Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly's Court Plays and Entertainments
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Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Late Tudor and Stuart Drama Medieval Institute Publications 7-18-2018 Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly's Court Plays and Entertainments Theodora A. Jankowski [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_ltsd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Jankowski, Theodora A., "Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly's Court Plays and Entertainments" (2018). Late Tudor and Stuart Drama. 1. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_ltsd/1 This Monograph is brought to you for free and open access by the Medieval Institute Publications at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Late Tudor and Stuart Drama by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact wmu- [email protected]. i Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly’s Court Plays and Entertainments ii LATE TUDOR AND STUART DRAMA: GENDER, PERFORMANCE, AND MATERIAL CULTURE SERIES EDITORS: Cristina León Alfar Hunter College, CUNY Helen Ostovich McMaster University See our website for further information on this series and its publications. Medieval Institute Publications is a program of Th e Medieval Institute, College of Arts and Sciences iii Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly’s Court Plays and Entertainments Th eodora A. Jankowski Late Tudor and Stuart Drama: Gender, Performance, and Material Culture MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS Western Michigan University Kalamazoo iv Copyright © 2018 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data are available from the Library of Congress ISBN 9781580443333 e- ISBN 9781580443340 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. v f o r Leona with all my love vi vii C o n t e n t s Publication Acknowledgements ix Personal Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction: Elizabeth I, John Lyly, and the Monstrosity of Icons 1 2 Rulership and the Monarch’s Two Bodies in Sapho and Phao , Campaspe , and Midas 2 7 3 Gender, Alpha Males, and All- Around Bullies in Love’s Metamorphosis 5 3 4 Sexuality, Lesbian Desire, and the Necessity of a Penis in Gallathea 7 1 5 Male Friendship and Unruly Women in Endimion 9 3 6 Early Modern Economics in the Entertainments 113 7 Coda: Th e Man in the Moon and Th e Woman in the Moon , or, Whose Moon Is It Really? 147 Works Cited 153 Index 163 viii ix Publication Acknowledgements ATERIAL IN THIS BOOK fi rst appeared in: “ ‘Th e scorne of M Savage people’: Virginity as ‘forbidden sexuality’ in John Lyly’s Love’s Metamorphosis ,” Renaissance Drama 24.1 (1993): 123– 53; “ ‘Where there can be no cause of aff ection’: Redefi ning Virgins, Th eir Desires, and Th eir Pleasures in John Lyly’s Gallathea ,” in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects , edited by Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan, 253– 74, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama , Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000; Women in Power in the Early Modern Drama , Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992; and “Th e Subversion of Flattery: Th e Queen’s Body in John Lyly’s Sapho and Phao ,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 5 (1991): 69– 86. x xi Personal Acknowledgements WOULD FIRST LIKE TO acknowledge and deeply thank my I research assistant, Scott O’Neil. He has been marvelous in searching out secondary sources and providing suggestions that were completely within the purview of what I was trying to accomplish with the book. He also happens to be one of the most dreadful punsters I have ever encountered. For all of his completely awful creations, I truly thank him. I also owe thanks to Scott’s Deborah (VanderBilt) and my Deborah (Uman) for put- ting us in touch with each other. Th anks are also due to Jerry Singerman, my editor at Penn Press, who recommended Erika Gaff ney to me. She is a delightful and calming editor to work with. Th anks also to the series editors Helen Ostovich and Cristina León Alfar and reader Andy Kesson for suggestions for revision. Th e writing of this book was made more diffi cult by the deaths of three close friends during its production. However, their places were taken by my dear friend and colleague Ann Augusta Cathey Carver and my new friend and colleague, Monica Weis. Th ank you also to Janey Runyon and the chicken wranglers Spike and Edie. I am also grateful for the support of all the Gardners: my sister P. J., nephew and niece Matthew and Jennifer Lanza, and my GREAT, in all senses of the word, nephew Holden and niece Phoebe. More profound thanks can be found on the dedication page. xii 1 C h a p t e r 1 Introduction: Elizabeth I, John Lyly, and the Monstrosity of Icons I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too. Queen Elizabeth’s Tilbury Speech Elizabeth I In October of 2013, a veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo was presented with a problem— an abscess in the colon of one of the zoo’s gorillas. It was clearly necessary to operate to remove the obstruction. While the vet- erinarian was sure this was the correct procedure, he had little training in operating on gorillas. Consequently, he called in two abdominal specialists from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. They arrived with their team and were presented with the veterinarian’s only guide to the gorilla’s interior: an old book with sketches of gorilla anatomy. In add- ition to having only the sketchiest notion of a gorilla, the surgeons from Mount Sinai also assumed that their patient would be enormous, an “800 pound” gorilla. They were corrected by the zoo’s veterinarian, who pointed out that gorillas never get that large and, in fact, the zoo’s largest gorilla weighed about 450 pounds. Their patient, Holli, was a mere 180 pounds. The surgeons were a bit concerned, but once they retracted the gorilla’s ebony- colored, hairy skin from the incision, they discovered that they were essentially looking at the insides of a human. Thus reassured, they completed the operation. 1 In August, 1588, Elizabeth I greeted her soldiers at Tilbury before the expected invasion of the Spanish, and advised her troops that she was prepared for the worst, having the “heart and stomach” of a king. Th ese incidents are both very similar and very diff erent. A “mon- strous” animal with a caricature- like external resemblance to humans turns out to have an interior that is so human that ordinary surgeons can operate upon it with complete confi dence. True, humans are evolutionarily related 2 2 ELIZABETH I AND THE SUBVERSION OF FLATTERY to gorillas, but while we may consider the exteriors of both species to be only vaguely similar, we are now presented with an incident in which the interior “truth” of both species is revealed to be extraordinarily similar. Th us, to what extent can humans be considered to take on some of the monstrosity of the gorilla, or that of any great ape? Moving to Tilbury, we are presented with another extraordinary experience. A female ruler claims to have somehow inherited or absorbed male organs: a heart and a stomach. Rationally, we know this is impossible, but probably as impos- sible as the Mount Sinai surgeons similarly being caught up short by the identical nature of human and gorilla interiors. Th us, what had ini- tially seemed monstrous has somehow been recast as essentially human. So, given this, how are we to view Elizabeth’s claims of male and female organs? Are there male and female organs? To what extent do male hearts diff er from female hearts, or male stomachs from female? Here we have no possibility of physical proof of Elizabeth’s contention, for to have sought the proof would have been to kill the queen. But since we can’t prove her claims one way or the other, we are left with a picture of the queen’s mon- strosity, a female body containing male parts and claiming as a result male strength and power. While delivering this well- known speech, Elizabeth was thought to have worn pieces of male armor so as to present an Amazonian or herm- aphroditic fi gure. 2 I want to consider for a moment not the exterior of the queen but what we “see” of her body in this speech. A completely female body is described as containing a male heart and stomach. Yes, this is a metaphorical usage, but I want to push it a little further and consider what the actuality of a situation such as this might imply. Would such a phys- ical combination of parts render Elizabeth hermaphroditic? 3 Many statues of hermaphrodites present the person asleep in a rather tortured posture whereby the lower spine is twisted in such a manner that from one view the hermaphrodite’s breasts are visible and from the other side the male geni- talia. Th is is clearly a monstrous presentation of a human form, perhaps as monstrous as a woman with the internal organs of a man.