WOMEN IN THE PLAYS OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE by STELLA COCORIS WHITEHOUSE A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama UNIVERSITY, ALABAMA 1977 Accepted by the Faculty of the Graduate School, The University of Alabama, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts specializing in ____..E~n~g,.,,...l~i~s~b....._ ____________ Thesis Committee: (T~of member below line) W-~~ Ro berd _Halli l.d.~----C,hairman Carol M. Kt • _Dept. Chairman Dwight D . Eddins ' ---- L-.-~Dean, Graduate School Date -~A~p~r~J~·l,.___2~9+,__..1~9~7~7---- ii Acknowledgements Heartfelt thanks must first go to Dr. Carol M. Kay, whose thought-provoking lectures on Renaissance drama inspired this thesis. Her guidance throughout the course of my research has been that of a scholar and a friend. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Robert W. Halli for the painstaking attention he devoted to my early drafts. His judicious comments and suggestions were indispensible. Many thanks, too, to Dr. W. Donald Kay for his valuable editorial assistance. Without their enthusiasm, patience, and understanding, this study would never have been completed. iii Contents Chapter Page Acknowledgements . iii Introduction . 1 I. Dido, Queen of Carthage 6 II. Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II 49 III. The Jew of Malta . .. 86 IV. Edward II . 110 v. Doctor Faustus . , 137 Conclusion . 162 List of Works Consulted 170 iv Introduction Criticism of the drama of the Renaissance has yielded an abundance of Marlovian scholarship, great and varied in scope. Particularly, there has been an immense interest in Marlowe's creation of the superhuman hero--the Tamburlaine or the Faustus who so completely dominates the stage that all other characters are assumed to be mere figureheads, symbols, abstractions, or embodiments. It is partly because of this interest in the overpowering hero that Marlowe's women have been neglected by many critics. Allardyce Nicoll makes a particularly sweeping statement when he claims that the absence of the "feminine element ... mars the dramas of Marlowe" and that "the consistent elimination of women" in his works "proves in him a lack of sympathy with the whole of life. 111 I would maintain that the "feminine element" is not absent in Marlowe, but rather too often slighted by critics. This is not to say that major critical works on Marlowe disregard his female creations entirely. Women in major roles (i.e., Dido, Zenocrate, Abigail, Isabella) are treated in various degrees by Steane in Marlowe: A Critical Study; by Cole in Suffering and Evil in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe; by Kocher in Christopher Marlowe: ~ Study of His 1 2 Thought, Learning, and Character; by Levin in The Overreacher; by Bakeless in The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe; and by Bevington in From 'Mandind' to Marlowe. C. I. Duthie emphasizes the significance of Zenocrate's role in "The Dramatic Structure of Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II," concerning himself basically with the effect she has on Tamburlaine. W.W. Greg, in "The Damnation of Faustus," and Leo Kirschbaum in "Marlowe's Doctor Faustus: A Reconsidera­ tion," shed some light on the importance of Helen's role. F. P. Wilson, in Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare, explores the significance of Isabella's role in Edward II. Larry Goldberg's dissertation, "The Role of the Female in the Drama of Lyly, Greene, Kyd, and Marlowe" (Northwestern, 1969) concentrates primarily on the major female characters in five Marlowe plays in respect to how they pertain "to the form of the plays" and how the role of the female either generates, harmonizes with, or reinforces the informing principle of each play. But while Goldberg's is the only study dealing specifically with a number of Marlowe's women, he pays little attention to the significance of the minor female roles. None of the above-mentioned works offers an extensive, unified view of all Marlowe's female characters and their importance to the plays as a whole. When the subject of Marlowe's women is approached, comments are usually relegated to only a few lines. For example, Steane notes in passing that "a cynical belittlement of women ... is a Marlovian characteristic. 