Much Ado - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

308 Pages·2012·16.63 MB·English

by  Sue Marilyn Knott

COMPETING DISCOURSES OF LOVE AND SEXUALITY
IN THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
IN RENAISSANCE DRAMA
SUE MARILYN KNOTT
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts
of the University of Birmingham
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English
Faculty of Arts,
University of Birmingham
March 1998
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Synopsis
Competing Discourses of Love and Sexuality in the
Relationships of Men and Women in Renaissance Drama
This thesis is an examination of the ways in which competing discourses of
love and sexuality, ranging from the literary and philosophical to the religious, have
influenced the portrayal of men and women in the drama of the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. The structure of the thesis is in two parts: the first
concerns what might be termed normative relationships, underlying which is the ideal
of mutual affection in marriage, and the second, relationships which undermine, or
challenge that ideal. My central proposition is that the conflict between the demands
of the body and the spirit, rooted in the ascetic heritage of the Middle Ages, lies at the
heart of all discourse on love and sexuality. This is demonstrated in the tension
between the Petrarchan idealisation of love and women, and their denigration;
between sublimation and sexual fulfilment. Underlying the idealism associated with
love is the fear of disillusionment and betrayal, arising out of a deep-rooted
association of sexuality with sin, which finds expression in anxiety about female
sexuality. The playwrights dramatise these tensions, placing them in a context of
changing values in which traditional views of morality come into conflict with a
cynical acceptance of human frailty.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It would be impossible to name all those to whom I owe a debt of gratitude.
First and foremost, to my immediate family, James and John who have lived through
some of the trials and tribulations of this undertaking over the past few years, to my
elder son, Paul, and to my mother, who is, sadly, unable to share the relief associated
with its completion. Secondly, my gratitude is due to Martin Wiggins, who inspired
my interest in the work of Shakespeare's contemporaries, not to mention Shakespeare
himself, to Stanley Wells for his kindness and his encouragement, and to the ever-
helpful librarians, Jim and Kate, and their predecessor, Susan Brock. My thanks are
also due to the members of The Shakespeare Institute, so many of whom have offered
their support and encouragement, in particular, to my M. A. colleague, Caroline
Cakebread for her cheerful and positive outlook, to Ann Kaegi for warning me of
some of the pitfalls, to Becky Owens for her sense of humour, and to Gene Giddens,
for reading some of my work and helping me solve some of the mysteries of the Mac.
Finally, to Jean Tinston, for her unfailing support through both family and academic
crises.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION....... .......................................................................... 1
PART ONE: COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE
CHAPTER ONE: THE HEAVENLY RHETORIC OF HER EYE'
i. 'If love, dear God, what is its quality? '................................................ 11
ii. 'It is man with whom we have always to do'................,...................... 15
iii. 'That I may be like a lover, and then I will sigh and die'................. 19
iv. 'Tis Hymen peoples every town'.......................................................... 24
v. 'Let us seek our own torments'.......................................................... 27
vi. 'Give me a lover, let the husband go'................................................. 33
CHAPTER TWO: 'TO LOVE EXTREAMELY PROCURETH EYTHER
DEATH OR DANGER.'
i. 'Man ought to beware of this Passion'................................................ 40
ii. 'Dangerous suspicion waits on our delight. '....................................... 50
iii. 'Let love-devouring death do what he dares'..................................... 54
iv. 'These violent delights have violent ends'......................................... 62
v. 'This is flesh and blood, sir' ................................................................ 71
CHAPTER THREE: 'A REMEDY AGAYNST SINNE? '
i. 'That men may live modestly with their wives'.. ...................................... 84
ii. 'Their chastity, that should be his alone'............................................... 91
Hi. 'An act which is so natural, just and necessary'................................ 97
iv. 'Do you ever think to find a chaste wife in these times ?'.................... 99
v. 'Hardto be disproved, lust's slanders are'....................................... 108
vi. 'Ha, that wives were of my metal'................................................... Ill
CHAPTER FOUR: 'NO SINNE BUT A PASTIME?'
i. 'The outrageous seas of adultery.'................................................... 119
ii. 'What labour is'tfor woman to keep constant?'............................. 125
iii. 'Is all this seeming gold plain copper?'.......................................... 132
iv. 'Such an appetite as I know damns me'.......................................... 135
v. 'O the unsounded sea of women's bloods'..................................... 143
vi 'O thou beguiler of man's easy trust'........................................... 148
PART TWO: SEDUCTION AND BETRAYAL
CHAPTER FIVE: 'THE IMPUDENCE OF FLESH AND HELL'.
i. 'I did not bid thee talk of Chastity'................................................... 153
ii 'Love's subject grows too threadbare nowadays.'.......................... 159
iii. 'It is our blood to err, though hellgap'd loud'............................. 167
