The Tragedy of Peace: Political Meaning in Author(s): A. A. Bromham Source: Studies in , 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

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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 (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 (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: 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 , 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. Indeed, there appears to be at this time what we might call quite a substantial "literature of peace," presenting opposing attitudes towards this issue." A tract, The Peace-Maker, or Great Brittaines Blessing (1618), which was actually entered to Thomas Middleton in the Stationer's Register, and which bears the royal arms and a "Cum Privilegio" on the title page, but is thought by some to be the work of Lancelot Andrewes with sections by James I himself, praises the king as the new Solomon and the benefits of the peace which he has established.12 Written before the crisis in Bohemia, it deals with the causes of peace-breaking at home, particularly with the issue of duelling. The king's motto, "Beati Pacifici," is used as a refrain at the end of several paragraphs. It is also used in the works of other writers. Beati Pacifici: The Blessednes of the Peace-makers (1620) is the text of two sermons preached before the king by John Denison, and obviously printed with official approval. 13It, like Robert Aylett's Peace and herfovre garders (1622), praises the benefits of peace and the blessedness of the peace-maker. The prefatory verse to Aylett's book indicates that it is intended as a criticism of those who advocate war.'4 Significantly both Denison and Aylett attack those who disturb the peace and cause divisions within the country, and they focus their attention on Puritans, the "contentious brethren" who "dissent from our Church in her Ceremonies and government,"'5 the very kind of people whose hatred of popish practices would also lead them to be most vociferous in criticism of the failure to support the Protestant cause in Europe. Denison thus tries to discredit the opposition's case by suggesting that it is made by trouble-makers.'6 Some of Middleton's other works from the period when Women Beware Women was written give clear indications of the dramatist's A. A. BROMHAM 313 political position in relation to these matters. At the conclusion of The World Tossed at Tennis (1620) the Soldier resolves to join the volunteers going with Sir Horace Vere to the assistance of the Elector Palatine in that year: "I'll over yonder, to the most glorious wars / That e'er fam'd Christian kingdom."'7 Middleton stresses the religious nature of the war through the reference to the Christian kingdom. The only war which would bring glory and fame to it would be a war against the enemies of the faith. The lines imply that the defence of the Palatinate is necessary for the preservation of true religion, and the heavy emphasis on the renown to be gained by fighting for this cause is implicitly critical of official foreign policy which by contrast must appear inglorious and ignoble. It is true, as Rhodes Dunlap points out,'8 that this speech is followed immediately by that of the Scholar who says that he will stay and settle in "a land of a most glorious peace," and who goes on to praise James I, but the praise is for peace at home, and the recognition of the necessity to fight in particular circumstances is not necessarily at odds with a general desire for peace. As so often in Middleton's work, criticism of official policy which might be interpreted as reflecting on the king is balanced by expressions of respect for the monarch.'9 The dramatist's praise of Prince Charles in The World Tossed at Tennis and elsewhere is indicative of his attitude, since the prince joined the war party in the Council in the early part of the conflict. The hope associated with the prince is expressed in martial terms: Nay, where the prince of nobleness himself Proves our Minerva's valiant'st, hopefull'st son, And early in his spring puts armour on.20

In the city pageant, The Triumphs of Integrity (1623), in which the king's motto, "Beati Pacifici," is prominently displayed, there is also an expression of hope in Charles: We have the crown of Britain's hope agen, Illustrious Charles our prince, which all will say Adds the chief joy and honour to this day.2'

Middleton's regard for the prince is most clearly demonstrated in A Game at Chess (1624), where, as the White Knight, he is presented as the hero of the piece, actively outwitting and unmasking the Black House, which represents the forces of Catholicism led by the king of Spain. There is evidence which might suggest that Women Beware Women should be seen as a conscious contribution to what I have 314 POLITICS IN WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN termed the "literature of peace" produced at this time. The word, "peace" occurs with interesting frequency in the play, and we know from his other works that it is a prominent feature of Middleton's dramatic technique to alert his audience to central ideas and issues through the recurrence of key words, which, used in different contexts and situations in a play, reveal the various facets of its central concerns.22 Bianca is the first character to use the word in the first scene of the play; her words carry some emphasis because up to this point, although she has been a focus of attention, she has been silent:

Kind Mother, there is nothing can be wanting To her that does enjoy all her desires. Heaven send a quiet peace with this man's love, And I am as rich as virtue can be poor: Which were enough after the rate of mind To erect temples for content placed here. (I.i. 125-30)23

