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Interiority, Truth, and Violence in Early Modern Drama "Carv'd out in bloody lines": Interiority, Truth, and Violence in Early Modern Drama Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Labiner, Elizabeth Tye Citation Labiner, Elizabeth Tye. (2021). "Carv'd out in bloody lines": Interiority, Truth, and Violence in Early Modern Drama (Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA). Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 06:51:21 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/661265 “CARV’D OUT IN BLOODY LINES”: INTERIORITY, TRUTH, AND VIOLENCE IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA by Elizabeth Labiner __________________________ Copyright © Elizabeth Labiner 2021 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2021 2 3 Acknowledgements My dissertation research and work were made possible in part by funding support from the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the University of Arizona English Department Summer Research Fellowship, the University of Arizona Graduate and Professional Student Council, and the University of Arizona English Graduate Union. I would like to specifically thank the Folger Shakespeare Library for granting me the opportunity to conduct archival research in their holdings in Washington D.C. This dissertation is complete only through the unwavering support of a great many people, and I cannot thank them enough for all of their kindness and patience through this long journey. First and foremost: thank you to my family. It’s not been an easy road, but you’ve walked it with me. I don’t have words enough to express my gratitude to my mentor, advisor, chair of every exam and dissertation committee, and friend Dr. Meg Lota Brown. Your brilliance and passion showed me the type of scholar I could aspire to be, and your warmth, humor, drive, and steadfastness demonstrated the character and grace with which I should approach work and life. My committee as a whole has been an absolute pleasure during this years-long process. Thank you to Dr. Ute Lotz-Heumann, Dr. Fred Kiefer, and Dr. Jerry Hogle for your support, advice, and expertise. My writing and scholarship are better for having worked with you, and my time in graduate school was made brighter and more exciting by learning from you. Thank you as well to Marcia Simon. Your aid extended far beyond the logistical aspects of graduate school; it meant a great deal to me to know that I could always find a safe haven in your office, and that you’d always ask how I was doing beyond classes and writing. You are a gem. An enormous thanks as well to the friends, both in this program and outside of it, who kept me sane during these years. I couldn’t have reached the finish line without you cheering me on along the way, nor without you reminding me to take breaks and enjoy life. There are more people than I can thank individually, but a few particularly stellar individuals include Erin Tinker, Christine Alvarez, Elizabeth Denneau, Travis Sawyer, Jay Voris, Justin Williams, Jordan Handler, Mike Fallwell, and Margot and Aaron Havas. Thank you to Katie Buell and Courtney Inscoe, who stayed close even though they were geographically distant. Thanks as well to my SF/F book club, for graciously tolerating me bringing up my dissertation in nearly every club meeting. A very special thank you to Dr. Kristen Coan Howard, an incredible friend and the best dissertation- writing accountability partner a PhD candidate could have. I don’t think I could have made it through comprehensive exams and the dissertation years without you by my side. 4 Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………. 5 Introduction: “A heart in which is writ the truth I speak” ……………………………………. 7 Chapter 1: “Now perform’d, my heart is satisfied”: Violence and Truth in Theater ………… 41 Chapter 2: “Her too-fruitful womb too soon bewray’d”: Organs, Evidence, and Embodied Meaning ………………………………………………………………………………………. 88 Chapter 3: “In my heart the strong and swelling evil”: Problems of Piety and Power ………. 144 Conclusion: “I do understand your inside” …………………………………………………… 202 References …………………………………………………………………………………..... 213 5 Abstract In “Carv’d out in bloody lines”: Interiority, Truth, and Violence in Early Modern Drama, I examine dramatic presentations of truths and truth-telling as they connect to interior spaces, including the heart, the theater, and the uterus. I argue that viewing the theatre as a heart helps us understand the power of drama and its role in social criticism during the early modern era. In the theaters, playwrights invited audiences into the beating heart of their society by asking them to see truth and truths as political, contingent, and even contradictory. My figuration of the theater as the heart of the social body is supported by early modern English monarchs’ construction of the realm as a body and themselves as the head of that body. I argue that in the body of London, it is in fact the theater that functions as a heart and prime circulator, using its privileged space to introduce and move ideas in the social body. The individual human body and its organs, particularly the heart and the uterus, are linked onstage to problems of knowing and understanding. The body and its insidiously unknowable interior present a rich dramatic framework for explorations of truth, love, epistemology, ontology, and violence. Playwrights link truth and interiority by physically and figuratively housing evidence inside the body, inscribed on the heart or contained in the uterus, tantalizingly close yet frustratingly invisible to others. I argue that by complicating the body, organs, and signs, playwrights complicate the truths that they are said to house and signify. Acts of misreading and misunderstanding permeate early modern drama; knowledge is deconstructed and made unreliable at every stage of assessment. 6 Early modern writers firmly linked the conscience and the heart, using them essentially interchangeably, and often described inscriptions or writing of the conscience in and on the heart. As in my examination of the body, questions of being versus seeming and whether interior realities are externally evident come to the fore in my analysis of belief, piety, clergy, and the church. Playwrights tap into these concerns by dramatically juxtaposing the tongue and the heart, or playing up the distance between the two, emphasizing the possible divide between the invisible interior and the spoken word, and raising the question of whether what is spoken truly represents the person’s heart, conscience, thoughts, or beliefs. The question of how to ascertain an individual’s belief, loyalty, and morality -- how to read their hidden heart -- is of paramount importance. 7 Introduction: “A heart in which is writ the truth I speak” William Harvey, “Physician Extraordinary” to King James I and later “Physician in Ordinary” to King Charles I, first published Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus in Latin in 1628; the English translation, The anatomical exercises of Dr. William Harvey professor of physick, and physician to the Kings Majesty, concerning the motion of the heart and blood, followed in 1653. Harvey combined theory and observation to construct his account of the structure and functioning of the heart and circulatory system, which he dedicated to his monarch: To The Most Illustrious And Indomitable Prince Charles King Of Great Britain, France, And Ireland, Defender Of The Faith Most Illustrious Prince! The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all growth depends, from which all power proceeds. The King, in like manner, is the foundation of his kingdom, the sun of the world around him, the heart of the republic, the fountain whence all power, all grace doth flow. What I have here written of the motions of the heart I am the more emboldened to present to your Majesty, according to the custom of the present age, because almost all things human are done after human examples, and many things in a King are after the pattern of the heart. The knowledge of his heart, therefore, will not be useless to a Prince, as embracing a 8 kind of Divine example of his functions, - and it has still been usual with men to compare small things with great. Here, at all events, best of Princes, placed as you are on the pinnacle of human affairs, you may at once contemplate the prime mover in the body of man, and the emblem of your own sovereign power. Accept therefore, with your wonted clemency, I most humbly beseech you, illustrious Prince, this, my new Treatise on the Heart; you, who are yourself the new light of this age, and indeed its very heart; a Prince abounding in virtue and in grace, and to whom we gladly refer all the blessings which England enjoys, all the pleasure we have in our lives. Your Majesty’s most devoted servant, William Harvey. London, 1628.1 This dedication is rich in metaphors, pointing readers to an understanding of the epistemological and ontological structures of its time. Harvey posits the heart as that “from which all power proceeds,” linking the microcosm to macrocosm in increasing steps: the body, the kingdom, and the cosmos. The king, in Harvey’s construction, is the beating “heart of the republic” imbued with grace and power that he disperses into the body of the kingdom.
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