was thought to have been "curled and crooked . . . through immoderate heate."^ Niger employs this same "Climate Theory" argument above, as does Oceanus later when he tells Niger of the country at which they have arrived: This Land, that lifts into the temperate ayre His snowy cliffe, is Albion the faire So call'd of Neptunes son, who ruleth here. (205-207) The "temperate ayre" is here associated with England, and hence, with whiteness. It is the land for which the daughters have been seeking. Here they will be "blanched white." Word of this land "whose terminatio (of the Greeke) / Sounds Tania" and of its power to transform blackness to white, comes from "Great Aethiopia," the Moon, a reoccurring symbol of whiteness, hence purity, throughout the masques. In a recognition of his error, Niger praises the Moon: Great Aethiopia, Goddesse of our shore. Since, with particular worship we adore Thy general brightnesse, let particular grace Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 149 Shyne on my zealous Daughters: Shew the place. Which, long, their longings urdg'd their eyes to see. Beautfie them, which long have Deified thee. (224-229) The association between white and beauty is ultimately realized in The Masque of Beauty with the presentation of the island at Albion's shore. The nine elements of Beauty arrive with the four daughters on the island, and each is linked to whiteness. Splendor, "her bright hayre loose flowing" is "drawn in a circle of clouds . . . in her hand a branch, with two Roses, a white and a red." Serenitas has "upon her head a cleare, and faire Sunne shining, with rayes of gold striking downe to the feet of the figure. In her hand a Christall." Germanatio is enrobed "with a zone of gold about her Wast." Laetitia's hair is flowing "and stuck with flowers." Temperies is dressed "in a garment of Gold, Silver, and colours weaved," in her hand "an Urne of water." The sixth, Venustas wears a "Silver robe . . . her sockes wrought with pearle." Dignitas, the seventh element, held "in her hand a Golden rod." Perfectio had "a wreath of Gold upon her head." And finally, Harmonia, "a Personage, whose dressing had something of all the others, her robe painted full of Figures. Her head was compass'd with a crowne of Gold" (180-228) . The song that accompanies their arrival makes clear the association between white and beauty: When Love, at first, did moove Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 0 From out of Chaos, brightned So was the world, and lighted. As now! Echho. As now! Ecch. As now! Yeeld Night, then, to the light. As Blacknesse hath to Beautie; Which is but the same duety. It was for Beauty, that the World was made. And where she raignes. Loves lights admit no Shade. (282-290) While Anne's choice of blackface, then, may have been intended to subvert the traditional aesthetic ideology that privileged red and white by promoting an alternate ideology that links blackness with beauty, Jonson undercuts that suggestion. Perhaps the cultural stereotypes were too strong to overcome, or perhaps Jonson recognized the subversive use of Anne's blackness here. Or perhaps, because the women are transformed by Albion, Jonson restores power to where he feels it ultimately belongs, with the patriarchy and its representative, James. Another cultural stereotype on which Jonson relied was one that associated blackness and with sexuality. If Anne was aware of this association, and there is no reason to assume she was not, then her choice of blackness, besides drawing attention to the exotic and consequently to the aesthetic, could suggest a reference to her own sexuality, especially in light of James's views toward her and women in general. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 1 Ten years before his marriage to Anne, James's preference for the exclusive company of attractive young men was a topic of serious concern for his advisors, especially since this obsession with his "favorites" quite often had a bearing on his political decisions.” In 1579 the French lord Esme Stuart arrived in Edinburgh at the behest of the Guise faction to promote closer ties between France and Scotland, encourage Catholicism, and lobby the political cause of the imprisoned Mary. James was immediately taken with the handsome older man and at their first meeting "tooke him up and embraced him in a most amorous manner." Later James would confer on him "a rich inheritance," employ him in state affairs, elect "him one of his honourable Privy Counsell, Gentleman of his Bed chamber, and Governour of Dumbarton Castle."^ After James named Esme Stuart duke of Lennox, a number of Scottish royalty, which included the earl of Mar, Lord Lindsay, the master Glamis, the earls of Glencairn, Bothwell, Angus, and Gowrie, formed the "Lords Enterprisers" and lured James to Ruthven castle where he was held captive and forced to insist that Esme Stuart leave the country.” While the powerful families of Scotland may have been outraged at James's behavior with Stuart, the real issue, as in Marlowe's Edward II, was primarily power, and those who controlled the king, controlled that power.” The same year he sailed to Denmark to bring Anne back to Scotland, James's personal relationships were an issue again Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 2 when he became involved with George Gordon, earl of Huntly and a Catholic. Even after it was revealed that Gordon was involved in a conspiracy with Philip II to invade Scotland, James refused to take strong action against him. Thomas Fowler wrote to Walsingham on March 1, 1589, that the day after James discovered Gordon's role in the plot "he went to the castle to dinner, where he entertained Huntly as well and kindly as ever, yea he kissed him at times to the amazement of many." Two weeks later Fowler reported that the "King hath a strange, extraordinary affection to Huntly, such as is yet unremoveable."” Though James eventually charged Huntly with treason, he refused to exact a stern punishment, shocking Elizabeth and the Scottish Kirk. Once again, James's personal affairs had threatened the political stability of the country, a scenario he was to repeat even after his marriage to Anne of Denmark. The marriage of James and Anne was, for the first several years or so, somewhat happy. Anne was well-received in Scotland and James declared his love for her in poetry: Your smiling is an antidote againes The melancholie that oppresseth me And when a raging wrathe into me raignes Your loving lookes may make me calme to be How oft you see me have an heavie hart Remember then sweete Doctour on your art.” In 159 3, with Anne's first pregnancy, however, a problem began Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 3 to develop that would eventually spell the end of any domestic happiness between the two. That problem had to do with who would raise their children. James demanded complete control over the royal children, but Anne, raised in happy family surroundings, insisted on bringing up the children herself. James eventually won out, and shortly after Henry's birth in 1594, he gave orders that his son, just as he had been, was to be placed under the care of John, earl of Mar, who would serve as "Governor to the said Prince within the Castle of Stirling with enjoyment of such honours, privleges and commodities as he, his father and grandfather enjoyed of before."” Anne was furious, and for the next ten years she and James fought constantly over who would raise Henry. By the time James left for England in 1603 to be crowned James I, the marriage between him and Anne had deteriorated to the point that the two rarely spoke, except to argue.Once in England, James sent Anne a letter that spelled out what she could expect of their marriage in the future: And therefore I say over again, leave these womanly apprehensions, for I thank God I carry that love and respect unto you which, by the law of God and nature, I ought to do to my wife and mother of my children. For the respect of your honorable birth and descent I married you; but the love and respect I now bear you is for that ye are my married wife and so partaker of my honour, as of all my other Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 4 fortunes James's feelings toward Anne, and the marriage itself, at this point was clearly based not on love, but on his obligation to the laws of the Church and to his children. Even his decision to marry her, he writes, was based not on love, but on her honorable birth and descent. The letter brings new meaning to his love poetry, then, for in the sonnet quoted above, the focus is clearly on what Anne can do for him, not on his love for her. Anne's feelings for James were just as obvious, for one court observer noted that she had but little Notion of Love; and that small Portion of it, which she had felt for the King, was soon worn out, by their frequent Wrangles: She grew to despise him for his Want of Spirit, and took so little Care to conceal her mean Opinion of him."^ The marriage between was clearly over, and upon her arrival in England, Anne spent most of her time removed from court life and James. In light of this evidence, Anne's request that Jonson portray her in blackface shifts attention to the sexuality of the black as well as the sexuality of women in general. Blackness had long been linked with sexuality, especially in its more disruptive and illicit forms, and Anne's request does, as Lewalski suggests, draw attention to the "primitive energies" associated with African women. Blackness in The Masque of Blackness, then, appeals to James's fear of the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 5 feminine, a fear that Jonson will undercut later in the masque, and especially in The Masque of Beauty where that fear is revealed to be groundless. Anne's choice of colors may have been meant to suggest James had little to fear from her and should welcome the feminine to his court, much as the transformed nymphs and their feminine attributes are embraced by Neptune's court in The Masque of Beauty. There, near the end of the masque, female power is privileged in one of the concluding songs: Had those, that dwell in error foule. And hold that women have no soule. But seene these move: they would have, then. Said, Women were the soules of men. So they doe move each heart, and eye With the world's soule, true harmony. (368-373) Whether or not Anne had a hand in actually writing some of the lines of Blackness or Beauty is not known. Royal involvement in such masques as The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers, Oheron: The Faery Prince, and Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion could be used to argue that she was.” Nonetheless, the song does promote feminine power. What is clear throughout the two masques, though, is that Jonson was keenly aware of the associations between sexuality and blackness, as sexuality linked to blackness is carefully undercut throughout. As such, he promotes the cultural view that chastity is associated only Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 6 with whiteness while also promoting Anne's agenda that women pose no threat to the patriarchal power structure James has established at court.” Blackness had long been linked to illicit sexuality, primarily because of its association with Islam. Leo Africanus argued that Islam "looseth the bridle to the flesh, which is a thing acceptable to the greatest part of men."” Islamic law governing multiple marriages and especially divorce were perceived to promote promiscuous behavior in its adherents. Sir John Mandeville observed that "Mahomet commanded in his Alkaron, that every man should have two wives, or three or four; but now they take unto nine, and of lemans as many as he may sustain. Africanus tells of naked "holy-men" in Cairo who "like bruthe beastes ravis[ed] women in publick places . as [they] were comming foorth of a bath.” English explorers recounted tales of encounters with peoples in the middle parts of Africa who used "the felowship of their wives, that others use in secrete: they use in open sighte." These men were the "Nigritae, which we now call Moores, Moorens, or Negroes, a people so beastly living, with a God, lawe, religion, or common wealth."” If the sexuality of the black man in his native land was viewed with revulsion and suspicion, the sexuality of the black women was an even greater source of anxiety. Black women were often linked with promiscuity and prostitution. In England, one notorious black prostitute, Lucy of Clerkenwell, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 157 was known to frequent an area near the Innes of Court. In a letter to Thomas Lankford, secretary to the Earl of Hertford, Denis Edwards ask that Lankford "pray enquire after and secure my negress; she is certainly at the Swan, a Dane's beershop, Turnbull Street, Clerkenwell."” G.B. Harrison, in an analysis of the sonnets of Edward Guilpin, argues that sonnet sixty- five alludes directly to black prostitutes in London: Because Nigrina hath a painted face. Many suspect her to be light and base; I see no reason to repute her such. For out of doubt she will abide the tuch. Harrison concludes "Nigrina" was intended to link this woman who "abides the tuch" to black prostitutes. In John Weever's Epigrams (1599) Harrison notes the association of moral laxity with black women: Is Byrrha browne? who doth the question aske? Her face is pure as Ebonie jeate blacke. It's hard to know her face from her fair maske, Beautie in her seems beautie still to lacke. Nay, shee's snowy-white, but for that russet skin. Which like a vaile doth keep her whiteness in.