The use of the adjective, "quiet," in association with "peace" is not tautologous but has an emphatic function. It also alerts us to the fact that references to "quiet" and "quietness'" should be included within the verbal series which runs throughout the play and proliferates in the final scene. In the same scene Leantio speaks of their "quiet innocent loves." In addition, the association of "quiet" with "peace" serves to emphasize a contrasting series associated with storms and thunder. One verbal series serves to define the other, and they are both significantly linked to location and spatial perspectives, peace being connected with interiors, with shelter from the storms which rage outside. The second and third scenes of the play contain peace references. In I.ii, Isabella, distressed at the proposed marriage to the Ward, is given lines about God's ability to achieve peace:

That Providence that has made ev'ry poison Good for some use, and sets four warring elements At peace in man, can make a harmony In things that are most strange to human reason. (I.ii. 179-82)

The image suggests not the absence of opposing elements, and therefore of tension, but responsible control and balance of them. In the next scene Leantio persuades himself to go to work and to resist A. A. BROMHAM 315 the temptation to stay with Bianca, in words about peace, in both personal and public life, also achieved through responsible control:

As fitting is a government in love As in a kingdom; where 'tis all mere lust 'Tis like an insurrection in the people, That raised in self-will wars against all reason. But love that is respective for increase Is like a good king that keeps all in peace. (I.iii.43-48)

Implicit again here is an active state involving control of opposing elements in contrast to the static or passive state of the treasure in the chest image which Leantio uses in the first scene about the management of his love relationship. The two references in the second and third scenes to peace as involving responsible activity rather than passivity present the different spheres of universe, state, and personal life, or the levels of God, king, and husband, and thus convey a comprehensive idea of true peace. The source of the moral deadness of society in Women Beware Women is shown to be the morally irresponsible pursuit of security, of false peace in the sphere of personal relations, which is ultimately destructive of honor and integrity. It is noticeable that the word "peace" is to be found at crucial points in the play, suggesting that the dramatist is drawing attention to it. The word occurs in the first three scenes and in the final scene, but it is also present in the penultimate line of the Duke in II.ii, just before he leads Bianca away:

Put trust in our love for the managing Of all to thy heart's peace. We'll walk together, And show a thankful joy for both our fortunes. (385-87)

Significantly it is also present at the moment when Leantio's fate is sealed in IV.i, as Bianca indirectly suggests to the Duke that she would be glad to be rid of her former husband:

Bian. I love peace, sir. Duke And so do all that love; take you no care for't, It shall be still provided to your hand. (125-27) 316 POLITICS IN WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN

Other references to "peace" are scattered through the play and after the third scene all but two of these are to the false concept. The exceptions are both found in speeches of the Cardinal, who appears first in Act IV as a moral spokesman. In the same scene in which Bianca tells the Duke she loves peace and would be glad to be rid of Leantio, the Cardinal brings the Duke to an apparent state of repentance through his warnings of death and damnation. As he leaves, the Cardinal thinks he has worked a conversion and says, "The peace of a fair soul / Keep with my noble brother" (IV.i.265). The peace of which he speaks stands in stark contrast to the false peace which the Duke, left alone, shows that he is seeking. He will achieve the peace Bianca wants and avoid having to listen to more moral criticism and disturbing words from the Cardinal by refraining from sleeping with Bianca until he may marry her, which will be possible as soon as Leantio is murdered. In the last scene, as the dead lie around him, the Cardinal says:

The greatest sorrow and astonishment That ever struck the general peace of Florence Dwells in this hour. (V.ii. 198-200)

Again, the contrast between the peace of which he speaks, and the disorder and destruction wrought by those who have sought a false peace of their own is marked here just before the end of the play. The placing of the Cardinal's two references to peace, both of which provoke thought about the meaning of the word, is important. The nature of true peace is kept before the audience in a scene where the play's pace quickens as the characters hasten to their destruction, and also in the concluding moments of the final scene with, significantly, the last reference of the series. Elsewhere in the play references to the false peace are to be found. When Leantio returns home to find Bianca in a discontented state, he says, "What a peace / Has he that never marries" (III.ii. 199-200). His speech clearly indicates a desire to reject the responsibilities of marriage if it cannot provide pleasure. Hippolito, committing incest with his niece, Isabella, calls her "my life's peace" (III.iii. 193). False peace is also indicated when Livia pretends to be reconciled with Hippolito (who has just killed her lover) when she is actually secretly planning to have her revenge later in the marriage masque. She says to her brother, "I am now myself, / That speaks all peace and friendship" (IV.ii. 172-73). It is in the final scene of the play that the A. A. B R O M H A M 317 peace references multiply. As it opens, the Duke expresses the desire to effect a reconciliation between Bianca and the Cardinal: "How perfect my desires were, might I witness / But a fair noble peace 'twixt your two spirits"' (V.ii. 10-11). His brother replies, "I profess peace, and am content," but Bianca's aside shows that there is to be no peace between them despite the public show of it. She reveals that she has laid a plot to kill the Cardinal in lines which are doubly ironic in that they foretell what will happen to her, and also echo the Cardinal's own words of warning to the Duke in Act IV:

