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Religion, Gender, and Drama in Early Modern England, 1558-1625

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Religion, Gender, and Drama in Early Modern England, 1558-1625 ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: “IS THIS YOUR MANLY SERVICE?”: RELIGION, GENDER, AND DRAMA IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, 1558-1625 Thomas Joseph Moretti, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Dissertation directed by: Professor Theodore Leinwand Department of English This project argues that the interplay between religion and gender on the early modern English stage was a crucial means toward religious mediation and theatrical affect. Playwrights exploited the tensions between gender and reformed Christianity to expose the inconsistencies and contradictions within the period’s religious polemic, to combine various religious expressions and habits of thought, to deepen sensitivity toward England’s tenuous religious settlements, and to advance their art form. Furthermore, this project argues that the theater was better equipped than any other cultural and political institution to handle England’s complex religious situations. This study, then, engages a broader scholarly effort to understand the relationship between theater and religion during England’s ongoing reformations. Chapter 1 discusses how reformed biblical exegesis underwrote the staging of female piety in Lewis Wager’s Calvinist Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene (1566). Because this play surprises audiences with its endorsement of Mary’s devotion, Wager qualifies our sense that the Reformation was relentlessly committed to repressing sensual worship and stamping out iconophilic fervor. To heighten theatrical affect, his play inverts associations between femininity and sin even as he defends the theater in Calvinist terms. Chapter 2 assesses the interaction of religion, gender, and kingship in Shakespeare and company’s three Henry VI plays (~1592-95). By heightening the tensions between militant Protestantism and Christian humanism, the playwrights ask searching questions about the compatibility of reformed Christianity and kingship and about the place of Christian piety on the popular stage. To test various dramatic paces, to tap the theatrical possibilities of a weak and peaceful Christian king, and to unsettle audiences, Shakespeare and his collaborators show what is lost and gained by a culture that cannot reconcile masculine rule to reformed Christian piety. Chapter 3 argues that Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger’s The Virgin Martir (1622) takes advantage of Jacobean religious compromises and impasses. By staging a martyrdom that invokes sensual beauty and physical vulnerability, this play stresses reform, recalls John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, and endorses what Lancelot Andrewes called “the beauty of holiness”: the iconic splendor that reformers stripped from the Mass. As it bears witness to Jacobean England’s vexing religious settlement, the play exploits the recurring post-Reformation conflict between text, reform, and godly masculinity on the one hand, and spectacle, ceremonialism, and feminized piety on the other. “IS THIS YOUR MANLY SERVICE?” RELIGION, GENDER, AND DRAMA IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, 1558-1625 by Thomas Joseph Moretti Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Advisory Committee: Professor Theodore Leinwand, Chair Professor Kent Cartwright Professor Kimberly Coles Professor Theresa Coletti Professor Philip Soergel © Copyright by Thomas Joseph Moretti 2011 ii DEDICATION To my family. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful for the time, effort, and generosity of my committee members. Kent Cartwright, always courteous, knew how to balance praise with critical commentary. Kim Coles helped me to contextualize my arguments. She also introduced me to important scholarship at the Folger, even as she had her own work piled on a table in the reading room. Theresa Coletti helped me to broaden the scope and clarify the importance of my project. Her unwavering encouragement made it impossible for my confidence to waver. Phil Soergel was accommodating and reassuring. And Ted Leinwand always knew how to bring my attention back to the theater. His keen eyes, unwavering dedication, painstaking readings, and brilliant insights have led to what succeeds in this project. I also wish to thank Jane Hwang Degenhardt for her feedback on a portion of Chapter 3; to Linda Shenk, Carole Levin, and other participants at the 2010 Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo for their reactions