Vessels of Vengeance: Divine Wrath and Human Instruments in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy

VESSELS OF VENGEANCE: DIVINE WRATH AND HUMAN INSTRUMENTS IN EARLY MODERN REVENGE TRAGEDY Genevieve Romeo A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Jessica Wolfe Reid Barbour Mary Floyd-Wilson Darryl Gless Ritchie Kendall © 2010 Genevieve Romeo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT GENEVIEVE ROMEO: Vessels of Vengeance: Divine Wrath and Human Instruments in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy (Under the direction of Jessica Wolfe) This dissertation examines the intersections between human anger and divine wrath in Tudor and Stuart revenge tragedies. Traditional scholarship on Renaissance drama looks to the philosophical foundations of the passions, while more recent criticism focuses on the physiological origins of early modern conceptions of emotion. My work combines both of these approaches with a sustained investigation into the theological foundations and implications of the passions—specifically the passion of wrath as it finds both divine and human expression in revenge tragedy. My dissertation explores instances where divine and human anger collide—or, perhaps, collude—on the early modern stage by contextualizing plays such as William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy, and John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge with theological writings by John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Thomas Jackson, among others. My study analyzes the way authors used the anthropopathic conception of divine wrath as both an exhortation against human anger and as a metaphorical accommodation that legitimizes and sanctifies sinful, passionate human emotion. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many fine individuals. First, I simply cannot imagine having a kinder, wiser, or more helpful advisor than Jessica Wolfe. Without her dedication, insight, and inspiration, I am not sure that this project would have seen the light of day. Many thanks are also due to Reid Barbour for his enthusiastic encouragement throughout my graduate career. I am grateful to Mary Floyd- Wilson for her invaluable contributions to my development as a scholar and a teacher—she has been a wonderful mentor. I would also like to thank Darryl Gless for helping me see connections between even my most disjointed ideas and Ritchie Kendall, who has taught me that less is more when it comes to making jokes about Hoffman. Thanks to my mom for reading to me when I was a baby; to my dad for making me truly believe that I could do just about anything; to my brother Ken for always listening; to my sister Pookie for being an amazing role model; to my Yia Yia for bragging about me to all of her friends; to my Thea Rita for always making me feel like the most special person on the planet; and to my Papou, who taught me how to appreciate the small things in life. I am also grateful for the friendship of Cameron Brewer, who has always kept me from taking myself too seriously. I feel deeply blessed to have all of you in my life. Finally, I would like to thank my husband Dave, who is the most patient, genuine, loving person I have ever known. You make me want to be a better human being every day. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: Waiting on the God Who Waits: Divine Anger in The Atheist’s Tragedy and The Unnatural Combat ................................................................ 24 CHAPTER TWO: Votaries of Vengeance: Human Anger and Human Cruelty in Antonio’s Revenge .................................................................................................. 54 CHAPTER THREE: “When thunder claps, heaven likes the tragedy”: The Influence of the Imprecatory Psalms on Hoffman and The Revenger’s Tragedy ............ 85 CHAPTER FOUR: “O My Prophetic Soul”: Hamlet, Jeremiah, and Prophetic Drama ....... 119 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 158 WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................... 159 v INTRODUCTION Gail Kern Paster begins her ground-breaking study of the early modern passions, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage, with an excerpt from Bishop Edward Reynolds’ A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soule of Man (1640): “The Passions of sinfull men are many times like the tossings of the Sea, which bringeth up mire and durt, but the Passions of Christ were like the shaking of a pure Water in a cleane Vessell, which though it be thereby troubled , yet is not fouled at all.” 1 As Paster notes, Reynolds uses this metaphor to counter the Neostoic condemnation of human passions; his words reveal that “it is human sinfulness that makes immoderate passions an instrument of self-harm—an instrument of excess and indecency—not the passions themselves.” 2 Paster also observes that in comparing Christ to a “vessel of liquids,” Reynolds demonstrates the early modern understanding of “the nature of the passions as liquid—contained or uncontained, clear or muddy.” 3 This notion of the passions as literal forces within our body is reflected in Galen’s understanding of the passions as “one of the six factors (along with air, diet, repletion and evacuation, sleeping and walking, and exercise) that together determined the immediate state of well-being in a given body.” 4 The fact that several of these “non- 1 Edward Reynolds. A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soule of Man , ed. Margaret Lee Wiley (Gainesville: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1971), 49. 2 Gail Kern Paster. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage . Chicago: University of Chicago P. (2004): 1. 3 Ibid., 4. 4 Ibid., 4. natural” factors depend on environment marks a significant divergence between modern and early modern concepts of emotion. As Mary Floyd-Wilson explains: We understand emotion as internal, or part of our self, and not as an ecological or physiological force that moves in and out of the body. And yet early modern passions do cross the self’s shifting and fluid boundaries. The heart dilates or constricts in response to certain stimuli. When the emotions are stirred, people are moved to act or withdraw. Indeed, some early moderns construed the passion as residual environmental impressions, originally induced by an ecology that undermines any conception [of] a solid, static, or contained self. 5 The work of Paster and Floyd-Wilson, among others, clearly establishes that, for the early moderns, passions and emotions were physical forces that could be influenced not only by religious restraint or recta ratio , but by environmental factors. Indeed, as Pastor argues, “the passions had an urgent practical character” of coequal importance to “their overarching theological significance.” 6 But what is the nature of this “theological significance”? Do the passions have a “theological significance” beyond the “traditional” Neostoic castigation of passions? Furthermore, while the above passage from Reynolds reflects an early modern understanding of Christ’s passions, how did contemporary authors and theologians understand the emotions of God when He is not clothed in the flesh of Christ? A complete investigation into the divine valence of every significant emotion is certainly beyond the scope of this present study. Instead, this dissertation takes a necessarily narrow approach by examining the portrayal of anger in select revenge tragedies as a case study. Drawing extensively from both pagan and Christian sources, revenge tragedies are a rich source for any discussion of the early modern passions; however, the violence that 5 Mary Floyd-Wilson. “English Mettle” in Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion . Ed. Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania P. 2004): 134. 6 Ibid.,7. 2 permeates these plays makes them a particularly productive location for a scrutiny of anger. However, while the Stoic dimension of anger in Renaissance tragedy has been thoroughly examined by critics such as Gordon Braden and Geoffrey Aggeler, sustained analyses of Judeo-Christian notions of divine wrath and human anger in revenge tragedy seem to have fallen out of current critical favor. The renewed interest in the physical valence of emotion that has been sparked by Gail Kern Paster and Mary Floyd-Wilson, among others, provides an opportunity for future scholarly consideration of how early modern Christian theology complicates or contributes to the physiological understanding of passion. Richard Strier observes that “it is often taken as a basic truth about the whole ‘Western Tradition’ that the control of ‘passion’ by ‘reason’ is its fundamental ethical- physiological ideal.” 7 Strier’s article, “Against the Rule of Reason,” dismantles this notion by providing a panoply of authors—from Aristotle to Herbert—who offer eloquent apologiae for the passions. Strier notes that “both the humanist and the Reformation traditions provided powerful defenses of the validity and even desirability of ordinary human emotions and passions.” 8 These “defenses” suggest, among other things, that emotions like sorrow or grief are necessary elements

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