1 ‘The Art of Salvation is but the Art of Memory’: Soul-Agency, Remembrance and Expression in Donne and Shakespeare Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Department of English University of Lancaster January, 2007 Kathleen Mary O’Leary, M. A. 2 Acknowledgements Many thanks are needed. To Dr. Hilary Hinds, for guiding me through the early days of Donne. Especially to Professor Alison Findlay, for her unfailing insight, encouragement and affection that helped me reach this point. To my children, Emily and John, for being there, and Joseph, for his kindness. And finally, to my brother, David, whose jokes and general good humour guided me through this project, though its completion, sadly, he did not see. 3 ‘The Art of Salvation is but the Art of Memory’: Soul-Agency, Remembrance and Expression in Donne and Shakespeare Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Department of English University of Lancaster January, 2007 Kathleen Mary O’Leary, M A Abstract This thesis examines how the dislocation of old beliefs in post-Reformation England affected perceptions of the soul in the work of Donne and Shakespeare. The introduction, using Augustinian discourses on the tri-partite soul, explores how the soul is imagined in post-Reformation England. Current debates on interiority, the climate of anxiety that surrounds religious upheaval, historical readings of the composition of the soul and the problems of its actual representation on the page and stage are discussed. The patterning of Augustine‟s tri-partite model of Reason, Will and Memory is examined, and the regenerative power of concordant Memory that can bind together a harmonic trinity is offered as a solution to the fractured soul. 4 The first part of the thesis concentrates on writings that represent Donne‟s anxieties over the fate of the soul as he contemplates conversion from Catholicism to the new religious order. Chapter One is an enquiry into his unpublished works from 1601 to 1611 and examines the idea of the wandering soul, from The Progresse of the Soule, to the Divine Poems and finally to the redeemed soul seen in the form of Elizabeth Drury in the Anniversaries. In this chapter, I argue that Donne is searching for an alternative Marian aesthetic as he leaves behind his Catholic past, a new image of divine intercession for the Protestant world that might offer him comfort and a route to salvation. Chapter Two explores his very public sermons after he enters the ministry until his death. Here, a pattern of redemption is argued through the salvic properties of the living Word of the sermon that is relayed through the performative power of the preacher. The preacher‟s working space and the power of the Word to viscerally transform the congregation are central here to the soul‟s salvation. The second part examines how Shakespeare explores the „journey‟ of the soul through a selection of his plays, but where the limits of genre impose restrictions on Shakespeare‟s development of an image of redemption. Chapter Three examines the wandering soul in The Merchant of Venice and Othello. Through the trope of marriage, the fate of the souls of Jessica and Othello are explored as they find themselves marginalized in an inhospitable Venice, while their pasts have been forgotten in the attempt to convert to Christianity. Chapter Four explores the use of the female character as an image of Memory that can generate hope, reading Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Cordelia in King 5 Lear as “soul agents”, whose beneficence can bring about redemptive change. However, the thesis argues that the genre of tragedy examined here limits the soul agent. Chapter Five argues for an alternative genre that opens up the possibilities for the successful portrayal of the soul agent. In the romance plays, the representation of the soul can be seen working successfully to a redemptive conclusion. Romance dramas foreground their slippages in plot and take us into dreamscapes at the centre of which is an essential female influence. Marina in Pericles, Perdita in The Winter‟s Tale, Innogen in Cymbeline and Ariel/Miranda in The Tempest provide a link with Donne‟s presentation of the soul as female in the Anniversaries. Both Donne and Shakespeare suggest the idea of the female in literature as a redemptive figure, away from earlier discourses on the soul that finds itself at the mercy of epistemological wrangling. Donne and Shakespeare re-instate that sacredness and place it within art as an image of Memory, a vital component of Augustine‟s tri-partite soul, but also as an active and vibrant image of possibility. 