Cardinal, you die this night, the plot's laid surely- In time of sports death may steal in securely, Then 'tis least thought on. (V.ii.21-23)

In Bianca's "antemasque," Hymen, offering his cup to her, says, "Taste it, and thou shal ever find / Love in thy bed, peace in thy mind" (V.ii.53-54), and, as the Cardinal drinks from what she believes to be the poisoned cup, Bianca says "Now my peace is perfect" (V.ii.70). With Leantio dead, and the Cardinal doomed, she believes she will be able to live free from criticism and accusation. This is the peace she seeks, a state in which she is not forced to face her guilt. The masque then proceeds with further references to peace. At the opening a song is sung to Juno, presenting the plight of the nymph who is in love with two shepherds at once, and imploring her to set "right my peace of life, / And with thy power conclude this strife." The nymph is played by Isabella, and this prayer to a deity to establish peace in the sphere of her warring emotions may be intended to recall Isabella's lines in the second scene of the play about the ability of God to set the "four warring elements / At peace in men," a reference which I have suggested contributes to our understanding of the nature of true peace. After the song, Isabella as the Nymph asks Juno to

Pity this passionate conflict in my breast, This tedious war 'twixt two affections; Crown one with victory, and my heart's at peace. (V. ii. 87-89)

As she offers up incense to the goddess, she prays, "may it ascend peacefully." The masque, then, is concerned with the achievement of peace in this conflict of loves, but, as the audience is only too well 318 POLITICS IN WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN

aware, the performers have far from peaceful intentions towards each other. In the masque as in the play as a whole, the pursuit of peace, as the characters see it, is the pursuit of disaster and destruction. The significant recurrence of the word "peace," with its emphasis upon a morally irresponsible pursuit of security, is complemented in Women Beware Women by symbolic significance attaching to Middleton's use of location and to the establishment of spatial perspectives. The action of the play takes place largely within two settings, Leantio's house and the court. Though most of the scenes in which the dramatist makes the audience aware of a specific location are interiors, there are a number of references to the external world, and one scene, I.iii, in which the external world is directly presented. The importance of this scene to the play's structure is not always noted, yet it is an essential part of Middleton's very careful scenic patterning. Connections are often made between the "'chessscene" in the middle of the play and the masque at the end.24 In both those scenes the action on stage is split, in one between the chess game and the seduction, and in the other between the performers of the masque and the court audience; in both, the different levels of the stage are used. Such is also the case in I.iii. At first Leantio is in the street and his mother and Bianca appear at a window; then, later in the scene, the state procession with the Duke passes over the stage as the women observe it from above. So, in this scene, the audience is presented with a sense both of the Leantio household and of the external world. Bianca's fall comes about from this moment of looking out of the window into the world outside, and windows figure significantly in the play not only here but elsewhere. Bianca escaped from her parents' home through a window to elope with Leantio, who recalls the event in III.iii: "And then received thee from thy father's window / Into these arms at midnight" (III.iii.258-59). Later, when Leantio parades before Bianca in his new finery as Livia's lover, there is a suggestion that Bianca may be looking out of a window, since Leantio remarks on windows and again recalls the elopement:

These are her lodgings; She's simply now advanced. I took her out Of no such window, I remember, first. (IV.i.42-44)

Repetition of the staging of I.iii, with Leantio below and Bianca above, would remind the audience visually of that important scene, which shows the lovers' delight in each other immediately before the A. A. BROMHAM 319

