This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Contested green spaces on the early modern stage, 1590-­1634 Roesle, Philippe Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. 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Contested green spaces on the early modern stage, 1590-1634 Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Philippe Roesle King’s College London 2013 ABstract This thesis analyses the production of contested green space on the early modern stage. I argue that Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights staged subjective versions of green space which responded differently to cultural and political unease. Collectively, early modern dramatists produced a sedimented English countryside whose layers addressed dissonant interpretations of contemporary ideological struggles and debates. Representations of green space on the early modern stage negotiate both the political status quo and its alternatives; the stage represented the countryside in ways which both the court and those beyond hegemony wanted it to look like. In order to discuss fully the multivocal dimensions of green space, I offer a topological reading of spatial representation on the early modern stage. Contrary to the usual topographical analyses performed by critics of early modern drama, my topological reading focuses on spatial interrelation, configuration and complexity, registering multiplicities and contradictions within the social production of specifically homeomorphic green spaces. Across the four chapters, I discuss the negotiation of a specific element of contemporary discourse in a distinctly contested theatrical green space. I demonstrate in Chapter One how theatres imagined Robin Hood’s northern greenwood as both Protestant and residually Catholic. In Chapter Two, I interrogate the ways in which playwrights debated the benefits and dangers of agricultural innovation in rural England. In Chapter Three, I argue that Arcadian green spaces represented both a monarchic and an alternative Spenserian ideal. Lastly, in Chapter Four, I analyse how early modern drama complicated understandings of English nationhood by producing contested Welsh green space as both civil and barbaric. The stages’ collective output produced contested green spaces which dramatists layered with models of and models for reality, simultaneously containing and exploring the period’s discursive concerns over religion, consumption, royal succession and nationhood. Representations of green space on the early modern stage performed specific, if contradictory, conflicting and heterogeneous functions. The theatres’ production of contested green space negotiated the tensions and competing positions within Elizabethan and Jacobean socio-political debates. 2 Table of contents ABstract 2 Table of contents 3 TaBle of figures 5 Acknowledgements 6 Note on texts 7 Introduction Contested green spaces on the early modern stage 8 I. The ‘spatial turn’ and an early modern topology of space 13 II. Ecocriticism and idealised green spaces 21 III. Cultural geography and political green spaces 28 IV. Populating empty green spaces on the early modern stage 38 Chapter one Revisiting RoBin Hood’s greenwood: Sectarianism in northern England, 1590-1599 51 I. ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’: The Robin Hood tradition in non-dramatic genres 55 II. ‘And in the forrest or merry Sherewood hereafter thou shalt be free’: Imagining the northern countryside in the Robin Hood ballads 59 III. ‘Dost thou not see Robins ambitious pride’: The Huntingdon plays and the Protestant re-imagination of the greenwood 71 IV. ‘Lay waste their bordering Counties’: George a Green and the loyalty of Yorkshire 82 V. ‘They live like the old Robin Hood of England’: Arden between medieval Catholicism and early modern Protestantism 89 VI. Conclusion 99 Chapter two The ‘London eye’ and its discontents: Gendering agricultural capitalism, 1605-1609 101 I. ‘all the countrey is gotten into London’: City, country and agricultural capitalism in Jacobean England 106 II. ‘Was this a time of all times to disturbe the peace of the land’: The Midlands Revolt and the challenge to agricultural capitalism 113 3 III. ‘To see how the thought of green fields puts a man into sweet inventions’: City comedies and the gendered commodification of green spaces 121 IV. ‘O thou wall | That girdles in those wolves’: Timon of Athens and the self-destruction of the marketplace 132 V. ‘The country forces are arrived. Begone!’: The Woman’s Prize and the pastoralisation of the marketplace 139 VI. Conclusion 150 Chapter three Writing from the margins: The satyr and the place of Arcadia, 1609-1611 152 I. ‘Some horrid satyr, | bred in these woods, and furious in his lusts’: The Arcadian satyr and its cultural modifications 157 II. ‘In the navel of Englande’: Albrecht Dürer and the Elizabethan taming of the wilderness 164 III. ‘The glorye of th’Arcadian State’: Pan and the central stewardship of Arcadia 174 IV. The Spenserians and the taming of the satyr: Poly-Olbion and The Faithful Shepherdess 181 V. Re-imagining the satyr’s green space in the wake of The Faithful Shepherdess: Oberon, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest 191 VI. Conclusion 202 Chapter four The Welsh wild man: Colonisation and the western periphery, 1605-1634 204 I. ‘Remoteness giveth way to oppression’: The Act of Union and the homogenisation of Wales 208 II. ‘The weakest went to Walles’: Mucedorus, 1 Henry IV and polyphonic Welsh wild men 212 III. ‘Triumphs shall crown the glorious brow of Wales’: Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Valiant Welshman and the critique of Englishness 221 IV. ‘The cheefest brute of westerne Wales’: Colonisation and its limits in Edward I and A MasKe Presented at Ludlow Castle 228 V. ‘Their discipline, Now wing-led with their courage’: King Lear, Cymbeline and the contamination of Englishness 239 VI. Conclusion: For the Honor of Wales: Stabilising Wales 251 4 Conclusion ‘This age gives example to the contrary’ 254 BiBliography 266 TaBle of figures Figure 1: Edward Topsell, Historie of Fovre-Footed Beastes (1607), detail 158 Figure 2: Stuttgart Psalter, Psalm 77, detail 161 Figure 3: Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eva (1504) 165 Figure 4: Albrecht Dürer, Satyr Family (1505) 166 Figure 5: Michael Drayton, A Chorographicall Description (1622), detail 185 Figure 6: Valentine and Orson (1637), title page detail 204 Figure 7: Robin Hood, Will. ScadlocK and Little John (c.1696-1709), detail 205 Figure 8: Hans Sachs, Klag der wilden holzleüt (1545) 217 Figure 9: John Speed, Historie of Great Britaine (1611), detail 231 5 Acknowledgments When this project was in its early stages, it was hard to believe that it could ever become a fully formed thesis. Without the unfailing support and invaluable advice offered by my supervisor, Gordon McMullan, it would not have been possible. Throughout, Gordon’s insights have spurred me on and pushed me further, and I thank him for his commitment and also for teaching me - and then patiently reminding me of - the importance of signposting, structure and argument. Gordon’s support always went beyond early modern concerns – to my delight he introduced me to the culinary joys of North Carolina biscuits and gravy for breakfast(!) and a wonderful greengage crumble for dessert. I particularly relished Gordon’s timely congratulations whenever FC Basel successfully annoyed one of the local London sides and I would say that Gordon has definitely proved himself to be a worthy Basel supporter; I hope to take him to the St.