First printed in 1976, SELECTED PAPERS is the publication of the West Virginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association. It is published annually in the spring with support from Marshall University, West Virginia University, and the West Virginia Humanities Council. Subscription rates are $6.00 per annum and back numbers may be purchased for same. Requests should be addressed to Department of English, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, 26506-6296.

Copyright, 1998, West Virginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association.

This journal is a member of CELJ the Conference of Editors of Learned Journals. ISSN: 0885-9574

Articles

Poetical Historiography: Milton’s History of Britain as a Literary Text

James Egan

Vincentio’s Fraud: Boundary and Chaos, Abstinence and Orgy in Measure for

Measure

Brian Holloway

The Sanctification of the Tudor Dynasty in Bernard Andrè’s Vita Regis Henrici

Septimi

Daniel Hobbins

Commodification and Representation: The Body in Shakespeare’s History Plays

K. A. Ewert

How "Unpopular" Were Philip and the Spanish in the Popular Opinion of Mary’s

Day?

James H. Forse

Shakespeare’s Edward III

W. L. Godshalk

Performance Review

The Herbal Bed, by Peter Whelan

Reviewed by Byron Nelson

Book Review

Macbeth: A Guide to the Play by H. R. Coursen

Reviewed by William French

Brief Book Reviews

Shakespeare and the Jews by James Shapiro

Shylock and the Jewish Question by Martin Yaffe

Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon, ed. by Jeanne Shami

The subject of an entire volume in the Yale Edition of his prose, Milton’s History of Britain is at the same time one of the longest and least resolved texts in the entire canon. Probably begun in 1649, the History almost certainly occupied Milton’s attention again in the mid-1650’s (Von Maltzahn 22-48). He would have had ample opportunity for revision before publishing in 1670. Even if Milton were not inclined to revise, the licenser very likely was, possibly deleting material offensive to the bishops of Charles I and Charles II before approving the History (Von Maltzahn 2). Gary Hamilton’s notion that Milton’s conception of the work seemingly evolved during the two-and-a-half decades of its composition further complicates the question of textual identity (245). Nicholas Von Maltzahn’s reading of the History’s structure locates a narrative movement from a "mix of fiction and history…to [a] ‘true’ history, to a jeremiad based on Gildas," thus illustrating the problematic issue of genre (viii). To establish the History as a literary text would require that the critical issues above be assessed.

The most fully developed identity of the History is, of course, its identity as a specimen of late Renaissance historiography. Since the 1640’s Milton had recognized the need for a "continuous and general" history of England and had aspired to meet that need by compiling a detailed record of the national past from its mythological origins until, presumably, his own time (CPW 5:35). As he deliberated about the means to such an ambitious end, Milton considered the appropriate style (plain or ornate) and various matters of structural arrangement, notably the question of whether or not to include interpolated, invented speeches devised by the historian (Samuel 134-35; CPW 5:46). Throughout the History abundant evidence occurs of the extent of Milton’s scholarly research, his assessment and comparison of sources, and his skepticism about many events and issues in the historical traditions he had inherited. Even while the complex process of compiling his text unfolds, moreover, Milton seems aware of and reflective about that very process; he apparently understands, in effect, his own "movement between representational and rhetorical modes" (Herendeen 428).

Contemporary scholarship has framed Milton’s commentary, creating a sense of context perhaps unavailable to him. Wyman Herendeen argues that Milton’s historiography rejects antiquarianism, and this rejection is "part of his rejection of one kind of Protestant, even Jacobean historiography and its analogue in the episcopacy" (435). Additionally, Milton’s strategies for preparing the national record suggest a lack of sympathy for not only "the whole Renaissance scientific approach, as advocated by Bodin and Bacon and practiced by Camden," but even the "most advanced techniques of historical research of his day" (Landon 68-69). Despite its non-millennial qualities, the History appears congruent with many of the tenets of Christian historiography in the Renaissance, in particular a didactic intention: "The prime end of history was instruction, whether in statecraft, in a knowledge of human motives in action, or in morality" (Von Maltzahn 158; Fogle 4).

Irrespective of such secure contextualizing, Milton’s historiography must be measured in relation to the abundant evidence that it contains considerably more than a literal, public effort to compile and measure data. David Loewenstein has summarized the primary pattern of thematic and stylistic conflict in the History as an unresolved tension between "history as mythopoetic and rhetorical and history as truthful and scientific" (Milton and the Drama of History 84). Critical reaction to the History in the twentieth century illustrates his position well. French Fogle noted that Milton’s "deep respect for style and structure" sometimes led to his use of literary instead of historical criteria (CPW 5:48), and C. H. Firth that Milton apparently treated some historical evidence at "disproportionate length," possibly for aesthetic reasons (68). Joseph Bryant addressed the issue of Milton’s artistic presence and inclination in very specific terms, pointing out that Milton was "by no means reluctant to adorn a scene with poetic touches and figures of speech…" (21). All of this commentary underscores the complex, uncertain relationship between "literary art and historical evidence" in the History (Brownley 11).

The integrationist mode of Milton criticism seems particularly well adapted to these aesthetic tensions and conflicts because integrationism can be characterized as particularly sensitive to the "interaction between literature and history" (Woolrych 217). The most recent and complete demonstration of integrationist principles occurs in a 1990 collection of essays edited by David Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner, Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose. Briefly, integrationism opposes the longstanding historical assumptions that Milton’s prose qualifies only as "subliterary, a mere repository of ideas and gloss for the poems" and that "Milton’s career" can be "partitioned" into periods of prose propaganda and art, resulting in a "dichotomy of poetry and rhetoric" (Loewenstein and Turner 1). The integrationist perspective theorizes that literary subtexts can be located in non-fictional, didactic prose such as Milton’s and that literary genres and modes are occasionally used dialogically to comment upon one another. Stephen Zwicker’s 1984 reading of Milton’s Paradise Regained as an aesthetic challenge to Dryden’s emerging mode of heroic drama offers perhaps the best demonstration of genre commentary, while David Loewenstein’s argument for the "poetics of history" in Milton’s Defenses exemplifies the usefulness of the integrationist critique for Milton’s prose (Zwicker 270-89; Loewenstein 171-92). Having validated the assumptions of Zwicker and Loewenstein in my own analyses of Milton’s antiprelatical and regicide tracts, his final political pamphlets of 1659-73, and Andrew Marvell’s The Rehearsal Transpros’d, I propose in this essay to apply those assumptions to Milton’s History. Doing so allows for a fuller understanding of the ways in which the History qualifies as a literary text. Milton’s historiography can be read as a form of autobiography, a personal record of his aesthetic decisions about a variety of issues from 1649 until 1670, as well as a demonstration, by means of fundamental literary activity, of the aesthetic subtext available throughout his prose. This reading will show that, at a proto-fictive level, an artistic continuity stretching from the early 1640’s through the 1660’s can be traced in the History of Britain, providing an illustration of Milton’s evolving aesthetic criteria, narrative and stylistic choices, and evaluations of the historical material at his disposal. In addition to these broad theoretical applications, the History embeds evidence of Milton’s continuing search for themes for his tragic drama or epic (Landon 59).

A substantial and sophisticated amount of critical deliberating and assessment occurred as Milton assembled his text. One of the most pervasive problems he faced as he began to review earlier attempts at describing England’s past was that of how to present history "unworthy of recording" (Loewenstein, Milton and the Drama of History 86). In the Defensio Secunda (1654) he suggested that an eloquent record of historical events was second in importance only to any heroism recorded (Van Maltzahn 67). I would add that Milton conceived of the relationship between deeds and historians in aesthetic terms. If "great Acts" call for praise (CPW 5:40), anyone responsible for a general "decrease and fall of vertue" deserves the "examining, and searching stile of an intelligent, and faithfull Writer to the survay of their unsound exploits, better befreinded by obscurity then Fame" (CPW 5:40). At the opening of the Third Book, Milton defends this rationale by charging that "much more is it in a Nation to know it self; rather than…for want of self knowledge, to enterprise rashly and come off miserably in great undertakings" (CPW 5:130). His commentary constitutes an apologia, a rationale for satire, an essentially literary response to the historical dilemma of unworthy deeds. Milton grants himself an aesthetic license to censure the moral failings of his countrymen, much as he had done in the antiprelatical tracts of 1641-42. This rationale for satire, in fact, represents a continuation of the processes of self-definition and defense found in the Animadversions (1641), An Apology (1642), and The Reason of Church-Government (1642). In those tracts Milton had justified the use of "grim laughter" and strong censure. Now in the History, instead of presenting an epic rationale for cultural celebration, he insists that the nation "know it self," even if it must endure the scorn of a "searching stile" in order to do so.