112 Such perfunctory assumptions gloss over 3 some of the carefully wrought portraits to be found in the Marlowe canon, portraits which are a vital part of the tra­ gedies but which are not often explored in great detail. The particular problem under consideration in this thesis, then, is to determine to what degree and in what manner the presence of women adds to the scope of Marlovian drama by carefully examining each of the female roles. The following plays are considered chronologically: Dido, Queen of Carthage; Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and II; The Jew of Malta; Edward II; and Doctor Faustus. The Massacre at Paris is omitted from the study not only because of the incompleteness of the extant form, but also because it rarely measures up to the level of the other works. A three-fold method of examining the female characters is employed in this study, using the following questions as bases for analysis: 1) Is each woman related to the dramatic structure of a particular play? What part does she have in the play's movement? Does she influence it significantly? 2) Are the women thematically important in each play? If so, to what extent? J) Do the female roles help in any way to define the male roles? That is, do our interpreta­ tions of the female roles shape our responses toward the men in any way? Do any attitudes and/or emotions espoused by the women themselves 4 alter or sharpen our responses toward the male characters? Answers to these questions help to form some valid statements as to the role of women in Marlowe's drama as well as to generate a reconsideration of the theory that Marlowe had a "lack of sympathy with the whole of life." Notes 1 Allardyce Nicoll, The Theory of Drama, 2nd ed. (1931; rpt. New York: Bemjamin Bloom, 1966), pp. 157-159, 2 J.B. Steane, Marlowe: ~ Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. SJ. 5 I. Dido, Queen of Carthage General critical opinion designates Dido, Queen of Carthage as Christopher Marlowe's earliest drama. 1 Believed to have been written during Marlowe's Cambridge years, the play was performed by the Children of Her Majesty's Chapel, "presumably when these young players visited Ipswich near Cambridge in 1586-87. 112 It is interesting to note that Dido is the only Marlovian play with a female protagonist and several significant female roles. If Dido is indeed Mar­ lowe's first play, the rest of the canon reveals a drastic shift in the playwright's emphasis upon women, since females are generally subordinate in the other plays. Marlowe used the first, second, and fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid as his source for Dido; in fact, in many passages he depended quite heavily on the Latin text. 3 D. C. Allen identifies the following as some of Marlowe's alterations of Virgil: 1) Iarbus is given a larger part and is fancied by Anna; 2) Dido dismantles the Trojan ships and Iarbus' jealous aid helps them get away; 3) Aeneas is much softer than his prototype; 4) Iarbus, "unlike himself," dies with Dido and Anna; 5) the gods have a more important . 4 roe1 an d are more capricious. Each alteration is especially significant when we consider the consequence it has on the 6 7 female roles. Iarbus' enlarged role brings Anna more into play; it also allows us to see a heartless side of Dido's nature when she cruelly spurns him. The "softening" of Aeneas serves to emphasize Dido's apparent strength. The altercation between Juno and Venus culminates in a joint effort to secure a match between Aeneas and Dido. The appa­ rent effect of Marlowe's modifications is that they increase the dramatic possibilities of the female roles. Dido is, beyond doubt, a woman's play. C. F. Tucker Brooke notes that "it contains (at least among his plays) his most ela­ borate portraits of women--portraits which ... lack neither subtlety nor delicacy of feeling."5 Of the five female roles in the play (Dido, Venus, Juno, Anna, and the Nurse), the most "elaborate portrait," of course, is that of the protagonist, Dido. At first a powerful, commanding ~uler, sh~ is reduced to an insecure and forlorn lover victimized by uncontrollable passion. Venus and Juno are portrayed as capricious goddesses who, in effect, map out the queen's destiny to satisfy their own selfish desires without questioning the consequences that Dido will suffer. Dido's sister Anna, whose passion is not willed by the gods but rather by her own heart, nevertheless becomes a victim of burning love. The Nurse, touched play­ fully by Cupid's arrow, momentarily experiences notions of romance. The dominant theme in Dido is love--not only romantic love (Dido, Aeneas, Anna), but motherly love (Venus), 8 grotesque love (the Nurse), thwarted love (Juno), unrequited love (Dido, Anna, Iarbus), and even illicit love (Jupiter, Ganymede). All the major characters and many of the minor characters are in some way involved in a love relationship. There is always the suggestion, however, that love is dis­ ruptive; hence, more specifically, the theme is "the destruc­ tive power of love. 116 Love and its implications thus inform the movement of the play. Interestingly enough, dramatic structure is one aspect of the play which has received scant notice, an omission which is peculiar in light of its pattern of develop­ ment.