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Middleton and Tragedy
‘our “other” Shakespeare’ – Gary Taylor
‘As practised in Renaissance England and in classical Greece and
Rome, tragedy is an intense exploration of suffering and evil
focused on the experience of an exceptional individual,
distinguished by rank or character or both. Typically, it presents a
steep fall from prosperity to misery and untimely death, a great
change occasioned or accompanied by conflict between the tragic
character and some superior power. It might be said, therefore,
that conflict and change – the first intense if not violent, the
second extreme – together constitute the essence of tragedy.’
Tom McAlindon, ‘What is a Shakespearean tragedy?’
Aristotle’s definition of Tragedy in the 4th Century BCE Poetics: “Tragedy,
then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain
magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the
several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action,
not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to
accomplish its katharsis* of such emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore,
must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot,
Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Melody” (translation by S. H.
Butcher).
Plot must be of a ‘certain magnitude’ and ‘seriousness’ with ‘universal
significance’. The plot works toward a reversal of intention (‘peripeteia’)
producing ‘recognition’ (‘anagnorisis’), a change from ignorance to
knowledge producing love or hate between the persons destined for good or
bad fortune, which in turns creates the catastrophe leading to the final scene
of suffering. Aristotle uses Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus as his model
descriptively for his theorising.
*katharsis: a term that has produced much dispute. A state of mind
produced by the spectacle, where the massive contradictions of feeling –
‘pity’, ‘fear’, terrible suffering – are somehow reconciled through the
experience of watching, yielding, finally, in the spectator, grave
understanding.
However, the most influential models of tragedy for Shakespeare and his
contemporaries were not Greek but Roman and late medieval, specifically Seneca’s
rhetorical and highly sensational plays (written, we think, for recitation) and the
narrative verse tragedies that came in the wake of John Lydgate’s fifteenth-century The
Fall of Princes, like the 1559 collection known as The Mirror for Magistrates.
Seneca (writing when Nero was emperor): terrible and sensational crimes; tyranny
and the abuse of political power; rage, lust, sexual jealousy; revenge spurred on by
ghosts, Furies, ‘the gods’. See Titus Andronicus; The Spanish Tragedy. A ‘theatre of
blood’. And a theatre of the defiant, assertive ‘self’ who is prepared to do wrong,
consciously, in pursuit of his end: Titus, Hieronimo.
Fall of Princes: explores political power but under the influence of Fortune,
mutability in worldly affairs, and constant catastrophic change. Imaged in the ‘wheel’
or ‘ladder’: attaining the ‘top’ of power and prestige, the ambitious hero over-reaches
himself and topples headlong into disaster. Classical notions of ‘Fortune’ are now
explained in Christian terms: the ‘original’ Fall of Adam tropes all future individual
falls of man. This tragedy is ethical and political: it demonstrates eternal justice, a
link between action and consequence; it shows divine retribution and warns against
tyranny and rebellion. It incorporates elements from the medieval morality plays,
most significantly, a secularised representation of the Vice character.
Listed as tragedies in the First Folio, 1623:
Titus Andronicus
Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
Hamlet
Othello
Macbeth
King Lear
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Timon of Athens
Cymbeline, King of Britain
[Troilus and Cressida]
Terrible recognitions
Irreparable loss
Destruction of the noble
Accidents proceeding
from good intentions: ‘I
thought all for the best’
Mis-taking
Betrayal – by others, by
the self
Time: running out
The role of the domestic: family tragedies … investigation of male self-hood?
Where does Middleton take tragedy in plays like Women Beware Women and The
Changeling? How much of ‘Shakespearean’ tragedy shows up in Middleton?
Tragedy and sex ‘crime’: Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello
Comedy and the sex ‘crime’: ‘Oh, mother! Do not marry me to yon fool! / I had
rather be set quick in the earth and bowled to death with turnips’ (Anne Page in
The Merry Wives of Windsor); ‘You have her father’s love, Demetrius. / Let me have
Hermia’s. Do you marry him’ (Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream); ‘I must
forsooth be forced / To give my hand opposed against my heart / Unto a mad
brained rudesby full of spleen / Who wooed in haste and means to wed a leisure’
(Kate in The Taming of the Shrew); Marry [a husband?] ‘Not till God make men of
some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered
with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward
marl?’ (Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing). ‘Check thy contempt. Obey our will
…’ ‘Undone and forfeited to cares forever! … Oh, my Parolles, they have married
me!’ (King, Bertram in All’s Well that Ends Well).
Women (and men) and the misery of enforced marriage: the subject of Elizabethan comedy
develops into the subject of Jacobean tragedy with the exploration of the unsuitable suitor?
Women Beware Women and marriage/woman question: trope of the unsuitable suitor
Plotline no. 1. Leantio (unsuitable suitor) and his ‘stolen’ aristocratic Venetian bride
Mother: You’re to blame / … To wrong such a perfection / …To draw her from her
fortune, which no doubt / At the full time might have proved rich and noble! / You
know not what you have done… / What ableness have you to do her right then / In
maintenance fitting her birth and virtues? -- / Which ev’ry woman of necessity looks
for / And most to go above it, not confined / By their conditions, virtues, bloods or
births / But flowing to affections, wills and humours.