Another recurring aesthetic topic in the History involves Milton’s assessment of the form, movement, and intrinsic beauty of historical narrative generally. Even in Book One, as he recounts primarily mythological material, Milton finds Geoffrey of Monmouth, his probable source, "wearie, as seems, of his own tedious Tale" (CPW 5:35, N. 15). In the Second Book, though he now has Caesar’s relatively reliable Commentaries to draw upon, Milton undertakes a task he describes as "almost superfluous" because "Roman Authors" have left "an unsightly gap so neer to the beginning" (CPW 5:41). To create a balanced and symmetrical account of early national history, Milton allows himself the liberty to add, omit, explain, or articulate whatever his sources fail to render fully or gracefully (CPW 5:41). Finishing Book Three, Milton declines to "encumber the story with a sort of barbarous names, to little purpose" (CPW 5:180). Book Four includes a similar comment: Milton declines to "wrincle the smoothness of History with rugged names of places unknown…" (CPW 5:239). Still more emphatic in Book Four is his admission that "I am sensible how wearisom it may likely be to read of so many bare and reasonless Actions, so many names of Kings one after another, acting little more then mute persons in a Scene" (CPW 5:239). This pattern of discussion suggests that Milton approached the raw historical material at his disposal with a set of implied criteria about the value and integrity of the tale the historian must tell. In his estimate, that tale must embody efficiency, intrinsic interest, and a proper balance of general and specific information. Evidently, credible historical characters with verisimilitude are more meritorious than mere lists of "bare and reasonless Actions" or "mute persons in a Scene." His evaluation implies an aesthetic rhythm: Milton not only prepares an actual national history of Britain as he considers the available sources, but his speculations about the strengths and weaknesses of those sources imply a sense of design and purpose for an ideal national history, a work as yet unwritten. Such a history would, if his criteria were to be applied, offer both accuracy and beauty, and thus pleasure in a fashion common to literary works. Milton’s deliberation over the aesthetic possibilities of the historical materials he reviewed is further extended by his metaphoric dismissal of the merits of chronicling the "Wars of Kites, or Crows" (CPW 5:249). Here he implies the aesthetic limitations of particular concepts and situations, their inappropriateness for an artistic agenda of significance. In effect, Milton approached the evidence of history in much the same way he approached themes for formal literary composition, with the creative awareness of an artist.

Issues of mode, decorum, genre, and audience likewise appear on Milton’s contemplative agenda in the History. He regularly deconstructs the "fabling zeal" evident in the sources he consults (CPW 5:111), especially those which have contributed to the legend of King Arthur. Arthurian legend, Milton complains, consists primarily of "unlikelyhoods," "uncertainties," and "old legends and Cathedrall regests" (CPW 5:166). Reviewing the origins of the legend, Milton concludes that Arthur’s alleged exploits cannot be confirmed by contemporary accounts or that such accounts are deliberate misrepresentations. This skepticism about Arthurian legend implies Milton’s misgivings not only about dubious data, but also about the bombastic, fantastic tactics by means of which the life of Arthur had been distorted into what he considered a bankrupt, nearly comic, fable. Arthurian lore, Milton notes dismissively, might be appealing to such a limited historian as William of Malmesbury, who recorded a story about King Edgar which Milton considered "fitter for a Novel then a History" (CPW 5:327). In evaluating Arthurian legend and in surmising the appropriate medium for the tale of King Edgar, Milton invokes criteria of genre and mode to arrive at verdicts which, despite their occurrence in an historical context, approximately literary criticism. An implicit reflection on the possible placement of tragic and comic elements in a narrative occurs, finally, at the conclusion of the History’s final book. There Milton includes the fable of one "Elmer, a Monk of Malmsbury," who "had made and fitted Wings to his Hands and Feet; with these on the top of a Tower, spread out to gather air, he flew more then a Furlong; but the wind being too high, came fluttering down, to the maiming of all his Limbs; yet so conceited of his Art [was he], that he attributed the cause of his fall to the want of a Tail, as birds have, which he forgot to make to his hinder parts" (CPW 5:394-95). Seemingly aware of the incongruous nature of the tale, Milton adds, "This story, though seeming otherwise too light in the midst of a sad narration, yet for the strangeness thereof, I thought worthy anough the placeing as I found it plac’t in my Authour" (CPW 5:395). Milton now addresses the issue of decorum, the question of authorial selection of narrative raw material. To put it another way, he confronts the question of what to include in a history (Levy 281), and concludes with the aesthetic notation that a leavening of the comic and bizarre appropriately counterpoints the litany of corruption and defeat which makes up the primary focus of his account in Book Six.

The nature of Milton’s audience and the assertion of his own authorial identity constitute a final category of aesthetic inquiry in the History. Declining to include an anecdote from his sources, Milton justifies himself with this observation: "where [in Matthew of Westminister] I leave [the story] to be sought by such as are more credulous then I wish my readers" (CPW 5:252). Just as his commentary about the flaws in the record of the national past he inherited implied a sense of an ideal history of Britain, Milton now touches on the prudence and analytical skepticism he considers essential for the worthy reader. To satisfy that reader’s just discrimination, he proposes a particular strategy for presenting historical narrative, "a plain, and lightsom brevity…so as may best instruct and benefit them that read" (CPW 5:4). In opposition to the "fabling zeal," conjecture, and interpolation favored by many earlier historians, Milton expects to "represent the truth naked, though lean as a plain journal" (CPW 5:230). As he had done in critiquing the literary output of Joseph Hall earlier in the 1640’s, Milton defines his authorial identity in opposition to the methods he has taken pains to discredit (Egan, "Creator-Critic" 50-54). Plainness in the History, then, occurs as the result of a systematic process of evaluation and deliberation.

A large additional body of evidence to support the argument for the dual historical-aesthetic properties of Milton’s narrative can be found in the presence of literary processes, strategies, and goals throughout the text. The treatment of the Saxon leader Vortigern, an historical figure mentioned as a possible subject for a British tragedy in the Outlines for Tragedies, provides a case in point (CPW 8:569). While the Outlines include only brief factual material taken from Speed, the History represents, in a rudimentary or proto-fictive way, Milton’s development of the aesthetic possibilities inherent in the historical evidence about Vortigern. The History incorporates a lengthy account of Vortigern (sixteen pages in the Yale Edition), one of the most fully developed renderings of an early character in the entire work. Milton reviews a fairly broad range of sources, compiling information from several accounts, so that his specific sketch proves larger and more complex than those of the sources he had consulted. These sources provide various perspectives and vantage points on the central character of Vortigern, whose struggles comprise a sort of plot, replete with dramatic oppositions between him and other Saxon leaders over power and territory. Milton’s combination of characterization through an accumulation of detail, plot by means of a continuous development of Vortigern’s story, and dramatic antagonism adds up to an assessment of Vortigern’s heroic potential and a conclusion that this warrior figure lacks the moral strength of the legitimately heroic. After dramatizing and reviewing Vortigern’s story, Milton locates the political weakness and moral decay that eventually corrode him. Vortigern, he points out, was outwitted by his father-in-law Hengist and poisoned by his "own sottishness…with his Peers not unlike himself" (CPW 5:153-54). The theme of Milton’s dramatic reconstruction of Vortigern’s career centers on the fallibility of this intriguing but weak military adventurer. Thus, at the same time that he constructs a national and public historical narrative, Milton also enacts and evaluates his personal and literary interest in the tragic potential of a character.

Both Milton’s Commonplace Book and his Outlines for Tragedies suggest that his assessment of the literary potential of historical characters extended into his treatment of King Alfred. Milton notes in the Outlines that an "Heroicall Poem may be founded somwhere in Alfred’s reign" (CPW 8:571) and that Alfred set on the Danes with a "mightie slaughter" (CPW 8:571). In the Commonplace Book he praises Alfred’s sense of justice and peacekeeping ability (CPW 1:386) in addition to his success at turning the "old laws into English" (CPW 1:424). The presentation of Alfred in the History represents a continuation of Milton’s interest by means of a full sketch of a credibly heroic figure, very much the opposite of Vortigern. Milton adds to the portrait of Alfred provided in his sources an imaginative touch of his own in the form of specific details about the military galleys Alfred constructed, a tribute to Alfred’s wisdom in battle (CPW 5:288). He praises the king’s learning (CPW 5:290), excuses his youthful excesses (CPW 5:290), and omits material which might seem to indicate a popish inclination on Alfred’s part (CPW 5:282, N. 35; CPW 5:283, N. 43). He describes Alfred as the "miror of Princes" (CPW 5:292), doing so in a polished, symmetrical style unusual in the History (CPW 5:290-91; Egan, Inward Teacher 43). Milton systematically arranges historical data in this portrait of Alfred, combining material from sources with his own sympathetic perspective apparent in the Commonplace Book and the Outlines to exemplify the durably heroic. Extended character development, conflict (Alfred versus the insidious Danes), and internal dramatic opposition (Alfred’s productive struggle to balance intellectual and military activity) represent Milton’s use of fundamental literary processes to enact his early notion that an "Heroicall Poem may be founded somewhere in Alfred’s reign" (CPW 8:571). The public, national character of Alfred compiled at length in the History, then, simultaneously demonstrates the continuity of Milton’s personal literary agenda, a measurable advancement over the rough notes and abstract observations of the Commonplace Book and the Outlines, a shaping from historical information and artistic imagination of what amounts to the sort of heroic characterization which was to find its fullest expression in the epics.