^° Here Weever plays on the same notion that beneath her blackness Byrrha is white, signifying her beauty and purity. As such, illicit sexuality is contained. Jonson makes this same point throughout The Masque of Blackness by containing Anne and her ladies' dangerous sexuality as represented by Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 5 8 their "Curtizen-like" appearance. This containment of black female sexuality in the masques is achieved through the promise of transformation at the end of The Masque of Blackness and an actual transformation in The Masque of Beauty. Near the end of Blackness the Moon (Ethiopia) tells the daughters that "the night growes old, / And we are griev'd, we cannot hold / You longer light" (325- 327) . But they are to take comfort, for while Niger must return to Africa, they shall "here remayne the Ocean's guests" (330) where they "shall (when all things else doe sleepe / Save your chast thoughts) with reverence, steepe / Your bodies in that purer brine, / And wholesome dew, call'd Ros-marine" (337-340). The daughter's chaste thoughts as well as their pure bodies makes clear that along with the physical transformation to whiteness comes a transformation in sexuality, especially if Jenson's use of "Ros-marine" is meant to allude to the herb rosemary and its association with remembrance at weddings— signifying purity and chastity. In The Masque of Beauty, the link between whiteness and sexual chastity is made even clearer. There the four daughters previously held captive by the black (and consequently evil) Night are discovered on a throne Wherein they sit, and are, like Heaven, whirl'd About the Earth; whils't, to them contrarie. Following those nobler torches of the Skie A world of little Loves, and chast Desires, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 159 Doe Light their beauties, with still moving fires. (130-134) On that throne they sing Their songs [while] two fountaines flow, one hight Of lasting Youth, the other of chast Delight. (145-146) Once rescued by the white Moon, they are welcome into the world of love and chaste desires, a world where Albion/James and Anne rule, magically transforming black (evil and sexuality) to white (chaste delight and desire). While Jonson is careful to make his masques conform to the wishes of Anne in his use of blackness to suggest, perhaps, a focus on an alternate aesthetic of beauty, and female sexuality, the masques are, in the end, written primarily to praise James and to promote his vision of English nationalism. Perry Graham has argued that it was an article of faith with Jonson that the masques should have a philosophical and intellectual structure— the "soul" of the masque as he termed it— which would outlive the transitory vehicle of its display. So the complexity of the masque increased on every leve, but its objective remained the magnification of the king, and praise of his virtues and of the wisdom of his rule.*’ As Jonson would later state in his introduction to Hymenaei, masques, "though their voice be taught to sound to present Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 0 occasions, their sense, or doth, or should, lay hold on more removed mysteries."^ Jonson may, at Anne's request, draw upon the topical issues of his time, but his ultimate goal is to promote a vision of timeless and universal morality. Like Sidney before him, he viewed the role of the poet as one who conveys truth, who "teaches and delights." Jonson makes this clear in his introduction to The Masque of Blackness: But (when it is the fate, even of the greatest, and most absolute births, to need, to borrow a life of posteritie) little had beene done to the studie of magnificence in these, if presently with the rage of the people, who (as part of greatnesse) are priviledged by custome, to deface their carkasses, the spirits had also perished (3-9). His intent in the masque is to show how the interior can trans-form the exterior. This is illustrated in the song that introduces the daughters of Niger Who, though but blacke in face. Yet are they bright. And full of life, and light. To prove that beauty best. Which not the colour, but the feature Assures unto the creature. (103-108) Only those who have light and life at the core of their being can (as would Anne) achieve the transformation and allow what Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 1 is within to be revealed without. But that transformation is possible only with the intervention of the divine, in the masques James as Albion. The masque in general has long been recognized as an entertainment in which "the god-like attributes of the king who professed to rule by divine light are extolled: his wisdom, justice and mercy."” These attributes of James are present throughout both The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty. Niger learns upon his arrival that he has found the "Tania" for the which the Moon told him to seek. Oceanus tells him that This blessed Isle doth with that Tania end. Which there they saw inscrib'd, and shall extend Wish'd satisfaction to their best desires. Britania, which the triple world admires. This Isle hath now recovered for her name; Whose raigne those beauties, that with so much fame The sacred Muses sonnes have honored And from bright Hesperus to Eovs spred. With that great name Britania, this blest Isle Hath woone her ancient dignitie, and stile, A world divided from the world: and tri'd The abstract of it, in his generall pride. For were the world, with all his wealth, a ring, Britania (whose new name makes all tongues sing) Might be a Diamant worthy to inchase it. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 2 Rul'd by a Svnne, that to this height doth grace it: Whose beames shine day, and night, and are of force To blanch an Aethiope, and reuiue a Cor's (238-255) Here Jonson's praise of monarch operates on a number of levels. First, James's pet term Britania becomes the major focus of this speech, the poet arguing that the unification of Scotland, Ireland, and England is admired throughout the world. The land's special place in history is thus assured, placing it apart from the rest of the world. As such, any need for the exotic or extravagant is unnecessary. England has all that it needs at home. Second, James is compared to the sun itself, helping to reinforce the link between his person as king and God. That link is further solidified by the god-like power accorded to him— the power to turn evil to white and to raise the dead. Jonson, as he does in many of the masques, does not miss the opportunity to direct a bit of praise toward himself though. His preferred medium of praise is poetry, thus establishing a connection between himself and the sacred muses of antiquity. Later, in The Masque of Beauty, Jonson praises James's efforts at promoting British imperialism. Near the end of the masque January speaks directly to James to argue for a focus on the external: Now vse your seate: that seate which was, before. Thought stray'ing, vncertayne, floting to each Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 3 shore, And to whose hauing euery clime laid clayme. Each land, and nation vrged as the ayme Of their ambition, beauties perfect throne. Now made peculiar, to this place, alone; And that, by'impulsion of your destinies. And his attractiue beames, that lights these skies: Who (though with th' Ocean compass'd) neuer wets His hayre therein, nor weares a beame that sets. Long may his light adorne these happy rites As I renew them; and your gracious sights Enioy that happinesse, eu'en to enuy,'as when Beautie, at large, brake forth, and conquer'd men (382-395). Here James's act of imperialism within the masque is praised. Albion represents that part of the world to which all others must come in order to attain perfection and beauty, just as the original eight daughters in The Masque of Blackness, then later the other four in Beauty, made their pilgrimage to obtain their own beauty. Jonson manages to dramatize the perfect model for colonization of other cultures. Other cultures arrive at Albion's shores (or he at theirs) and willingly embrace the qualities he offers— in the case of these masques, beauty and perfection. The masques thus represent "an idealized world in which normally intransigent blackness is subdued by a European order predicated on white . power."” The audience is meant to think of James's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 4 court as the center of world power, destined to attract various races and cultures to its shores in order to be willingly transformed and colonized. As such, Jonson offers an alternative to the usual imperialism practiced primarily by the Spaniard. While Spain conquers by cross and sword, James uses kindness and love. The Ethiopians and others like them embrace English culture for they see in James's eyes "Promethean fire / Throughout this all; whose precepts do inspire / The rest with dutie; yet commanding, cheare: / And are obeyed, more with love, then feare" (35-39). Whether or not Anne intended The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty to serve an ideological function is unclear, though given Jonson's concern with undercutting negative stereotypes associated with blackness and his obsession with containing female beauty and sexuality seems to argue that she did. James, however, probably did not understand her intent, or if he did, he did not embrace her views. After 1608 Anne spent even less time at court than before. But in 1618 she tried one last time to assert her authority by proposing to James that he consider a marriage between Charles and the Spanish Infanta, Anna. James was outraged at her suggestion and announced that "he chose to dispose of his children according to his own fancy."” The Venetian Ambassador Piero Contarini would write of Anne ten years after her triumphant entrance in The Masque of Beauty, that "she is unhappy because the king rarely sees her and many Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 5 years have passed since he saw much of her. She possesses little authority in the court and cannot influence the king's favour."” Anne died on March 2, 1619. Her end was recorded by Antonio Donato: Her Majesty died three days ago in the palace at Hampton Court, . . . without seeing the king, who was at Newmarket. She breathed her last amid a few attendants in a country place, without the help of those remedies which might have lengthened her days even if they did not cure her. However, before dying, she had time to embrace the prince, her son, and had this satisfaction as mother of the succeeding king.” Subversion is a strange thing. Words, once spoken cannot be recalled, and do have an impact, no matter how carefully contained the message may be. Anne's suggestion that James consider a Spanish Match between Charles and the Infanta is one such example of how subversion contained can still have an impact, for James himself would actively pursue an alliance between Spain and England exactly as Anne had desired. Whether or not he remembered that Anne had suggested the match is not clear. He probably did not. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 6 Notes 1. Ben Jonson, 11 vols., C.H. Herford and Percy & Evelyn Simpson, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), X:445. Hereafter referred to as Herford and Simpson. 2. All quotes from The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty from Herford and Simpson, VII. 3. Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 7. 4. David M. Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland (Columbia, and London: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 75. 5. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 29. 6. Ibid, 29. 7. Ibid, 32. 8. Ibid, 34. 9. Anthony Barthélémy has suggested that another reason why Anne chose blackface was based on literary precedence, for "courtiers masquerading as Moors has a long history in England. The earliest documented instance occurred in 1510 at the court of Henry VIII" {Black Face, Maligned Race: The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne [Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1987], 19-20). While that may be true, I am more interested here in how blackness is used to promote ideology rather than in source studies. 10. Herford and Simpson, X:446,457. 11. From Sabbatini's description of the stage and props in Herford and Simpson, X:408. 12. Besides drawing on popular travel literature of the period as well as the mythologies of Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, Natale Conti, and Vincenzo Cartari, (Herford and Simpson, X:421-423), Jonson may have chosen Africa for another reason. In choosing Africa as the place of origin for the nymphs instead of other parts of the known world in which Moors were known to live, Jonson avoids any allusions to Spain. Whether Anne recognized an association between Moors and Spain is unclear, but if she did, then her choice here would lend additional support to Lewalski's argument that the masque was politically subversive. Anne's views on Spain were well known: she had reputedly embraced the "Spanish" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 7 religion in 1600 (exchanging gifts with Pope Clement VIII in 1601 and 1604), and advocated solidifying the 1603 peace between England and Spain by marrying Elizabeth to Philip III and Henry to the Infanta Anna. See Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers, 72-73; Lewalski, Writing Women, 21. 13. Designs by Inigo Jones for Masques and Plays at Court: A Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings for Scenery and Costumes Mainly in the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, K.G., ed. Percy Simpson and C.F. Bell (Oxford: Printed for the Walpole and Malone Societies at The University Press, 1924), 35. 14. D'Amico, The Moor in English Renaissance Drama, 50. 15. Africanus Leo, The history and description of Africa, and of the notable things therein contained, written by al-Hassan ibn-Mohammed al-Wezaz al-Fasi, a Moor, baptised as Giovanni Leone, but better known as Leo Africanus, 6 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1896), 1:91, 6:276. 16. Herford and Simpson, X:448. 