Leantio: … I pray, do not you teach her to rebel,
When she’s in a good way to obedience…She intends
To … frame the fashion of an honest love
Which knows no wants but mock[s] poverty.
Bianca: Kind mother, there is nothing can be wanting
To her that does enjoy all her desires.
Heaven send a quiet peace with this man’s love,
And I am as rich as virtue can be poor…
You have not bid me welcome since I came… [Kisses]
Leantio: Tis a bitterness / To think upon tomorrow: that I must leave her / Still to
the sweet hopes of the week’s end…pleasure…Saturday night.
Leantio: O, fair-eyed Florence,
Didst thou but know what a most matchless jewel
Thou now art mistress of, a pride would take thee
Able to shoot destruction through the bloods
Of all thy youthful sons. But tis great policy
To keep choice treasures in obscurest place.
Should we show thieves our wealth, twould make em bolder.
Temptation is a devil will not stick
To fasten upon a saint; take heed of that.
The jewel is cased up from all men’s eyes.
Who could imagine now a gem were kept
Of that great value under this plain roof?
But how in times of absence? What assurance
Of this restraint then? Yes, yes, there’s one with her.
Old mothers know the world. And such as these,
When sons lock chests, are good to look to keys. (1.1.161-76)
********
Guardiano: I never knew him [the Duke]
So infinitely taken with a woman;
Nor can I blame his appetite, or tax
His raptures of slight folly: she’s a creature
Able to draw a state from serious business…He’s spoke twice now…(2.2.13-17, 20)
Guardiano: Tis beyond your apprehension
How strangely that one look has catched his heart.
Twould prove but too much worth in wealth and favour
To those should work his peace.
Livia:
And if I do’t not, …
I’ll quite give o’er and shut up shop in cunning. (2.2.20-27)
********
[Livia and Mother sit to play at chess]
[Enter, above, Guardiano and Bianca taking ‘delight / to see your rooms and pictures’]
Guardiano: There’s a better piece / Yet than all these…Turn but your eye now …
[Enter Duke, behind Bianca; Bianca turns and sees the Duke]
Bianca: O sir!
Duke: He’s gone, beauty …
Bianca: O, treachery to honor!
Duke: Prithee, tremble not … Why art so fearful? … I’m friend to brightness … Pish, strive not … The
lifting of thy voice is but like one / That does exalt his enemy … / Take warning … I should be sorry the
least force should lay / An unkind touch upon thee… I give better in exchange: wealth, honour. / She
that is fortunate in a duke’s favour / Lights on a tree that bears all women’s wishes…Take hold of
glory./Do not … cast away your life / Upon necessities… (2.2.112-375)
********
Guardiano: I can but smile as often as I think on’t. How prettily the poor fool was beguiled, / How
unexpectedly! It’s a witty age. / Never were finer snares for women’s honesties / Than are devised in
these days (2.2.393 – 397).
Bianca: Now bless me from a blasting! I saw that now
Fearful for any woman’s eye to look on…
Yet since my honour’s leprous, why should I
Preserve that fair that caused the leprosy?
Come, poison all at once…I’m made bold now…
…Sin and I’m acquainted,
No couple greater…What, at it still, Mother?...
The kindness of some people, how’t exceeds!
Faith, I have seen that I little thought to see
I’th’morning when I rose… [Aside to Livia] You’re a damned bawd.
[Eixt]
Livia: Is’t so? ‘damned bawd’?
Are you so bitter? Tis but want of use…
Tis but a qualm of honour; twill away;
A little bitter for the time, but lasts not.
Sin tastes at the first draught like wormwood-water,
But, drunk again, tis nectar ever after. (2.2. 419 – 476)
Bianca: How strangely woman’s fortune comes about!
This was the farthest way to come to me,
All would have judged that knew me born in Venice,
And there with many jealous eyes brought up
That never thought they had me sure enough
But when they were upon me. Yet my hap
To meet it here, so far off from my birthplace,
My friends, or kindred! Tis not good, in sadness,
To keep a maid so strict in her young days.
Restraint breeds wand’ring thoughts, as many fasting days
A great desire to see flesh stirring again.
I’ll ne’er use any girl of mine so strictly…They will come to’t
And fetch their falls a thousand mile about.
Where one would little think on’t…
How now, what silkworm’s this, in the name of pride?
(Husband/Wife trade observations: lodging, suit, cloak, slippers, shoemaker, spurs.
And insults: ‘You’re a whore…An impudent, spiteful strumpet’ but ‘I am not lovestarved’; ‘’Vex, gnaw’.
And remedy from the Duke: ‘Do not vex your mind. Prithee, to bed, go. /All shall
be well and quiet’.