to a portion of Chapter 3; to Paul White, Jeffrey Knapp, Alexandra Johnston, and other attendants at the 2005 Elizabethan Theater Conference in Waterloo for providing key insights after I presented a very early portion of Chapter 1; and to Patricia Badir, who let me see sections of her book on Mary Magdalene before its release date. These people demonstrate how goodwill and scholarship go hand-in-hand. I would also like to thank Keith Botelho, Kate Bossert, David Coley, Beth Colson, Lara and Tim Crowley, Betty Hageman, Donna Hamilton, Gillian Knoll, Jody Lawton, Doug Lanier, Linda Macri, Chris Maffucio, Meg Pearson, and Margaret Rice. Marc Lavallee has been a good friend throughout this process, as has Jim Poisson, whose iv heart is always in the right place. Marc, Jim, Jack Berry, and Jack’s summer reading group—Fr. Ryan Connors, Tom Keefe, Ben Thorpe, Steve Salomone, Mike St. Thomas, and Andy Tardiff—surprised me with new ideas and kept my intellect and imagination working during Rhode Island’s humid July mornings (Jim’s donuts from Allie’s and Jack’s limitless coffee helped, too). I would like to thank my grandparents, Frank and the late Natalie Williams, whose heartening support made my career choice possible. My mother, Marilyn, my brothers, Vin and Andrew, and my father, Vinnie, also lent their support. I also thank my in-laws, Dennis and Marcia, for the help that I cannot even begin to list here. Lastly, I thank my wife, Candice, who has sacrificed more than I ever could. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 “A woman terrestriall?”: Rethinking Theater and Reform in Lewis Wager’s Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene 18 Chapter 2 Theater and Christian Rule in the Henry VI Plays 72 Chapter 3 “Can this doo’t?”: The Jacobean Fantasy of a Via Media Religion and the Theatricality of Holiness in The Virgin Martir 135 Bibliography 205 vi LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1. Princess Elizabeth before Christ A Godly Medytacyon of the Christen Soule (1548) 67 Fig. 2. The burning of Thomas Tomkins’s hand Actes and Monuments (1570) 175 Fig. 3. The burning of John Hooper Actes and Monuments (1570) 176 Fig. 4. The burning of Thomas Cranmer Actes and Monuments (1570) 200 Fig. 5. “Of Envie” A Christall Glass of Christian Reformation (1569) 200 Fig. 6. Thomas Cranmer’s final conversion Actes and Monuments (1570) 201 1 INTRODUCTION All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven stages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school; and then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow; then a soldier Full of stange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth; and then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. (As You Like It 2.7.140b-67) The world according to Jaques is a stage without religion. He steadfastly avoids any religious overtones that might contextualize his otherwise discouraging rendition of the theatrum mundi trope.1 There were other choices. The protheatricalist Thomas Heywood followed in the footsteps of the church fathers when he envisaged a stage 1 For a survey of the religious, philosophical, and literary origins of theatrum mundi, see Christian’s book. Also see Davis and Postlewait 8-11. For patristic applications of the topos, including Augustine’s and Tertullian’s, see Christian 34-41. Of course, there are classical and astrological appropriations in Jaques’ speech, but even these he strips of any hint of religion. For instance, his seven ages parallel the seven spheres, but none of them is the Sun (Bradford 174-75). 2 “fill[ed]” with actors for God’s amusement and judgment: from the “starre-galleries of hye ascent,” God could “applaud the best” and “doom the rest” (An Apology for Actors sigs. A8r-A8v).2 Pierre Boaistuau’s theatricalization of the divine comedy, though more frightening, is ultimately salvific: with death, the “end of this bloudie Tragedie,” and amid God’s “dreadful laughter,” comes knowledge of sin and the desire to enter heaven (sig. A4v). Even John Calvin was wont to praise the world that he feared as God’s majestic, dazzling theater.3 Jaques conjures a series of brief manly shows. Following the “mewling and puking” infant and the “whining schoolboy” but before an emaciated man’s “second childishness,” the lover sighs “like a furnace,” the soldier is “sudden and quick to quarrel,” and the fat justice sits “[w]ith eyes severe and beard of formal cut.” Although Jaques’s speech begins in the spirit of gender equality—“men and women are...players”—he is not interested in female performances, not even a “chaste lady” or a “wanton Curtezan” (Heywood, An Apology for Actors, sig.
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