Domestic Tragedy on the Early Modern English Stage Frederick Kaj Olof Bengtsson Submitted in ...

251 Pages·2014·1.01 MB·English

by  Frederick Bengtsson

True and Home-Born:
Domestic Tragedy on the Early Modern English Stage

Frederick Kaj Olof Bengtsson

Submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2014
© 2014
Frederick Kaj Olof Bengtsson
All rights reserved
Abstract
True and Home-Born: Domestic Tragedy on the Early Modern English Stage

Frederick Bengtsson

“True and Home-Born” intervenes in critical debates about early modern domestic tragedy, arguing
that—far from being a form concerned exclusively with moral admonition or the domestic sphere—it is
a centrally important site for dramatic experimentation and theorization at a key moment in England’s
evolving theatrical culture. Encompassing texts such as Arden of Faversham (1592), A Warning for Fair
Women (1599), and A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607), the term groups plays that share an interest
in “ordinary,” nonaristocratic life, dramatize domestic events of a sensational and violent nature, and
stage detailed and accurate representations of household settings and domestic ideology. While
domestic tragedy has a significant forty-year theatrical history—comparable to the early modern
revenge tragedy—and is associated with prominent dramatists such as Thomas Heywood, John Ford,
and William Shakespeare, these plays continue to be regarded as marginal dramatic texts, mainly of
interest as archives of early modern domestic ideology and experience. I argue, in contrast, that
domestic tragedies represent a key strand in the development of English tragic drama. Their heightened
reflexivity about their dramatic and tragic form suggests a deep and abiding interest in dramatic and
theatrical matters: in how drama creates verisimilitude, how it represents “truth,” and how it imagines
and participates in a new, native, and national theatrical culture.
The first half of “True and Home-Born” focuses on a number of plays traditionally identified as
domestic tragedies, showing that their interests are not confined to the household, but extend to the
dramatic and theatrical implications of faithfully recreating the reality of domestic experience on stage.
Heywood and Shakespeare, I suggest, are particularly attuned to these implications, and develop and
critique a form of theatrical verisimilitude in their respective engagements with the form. In the second
half, I suggest that the subgenre’s boundaries are more permeable than previous criticism has allowed.
By considering both the revenge tragedy and history play subgenres in terms of the domestic, I show the
extent to which domestic tragedy was fully imbricated in the period’s dramatic traditions and theatrical
culture. The revenge tragedies of Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare, I argue, turn to the household as a site
in which to imagine a new form of revenge drama that differs from its classical forebears and is thus
suited to the English stage. Finally, I contend that in a group of historical dramas that I call the “British
history plays,” focused on historical events set in ancient Britain, the domestic sphere becomes central
to the staging of history, offering early modern historical dramatists a means of bridging the gap
between ancient past and early modern present.
Contents

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................................. ii
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 1
“Thus have you seen the truth”: Tragedy and Truth on the Early Modern Stage ...................................... 36
Veracity and Verisimilitude in A Woman Killed with Kindness and Othello ............................................... 86
“Strange plots of dire revenge”: ‘Domesticating’ Revenge for the English Stage ........................................ 131
Domestic Histories of Ancient Britain ............................................................................................................. 178
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................ 232

