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Inter-Confessional Negotiations in Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger’s The Virgin Martyr: Truce as Disputation
Full text linkThe Virgin Martyr reflects the various debates linked to the field of diplomacy that took place during the Renaissance. The period has often been regarded as a time during which the status of diplomacy evolved and diplomatic figures, such as resident ambassadors, emerged. Concepts such as that of truce were theorized and redefined in the numerous treatises that were published during the period. In his 1625 treatise entitled On the Law of War and Peace, Hugo Grotius defines the truce as follows: ‘an agreement by which warlike acts are for a time abstained from, though the state of war continues’ before adding that ‘a truce is a period of rest in war, not a peace’. Therefore, I will regard the truce as an episode in which physical violence or the use of force stop and are replaced by an agonistic dialogue between the two parties. The Virgin Martyr, published a few years before Grotius’s treatise and just after the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) between Spain and the United Provinces, is very much concerned with the methods used to reach an agreement, the temporality of the truce and its aim. It perfectly illustrates what Timothy Hampton notices: ‘Literary texts provide a unique and privileged terrain for studying the languages of diplomacy. In turn diplomatic culture plays a dynamic role in literary history, in the invention of new literary forms, conventions and genres’. And, in The Virgin Martyr, the scenes of truce, during which inter‑confessional negotiations are conducted, impact the pace of the dramatic action, thus exemplifying the link between diplomacy and the creation of new literary and dramatic codes
Sir Thomas Salusbury 2nd’s (1612-1643) Manuscripts and Fragments
Full text linkThis article examines several manuscripts by Sir Thomas Salusbury 2nd (1612-1643) of Denbighshire, North Wales, bound within ‘The Salusburies of Lleweni Manuscript’, housed in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. The manuscripts discussed comprise Salusbury’s complete comedy, ‘Love and Money’, together with an ‘Epilogue’ and ‘Prologue’ to Salusbury’s missing play, ‘The Sorrowful Ladie’, which was performed, in 1639, at Thornhill, Buckinghamshire; a playlet, “The Citizen and his Wife” (1642) which has been transcribed by Martin Wiggins; two unfinished works, due to Salusbury’s untimely death in 1643, consisting of three acts of a tragicomedy, ‘The Lady of Loreto’, and a poetic translation of ten chapters of the ‘Book of Wisdom’ entitled, ‘The Wisdom of Saloman’. Salusbury’s manuscripts add to our growing understanding of the vibrancy of Caroline literature and powerfully encapsulate and dissect the anxieties of the cultural moment in the lead up to, and during, the Civil War. Key themes include good queenship, wise government, and the dangers of martial law. Additionally, these manuscripts give insight into the tastes of a provincial audience, demonstrate the dramatic interconnections between the provinces and London, and provide further evidence of the performance of seventeenth-century manuscript drama. The depth to Salusbury’s oeuvre is evident from his engagement with popular contemporary dramatic genres. Salusbury’s ‘Love and Money’ is a humours play indebted to Ben Jonson, whilst Salusbury’s neoplatonic tragicomedy, ‘The Lady of Loreto’, reflects the preferred theatrical experience of King Charles I’s exiled court, made fashionable by William Davenant and James Shirley
Shakespeare's King Lear: A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, ed. by Richard Knowles (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2020)
Full text link'A Simple Honest Dunce': Humphrey King and the Ambivalent Status of the Uneducated Poet at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century
No full textThe writings and social role of many marginal uneducated authors in the Elizabethan and Jacobean world of literature remain to be explored. In this article, the references to and writings of a man who seems to have been a key figure in the world of London literature around 1600, are examined in order to gauge the role of uneducated writers and explore how the status of uneducated and "simple" was exploited by writers of such a background. Humphrey King was a close friend of Thomas Nashe and other Elizabethan pamphleteers, but as a drinking companion rather than a likeminded poet. At the same time, King authored and published an infamous piece of poetry that establishes his ambivalent status as an inferior and rough writer. By studying this poem alongside his public persona, we are given a rare glimpse into the periphery of Elizabethan literary and urban life
The Play as Truce: Attainable Peace in Henry V and The Winter’s Tale
Full text linkIn the historical plays dealing with the Wars of the Roses and the Hundred Years’ War, Shakespeare does not focus on the end of the war. He dramatises the conflicts to such extent that we have the impression they are never ending experiences. Somehow it would be almost incoherent for the playwright to focus on the end of war in plays that each mark but a short episode in a lengthier war whose ‘end’ is thus located outside the temporal boundaries of the series of plays. More surprisingly, yet in keeping with the chronology of warfare, Shakespeare intersperses war plays with momentary cessations of conflict. This article shifts the focus from war to moments of truce, of temporary agreements between opposing parties and their impact on the audience. It does not focus on the truce as a military tactic to re-arm but as an essential element in a strategy of peace or entente. The article deals with two plays juxtaposing a domestic and international conflict: William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599), and The Winter’s Tale (1611), plays that present different outcomes for the truce, thus showing that Shakespearean drama offers a supple view of the truce as an instrument to reach attainable forms of peace