Another rudimentary literary process evident in the History is Milton’s use of narrative voice to shape the reader’s moral perspective in a manner resembling the Archangel Michael’s instruction of Adam in Books 11-12 of Paradise Lost. Michael presented alluring scenes of false beauty and pleasure to the fallen Adam and then sternly reproved his enthusiasm for these temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Milton’s display of events derived from his sources occasionally resembles Michael’s strategy of entrapment, a prominent instance being Milton’s treatment of the moral character of the Saxon King Harold:

Voice in the History also assumes functions that a fully fictive narrator might assume in Milton’s poetry and drama, a prominent example being the narrator’s function as the introducer of or choric commentator on dramatic scenes and episodes. In Book Five Milton begins to structure his historical record as a series of lives of rulers. Prior to describing the actual life and reign of Aethelstan, he adds this prefatory note: "But now to the story" (CPW 5:304). Both the placement of the commentary and Milton’s word choice ("now…story") suggest that events to follow contain a dramatic identity much as purely imaginary narratives do. In Book Six, a section of the text marked by more evidence of literary processes than earlier books had shown, Milton includes a form of choric commentary on the actions of Ethelred, beginning with this remark: "he proved a main accessory to the ruin of England, as his actions will soon declare" (CPW 5:342-43; my italics). Having prepared the reader for a "plot," Milton proceeds to narrate that plot, and then seemingly distances himself from the action to make this observation: "A man might now think that all would go well; when suddenly a new mischief sprung up, dissention among the great ones" (CPW 5:343). The reader hears the voice of John Milton the historian, yet the manner and tone of Milton’s voice recall the asides of a dramatic character or the commentary of a choric witness to the events in question. Like the processes of narrative entrapment examined earlier, this particular usage of voice approximates in a rudimentary way the fully crafted deployment of fictive narrators evident throughout Milton’s drama and poetry. A final specimen of Miltonic enhancement of the mechanism of presenting historical information occurs in the form of wry, typically ironic interjections inserted into the text, for example: "[Hardecanute] levied a sore Tax, that 8 marks to every Rower, and twelve to every Officer in his Fleet should be paid throughout England; by which time they who were so forward to call him over, had anough of him; for he, as they thought, had too much of theirs" (CPW 5:370; my italics). Milton’s commentary ("anough of him…too much of theirs") becomes an antithetical, alliterative assessment of the predicament of his ancestors, one which has stimulated him to respond in an amused, almost playful tone, to employ the evidence of history as a creative point of departure for wit.

One of the two most completely sustained examples of Milton’s employment of a literary process in treating an historical source occurs in Book Two when he turns to Caesar’s Commentaries. His handling of the Commentaries proves at least ironic, at most metatextual. The Commentaries not only contained the most detailed record of early Britain from roughly 53 B.C. until the fall of Rome late in the fifth century A.D., they also extolled, in an almost epic fashion, the heroic virtues of Julius Caesar and the cultural merits of the Roman empire. Instead of including a literal rendition of Caesar’s account, Milton arranges other Roman sources and his own observations into a commentary which utilizes Caesar’s own accounts to discredit him. Caesar, Milton reports, undertook the conquest of Britain for the classically heroic reasons of ambition and glory he admitted to, but also "som say, with a farr meaner and ignobler [desire], the desire of Brittish Pearls, whose bigness he delighted to ballance in his hand" (CPW 5:41-42). While Caesar typically plays up his own valor and that of his legions, Milton calls attention to the frequent resourcefulness of the Britains against Rome’s weapons and experience, notably the brave resistance against the Roman galleys:

Milton’s assessment of the Roman empire follows essentially the same pattern as his expose of Caesar. He compares sources on the topic of Roman military success, sometimes using one to discredit another, and in this case adding his own mockery of Roman boasting and pomp:

The final three books contain illustrations of still another activity that qualifies as literary, Milton’s habit of miniaturization. To cite one prominent example, Book Five includes the tale of the conspiratorial Anlaf and an unnamed but ingenious soldier:

David Loewenstein has argued that Milton’s "History resembles a dumb-show—in which its historical characters act ‘little more than mute persons in a scene’" (Milton and the Drama of History 86). The rudimentary literary activity I have demonstrated seems congruent with Loewenstein’s position. Formal, completely developed artistic processes such as characterization, point of view, and mimetic plotting do not occur in the History because of the obvious constraints imposed upon Milton by the demands of presenting a factually accurate appropriately skeptical piece of historiography. What the reader experiences instead can be explained as a recurrence of proto-dramatic, proto-fictive representations located between fully formed history and fully formed literature, a grand "dumb-show" of sorts. Parallels between the proto-literary activity of the History and entire, canonical specimens of Milton’s creative art are many. In addition to these elementary manifestations of aesthetic activity, the History displays several links to identifiable Renaissance literary and historical prose genres. For example, Milton had already employed the "old genres of advice to Parliament" in his pamphlets of the early 1640’s, and in the History merely broadened the scope of his writing (Von Maltzahn 22).

A case can be made as well for Milton’s incorporation of two familiar, widespread genres normally considered literary, though each draws substantially upon its immediate historical context—the Character and the Jeremiad. An abbreviated sketch of an individual offered as a representative of a type, the Character was frequently deployed as a tactic of satiric controversy during the Civil War and Interregnum, typically enumerating the real or imagined principles of a party in order to assault, or occasionally to justify them (Boyce 10, 17). Specific rhetorical and aesthetic devices, notably convoluted diction, paradoxical wit, the epithet, and antithetical Senecan sentence structures, constituted the Character’s stylistic makeup, a set of conventions favored by both Royalist and Puritan Character writers (Boyce 30-35). The Character’s vogue stretched from roughly 1640 to roughly 1680. Milton not only employed the genre in Areopagitica (1644) and again in the Defensio Secunda (1654) with his Character-like description of John Bradshaw (Boyce 59), he also offered a literary critique of Character writing in An Apology (1642) (Egan, "Creator-Critic" 53). The much debated Digression in the History, omitted in 1670 when the text was issued, qualifies organizationally and stylistically as a Character. Even though in its first published form (1681) the Digression was entitled Mr. John Miltons Character (CPW 5:405), modern scholarship has not associated the Digression with the Character genre, a curious omission when one considers that Milton’s celebrated Royalist contemporary, Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, integrated "related literary forms into his [History of the Rebellion]," notably the Character, and in fact used "the Character sketch [as his] most important literary method for historical explanation" (Brownley 61, 168). Milton’s Digression amounts to a Character constructed around the satiric theme of the lack of "heroic wisdom" (CPW 5:451). He epitomizes the moral and intellectual qualities of the rebellious divines and personifies in his Character several of the Revolution’s least attractive aspects, all in a prose style frequently marked by the primary traits of Character writing, particularly the witty, antithetical turn of phrase, as in this passage: "Then looking on the Church-men most of whom they saw now to have preach’t thir own bellies, rather then the gospel, many illiterate, persecutors more then lovers of the truth, covetous, worldlie, to whom not godliness with contentment seem’d great gaine; but godliness with gaine seemd great contentment" (CPW 5:449; my italics). In addition to this example of Character-like verbal play, Milton relies on such standard Character stratagems as the sententia or aphoristic distillation of wisdom: "For libertie hath a sharp and double edge fitt onelie to be handl’d by just and vertuous men, to bad and dissolute it becomes a mischief unwieldie in thir own hand" (CPW 5:449). Whereas the remainder of the History features modest, unadorned prose in keeping with Milton’s pronouncements about the leanness of truth (CPW 5:230), the Digression’s witty, schematic, antithetical style forges a separate, distinctly literary identity for it as a specimen of genre writing.

The second prominent prose genre evident in the History is the Jeremiad, an indictment of those who have lapsed from the strict path of Reformation and a call to imitate the moral propriety of an earlier generation. Milton first mentioned his "special gift for a jeremiad" in the Reason of Church-Government (Von Maltzahn 63). The Jeremiad occurs during the Civil War and Interregnum in a variety of forms: political tracts, proclamations for fasting, letters to the army and the Parliament (Knoppers 214). Just as The Readie and Easie Way (1660), one of Milton’s most dramatic and powerful final political statements, recently established as a Jeremiad, takes on a "distinctively literary aim, to provide a myth of the nation, a story by which the English under the restored monarchy can interpret their tragedy," the History chronicles national failings of moral resolve which explain quasi-mythically the troubled political legacy of Britain (Knoppers 224). Because of its vast scope, finally, the History as a Jeremiad assumes some of the embedding and encapsulating features of such canonical texts as Paradise Lost, Lee Johnson has shown how the epic embeds "blank verse sonnets" which extend the traditional role of the sonnet as a love poem (130-31). Barbara Lewalski has examined the wide variety of literary genres in what she describes as the encyclopedic epic of Paradise Lost, while Mary Ann Radzinowicz locates both thematic and structural embeddings from the Book of Psalms in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Like the epic generally, the Jeremiad provides vast scope and scale. Like Milton’s own epics, the History embeds such minor genres as the Character, the encomium (Milton’s praise of King Alfred), and the aesthetic apologia, resulting in an encyclopedic final product. Again, historiography closely parallels Milton’s most formal, canonical literary efforts.