fatal moment in which the Duke sees Bianca. Certainly the repetition of the detail of the elopement suggests that Middleton intends it to have a particular significance, and, indeed, we can see that he establishes a development associated with windows,25 from the joyful elopement of the lovers, to the moment when Bianca is seen by the Duke, and then to the bitter destructiveness to which they have come as they hurl abuse at each other in IV.i. Windows provide an interface between the interior and the outer world, and although the settings in Women Beware Women are largely interiors, the audience is not allowed to forget the external world. Into it Leantio must go to work to earn his living, and it is in I.iii that much emphasis is put on this point. In the same scene there is a glimpse of another aspect of the outer life as the state procession passes on its way to the cathedral. This is not in the play simply to establish how the Duke sees Bianca, nor is it a piece of gratuitous pageantry. The procession of the ruler, nobles, churchmen, and the States of Florence shows the outer world to be the sphere of public affairs as well as a world of work. The Duke appears in the scene solely in his role as ruler: he does not speak, and no sense of him as an individual character is conveyed except the Mother's comment that he is a "goodly gentleman" (line 90) of fifty-five. It is a mistake to bring to bear what we know of the Duke from later scenes when considering the effect of this. Far from having any reason to believe him to be a libertine, we have no reason to doubt the Mother's approving words. It is a common technique of Middleton's from his early comedies onwards to establish a critical, moral viewpoint by first establishing a character's role, such as mother, husband, ruler, thus setting up expectations about how the character ought to behave, and then subverting those expectations by showing a discrepancy between the ideal behavior appropriate to the role and the actual behavior of the individual.26 The solemnity and ceremony of the public event in this scene is in contrast to the disordered world of the court which is shown in the next act. What is conveyed here in the ordered hierarchy of the procession and the fact that it is a yearly ceremony of church and state, "Religiously observed," as the Mother says, is a sense of what the world of public affairs should be like, which is reinforced by the statements about good government in public and personal life in Leantio's speech a little earlier in the scene, lines 43-48, which is quoted above and which contains the reference to the "good king that keeps all in peace." The speech brings together the aspects of the outer life which are emphasized in this scene as a whole, the responsibilities of family life and labor and 320 POLITICS IN WOMEN B EW A RE WOMEN of public life and government. Margot Heinemann argues that the general life values of Leantio and his mother are those of industrious citizens, as we find Leantio expressing in this scene the importance of thrift and hard work, for instance, but Heinemann agrees that there is no pretence that the citizen characters live up to citizen ideals,27 any more than the Duke later in the play lives up to the ideals of good government expressed in Leantio's speech, and through the impression conveyed visually by the public procession. The important point to note is that at the beginning of the play Middleton not only defines true peace in the first references of the verbal series, but also provides a view of society and established ideals of behavior which should operate within it. Those ideals, associated like peace with moral responsibility and order, and the opposites of those ideals, are expressed within the play through contrasts between active, demanding, and potentially dangerous external or open worlds, and static, quiet, and apparently secure interior or closed worlds, expressed both verbally and also visually through the staging. In various ways Middleton suggests that engagement with the world of action and responsibility is essential, even inevitable, since ultimately it is impossible to remain detached or separate from it. Leantio wants to keep his new wife shut up within the house like a treasure locked within a chest, and Bianca wants him to stay at home with her and not go into the world of work. However, if he does not accept his responsibilities and go out into the external world, they will not survive, and implicit in the image of the treasure in the chest, which Middleton gives to Leantio, is the fact that to keep wealth unused, rather than to make it a means for life, or, on the analogy of the parable of the talents, to be productive of more wealth, is sterile. Indeed, the impossibility and unreasonable nature of Leantio's desire to protect Bianca from the outer life is emphasized by Middleton in Act III when, having discovered that his wife has been seen by the Duke, the factor desperately proposes to lock up his "treasure" even faster:

At the end of the dark parlour there's a place So artificially contrived for a conveyance, No search could ever find it. When my father Kept in for manslaughter, it was his sanctuary. There will I lock my life's best treasure up, Bianca. (III.ii. 162-67) A. A. BROMHAM 321

In that dark cupboard or passage there will be no window, no connection with the world outside, and the image forcefully expresses the fact that Bianca will be denied the possibility of taking moral responsibility for her life and actions. Leantio uses the word "sanctuary," and later the Duke will offer Bianca a court sanctuary for her guilty soul, but in Act IV the Cardinal stresses that there can be no sanctuary, no escape from facing up to the consequences of actions. It is an important speech because it expresses the idea through a contrast between an apparently safe interior and a dangerous exterior, and it also draws together important strands which derive from the first scene of the play:

I grant, so long as an offender keeps Close in a privileged temple, his life's safe; But if he ever venture to come out, And so be taken, then he surely dies for't. So now y'are safe; but when you leave this body, Man's only privileged temple upon earth, In which the guilty soul takes sanctuary, Then you'll perceive what wrongs chaste vows endure, When lust usurps the bed that should be pure. (IV.iii.38-46)

In the first scene of the play Leantio had presented himself, half- jokingly, as an offender: "I must confess I am guilty of one sin, Mother" (I.i.35). He also suggested that in reaching home he had found shelter from the storms outside (I.i.51-53), and Bianca spoke of building temples of happiness there in Leantio's home (I.i. 127-30). Storms, as the seduction scene indicates, represent moral judgments. Leantio's attempt to keep Bianca safe by locking her up is unsuccessful, and later, when she has taken up residence in court, she reflects on the foolishness of trying to protect anyone forcibly from life, suggesting that such attempts are often counterproductive:

