LEGAL PLAY: THE LITERARY CULTURE OF THE INNS OF COURT, 1572 - 1634 by BRENT EDWARD WHETTED B.A. Baylor University, 1993 M.A. University of Durham, 1995 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August 1999 © Brent Whitted, 1999 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of j\S l/\ The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) 11 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the social politics of literary production at London's Inns of Court from 1572 to 1634. Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of cultural production are widened beyond his own French academic context so that the Inns may be located as institutions central to the formation of literary and, in particular, dramatic culture in early modern London. A significant part of Bourdieu's research has concerned the establishment of a foundation for a sociological analysis of literary works. The literary field, Bourdieu argues, is but one of many possible fields of cultural production—social networks of struggle over valued economic, cultural, scientific, or religious resources. As a historically constituted arena of activity with its own specific institutions, rules, and capital, the juridical field of early modern London was a competitive market in which legal agents struggled for the power to determine the law. Within this field, the Inns of Court served as unchartered law schools in which the valuable cultural currency of the common law was transmitted to the resident students, whose association with this currency was crucial for their pursuit of social prestige. Focusing on the four Inns of Court as central institutions in the juridical field and their relationship with the larger political and economic forces of London, that is, the field of power, the thesis demonstrates how the literary art associated with these institutions relates to the students' struggle for social legitimation, particularly in their interaction with the City and the Crown. By demonstrating how the structures of literary texts reflect the structures of the relationship between the Inns and other centers of urban power, this analysis examines the pivotal role(s) played by law students in the development of London's literary culture. CONTENTS Abstract page ii Contents iii Table of Figures v Acknowledgments vi Preface 1 1 "A New Social Topography of London's Juridical Field 13 The juridical field, its agents and capital, and the field of power 14 The rules of the game 31 The habitus of a law student 36 2 Recognizing the Convertibility of Legal Capital 48 Transforming the (common)place 52 Edward Coke's reading on fines 52 Francis Beaumont's Grammar Lecture 58 William Browne's Ulysses and Circe 63 Maintaining autonomy through symbolic violence 72 The making(s) of Gesta Grayorum 74 3 Staging Exchange: the Inns and the Blackfriars Playhouse 87 "Certaine Observations" 94 George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston's Eastward Ho 100 Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One 114 Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle 120 iv 4 Converting Capital: the Crown, the Inns, and the City, 1633-34 129 Positions 134 King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria 134 William Prynne 136 The "younger sort" of lawyers 140 The Lord Mayor 145 Position-takings 147 William Prynne's Histriomastix 149 James Shirley's Triumph of Peace 153 The politics of gift-giving 159 King Charles, the Corporation of London, and the lawyers 160 Francis Lenton 166 Figures 1-9 171 Bibliography 180 V TABLE OF FIGURES Detail from engraving in Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1622 ed.) 171 Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library The legal quarter c.1563, detail from Ralph Agas's engraving of London 172 From Six Lectures on. the Inns of Court and of Chancery, W. B. Odgers, ed., p. 278 The legal quarter c.1570, detail from Ralph Agas's engraving of London 173 From J. H. Baker's The Legal Profession and the Common Law, p. 44 The City of Westminster, detail from Ralph Agas's engraving of London 174 From Ian Wilson's Shakespeare: The Evidence, plate 6 Michal Kobialka's drawing of Gray's Inn Hall 175 BromTheatre History Studies 4 (1984): 74 Lawyer at client's deathbed, painting dated 1607 176 From Ian Wilson's Shakespeare: The Evidence, plate 48 The Forum of Peace, by Inigo lones 177 From A Book.of Masques, R. F. Hill, ed., plate 17 The proscenium border of Triumph of Peace; by Inigo lones 178 YromA Book of Masques, R. F. Hill, ed., plate 15 Imaginative reconstruction of the Blackfriars Playhouse 179 From Irwin Smith's Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse, p. 307 In memory of Lola Beth Ferguson and Anna Doretta Gamboe I wish to thank: Edward, Dora, Craig, and Becky Whitted for their support, Gretchen Minton for her devotion, Paul Yachnin, Paul Stanwood, and Patricia Badir for their guidance, Mark Vessey for his encouragement and inspiration, Bill Gaines for his wisdom and advice, Kate Collie for her humor and patience, Jennifer Raguz for her wit and energy, Gudrun Dreher for her style and aesthetic sense, and Green College for its culture. 1 PREFACE I was aware from the outset that my task involved not simply telling the truth of this world, as can be uncovered by objectivist methods of observation, but also showing that this world is the site of an ongoing struggle to tell the truth of this world. —Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words, 35. When John Donne was admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 6 May 1592, he was twenty years old. For around two-and-a-half years, he studied the common law, then left his legal studies for voyages to Italy and Spain. While he was at the Inns, Donne apparently wrote his five Satires, each of which targets a particular object of his contempt. In Satire II, Donne concentrates on the people he encounters in his legal community. The worst of these, he claims, are lawyers who believe their poetry is original: ... hee is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw Other wits fruits, and in his ravenous maw Rankly digested, doth those things out-spue, As his owne things; and they are his owne, 'tis true, For if one eate my meate, though it be knowne The meate was mine, th'excrement is his owne. (1.25-30) Donne isolates one lawyer in particular, Coscus, and castigates his new habit of using the power of the law for seductive purposes, a habit that Donne believes is a shameful crime: . the insolence Of Coscus onely breeds my just offence, Whom time (which rots all, and makes botches poxe, And plodding on, must make a calfe an oxe) Hath made a Lawyer, which was (alas) of late But scarce a Poet; jollier of this state, 2 Then are new benefic'd ministers, he throwes Like nets, or lime-twigs, wheresoever he goes, His title of Barrister, on every wench, And wooes in language of the Pleas, and Bench (1.39-48)1 Donne is irritated that lawyers such as Coscus pretentiously use their association with the Inns (and the prestige of the common law) to fashion themselves as members of the cultural elite when in fact, "men which chuse / Law practice for meere gaine . .. repute / Worse then imbrothel'd strumpets prostitute" (1.62-64). Donne maintains that while lawyers like Coscus rely on the culture of the Inns as the source of personal prestige, "amateur gentlemen" at the Inns (like himself) seek connections with the court and are offended by the successful "self-interested diligence" of their professional colleagues (Corthell 28) .2 Geoffrey Bullough suggests that Satire II mocks the anonymous author of Zepheria (1594), a lyric sequence consisting of forty canzons (61). Margaret R. Christian of Pennsylvania State University, Lehigh Valley, is completing an edition of Zepheria in which she elucidates the poems' use of legal imagery as a poetic device that draws attention to the self-deceptive nature of romantic love. In the sequence, the lover Amphion fantasizes about the various illegal maneuvers whereby he could violate the letter of human legal codes that would govern his pursuit of Zepheria. Ronald Corthell observes that while Donne resided at Lincoln's Inn, legal and courtly studies were "causing an increasingly sharp division between the serious law students, on the one hand, and the students of civility, . the 'gentlemen' [who] were especially anxious to cultivate courtly postures and activities that would set them apart from the lawyers and law students with whom they were associated and whose social status was not high. As a coterie of wits Donne and his circle were defining themselves by opposition to a professional group which, as 'Satire IF makes clear, Donne regarded as a threat to himself and to the traditional order of society" (25). In Donne's eyes, this order consisted of the men with whom Donne was competing for the attention of the court; the "extravagant wit and manners" exhibited by Donne's circle were "manipulations of the courtly codes, linguistic and behavioral, which they would have to master in order to enter the Elizabethan system of preferment and privilege" (Corthell 26).