17. Blackness as disease is expressed by George Best, who in his 1578 description of Frobisher's search for a northwest passage, tells the story of "an Ethiopian as blacke as a cole" who took for a wife "a faire English woman." The two "begat a sonne in all respects as blacke as the father was, although England were his native countrey, and an English woman his mother." Best concludes from this that "this blacknes proceedeth rather of some natural infection of that man" instead of the "nature of the Clime . . . or the good complexion of the mother" (Richard Hykluyt, ed., The Principal Navigations, Traffigues and Discoveries of the English Nation, 8 vols. [London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1962], 5:170. 18. From Hakluyt's A Discourse concerning Western Planting, as quoted by J.G. MacDonald in "'The Force of Imagination': The Subject of Blackness in Shakespeare, Jonson, and Ravenscroft," Renaissance Papers (1991): 58-59. 19. From A Select Library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, trans. and ed. Philip Schaff (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1890-1900), as quoted by Anthony Barthélémy in Black Face, Maligned Race, 2. 20. Linda Woodbridge, "Black and White and Red all Over: The Sonnet Mistress Amongst the Ndembu," Renaissance Quarterly 40 (Summer 1987): 247. 21. I am indebted to Linda Woodbridge's article for several examples of red, white, and black in the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Campion, and others. Curiously, she overlooks Jonson's The Masque of Blackness and mentions only in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 6 8 passing his Masque of Beauty, but, then, the two masques do fall outside the genre with which her article is concerned. 22. "Poem 26" in Middle English Lyrics: Authoritative Texts, Critical and Historical Backgrounds, Perspectives on Six Poems, ed. Maxwell S. Luria and Richard L. Hoffman (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). 23. Geoffrey Chaucer, The House of Fame, in The Riverside Chaucer, general ed., Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987) . 24. Woodbridge, "Black and White and Red All Over," 247. 25. Edward DeVere, "What Shepherd Can Express," in Elizabethan Verse and Poetry, ed. George Reuben Potter (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1928), 30. 26. Edmund Spenser, "Sonnet 64," Amoretti, in Elizabethan Verse and Prose, 40. 27. "Sonnet 9," Astrophel and Stella, in Sir Philip Sidney: Selected Poetry and Prose, Robert Kimbrough, ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). 28. Sir Philip Sidney, "Sonnet 7," Selected Poetry and Prose. 29. In "Sonnet 130" the mistress has breasts of dun, hair of black wires, and a sallow complexion in opposition to the traditional "roses damask'd, red and white" (5). In "Sonnet 132" the poet argues in the couplet that he will "swear beauty herself is black / And all they foul that thy complexion lack" (13-14), i.e., a dark face. All Shakespeare sonnet quotes from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, David Bevington, ed. (New York: Scott Foresman and Company, 1980). 30. Evelyn Gajowski observes that Philo's images of darkness and sexuality denigrate Cleopatra, for "her status is diminished not merely to that of a whore, or 'strumpet,' but to that of an alien, or 'gypsy.'" Enobarbas's description, on the other hand, (though highly idealized) "is an invitation to rise above the delimiting Roman constructions of cultural and gendered other" to recognize Cleopatra's uniqueness (The Art of Loving [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992], 87, 90). 31. William Caxton, The mirrour of the world, 3 vols. (Kentfield, CA: L. & D. Allen, 1964), 1:214. 32. Thomas Newton, The Touchstones of Complexion (London: N.p., 1565), 15. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 169 33. A number of critics have argued that James was most likely a homosexual, though to James and his age, the term would have had little meaning. John Boswell points out that the "word 'homosexual,' despite its air of antiquity, was actually coined in the late nineteenth century by German psychologists, [and] introduced into English only at the beginning of the present century" (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980], 42). Nor would James's sexuality have defined him or limited his status in any way. Bruce Smith observes that "in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sexuality was not, as it is for us, the starting point for anyone's self-definition . . . ." "No one in England during the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries would have thought of himself as 'gay' or 'homosexual' for the simple reason that those categories of self-definition did not exist" (Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Poetics [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991], 11-12). 34. Robert Johnston, The Historié of Scotland, during the Minority of King James (London: W. Wilson for Abel Roper, 1646), 114; Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers, 26. 35. For a more complete account of James's relationship with Esmé Stuart, see Bergeron, Royal Family, 26-34. 36. Bergeron, Royal Family, 28-29. 37. The Letters of King James VI and I, ed. G.P.V. Akrigg (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 91; Bergeron, Royal Family, 3 5-3 6. 38. The Poems of James VI of Scotland, 2 vols., ed. James Craigie (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1955-1958), 2:169. 39. Calendar of State Papers Scotland, 2 vols., ed. John Thorpe (London: Ferguson, Treen et al., 1858), 11:280; Bergeron, Royal Family, 54. 40. David Bergeron notes that James's poem "A Satire against Women," which portrays women in less than flattering terms, could have been written during this period (Royal Family, 58). In the poem, James draws on all the stereotypes typically associated with women during the period: Even so all wemen are of nature vaine And can not keep no secret unrevealed And where as once they doe concaive disdaine They are unable to be reconcealed Fulfilled with talke and clatters but respect And often types of small or none effect. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 0 From The Poems of James VI of Scotland, 2:92. 41. The Letters of James VI and I, 214; Bergeron, Royal Family, 62. 42. Frances Erskine, Memoirs Relating to the Queen of Bohemia (London: N.p., 1753), 18; Bergeron, Royal Family, 18. 43. Both The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers and Oberon: The Faery Prince present Prince Henry as an alternative to his pacifist father. Henry certainly contributed to his own characterization in the masques. Later Charles and Buckingham took an active interest in the writing and production of Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion, primarily because it promoted English nationalism at the expense of Spain by reinventing the Charles and Buckingham's role in the Spanish Match. Sir Edward Conway, writing to the Earl of Bristol on 18 December 1623, observed that "the Prince and Duke [of Buckingham] are well, and practise the maske diligently every day" (MSS. of G.W. Digby, Historical MSS. Commission, Report VIII, pt. i. 216, as quoted in Herford and Simpson, X:658). Chamberlain reported to Carleton on 3 January 1624, that "there is much practising against the maske on twelfth night and many meetings at noble mens houses in the afternoones" (S.P. 14, clviii. 5, as quoted in Herford and Simpson, X:659). The masque was never performed, the excuse given out that James was unable to accommodate the French Ambassador and Spanish Ambassador at the performance. But given the anti-Spanish tenor of the masque, James may have feared offending Spain, for even at this late date he had not completely given up on a Spanish Match between Charles and the Infanta. 44. James's court might have excluded women not so much because it was rife with homosexuality, but because women did not fit into the "homosocial" court power structure. As Eve Sedgwick suggests, "in any male-dominated society, there is a special relationship between male homosocial (including homosexual) bonds and the institutions for maintaining and transmitting patriarchal power over women" ("Homophobia, Misogyny, and Capital: The Example of Our Mutual Friend," Raritan 2 (1983): 127. 45. Africanus The history and description of Africa as quoted by D'Amico, The Moor in English Renaissance Drama, 65. 46. Sir John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. A.W. Pollard (New York: Dover, 1964), as quoted by D'Amico, Black Face, 65. 47. Africanus, The history and description of Africa, 3:466. 48. Hakluyt. The Principal voyages, 1:57. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 1 49. As quoted by Eliot H. Tokson, The Popular Image of the Black Man in English Drama, 1550-1688 (Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1982), 84. 50. Harrison, Shakespeare Under Elizabeth, 310-311. 51. Perry Graham, "The Politics of the Jacobean Masque," Theatre and Government Under the Early Stuarts, J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shrewing, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), 92. 52. Herford and Simpson, VII, 17-19. 53. Graham, "The Politics of the Jacobean Masque," 90. See also Stephen Grgel's classic study of Jonson's Masques, The Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, UP, 1965). 54. Kim Hall, "Sexual Politics and Cultural Identity in The Masque of Blackness," in The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics, Sue-Ellen Case and Janelle Reinelt, eds. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991): 12. 55. Calendar of State Papers Venetian, 1603-1625, vols. 10-18 (London: HMSO, 1900-1912), 15:207. 56. Ibid, 15:420. 57. Ibid, 15:494-95. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 6 THOMAS MIDDLETON'S A GAME AT CHESS: CHECKING THE SPANISH THREAT On the 5th of August, 1624, one of the strangest and most politically charged plays of the period' began a wildly successful nine day run before finally being shut down at the request of King James. Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess, a chess match between the White House representing England and the Black House representing Spain, attracted an extraordinary number of patrons. The Spanish ambassador reported that "during these last four days more than 12,000 persons have all heard the play."- While the audiences were large, they were also extremely diverse. Writing to Dudley Carleton on 12 August, John Chamberlain observed that the play was "frequented by all sorts of people old and young, rich and poor, masters and servants, papists and puritans, wise men, etc., churchmen and statesmen."^ The Spanish ambassador complained that "it cannot be pleaded that those who repeat and hear" the play "are merely four rogues" because as well as the common people, "all the nobility still in London" flocked to the theatre.4 The play's popular appeal seems to have lay in its oppositional stance to the Spanish Match, the Jesuit Order, and Spain in general. The Spanish ambassador wrote that 172 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 3 the content of the play was so insulting and the intent so hateful that all these people come out of the theatre so inflamed against Spain that, as a few Catholics have told me who went secretly to see the play, my person would not be safe in the streets; others have advised me to keep to my house with a good guard.^ The Spanish Ambassador clearly recognized the power of the stage to promote a specific ideology. Though others before had used the stage to promote political and religious ideology, Middleton was the first to have been so bold as to actually portray living political figures on the stage. Indeed, what finally led to the closing of the play was not so much its anti-Spanish content, but that Middleton included stage-portrayals of members of the royal family.® In a letter to the Privy Council, Secretary Conway voiced James's displeasure with the play, for the take the boldness and presumption, in a rude and dishonorable fashion, to represent on the Stage and persons of his Majesty, the King of Spaine, the Conde de Gondomar, the Bishop of Spalato &c. His Majesty remembers well there was a commaundment and restraint given against the representinge of anie modern Christian kings in those Stage-plays, and wonders much both at the boldnes nowe taken by that companie, and alsoe that it hath ben permitted to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 4 bee so acted, and that the first notice thereof should bee brought to him, by a forraine Ambassador, while soe many Ministers of his owne are thereaboutes, and cannot but have heard of it.’ While James was certainly upset because he and other royals had been impersonated on stage, he was probably far more concerned that the play was openly critical of his pro-Spanish policy, especially the proposed Spanish Match between Charles and the Spanish Infanta, Anna. James's anxiety that his policy towards Spain was not popular is revealed in Conway's comment that "the first notice thereof should bee brought to him, by a forraine Ambassador." As such, it exposes "more vividly how isolated James was over his pro-Spanish policies."* Taking James's comments into account, then, the play serves as an excellent example not only of how a playwright can promote a specific political agenda through the use of drama in general, but more specifically, of how such anti-Spanish stereotypes as ambition, pride, greed, lust, and violence could function to promote that subversive political agenda. The function of the play in promoting a specific political agenda has been recognized at least since 1930. In his review of R.C. Bald's edition of A Game At Chess, John Dover Wilson hypothesized that Buckingham might have had a hand in producing the play as it helped to arouse popular support for his policy of war with Spain.