How strangely woman's fortune comes about; This was the farthest way to come to me, All would have judged, that knew me born in Venice And there with many jealous eyes brought up, That never thought they had me sure enough But when they were upon me. Yet my hap To meet it here, so far off from my birth-place, My friends, or kindred; 'tis not good, in sadness, To keep a maid so strict in her young days; Restraint breeds wand'ring thoughts, as many fasting days 322 POLITICS IN WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN

A great desire to see flesh stirring again. I'll ne'er use any girl of mine so strictly: Howe'er they're kept, their fortunes find 'em out. (IV.i.23-35)

As the note on this speech in the Revels edition indicates, Bianca should not be seen here as expressing an irresponsible view of the treatment of children; these are not sentiments which reflect the immorality of the woman, since the same counsel is offered by moral writers such as Richard Brathwaite in his Description of a Good Wife (1618).28 Implicit in all this is a belief that every person must be allowed to take responsibility for his or her actions. The external world is one of dangers, as the imagery of storms associated frequently with it indicates, and the possibilities for disaster are many, but it cannot be avoided. Virtue must be tested by experience and proved by action. It is a point Middleton makes frequently in his plays and it is Puritan in its orientation. Bianca makes the decision to leave Leantio's house where she would be shut up in a dark cupboard, but by moving to the court she removes herself to another enclosed world, where the privileged position conferred by wealth allows the Duke and the courtiers to take no account of the responsibilities which have to be faced in the external world. Bianca emphasizes this in the seduction scene, and it is the offer of security which seems to persuade her to give in to the Duke. At first she makes several efforts to resist. He tries to tell her that she has nothing to fear, and she replies in a speech which draws on the imagery of storms:

Make me not bold with death and deeds of ruin Because they fear not you; me they must fright. Then am I best, in health-should thunder speak And none regard it, it had lost the name And were as good be still. I'm not like those That take their soundest sleeps in greatest tempests; Then wake I most, the weather fearfullest, And call for strength to virtue. (II.ii.35 1-58)

Bianca implies that the Duke is in a privileged position in which he does not have to worry about the consequences of sin because he is above criticism, but ordinary people like herself need to live uprightly to avoid disaster. In purely social terms she is right: what chance would she have of survival as a fallen woman in a foreign city, A. A. BROMHAM 323 knowing no one but her husband and his mother, who would be likely to turn her out of the house, with little chance of her being able to return to her parents in Venice? Bianca is acutely aware of how vulnerable she is, and the Duke plays upon this very vulnerability to persuade her. He promises her not only material security, empha- sizing how precarious and full of wants her present life is, but also protection from moral censure; by becoming the Duke's mistress she will be in a position where no one will dare condemn her: "Come play the wise wench, and provide for ever" (II.ii.382). He promises her that her action of yielding to him will lead to a permanent state of security. The Duke goes on in his concluding lines to say:

Let storms come when they list, they find thee sheltered. Should any doubt arise, let nothing trouble thee; Put trust in our love for the managing Of all to thy heart's peace. (II.ii.383-86)

These lines bring together the two related strands within Women Beware Women, imagery of storms and bad weather, and references to peace. As in these lines, peace in the play is usually presented as the antithesis of the storm. We have noted already that storms, in Bianca's earlier speech, represent moral judgments, and the Duke's imagery presents us again with a contrast between interior and exterior. The storms occur in the external world but Bianca will be sheltered; she will be inside, out of the storm. She will not have to worry about moral responsibilities and conflicts which affect life in the external world. Peace and security are here associated with an interior, fixed state, which the play exposes as unwise, unrealistic, and immoral. The Duke's promise of perpetual peace is an illusion. The play's major concern with the pursuit of a false peace, of personal security at the expense of others, echoes major concerns in the world outside the theater, which I have outlined at the beginning of this essay. Pamphleteers such as Tom Tell-Troath show that the consequences in the world outside of not combatting false religion, of pursuing the false peace with Spain, may be disastrous, and the forceful words of Thomas Scott on this matter might equally be a summary of this major concern of Women Beware Women: "There is a worldly peace which men vnhappely hunt after, whilst they neglect the peace of conscience and ioy in the Holy Ghost;... we may be farre mistaken then seeking for peace, for behold it is warre; peace with men, may proue warre with God. Beware."29 Puritan writers do not 324 POLITICS IN WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN

separate politics from morality and religion. Scott's words recall the Bible's message that Christ came into the world to bring peace, but not peace as mankind normally thinks of it; but Scott's purpose is political, indicating that this message which applies to the personal life has equally a contemporary political dimension. The "peace of conscience" will only be achieved through the acceptance of moral responsibility in actively combatting false religion. So, although Middleton writes about the moral life of the individual, his emphasis upon "peace" and his concern with responsibility might well have been intended to suggest connections with contemporary political issues. The censorship ensured that Middleton could not write directly about such matters: when he did so in A Game at Chess he ran into trouble with the authorities, and earlier plays with political content such as and Hengist, King of Kent had to be set in a distant location or in the remote past. Women Beware Women takes a near contemporary real-life story as the basis for the main plot, but the Italian setting, the corrupt court, the characters and situations are typical of Jacobean drama, and their very familiarity may well have been used by the dramatist to mask the play's political message.30 Women Beware Women may not be an obviously political play, as A Game at Chess is, and modern audiences know that it works well as a tragedy without any knowledge of seventeenth-century politics. However, the dramatist's choice and particular treatment of the theme of peace at that time when it was an issue of burning concern, and when a number of writers were engaged in presenting both sides of the argument, suggests the strong possibility that the play should be seen on one level as a contribution to the debate. Political significance in the play as a whole would also make sense of two isolated topical references, noted by Baldwin Maxwell and by the editor of the Revels edition. In I.iii the age of the Duke is given as fifty-five. Baldwin Maxwell believed that Middleton refers to James I who reached that age on 19 June 1621, and that Bianca's words, "That's no great age in man, he's then at best / For wisdom, and for judgment" (I.iii.92-93), are meant to be a compliment to the King.3' J. R. Mulryne accepts this as plausible, as the reference occurs before the Duke has been revealed to be a libertine.32 The allusion to the Duke's age appears to have no basis in history or the sources of the play, yet it is so specific that it must be assumed that Middleton had a particular purpose in including this detail.33 It occurs in a scene which stresses the Duke's role as ruler, and which I have argued presents us with ideals of behavior. Like James I, the Duke has A. A. BROMHAM 325 obviously governed for many years, and it seems likely that, though the Duke of Florence in the play as a whole is not intended as a portrait of James I,34 Middleton wished his audience to be receptive to possible connections between what it sees on stage and contem- porary England. It is not, I believe, by accident that this is the same scene in which Leantio's lines about the "good king that keeps all in peace" (I.iii.48) occur. The Revels editor also sees here a compliment to James, and, indeed, it seems unlikely that such a reference would fail to remind many members of the audience of their own monarch and his motto. By doing so at a time of such debate about peace, Middleton may have been alerting them to the major theme of the play which I have outlined in this essay. I have suggested that in this scene in particular Middleton conveys a sense of a world of responsibilities, and of the true peace which is achieved only when regard is paid to them. The peace sought by characters in the play is a false peace based on a desire for quiet and the avoidance of difficult moral decisions, and to many people in contemporary England such seemed the peace which James I was actually pursuing in his response to events in Europe. The writer of Vox Populi (1620) says, "First it is well observed by the wisdome of our State, that the King of England, who otherwise is one of the most accomplisht Princes that ever raign'd, extreamly hunts after peace, and so affects the true name of a Peacemaker, as that for it he will doe or suffer anything."35 It is noticeable that the writer, while being critical of the king on this one issue, gives greater weight to his argument by expressing his high regard for the king in general. So, in Women Beware Women the complimentary nature of Bianca's comment on the Duke's age, Leantio's reference to the "good king that keeps all in peace," and the Cardinal's words about the Duke's wisdom and nobility before he upbraids him (IV.i.188-90), should perhaps be seen as examples of attempts to show respect for the person of the ruler while being critical of official policies. They indicate the tensions implicit in the "opposition" position, the conflict between wanting to be nothing other than a loyal subject while at the same time finding it impossible on grounds of conscience to accept particular actions or policies of the ruler. The Cardinal stresses to the Duke that he is responsible for the souls of his subjects. James's failure to support the Protestant cause in the Palatinate looked like a failure to oppose strenuously the forces threatening the Protestant religion, which might eventually put in peril the souls of Englishmen, as Tom Tell-Troath suggests. The end of Women Beware Women presents a society in ruins as a result of the failure of moral responsibility, and, 326 POLITICS IN WOMEN B E WA RE WOMEN as this essay has shown, the contemporary audience might well have seen in it a message for its time, the disasters attendant upon the pursuit of a false peace.