This review of the literary qualities of the History of Britain allows us to establish its identity more carefully by measuring those qualities against formalistic criteria for genre groupings. True, the History can be characterized as a Jeremiad, yet the formalist framing of the mode does not fully apply to Milton’s work. As Peter Gay argues, the "Jeremiad was a stylized history, designed to shame the present generation out of its erring ways by recalling the surpassing virtues of its fathers" (67). Clearly, Milton’s recounting of Britain’s past emphasizes national foolishness and moral recklessness at least as much as any "surpassing virtues." His Jeremiad, moreover, has a private, aesthetically reflective quality, an artistic signature distinct from those of other Jeremiads produced during the Civil War and Interregnum. Yet even the reflective quality of the text must be qualified. Roy Pascal defines the autobiography as follows: "A self-written prose account which attempts the recollection of the major portion of one’s past life and which focuses upon the inner thoughts or domestic or external activities of the individual" (9). Milton does not, however, describe the major portion of his past life nor does he directly invoke his personal or political activity in the narrative. If Pascal’s notion that an autobiography provides the "philosophical history of a man’s life" holds true, then Milton’s text does not contain an essential component of the formalist definition (8-11).

As I have proposed, even the label of Renaissance "historiography" customarily applied to the History must be employed with care, for Milton’s text offers both an actual reconstruction of Britain’s past and an implicit plan for an ideal reconstruction, while his motives for composition appear public and personal at once. He considers at some length aesthetic issues and practices normally irrelevant to a national history. The dialectic between the ideal history Milton envisions and the unbecoming record of national ignominy he must record, together with his desire to have his effort measured against the contributions of past historians, are signatures of his own work in varied prose and poetic literary genres more than they are characteristics of other examples of Renaissance historiography. We must turn, finally, to the Milton canon itself for the most accurate categorical identification of the History of Britain. James Holstun calls attention to Milton’s habitual processes of "self-memorialization and prophecy" evident in his "Latin defenses of…the 1650’s," and I would suggest that these processes apply more completely to the History than formalist genre categories do (260). Though Milton evidently does not present his History as an autobiography, in a specific yet implicit, subtextual way, he dramatizes and debates literary agendas, tactics, and theoretical concerns that typify his production in modes as diverse as pastoral verse and polemical tract writing. Not formally a diary, the History still embeds a detailed, telling record of Milton’s personal preoccupation with the articulation of his lifelong literary goals. If we can legitimate the apologia treating the rationales for religious satires in 1641-42 as indicative of Milton’s political bearing, and regard as genuine his deliberations in the pamphlets of 1659-73 about how to write plain prose, then we should grant the likelihood that the History of Britain has an aesthetic identity.

James Egan

University of Akron

¹See also the tale of King Canute (CPW 5:365-66), in which Milton epitomizes the themes of false appearance and the serio-comic intractability of error.

Many existing views of Measure for Measure seem intriguing but incomplete. They might reinforce our perception of this play as fragmented and baffling, because they do not integrate apparently conflicting outlooks presented in the play’s Vienna, and generated by the mysterious action of Vincentio. Notice how the following different interpretations display the conflicts: the extreme view proposed by Roy Battenhouse that the Duke stands for God (Rossiter 108-28); the modified position of Elizabeth Marie Pope that the Duke is a successful magistrate with divinely-delegated powers ("Renaissance" 66-82), almost in line with Eliade’s version of a receding sky-god replaced by a local delegate (see Eliade 52); the attack upon Vincentio’s foolish "mystification" by Clifford Leech (69-71); and the concomitant understanding by Wylie Sypher that the Duke’s Vienna is merely an arbitrary, chaotic locale where passion and abstinence indifferently change place (262-80). Missing from such interpretations of Measure for Measure is isolation of controlling motifs: that of trial by temptation—or "assaying," as both the play and contemporary religious tracts name it; and of classical concepts of restrained chaos. Understanding these ideas will not resolve all the necessary ambiguities, but may provide a coherent approach to viewing or directing this perplexing drama. Analyzing Vincentio as a self-appointed "assayer" means exploring the chaotic world of Vienna, transformed by Vincentio’s incompetence into a predatory dis-order. To refer to Eliade again, the Duke has perhaps assumed the role of demiurge only to recede himself, giving way to a lesser divinity (40, 50-52) in Angelo—a character significantly named. This recession of deities and the replacement of divine prerogative by human misapplication of that prerogative unleashes forces which, in seeking to control chaos, themselves prepare for more of it.

The context of theology provides one key to this analysis. Thomas Morton’s translation of Calvin’s The Institution of Christian Religion, for example, asserts a tripartite division of temptation as a trial in which God tests us by offering lures; the devil then assails the weakened individuals; and evildoers consequently seek to take advantage of the afflicted (75-77). Thomas Tymme’s A Commentarie of John Caluine, vpon the first booke of Moses called Genesis also describes God’s role in temptation as that of putting us "to a serious triall" in order to test faith (473). And Thomas Taylor’s Christs Combate and Conquest notes that God may tempt us by sending "afflictions," by pronouncing a "speciall commandement," or by "occasioning objects"—lures. These divinely-ordained temptations occur for "a proofe what is in vs, and a tryall what we doe" (69). It is the divine prerogative to "assay" humanity, and the human duty to obey God.

One who assumes this prerogative to test another’s character by occasioning temptation—who experiments with others while pretending to be sacrosanct—is presumptuous. And pride—the very medieval/Augustinian "pride of life"—is the Duke’s failing in arrogating to himself the power to tempt Angelo. Vincentio has appeared to some as erring and inconsistent, and to others as a deific incarnation for the same reason: the Duke is an erring, presumptuous man who acts as though he were God. But failing to profit from this displacement of sacral authority, Vincentio lacks spiritual insight and is by no means a divine instrument mandated to assay his fellow-citizens. His tampering merely produces disorder and suffering.

As we gather from the first act, Vincentio assays Angelo both by a "speciall commandement" and by "occasioning" an object. The commandment occurs in 1.1 (see Shakespeare 403-431 for all such references), when Vincentio invests Angelo with unwarranted ducal might, thus generating the "object" of temptation: absolute power over "mortality and mercy" (1.1.44). Aware that such power easily corrupts, Angelo begs that he be tested further before receiving such authority (I.i.48-50). We note that Vincentio’s choice of Angelo as surrogate lacks logic; though Escalus—older, and wiser—is next in command, the Duke avers that his decision—either to test Angelo’s "extreme ascetic righteousness" (Knight 86) or to assay the entire world of Vienna (Charlton 249)—is "leavened and prepared" (1.1.51).

We discover in I.3 the nature of this preparation as Vincentio explains his actions to Friar Thomas, revealing a character weakness and a strange motivation in appointing Angelo. After the friar, God’s proxy, rebukes Vincentio for the timidity of disciplining a populace by proxy, the Duke admits his laxity of fourteen years—but declares that he will observe his proxy Angelo from the vantage of religious disguise and conduct a moral text of his new surrogate (1.3.34-54). This trial will produce only the enlightenment derived from nightmare.

And the nightmare unfolds. Once Vincentio sets up his test and vanishes, Angelo exercises his new-found power—punishing not the decayed fornicators drinking at Mistress Overdone’s in I.ii, but instead the hapless Claudio, whose monogamous and nearly-connubial arrangement opposes the anarchic norm of the brothel world. And Angelo’s absolutism not only oppresses equity with spurious justice, but incites Angelo to persist in error, sentencing Claudio to death because of an imagined equality existing between all sins. This concept drives Angelo to embrace the basest of urges, as well, since he believes that his prurient interest in Isabella indicates a complete depravity.

The scenes of attempted seduction and self-analysis, 2.2 and 2.4, display lust overwhelming the misguided Angelo while illustrating vividly the Renaissance psychology of temptation. As Taylor’s Christs Combate and Conquest (57-58) and Gervase Babington’s Workes (17) both indicate, we must conquer temptation first by dismissing its suggestion, then by refusing to entertain the "rising" of sinful desires, and finally—having failed all else—by refusing to enact the sinful designs contemplated. These steps, of course, correspond to the traditional Augustinian paradigm of suggestion, delectation and consent (Howard 60, Pope Paradise). We are not sinners until we fail that last step and stumble into the abyss.

So, we watch Angelo succumb to lust for Isabella according to this paradigm. In 2.2, Angelo soliloquizes on his virtue, addressing Satan as a "cunning enemy that, to catch a saint,/With saints dost bait thy hook" (2.2.180-81). He characterizes himself as rotten carrion and as a razer of sanctuaries (2.2.167-72). He muses fondly about his desires during 2.2.174-79, and he is fascinated by the rising of sin (2.4.20-23). Finally, after fruitless double-entendres in his interview with Isabella—probings of his own mental state as well as that of the novice’s—Angelo declares his intent openly, crossing the point of no return. He cannot now reverse himself by returning to veiled language or casuistic supposition, or assert that he merely wishes to "assay" Isabella once he declaims that "My words express my purpose" (2.4.148-49). From this point on, Angelo hurtles into baseness, threatening Isabella with Claudio’s doom, seeking to ensure that Claudio will be executed regardless of Isabella’s action—and forcing the eavesdropping Duke to understand for the first time the depth of Angelo’s depravity. Unfortunately, Vincentio does not realize that his "test" is to blame for Angelo’s fall.

Nor does Vincentio comprehend what kind of world in general his experiment creates. His abrogation of responsibility in the name of moral trial produces a predatory interaction of tempters and tempted which resonates throughout the play. Vincentio tempts Angelo with absolute power; Isabella, coached by Lucio in the alluring arts, tempts Angelo. Angelo, corrupted, tempts Isabella. Distraught and requiring support, Isabella visits Claudio—and "assays" him, confident that he will agree with her.

