John Higgins-Dissertation
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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Authority from his majesty : drama and popular politics in early modern England Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67g2v74t Author Higgins, John C. Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Authority from his majesty: Drama and popular politics in early modern England A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by John C. Higgins Committee in charge: Professor Louis Montrose, Chair Professor Marcel Henaff Professor Kathryn Shevelow Professor Janet Smarr Professor Don Wayne 2011 Copyright John C. Higgins, 2011 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of John Higgins is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2011 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………………………….. iii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………. iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….. v Vita………………………………………………………………………………… vi Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 1: “Authority from his majesty”: Popular politics and the ideology of form in Philaster………………………………………………………………….. 38 Chapter 2: “Justice always shaking hands with mercy”: Dialectical genres in Measure for Measure and Promos and Cassandra………………………………. 109 Chapter 3: “Standing in altercation”: Performance, contradiction and the law in The White Devil…………………………………………………………………... 153 Chapter 4: “Laughter or loss in another place”: Authority, geography and the “special decorum” of Bartholomew Fair………………………………………… 225 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………… 309 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge Professor Louis Montrose for his support as the chair of my committee. His feedback on the multiple previous drafts of every chapter of this dissertation has proven to be invaluable. Chapter 2, in part, has been accepted for publication and will appear in English Literary Renaissance 2012. The dissertation author was the primary investigator and authory of this paper. v VITA 2001 Bachelor of Arts, Northwestern University 2003 Master of Arts, University of Chicago 2004-2009 Teaching Assistant, University of California, San Diego 2009-2010 Associate in Literature, University of California, San Diego 2011 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “‘Justice always shaking hands with Mercy’: Dialectical genres in Measure for Measure and Promos and Cassandra. In print with English Literary Renaissance, forthcoming 2012. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Authority from his majesty: Drama and popular politics in early modern England by John C. Higgins Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego Professor Louis Montrose, Chair My dissertation draws on recent methodological and theoretical developments in social history in order to rethink the political significance of formal experimentation in early 17th century English theater. Specifically, I argue that formal experiments in four Jacobean plays should be read as participating in a process whereby early modern rulers and the people they ostensibly commanded negotiated and struggled over the meanings of dominant political discourses and the legitimate uses of governing institutions. Recent social historical work on “popular politics” has drawn attention to the fact that local officials and private citizens both manipulated tropes of authority and obedience and vii appropriated governing institutions – including the militia, the jury trial and the public execution – in order to meet their own political needs rather than those of the court. By focusing on popular political activity, I reconsider the new historicist claim that, “Power in early modern England was performative,” in order to emphasize the participatory, contested nature of performance as a social activity, and the overdetermined, negotiated nature of the period’s political hegemony. The plays that I analyze not only include characters and images drawn from popular political life but also actively participate in this negotiation by appropriating dominant governing discourses and institutions for the benefit of the players and playwrights and the entertainment of diverse audiences. In each chapter, I engage in an intertextual analysis that reads a single, experimental play in conversation with different historical texts – including pamphlets, chronicle histories and trial records – that record and respond to the appropriation of authority. The first chapter reads Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster in relation to divine right treatises, political rumors and popular protests. The second chapter reads Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure as a manipulation of the dominant legal discourse surrounding justice and mercy. The third chapter places John Webster’s The White Devil into conversation with legal rituals like trials and public executions. The final chapter reads Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair alongside various texts describing the demographic changes to the early modern London metropolis and the struggles of the city government to manage these changes. viii Introduction “In all well setled Monarchies, where Law is established formerly and orderly, there Iudgement is deferred from the King to his subordinate Magistrates; not that the King takes it from himself, but gives it unto them.” – King James I, A Speech in the Starre-Chamber, the 20th of June anno. 1616 “At the first those foresaid multitudes assembled themselves, without any particuler head or guide, then starte uppe abase fellow called Iohn Reynoldes, whom they surnamed captain Powch, because of a great leather powch which he wore by his side, in which purse he affirmed to this company, [that] there was sufficient matter to defend them against all comers… Hee told them also, that he had Authoritie from his maiestie to throwe downe enclosures, and that he was sent of God to satisfie all degrees whatsoever.” – Edmond Howes, The annales, or a generall chronicle of England… [continued] unto the ende of this present yeere 1614 “Call hither, I say, bid come before us Angelo. What figure of us think you he will bear? For you must know, we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply, Lent him our terror, dressed him with our love, And given his deputation all the organs Of our own power. What think you of it?” – The Duke in William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure In my dissertation, I will analyze “popular politics” as a source of tension in early modern English governance and a social process by which local communities throughout the country – including those formed within and around the London commercial theaters – both discursively and practically negotiated this tension. The preceding quotations from King James I, Edmond Howes and William Shakespeare all recreate, in different forms, an inherent contradiction of monarchical government: the simple fact that early modern English monarchy ostensibly vested absolute political authority in the singular person of the king, while nevertheless materially relying upon a whole host of local 1 2 officials to carry out and enforce that authority. Political authority in early modern England was thus symbolically centralized to the highest possible degree, but in practical terms proved quite diffuse. In his speech to the Star Chamber, James I reproduces this contradiction of monarchical government by adopting a strained and tense language to describe the delegation of authority. In early modern legal usage “defer” meant both to “offer for acceptance” (John Foxe refers to “a corporall othe to them deffered by the iudges”) and to “submit for determination or judgment” (Robert Barnes describes how a case was, “Deferred of both partes to the sentence of the kyng”).1 While the implications of “deferring judgment,” in these two senses may initially seem at odds with one another – the former vesting legal authority to a person that otherwise lacks it, the latter submitting oneself to the superior authority of another – James’s use of the term paradoxically encompasses both meanings. He grants his judges an authority to which others will submit. The inherent tension associated with an absolute monarch offering other citizens power gets highlighted in James’s insistence that he does not, “Take judgment from himself, but gives it to subordinate magistrates.”2 Semantically, the phrase seems comically bereft of meaning; James seems to draw a distinction here between whether he claims (or even steals) power from himself or simply gives it away. The point that he hopes to clarify but only awkwardly states, however, is that in “deferring judgment,” the king gives away his power while still maintaining it. Far from an abdication, vesting others with authority theoretically extends the power of the king throughout the country 1 nd Oxford English Dictionary 2 ed. (online version November 2010), s.v. “defer, v.2.” 2 James VI and I, A Speech in the Starre-Chamber, the XX. of June. Anno 1616, in Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 205. 3 to places where he himself does not physically reside and cannot always visit. In order to describe this paradox of monarchical authority adequately, James uses language in such a way that individual words like “defer” must