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Acknowledgements
This dissertation—and these thanks—have been a long time coming, but here they finally are.
First and foremost, my mentor Jean Howard, for whom there are almost no words and without whom
there probably would not have been any—thank you for your unfailing support, unwavering
enthusiasm, and your kindness and friendship. Julie Crawford and Molly Murray have been stimulating
interlocutors, incisive readers, patient advisers, and good friends. Working with you, my committee of
committees, has been both a pleasure and a privilege.
To all those at Columbia who eased the way, thank you. Alan Stewart’s ever-calming, ever-patient
presence and his ever-thoughtful advice have been a boon to my graduate school existence. Nicole
Wallack has always been incredibly supportive, insightful, and generous. Over the years, the members of
the early modern dissertation seminar have been a wonderfully companionable community, and an
insightful one. Fellow travellers through graduate school, old and new, have provided both intellectual
stimulation and intellectual respite whenever and wherever needed. Alice Boone, Marina Graham,
Musa Gurnis, Ruth and Ean Lexton, Katja Lindskog, Sara Murphy, Nick Osborne, Christine
Varnado—the long years seemed much shorter thanks to you all. Mary Kate Hurley—your friendship
and generosity have been indispensable.
Lynn Festa, who set me on this path years ago, and made me a better thinker along the way—having
you as a guide, a mentor, and a friend has always smoothed a long and sometimes rough journey.
Denis, who was there for the first time around, and the second—thank you always for your friendship,
brother.
Emily, who is here for the third time around, and who I met when it began—you know my ideas better
than I do, and make them sound better than I could. Thank you for your thoughts, for my words, and
for our story.
My parents, who gave me everything, and then some—you made me feel like I could do anything and be
anyone. For your unstinting generosity and unwavering belief in me, thank you.
Last but never least, Stephanie, my dearest sister and my oldest friend. You always told me—and never
doubted—that I would finally get here, and here I am. Thank you for everything.

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To Emily
To my parents
To my sister

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Introduction
TRUE AND HOME-BORN: DOMESTIC TRAGEDY ON
THE EARLY MODERN ENGLISH STAGE
Arden of Faversham (1592),1 perhaps the best-known early modern domestic tragedy, ends with a
dramaturgical apology:
Gentlemen, we hope you’ll pardon this naked tragedy
Wherein no filèd points are foisted in
To make it gracious to the ear or eye;
For simple truth is gracious enough
And needs no other points of glozing stuff.
(Epilogue 14–18)2
This epilogue is no meek apology, but rather a bold statement about the true nature of tragedy, which
makes a case for Arden as something new, something different. Franklin, friend of the murdered Arden,
here entreats the audience to excuse the simplicity of the play just ended, this unconventional “naked
tragedy” that lacks the usual rhetorical ornament to make it “gracious to the ear or eye.” Initially
deferential, by the end he confidently asserts that the more profound grace of “simple truth” should
compensate for this lack of ornament, implicitly distancing this new form of tragedy from traditional
understandings of the genre, which associated it with the highly wrought rhetoric of the Roman
dramatist Seneca and other classical influences. The passage’s double registers of meaning emphasize the
superficiality of rhetorical ornament: the “filèd points” not only refer to polished or elaborated rhetoric,

1 Arden was entered into the Stationers’ Register on 3 April 1592, and printed later that year. Since the main source for the
plot is the 1587 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the play is usually dated 1587–91. Here
and throughout the dissertation, parenthetical dates refer to the first printing, unless otherwise specified. Where printings
have been shown to occur much later, an estimated date of performance or composition (preceded by ‘c.’) will be given.
2 The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham, ed. M. L. Wine (London: Methuen, 1973). All references are to this edition,
unless otherwise noted.

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but to fine lace, while “glozing stuff” is both specious or flattering rhetoric and gaudy or gleaming
fabric.3 Arden, in other words, wears homely (plain and English) attire rather than needlessly decorative,
foreign garb.
Arden might lack those qualities that make it appealing to the senses, or “gracious to the ear or
eye.” But in the repetition of “gracious” on the very next line, the graciousness of rhetoric is outweighed
by the grace of truth: “For simple truth is gracious enough.” Simplicity, like nakedness, plays on a sense
of being unadorned or without ornament. Arden’s truth is free of rhetorical ornament because the play
itself is. Simplicity also calls to mind straightforwardness, and a “simple truth” is thus not just a truth
free of ornament, but a truth easily apprehended, easily digested, easily recalled.4 Arden is a “naked
tragedy” on several levels: potentially deficient or inadequate, as Franklin (disingenuously) suggests;
devoid of rhetorical ornament or frills; and—through the association of rhetoric with fabric and
embroidery—uncovered or undressed, revealed in its bare essence.5 Requiring no specious or fancy
additions, “no other points of glozing stuff,” truth on its own is “gracious enough” to constitute a tragic
play. Tragedy is defined not by how it looks—or rather, sounds—but by what it does: it stages “truth.”
Arden, then, is presented not just as a different kind of tragedy, but a truer form of tragedy, a
tragedy that reveals the essence of its own form. This claim is especially audacious given the details of
the play’s plot and setting. Far from the rarefied heights and ancient past of classical tragedy, the play

