Self and Violent Hands

340 Pages·2011·1.77 MB·English

by  Fiona Martin

http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/

Research Commons at the University of Waikato

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thesis.
‘MORBID EXHILARATIONS’:
DYING WORDS
IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA

A thesis submitted in fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
in
English
at
The University of Waikato

by
FIONA MARTIN

2010
i

Abstract

In Renaissance England, dying a good death helped to ensure that the soul
was prepared for the afterlife. In the theatre, however, playwrights disrupt and
challenge the conventional formulas for last words, creating death scenes that
range from the philosophical to the blackly comic. In expanding the potential of
the dying speech, dramatists encourage in their audiences a willingness to
contemplate less orthodox responses to death.
This thesis thus focuses on the final utterances of dying characters, in
selected scenes from early modern English tragedies. While scenes from iconic
dramatists such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are considered
as part of the discussion, emphasis is primarily given to those of less canonical
playwrights, including George Chapman, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher, Thomas
Kyd, Gervase Markham, John Marston, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton,
John Webster, William Sampson, and Robert Yarington. Chronologically, the
scenes span nearly four decades, from Marlowe‘s Tamburlaine plays in 1590, to
Sampson‘s Vow Breaker in 1636.
The thesis encompasses four major contexts for the study of dying
speeches: beheadings, murder, revenge and suicide. Chapter One, on public
execution, focuses on scaffold speeches delivered prior to simulated beheadings
on the stage. The second chapter examines the genre of the murder play and the
pattern of the victim‘s displaced last words. Chapter Three explores the creative
freedom taken by playwrights in the composition of dying speeches in revenge
scenarios, and the final chapter foregrounds the verbal preoccupations of
characters who choose to take their own lives. Each subject is established in
relation to social, religious and political contexts in early modern England, so that
ii

characters‘ final words are considered from both historical and literary
perspectives.
iii

Acknowledgements
If Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists were to seek feedback and insight
into their plays (post-performance at the Mermaid Tavern), they could find no
more appreciative and erudite companion than Dr. Mark Houlahan. It has been a
great privilege to have had Mark as my Chief Supervisor. In addition to sharing
books, resources and insights, he has also encouraged me to present conference
papers and seminars, always offering excellent advice, support and feedback.
Dr. Kirstine Moffat has been an absolute pleasure to work with. With a
combination of scholarly professionalism and a delightful spirit of adventure, she
has consistently dispelled moments of gloom, tightened my prose, and bolstered
my moral fibre with pep talks and chocolate.
Professor Anne McKim has read through many chapter drafts and
suggested improvements to the bibliography. Her support and advice on all sorts
of academic-related matters has been much appreciated.
My thanks to Associate Professor Norman Simms for providing valuable
feedback on an early draft of the introduction. Thanks also to Professor
Alexandra Barratt for her involvement with the thesis, and for her generosity in
sharing books and information on new publications.
To Dellie Dellow, my grateful thanks for all kinds of office help, and for
the most exuberant and imaginative moral support. Thankyou also to Athena
Chambers, whose helpfulness has always been accompanied by good humour.
I have received financial support and encouragement from various
organizations. I am grateful to the English department for providing funding for
conference-related expenses. Gwenda Pennington and her team at the
Scholarships Office have been marvellously supportive and helpful. My thanks to
iv

