WORD AND SACRAMENT IN SHAKESPEARE'S SECOND TETRALOGY John Thomas Dever Newport News, Virginia B.A., Bellarmine College, 1968 M.A., University of Kentucky, 1974 A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Virginia May 1991 ii ,. €) Copyright by John Thomas·oever All rights reserved May 1991 iii Abstract Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy is deeply informed by contemporaneous theological and linguistic concerns. In portraying the collapse of an overextended sacrosanct conception of kingship in Richard II, the disorder and clarification resulting in i and 2 Henry IV, and the reconstitution of genuinely sacramental kingship in Henry V, Shakespeare draws from correspondent ideas of the English Reformation. While not dispensing with sacramental elements and the performance of ceremonies, Anglican teaching emphasizes that efficacy resides in the inner effect upon a properly disposed receiver within a larger comprehending and affirming community. Semantics undergoes a similar shift in emphasis, with the meaning of language not existing primarily in isolated reference but constituted by use within a community. The binding power of oaths, a use of language closely associated with sacraments, is likewise qualified by conditions of pledge and fulfillment. The tragedy of Richard II stems from his attempt to render kingship invulnerable by assuming inherent connection between its external forms and inner reality. The reign of the usurping Henry IV precipitates attempts by Hotspur and other rebels to restore an irreparably lost order; and ventures, both comic and crass, by Falstaff and associates to exploit the lack of correspondence between signum and iv res, word and reference, oath and obligation. Assimilating values from antithetical perspectives, Prince Hal awaits the opportunity to perform genuine acts of valor. Despite doing so at the end of Part I, he is unable to claim due credit in a world lacking stable signification. In Part II, language and signs divorced from meaningful correspondence exert increasingly insufferable power until redeemed by Hal, who demonstrates his worthiness as heir in the encounter with his dying father. As Henry V, he constitutes a new order of kingship by forthrightly facing the emptiness of words and ceremonies in themselves; but in an action parallel to that of the Chorus with the play's audience, he invests them with meaning by creating communities aware of the discrepancy between signifiers and things signified, things seen and unseen, but using their powers of imagination and affirmation to bridge the difference. V To the memory of my mother Mary Frances O'Sullivan Dever vi Acknowledgements In the course of preparing this work, I have been fortunate in receiving the assistance of many people. My introduction to the captivating world of Shakespeare's histories occurred under the tutelage of J. A. Bryant, Jr., in a seminar that he conducted at the University of Kentucky in the spring of 1973. It was there that I conceived of the centrality of word and sacrament to understanding Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy and developed a paper around it. In my enthusiasm, I thrust my writing upon friends and colleagues, Mike Moran, Walter Foreman, and Richard Sugg; I also carried it to England that summer when the Kentucky Branch of the English-Speaking Union sponsored my attendance at the University of Birmingham's annual Shakespeare institute at Stratford-upon-Avon. There David Palmer, like previous readers, reacted favorably, but kindly and tactfully suggested that the ideas would mature with time and more intensive research. As years passed, my energies were spent on many other projects until the time came for writing the dissertation at the University of Virginia, where after being admitted to candidacy for the doctorate, I chose to take up the topic again. My director, Arthur Kirsch, has been unfailingly patient, supportive, and inspiring. I also appreciate the time spent reviewing the manuscript and constructively vii commenting on it by the other members of my committee: Professors Paul cantor, Clare Kinney, and Erik Midelfort. Also of assistance at the University of Virginia were Jon Whitman, who pointed me towards important medieval sources on the sacraments, and James Nohrnberg, who suggested further relevant material. I would also like to express my appreciation for the encouragement and support given by my colleagues at Thomas ~ Nelson Community College, where I have served on the faculty and administration while preparing this manuscript. I would particularly like to acknowledge Robert Templin, Jr., president of the college, and Michael Bruno, colleague in the English Department, who made it possible for me to have enough time away from the press of everyday affairs so that I could get a substantial amount of writing done. Further thanks go to Jack Fulghum, whose assistance has gone far beyond formatting my hard drive, and Aileen Schweitzer, who has cheerfully processed numerous inter-library loan requests. Finally, let me express gratitude for the support and encouragement of my wife, Peggy, and of her parents, Dallas and Katherine Bryant, as well as for the patience of my children, Seth and Sarah, who have long awaited the completion of this project. viii Contents Introduction 1 1. Richard II: Swearing by the sword 27 2. 