Moral Issues in the Plays of Philip Massinger
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CERTAINTY AND DOUBT: MORAL ISSUES IN THE PLAYS OF PHILIP MASSINGER by STEVEN HOLDEN, B.A. (HONOURS) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master ofJod..(Englih) !:\ University—Of'faSmania March, 1985 Contents Abstract .. • • • • • Prefatory Note • • • • Abbreviations .. • • • • • • • • vi Decadence: Moral, Theatrical and Linguistic .. • • • • • • • • 1 II Characteristic Concerns of Tragedy and Tragicomedy 25 Romance and Satire: the Moral Structure of Massinger's Comedies and Tragi- comedies .. 66 IV The Fatal Dowry, The Duke of Milan and The Unnatural Combat: Moral Order in terms of Guilt and Justice • • • • 105 V The Virgin Martyr, The Roman Actor, and Believe As You List: the Conflict of Individual and State 141 Bibliography . 177 Abstract The theory of decadence in early seventeenth-century drama has generally been misapplied. Chapter I suggests that the moral uncertainty found in many plays is not the product of some kind of perversity but of a sea-change in the way belief, knowledge and law were perceived. The application of an ethical standard which equates a corrupt court with a corrupt private theatre imposes an ideological and inappro- priate interpretation on the drama. I argue that changes in morality, the theatre and literary style are not symptoms of decay. If they are, then Shakespeare may be as culpable as Beaumont and Fletcher. I suggest, in Chapter II, that Shakespeare's tragedies and tragicomedies, like Beaumont and Fletcher's tragicomedies, are tragic and tragicomic precisely because they are uncertain. We usually find an unresolved tension in the ending which prevents us from carrying home a moral for our use and edification. We are disturbed rather than comforted. Massinger's method in collaboration is similar. His independent tragicomedies, as I argue in Chapter III, exploit the tension between romantic and satiric action to illustrate a complex moral world in which characters may have an uncertain and changing moral status. Typically he uses satiric characters and methods to undercut romantic assumptions and conventions. The process can sometimes lead, however, to confusions which make some of Massinger's plays morally dubious rather than ambiguous. iv The questions, paradoxes and tensions in Massinger's tragedies are more acute than those to be found in his tragicomedies. He presents a shifting world in which it is difficult to judge characters accurately, and in which justice seldom seems to be done. Our sympathies are complicated by the multiple moral status of his protagonists, or their antagonists, who are never totally evil or wholly redeemable. The Renaissance plays, in Chapter IV, exploit the problems inherent in the idealistic and malicious pursuit of revenge. The Roman plays, in Chapter V, deal with more political complexities, largely the result of a simultaneous sympathy for the individual and acceptance of the identity imposed on him by the state. The tension between perceived and imposed identity, and the tragic destruction of the integrity of the individual, are most fully realised in The Roman Actor and Believe As You List. The simultaneity of equal and opposite values in these plays is common to Massinger's work as a whole. The tension of uncertainty - whether broken, as in the tragedies, or not - seems to express exactly that "negative capability" which Massinger has been denied. Only if we read him on the most superficial level, can we consider him to be moralistic or simplistic. v Prefatory Note It is surprising how easily critical suggestions snowball into unqualified assertions. Philip Massinger is one dramatist of the early seventeenth century who has suffered, and a renovation of his reputation seems not only timely but necessary, particularly in view of his fine tragedy, Believe As You List. My greatest debt has been to Margaret Scott, for introducing me to this play and urging its merits, and for steering me away from too rigorous a sceptical interpretation of Massinger•s plays. I would also like to thank Adrian Colman, who took over supervision of the thesis in its final stages. Cheryl Vertigan and Graeme Rayner of the Morris Miller Library, and Annette Sumner of Inter-library Loans, have always been unfailingly helpful. My debt to Kathryn Holden for transforming manuscript to type is enormous. I would finally like to thank the Commonwealth Department of Education for a post-graduate research scholarship which has supported me over the last two years� This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other higher degree or graduate diploma in any university, and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where. due reference. is made in the text. · vi Abbreviations A.U.M.L.A. Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Oxford Massinger The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger. Ed. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson. 5 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1976. CHAPTER I. DECADENCE: MORAL, THEATRICAL AND LINGUISTIC The early seventeenth-century drama has suffered, since the nineteenth century, from the critical misconception that it is decadent. For nineteenth- century critics decadence referred to indecorous subject matter, although they had difficulty in defining a sudden moral collapse over the forty- year period from the early 1600s to the closing of the theatres. More recently, the term has been applied to literary style as well. In most cases decadence also implies the moral laxity of the private theatre audience. 1 The charge of decadence is most commonly applied to Beaumont and Fletcher, 2 usually in relation to their shaky moral effects. By the time we get to Philip Massinger the criticisms of them are merely re-cut to fit him. Massinger was also the focus of T.S. Eliot's influential writing on the "dissociation of sensibility" which, he argued, was apparent in 1. I am indebted to S. Gorley Putt, "The Complacency of Philip Massinger, Gent," English, 30 (1981), 99-100, for this review of the decadence theory. On the influence of the private theatre audience see Lawrence Wallis, Fletcher, Beaumont and Company: Entertainers to the Jacobean Gentry (New York: King's Crown Press, 1947), pp. 73, 80. 2. For example, by M.C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (1935; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), Ch. 10; and T.B. Tomlinson, A Study of Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1964), Ch. 10. "Beaumont and Fletcher" refers to Beaumont, Fletcher and their collaborators in the plays of the canon, including Massinger. 2. the literature of the seventeenth century. 3 In the face of such critical abuse it seems necessary to, as it were, negotiate a new contract for Massinger. I shall suggest later that he is not morally decadent, nor a strict and insipid moralist, 4but a dramatist who expresses a moral uncertainty typical of his age. Here, I simply want to answer the charge of decadence. The arguments of the "decadent" critics are mutually reinforcing:, bad audiences influence bad playwrights to write bad plays. I shall attempt, therefore, to answer their arguments in three separate but related ways. Firstly, they confuse a perverse or dubious morality with moral uncertainty. Secondly, the influence of the private theatres is more likely to have been positive than negative. And thirdly, Massinger's distinctive literary style is not evidencel _ of decay. The "decadent" critics tend to treat the very real problem of strange moral gymnastics in the early , seventeenth-century drama by measuring perversity [ rather than examining the gymnastics. Basically, they reprove the absence of moral certainty. 5 This assumes that the function of drama is to guarantee moral security, or to organise a moral system. Beaumont and Fletcher are considered 3. T.S. Eliot, "Philip Massinger," in Elizabethan Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1934). 4. A point of view influenced by T.A. Dunn, Philip Massinger: The Man and the Playwright (London: Nelson, for the University College of Ghana, 1957), pp. 131, 144, 149. 5. See, for example, Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library, II 2nd ed. (1876; rpt. London: John Murray, 1909), pp. 143, 147, 159- 60; A.H. Cruickshank, Philip Massinger (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1920), p. 19; and L.C. Knights, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (London: Chatto and Windus, 1968), p. 295. 3. decadent because their moral conclusions appear to be disorganised and facile. Clearly, Beaumont and Fletcher differ from Shakespeare and not just because they are less talented. But their plays, like Shakespeare's, do respond to moral issues in an organised way. The response of Beaumont and Fletcher often seems obscure because of their tendency in some plays to stumble into moral confusion. I shall compare Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida with their A King and No King to illustrate this. But Beaumont and Fletcher also express a more deliberate ambiguous method in The Maid's Tragedy, in which, I suggest, moral issues are galvanised and express extreme tensions. This play compares well with Measure for Measure where, typically of the Shakespearean problem play, moral issues seem to be suspended. The following discussion rests on the assumption that a play is effective when the moral outcome answers to our dramatic experience, not necessarily our moral preferences; and, following from this, that the moral outcome need not be absolute, so long as it answers to our dramatic experience. These assumptions are important because, if we accept the moral criteria which critics of the decadence apply, we will find ourselves condemning plays like Measure for Measure as inept, incompetent, unscrupulous or morbid; or else we will have to distort the play to preserve some kind of moral integrity.