3 OED, s.vv. “filed”: “polished, smooth, neatly finished off or elaborated; fine”; “point”: “a subject or matter in dispute or
under discussion; a proposition, argument, or idea,” and also “thread lace made wholly with a needle”; “gloze”: “to talk
smoothly and speciously; to use fair words or flattering language; to fawn,” and also “to shine brightly, to blaze; also, to
gleam”; “stuff”: “material for making garments; woven material of any kind.”
4 In the earliest cited usage (still current in the early modern period), “simple” means “free from duplicity, dissimulation, or
guile; innocent and harmless; undesigning, honest, open, straightforward.” Ibid., s.v. “simple.”
5 During the early modern period and as late as 1817, “naked” could mean specifically “lacking or defective in some quality,
skill, etc.; esp. lacking in rhetorical art.” Ibid., s.v. “naked.”

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dramatizes the 1551 murder of Thomas Arden, a controversial landowner in the Kentish market town of
Faversham. A notorious story with its own particular place in English history—Raphael Holinshed saw
fit to devote a considerable amount of text to this apparently “private matter” in the 1587 edition of his
Chronicles (the play’s main source)—it appeared in numerous retellings throughout the Elizabethan
and Jacobean periods.6 It is nevertheless a striking choice for a tragic narrative, concerning as it does
“the lives of ordinary people [. . .] presented with an immediacy foreign to both the elevation of tragedy
and the ridicule of comedy, an immediacy that [makes] those other forms seem foreign,” in the words of
Richard Helgerson, whose work has usefully shown just how unique the “ordinariness” of Arden and
other domestic texts is in artistic and literary terms.7 In its sensational and salacious nature, in the
ordinariness of its nonaristocratic protagonists, and in its lack of a clearly identified tragic hero or an
obvious tragic arc, Arden of Faversham undoubtedly represents, and presents itself as, a break with
established concepts of tragic decorum.8
Early modern England was no stranger to tragedy as a form of literary and cultural expression.9
A rich tradition of de casibus tragic literature existed in the period, as exemplified by the 1559

6 Holinshed dedicates some 5,000 words in total, more space than any other “private” crime is given. Other versions of the
story include the first brief mention in the 1551 Breviat Chronicle, the account in the Faversham Wardmote Book, accounts
by John Stow and other historians, a mention in Thomas Heywood’s poem Troia Britannica (1609), and the “Complaint
and Lamentation of Mistress Arden” (1633), a ballad. At least a dozen different retellings appeared between 1551 and 1643.
7 Adulterous Alliances: House, State, and History in Early Modern European Drama and Painting (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2000), 2.
8 The kind of decorum articulated by (for instance) Sir Philip Sidney, modelled on Aristotelian precepts and classical
precursors that idealized the nobility of the tragic protagonist and a highly developed rhetorical style. Which is not to say
that the play necessarily is a break with decorum, but that the epilogue positions it as such. For an overview of the “idea” of
tragedy in the early modern period, see David Scott Kastan, “‘A rarity most beloved’: Shakespeare and the Idea of Tragedy,”
in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works: The Tragedies, eds. Richard Dutton & Jean E. Howard (Malden: Blackwell, 2003),
4–22: 4.
9 For an overview of the development of this “mongrel genre,” see Rebecca Bushnell, “The Fall of Princes: The Classical and
Medieval Roots of English Renaissance Tragedy,” in A Companion to Tragedy, ed. R. Bushnell (Malden: Blackwell, 2005),
289–306.

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