the University of Waikato for the award of a Doctoral Scholarship, and to the
Vice-Chancellor‘s Office for a Claude McCarthy Fellowship. I am also grateful
to the Waikato Branch of the New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women
(NZFGW) for the receipt of a Merit Award for Doctoral Study.
For the opportunity to publish material from this thesis, my thanks to Dr.
Laurie Johnson, Dr. Darryl Chalk, David McInnis, and Dr. Brett Hirsch. My
appreciation also goes to Professor David Carnegie for taking the time to talk
about Webster, and for his role in the staging of Homes‘s impressive onstage
suicide in the production of Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Special thanks are due to Dr. Louise Clark and Rowena McCoy, who
attentively read through the entire draft of the thesis and thereby helped to ensure
a more polished final product.
Catherine Stevens‘s chats from Edinburgh, and her nudging of literary
texts in my direction, have been gratefully and pleasurably received.
John Carr must be commended for exhibiting a very rare form of patience
throughout this project. I owe him thanks for uncomplainingly taking care of
mundane matters, and for putting up with endless conversations about the
beheaded, the hanged and the murdered. I can only hope that, for him, the silence
will be a rest.
My daughter and dear friend, Hannah Wright, is a fellow scholar, editorial
assistant, and kindred spirit. She has contributed to the project in so many ways –
by talking through ideas, organizing paperwork, proofreading drafts, and offering
feedback. Her engagement with my morbid topic has sustained me throughout the
project, and her enthusiasm has been a blessing and a joy.
v

for

George and Daphne Martin,
the very best of parents

and

in memory of
Jason Waterman,
friend and scholar,
who is much missed
vi

Table of Contents

Abstract i
Acknowledgements iii
Dedication v
Table of Contents vi
A Note on Editions v i i

Introduction: 1
Dying Speeches and the ‗Quality of the Liminal‘

Chapter One 38
‗Headless Errands‘: Beheadings

Chapter Two 103
‗Sanguinolent Stains‘: Murder

Chapter Three 159
‗Monstrous Resolutions‘: Revenge

Chapter Four 221
‗Self and Violent Hands‘: Self-Murder

Conclusion 294

Works Consulted 301
vii

A Note on Editions

Unless indicated parenthetically in the text, citations from the plays of William
Shakespeare, John Webster and George Chapman are from the following editions:
Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Compact Edition. Ed. Stanley Wells and
Gary Taylor. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
Webster: The Works of John Webster: An Old-Spelling Critical Edition. Ed.
David Gunby, David Carnegie and Antony Hammond. Vol. 1. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1995.
Chapman: The Plays of George Chapman. Ed. Thomas Marc Parrott. 2 vols.
New York: Russell & Russell, 1961.

Note: The phrase ‗morbid exhilarations‘, used in the title of this thesis, is from
Mark Houlahan‘s chapter, ―Postmodern Tragedy? Returning to John Ford‖.
Tragedy in Transition. Ed. Sarah Annes Brown and Catherine Silverstone.
Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007, 253.
1

Introduction: Dying Speeches and the
‘Quality of the Liminal’1

In one of the more bizarre scenes in Jacobean tragedy, the villain
D‘Amville in Cyril Tourneur‘s Atheist‟s Tragedy (published 1611) accidentally
brains himself with an axe. This extraordinary occurrence may be considered
variously as an instance of providential self-execution, as a murder that represents
the culmination of a revenge scenario, or as an unwitting act of self-slaughter.
While this is strange, what is more astonishing is that D‘Amville makes a speech
as he is dying: he staggers from the scaffold and articulates twenty-four lines of
coherent last words, acknowledging the crimes he has committed and musing
upon the appropriateness of his own demise.
In making such a confession, D‘Amville fulfills the Jacobean spectator‘s
expectation of a dying speech and provides a form of closure, both for himself and
for his audience. His final speech draws attention to the potentially complex
nature of the dying utterance, for it touches upon issues that were of central
importance during the early modern period, including the notion of the good,
Christian death; the tradition of deathbed confession after careful preparation for
dying; and anxiety over the fate of the soul in the afterlife. From the theatrical
perspective, the improbability of D‘Amville‘s performance is immaterial – what is
important is that he dies spectacularly, his ability to speak uncompromised. His
final words both satisfy and unsettle: they explain and conclude, but they also
indicate the extent to which D‘Amville has alienated himself from the possibility
of Christian redemption.

1 Gordon McMullan‘s phrase ―the quality of the liminal‖, from his Shakespeare and the Idea of
Late Writing, points to the dying speech as a crucial, threshold event (215).