NOTES

'Particularly interesting contributions on the subject are to be found in Dorothy M. Farr, Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1973)-"the uniqueness of his tragedies derives a good deal from his ability to develop an inherently comic situation at depth" (p. 7); R. B. Parker "Middleton's Experiments with Comedy and Judgement," in Jacobean Theatre, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris (London: Edward Arnold, 1960; rpt. 1965), pp. 179-99; George E. Rowe Jr., Thomas Middleton and the New Comedy Tradition (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1979), pp. 190-200; T. B. Tomlinson, "Naturalistic Comedy and Tragedy: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and Women Beware Women" in A Study of Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 158-84. 2See in particular, Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980); Anne Lancashire, "The Witch: Stage Flop or Political Mistake?"in "'Accompaninge the players": Essays Celebrating Thomas Middleton 1580-1980, ed. Kenneth Friedenreich (New York: A.M.S. Press, 1983), pp. 161-81; A. A. Bromham, "The Contemporary Significance of The Old Law," SEL 24 (Spring 1984):327-39. 3William Power, "Thomas Middleton vs. King James I," AN&7Q202 (December 1957):526-34; "The Phoenix, Raleigh and King James," N&iQ 203 (February 1958):57-61. 4J. R. Mulryne in the Revels edition of the play (London: Methuen, 1975) accepts 1621; Roma Gill in the New Mermaid edition (London: Ernest Benn, 1968), and David L. Frost in The Selected Plays of Thomas Middleton (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978), both agree on circa 1621. 5See Heinemann, pp. 134-71, and my note, "Thomas Middleton's Hengist, King of Kent and John Ponet's Shorte Treatise of Politike Power," N&Q 29 (April 1982):143-45. 6Heinemann, p. 154. 7David Harris Willson, King James VI and I (London:Jonathan Cape, 1956; rpt. 1971), p. 411. 8Tom Tell-Troath in A Fourth Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, On the Most Interesting and Entertaining Subjects: But chiefly such as relate to the History and Constitution of these Kingdoms, Selected from an Infinite Number in Print and Manuscript, in the Royal, Cotton, Sion, and other Public, as well as Private Libraries, Particularly that of the Late Lord Somers. Revised by Eminent Hands, 4 vols. (London:Printed for F. Cogan at the Middle-Temple-Gate, in Fleet Street, 1752), 1: 112. 9Fox Coeli, Or Newes From Heaven (1624). "'Tom Tell-Troath, p. 117. "On the one side there are the pamphlets of Thomas Scott and writers like Tom Tell-Troath, presenting a critical view, whilst on the other, praising the King and supporting official policy, are to be found such works as Robert Aylett, A. A. BROMHAM 327