* Critics since have maintained that the play actively promotes an ideology in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 5 opposition to that fostered by James in his pacifist Spanish foreign policy. As such, the play does more than simply reflect the political controversies of the period. It actively interrogates those controversies and ultimately promotes an alternative ideology more in line with Charles and Buckingham's oppositional foreign policy stance.Jerzy Limon, for example, argues that reference to political issues in the play was not a spontaneous reaction of the dramatists . . . against the mishandling of England's foreign policies by the court, but a consciously contrived campaign, initiated and sponsored by a group of politicians whose goal it was to use all means available to win the support of both nobility and common." Moreover, he concludes that "because the play reveals striking congruity with the new ideology of the 'war party' headed by Lord Buckingham and Prince Charles, it is therefore . . . plausible that these two sponsored the production."’’ While the issue of subversive politics in the play has been studied extensively, how Middleton relies on nearly a hundred years of anti-Spanish stereotypes to promote a subversive political agenda has been overlooked. Middleton, as did playwrights before him,'* employs such Black Legend stereotypes as Spanish ambition, lust, and cruelty to attack James's policies on the Spanish Match and the problem of Jesuits in England. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 6 At least three plots are developed in A Game at Chess that point toward subversion of James's foreign policy through use of anti-Spanish stereotypes: the Black Knight's attempt to "capture" the White Knight and White Duke by inviting them to visit the Black house and winning (or forcing) them over to the Black side, the attempted seduction of the White Queen's Pawn by the Black Bishop's Pawn, and the Black King's attempt to seduce or rape the White Queen. Of these the first is directly related to the failed Spanish Match and the stereotype of Spanish ambition and pride, while the others are related primarily to an attack on James's lax policies towards Catholics in general and Jesuits specifically by employing the anti-Spanish stereotypes of lust and cruelty. James had long been a proponent of solidifying peaceful relations between England and Spain through m a r r i a g e . ^ His first attempt at a royal match came in 1607 when he began to promote himself as the great peacemaker and mediator of continental conflicts. As a Scot, James had never seen Spain as a religious or political enemy,'* and came to the throne of England not with rabid anti-Spanish sentiments, but with a genuine desire to affect peaceful relations between the two countries. His sentiments toward Spain were confirmed with The Treaty of London, signed in August 1604, as well as in his comments to Robert Cecil: "I will never allow in my conscience that the blood of any man shall be shed for diversity of opinions in religion."'® Though he was more willing than his Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 7 predecessor to allow a greater diversity of religious thought to flourish in England, he was not, as many in England felt he was, attempting to promote Catholicism: "I would be sorry by the sword to diminish their number, but I would also be loathe that, by too great connivance and oversight given unto them, their numbers should so increase . . . as, by continual multiplication, they might at last become masters."” As the great peacemaker, only James could resolve the age-old divisions between Catholic and Protestant, Spaniard and Englishman. This desire to mediate was nowhere more apparent than in his actions during the Bohemian Crisis of 1617-20. In 1617, the Bohemian Diet elected the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand of Styria, King of Bohemia.'* One of Ferdinand's first acts was to suppress the concessions made earlier to Bohemian Protestants. The more radical Bohemian Protestants rebelled, formed their own Diet (the Prague Diet of 1619), and elected as their king the Calvinist-leaning Frederick, Elector Palatine and husband of James's daughter Elizabeth. Spain took a keen interest in these events as a major military route to the Netherlands passed through the Palatinate, and the treaty Spain had established there was set to expire in 1621. Also interested was Maxamillian of Bavaria, to whom Ferdinand secretly promised the title of Elector Palatine in return for his military support. Frederick, against the better advice of his father-in-law James, unwisely chose to accept the Bohemian crown. Retaliation was swift and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 8 decisive. Maxmillian's forces invaded Bohemia, and the Spanish invaded the Upper Palatinate. In the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, Frederick's forces were defeated, and he and his family were forced to seek safety in the United Provinces. In England the public reaction to these events in which a popular English princess and her widely admired husband were involved was predictable, and the cry went out for England to intervene. James, however, was reluctant to do so. Though he did allow a volunteer force of some 4,000 to be recruited and sent to the Palatinate under the command of Sir Horace Vere,” he had been opposed to Frederick's decision in the first place and refused to recognize the claim that Frederick's cause was based on religion, for what hath religion to do to decrown a king? Leave that opinion to the Devil and to the Jesuits, authors of it and brands of sedition. For may subjects rebel against their prince in quarrel of religion? Christ came into the world to teach subjects obedience to the king, and not rebellion.’® As far as James was concerned, Ferdinand was the legitimate ruler of Bohemia. Spain's decision to invade the Upper Palatinate, however, was another matter entirely, one that would require action. The action that James decided on was not to raise an army immediately and invade as many in England hoped, but to attempt to resolve the issue by arranging a marriage between his son Charles and the Spanish Infanta, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179 Maria. James thought that a marriage between Spain and England would be the first step in the process of working with Spain on a timetable for the restoration of the Palatinate to his son-in-law and daughter. Spain, on the other hand, saw the marriage as a way to prevent active English military intervention. If they could keep England in negotiations long enough, events on the battlefield "would resolve matters to their favour."” The English public's reaction to the proposed match was characteristic, given it's long-standing hatred of Spain: most were appalled at James's decision. Militant Calvinists saw the King's move as a strategic as well as an ideological "dereliction of duty; for a blow at the body of Protestantism in Europe was a mortal one to the reformed church as a whole."” Spain's actions in the Palatinate were depicted as a type of murder, a "thrust at the heart" of the state. Spain "followeth the Catholike King, whose ambition it hath ever been through the sides of Religion, to thrust at the heart of the State, his Title of Catholike King, reflecting more upon universall Monarchy, then greatnesse of religion."” A marriage between England and Spain was akin to treason, for the decision to negotiate rather than fight was "viewed as a perilous betrayal of family, essential allies and the true church."” In addition to fearing the dissolution of the reformed church, pamphleteers also feared for Charles's life if such a marriage went forward: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 0 The reason why all good Protestants and loyal subjects feared this match, proceeded from their love to God, his truth, the King and the Prince. For all men knew the Jesuits to be the sworn instruments of the Spanish King, and would easily bring to pass, by poison for otherwise, the abortive ends of our King and Prince, after he should once have two or three children by the Spanish lady, who, then overliving them, would be sure to train up her offspring in the Romish religion, to the utter ruin of this flourishing church and Kingdom.” Even Charles's soul was thought to be in danger. Puritan writers such as Alexander Leighton warned the future monarch of the consequences of such a marriage: As for you gracious Prince: If you desire to present your selfe to God, as a member of his unspotted Spouse in Christ, be not unequally yoked; away with that Lincie-wolsie Match: (with reverence be it spoken) it is a beastly, greasie, and a lowsie- wearing, unbefitting your Grace. Scripture will apologie my termes, which speaking of spirituall whoredome, given it alwaies the vilest terms."” James also faced stiff opposition to his proposed match. In 1621, parliament, dissatisfied with James's failure to intervene in the Palatinate with military force, petitioned the King for reinforcement of anti-Catholic laws at home, war Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 181 with Spain, and the marriage of Prince Charles to a Protestant. James responded by writing to the Commons that none therein shall presume to meddle with any thing concerning our Government or Mysteries of State, namely, not to speak of our dearest Son's Match with the Daughter of Spain, nor to touch the Honour of that King, or any other Our Friends or Confederates.” Early the following year, James, after he and parliament could not agree to exactly what meddling "with any thing concerning our Government" meant, dissolved the Parliament of 1621. In this he followed the advice of the Spanish Ambassador Gondomar, who argued that no treaty or marriage would be possible with such a parliament in session, and ignored the warnings of the Privy Council, particularly the anti-Spanish Lords Pembroke and Hamilton.” By early 1623, the proposed marriage had still not been approved and the situation in the Palatinate was desperate. Charles and Buckingham, impatient with the progress of the marriage negotiations, finally took action. On 18 February 1623, disguised with beards and hoods, and traveling under the names of Thomas and John Smith, Prince Charles and Buckingham rode through France and Spain and arrived in Madrid unannounced. Their sudden arrival forced Spain to show its hand. Charles and Buckingham finally managed to negotiate a marriage treaty that was ratified in the Chapel Royal at Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 2 Whitehall on 20 July 1623. The provisions of the treaty did not favor England. In effect, England sanctioned the practice of Catholicism in England by agreeing to suspend penal laws against English Catholics (to suspend them entirely within three years) and Charles agreed to receive instruction in Catholic doctrine so often as the Infanta wished i t . ’* No where in the treaty was there any mention of a Spanish withdraw from the Palatinate. In Spain, Charles and Buckingham quickly began to suspect that Philip was intentionally delaying implementation of the treaty, especially when he refused to allow Charles to return to England with the Infanta, insisting that she remain in Spain until it became apparent that the provisions of the treaty were being implemented.*® Disillusioned, disappointed, and angry, Charles and Buckingham returned to England on 5 October 1623, "brideless and still Protestant."*' The two were greeted with feasts, bonfires, bell-ringings, patriotic speeches, and a service of national thanksgiving in St. Paul's Cathedral. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on the 11th that he had "not heard of more demonstrations of public joy then were here and every where from the highest to the lowest."*’ Once they had safely returned to England, Charles and Buckingham turned their full attention to the dissolution of the marriage treaty, finally persuading James to ask members of the 1624 Parliament "for their advice whether he should proceed any further in his treaties with Spain about the match Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 3 of the Prince or concerning the restitution of the Palatinate."” James's decision to ask the advice of Parliament on issues of foreign policy reflects just how desperate he was to obtain aid for the Palatinate. Parliament offered him a deal: they would fund his cause, but only if he agreed to dissolve the marriage treaty. After some months of quibbling over the amount of monies that would be released in support of his cause, James finally agreed on 23 March to break the treaty on the understanding "that you will make good what you have spoken, and that in what you advise me unto, you will assist me with your wisdom, monies and forces, if need require."” Later that year in August, Middleton's A Game at Chess was performed. The plot in which the White Knight and White Duke visit the Black house is clearly based on the visit to Spain by Charles and Buckingham in 1623. However, unlike the negative outcome of Charles's actual visit— the marriage treaty and English concessions— in the dramatic recreation in A Game At Chess, history is reinvented and Charles and Buckingham assume the roles of spies in order to expose Spanish ambition, greed, and lust, and justify an attack by the White House on the Black. As such, the plot echoes Buckingham's sentiments that war should be declared on Spain. In addition, unlike the pamphlet literature of the period, Middleton praises Charles and Buckingham for their actions, and even James (as the White King) is revealed to play an important part in exposing Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 4 Spanish evils. As such, the play does not serve as a blanket condemnation of James, but functions in opposition to one specific aspect of his reign— the Spanish Match. The very topical match, then, is used primarily by Middleton to promote an anti-Spanish ideology in opposition to James's pacifist policy of promoting marriage between the two nations. In the play, the White Knight and White Duke visit the Black house at the insistence of the Black Knight, who represents Spanish ambition and pride in the person of Ambassador Gondomar. In 1613 Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, later (1617) conde de Gondomar (1567-1626), arrived in London to serve as resident ambassador to James's court.” Gondomar quickly established good relations with James and was credited by a number of pamphleteers for proposing the Spanish marriage to James as well as influencing James to take a more lenient approach toward English Catholicism.” In his pamphlet Vox Popnli, or Newes from Spayne (1620), Thomas Scott described how the Spanish monarch used his ambassador to affect Spain's foreign policy. In a fictional meeting between Philip and Gondomar, Gondomar says that What the ignorant call treason, if it be on this behalf is truth; and what they call truth, if it be against him is treason: & thus all our peace, our warre, our treaties, marriages, and whatsoever intendment else of ours, aimes at this principall end, to get the whole possession of the world, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 5 to reduce all to unitie under one temporall head, that our King may truly be what he is stiled, the catholick and universal King.” This goal, the "possession of the world," can only be achieved, Gondomar continues, through the spread of Catholicism: . . . in England especially, where at once they learne to obey the Church of Rome as their mother, to acknowledge the catholique King as their father, and to hate their own King as an heretique and an usurper. So we see Religion and the State are coupled together . . . Middleton's Black Knight is no less ambitious or Machiavellian in character. The Black Knight brags to the audience in a soliloquy that he has been responsible for all sorts of "designs" — "some brave ones"— during his time at the White court: Was it not I procured a gallant fleet From the White Kingdom to secure our coasts 'Gainst the infidel pirate, under pretext Of more necessitous expedition? Who made the jails fly open, with miracle. And let the locusts out, those dangerous flies Whose property is to burn corn with touching? . . . Whose policy was't to put a silenced muzzle On all the barking tongue-men of the time. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 6 Made pictures that were dumb enough before Poor suffererers in that politic restraint? My light spleen skips and shakes my ribs to think on't. Whilst our drifts walked uncensured but in thought, A whistle or a whisper would be questioned In the most fortunate angle of the world. (III.i.85-91,100-107)” The topical references the Black Knight alludes to here include the English assistance in helping the Spanish fight against the Turks at Algier**®; Gondomar's alleged role in convincing James to free some seventy-four Catholic priests who were then delivered to Gondomar” ; and the accusation that Gondomar persuaded James to enact legislation outlawing preachers from opposing Spanish/English foreign policy from the pulpit.” There is something for everyone in the audience in the Black Knight's speech, especially when he continues to boast that "the court has held the city by the horns / Whilst I have milked her (III.i.107-108). This can be glossed either as a reference to funds being secretly funneled out of England into Spain, or it may be an allusion to an event which was alleged to have occurred in April 1621. One story (found in Gardiner's History of England) tells of a group of London apprentices who called out after Gondomar's litter, "There goes the devil in a dung-cart." The comment prompted action by Gondomar's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 7 followers who came to blows with the apprentices. The Crown demanded punishment, and the Lord Mayor reluctantly sentenced the offenders to be whipped through the streets. A sympathetic crowd gathered and rescued the apprentices. Gondomar later appealed to James, who came in person to the Guildhall. He told the assembly that "if such things were allowed [insults against Spain to go unpunished], he would place a garrison in the City and seize its charter." The original sentence was carried out and one of the apprentices died as a result.” This story indicates just how hated Gondomar was in England and supports the Black Knight's boast that the court held the city while he "milked her," perhaps an allusion to the power Gondomar wielded in the city with the aid of James. The line may occur in the Knight's speech as a reminder to apprentice and royals alike in the audience of just how powerful Spain's presence in England could be. At the Black court, the Black King has grown impatient at his court's attempt to seduce the White Queen, and orders the Black Knight to extend an invitation to the White Knight in order to gain access to her through him. The Black Knight tells his Pawn that I'm now about a masterpiece of play To entrap the White Knight and with false allurements. Entice him to the Black house— more will follow— Whilst our Fat Bishop sets upon the Queen; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 8 8 Then will our game lie sweetly. (IV.ii.77-81) He later reveals to the Black King My life for yours, Black Sovereign, the game's ours; I have wrought underhand for the White Knight And his brave Duke and find 'em coming both. (IV.ii.135-137) The White Knight and White Duke, in a bit of historical revisionism, do not naively venture to the Black house as did Buckingham and Charles, but enter with the intent of clearing the White Queen's Pawn's name while attempting to discover the evil practiced there. At the entrance of the Black Knight, the White Duke draws the White Knight's attention to the evil the Black Knight represents, thus alerting us to the fact that the "sins" the two will later accuse themselves of possessing at the Black house will be feigned: White Duke. Look, would you see destruction lie assunning? In yonder smile sits blood and treachery basking; In that perfidious model of face-falsehood Hell is drawn grinning. White Knight. What a pain it is For truth to feign a little (IV.iv.13-17). They are clearly in control of the action, and, unlike Charles and Buckingham in their journey to Madrid, here England will Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189 be the deceiver, not the deceived. The notion that the visit is calculated to gain advantage over the Black house is further developed in a conversation between the White Queen and the White King. In a soliloquy, the White Queen laments her son's departure and fears for his safety: My love, my hope, my dearest! O he's gone. Ensnared, entrapped, surprised amongst the Black ones. I never felt extremity like this; Thick darkness dwells upon this hour, integrity (Like one of heaven's bright luminaries now By error's dullest element interposed) Suffers a black eclipse. I never was More sick of love than now I am of horror. (IV.V.1-8) Her fear here represents the fear the public felt when it learned of the departure of Charles and Buckingham. The White King enters along with the White Bishop to rescue the Queen from the clutches of the Fat Bishop. The White King tells the Fat Bishop that his plans to seduce the Queen have failed and that the White court is well aware of the attempt on the White Knight and White Duke: For thy vain hope Of the White Knight and his most firm assistant, Two princely pieces which I know thy thoughts Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 190 Give lost forever now, my strong assurance Of their fixed virtues, could you let in seas Of populous untruths against that fort, T'would burst the proudest billows. White Queen. My fear's past then (IV.V.48-54) The scene ends with the "bagging"” of the Fat Bishop, foreshadowing the defeat of the Black house that will occur in the final act. Once at the Black house, the White Knight and White Duke continue to deceive the Black Knight so that he may confess to all the evil practiced there. The White Knight tells the Black Knight that he is doubtful that many of his vices can be satisfied by the Black house. The first from which he suffers is an ambition to encompass the entire world. The Black Knight quickly dismisses his fear and describes the ambition of the Black house through use of a culinary metaphor: We're about that already; And in the large feast of our vast ambition We count but the White Kingdom whence you came from The garden for our cook to pick his salads; The food's lean France larded with Germany, Before which comes the grave-chaste signiory Of Venice, served in capon-like in white broth; From our chief oven, Italy, the bake-meats. Savoy, the salt, Geneva, the chipped manchet; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 191 Below the salt the Netherlands are placed, A common dish at lower end o'th' table For meaner pride to fall to; for our second course A spit of Portugais served in for plovers, Indians and Moors for blackbirds; all this while Holland stands ready melted to make sauce On all occasions; when the voider comes And with such cheeer our crammed hopes we suffice, Zealand says grace, for fashion; then we rise (V.iii.82-99) Here is revealed the standard stereotype of the ambitious Spaniard bent on world conquest. Of special interest, however, is the mention of Germany, a reference to which would have carried great significance with an audience familiar with the situation in the Palatinate and the plight of the English Princess, Elizabeth. The next vice from which the White Knight allegedly suffers is greed: "I am as covetous as a barren womb, / The grave, or what's more ravenous" (V.iii.106-107). Again, the Black Knight brags that the White Knight will feel right at home at the Black court: We are for you, sir; Call you that heinous that's good husbandry? Why, we make money of our faiths, our prayers. We make the very death-bed buy her comforts. Most dearly pay for all her pious counsels. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192 Leave rich revenues for a few sale-orisons Or else they pass unreconciled without'em. Did you but view the vaults within our monasteries, You'd say then Plutus, which the fiction calls The lord of riches, were entombed within'em. (V.iii.106-116) Again, as in the speech on ambition, Middleton here draws upon another well worn anti-Spanish stereotype, greed, especially in relationship to the sacred and the practice of selling indulgences. The final vice to which the White visitors confess is lust, a vice for which the Spanish were thought to have a particular affinity. The White Duke^ tells the Black Knight that he suffers from a vice often called an "infirmity of blood, flesh-frailty, / But certain there's a worse name in your books for't" (V.iii.122-23). This vice, the Black Knight replies, is the least serious of those named so far. It is The trifle of all vices, the mere innocent The very novice of his house of clay: venery! If I but hug thee hard I show the worst on't. 'Tis all the fruit we have here after supper; Nay, at the ruins of a nunnery once Six thousand infants' heads found in a fishpond. (V.iii.124-129) Once the Black Knight has confessed to the White spies that the Black house is guilty of the same sins which they profess Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193 to possess, the White Knight and Duke reveal their true intent and capture the Black King: White Knight. There you lie then And the game's ours — we give thee checkmate by Discovery, King, the noblest mate of all! (V.iii.159-161) The game won, each of the Black pieces is placed into the bag, including one who has not played a prominent role in the action of the marriage plot: the Black Duke, who is referred to by the White Duke^ as "a sun-burnt, tansy-faced beloved, / An olive-coloured Ganymede" (V.iii.211-12). Immediately following this reference to Spanish lust, this time homosexual lust, the White Queen's Pawn, as a symbol of English virtue, closes the play by praising the White court and condemning the Black. That Middleton would choose to place Spanish lust in contrast to English virtue is not surprising, as lust plays a prominent role in how the Black House is stereotyped in the other two plots of the play: the attempted seduction of the White Queen's Pawn and the attempted rape of the White Queen. The Black Knight does not work without assistance. Aiding him in the quest for universal monarchy is the ambitious Black Bishop's Pawn, meant to represent the Jesuit order. The Black Queen's Pawn tells the White Queen's Pawn that the Jesuits in England are "not idle." The Black Bishop's Pawn . . . finds 'em all true labourers in the work Of the universal monarchy, which he Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194 And his disciples principally aim at. These are maintained in many courts and palaces, And are induced by noble personages Into great princes' services, and prove Some councillors of state, some secretaries. All serving in notes of intelligence. As parish clerks their mortuary bills. To the Father General. (I.i.50-59) Throughout the play Middleton does not miss an opportunity to denigrate the order by portraying them as politic, lustful, and violent. In this he appeals to the public's perception of just how dangerous and loathsome the Jesuits were thought to have been. James called the Jesuits as "venomed wasps and firebrands of sedition, calling for their expulsion as early as 1604. Later in 1606, legislation was enacted to formally expel members of the order. James's intent was simply to avoid bloodshed: "to avoid the effusion of blood, and by banishing them presently out of our dominions, to remove all cause of such severity as we shall otherwise be constrained to use."*** The order of expulsion had little effect, however, for Lockyer notes that by 1623 Jesuits "were sufficiently numerous to be erected into a separate province, subdivided into twelve districts."^ An indication of just how numerous and bold they had become is revealed in the story of the fatal vespers at Black Friars on 26 October, 1623. When a Jesuit began to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195 preach at a service attended by Catholics and proselytes and conducted by Jesuits, the floor of the crowded room collapsed, killing the Jesuit preacher and many of the congregation. The incident provided fresh ammunition to the anti-Jesuit pamphleteers^ who recounted the event "in an outpouring of uncharitable and gleeful tracts."