And Isabella’s dialogue with Claudio closely parallels Angelo’s tentative examination of Isabella in II.iv, revealing the basic structure of temptation at work throughout Vienna. Angelo begins his interview with Isabella by pronouncing Claudio’s doom, then seeming to relent (2.4.33-35). Similarly, Isabella declares her brother’s doom and then holds out the chance of reprieve (2.3.61-63). And as Angelo leads Isabella on, while tantalizing himself—confusing with puzzling language, teasing with false hopes, finally disclosing the dark intent—so Isabella assays Claudio. Finally, she states her theme openly, and with fascinated horror, as does Angelo: "If I would yield him my virginity,/Thou mightst be freed!" (3.1.98-99)

Claudio, of course, attempts to soften Isabella. When Isabella declares the desperate situation, Claudio first concurs with, then argues against Isabella’s position, stating that fornication "Is no sin,/Or of the deadly seven it is the least" (3.1.110-111). Next, Claudio proposes that Angelo’s request might not be a sin at all (3.1.113-15). Finally, having insisted upon the triviality of lechery, Claudio appeals to sibling compassion, asking Isabella to consider the likelihood of his perdition (3.1.118-28), and assuring her that nature forgives any sin committed in executing sisterly duty:

This revelation causes the play’s unsettling or "dark" tone. We distrust the new social order created not because the play lacks morality—the temptation scenes themselves function as traditional moral commentary—but because neither Vincentio nor any other characters explain this morality. We expect the Duke to emerge from the dark world of disguise with a cogent moral statement, a rationale for his experiment in assaying, and a vision that will set Vienna right, but find that Vincentio’s own inaction exposes him as unsound. It is as though the sky god takes over from the demiurge again, but chooses to be inarticulate and arbitrary.

Finally, Vienna strangely resembles a scenario from classical myth, the retelling of which begs questions about the means to quell disorder which preoccupied the classically-influenced English from the era of the Armada to the time of the Falklands. Consider the Proserpina myth—itself concerned with the gods retrieving order from Pluto’s chaotic, earth-threatening abduction of Ceres’ daughter—think of the beautiful Isabella exciting both the Duke of Dark Corners and his surrogate. Or recall the story of Mount Etna’s origin (Bulfinch 66). Jove, to subdue the unruly Typhon, must imprison the writhing, disordered monster beneath Etna—though still at times, this giant (a figure of chaotic, elemental energy) shakes and quakes. This ancient tale, then, becomes a metaphor for the role of the classical deity with respect to emotional, sensual turbulence; a cosmic ruler must construct a boundary around the potentially chaotic, though that ruler cannot hope entirely to quell the anarchy of passion thus contained. We might call this the classical version of the "strange attractor." We see similar attempts to bind, cloak, and gag eruptive passion in our play.

The disguising and sentencing of Measure for Measure asks if it is merely enough to enclose, to bind, the chaos of unruly emotion. Here the cosmos is Vienna; Zeus, the bungling Duke whom the equally befuddled Angelo calls "godlike" (5.1.365). In this microcosm, the sovereign decrees ill-dispensed matrimonial bonds to salvage social order or channel passion; the loose bawd Pompey is remanded to legal caprice and must shroud himself in the ever-fitting "memento mori" garb of the hangman; and the "Duke of Dark Corners" himself cloaks his inner laxity and folly in a friar’s coarse gown of penitence.

Or contemplate another classical view of control and chaos—the periodic orgy which (as Mircea Eliade notes) creates sanctioned episodes of "dissolution" and "chaos" in an otherwise restricted society, thereby alternating times of growth and reconstruction with limited episodes of formless, uncontained energy. Though the reconstruction after an orgy is supposed to lead to regeneration (359), Measure for Measure contradicts this idea. Here the fat Pompey and the lean hangman represent two sides of the same unstable, yet unprogressive, place. There does not seem to be any social progress emerging from the cycles of passion and restraint in Vienna, because the key figures appear to lack the intelligence to profit from their experiences. In fact, the completely ambiguous ending of this play encourages an intriguing staging possibility; an acting company might change Isabella’s speechless reaction to the Duke cyclically over the course of the play’s run, ending one performance with an acceptance, another with skepticism, another with revulsion, another with a neutral expression. Acceptance, rejection, binding and uncloaking emerge by turns in the world of Vienna. This cycle of order and disorder, repression and exuberance may be enacted differently in each performance, and commented upon by a different response from Isabella. And consider this; though we are not used to assuming that the play would radically destabilize over the course of successive enactments, we can reasonably assume that the play when first performed improved every day. Could part of this bettering have included a cumulative commentary on preceding alternatives using Isabella’s reaction at the drama’s close?

For all its trappings of the Christian doctrine of denial, for all the stageplay involving temptation, confession, and the cowl, Measure for Measure strongly suggests a classical model of restricting chaos. And though the task of containing disorder in wide-open Vienna escapes Vincentio, both the troubled world of Measure for Measure and its "unreconciled reconciliation" anticipate the attempt of Prospero in The Tempest. On that bounded little isle, and also invoking the aid of Providence, a better yet imperfect ruler might use art and knowledge to restrict evil while yet acknowledging a place for his "things of darkness."

Brian R. Holloway

The College of West Virginia

Ever since the nineteenth-century German scholar Wilhelm Busch dismissed the historical value of Bernard Andrè’s Vita Regis Henrici Septimi (hereafter the Vita), historians have been reluctant to exploit the work for much more than a few isolated facts.¹ This reaction to a less than critical acceptance of Andre’s account was itself the result of a necessary and healthy skepticism, of a more critical use of sources that is a hallmark of nineteenth-century historiography. Yet I wonder whether this reaction was not carried too far. Considered not as an authoritative text, but as a product of humanist court culture, I believe the Vita has much more to offer than a traditional reading might allow. But before I go on, a word about the author.

Bernard Andrè of Toulouse (c.1450-c.1522) is described in contemporary documents as the poet laureate and royal historiographer under Henry VII. He may have accompanied Henry across the Channel in 1485, for—blind though he was—he was in London extemporizing Sapphic odes aloud in public, as he himself tells us, when Henry arrived there in triumph after the Battle of Bosworth Field (Vita 35). He enjoyed royal patronage the rest of his life, and in return he supported the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VII by his writings. If he was a disciple of the so-called New Learning of his day, his writing illustrates more of its vices than its virtues. The Vita—essentially the first Tudor history (1500-1502)—is no exception. C. S. Lewis’s description of another contemporary humanist, Hector Boece—that he "writes classical Latin, keeps his eye on Livy, and is never so happy as when he can set his characters making speeches"²—applies with equal force to Andrè. Tudor England was for him a stage upon which to re-enact classical history, a drama in which he seems to have been playing the part of no less a personage than Sallust, the great Roman historian.³

Yet these strictures notwithstanding, it seems high time to reconsider the value of Andrè’s Vita, not as a revelation of history "as it actually happened," but as a humanist artifact, a very deliberately fashioned object: specifically, to consider how Andrè fashions his narrative in order to sanctify the Tudor dynasty. But I also wish to raise the question here of Andrè’s place in the creation of what has been called the "Tudor Saga," the Tudor version of fifteenth-century history. For if we remember Shakespeare’s version of that tradition more than the rest, it may be instructive to look more closely at some of the materials he used. In order to sanctify the Tudor dynasty in the Vita, then, Bernard Andrè emphasizes three themes: (1) the sanctity of Henry VI and his connection to the young Henry Tudor; (2) the sanctity of Henry VII himself, presented as the quintessential Christian monarch; and (3) a sanctified, Tudor version of English history.

Andrè’s Henry VI is a pious but hapless ruler who is at the mercy of evil spirits and evil men. While he was reigning, Andrè tells us, "an evil spirit who envied his kingdom’s peace resurrected ancient Saxon hostilities among the Britons in this kingdom" (Vita 13-14).⁴ The reference to Britons and Saxons illustrates Andre’s version of English history, which follows Geoffrey of Monmouth. The Britons, or Welsh, are the heroes, and the Saxons, or English, are the villains; but more on this later. Andre’s evil spirit is none other than Tisiphone, one of the three Furies, those evil, winged goddesses of the classical past who avenged wrongs done to kindred. (Remember that Andrè is first of all a humanist, and that he ever translates English history into its classical equivalent, modeling himself on Lucan and Sallust; sometimes even using their words.) As Andrè tells the story,

But in any case the person immediately responsible for Henry VI’s assassination was Richard, duke of Gloucester, whom, Andrè claims, King Edward sent to "slaughter" King Henry. This occurs after Henry, now in prison and facing execution, prays to God and accepts his misfortune as part of the mystery of divine Providence. Andrè puts the words into Henry’s mouth, as he reflects over the course of his life: "And I willingly accepted the trials alike with the blessings as from thy hand; for Thou makest thy sun to rise above the good and the wicked, and Thou bringest the rains over the just and the unjust." Life, in this scenario, is a grand morality play. As for death: "[it] is not bad unless it leads to something worse beyond the grave; for a death must not be considered evil that follows a virtuous life." King Henry, Andrè adds, "calmly instructed his guards with these words and many like admonitions" (22-23).