iv. 'Am I the author of your sin?'....................................................... 178
v. 'A good whore had saved all this'.................................................... 183
CHAPTER SIX: 'LINES PARALLEL THAT NEVER MEET'
i. 'Men having autoritie' and 'mirrors of rare chastitie'....................... 193
ii. 'Do what I can, no reason cools desire'.......................................... 199
iii. 'Dost thou desire her foully for those things that make her good? '... 203
iv. 'If thou dost live I must my honour lose'....................................... 212
v. 'Thou mayst enforce my body but not me'...................................... 214
CHAPTER SEVEN : 'THE WOMAN'S PART'
i. 'A wretchedly carnal thing'.. ............................................................. 228
ii. 'Venus'sweete delights'.... ................................................................. 230
iii. 'A commodity will lose the gloss with lying'.................................... 235
iv. 'There's language in her eye'........................................................... 237
v. 'Must my life be made the world's example?'.................................. 240
vi. 'Theirfair, glozing countenance'...................................................... 258
vii. 'Thy black shame and my justice'..................................................... 270
viii. 'What have I gained from thee but infamy..'................................ 275
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 283
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................ 289
INTRODUCTION
This thesis is an examination of the ways in which competing discourses of
love and sexuality, ranging from the literary and philosophical to the religious, have
influenced the portrayal of men and women in the drama of the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. The discourses to which I refer are those which are
employed to describe, discuss and regulate love and sexual behaviour. Predominant
amongst them is the Petrarchan language of courtship, which seems to promote a
different set of values to those of the moral and religious treatises of the time. My
aim is to explore the way in which the tensions arising from these sources are
reflected in the drama of the period. In my discussion I have taken a thematic
approach, rather than adopting one of the more traditional and convenient methods of
ordering material: by author, genre or chronology. These well-established approaches
have their advantages but impose their own particular pattern from the outset. I have
chosen, instead, to consider the patterns which emerge from the study of a sample
which includes a range of author and genre, and which encompasses drama of the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
The clearest pattern that arises is that of a repeated conflict between the
demands of the body and the spirit, rooted in the ascetic heritage of the Middle Ages,
and given renewed urgency by the demands of Protestantism on the individual
conscience. This conflict, which is expressed in a questioning of the values of love in
what is perceived to be a changing society, lies at the heart of all discourse on love
and sexuality. The word love resists definition, then as now, but I have taken it as it
was used in the period to cover a whole range of emotions from platonic admiration
to what is sometimes referred to as lust. 'Sexuality' is a term which was not in use in
the period but I have used it, according to the Oxford English Dictionary's definition,
to describe what is 'relative to the physical intercourse between the sexes, or the
gratification of the sexual appetites.' To make a distinction between love and
sexuality is not necessarily any easier now than it was in the Renaissance but it is a
distinction which was important to writers in a period in which love was perceived as
being hierarchically structured, with chaste affection at the pinnacle of which lust
formed the base.
The portrayal of love and sexual relationships on stage has often provoked an
emotive response in critics. Traditional chronological and author-centred approaches
have led a number of critics to shape the dramatic portrayal of love and sexuality in
the period as one of decline into what Muriel Bradbrook calls 'the decadence.1 l The
term is used to refer to a decline in moral, as well as artistic standards. The process is
effectively summed up by Una Ellis Fermor as 'the sinking of the clear exaltation of
the Elizabethan age into the sophisticated, satirical, conflicting mood, deeply divided,
of the Jacobean drama.' 2 More recently Alexander Leggatt, though he acknowledges
that cultural change is a gradual process, suggests that there are distinct differences
between Elizabethan and Jacobean drama which relate to sexual and moral issues. He
describes the Jacobean Age as being characterized by 'the excitement of living in a
sharply felt present, one in which the driving forces are material and sexual appetite',
pointing out that, although the tradition of moralising persists in the drama, it is
accompanied by a 'gleeful fascination with the vice and folly under attack,' 'a quality
we hardly ever see in Shakespeare.' 3
Leggatt's argument is less of a value judgement than that of some of the critics
to whom I refer on the following pages, but in excluding Shakespeare from the
'gleeful fascination' with vice exhibited by his contemporaries he is following the
tradition of associating Shakespeare, not only with a golden age of drama, but with a
more wholesome attitude to the portrayal of sexuality; of making him the yardstick,
1 Muriel Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Jacobean Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1935)pp.240-67
2 Una Ellis Fermor, The Jacobean Drama (London: 1957) p.10
3 Alexander Leggatt, Elizabethan Drama: Shakespeare to the Restoration, 1590-1660 (Burnt Mill:
Longman, 1988) p. 103