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OLDER WOMEN in ELIZABETHAN and JACOBEAN DRAMA by YVONNE ORAM

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OLDER WOMEN in ELIZABETHAN and JACOBEAN DRAMA by YVONNE ORAM OLDER WOMEN IN ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN DRAMA by YVONNE ORAM A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The Shakespeare Institute School of Humanities The University of Birmingham May, 2002 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. OLDER WOMEN IN ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN DRAMA by YVONNE ORAM ABSTRACT This thesis explores the presentation of older women on stage from 1558-1625, establishing that the character is predominantly pictured within the domestic sphere, as wife, mother, stepmother or widow. Specific dramatic stereotypes for these roles are identified, and compared and contrasted with historical material relating to older women. The few plays in which these stereotypes are subverted are fully examined. Stage nurse and bawd characters are also older women and this study reveals them to be imaged exclusively as matching stereotypes. Only four plays, Peele’s The Old Wives Tale, Fletcher’s Bonduca, and Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter’s Tale, by Shakespeare, reject stereotyping of the central older women. The Introduction sets out the methodology of this research, and Chapter 1 compares stage stereotyping of the older woman with evidence from contemporary sources. This research pattern is repeated in Chapters 2- 4 on the older wife, mother and stepmother, and widow, and subversion of these stereotypes on stage is also considered. Chapter 5 reveals stereotypical stage presentation as our principal source of knowledge about the older nurse and bawd. Chapter 6 examines the subtle, yet comprehensive, rejection of the stereotypes. The Conclusion summarises the academic and ongoing cultural relevance of this thesis. This work is dedicated to all the women in my family, young and old, and especially to Dee. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks to the many people who have supported me in researching and preparing this work and especially to:- Dr Martin Wiggins, my supervisor, whose intellectual focus kept me on track; Jim Shaw and Kate Welch in the Shakespeare Institute Library, who have been unfailingly helpful and good-humoured; all the members of the Renaissance Studies Group; Yvonne Steinmetz-Ardaseer, fellow student and friend; Sylvia Roberts, Heather Johns and all the staff at Saltash Library (hurrah for the inter-library loan system, saviour of long-distance students!); Lili Sanchez, Joanne Wilshaw and all my work colleagues, and students past and present, who have shown an interest, discussed and listened; and, of course, Steve and Ivor who cheered and supported, and got me there. CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………….1-19 Chapter 1: Older women in the Early Modern period – stage images and contemporary evidence……………………………………………………… 20-41 Chapter 2: Older wives………………………………………………………42-82 Chapter 3: Older mothers and stepmothers……………………………..83-167 Chapter 4: Older widows………………………………………………....168-204 Chapter 5: Bawds and nurses – the matching stereotypes…………..205-243 Chapter 6: ‘Of boundless tongue’ – rejecting the stereotypes……….244-278 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………279-293 Bibliography………………………………………………………………..294-341 PREFACE The plays discussed in this study are dated in accordance with the Annals of English Drama 975-1700 ed. by Alfred Harbage, revised by S. Schoenbaum (London: Methuen, 1964), unless modified by subsequent scholarship. A list of the plays used appears in the Appendix, and there is a list of the editions used and referred to in the Bibliography. Throughout this study I have considered characters listed in An Index of English Characters in Early Modern English Drama Printed Plays 1500 – 1660 ed. by Thomas L. Berger, William C. Bradford, Sidney L. Sondergard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). I have modernised old spellings in quotations from plays in accordance with the guidelines laid down in Stanley Wells, Modernizing Shakespeare’s Spelling (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). IMAGES OF OLDER WOMEN IN ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN DRAMA (Yvonne Oram) Introduction. Four older women occupy central, authoritative positions on stage during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods - Madge in George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale (1590), Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (1607) and Paulina in The Winter’s Tale (1610), both by William Shakespeare, and the Queen of the Iceni in John Fletcher’s Bonduca (1613). That there are only four such outstanding figures is not disappointing, in my view, even though ageing women are present in large numbers on stage at this time appearing in plays of all genres. For, as I show in this study, the majority of older women are imaged stereotypically within the roles of wife, mother, stepmother, or widow, and so the way in which these four evade such stereotyping to take centre stage is remarkable. They personify a positive portrayal of the older woman which, though it cannot completely compensate for a predominantly negative presentation in publicly performed drama of the period, certainly counteracts and challenges such imaging of her character. In this Introduction I am reversing the order of this research, for I discuss these four female characters in detail in my final chapter – presenting them as the only examples of rejection, by dramatists, of the stereotypes of the older woman. I want to draw attention to them here, though, not just because of their inspiring presence but because they are distinguished by their shared access to the extensive language which is power on stage and 1 which gives a character dramatic centrality. Some of the other older women I discuss do speak out articulately and at some length but, as I have indicated, this is usually done in the role of wife, mother, stepmother, widow. Even mature female rulers are depicted primarily in relation to a husband (alive or dead) or to grown children. I will establish that the constraints of domesticity limit the range of stage discourse for the older woman. The only ageing women on stage who operate beyond the family are nurses and bawds and even here the nurse can be seen as part of a family, albeit in a servant’s role. My exploration of these characters reveals them to be equally constrained by their stereotypical depiction, which limits the language they can access and, consequently, restricts their dramatic power. The activity on stage of Cleopatra, Bonduca, Madge and Paulina has little or no connection with domesticity and we see them operating freely beyond the conventions of marriage and family. Each manipulates and directs the drama she inhabits: indeed, both Madge and Paulina are imaged, metaphorically at least, as that rare creature in the period under discussion - the female creator of a performed play. In Madge’s case the performance is the medium for her spoken tale. Paulina takes part in and directs others in a particular performance which she has created. In all four cases the older woman is authoritatively outspoken. Catherine Belsey has said that ‘for women to speak is to threaten the system of difference which gives meaning to patriarchy’ and, as I show throughout this study, uncontrolled speech in the older woman causes particular male anxiety.1 The fact that autonomous power through language is achieved by these four characters indicates a rare 1 Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London: Methuen, 1985), p.191. 2 celebration of the potential for continuing creativity in the older woman, expressed without apparent anxiety by male playwrights and in terms of theatrical performance. We see that the ageing female who escapes the containment of domesticity and social stereotyping has the ability to create her own alternative story. The creation may have limits. For Cleopatra and Bonduca narrative control extends to the final organisation and performance of their own deaths but, while this is the ultimate act of self-determination, this very control results in each writing herself out of her own story. The storytelling and directorial roles taken by Madge and Paulina apparently come to an end when they are drawn back into domesticity. Madge being a dutiful wife must get on with providing breakfast for the guests who have formed her audience, while the widowed Paulina is presented with a new husband and therefore a new occupation which implicitly supersedes that of playmaker. However, both women remain active in the stories they create until these are fully played out, and at the very end of The Winter’s Tale Paulina is still free, articulate and acknowledged as powerful by the dominant male character in the drama. Although these powerful older women are few, their presence and their making of alternative stories signifies a different dramatic imaging of the figure of the older woman which is not only rare but stands in stark contrast to the way that she is generally presented. Despite historical evidence that the older woman occupied many different roles in society during the period discussed, on stage she is presented only in the roles I have indicated above – wife, mother, stepmother, widow, nurse, bawd. Like her younger counterpart, the older woman on stage is depicted as requiring male governance, through the 3 law in the case of the bawd and, where all the others are concerned, through the controlling agencies of marriage and the family. This is not surprising, given that the performed dramatists of the period are male and influenced by the dominant viewpoint of a society which aspires to clear definition and compartmentalising of male and female roles.
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