This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Gender and delay in early modern theatre patience, prodigality and revenge Lewis, Sarah Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. 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Gender and delay in early modern theatre: patience, prodigality and revenge Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sarah Lewis King’s College London 2011 Abstract In this thesis, I analyse a series of plays from the early modern professional stage to argue that temporality is socially constructed in the early modern period and that time, like gender, class and race, is a category through which early modern subjectivity is negotiated. I suggest that the ‘early modern temporal consciousness’ was dominated by a binary of action and delay and I explore the ways in which the axis of time, as it is defined by that binary, intersects the axis of gender on the early modern stage. Through my analysis of delay, and of action as its implicit opposite, in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama, I argue that a variety of gendered social identities are constructed temporally. I begin with the best known drama of delay, Hamlet. This play sets the terms for my exploration of the gendered experience of time through its engagement with three concepts which are, I suggest, structured by the opposition of action and delay which shapes temporality in early modern society: patience, prodigality and revenge. I proceed with chapters focused on these three thematic foci in turn, analysing a range of domestic comedies and revenge tragedies performed between 1585 and 1622. I argue that these dramatic genres mark fundamental differences in the experience of temporality by men and women and that those differences drive the plots and thematic concerns of the theatre at that time. I conclude by looking at how theatrical repertories informed the autobiographical writings of Lady Anne Clifford, a ‘postponed heiress’ who structured her gender and her works through the dramatic models of patience, prodigality and revenge. Thus this thesis offers a double argument: it marks gender as a shaping factor in the experience of time and it helps define early modern gender categories by way of temporality. 2 Table of contents Abstract 2 Table of contents 3 Acknowledgements 5 Note on texts 6 Introduction The temporal gendering of early modern subjects 7 i Gendering time in recent criticism 11 ii Defining the ‘early modern temporal consciousness’ 20 iii The temporalities of gender in medical and conduct literature 34 iv Patience, prodigality and revenge: gender and delay in early modern theatre 56 Chapter 1 The delay’s the thing: patience, prodigality and revenge in Hamlet 61 i ‘[C]ool patience’ and ‘wicked speed’: women waiting and not waiting 64 ii ‘[D]rinking, fencing, swearing’: the delays of prodigal action 77 iii ‘[S]wift’ yet ‘dull’: the prodigality and patience of revenge 87 iv Thrifty prodigality, wasteful patience: Hamlet beyond binaries 95 Chapter 2 Virtuous delay: the long-suffering wife ‘armed with patience’ 101 i ‘In your patience possess ye your souls’: patience as authorised delay 104 ii ‘Delay breeds danger’: the denigration of patience 122 iii ‘Women must have their longings, or they die’: whores and shrews 128 iv The dual temporality of patience 138 v The Patient Husband and the Honest Whore 144 Chapter 3 Subversive action: the prodigal husband as ‘[g]ood aged youth’ 151 i ‘Ryot, Swearing, Drunkennes, and Pride’: prodigality as action 153 ii ‘[T]hey that dye most vertuous, hath in their youth, liued most vicious’: 169 prodigality as delay iii From prodigal son to prodigal husband 182 iv ‘I have a project in my brain begot’: patience turns prodigal 192 3 Chapter 4 ‘A kind of pleasure follows’: the actions and delays of revenge 200 i The dual temporality of revenge 203 ii ‘[P]atience is the honest man’s revenge’: the perpetual deferral of vengeance 208 iii ‘Delays! – Throttle her’: the prodigal intemperance of revenge 214 iv The male revenger: action legitimised 220 v The female revenger: subversive delay 230 vi Authorising male delay, condemning female action 242 Coda Lady Anne Clifford: the ‘postponed heiress’ and the memory of theatre 250 i ‘[K]ept inclosed with so many eyes, | As that it cannot stray and breake 254 abroade’: defining virginity as delay ii ‘[I]t was his office by inheritance, and so is lineally descended on me’: the 263 heiress-in-waiting iii ‘Sometimes he used fair means and persuasions, and sometimes foul means 268 but I was resolved before so as nothing would move me’: delay as subversion iv ‘I am like an owl in the desert’: the patient wife 276 v Delay as revenge: the Life of Me, ‘The Great Picture’ and the diary of 1676 288 Conclusion 299 Appendix 307 Bibliography 312 4 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Gordon McMullan, for all his support and encouragement. His faith in both me and the project has inspired me to keep going over the last four years and I am very grateful for his guidance. I would also like to thank my second supervisor, Sonia Massai, who has given me some much valued feedback on the thesis in its various stages of development. Thanks also to others at King’s who have kindly reviewed my work and talked with me about the project, including Ann Thompson, Laura Gowing, Hannah Crawforth and Alan Read. Many others, at King’s and beyond, have generously offered me their thoughts on the thesis as well as some much valued advice, including Mick Hattaway, Janet Clare, Shehzana Mamujee, Peter Kirwan, Anita Butler and Anne Gill. In particular I would like to thank Sarah Dustagheer and Jennifer Young, whose support as friends and colleagues has been invaluable. I owe thanks to a number of people who motivated me to undertake this project. Martin Butler got me hooked on all things early modern as an undergraduate at the University of Leeds, Paul Steggall and Liz Amos encouraged me to return to academia after five years away from the library, and Alice Hunt gave me the confidence I needed to apply for the PhD whilst I was studying for my MA. Thanks to all. I am also hugely grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my research for three years. Many, many thanks to all the friends and family who have encouraged me through the highs and lows. My biggest debt of gratitude is owed to my parents, without whose support in so many ways, I could never have started, let alone finished, this thesis. 5 Note on texts In this thesis I use the best recent editions of plays where they exist and modern spelling wherever possible, though with the significant exception of the Bowers edition of The dramatic works in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon which I use throughout because of its comprehensiveness. Also, I have chosen not to use the modern-spelling Taylor / Middleton edition of part one of The honest whore because there is no equivalent modern-spelling edition of part two.Where no modern spelling edition exists, I use the earliest text of each play.