It is also Andrè who first describes the meeting between Henry VI and the future Henry VII, and the king’s prophecy of the boy’s future enthronement. Shakespeare gives us the story after it has had time to grow in the telling, embellished by successive generations of able propagandists. When he first sees the boy, Shakespeare’s Henry VI proclaims "His head by nature fram’d to wear a crown,/His hand to wield a sceptre, and himself/Likely in time to bless a regal throne" (3 Henry 6, 4.5.72-74). Andre’s Henry VI simply summons the boy into his presence while the king is washing his hands, and prophesies that he will one day rule the kingdom and have "all things under his power" (14). Yet the two scenes are essentially the same.

What moved Andrè to present Henry VI in such a way? Following his death, there was a real popular devotion toward Henry VI that continued even after the outbreak of the Reformation on the Continent. When Henry VII came to the throne in 1485, he was eager to bolster his direct Lancastrian claim to the throne, which stemmed from his mother’s side of the family. Early Tudor historians reflect this concern by presenting Henry VI in the best possible light. For the earlier Yorkist historian John Warkworth, writing shortly after 1474, Henry is a harmless figure, merely innocent and guileless, misguided by evil advisers, and the realm suffers accordingly. The people’s anger at the king is "alle bycause of his fals lordes, and nevere of hym."⁵ He is much the same in John Blacman, writing in 1484, a year before Henry Tudor came to power. Blacman’s Henry is "exceeding gracious and merciful," "a second Job, a man simple and upright without any crook of craft or untruth."⁶ The antiquary and topographer John Rous, writing sometime between 1485 and 1491, on the other hand, and a political weathervane if ever there was one, begins the sanctification of Henry for political expediency when he describes Henry’s corpse as "perfectly preserved except that the remains were ‘not sunken enough with his wonted leanness.’"⁷ Andrè adds everything of substance, really, that Shakespeare used later on, and what is more, he puts his Henry VI into a broad scheme of history, providing a scope and teleology to his work that previous treatments lack. The only thing missing was the kind of decorative detail that often embroidered saints’ lives. The most influential Tudor historian, Polydore Vergil, who wrote his Anglica historica (published in 1537) at the request of Henry VII, gives us a Henry whose humanity is now barely discernible through the mists of saintly virtue: "King Henry…preferred peace before warres, quietnes before troubles, honestie before utilitie, and leysure before busines; …so patient [was he] also in suffering of injuries…as that he covetyd in his hart no revenge, but for the very same gave God Almighty most humble thankes, because therby he thought his sinnes to be wasshed away."⁸ The description of Henry VI is now highly stylized, almost bloodless, more marble than man; but for all this, Polydore—from whom Holinshed gets his story—adds nothing of substance to the Henry VI we find in Andrè.

I said before that when he became king, Henry VII was eager to bolster his Lancastrian claim to the throne. One way of doing this was to associate himself with the last Lancastrian monarch, Henry VI. Andre’s account of the meeting between the two and of Henry VI’s prophecy of the future success of Henry VII may be taken as an attempt not only to associate them, but to suggest that the meeting somehow symbolized the passage of legitimate authority from Lancaster to Lancaster. And the fact that Polydore Vergil repeats the very same story almost certainly indicates that he had it from Andrè.

Although it is not my purpose here to demonstrate the fact, there is abundant evidence to suggest that Henry Tudor’s claim to England’s throne needed all the support it could get, and that Henry was quite conscious of the instability of his dynasty. Andrè’s Vita, in its concern to emphasize the sanctity of Henry VI and to forge a link between the dead Lancastrian king and Henry Tudor, was helping to fulfill the larger purpose of providing stability, legitimacy and even divine predestination for the reign of Henry VII.

Andrè’s treatment of Henry VII seems to attribute sanctity to him as well, thus setting the tone of historical writing for future generations. Like many a saint, Andrè’s Henry gives evidence of divine favor from earliest childhood. He is born on the "most auspicious day of Saint Agnes the Second"; onlookers marvel to see his attention to the divine office as a boy; his tutor has never seen a child of his age with such acuity; Duke Francis of Brittany is astonished that "at such a young age [around 15 years old] he possesses gravity, well-mannered behavior, gentleness, humility, and a goodness both native and bestowed from above"; and his saintly mother arranges a nearly miraculous escape to the Continent to save him from the tyrant (12, 13, 17-18, 15-16). Arrived at manhood, Henry sets sail for England in 1485, while beseeching all priests and clerics to "pour forth prayers to God without ceasing, until by his mercy your prayers may be heard." Rumors circulate that "the time for vengeance" is at hand, "that God [is] avenging with resolute step." Upon arriving at Milford Haven he warns his men not to molest the inhabitants, admonishing them with the Golden Rule "to do nothing to others that you would not wish others to do even to you yourselves" (27, 31, 30-31). Henry plays the role of merciful monarch to perfection, being led by piety to recall the marquess of Dorset, stepson of Edward the Fourth, from prison in Paris, where he had been placed after trying to flee secretly to England in order to aid Richard (24). The list of pious deeds and dicta is nearly as long as the Vita itself. Hearing that the pope has announced a crusade against the enemies of the Church, he immediately commands that the cross be proclaimed throughout the entire kingdom. Setting out for war in France, he explains to his followers: "Truly, I do not put my trust in the strength of men, the number of weapons or horses, in riches, or other advantages alone; rather, I have placed my complete hope in the mercy, compassion, and assistance of God" (54, 59). To say merely that Andrè makes little attempt at impartiality is to risk extravagant understatement: "There has never been before," he insists, "nor shall there ever be, a king more distinguished than he, even if the age of king Saturn returns," for "our king is more blessed and wiser than Saturn." He is "a prince who delights not in conquest or killing; a prince holding sway over the might of the sea; a prince moved with care for his kingdom;…a prince, Croesus, who spurns your wealth; a prince descended from heavenly Mercury." And so it goes, on and on, a hymn of praise better directed at gods than men (64, 53). Taken together, I suppose the effect of such writing on most Moderns is enough to cause a deep-seated disgust; we would ascribe all of Andrè’s panegyric, as have some modern historians, to sheer flattery, to "elegant toadyism to a royal paymaster," to class Andrè and others like him as nothing more than official hacks. Of course there is certainly an economy of exchange operating here: on the most basic level, Andrè gets patronage while Henry VII gets support for his dynasty from fashionable humanists. Yet this does not prevent the possibility that both Andrè and Henry may have believed that much of what Andrè wrote was true. I for one concede that this may present a more disturbing case than if Andrè was merely a shallow hypocrite and Henry an impostor.

Andrè’s version of the course of English history also serves to sanctify and legitimate the Tudor dynasty. I said earlier that Andrè follows Geoffrey of Monmouth in his presentation of the Britons and Saxons as "heroes" and "villains" respectively. I shall now explain how and why he does this. Andrè is quick to point out the connections of Henry’s father, Edmund Tudor the earl of Richmond, through his mother Queen Catherine, to various kings and emperors of Europe—in fact he does so in the very first sentence (9); but he also hastens to emphasize Henry Tudor’s Welsh ancestry through the male line, his descent from the ancient British kings—and this is where Geoffrey comes in—King Cadwallo, the scourge of the Saxons, and his "son" Saint Cadwallader (9-10).⁹ (We might speculate that these two figures each represent one side of Henry VII’s personality: Cadwallo his valor, Cadwallader his piety.) But then comes the remarkable part. As Andrè tells the story, from the death of Saint Cadwallader

To make the contrast with the immediate past even more striking, Andrè stresses the load of misery under which England was laboring prior to Henry’s arrival, the "series of many wars, disastrous losses, and massacres," caused, of course, by Richard III (11). And in the long run, it was probably this contrast with Richard—and this was a theme on which many a Tudor apologist would learn to improvise—far more than Henry’s Welsh or Lancastrian ancestry, that made the case for the sanctity and legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty. Now Richard is King Henry VI’s executioner, "for bloody crimes pleased Richard through and through" (19); now he is the murderer of Edward IV’s innocents, Edward V and Richard, duke of York. Following these murders, Andrè asserts, "the entire country was convulsed with sobbing and anguish." Nobles feared for their lives, and put on a good face but kept their hearts from being purchased by the tyrant (24). But Richard’s days were clearly numbered, for when Henry Tudor came to liberate England, it was "with divine power vindicating, willing, and assisting" him (11). Weighing anchor from France, his army sets sail with favorable winds and propitious signs from heaven (29). When Richard hears of his enemy’s approach, he responds, says Andrè, just as a Hyrcanian tiger or Marsian boar would when wounded, "enkindled into rage and madness." Breaking out into a savage war-cry, he orders his followers "to destroy everyone by fire and the sword, without mercy, pity, or kindness." The Frenchmen and other foreigners in Henry’s train are to have their throats cut and to be crucified without exception. As for the earl of Richmond: "Slaughter [him] without respect to his blood or noble birth; or, if you can, bring him to me alive, so that after I have crafted some new or uncommon punishment in accordance with my own devising, I may slaughter him, cut his throat, or slay him with my own hands" (30-31). Next to such a monster, we might well ask, who would not appear a saint? But when the comparison is to a king who proclaims to England upon his arrival that he loves her and will be her protector; who comes not to plunder with fire or the sword, but to liberate from tyranny; who insists that his soldiers follow the Golden Rule—why, the sanctity of Henry VII is a sure thing.

