Identity and Awareness: Manifestations of Self and Persona
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Identity and Awareness: Manifestations of Self and Persona in Early Modern English Drama By Copyright 2014 Zsolt Mohi Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Geraldo U. de Sousa ________________________________ David M. Bergeron ________________________________ Richard F. Hardin ________________________________ Byron Caminero-Santangelo ________________________________ William Keel Date Defended: September 2, 2014 ii The Dissertation Committee for Zsolt Mohi certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Identity and Awareness: Manifestations of Self and Persona in Early Modern English Drama ________________________________ Chairperson Geraldo U. de Sousa Date approved: September 2, 2014 iii Abstract This dissertation traces five early modern English dramatic characters through their crises of identity. The reader will follow the very different ways these characters respond to the demand that they represent themselves in the respective social worlds they inhabit. The protagonist in each of the plays, in Gammer Gurton’s Needle, in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, in Arden of Faversham, and in Shakespeare’s Othello, uses rhetorical skills, the impression he makes on the senses of other characters, and action to embody the function the fictional world prescribes for them. It will appear that the three corresponding media, that is, language, perception, and action, do not only give characters an opportunity to manifest aspects of their public persona; but these media also represent that dramatic world, its social conditions, and the identity of others to the characters I examine. Besides building a complex image of who they are, each character negotiates his or her relationships to others through these three media. Are characters content with the social identity they build in the process, or are they aware of who they are in some way other than what they show? Is there a part of who they are that eludes representation? When they fail to comply with the requirements of a social identity, or when they decide to withdraw from it, characters testify to a degree of consciousness that they possess, or wish they possessed, an interior space, a sense of self, as a part of their identity. The self is elusive; it resists a simple definition, but the chapters that follow point out hints and signs that the characters are aware of their precious inwardness, often in the moment when they are losing it. The analyses take advantage of the critical literature on the early modern individual both before and after Stephen Greenblatt’s groundbreaking work. Reflections on a range of contemporary written discourse support the study of the characters’ success and failures in their search for identity. iv Acknowledgements Professor Gerldo U. De Sousa, my Dissertation Director, guided me through the planning and writing process and gave me feedback on the many versions of my chapters. Professors Richard F. Hardin and David Bergeron read my drafts, commented on them, and discussed issues of the research and writing process with me as I needed help. Professor Byron Caminero-Santangelo was ready to talk to me about my ideas and helped me prepare for the Defense. Professor Frank Baron gave me valuable advice and material especially on Doctor Faustus. Professor Donald Wesling from the University of California San Diego read my early drafts and provided helpful comments. Professor William Keel supported me in the preparations for the Defense. Without the consistent and reliable support of these Professors I would not have been able to write the Dissertation. Apart from academic advice, I received indispensible personal support from friends both here and overseas. Professor Julia Bader from UC Berkeley gave me expert advice on how to manage academic processes and personal issues in this country. Margretta de Vries gave me technical assistance and helped me with proofreading. My Aunt, Frau Edith Herm, nourished me with cakes she prepared in her kitchen in Sindelfingen, Germany. My Sister, Terézia, held the home front for me in Budapest, Hungary, taking care of personal and administrative problems while I was away. My childhood friend, Erika Feczus, gave me all the moral support she could. Erika Sólyom encouraged me to overcome many difficulties. Without the support of these people, I could not have completed this project. v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1 Early Tudor Self-Fashioning: Coming of Age in Gammer Gurton’s Needle ..................................................... 29 CHAPTER 2 The Prodigal and his Brother: The Loss of Self in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors ....................................................................................... 58 CHAPTER 3 Doctor Faustus and the Promise of Magic ................................................................................................................ 111 CHAPTER 4 From “Circulating Passions” to the Power of Discourse: The Structure of Identity in Henry VIII and in Arden of Faversham .............................................................. 144 CHAPTER 5 Language and the Perception of Identity in Othello ............................................................................................. 202 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................................................ 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................................................... 274 1 Introduction In his essay “Of the inconstancie of our actions,” Michel de Montaigne questioned the assumption of the divine serenity of the immortal soul in contrast to the ephemeral existence of the body as only “the soul’s conveyance” in Christian theological convention.1 He did so by transposing the static Platonic dichotomy of body and soul into the dynamic terms of the private “selfe” and its public appearance, a “maske,” lending also a dramatic aspect to his discussion of how a human being acts in the world. In his introspective mode of observation, Montaigne characterized what he called “my soule” or “my selfe”2 as the seat of “our appetite” that pulls our actions in every which way “according as the winde of occasions doth transport us” (184). Correspondingly, the label he attaches to this inner core of the personality is “inconstancy” (183) and the name of its characteristic act is “Distinguo” (185). A dramatic sense of the core of the human personality arises in these words, the source of a will to action, which is clearly directed toward the outside world as it appears to the senses, the instruments of distinction. In discussing aspects of early modern dramatic identity in this dissertation, I am going to refer to this putative inner aspect of characters as the self. I have to make a distinction here between the meaning of “self” as I use it in this dissertation and that of “inwardness.” “Inwardness” is a general term for the phenomenon Katharine Eisaman Maus defines as “an unexpressed interior” in contradistinction to “a theatricalized exterior.”3 Her study on inwardness focuses on the difference between “interior and exterior” (3), on the problem of how what cannot be seen can be known, and on the social and political consequences of this “gap” (2). My work, however, explores the structure of identity and its manifestations in discourse, 1 According to Adolar Zumkeller, St Augustine used “Platonic images of ‘the soul’s clothing’ […] and ‘the soul’s conveyance’ […] to describe the body.” Augustine’s Ideal of the Religious Life, trans. Edmund Colledge (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986) 218. 2 Michael De Montaigne, “Of the inconstancie of our actions,” The Essays or, Morall, Politike, and Militarie Discovrses, II, 1, trans. Iohn Florio (London: 1632) 183–87. 185. Early English Books Online 28 July, 2014. 3 Katharine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995) 2. 2 perception, and action. I am interested in how individual characters experience their inwardness and how they protect it by building a front to the outside world around it. In this approach, therefore, inwardness becomes personal,4 individual, and unique. I hope that the word “self” will help me contain the unstructured and often chaotic sense of this interiority in the private domain. Montaigne also defined the relationship between the self and its outward appearance that he called a “maske.” According to him, the “selfe” emerges prior to its public image, in which it strives to realize itself to the world. While he acknowledged the passions of the heart, Montaigne pointed out that one cannot let such a sense of “confusion, disorder, blending, mingling” (185), etc., show in social situations. In an attempt to assume a semblance of the “virtue” (186) of “constancie” (183), he argued, “wee borrow” her image as a disguise (186). This way, we follow the prescript we receive “even [from] good Authors” who, Montaigne claimed, often frame