City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 1990 The Changing Face of Fortune in Six English Versions of the Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra Mary Aileen Mallery The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2177 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6N x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microti m s International A Bei' & Howell Information Com pany 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor Ml 48106-1346 USA 313 761-4 700 800 521-0600 Order Number 9020780 The changing face of Fortune in six English versions of the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra Mallery, Mary Aileen, Ph.D. City University of New York, 1990 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE CHANGING FACE OF FORTUNE in Six English Versions of The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra by Mary Aileen Mallery A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York. 1990 This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. [signature] l jl s i ;2Date' Chair 6f Ex^aminirig committee [signature] Date Executive Officer [signature] [signature] Lillian Feder Supervisory Committee The City University of New York i i Acknowledgements I am grateful for the assistance of the librarians and staff of the British Library, London; the Warburg Institute, London; the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; the Butler Library at Columbia University; and the Firestone Library at Princeton University. Special thanks to Professor Helga Feder of the City University Graduate Center Library. In addition, discussion at the Provost's Colloquium on "The Journey of the Self" was indispensable to the shaping of this work. Thanks also are due to friends and family who made it all possible. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................... 1 PART I: MAN'S BATTLE AGAINST FORTUNE 1. Fortune in English Literature from Chaucer through Shakespeare................. 14 2. The Countess of Pembroke's "Antonie:" The Prison-House of Fortune................ 3 5 3. Samuel Daniel's "Tragedy of Cleopatra:" Fortune and the Mind........................ 60 4. William Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra:" The Measure of Man.......................... 80 PART II: THE TRIUMPH OF FORTUNE 5. Fortune in English Literature from Jonson through Dryden....................... Ill 6. Thomas May's "Tragoedy of Cleopatra:" Fortune in Satire........................... 128 7. Sir Charles Sedley's "Antony and Cleopatra:" Fortune in the Later Heroic Drama........... 146 8. John Dryden's "All for Love:" Fortune in the "New" Tragedy................ 163 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY............................. 180 iv MALLERY— PAGE 1 INTRODUCTION This study traces the development and changes in the depiction of the goddess Fortune in a selected group of dramas written between 1592 and 1678: the six English versions of the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. The concepts surrounding the goddess Fortune and her place in any culture change with the idea of the individual's ability to shape his own destiny. In the seventeenth century in particular Fortune becomes increasingly connected to questions of personal identity and what Stephen Greenblatt has called "self-fashioning,"1 so that by 1678 the subject cf John Dryden's All for Love is not the quest for the Fortune of Love as its title indicates, but instead the characters are concerned with answering the question "Who am I?" The main change in the depiction of Fortune occurs after the reign of James, when Fortune becomes a ruling force in man's life, and the individual seems to have no redress against the order she imposes on his life. This tyranny of Fortune is perceived as good, however, because it imposes order on man's life, whereas if left to himself the individual regresses to animalistic violence and the chaos of nature, best described by Thomas Hobbes in his influential Leviathan (1651). Until recently, the traditions of the goddess Fortune were considered a part of medieval allegory exclusively. In MALLERY— PAGE 2 the forties and fifties Willard Farnham and H.B. Charlton noted the importance of Fortune in the early English drama, but both concluded that it was a remnant from morality plays and Senecan tragedy, forms which lost their explicit influence as English drama became more sophisticated. In this decade, Frederick Kiefer challenged this view. He begins his book-length study of Fortune and Elizabethan Traaedv (1983) with the remarks: To trace the development of English drama in the sixteenth century is to recognize that Fortune gradually assumed not less but more importance.... It is toward the end of the Elizabethan era, rather than at the beginning, that we find the most dramatically compelling treatment of Fortune. Similarly, it is in the latter part of Shakespeare's career that Fortune engages his imagination most fully (xvii). In fact, Fortune is a key theme in European drama, both tragic and comic, of the seventeenth century. The idea of Fortune was especially important to the English Protestants, as is evident in their doctrine of election,2 so much so that one of the first boats to Plymouth which the Puritans took to escape religious persecution in 1621 was named the "Fortune." The seventeenth century and its political, religious and linguistic revolutions have been the focus of much discussion in recent years. Michel Foucault argued in The Order of Things (1972) that the seventeenth century is the watershed of modern civilization; it marks the transition in the Western episteme of man's relationship to the world MALLERY— PAGE 3 through language, from which emerged the current crisis of man's alienation from the world and his own humanity. Francis Barker examines Foucault's ideas further in The Tremulous Private Bodv: Essavs on Subjection (1984) by focussing on the literary evidence of this crisis particularly in seventeenth century England. Barker analyzes the diaries of John Evelyn as well as Jacobean tragedy and Milton's prose works to support his conclusion that the main transition in linguistic discontinuity at this time can be traced through changing representations of the human h^dy. Barker claims that a ''new'' body, the human physique as an instrument, emerged through the influence of Puritan antisexuality and also because of the mechanical "decorporalization" of the scientific revolution: the body becomes an object rather than a subject. Foucault's and Barker's work are especially important to the analysis of the changes in the depiction of Fortune because she is the goddess of worldly goods. Man's concept of himself in terms of his physical attributes, his possessions and the range of his power, are all defined by his relation to Fortune. In fact, as Machiavelli showed in his political writing, the concept of the hero in the Renaissance is a question of the individual's ability to woo and win lady Fortune. There have been many answers and amplifications of the "Foucault hypothesis" of radical change in Western thought. MALLERY— PAGE 4 The main thrust of the criticism is that this idea of change is contrary to our experience of historic process.3 Thomas M. Greene gives the best answer to theorists of "radical discontinuity" in language in his book The Light in Trov: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (1982), where he notes that, "Time may be the element in which words are eroded but it is also the element in which, for each of us, they acquire accumulatively their being and their wealth.... The word carries with it a story of its development, its evolution,... [its] 'etiology'" (15-6). In his article on "Fortune ai:d Fate" in The Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Vincenzo Ciotf^ri notes many different versions of the goddess as she appears in early Renaissance literature, beginning with Saint Augustine, who sees Fortune as the antithesis of the Christian church because of her focus on worldly goods; he also repudiates her divinity because she has no substance: if one could isolate her long enough to define her, she would cease to be Fortune because she is by nature "inconstant." Dante placed Fortune in hell4 where her role is one of Divine Justice in God's scheme.