Andrè thus gives us a saint in Henry VI; the best king of all human history in Henry VII; and a version of English history that sanctifies both the Lancastrian dynasty, and its fruition and culmination as well: the dynasty established by Henry Tudor. At least one conclusion to be drawn from all this, is that the extremes of scorn and praise found in Andrè were bound up with the Tudor Saga almost from the very start. Conceding to Shakespeare and the other dramatists the mastery and influence of their presentation, we must also allow that the form their story took did not just go back to Hall and Holinshed, nor even to Polydore Vergil: it was in fact at least one hundred years old, almost as old, even, as the events themselves. The story does not "reach maturity" with Shakespeare: it was in the prime of manhood a century earlier. Andrè’s Henry VI is as saintly, his Richard III every bit as villainous, his Henry VII many times more virtuous, than the counterparts in Shakespeare.¹⁰ You will search in vain this early for "the other side of the story"; you cannot, if you will permit the metaphor, outwit the sources of corruption by going upstream a bit further: the fountainhead itself is poisoned. And the longevity and durability of this version of history, which even came to find a respectable place in what has been called the Whig Interpretation of History (for it is under the House of Tudor that the Reformation comes to England), are not the least remarkable accomplishments of Tudor propaganda. Few people will deny that Henry VII got his money’s worth from his poets. Perhaps the moral of the story may be reduced to a cliché from the world of modern marketing: it pays to advertise.

Daniel Hobbins

University of Notre Dame

¹Wilhelm Busch, England under the Tudors. King Henry VII, 1485-1509, trans. Alice M. Todd (1895; New York: Burt Franklin, 1965) 393-5. The Vita was published by James Gairdner as Vita Regis Henrici Septimi, Rolls Series, 10 (London: 1858) 1-75.

²English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Oxford U, 1954) 116.

³See Constance Blackwell, "Humanism and Politics in English Royal Biography: The Use of Cicero, Plutarch and Sallust in the Vita Henrici Quinti (1438) by Titus Livius de Frulovisi and the Vita Henrici Septimi (1500-1503) by Bernard Andrè," in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani, ed. I. D. McFarlane (Binghamton, N.Y.: U Center at Binghamton, 1986) 235-37. On Andrè and the newer humanists, see Alistair Fox, Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) 109.

⁴All translations from the Vita are my own.

⁵J. O. Halliwell, ed., Warkworth’s Chronicle (London 1839) 12.

⁶Quoted in Roger Lovatt, "John Blacman: Biographer of Henry VI," in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981) 438-9.

⁷Thomas Hearne, ed., Joannis Rossi Antiquarii Warwicensis Historia Regum Angliae (Oxford, 1716) 217; quoted in J. W. McKenna, "Piety and Propaganda: the Cult of Henry VI," in Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. B. Rowland (N.p.: Kent State U, 1974) 85, n. 18. My translation.

⁸H. Ellis, ed. Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History (London, 1844) 70-71, 156-7; quoted in Ralph Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (Berkeley: U of California, 1981) 5.

⁹In Bede, Geoffrey’s source, the two are not related. See J. S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley: U of California, 1950) 251-56.

¹⁰Compare the comments made by George B. Churchill in his study of the historical and literary precedents of Shakespeare’s Richard III: "the Richmond and Richard of Shakespeare’s speeches—modeled on those of Vergil and Hall—are in all essentials the Richard and Richmond of Andrè." Richard the Third up to Shakespeare (Berlin: Mayer & Muller, 1900; New York; Johnson Reprint Co., 1970), 66.

In his defense of the theatre of 1592, Thomas Nashe singles out the popular genre of the English history play as especially praiseworthy; he argues that history is better off embodied on the stage than interred in the chronicle books:

A similar argument, for the virtue and even the necessity of a more visceral representation in bodying forth history, is made by an anonymous reporter for the New York Times in reviewing a photographic exhibition called "The Dead at Antietam." The battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, was the single most bloody day in the American civil war. The battle was also a landmark event for another reason: it was "the first battlefield in American history"—and in fact one of the first in the history of photography—"to be covered by cameramen before the dead had been buried" (Frassanito 17; see also 19-26). The exhibition, displayed at the New York gallery of Mathew Brady less than a month after the battle, contained a number of photographs that "depicted clusters of bloated corpses stiffened in grotesque positions—the very features of the lifeless, swollen faces could be distinguished" (Frassanito 14-5). In his review of the exhibition, the reporter tries to account for the "terrible fascination" of these photographs:

Photography and theatre are in a way both mixed mediums, both conditional enterprises, both conflicted combinations of representation and materiality: in their respective representations of history, both are substitutions for but at the same time very powerful registrations of their subjects. Both Nashe and the New York Times reporter might agree that for these plays and for these photographs their "power of authentication exceeds the power of representation" (Barthes 89)—that they become, if not the thing itself, at least something very like it, at least honourable stand-ins. Neither Talbot nor those fallen at Antietam can speak for themselves; the artists attempt to speak on their behalf, in an effort to bring the material reality of historical subjects recognizably and unavoidably into an audience’s present view and understanding.

Of course, both of these positive accounts appear at times when the respective mediums involved were still quite new; they are now cultural commodities among many others vying for the attention of our late twentieth-century consumer society, a society which consumes, mostly, images and representations. In the theatre, a real body on the stage is just another element of production, flesh and blood to be sure, but subject to the "processing and commodification of the body" (Birringer 208) in an often overdetermined scopic economy. But the worthy historical representations Nashe and the New York Times reviewer refer to were cultural commodities in their own times as well—the photos of the dead at Antietam were all for sale, and history’s dead were resurrected by Shakespeare for financial gain. These worthy representations were meant for the consumption of a paying public as part of a commercial venture. Representation, then and now, always entails a certain commodification; to register the historical subject in any meaningful sense, the power of authentication has to compete with and exceed both.

But in considering the perils of representation and the commodification of the body with regards to the medium of expression, we would do well to remember that the commodification of the body is a recurrent, even integral element of the content of Shakespeare’s history plays. The cultural commodities he makes out of history are intensely concerned with, represent and interrogate, the commodification of the body in history.

When Nashe writes of the English hero Talbot triumphing again upon the stage, his characterization of the audience’s reaction is, revealingly, not one of mere jingoistic rejoicing; instead, Talbot is "newe embalmed" with the tears of those who behold him, those who imagine him in his death-throes "fresh bleeding." The play Nashe refers to, Henry VI, Part One, dramatizes England’s costly losses in France and the beginnings of civil war at home, not to mention Talbot’s own death on the battlefield. Talbot may be a terror to his French foes, but to the competing factions of his English friends he is a commodity among others, a useful but expendable article of exchange in the larger process of the pursuit of power and advantage at home. The brave and noble Lord Talbot ultimately becomes the "bought and sold Lord Talbot" (4.4.13); he becomes one of the many who "sold their bodies"—so they thought—"for their country’s benefit" (5.6.106) only to be sold short, their use-value terminally expended. Like the fallen soldiers photographed at Antietam, in this play Talbot also is represented as lifeless matter, as Joan describes him, "stinking and flyblown" (4.7.76) upon the field. Joan best recognizes the end result of the use that is made of Talbot, his used-up-ness after he is abandoned by his superiors. Talbot’s death scene may be "heroic," but the process Shakespeare dramatizes leading up to his death is anything but. The history that is bodied forth here speaks viscerally not of triumphs but of the terrible reality and the terrible costs of war, where the body as commodity is expended and wasted. Nashe’s encomium is exact: in the representation of history that is Henry VI, Part One, brave Talbot’s triumph is not in France but "on the Stage," where spectators may perceive him "fresh bleeding" as he is sold to his death.

In Shakespeare’s history plays, bodies are often subject to a certain commodification in the making of history—the powerful make history, and they use the bodies of others, in their wars, in their political manipulations, in their politic marriages, as just so many articles of convenience and articles of commerce to be utilized in the most expedient fashion. But having physically present actors bodying forth the history-making process calls attention to and interrogates that process, because it displays to us viscerally and unmistakably the means to history’s ends; with the means so displayed, we become more aware of both the costs and the casualties of history-making. For the remainder of this paper, I want to look at some of those great battles, both on the field where force is the argument, and in those equally dangerous interims where lineage and succession is the argument, but in both cases where the battle for advantage is waged by using, buying and selling, the bodies of others.

In Henry IV, Part Two, while foraging through the Gloucestershire countryside for "sufficient men" (3.2.92), Sir John Falstaff engages most explicitly in the buying and selling of bodies for advantage. Ostensibly acting on the King’s behalf, Falstaff accumulates bodies to stand against the rebels; he shows, at the least, a certain indifference toward those bodies who line up before him as he fills his quota. "You shall go," he tells one of the likeliest, "it is time you were spent" (115-6), time to be consumed by the King. But if these men are useful to the King for his battles, they are more useful to John Falstaff to pad his pockets; it is not gentle compassion but hard currency that governs "how to choose a man" (254) to best advantage, as he reverses himself and allows the likeliest to stand out.

