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Political Meaning in Women Beware Women Author(S): A The Tragedy of Peace: Political Meaning in Women Beware Women Author(s): A. A. Bromham Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 26, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, (Spring, 1986), pp. 309-329 Published by: Rice University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/450510 Accessed: 12/04/2008 17:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rice. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org SEL 26(1986) ISSN 0039-3657 The Tragedy of Peace: Political Meaning in Women Beware Women A. A. BROMHAM Thomas Middleton's tragedy, Women Beware Women (1621), has justifiably received a considerable amount of critical and scholarly attention. Together with The Changeling (1622), it forms the pinnacle of his dramatic achievement, and it is always likely to be a main focus of interest. The two tragedies, however, are often treated in isolation from the rest of the dramatist's work, though some studies have provided important insights into their relation to the comedies, and have helped us to understand more fully their place in the development of Middleton's work.1 More recent studies have revealed other kinds of connection between the plays by providing historical perspectives and by exploring the relation of the drama to contemporary social, political, and religious matters.2 Early in his career, Middleton wrote The Phoenix (1604), a play about the ideal prince and the art of princely government, at the time of the accession of James I. His last play, A Game at Chess (1624), was a political satire. These indications of political interest both early and late in Middleton's career suggest the likelihood of its expression in some of the other plays, but, although William Power made some suggestions in the 1950s,3 this aspect of the dramatist's work had not been fully explored until the appearance of Margot Heinemann's book, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama Under the Early Stuarts, in 1980. Even she treats Women Beware Women more from a social point of view, and does not Anthony A. Bromham is a Principal Lecturer in English at the West London Institute of Higher Education, England. He has published work on Thomas Middleton in Notes and Queries and in Studies in English Literature. A book for students on The Changeling, published by Macmillan, will appear in 1987. This essay arises out of ongoing research into Middleton's tragicomedies and tragedies. 310 POLITICS IN WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN suggest quite the kind of fuller political context she presents in her chapters on The Witch, Hengist, King of Kent, andA Game at Chess. I want here to suggest a dimension of political significance in Women Beware Women in the writer's choice and treatment of thematic material, and to show, through an examination of verbal and image series and of the use of setting and spatial perspectives, how motif and dramatic effect are integrally related to political viewpoint. I shall argue that the play makes a contribution to the contemporary debate about James I's peaceful foreign policy which was intense in the early 1620s. Though there is no conclusive evidence for the exact dating of Women Beware Women, there is considerable agreement on a date around 1621.4 This would place the play within a year of Hengist, King of Kent (1620) and within three years of a A Game at Chess (1624), both of which have strong political content.5 At the time when Women Beware Women was written there was considerable public concern in the country about events in Europe and the fate of James I's popular daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, the Protestant Elector Palatine. On 25 October 1619 they had been crowned king and queen of Bohemia in Prague upon the deposition of the Catholic Ferdinand of Styria, who had just been elected emperor. Catholic Spain and Bavaria were bound to assist their kinsman, the new emperor, and so in the summer of 1620 the Spanish invaded the Palatinate, whilst a Bavarian army marched on Bohemia. James I was in a difficult position. Negotiations were in progress about the marriage of Prince Charles to the infanta of Spain, and the king of England had no wish to alienate the Hapsburgs by supporting Bohemia. Moreover, his motto was Beati pacifici, and his wish to be seen as Rex Pacificus was very dear to his heart. However, his failure to aid his Protestant son-in-law, while pursuing friendly relations with Spain, seemed to many in England misguided, and, worse, likely to lead to the triumph of false religion. Anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic feeling in the country was deep- rooted, and had been fuelled in 1619 by the execution of Raleigh at the instigation of the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, who, it seemed, was acquiring more and more influence over the king. When Elizabeth had to flee from Bohemia with her children in the winter of 1620, she and her husband became a focus for popular anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feeling in England. They had been dispossessed of their territories by Catholic forces, and there was a strong feeling that war was the only honorable and morally justifiable course for James I to take. The Parliament of 1621 clashed with him by demanding the A. A. BROMHAM 311 right to debate foreign policy. Margot Heinemann asserts that the parliament "'certainlyrepresented majority opinion in the country."6 Not only in the nation at large, but at court and in the Council there were those who held the view that James's failure to support the elector was a failure to support true religion, and also the failure of a father to support his children in time of trouble. Willson quotes a letter from Pembroke, the leader of the anti-Spanish group in the Privy Council, which indicates that war is necessary if religion and national and family honor are to be upheld: It is true that the King will be very unwilling to be engaged in a war. And yet I am confident, when the necessity of the cause of religion, his son's preservation, and his own honour call upon him, that he will perform whatsoever belongs to the Defender of the Faith, a kind father-in-law, and one careful of that honour which I must confess by a kind of misfortune hath long lain in suspense.7 The feeling and attitude implied in the last clause are more directly expressed in many of the popular pamphlets of the early 1620s, critical of the pro-Spanish policy, of the Spanish marriage plans, and advocating assistance for the king and queen of Bohemia. In one such pamphlet, Tom Tell-Troath, which probably appeared in 1622, the writer takes up the king's title, Defender of the Faith, and questions its validity: "As for the glorious Title, Defender of the Faith (which was wont to be a Point of Controversie betweene us and Rome) they say flattly that your faithful Subjects have more Cause to question that then the Papists."8 The writers of these pamphlets stress that the pursuit of peace springs from a desire for false security, which leads to inaction and the wish to avoid responsibilities. The writer of Vox Coeli says: And let vs dispell those charmes of security, wherein England hath bin too long lull'd and enchanted a sleepe: And if feare and pusilanimity yet offer to shut our eyes against our safety, yet let our resolution and courage open them to the imma- nency of our danger; that our glory may surmount our shame, and our swords cut those tongues and pens in pieces, which henceforth dare either to speake of peace, or write of truce with Spaine.9 In a striking passage from Tom Tell-Troath, the writer laments the loss of national honor possessed by the country in the reign of Queen Elizabeth when Spain was the national enemy: 312 POLITICS IN WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN The old Compasse of Honour is quite forgott, and our Pilotts, now adaies, know no other Route than that of their own Fortunes; according to which they tacke and untacke all publicke Affaires. No Marvaille then, if wee see your goodly Vessels of this State misguided and shamefully exposed to all Maner of Danger. Sometimes by being runn agrounde upon your Sands of shallow and uncertaine Policie; but most of all, by being kept at Anchore, and full as it is of Leakes, and rotten Ribbes, in the deepe Gulphe of Security. 10 If pamphleteers such as Tom Tell-Troath and Thomas Scott were critical of James's peaceful foreign policy, other publications, often of an official, or officially-approved, kind, extolled the benefits of peace.
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