^' On 13 May 1624, three months before the first production of A Game at Chess, James issued yet another edict declaring "that all Jesuits and seminarie priests shold avoide the realme by the I4th of June."^ Middleton capitalizes on this English fear and hatred of Jesuits throughout the play, for if the Black Knight represents the political dangers posed by the Black House, the Black Bishop's Pawn represents a religious as well as a moral threat— Spanish lust and violence. The first hint of the true nature of the Jesuit order in the play is revealed even before the first act. In the Induction Ignatius Loyola arrives to complain that his followers have not been as successful in their conquest of England as he had hoped. Referring to England, he laments that "Here's too much light appears shot from the eyes / Of truth and goodness never yet deflowered" (9-10). He goes on complain that were he alive he'd make short work of the English Queen (allegorically representing the Church of England): If I had stood so nigh, I would have cut That Bishop's throat but I'd have had his place. And told the Queen a love-tale in her ear Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196 Would make her best pulse dance (64-67). The action of the play opens on this note of seduction as the Black Bishop's Pawn attempts to seduce the White Queen's Pawn. The means by which the seduction will be accomplished is confession. The Black Bishop's Pawn discloses the purpose of confession: Now to the work indeed, which is to catch Her inclination; that's the special use We make of all our practices in all kingdoms. For by disclosing their most secret frailties. Things, which once ours, they must not hide from us, (That's the first article in the creed we teach'em) Finding to what point their blood most inclines. Know best to apt them then to our designs. (I.i.108-115) Just how dangerous confession can be is revealed later by the Black Knight's Pawn, who declares that once a woman is in the hands of a Jesuit "She never returns virtuous; 'tis impossible" (I.i.210). In this, Middleton appeals to the popular English belief that confession leads to sexual seduction: They [Jesuits] are their (nuns) confessors, and therefore whatsoever they command. Nuns must obey; yea, if it were to lie with them all night, as questionless they do with some of them.^ The Black Bishop's Pawn's attempt to seduce the White Queen's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197 Pawn fails, however, and he leaves her with a book that outlines her duty to the confessor: . . it is the daughter's duty / To obey her confessor's command in all things / Without exception (II.i.1-3). He returns later in the scene and reads a letter he has recently received from the Black King, who urges him to "make some attempt upon the White Queen's person, whose fall or prostitution our lust most violently rages for (II.i.23-24). Lust, it seems, is a vice that infects monarch and subject alike in the Black realm. When the Black Bishop's Pawn's advances are rejected by the White Queen's Pawn, Middleton resorts to yet another use of a negative stereotype most commonly associated with the Spaniard, sexual violence— rape. The 1573 pamphlet, A supplication to the Kings of Maiestie of Spayne made by the Prince of Orange the writer attempts to stir up popular rage against the Spaniard by recounting stories in which "honest women and young maidens" are raped in front of their husbands and fathers, while pregnant women are butchered in the streets.^ Not only would Spaniards rape women, but men were not safe either. In The Copie of the Anti-Spaniard made at Paris by a French Man, the Spaniard participated in "lustful and inhuman deflowering of matrons, wives, and daughters." In addition, the "sodomitical ravishing of young boys, which the demi-barbarian Spaniards committed in the presence of aged burgesses that were fathers, brethren, or husbands"^ was enough to enrage any English reader.^ Finally, not to be Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 198 outdone. Sir Walter Raleigh in his 1595 The Discovery of Guiana reported that when gold was not forthcoming, the Spaniards "took for them [the natives] both their wives and daughters daily, and used them for the satisfying of their own lusts."” In the play, after surprising the White Queen, the Fat Bishop reinforces the stereotype of Spaniard as rapist when he tells her that The Black King's blood burns for thy prostitution And nothing but the spring of thy chaste virtue Can cool his inflammation; instantly He dies upon a pleurisy of luxury If he deflower thee not. (IV.V.16-20) Middleton's use of the word "deflower" (or ravish) here is clearly meant to reinforce the Black Legend stereotype of the Spaniard as rapist. After his attempted rape of the White Queen's Pawn, the Black Bishop's Pawn flees the country when he learns that the White Queen's Pawn intends to report him to the White King. The Black Knight rifles the contents of the Black Bishop's Pawn's papers in order to destroy any evidence that will reveal the true nature of the Pawn. There he finds that most of his papers contain . . . bawdy epistles; Time they were burnt indeed, whole bundles on'em. Here's from his daughter Blanche, and daughter Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199 Briget, From their safe sanctuary in the Whitefriars; These from two tender Sisters of Compassion In the bowels of Bloomsbury; These three from the nunnery in Drury Lane. (II.i.192-204) Middleton takes the portrayal of Spanish lust one step further here as the Black Bishop's Pawn moves from simple lust (for the White Queen's Pawn), through rape, and into the deviant world of professional prostitutes at Whitefriars and Drury Lane. Apparently the lust of the Black House knows no bounds as is revealed in the Black Knight's readings from the Taxa Poenitentiaria, a satirical document that lists ecclesiastical pardons for sins, alleged by pamphlet writers of the period to have been used by the Jesuits: Adultery? O, I'm in't now. — "For adultery a couple Of shillings, and for fornication five pence"— Mass, those are two good pennyworths! I cannot See how a man can mend himself. — "For lying With mother, sister, and daughter" — ay, marry, sir— "Thirty-three pounds, three shillings, three pence"— The sin's gradation right; paid all in three too. (IV.ii.93-100) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 200 George Gascoigne, in The Spoil of Antwerp, made a similar observation concerning the deviant sexual practices of the Spaniard when we wrote of the "barbarous cruelty, insolences, rapes, spoils, incests and sacrileges" that were committed by Spanish soldiers during the siege of Antwerp.** Middleton is obviously drawing on this tradition in his own characterization of the Jesuit Spaniard, the Black Bishop's Pawn. The plot in which the Black Bishop's Pawn attempts to seduce the White Queen's Pawn serves as an illustration of the threat posed to the Church of England by the Jesuits. As noted above, James had to continually stay on top of the Jesuit problem, issuing edicts for their expulsion time and time again. They had been blamed by pamphleteers for any number of problems abroad and at home, including the wars in Bohemia and the Gunpowder Plot.” The political danger represented by the Jesuit is accompanied in A Game at Chess with a warning against the type of morality that will be brought with them. Allegorically the Black Bishop's Pawn represents the perversion of the Catholic faith and the attempted rapes (on the White Queen's Pawn and the White Queen herself by the Black King) represent the lengths to which Spanish Catholics will go to gain control over the Anglican Church. Middleton's use of negative sexual stereotypes, especially the more "deviant" varieties— sodomy, rape, and prostitution— in the construction of the Black Bishop calls attention to the very Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201 real physical threat posed by the Spaniard, especially if readers believed the stories and the representations of Spain that had been circulating in the pamphlets and on the stage since the early part of Elizabeth's reign. What kind of ideological work does A Game at Chess perform? The play promotes a number of political agendas. First, the plot in which the White Knight and White Duke visit the Black house is clearly intended as a dramatic recreation of the actual journey Charles and Buckingham took to Madrid in 1623. The historical event ended in near disaster for the English when Charles and Buckingham nearly succumbed to a Spanish plot to convert the two to Catholicism and Charles and James made unwise concessions to Catholic interests in England. The fictionalized account, however, portrays the Whites as shrewd statesmen, able to resist the pleasures and temptations of the Black house in order to gain the intelligence they need to defeat the Black King. This rewriting of history was not unique to the period in which Middleton was writing,nor is it unique to English drama in general*'. The revision of the failed Madrid journey, then, may have been intended to appeal primarily to Charles and Buckingham, who upon their return from Spain in late 1623 played a greater role than ever in attempting to reverse James's pacifist stance toward Spain. Whether Charles and Buckingham had a hand in the production of or defense of A Game at Chess remains the subject of conjecture at this point. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 202 but what it is clear is that part of the play's ideological function was to denigrate the Spanish marriage and elevate Charles and Buckingham. Given the political climate in which the play was written and performed it could have been designed not only to praise Charles and Buckingham or expose the Jesuit problem, but also to promote the need for England to declare war on Spain. The message of the play seems to be that if Spain is not stopped, and stopped soon, then her dream of the universal monarchy will be realized, women and men will be raped in the streets, and Jesuits will see to the overthrow of the Church of England. The words of the Spanish ambassador are worth quoting again: all these people come out of the theatre so inflamed against Spain that, as a few Catholics have told me who went secretly to see the play, my person would not be safe in the streets; others have advised me to keep to my house with a good guard.” Perhaps the play was shut down because of the representation of royals on the stage, or perhaps other issues were involved. James may have feared that the citizenry would be so "inflamed against Spain" that it would be difficult if not impossible to control a pro-war frenzy. Perhaps he held out hope for one more attempt at peaceful negotiations through marriage, a marriage in which Spain as bride is demonized and denigrated through the use of popular stereotypes. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 3 Notes 1. Margot Heinemann observes that A Game at Chess is "unique not only in Middleton's work, but in the whole of early Stuart drama. Nowhere else was the popular stage used by sophisticated critical satire on matters of intense political controversy" (Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980], 151). 2. E.M. Wilson and O. Turner, "The Spanish Protest against A Game at Chess,” Modern Language Review 44 (1949): 477. 3. "Chamberlain to Carleton, 12 Aug. 1624," Letters of John Chamberlain, Norman Egbert McClure, ed. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), 317. 4. Wilson and Turner. "The Spanish Protest against A Game at Chess," 477. 5. Wilson and Turner, "The Spanish Protest against A Game at Chess,” 47 8. 6. At least five specific rules were applied by the censors when deciding to license a play (Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 39). Not permitted were 1. Critical comments on the policies or conduct of the court. 2. Unfavorable presentation of friendly foreign powers or their sovereigns, great nobles, or subjects. 3. Comment on religious controversy. 4. Profanity and oaths (from 1606 onwards). 5. Personal satire on influential people. Of these Middleton violated at least four in A Game At Chess. 7. Thomas Middleton, A Game At Chess, ed. R.C. Bald (London: Cambridge UP, 1929), 159-60. 8. Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), 243. 9. John Dover Wilson, Review of R.C. Bald's edition of A Game At Chess, The Library, fourth series, XI (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1930), 105-116. 10. Albert H. Tricomi employs the term "oppositional drama" in referring to A Game At Chess, primarily for its opposition to "one or more tenents of the crown's foreign policy" (Anti-court Drama in England, 1603-1642 [Charlottesville: University Press], 14); A.B. Bromham and Zara Bruzzi argue that the play is "part of an orchestrated political campaign associated with opposition to official foreign policy, and devoted to the cause of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 4 Protestantism at home and abroad" ("The Changling" and the Years of Crisis, 1619-1624 : A Hieroglyph of Britain [London: Pinter, 1990], 148); Julia Gasper writes that the play "also provides propaganda for the foreign policies of Buckingham" (The Dragon and the Dove: The Plays of Thomas Dekker [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], 187); and Janet Clare says "Its importance in international politics cannot be overestimated: its dramatised political currents, embodying half a century's fear and hatred of Spanish power, produced threats of war" ("Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority": Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990], 198). 11. Jerzy Limon, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/4 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986), 1-2. 12. Limon, Dangerous Matter, 98. 