Plotline no. 2. Proposed marriage between Isabella (beautiful, accomplished,
wealthy) and the Ward (an imbecile, rich, tutored by ‘Sordido’, addicted to
vaguely disguised sex games/toys, libido personified as in fool’s ‘bauble’).
Arranged by her father (Fabritio) and Guardiano (who holds his wardship).
Fabritio (to Isabella): On with your mask, for tis your part to see now,
And not be seen…
See what you mean to lie; nay, and I charge you,
Like what you see. Do you hear me? There’s no dallying;
The gentleman’s almost twenty, and tis time
He was getting lawful heirs, and you a-breeding on em! (1.2.74-79)
********
Livia: I must … take my niece’s part, and call’t injustice
To force her love to one she never saw.
Maids should both see and like; all little enough.
If they love truly after that, tis well.
Counting the time she takes one man, till death,
That’s a hard task, I tell you; but one may
Enquire at three years’ end amongst young wives,
And mark how the game goes. (1.2.29-37)
Fabritio (to Isabella): How do you like him, girl? This is your husband.
Like him or like him not, wench, you shall have him,
And you shall love him.
Livia: O, soft there, brother! Though you be a justice,
Your warrant cannot be served out of your liberty.
You may compel, out of the power of father,
Things merely harsh to a maid’s flesh and blood;
But when you come to love, there the soil alters;
You’re in another country, where your laws
Are no more setby than the cacklings
Of geese in Rome’s great Capitol…
Isabella: [aside] Marry a fool!
Can there be greater misery to a woman
That means to keep her days true to her husband
And know no other man? So virtue wills it.
Why, how can I obey and honour him…? O, the heart-breakings
Of miserable maids where love’s enforced!
The best condition is but bad enough:
When women have their choices, commonly
They do but buy their thraldoms, and bring great portions
To men to keep em in subjection …
Men buy their slaves, but women buy their masters (1.2.130 – 178)
[Hippolito, her uncle, as incestuous unsuitable suitor; helpful Livia and historic
revelation cancelling filial obedience and … ‘Never came joys so unexpectedly!’]
The Final Scene … The Wedding Masque
Duke: What’s this, Fabritio?
Fabritio:
Marry, lord, the model
Of what’s presented….
Duke: But soft: here’s no such persons in the argument
As these three, Hymen, Hebe, Ganymede.
The actors that this model here discovers
Are only four, Juno, a nymph and two lovers.
Bianca: This is some antimasque, belike, my lord…
Duke:
She falls down upon’t.
What’s the conceit of that?...
This swerves a little from the argument…
Why, sure the plot’s drawn false: here’s no such thing…
I have lost myself in this quite.
Hippolito: My great lords, we are all confounded….
Duke: Upon the first night of our nuptial honours
Destruction play her triumph, and great mischiefs
Masque in expected pleasures! Tis prodigious…I like em not.
Removed these ruined bodies from our eyes…I am lost in sight and strength…
Bianca: Not yet? No change? When falls he to the earth?... Nor yet?
O, the curse of wretchedness!
My deadly hand is fall’n upon my lord!
Destruction take me to thee!
Accursed error!...Give me thy last breath…So my desires are satisfied…
Leantio, now I feel the breach of marriage
At my heart breaking. O, the deadly snares
That women set for women, without pity
Either to soul or honour! Learn by me
To know your foes. In this belief I die:
Like our own sex we have no enemy, no enemy.
Women Beware Women? Really?
‘Women Beware Women is an impressively stark and disturbing play. As in King Lear, the
plots reinforce each other; each of the contrasted marriage-matches seals off the
possibility of there being a happier alternative in its opposite. The language has a
conversational surface that is firmly locked into a network of unremitting ironies…
[D]ramatic irony transports the everyday stuff of social comedy into a tragic world…As
she dies amongst strangers, Bianca, forgetting the Duke and Guardiano, blames women
for it all – perhaps, in this at least, a woman of whom women should beware’ (John
Jowett, in Taylor and Lavagnino, Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works).
SLAPSTICK TRAGEDY?
The edifying story of Frances Howard, daughter Earl of
Suffolk, b. 1590; married (aged 14) to 13-year-old Earl of
Essex (son of Robert, executed by Elizabeth in 1601).
Separated to avoid premature sexual intercourse and
pregnancy. Essex on European tour until 1607/8. Lady
Essex at court, where she falls in love with Robbie Carr,
favourite to King James, who makes him Earl of Somerset.
She sues for an annulment of her marriage to Essex –
alleging impotence and failure to consummate marriage
(which he contested, alleging impotence by witchcraft only
with her. See Middleton’s play, The Witch.) James grants
the divorce in 1613; two months later she marries Carr ‘in
her hair’ and at stupendous cost to the crown. Meanwhile,
Carr’s personal private secretary, who has objected
strenuously to the marriage, is imprisoned in the Tower
and there dies under mysterious circumstances. It’s later
discovered that he has been poisoned by Frances in
collusion with a servant, Anne Turner (who’s executed: see
her ‘confession’. The Somersets are sent to the Tower, but
spared execution and later pardoned by the King.
Women beware women? And men?