Theatricality, Cheap Print, and the Historiography of the English Civil War
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THEATRICALITY, CHEAP PRINT, AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR A Dissertation by JAEMIN CHOI Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2010 Major Subject: English THEATRICALITY, CHEAP PRINT, AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR A Dissertation by JAEMIN CHOI Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Margaret J. M. Ezell Committee Members, Paul Parrish Patricia Phillippy James M. Rosenheim Head of Department, Jimmie Killingsworth May 2010 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT Theatricality, Cheap Print, and the Historiography of the English Civil War. (May 2010) Jaemin Choi, B.A., Korea University at Seoul; M.A., Korea University at Seoul; M.A., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Margaret J.M. Ezell Until recent years, the historical moment of Charles II's return to England was universally accepted as a clear marker of the end of "the Cavalier winter," a welcome victory over theater-hating Puritans. To verify this historical view, literary historians have often glorified the role of King Charles II in the history of the ―revival‖ of drama during the Restoration, whereas they tend to consider the Long Parliament‘s 1642 closing of the theaters as a decisive manifestation of Puritans‘ antitheatricalism. This historical perspective based upon what is often known as ―the rupture model‖ has obscured the vibrant development of dramatic forms during the English civil wars and the ways in which the revolutionary energy exploded during this period continued to influence in the Restoration the deployment of dramatic forms and imagination across various social groups. By focusing on the generic development of drama and theatricality during the English civil wars, my dissertation challenges the conventional iv historiography of the English civil war literature, which has been overemphasizing the discontinuity between the English civil war and the periods before and after it. The first chapter shows how the theatrical energy displaced from traditional cultural domains energized an emerging cheap print market and contributed to the invention of new dramatic forms such as playlets and newsbooks. The second chapter questions the conventional association of Puritanism and antitheatricalism by re- historicizing antitheatrical writers and their pamphlets and by highlighting the dramatic impulses at work in Puritan iconoclasm during the English civil wars. The final chapter offers the Restoration Milton as a case study to illustrate how the proposed historical perspective replacing ―the rupture model‖ better explains not only the politics of Milton‘s Paradise Lost but also of Restoration drama. v To my parents, Kioc Choi and Soongil Kim vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have incurred many debts of gratitude while working on this dissertation. Certainly my first thanks should go to Dr. Ezell, my committee chair. The completion of this dissertation would not have been made possible without the unwavering support of Dr. Ezell. I am also very grateful to my committee members, Dr. Parrish, Dr. Phillippy, and Dr. Rosenheim, for their guidance and support throughout the course of this research. It has been a great privilege for me to work with such highly respected scholars. Thanks also go to my friends and colleagues and the department faculty and staff for making my time at Texas A&M University a great experience. I also want to extend my gratitude to my friends outside Texas A&M, Joshua Hill, Jung-Hwa Lee, and Serk- Bae Suh, who read and gave very useful comments on earlier drafts. Finally, special thanks to my wife, Sookkyung Yeon, who has shown extreme patience and understanding throughout my graduate career, and to my whole family in Korea, who have sustained me not only emotionally but also financially since the beginning of my studies at Texas A&M University. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION .......................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 A. Periodization and Seventeenth Century Literature .................... 1 B. Theatricality and the Revolutionary Period ............................... 7 II EMERGENCE OF NEW THEATRICALITY .................................... 19 A. The 1642 Parliament Order and Its Aftermath .......................... 19 B. Theatricality and Cheap Print .................................................... 39 C. Conclusion.. ............................................................................... 77 III ICONOCLASM AND POST-REFORMATION DRAMA ................. 83 A. Iconoclasm and Theatricality .................................................... 83 B. Iconoclasm and the English Civil Wars .................................... 115 C. Conclusion ................................................................................. 153 IV MILTONIC PROBLEMS IN THE AGE OF THE RESTORATION . 155 A. Milton and the Restoration ........................................................ 155 B. Milton‘s Dramatic Imagination ................................................. 166 C. Milton and Restoration Drama .................................................. 185 D. Conclusion ................................................................................. 211 V CONCLUSION/EPILOGUE ............................................................... 215 viii Page BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................... 221 VITA ......................................................................................................................... 236 ix LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE Page 1 Book of Martyrs, Vol. 2 (1583), 1037 ........................................................ 90 2 Book of Martyrs, Vol. 2 (1583), 1079 ........................................................ 90 3 Book of Martyrs, Vol. 1 (1583), 795 .......................................................... 91 4 Book of Martyrs, Vol. 2 (1583), 1294 ........................................................ 124 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Periodization and Seventeenth Century Literature One of the convenient cognitive tools we use daily is classification. Classification is essential for the clear recognition of otherwise unintelligible economy of time, space, and text. It is by articulating the murky flow of change, whether temporal and spatial, into several meaningful units that we are able to build our hermeneutic framework and marshal our intellectual forces against confusion and disorder. Nonetheless, as recent European thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault have taught us, classification can be deceiving when we fail to question its artificial and arbitrary ‗nature‘ and, instead, take for granted the very cognitive lens through which we see the individualized objects. My dissertation proposes to question one of the common practices used for classification of literary texts—periodization—by looking at problems with the conventional timeline of seventeenth-century literature and how such a practice of periodization has the possibility to obscure rather than to clarify the understanding of literature. There are few literary periods that have been so thoroughly fragmented into separate sub-periods as the seventeenth century. This dissertation follows the style of the MLA Handbook. 2 Subdivided into the segments of the early seventeenth century, the English Civil War, and the Restoration, the century exhibits no unity and coherence. Instead of seeking to unite this fragmented picture of seventeenth-century literature, most scholars limit their interests to one of these sub-areas and become specialists on literary practices within the smaller periods. The result is that a wide gap between one sub-period and another emerges and remains open. It is against this background that Harold Love points out (though he himself neglects to give much thought to the existence of English Civil War literature) that the study of seventeenth-century literature has been dominated by two separate groups of specialists who do not share the same agenda: Literary Scholars working on the earlier Stuart period define themselves as Renaissance specialists, inhabiting a different conceptual as well as historical world from those working on the later Stuart period who define themselves as Augustan specialists. Those Renaissance specialists who concern themselves with Caroline authors further define themselves as studying the end of a process of development which reached its highest point with Shakespeare, while Restoration scholars see themselves as occupied with the beginning of a process which is to reach fruition in Pope and the eighteenth-century novelists. Despite the existence of the Oxford book of Seventeenth-century verse there is no such subject