13. Annabel Patterson notes that a number of plays containing Spanish themes or titles were performed in the years immediately preceding Middleton's A Game At Chess. These included The Spanish Gypsy (1623), wrongly attributed by Patterson to Middleton and Rowley and performed for Charles by The Lady Elizabeth's Company on 5 November, mere days after the prince's return from Spain without a Spanish bride; The Spanish Viceroy (1624) , thought to have been written by Massinger and performed without license; and The Spanish Contract (1624), performed on 26 April, 1624 (Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, 85. The later two plays are lost, and one can only speculate that The Spanish Viceroy may have referred to Gondomar while The Spanish Contract is a clear reference to the failed Spanish Match. In addition, Jonson's unperformed Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion also reflects the court's taste, especially Charles and Buckingham, for anti-Spanish entertainment. 14. As suggested above in my analysis of Anne's role in The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty, it was most certainly the Queen's idea to marry one of her children to Spain, though she was more likely motivated by religion than politics. Anne had proposed a match as early as 1602 between Henry and the Spanish Infanta. For this and more on Anne's Catholic views, see Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers, 72-73. 15. James's pacifist views toward Spain can perhaps be traced to his relationship with his mother, Mary. Their on-again, off-again relationship could have affected his views of Spain. In February, 1586, James ordered an openly defiant clergy in Edinburgh to pray for his mother. Later, in August, he helped seal her fate for her involvement in the Babington Plot (the attempted assassination of Elizabeth sponsored by continental Catholics) by writing in praise of Walsingham's exposure of the "foul conspiracies as have been of late haply discovered amongst you." See Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers, 3 5-46. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 5 16. Letters of King James VI and I, 204-205. 17. Ibid, 204. 18. Roger Lockyer, The Early Stuarts: A Political History of England, 1603-1642 (London: Longman, 1989), 3-25. 19. Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, 19. 20. United Kingdom, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), vol. 370 (1621). 21. Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, 20. 22. Broham and Bruzzi, The Changling and the Years of Crisis, 41. 23. Thomas Scott, A Speech Made in the Lower House of Parliament, Anno 1621: Edward Cecill, Colonell (London: N.p., 1621), 2. 24. Broham and Bruzzi, The Changling and the Years of Crisis, 8. 25. Sir Simonds D'Ewes, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Bart., During the Reigns of James I and Charles I, ed. J.O. Halliwell (London: R. Bentley, 1845), 182-83. 26. Alexander Leighton, Speculum Belli sacri: or the Lookingglasse of the Holy War Wherein is discovered: The Evill of War. The Good of Warr. The Guide of War (London: N.p., 1624), 208. 27. United Kingdom, Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons in 1620 and 1621 (Oxford: HMSG, 1766), 2:277. 28. Robert Zaller, The Parliament of 1621: A Study of Constitutional Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). 29. Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, 21; Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess, ed. T.H. Howard-Hill (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1993), 21. 30. Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, 21. 31. Middleton, A Game at Chess, Howard-Hill, 31. 32. "Chamberlain to Carleton, 12 Aug. 1624,"Letters of John Chamberlain, 515. 33. The House of Commons 1547-1714, ed. Ronmey Sedgwick (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970), 670. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 6 34. As quoted in R.E. Ruigh, The Parliament of 1624 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1971), 230. 35. Middleton, A Game at Chess, Howard-Hill, 10. 36. Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, 17. 37. As quoted by Marvin Arthur Breslow, A Mirror of England: English Puritan Views of Foreign Nations, 1618-1640 (Cambridge MA: Harvard, UP 1970), 50. 38. Ibid, 50. 39. All quotes from Middleton, A Game at Chess, T.H. Howard-Hill. 40. Wilson and Turner, "The Spanish Protest against A Game at Chess,” 145; Middleton, A Game at Chess, Howard-Hill, ed., nl24. 41. See John Reynolds, Vox Coeli, or News from Heaven (London: W. Jones, 1624) , 56; Middleton, A Game At Chess, Howard-Hill, nl24. 42. Wilson and Turner, 151; Middleton, A Game At Chess, Howard- Hill, nl25. 43. For the complete story, see Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 154. 44. The black "bag" into which the captured Black pieces are placed is traditionally thought to represent "Hell." See Heinemann, Howard-Hill. 45. Howard-Hill argues that the shift from White Knight's "sins" to White Duke's "sins" is used by Middleton ironically, for "Buckingham's profligacy was notorious," Goodman observing for instance that in Madrid 'he did a little offend in his wantonness'" (G. Goodman, The Court of King James the First, 2 vols., J.S. Brewer, ed. [London, 1839], 371-72). Bullen prints an anecdote about Buckingham's courtship of Olivare's wife (Thomas Middleton, The Works of Thomas Middleton, 8 vols., ed. A.H. Bullen, [London, 1885-87]); See also Middleton, A Game At Chess, Howard-Hill, nl85. 46. Heinemann observes that "while the dramatist is careful to include nothing that will raise a laugh or a jeer at the Prince's expense, he makes Buckingham accuse himself of faults well known to be his in reality— gluttony, fatness and lechery, with more than a hint of homosexual lechery at that" (Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 164). 47. Letters of King James VI and I, 204. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 7 48. Royal Proclamations of King James I, vol. I., James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes, eds. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973), 144; Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, 288. 49. Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, 294. 50. See, for example. Something Written by occasion of that fatall and memorable accident in the Blacke Friers (London: N.p., 1623);The Fatal Vesper, or A True and Punctuall Relation of that lamentable and fearefull accident . . . by the fall of a roome in the Black-Friers in which were assembled many people at a Sermon, which was to be preached by Father Drurie a Jesuite (London, N.p., 1623); John Gee, The Foot out of the Snare (London: H.L. for Robert Milbourne, 1624); Thomas Scot, The Second Part of Vox Populi, (London: N. Okes and J. Dawson, 1624), 30-32; Scot, Digitus Die, (London: N.p., 1623), 23; Jeremiah Dyke. Good Conscience: Or a Treatise Shewing the Nature, Meanes, Marks, Benefit, and Necessity thereof (London: R. Mylbourne, 1624). 51. Breslow, A Mirror of England, 58. 52. Middleton, A Game At Chess, Howard-Hill, 14. 53. L. Owen, The Running Register, (London: F. Kingston for R. Milbourne, 1626), 23. 54. William of Orange, A supplication to the Kings of Maiestie of Spayne, 20. 55. The Copie of the Anti-Spaniard made at Paris by a French Man, a Catholique, Wherein is directly proved how the Spanish king is the onely cause of all the trouble in France (London: John Wolfe, 1590), 27-28. 56. At the end of the play Middleton hints at this Spanish proclivity for homosexual relations when the Black Duke is identified as a "tansy-faced beloved, / An olive-coloured Ganymede" (V.iii.211-212). The Black Duke is thought to have represented Olivares, Philip IV's valido, or favorite (Middleton, A Game At Chess, Howard-Hill, nl90). 57. Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana, in Sir Walter Raleigh: Selected Poetry and Prose, 138. 58. George Gascoigne, The Spoil of Antwerp. Faithfully reported by a true Englishman who was present at the same (London: Richard Jones, 1576), 43. 59. See, for example. Troubles in Bohemia and other kingdomes procured by Jesuits (London: N.p., 1619); James Wadsworth. The English Spanish Pilgrime. Or, A New Discoverie of Spanish Popery and Jesuiticall Stratagems. With the estate of the English Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208 Pentioners and Fugitives under the King of Spaines Dominions, and elsewhere at their present. London: T. Cotes for Mich. Sparke, 163 0) ; and Scot. Digitus Dei. 60. Ben Jonson makes a similar move when he tells his version of the Spanish Match in Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion, Herford and Simpson, VII. 61. Shakespeare's histories are perhaps the best known examples as were Cecil's use of interludes as political weapons against Philip II and the Catholics. Similarly, when it was "desired that Puritanism should be unpopular, the players were not debarred from satirizing Puritans," as in the plays of Ben Jonson. See "Introduction," The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, ed. J. Quincy Adams (New Haven: Yale UP, 1917); Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 27. 62. Wilson, and Turner, "The Spanish Response to A Game At Chess,” 278. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION The purpose of this study has been to explore how five playwrights writing between the years 1587 and 1624 employed stereotypes of the Jew, the Moor, and the Spaniard to promote and subvert religious, political, aesthetic, and sexual ideologies. Studying the use of stereotypes by Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton reveals how these playwrights drew upon a variety of stereotypes to direct their audiences's attention to such major issues of the period as Spanish expansionism, English economics, feminine aesthetics and sexuality, English imperialism, and the threat of foreign invasion. In addition through their use of the specific stereotypes of greed, lust, duplicity, ambition, and cruelty, the playwrights help to foster a closer association between Jew, Moor, and Spaniard— an association that had started with the pamphlet writers of the period. Jew and Moors, therefore, could often be used as placemarkers for Spaniards, as is the case in Kyd and Marlowe, while other playwrights, such as Shakespeare and Jonson, would use established stereotypes to direct an audience's attention toward a critique of economic and social practices. While each used stereotypes to promote 209 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210 or subvert a particular ideology, all the playwrights examined in this study were concerned with the promotion of English ethno-nationalism. The stereotype of greed is used most effectively by Marlowe and Shakespeare, though each employs the stereotype for a different ideological function. Marlowe, in The Jew of Malta, uses greed not only to draw attention to how all the other characters, with the exception of Abigail, possess this trait, but to focus the audiences' attention on Barabas. After doing so, Marlowe then very carefully begins to establish connections between Spain and Barabas: his knowledge of converse practices, his personal history before arriving in Malta, and, most tellingly, his use of the Spanish language. As such, Barabas becomes the representation of a Sephardic Jew, representing not only the typical "evil" English stereotype of the Jew, but also a stereotype of a Spaniard. By placing Barabas in Malta with a named Spaniard, Martin del Bosco, and the Turkish Calymath, Marlowe points out just how threatening Spanish imperialism in the Mediterranean region can be. As such, Marlowe directs his attention outward, toward the geo-political to foster a sense of English ethno- nationalism in opposition to the demon Jew, Spaniard, and Turk. While Marlowe focuses on the external through the construction of his Jew, Shakespeare uses greed in The Merchant of Venice to critique economic ideologies that stress Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211 profit at the expense of social relations. Though Shylock is stereotyped as the "typical" greedy and evil Jew, Shakespeare undercuts that representation in two places in the play: in Shylock's "Hath not a Jew" speech and in the trial scene. In his "Hath not a Jew" speech Shylock draws attention to what little distinction does exist between Jew and Christian. All bleed, all laugh, all seek revenge, and as is revealed throughout the play, all seek profit. In the trial scene the hypocrisy of the Christian community is exposed as Portia and the others refuse to grant Shylock the mercy which they so eloquently argue he should show toward Antonio. This blurring of the distinction between Christian and Jew is also reinforced in Shylock's confusion over daughter and ducats, for just as he cannot see the negative effects that his obsession with greed can produce, so too, are friendship, marriage, and child/parent relations threatened in the Christian community through their concern with profit. That Shakespeare is interested in subverting a dominant economic ideology based on the acquisition of profit is revealed if the play is read against the economic problems of the period, including the rise in grain prices and the expensive and unprofitable English military excursions against Spanish ports. The most successful use of the stereotype of lust occurs primarily in Jonson and Middleton. Queen Anne's insistence that Jonson portray her and her court in blackface promotes Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212 emergent ideologies related to gendered aesthetics and sexuality. The typical stereotype of blackness that associated it with unrestrained sexuality is subverted in the Masque of Blackness primarily because it is Anne who appears black. As such, Jonson works hard to undercut negative stereotypes, especially in Niger's speeches, to reveal that chastity and beauty can be located in blackness. While Anne may be making a point to James that he has nothing to fear by permitting her great control and access to the court, Jonson ultimately returns the focus of the masque to English ethno-nationalist concerns and blackness is colonized by whiteness much as James represents a colonial power willingly embraced by the daughters of Niger. Similarly, Middleton also begins with a critique of the internal only to shift toward the external, but the