Peace and her fovre garders (1622), John Denison, Beati Pacifici; The Blessednes of the Peace-makers (1620), John Hall, The True Peace-Maker (1624), and Sir John Stradling, Beati Pacifici: A Divine Poem (1623). '2Willson, p. 271, states that the writers were Lancelot Andrewes and James I, though he does not present evidence. Margot Heinemann (p. 115) accepts that Middleton did not write the pamphlet apparently on the basis of Willson's statement. Middleton's authorship is supported by A. H. Bullen, the nineteenth- century editor of the dramatist's works, and by Rhodes Dunlap in "James I, Bacon, Middleton and the Making of The Peace-Maker," in Studies in the English Renaissance Drama, ed. Josephine Waters Bennett, et al. (London: Peter Owen and New York: New York Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 82-94. Bullen found the pamphlet puzzling and felt that it could have been an elaborate joke on Middleton's part. There seems to be a hint of relief in Heinemann's acceptance in a footnote of Willson's attribution, but it seems to me it would be possible to accept Middleton's authorship without this being in contradiction to Heinemann's case for Middleton as an "opposition" writer. The pamphlet is about peace at home and duelling in particular, about which Middleton had written in A Fair Quarrel only the previous year. It was written before the events in Bohemia and the Palatinate, and, as I state elsewhere in this essay, expressions of general respect for the king, and indeed for his motto, are to be found in Middleton's work, set against criticism of specific policies. '3The Dedication reads, "The publishing of these Sermons hath, by some who are iudicious, been thought necessary for the present times." 14 Some loathing Peace, wish Warre,because vnknowne, To them Peace is like Manna, common growne: I such doe wish to trauell out, and see Their Countries Blisse, by others misery. '5Denison had obviously been criticised for the vehemence of his attack on Puritans, as he mentions the fact in the address "To the Reader": "Christian Reader, I am occasioned, in saluting thee, to Apologize for my selfe. I haue beene taxed, by some, for too much tartnesse in these Sermons, against those who dissent from our Church in her Ceremonies and gouernment, and for ranking them with Peace-breakers." Aylett's prefatory poem, "To the curious Reader," obviously contains a reference to Puritans when he writes Prophaner Michals will be censuring Eu'n David if hee doe but dance and sing Before the Arke. '6He praises the peace-maker as blessed and condemns the peace-breaker as accursed. Peace-breakers are listed as, Satan, the first peace-breaker, then the Bishop of Rome (p. 38), Jesuits (p. 40), and then the "contentious brethren" (p. 42)-"we are incumbred with certaine contentious brethren, who striue ... earnestly about matter of ceremony and circumstance." '7The Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. A. H. Bullen, 8 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885-1886), 7:191, lines 875-76. 'Dunlap, p. 91. '9In The Old Law, as I show elsewhere (see note 2 above), a critical view of the royal prerogative in the controversy over the Common Law is modified by Cleanthes' assertion of loyalty to the ruler and the direction of criticism against 328 POLITICS IN WOMEN B E WA RE WOM E N the king's counselors. In Hengist, King of Kent, Constantius is presented in a double perspective as a man of sincerity whose sense of spiritual matters commands respect, but whose naivete produces moments of satiric comedy. In A Game at Chess, the White King is treated in a respectful way but with ironic suggestions of weakness. 20Works,7:190, lines 863-65. 21Works,7:395. 22The best example of this is perhaps the use of the word "service" in The Changeling, which is used at first largely in connection with actions performed according to a courtly code of honor, and becomes corrupted during the course of the play until it is used almost exclusively with its sexual meaning in the latter scenes, thus reflecting on a verbal level the corruption of Beatrice-Joanna. 2All quotations from Women Beware Women are taken from the Revels edition, ed. J. R. Mulryne (London: Methuen, 1975). 24See for instance Neil Taylor and Bryan Loughrey, "Middleton's Chess Strategies in Women Beware Women," SEL 24 (Spring 1984):351. 25ChristopherRicks observes the recurrence of "window moments" in "The Tragedies of Webster, Tourneur and Middleton: Symbols, Imagery and Conventions," in Sphere History of Literature in the English Language, ed. C. Ricks, 12 vols. (London: Sphere Books, 1971), 1:312-13. "The scene in in which Andrew Lethe meets his mother is one such example. Reaction to the Duchess in More Dissemblers Besides Women depends very much on her first being established as a type of the virtuous widow. The whole of The Old Law is based upon setting actual behavior against ideal role behavior. 27Heinemann, p. 198. "Revels edition, pp. 120-21 (footnote). "Thomas Scott, Digitus Dei (1623), pp. 3-4. "How a writer manages to make a political message sufficiently clear to his audience whilst at the same time masking it enough to evade censorship is a difficult problem. J. W. Lever, in The Tragedy of State (London: Methuen, 1971), has shown how many plays of the period with Italian court settings had reference to the contemporary English court and to political issues. Margot Heinemann says of the London citizens who saw Women Beware Women that "They at least are very unlikely to have taken the play as a fantasy picture of exaggerated Italianate vice" (Heinemann, p. 193). 31Baldwin Maxwell, "The Date of Middleton's Women Beware Women," PQ 22 (1943):338-42. "Revels edition, p. xxxv. 3Maxwell indicates that Middleton gives the correct age of the real-life Bianca ("about sixteen"), but the actual Duke was twenty-three when he met her, and died at the age of forty-six. The Revels editor states that none of the possible sources actually indicates the Duke's age (Revels, p. xxxv.) 3Margot Heinemann suggests that the Duke of Florence has characteristics of the real-life Duke of Buckingham (pp. 185, 193). This view in no way invalidates some identification of the Duke in the third scene of the play with James I. Women Beware Women is not a political allegory in which characters from the play can consistently be equated with living persons as in A Game at Chess. Middleton creates characters and situations which at various times suggest various kinds of connection with the world outside the theater. In the third scene of the play where the Duke is not seen as a libertine it is not implausible that the A. A. BROMHAM 329 audience might make connections with their own ruler, but these connections are not made by topical allusions elsewhere in the play, where actions and situations suggest other kinds of contemporary connection. The Duke of Buckingham wielded very considerable political power and influence, and the ruler in the play is a duke. The division of the character into the public "goodly gentleman" of fifty-five, who is seen in the context of an orderly state procession to a religious service in I.iii. and the private libertine of the rest of the play may suggest something of the division of power between king and influential favorite. 35Thomas Scott, Vox Populi (1620), sig. Blv.