A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Early Modern Legal Poetics and Morality 1560-1625 Janis Jane Darvill Mills Doctor of Philosophy English Literature University of Sussex January 2011 WORK NOT SUBMITTED ELSEWHERE FOR EXAMINATION I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature……………………………… Acknowledgements I would like to extend special thanks to my supervisor, Dr Margaret Healy, who has provided tremendous encouragement, support, and guidance during the writing of this thesis. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Department for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex for their generous help and advice. I am indebted to Dr Cathy Parsons and Dr Paul Quinn for their insightful comments, and to Barbara Kennedy for her unfailing generosity and friendship during the research process. The University of Sussex Library and The British Library have provided the resources for my research for which I am grateful. I also owe a particular debt of gratitude to Jonathan, William, and Josephine for their enduring enthusiasm and support throughout the production of this work. UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX JANIS JANE DARVILL MILLS DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY EARLY MODERN LEGAL POETICS AND MORALITY 1560-1625 SUMMARY This thesis examines the reciprocity of literary and legal cultures, and seeks to enhance understanding of cultural and socio-legal constructions of morality in early modern England. Identifying the tensions in an institutional legality in which both secular pragmatism and moral idealism act as formulating principals, it interrogates the sense of disjuncture that arises between imaginative concepts of moral justice and their translation into the formal structures of law. Chapter 1 investigates representations of rape in light of the legislative changes of the 1570s, and addresses the question of how literature shapes the legal imaginary of immorality. Literary models, notably Shakespeare’s The Rape Of Lucrece (1594), and George Peele’s Tale of Troy (1589), are examined together with the texts of Edward Coke and Thomas Edgar to argue that lawyers’ mythopoeic interpretative strategies produce a form of legal fiction in relation to sexual crime. These strategies are contextualised in Chapter 2 in relation to the education and literary-legal culture at the Inns of Court, and the thesis progresses to an examination of the inns’ literary and dramatic output – notably that of Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorbuduc, and Arthur Broke’s contemporaneous revels’ masque, Desire and Lady Bewty (1561-2) – to establish how the legal fraternity wielded significant authority over Tudor sexual politics, moral signification, and interpretative practices. Chapters 3 and 4 explore legal and ethical challenges heralded by the Jacobean accession, particularly those posed by the Somerset scandal. Analysis of histories, letters, and court satire, together with Thomas Campion’s The Lord Hay’s Masque (1607), and George Chapman’s Andromeda Liberata (1614) and The Tragedy of Chabot (1639), illuminates the period’s textual negotiations of legal, political, and personal ethics, and offers a revealing picture of the moral paradoxes produced by the opacity of the parameters between the personal and political lives of the ruling elite. Notes on the text and abbreviations All the Shakespeare texts cited, and the dates of publication given, are from The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt and others (London: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd, 1997). The Early English Books online texts cited were all accessed through the University of Sussex Library Website. The Unique Resource Locator for all is identical, apart from the individual EEBO citation number, and for the sake of brevity I have simply cited this number in the footnotes. The full address is http://gateway.proquest.com/exproxy.sussex.ac.uk/openurl?ctx-ver+Z39.88- 203&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation I have retained the original spellings from primary texts as far as possible, including unmodified i/j and u/v spellings, with the exception of the long ‘s’, and have expanded contractions where necessary. Dates are given New Style (i.e. with each year assumed to begin on 1st January rather than 25th March. All online journal articles cited were accessed through the University of Sussex Library website. I have cited the database on which they are held, the URL (unique resource locator) or DOI (digital object identifier), and the date accessed. If no URL is given, I have looked at the original file copies held in the University Library. STC refers to the Short Title Catalogue Wing refers to the Wing Catalogue Translations are my own unless otherwise stated. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: EARLY MODEN LEGAL POETICS AND MORALITY 1560-1625……...….….1 Literature, Law, and Cultural History…………………………………………………………………..5 Contemporary Questions of Literature and Law……………………...……………………...………...7 Literature in Law: Legal Fiction and Literary Culture………………………………………………...14 Historical Context and Critical Responses………………………………………………………...…..21 Method…………………………………………………………………………………………...…….29 Structure…………………………………………………………………………………...…………..32 CHAPTER ONE: ‘LEGAL FICTION’ THE AFFINITY BETWEEN RAPE MYTHS AND THE EARLY MODERN SOCIO LEGAL CONSTRUCTS OF RAPE………………………….39 Women and the Law………………..………………………………………………………….…...…39 The Laws on Rape…………………………………………………………………………….….…...43 Legal Fiction: good / bad fiction and interpretation…………………………………………….…….52 Mythopoeic Narratives of Rape…………………………………………………………………….…54 Law and Poetics………………………………………………………………...……………………..62 The Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights……………………………………………………….….65 The Case of Elizabeth Venor……………………………………………………………………….. 73 Early Modern Literary Responses to the Issues of Consent: Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and Peele’s Tale of Troy..……………………………………………………………………….……75 The Abduction of Helen………………………………………………………..……………….…….75 The Rape of the Sabine Women.…………………………………………………...………….……..79 The Ravishment of Lucrece…………………………………………………………………………..82 CHAPTER TWO: PERFORMING THE LAW: LITERATURE AND LEARNING AT THE EARLY MODERN INNS OF COURT………………………………………………….……….90 Literary Fiction, Criminal Prosecution, and Dramatic Form in Criminal Trials…………………….90 The Historical Context: Concepts of The Common Law…………………………………………….95 The Development of the Legal Establishment: The Early Modern Inns of Court In Context...……..99 Performing the Law…………………………………………………………………………………115 CHAPTER THREE: THE LEGAL POETICS OF RULE: MORALITY, UNION, AND THE POLITICS OF MARRIAGE AT THE COURT OF KING JAMES 1604-1613..……………………137 The Politics of Peace………………………………………………………………………………..143 Royal Representation and Legal Poetics…………………………………………………………....148 Court Satire 1604-1616…………………………………………………………………….……….150 The Uneasy Peace 1604-1607……………………………………………………………………....157 The Issues of Union and the Parliament of 1606-7………………………………………………...162 Anglo-Scottish marriage 1607-1613...………………………………………………………………169 CHAPTER FOUR: PRISMATIC TRUTH: LIES AND LEGALITY IN THE CASE OF THE EARL OF SOMERSET………………………………………………………………………………186 Textual Remains: The Somersets and the Death of Sir Thomas Overbury………………………..197 Personal Politics: Chapman’s The Tragedy of Chabot Admirall of France………………..….......206 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………...230 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………..237 1 Introduction Early Modern Legal Poetics and Morality 1560-1625 As of a picture wrought to opticke reason… And till you stand, and in a right line view it, You cannot well judge what the maine form is.1 These lines from George Chapman‟s The Tragedie of Chabot (c 1621) capture the way in which the socio-political effects of art were understood in the cultural imaginary of the seventeenth century. Pointing to the contingency of visual perception, the author describes an anamorphic picture – a self-referential art form presenting a visual puzzle that prompts the viewer to decode its meaning. The “picture wrought to opticke reason” thus self-consciously signals the multiple perspectives that it makes possible and the necessity for judicious interpretation on the part of the viewer. In this respect the picture stands as a metaphor for the play itself – a work that resonates with other late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary forms that present their political or moral messages with a similarly prudent ambiguity. As Jonathan Dollimore has shown, the appropriation of literature in support of specific causes makes obvious an early modern awareness of art‟s powerful political effects and The Tragedie of Chabot, as a closet drama that explores the way in which 1 George Chapman and James Shirley, The Tragedy of Chabot Admirall of France : as it vvas presented by her Majesties Servants, at the private House in Drury Lane. Written by George Chapman, and Iames Shirly (London: 1639) STC (2nd ed.)