external for Middleton represents a political danger to be contained. In A Game At Chess,the playwright employs lust to criticize James's pro-Spanish policies, especially as related to the Spanish Match and the problem of Jesuits in England. Middleton, unlike Jonson, does not undercut stereotypes associated with lust, but works hard to sustain and promote them. By relying on an English audiences' accumulated knowledge of Black Legend stereotypes, Middleton portrays the Black House as consumed with lust as evidenced through the Black King's attempt to rape the White Queen and the Black Bishop's Pawns's attempted rape of the White Queen's Pawn. As Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 1 3 such, Middleton subverts James's policies while promoting Charles and Buckingham's anti-Spanish agenda, especially as the White Knight and White Duke effect the capture of the Black (Spanish) court. The greatest use of Black Legend stereotyping occurs in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. There Kyd portrays the Spaniard as greedy, cruel, and ambitious to draw the audience's attention to the need to intervene in Iberian political affairs. Spanish cruelty is revealed in the Portuguese Viceroy's fear that Spain will murder his captured son; greed in Lorenzo's pandering of his sister and the murder of Horatio, who threatens the young prince's plans to ally himself with the wealth and power of Portugal; and ambition in Spain's military incursions into Portugal. The power England once wielded on the peninsula is alluded to in Hieronimo's first masque when Moors and English seize control of the throne of Spain, an allusion that advocates a joint Moroccan/English expedition against Portugal and Spain. In addition, Hieronimo's murder of the entire Spanish court also points toward the need to form a Moroccan and English alliance as Bel-Imperia (allegorically representing Elizabeth) and Hieronimo (disguised as a Moor) murder the entire Spanish court. The fear of Spanish expansionism is clearly expressed in the play, but that fear is contained by portraying the English as the clear winners. These stereotypes of greed, lust, duplicity, ambition. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 1 4 and cruelty continued to flourish in the drama of the period. Especially significant is how other playwrights continued to use the stereotypes in order to denigrate Spain. In Thomas Dekker'^ Lust's Dominion, a cruel Moor and a Spanish queen consumed with lust orchestrate the downfall of the Spanish court. In Samuel Rowley's The Spanish Gypsy\ lust, cruelty, and greed again play a major role, especially in the rape scenes and Clara's father's plan to marry his daughter off for money. And in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Spanish cruelty, greed, ambition, duplicity, and lust are represented by the brothers Ferdinand and the Cardinal.^ These plays also promote or subvert specific ideologies, especially when placed in their historical context. As the English began to expand their colonial interests, especially in Africa, the strong association between Moor and Spaniard that had existed in the sixteenth century began to weaken somewhat,* though as late as 1824 the English poet Lord Byron would rely on his readers' awareness of the association between Moorish and Spanish lust in his characterization of Donna Julia, whose bloodlines are less than pure: The darkness of her oriental eye Accorded with her Moorish origin; (Her blood was not all Spanish; by the by. In Spain, you know, this is a sort of sin;) When proud Grenada fell, and, forced to fly, Boabdil wept; of Donna Julia's kin Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 1 5 Some went to Africa, some stayed in Spain— Her great grandmamma chose to remain. She married (I forget the pedigree) With an Hidalgo, who transmitted down His blood less noble than such blood should be; At such alliances his sires would frown. In that point so precise in each degree That they bred in and in, as might be shown. Marrying their cousins— nay, their aunts and nieces. Which always spoils the breed, if it increases (Canto the First, LVI-LVII)* Not only is there a strong association established here between Moor and Spaniard, but Byron alludes to the unrestrained lust of both groups through his discussion of the marriage practices of the Spanish nobility (Hidalgo) and his characterization of Donna Julia throughout the remainder of the canto. Jew and Spaniards, however, began to part company as early as 1655. In December of that year Oliver Cromwell argued successfully for the readmission of the Jews at the Whitehall Conference, granting them verbal permission to maintain a synagogue, provided that they did not attract too much attention. Though motivated primarily by commercial interests, Cromwell proved his commitment to the Jews when war against Spain was declared the following year. The political forces Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 216 who had opposed readmission of the Jews persuaded the Privy Council to issue a proclamation declaring that the property of Spanish subjects living in England was subject to seizure. A Marrano merchant, Antonio Rodriguez Robles, had his property confiscated on the basis that he had once lived in Spain as a conversa. Robles declared his innocence on the grounds that he was a Jew and was in no way associated with Spain. Cromwell's faction supported Robles's cause, and his property was eventually returned, English officials agreeing that there was no longer a basis for linking Jews to Spain.* But the negative stereotypes associated with the Spaniard remained. Especially popular was the stereotype of the cruel Spaniard. Echoing John Foxe's sentiments about the Spanish Inquisition, Daniel Defoe included a number of Black Legend elements in Robinson Crusoe. When Friday and Crusoe rescue a Spaniard from cannibals, Crusoe tells the Spaniard that he will aid the shipwrecked Spanish crew, but only on the condition that they promise not "to make a prisoner of me in New Spain, where an Englishman was certain to be made a sacrifice." Crusoe tells the Spaniard that he would "rather be delivered up to the savages and be devoured alive than fall into the merciless claws of the priests and be carried off into the Inquisition."* Significantly, Defoe seems to draw from earlier models of Spanish behavior in the New World, as by the early eighteenth century, the Inquisition had lost much of its power and terror at the hands of Spain's first Bourbon Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 1 7 king, Philip V. On the stage Black Legend stereotypes continued to be employed. In such plays as The Spanish Wives (1696), The Spanish Coquettes (1788), The Spaniards in Peru (1799), The Spanish Lovers (18 31) , The Spanish Armada (1834), The Spanish Girl (1857), and A Spanish Bridal (1875), the typical stereotype of the Spaniard as greedy, lusty, cruel, ambitious, and duplicitous continued to be promoted and developed. In the twentieth century, the has emphasis shifted toward the element of lust, especially in popular film. In the 1948 Captain from Castile, Pedro de Vargas (Tyrone Power), a dashing Spanish swashbuckler, incurs the wrath of the evil Inquisition, and flees to Mexico where he seduces the innocent and virginal peasant girl (Jean Peters). In the 1961 screen adaptation of the Broadway musical West Side Story, the beautiful young Puerto Rican Maria (Natalie Wood) falls in love with the ill- fated Tony, much to the dismay of her friend Anita (Rita Moreno), who advises Maria to "stick to your own kind." In 1966, Latino playboy Ricardo Montalban seduces diplomat John Forsythe's wife (Lana Turner) in Madame X. Enrique Fernandez points out that "in seven decades, it seems, things have not changed all that much for Latinos." Latinos are still portrayed in popular culture as dangerous greasers or impassioned and skillful lovers. Latinas are just as dangerous. They are the "archetypal dark women who compete with the virginal blonde for the hero's affection.Reuben Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 218 Blades makes much the same point about film, as has been made in this study of how stereotypes were used on the stage, when he notes that the representation of Latinos in film varies according to the politics of the time. In the early twentieth century, when American imperialism reached its height in Latin America, the Latino was greaser, an "amoral character of unspeakable violence who came to personify . . . any person of Spanish-speaking origin." In the 19 3 0s, Hollywood followed Washington's agenda in helping to strengthen diplomatic ties with Latin America by producing "sympathetic Latino characters and musical comedies that prominently featured Latino roles."* In recent popular films, such as The Mambo Kings and Scarf ace, Black Legend stereotypes continue to appear. If the conclusion reached in this study is correct— that the drama of the sixteenth century informed religious, economic, political, and aesthetic ideologies through the use of negative stereotyping— then could the same be said of this century? Is Reuben Blades correct in pointing out that the representations of Spaniards and Latinos in popular culture impact our own political, religious, economic, and aesthetic ideologies? Can the demonization of Manuel Noriega by the Bush Administration be traced to the representation of Latinos in "greaser" films?'* Can the paternalistic attitude the United States has adopted toward Latin America since the 1960s be connected to religious and cultural divisions as portrayed in West Side Story? And does negative stereotyping explain how Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219 Proposition 187 could have passed in California two years ago? Given the pervasive presence of the Black Legend in literature and popular culture, it is not difficult to understand why Newsweek constructed Manuel Noriega as it did, why Proposition 187 passed in California, why Patrick Buchanan wants to construct a fence along the Mexican, and not the Canadian, border, and why two Riverside Police officers savagely beat two unarmed Mexicans in early April, 1996. It is not difficult to understand, especially if we remember that much negative stereotyping has been directed toward the south— toward an area once known as New Spain. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 220 Notes 1. The attribution of The Spanish Gypsy to Middleton has recently come under serious attack. In the forthcoming complete works of Middleton to be published sometime in 1997 by Oxford University Press, Gary Taylor will argue that the play should be dropped from the Middleton canon and instead be attributed to Rowley (Taylor made this announcement at the Marlowe and Middleton session of the annual Shakespeare Association of America's meeting in Chicago, April, 1995). 2. It could be objected that Ferdinand and the Cardinal are Italian, not Spanish, but a strong Spanish connection is established by Webster when the Cardinal, upon learning of his sister's marriage, declares "Shall our blood? / The royal blood of Aragon and Castile, / Be thus attainted?" (II.v.21-23) (John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, ed. Elizabeth M. Brennan (1964; reprint, London: A&C Black, 1985) . An audience of the period would not have missed the link to Spain's historic kingdoms, Aragon and Castile. 3. See Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economics of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995), 227- 253 4. George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1958). 5. See Bernard Glassman, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Without Jews, 131-132. See also Lucien Wolf, who claimed that this case was the turning point in the history of the London Congregation of Marranos. It brought them from the first time into the light of day as a Jewish community. Thenceforth they were compelled to rely for whatever privileges they might claim in this country not upon their foreign birth, but upon their quality as Jews ("Crypto Jews Under the Commonwealth," The Jewish Historical Society of England 7 [1895], 66). 6. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1960; reprint. New York: Signet Classic, 1980), 240, 236. 7. Enrique Fernandez, "Spitfires, Latin Lovers, Mambo Kings," New York Times, 19 April 1992, National Edition, sec. HI. 8. Reuben Blades, "The Politics Behind the Latino's Legacy," New York Times, 19 April 1992, National edition, sec. H31. 9. It is interesting to observe how the Black Legend functioned in the media construction of Manuel Noriega. In early January, 1990, Newsweek reported the following: Lt. General Thomas Kelly— Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221 U.S. commander of Operation Just Cause— described Noriega as "a crafty devil capable of any crime imaginable," and an un-named Panama-based American official called him "a voodoo practicing, murdering thug." Twenty four hours after the invasion of Panama, Noriega's "secret voodoo lair" was discovered by U.S. Special Forces troops. Uncovered there were a "quartet of Brazilian witches, who practiced voodoo on his [Noriega's] behalf, a bucket of blood, talismans, 50 pounds of cocaine, a statue and portrait of Adolph Hitler, automatic weapons, and a fully trimmed Christmas tree" (Newsweek Magazine, l January 1990, 15; 15 January 1990, 29-30) . Later, after Noriega's capture, in a follow-up article that traced his rise to power, Newsweek described Noriega as "a mean streets Mestizo [a person of mixed Indian and Spanish blood], the bastard son of his father's domestic." Noriega was a "macho officer, proficient in judo and parachuting, [who] would perfume himself heavily on his off duty hours and wear yellow jump suits with yellow shoes, [and] travel the world with a male companion with whom he was widely rumored to be having an torrid affair" {Newsweek Magazine, 15 January 1990, 19, 24. Noriega was a living example of the Black Legend: greedy, cruel, ambitious, duplicitous, and sexually "deviant." 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