6 Contents Introduction 8 Spiritual Fragmentation and Struggle 8 Introspection and Interiority 18 Religious and Social Upheaval 24 The Fractured Soul 33 The Problem of Representation 49 1. Donne’s Search for a Marian Aesthetic 67 The Triumph of Eve 70 Dejection and Doubt 79 Salvation 108 2. Salvation through the Word 126 The Protestant Word and the living text of the Sermon 127 The Preacher‟s Space 142 The Visceral Body 154 3. The Letter without the Spirit: Forgetting and False Remembrance in The Merchant of Venice and Othello 181 The Wandering Soul 190 „This muddy vesture of decay‟: Empty Rhetoric and the lost Father in Portia‟s Belmont 193 „Speak of me as I am‟: Self-Construction and Edited Memory in Othello 212 4. ‘Her smiles and tears / were like a better way’: Soul-Agents, redemptive heroines and the limits of Genre 232 „As high as heaven itself‟: The steadfastness of Juliet 234 „A soul in bliss‟: The transcendent wisdom of Cordelia 241 5. ‘Rich and Strange’: Soul-Agents as Catalysts of Harmonious Regeneration 258 „Thou that begett‟st him that did thee beget‟: Marina and the Water of Life 271 „Our Perdita is found‟: The Recovery of Faith in The Winter‟s Tale 282 Innogen and the Recovery of National Memory 289 „Freeing all Faults‟: Miranda, Ariel and the Investment of Communal Grace 310 Conclusion 329 Bibliography 334 7 To David, kairos and chronos 8 Introduction Spiritual Fragmentation and Struggle Oh my blacke Soule! Now art thou summoned By sicknesse, deaths herald, and champion; Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled, Or like a thiefe, which till deaths doome be read, Wisheth himselfe delivered from prison. (John Donne: Holy Sonnets II, 1609)1 Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [ ]2 these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? (Shakespeare: Sonnet 146, c. late 1590-early 1600)3 In these sonnets, both Donne and Shakespeare lament the fate of the soul. It is sick, it pines, it is sinful, it has done wrong, it does not know which way to turn for respite. The tone employed by both writers is one of dismay that the soul should be in such a pitiable state, their opening exclamatory „Oh‟ and „Poor‟ suggestive of the consternation that 1 Helen Gardner gives a clear and detailed account of the composition of the sonnets, called Divine Meditations, in the 1633 and 1635 editions of Donne‟s work in John Donne: The Divine Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. xxxvii-xliii. All references to these poems are from this edition. 2 These two syllables are missing in the Quarto, where they are replaced by a repetition of „my sinful earth‟, which does not scan. Martin Seymour-Smith has offered „Gull‟d by‟ The Art of Shakespeare‟s Sonnets (London: Heinemann, 1982), p. 113, but has also commented on „Fool‟d by‟ that was popularised by Malone in 1780 (p. 188); Helen Vendler The Art of Shakespeare‟s Sonnets (London & Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), has argued for „Feeding‟ (p. 610), whilst in the Norton Shakespeare (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), the footnotes indicate that guesses have included „Starved by‟ and „Foiled by‟ (p. 1973). The 1964 Signet classic edition of the Sonnets, edited by William Burto (London: The New English Library Limited), includes „Thrall to‟, „Rebuke‟ and „Leagued with‟ as alternatives (p. 186). Vendler‟s choice is particularly interesting as the use of the present participle places the soul in an active position, nurturing the body‟s appetites, that not only puts into question its divine connection but also argues for the soul‟s collusion in its own damnation. „Feeding‟ would also balance rhythmically and syllabically with „Painting‟ in the complementary line 4 and would also form part of the conceit of consuming that runs through the whole sonnet. 3 All references to Shakespeare‟s works are taken from Norton Shakespeare, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt and others (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997). 9 follows. And the speakers of both sonnets indicate that it is not only their souls that are in such turmoil: „my blacke Soule‟, „the centre of my sinful earth‟, but also that the souls in question have responsibility for their fates, the use of the second person „thou‟ denoting the soul‟s active and almost independent state from the speaker, „Thou art like a pilgrim […] like a thief‟, „Painting thy outward walls‟. The juxtaposition of the oppositional „pilgrim‟ and „thief‟ is suggestive of searching whilst at the same time alluding to outlawed displacement from the sacred; the „costly‟ outward show indicative of a worrying inward dearth. Taken with the responsibility that is indicated in the possessive pronouns, the diction points to an inversion of the spiritual patterning that is expected of the soul, for here we have a fall from grace, and also a shame derived from a lack of accountability that is attached to such a fall.