Cuckolds and Codpieces: Early Modern Anxieties in Male Potency
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2015 Cuckolds And Codpieces: Early Modern Anxieties In Male Potency Doris Barkin Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/852 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] CUCKOLDS AND CODPIECES: EARLY MODERN ANXIETIES IN MALE POTENCY BY DORIS BARKIN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 ii © 2015 DORIS BARKIN All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Clare Carroll ______________ _____________________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Giancarlo Lombardi ______________ _____________________________________________________ Date Executive Officer ______________________________________________________________________ Will Fisher ______________________________________________________________________ Eugenia Paulicelli THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract CUCKOLDS AND CODPIECES: EARLY MODERN ANXIETIES IN MALE POTENCY by Doris Barkin Advisor: Professor Clare Carroll My dissertation is an exploration of male potency through a close examination of the tropes of the cuckold and the codpiece as presented in English dramatic works of the early modern period: I examine codpiece and cuckoldry discourses side by side, to see how one informs the other, and to perceive to what extent masculinity is affected and communicated by these discourses. My purpose here is to explore early modern views of masculinity, marriage, and sexuality through various theoretical frameworks, from Freud to Foucault. My study argues that while the codpiece may emphasize or articulate sexual power and virility, that is, potency, the specter of cuckoldry undermines this power. It is my contention that in order to maintain mastery, the early modern male appropriates the signification of the codpiece, which is in and of itself charged with ambiguity: on the one hand it may signify concealment; on the other, exhibitionism. A close reading of Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl and Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona reveals how gender is materialized and appropriated through the female codpiece, while Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Othello establish the tension between masculine identity and jealousy through the topos of cuckoldry, be it comic or tragic. My v emphasis on impotence, as an undercurrent and overt theme, distinguishes my study from other scholarship in the area of gender and cultural critique . To demonstrate my argument, I apply an eclectic approach: my analysis is formed on the basis of a cultural historicist approach, and is further extended by the deployment of psychoanalytic and gender theories. In addition, the modality of resistance in feminism reaches out to the particular interests of queer theory such as transgressive phenomena, specifically cross-dressing, and, performative aspects of gender construction. My aim is to illuminate some of the most provocative tensions and possibilities in the study of early modern desire. Tracing as I have an evolution of thought, demonstrates that patriarchy was not monolithic and masculinity was not fixed; in fact, this evolution may have introduced a newer, heterodoxical view of ideal masculinity as tending toward the feminine. My aim, then, is to demonstrate that in early modern English drama, the tension between virility or potency and weakness or impotence as signified by codpiece and cuckoldry discourses betrays an anxious masculinity: masculine desire is represented as complex, fraught with aggression but also with fragility and vulnerability. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation has been a long time coming. Starting out as a fledgling graduate student many years ago, I faltered, stumbled, fell, but eventually raised myself up, determined to see the project through to its completion. The perseverance and discipline I attribute to experience; the resoluteness I attribute to the reassurance and confidence of believers and supporters. First and foremost among these supporters is Clare Carroll, the director of my dissertation who, first, as a member of my Orals committee recommended reading Rabelais again. Our conversations helped me think through my ideas about women, men, aging, love, and fidelity, all of which gave rise to the subject I study here. As the director of my dissertation, her insights, questions, discussions, abundant comments and suggestions, but most of all her encouragement, support, and succor gave me the confidence to continue and move forward, for which I am so deeply grateful. I also owe a great deal to my readers, Eugenia Paulicelli and Will Fisher who have been generous in their feedback, and inspiring in their knowledge and their scholarship. Will Fisher, in particular, guided me through the early stages of formulating and structuring my thinking; his work has been tremendously influential in shaping my thought. I also thank my professors along the way at the Graduate Center, Evelyne Ender, Mario Digangi, Monica Calabritto, and Vincent Crapanzano, who unfolded for me new and exciting ways of thinking, and whose doors were always open for my questions, my vii probing, and my concerns. They are teachers in the best sense of the word: they instill and provoke engagement with ideas, and they do so with patience and devotion. My research and writing have also been supported by my colleagues in the department of English at City College, and through a fellowship leave granted by the Division of the Humanities and Arts, which gave me time to finish this dissertation. I am thankful, as well, for the generous funding of the PSC – CUNY Research grant, which I was awarded in 2009 through 2010. I cannot express enough my gratitude to my family, Marsha and Eric Levine, my parents, Nina and Mark Levine, who surrounded me with books and valued education above all else, and to my friends, too numerous to name individually, but without whose affection and understanding I could not continue in this dissertation or in this life. I want to single out for special thanks my daughter, Lana Barkin, whose pride in my accomplishment drove me to completion, and whose love sustained me through both the light and the dark days. This dissertation is dedicated to Larry Berkley, great friend and fellow teacher and scholar, who passed away in 2013 as I was in the middle of writing my dissertation. Larry inspired me through his own stubborn perseverance, and strengthened my resolve to keep going and going, facing down every challenge that came in the way, just as he did throughout his life. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Codpiece Daughter 42 Chapter 2 A Monster with Two Trinkets 76 Chapter 3 Horn Madness: Impotence, Cuckoldry, and Patriarchal 112 Marriage in The Merry Wives of Windsor Chapter 4 “O most lame and impotent conclusion!” (Othello 2. 1. 163) 147 Bibliography 188 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Bronzino, Agnolo, Guidobaldo II della Rovere 10 Figure 2: Holbein, Hans, Whitehall Mural Cartoon 11 Figure 3: Unknown, after Holbein, King Henry VIII 12 Figure 4: Woodcut Illustration, from Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d, or The Artificial Changeling 13 x Barkin 1 Cuckolds and Codpieces: Early Modern Anxieties in Male Potency Introduction “For the codpiece is the primary item of a fighting man’s armour” (Gargantua and Pantagruel. Trans. M.A. Screech 438).... “… Reflect… how Nature inspired man to arm himself and which part of his body he first protected with armour. It was, by God’s virtue, the balls.” (440). [“Car la braguette est premiere piece de harnoys pur armer l’home de guerre”] (Rabelais, Oeuvres completes 373)…. [“-- Considerez (dist Panurge) comment nature l’inspira soy armer, et quelle partie de son corps il commenca premier armer. Ce feut (par la vertus Dieu) la couille,] (Rabelais Oeuvres completes 375). It is in Le Tiers Livre, (“The third book,” 1546) of Rabelais’ Pantagruel (1532), which in its entirety is a discourse on marriage, that Rabelais ingeniously brings together the codpiece and the cuckold as foundational in the metaphysics of masculinity. In response to Panurge’s declamation above, avowing and assenting to Panurge’s manly self-protection, Pantagruel advises him categorically not to marry: “You will be cuckolded, you will be beaten and you will be robbed” (463) [“Vous serez coqu: vous serez battu: vous serez desrobbe”] (Rabelais Oeuvres completes 394). As a touchstone for early modern thinking about marriage, cuckoldry, and masculinity, Pantagruel’s judgment seems to have endured late into the sixteenth and seventeenth century in the dramatic work of the period. While Rabelais’ treatment of the topoi is comic, the book, by virtue of its voluminous, extravagant satire of theological, philosophical, social and political ideologies, contains within it the groundwork for Barkin 2 various and fecund conceptions and perspectives, both in literature and in criticism. One such