TROY IMAGERY AND COMPETING CODES OF PIETY IN SHAKESPEARE’S EARLY HISTORY PLAYS BY © 2010 Brian J. Harries Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty at the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________ Chairperson Committee members ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ Date Defended _____________________ ii The Dissertation Committee for Brian J. Harries certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: TROY IMAGERY AND COMPETING CODES OF PIETY IN SHAKESPEARE’S EARLY HISTORY PLAYS Committee: ________________________ Chairperson ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ Date approved: _____________________ iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION “Is Not the Truth the Truth?”: Shakespeare’s Exploration of the Past……………………1 CHAPTER 1 Pietatem Virumque Cano: Virigilian Ethics and the British Troy Myth on Stage………32 CHAPTER 2 The “Head Whose Churchlike Humors Fits Not for a Crown”:. Henry’s Pius Foils in 1 and 2 Henry VI………………………………………………….86 CHAPTER 3 Emblems and Emptiness: The Decline of Pietas in 3 Henry VI and Richard III………136 CHAPTER 4 “The Mirror of All Christian Kings”: Henry V as a Corrective to the First Tetralogy…………………………………………189 EPILOGUE “All the Argument is a Whore and a Cuckold”: Troy Outside of History in Troilus and Cressida………………………………………224 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………240 1 Introduction “Is Not the Truth the Truth?”: Shakespeare’s Exploration of the Past “Is not the truth the truth?” Falstaff angrily demands in II.iv of 1 Henry IV when the young Prince Hal challenges his narration of the botched robbery.1 Falstaff has just given his eye-witness account of the band of thieves that set upon him after his own exploits in highway robbery, and he expresses incredulity that anyone would dare question a tale of such iron-clad authority. Of course, the play lets the audience in on the joke with Prince Hal; we know that he and Poins robbed Falstaff in disguise, just to see what kind of exaggerated story they could elicit about the encounter. The scene demonstrates a good deal about the relationship between Hal and Falstaff, and certainly supports the image of Falstaff as the buffoonish lord of the Eastcheap world, but Falstaff’s question raises an important issue for the play. In this case, we must admit that the truth is not, in fact, the truth. Coming, as it does, near the beginning of Shakespeare’s sixth installment in his eight-play cycle on England’s fifteenth-century kings, Falstaff’s question also has relevance for the history plays as a whole. Plays concerned with the lives, actions, and legacies of historical figures necessarily concern themselves, to some degree, with representing the truth. Though Falstaff constructs a relatively frivolous lie, it produces troubling implications. If someone as transparent as Falstaff has the power to remake historical truth, however unsuccessfully, how can members of the audience, the average citizens of London, ever hope to make sense of past events? Graham Holderness argues that such a question lies at the heart of Shakespeare’s 2 history plays.2 Holderness describes the 1580s and 1590s as a period that fell between two important models of historical interpretation. The providentialism so prominent in medieval chronicles, and even in the works of Hall and Holinshed, had largely lost credibility with the influx of Italian humanism, and the progressive “new historiography” of people like Stow, Camden, and Bacon wouldn’t gain prominence until the first decades of the seventeenth century. As such, “The period of the Renaissance history play falls precisely between these decisive historical ‘breaks,’ and represents inevitably a transitional period in which different ideas of history competed for dominance.”3 In such an intellectual environment where the fundamental nature of history itself came into question, writers employed many different ideological approaches and literary genres in an effort to understand past events. Holderness, therefore, sees less merit in attempting to identify the ideological models that Shakespeare’s histories reflect than in approaching them as pieces that actively participate in contemporary historiography.4 I will argue that Shakespeare’s historiographical approach in these plays utilizes familiar images of Britain’s ancient heritage to interpret and structure an examination of England’s more recent past. Holderness finds Shakespeare’s English history plays particularly remarkable because they explore the world of feudal kingship on its own terms, or rather because they trace the transition from a distinctly different feudal world to the modern model of monarchy, familiar to the audience. Paola Pugliati, likewise, views Shakespeare as a historian concerned with representing the past through viewpoints other than that of a modern chronicler or narrator.5 The plays actively explore issues of government, 3 kingship, and causality by inserting the audience into the midst of historical events. For Pugliati, the stage play represents more than a simply commercially viable medium; it represents a revolutionary experiment in historical representation because historical plays provide a particular historical experience, entirely different from the one provided by the reading of history books … While a narrator will have to state and argue the truth of the facts reported, a dramatist can rely on the reality effect of the performance to induce belief in the truth of what is represented.6 These plays have the advantage of bringing an audience into direct confrontation with the past by vivifying the people and actions described in history books. The audience would see this, not as a cheap bastardization of historical material, but as important and innovative history in its own right. Rather than relying on the authority of a historian like Falstaff, a theater audience “sees” history firsthand. Yet, as Pugliati points out, the concept of history current in the 1590s looked somewhat different from our modern idea of what history should be.7 An audience in the late sixteenth century would allow a certain flexibility of historical facts in favor of a narrative that structured events to provide coherence and meaning. Within this context, Shakespeare’s history plays represent a sustained attempt to make sense of England’s recent past throughout the War of the Roses. In doing so, they take part in an important historiographical moment that sought to understand history’s purpose and communicate it in new ways. 4 In the brief epistle to the reader in his 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Thomas North makes clear the important role that history can play in personal education. About the discipline in general, he says, “stories are fit for every place, reache to all persons, serve for all tymes, teache the living, revive the dead, so farre excelling all other bookes, as it were better to see learning in noble mens lives, than to read it in Philosophers writings.”8 Rather than dealing simply in abstract terms, historical matter provides countless examples that illustrate philosophical ideas, moral conduct and any number of other issues that might prove beneficial to the reader.9 Certainly, North does not present a completely new idea in saying that an illustrative example can have a more profound effect than a simple statement. This goes back at least as far as Horace’s description of ideal poetry as dulce et utile, both pleasing and useful or instructive in what it presents. However, in using the “stories” of true history to fill that role, North makes a very important distinction about what makes Plutarch a great historian: For all other were fayne to take their matter, as the fortune of the contries whereof they wrote fell out: But this man being excellent in wit, learning, and experience, hath chosen the special actes of the best persons, of the famosest nations of the world.10 Selection functions as the cardinal virtue in North’s mind. Whereas simple chronology presents events according to the whims of fate and happenstance, Plutarch has selected specific examples from across the ancient world and presents them in a way that structures and gives them meaning. 5 North’s very brief comments define a vision of the historical project that involves more than simply recording and maintaining a record of the past’s great deeds. In the longer introduction to Amyot’s French translation, which North also translates and includes in his volume, Amyot waxes eloquent on history’s ability to provide scholars and readers with a wealth of examples to illustrate moral conduct and philosophical abstractions. Yet Amyot implies a passive nature on the part of the historian. History consists of an accurate record, a “storehouse” of past actions, and this record’s accuracy establishes the virtue of the material. History, he says, “hath a certaine troth in it, in that it alwayes professeth to speak truth, & for that proper ground thereof is to treat the greatest & highest things that are done in the world.”11 If a historian aims at presenting a true account, the history he creates will, by its very nature, provide instructive examples. North certainly takes no issue with Amyot’s praise of history, even explicitly abstaining from comment because these virtues “are sufficiently declared