1 Henry IV: "ecce signum!" 55 3. 2 Henry IV: Turning the Sword to Word 88 4. Henry V: Swords, Oaths, Men's Faiths, and Wafer Cakes 117 Works Consulted 152 ix "Minding true things by what their mock'ries be" Henry V 1 Introduction This study of Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy seeks to demonstrate that the individual plays and their overall design are deeply informed by contemporaneous theological and linguistic concerns. It proceeds on the hypothesis that as Shakespeare shaped the historical material before him to depict in Richard II the collapse of one conception of kingship with its attendant world view and in the subsequent three plays its progressive reconstitution on new terms, he made use of correspondent ideas and issues from the English Reformation, particularly those concerned with sacramental theology and associated matters of language. Barber and Wheeler have postulated the profound effect that abolishing the Catholic mass and discarding belief in the Real Presence must have had upon Shakespeare as person and artist, particularly in the way he shaped the psychological configuration of the tragedies (20-38). Although this study disavows interest in Shakespeare's personal beliefs and refrains from extensive psychological interpretation, it does, like Barber and Wheeler, assume that the transition from Catholic to Protestant England to be critically important in understanding Shakespeare's artistic achievement. In the four plays under consideration, the Reform movement provided Shakespeare with immense resources of contested meanings and beliefs, not to mention anxieties, 2 to draw upon in depicting the effort to establish a new order after the deposition and murder of one considered to be "the figure of God's majesty,/ His captain, steward, deputy elect,/ Anointed, crowned, planted many years" (R2 4.1.125-27). 1 In no way, however, do I propose or mean to suggest that Shakespeare is writing about the Reformation, using the events from the first quarter of the fifteenth century as a proleptic vehicle for a religious allegory of what was to occur over a century later. Clearly his subject, as in the previous tetralogy, is English kings and English history. But the abundant allusions in the plays to sacramental practices, biblical topics, and linguistic perplexities invite us to consider these as more than isolated, cosmetic references in an account otherwise devoted to domestic political turmoil assuaged by foreign expedition. They form a distinctive pattern showing that the problems of kingship and order are posed and worked out in terms frequently analogous to Reformation principles. To speak of Reformation principles comes dangerously near to oversimplifying a subject where controversy abounded. But to a remarkable extent, there does emerge a 1 All quotations from Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV, and Henry V are taken from the new Arden editions, edited respectively by Ure, Humphreys, and Walter. Quotations from other plays and poems are taken from The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by Evans et al. 3 consistency in Anglican thought, what George and George term "the Protestant mind of the English Reformation." Detailed background and relevant sources are provided at applicable points in the discussion of the individual plays; here I shall simply provide an overview suggesting the linkages between topics. At fundamental issue for Reformers is determining the appropriate balance between the claims of works, opus operatum, and sacramental signum, on the one hand; and faith, opus operantis, and res, on the other. The Protestant shift is towards the primacy of inner disposition as implied by the latter group of terms, as against the sufficiency of external action sanctioned by the former. But this changed emphasis does not preclude the usefulness or necessity of what is displaced: works confirm faith; ceremonies whose meaning is understood and affirmed have value; and substance remains largely inaccessible unless expressed in signum. Time and again, issues similar to these emerge at critical junctures in the plays. In the related area of language, the fundamental issue is mediating between competing conceptions of meaning: in the traditional view, language conceived of as representational of and correspondent to realities beyond it; from a more revolutionary perspective, language regarded as relational and constitutive, its meaning discovered not in the things it supposedly refers to but in the dynamic of 4 its use within a com.munity. 2 The shift towards meaning as constitutive occurs with the Reformed emphasis upon the affective dimension of language. As Waswo demonstrates, the hermeneutic principles of Erasmus and Luther in regard to scripture result in a rhetorical theory and practice akin to the formative aims of poetic discourse advanced by Sidney.