James Howell’s Familiar Letters, Print, and History
Full text linkIn his Epistolae Ho-Elianae, or, Familiar Letters (1645), James Howell took the letters of Seneca and Cicero as models for an epistolary history of his own time. However, he published his book at a moment of dramatic change in English print culture, in which both the sheer quantity and partisan quality of printed newsbooks were exploding. Amid the tumult of the Civil Wars, Howell decried the emergence of a print-based public sphere of debate while simultaneously participating in it. Howell imagined the letter as a privileged sphere of genteel exchange, while diving into the pamphlet wars of the 1640s and 1650s. His example can show us much about the differences between the media realities we inhabit, and those in which we would like to live
Richard Field’s English Reception of the Truce of Plessis-lez-Tours (1589)
Full text linkAccording to the Stationers’ Register, it was on 26 May 1589 (old style) that Richard Field, one of London’s most prominent stationers, entered two volumes dealing with French affairs. They were two collections containing three declarations made by the Kings of France and Navarre about a truce they had formalised a few weeks earlier. This agreement was meant to put an end to the long period of intermittent war between Henry of France and his cousin of Navarre. The two Henrys met at Plessis-lez-Tours, by the Loire River, in late April 1589. The meeting was observed and celebrated by many people in the kingdom. Combined, the royal troops and those of Navarre could win against the Leaguers and the Spanish. Indeed, as publisher Richard Field did not act simply as a courier, conveying news and ideas from one side of the Channel to the other – he may be considered as a co-author of the volumes he printed. This article intends to show how Field, in combining the three declarations, created a theatrical and political space on which truce was staged and in which Henry, king of Navarre and would-be king of France, stood out as the only king of peace. In so doing, Field wanted the texts to be read as celebrations of a long-awaited truce but a truce that was only a stepping-stone for Navarre to become king of France
Translation and Ovid as diplomatic tools in William Caxton’s Eneydos (1490)
Full text linkIn 1490, in Westminster, William Caxton published Eneydos – the first printed translation of Virgil’s Aeneid in vernacular English. Eneydos is an English translation of an anonymous French text called Le Livre des Énéydes compille par Virgile, lequel a esté translaté de latin en François. Although the source text describes itself as a French rendering of Aeneid, Le Livre des Énéydes is not a verbatim translation of Virgil’s epic poem: Tudor translation practices tended to create dialogue between sources through comparisons between texts, the incorporation or dismissal of elements from a specific episode, as well as digressions. As a result, Le Livre des Énéydes and Eneydos, although read as one unified version of Virgil’s Aeneid, borrow from different source texts and offer diverging readings of certain mythological figures and episodes. Two accounts of Dido’s life are told in Le Livre des Énéydes and Eneydos: a rewriting and translation of Boccaccio’s depiction of Dido’s life in De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (1355-73) – according to which Dido kills herself in protest as she refuses to marry a neighbouring king in order to stay true to her vow of chastity – is followed by a rewriting and translation of Virgil’s Aeneid 4, in which Dido falls in love with Aeneas and commits suicide out of love and despair when he eventually leaves Carthage. The juxtaposition of these two conflicting and opposing versions of Dido’s life introduces a well-known debate into the text. Indeed, the French compiler brings together two accounts that are representative of two of the three traditions that surround the figure of Dido (Virgil’s misogynistic rendition of Dido’s life, and Boccaccio’s historic, arguably pro-Dido digest), putting a greater emphasis on the mythological figure and thereby stirring up debate on the Queen of Carthage. There is a basis for this, as for many centuries, Aeneas’ supposed cowardice and Dido’s arguable virtue have been discussed in literature. The third tradition – the Ovidian angle – depicts Dido under a favourable light and condemns Aeneas for his dubiousness. It is introduced into the narrative by William Caxton, who added pro-Dido elements to his translation. And yet, Caxton does not openly defend Dido’s plight: the changes he makes in his translation are fairly subtle. Le Livre des Énéydes and Eneydos reactivate the debate and directly take part in the Querelle des Femmes (sometimes translated as the Battle of the Sexes), a literary debate on the condition of women which was then raging throughout Europe. This article aims at examining how the act of translation and how the Ovidian intertext are part of a proto-feminist rhetoric of appeasement of violent misogyny