But while Falstaff dabbles in a little commodities trading behind the King’s back, the King’s party is involved in something similar in their meeting with the rebels. This last-ditch effort to negotiate a peace, even as opposing armies stand in sight of one another, has its doubters among the rebels; Mowbray, for one, is skeptical of the "valuation" (4.1.187) the King will make of them even if he accepts their terms. But for a guarantee to redress their grievances, the rebel leaders deliver themselves back to the King’s cause, only to find that their bodies are not included in the guarantee. The King’s party is only too willing to buy the peace; for this peace, the rebel leaders realize too late that "they sold themselves" (4.2.66) to execution. The events of Gaultres Forest become a mirror of events in the Gloucestershire countryside: here the leaders are bought and sold behind the backs of their dismissed soldiers, soldiers who then must watch precisely their backs as the King’s forces turn to "pursue the scattered stray" (4.1.346) and press advantage a little further.

The particular elements of apparent history-making that Shakespeare chooses to display and embody call into question the process whereby bodies are reduced to their use-value, used up, and discarded. Perhaps the most devastating display of this process is to be found in King John, where John and King Philip of France—representing the boy Arthur and his competing claim to the English crown—meet before the city of Angers, each to claim that city’s allegiance. The citizens of Angers, however, remain aloof:

Citizen Till you compound whose right is worthiest,

We for the worthiest hold the right from both. (2.1.281-2)

Right is deferred, to be determined on the field. When the resultant battle is fought, both sides claim to have out-slaughtered the other.

French Herald France this day hath made

Much work for tears in many an English mother,

Whose sons lie scattered on the bleeding ground.

(302-4)

English Herald [L]ike a jolly troop of huntsmen come

Our lusty English, all with purpled hands

Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes. (321-3)

Not surprisingly, the citizens of Angers find the battle notably bloody but still inconclusive. The bleeding ground and the bodies upon it provide no resolution; they only provide, as the Bastard sardonically notes, a feast for Death, who "mous[es] the flesh of men/ In undetermined differences of kings" (354-5). But differences are resolved, for a time, with a simple switch in the articles on offer, from the bloody flesh of soldiers to the fair flesh of Lady Blanche, a most eligible bride sold into a most politic and expedient settlement. The victory, the Bastard declares, goes to

That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling commodity;

Commodity, the bias of the world… (574-5)

As Blanche’s body gains value in the exchange, for the dead left on the field, their bodies lose all value, their wounds all meaning, as the causes that each side’s casualties thought they were fighting for are abandoned for expediency’s sake. The wounded and opened bodies, subject to a "referential instability" (Scarry 117) while both sides claimed them for their own purposes, are now simply subject to a referential canceling, where they come to mean nothing at all, become casualties of commodity, not of war. In King John, the many bodies of convenience are put to use or used up in a constantly shifting, dangerously fickle "value economy" (Engle 2).

The commodifications of female bodies in politic marriages can be found in a number of the other history plays. In All Is True, the play’s "central action" is the politic exchange of one wife for another in "Henry’s exchange of Katherine for Anne" (Leggatt 217). The exchange is both a brutally mercenary and a shrewdly mercantile endeavour, but if the play shows us something of Katherine’s escape from the exchange mechanism in her honourable death, it also shows us how Anne becomes subsumed in that mechanism. The use Henry has in store for her is apparent before he even makes his first offer, in the dialogue between Anne and the Old Lady that most explicitly equates the female body with capital and commodity. Ostensibly lamenting the fall of Queen Katherine, the Old Lady seems also to be testing the waters, or perhaps preparing the stomach of Anne for her coming role:

Anne By my troth and maidenhead,

I would not be a queen.

Old Lady Beshrew me, I would—

And venture maidenhead for’t; and so would you,

For all this spice of your hypocrisy. (2.3.23-6)

Swearing on maidenheads draws the Old Lady’s attention to the source of Anne’s venture capital, as it were, in attaining such high placement. In her obscene quibbles, the Old Lady specifies Anne’s most valuable bodily part; for the king’s "gifts," she maintains,

Saving your mincing, the capacity

Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive

If you might please to stretch it.…

Pluck off a little;

I would not be a young count in your way

For more than blushing comes to. If your back

Cannot vouchsafe this burden, ‘tis too weak

Ever to get a boy. (31-3, 40-4, my italics)

When the Lord Chamberlain delivers Henry’s first offer—the title of Marchioness of Pembroke, and a thousand pounds a year annual support (60-5)—the process begins whereby a price may be put on that part. The Old Lady knows what will follow: "A thousand pounds a year, for pure respect? / And no further obligation?" (96-7). And so, in her sense of foreboding, does Anne: "Would I had no being, / If this salute my blood a jot. It faints me / To think what follows" (103-5). To the acquisitive Henry, Anne would need to have had no body to avoid such a purchasing. Anne’s swift rise comes as a matter of the king’s pleasure—he desires her first as an erotic commodity—but also of the king’s policy to produce a male heir; Anne’s "state body" (Hodgdon 218) becomes the valuable means to this necessary royal production, but it is her private body that will bear the cost of any failure in public where that commodified body is used up. This particular body is, I think, most conspicuously absent from the stage at the baby Elizabeth’s christening; Anne’s disappearance from the stage here speaks volumes for her commodified body being sold short, in her own soon-to-come long divorce of steel.

One final foray into commodification: after his spectacular victory at Agincourt, Henry V still has work to do to secure his claim to France. The wooing of the French princess Catherine in the play’s final scene is much more than a love suit. Henry requires Catherine, his "capital demand" (5.2.96) in the peace settlement, so that he may secure his rights to France through lineage as well as conquest; he will secure his claim through her body, and through her body he will provide for an heir to continue that claim: "Thou must…needs prove a good soldier-breeder" (203), he informs his bride-to-be. In the scene of Henry’s wooing he has the vast majority of the lines, but the uses he would make of Catherine’s body here in the aftermath of war—as a politically valuable possession, and as a convenient "conduit" for the "transmission of patriarchal authority" into the future (Rackin 161)—must still be measured against the presence and reactions of that body represented upon the stage. The scene is, after all, the most lengthy encounter between French and English in the entire play; in its protracted length exists the possibility that Henry meets more resistance than he met on the field at Agincourt, or from the French court who will ratify every one of his demands. It is, of course, Catherine herself who calls into question his "suit":

King Harry Therefore, queen of all, Catherine, …wilt thou have me?

Catherine Dat is as it shall please de roi mon père.

King Harry Nay, it will please him well, Kate. It shall please him, Kate.

Catherine Den it sall also content me.

King Harry Upon that I kiss your hand, and I call you my queen (242-50)

With the diplomatic party and their demands off in another room, Henry attempts to fashion the situation into an independent, private love-suit between himself and Catherine. Catherine’s response here is conditional: conditional on what has led to this point and on what is going on in that other room. She seems supremely aware of her commodity status here, that she is one of the demands. She does not appear to "consent winking" (302), as Henry later acknowledges. By allowing Catherine to have her eyes open to the political context of the final scene, Shakespeare does not change the fact of her match with Henry, but he does perhaps open our eyes to the strained and artificial nature of Henry’s attempt to pass off politic commodifications as a love-suit. This particular body of convenience may not so easily be bought and sold, or be made, as Henry hoped, to "wink and yield" (297).

In Shakespeare’s representations of history, what often comes to be authenticated is the human cost, measured in present bodies, of the "commodification of the personal" (Bruster 42). In putting flesh once more on history’s old bones, in bodying forth its means, Shakespeare’s history plays may also afford us the possibility of questioning the ends to which these bodies are put. The stage remains uniquely privileged in its capacity, as Hélène Cixous puts it, to "get across" to its audience "the living, breathing, speaking body" (547). With bodies on the stage, with bodies seemingly once more at stake, the commodifications of history-making can still be made conspicuous to us consumers of historical representations.

K. A. Ewert

Pittsburgh, PA

The traditional interpretation of the reign of Mary I asserted that her marriage to Philip II was universally detested among the Commons and Gentry of England. According to this interpretation, he, and his Spanish entourage, were hated and feared even before their arrival in England, and once there were treated with hostility and contempt throughout Mary’s reign. This view rested on two presuppositions: (1) that Protestantism won over the majority of Englishmen by the end of the reign of Edward VI, and (2) that these staunchly Protestant Englishmen supposedly linked Mary, her Catholicism, her Catholic, Spanish husband Philip, and his kingdom with their hatred of the Pope (Powell 93-5).

These presuppositions were taken as fact in the works of influential nineteenth-century historians like James Anthony Froude, Henry Thomas Buckle and Thomas Babington Macaulay (Juderias 230-55). Charles Dickens’ Child’s History of England clearly displayed the firm grip these presuppositions held on scholarly and popular perceptions of England’s past in the mid-nineteenth century. Dickens wrote that Philip was "certainly not the people’s man; for they detested the idea of such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and murmured that the Spaniard would establish in England, by the aid of foreign soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even the terrible Inquisition itself" (Dickens 265).

In turn, nineteenth-century interpretations informed subsequent generations of historians (Fussner 51-8). For instance, in 1964 Eric Simons flatly declared that Mary came to the throne burdened "by the hatred of a large proportion of her people for the religion to which she was devoted" (Simons 39). In 1944 and 1959, when Royall Tyler edited The Calendar of State Papers, Spanish for the reign of Mary, he created the index entry: "Spanish, their unpopularity"; yet he created no corresponding entries for other nationali