Areopagitica

• Argues against use of licensing and freedom of speech
• Written in response to Licensing Order of 1643- published on 23rd November 1644
• Name derives from an ancient Greek council situated on the hill of Areopagus in Athens. Isocrates sought to restore the power of council
• Didatic purposes- not in favor of empty flattery
• The value of books
• Milton appeals to history, demonstrating the lack of censorship in enlightened Greek and Roman societies + censorship= Catholic tyranny
• Faith in human ability to reason and decide; God has gifted us with this rationality 
• "Knowledge of is so involv'd and interwoven with the knowledge of evill"
• "He that can apprehend and consider vice... and yet abstain...he is the true wayfaring Christian."
• Controversial books of religion are more of a danger to the learned than to the ignorant- "likeliest to taint both life and doctrine"
• "Evil manners are as perfectly learnt without books"
• "ordain wisely as in this world of evil"
• Censorship only masks vice, it does not eradicate it from its roots: "though ye take from a covetous man all his treasures, he has yet one jewell left, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness"
• Virtue must temper the passions- Aristotelian influence- Golden Mean between extremes
• Motives for working as censor? If they are only financial the work loses its value- they are merely playing up to desires of leaders. Undermines trust in society, discourages writing and scholarship
• "When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him"- the thought and care put into work is not to be lightly dismissed. 
• If we are so suspicious of men "as to fear each book...before we know what the contents are," then we are facing "a second tyranny over learning"
• "Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopoliz'd and traded in by tickets and statues, and not standards." 
• Repression has opposite effect to that intended...."instead of suppressing sects...it raises them and invests them with a reputation."
• "Our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise...Truth is compar'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition"- censorship stands in the way of progress the search for Truth
• Blind obedience to authority is not true faith; it is unreasoning and ignorant - encourages personal, genuine relationship to God and search for religious truths. 
• England is the new chosen nation of God- it is an earthly type of the City of God
• "When there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinions in good men is but knowledge in the making."
• Licensing makes priests and clergymen lazy- no need to better instruct their congregation as their truth is forced
• "Let Truth and Falsehood grapple in the open. Truth will win."
• Doctrine of Limited Tolerance: "If all cannot be of one mind."
• If nothing else will work: "It would be no unequal distribution ... to suppress the suppressors themselves."
• To set right the wrong that has been done is the highest and wisest thing that Parliament can do- flattery- "We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formall and slavish.... but you then must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitary, and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have free'd us."  

Elizabethan Medicine

Elizabethan Medicine

Choler

“The unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.”- Goneril

Traditional medicine was a combination of folk and learned traditions. As a result Renaissance medicine drew upon on the language and system of the bodily fluids- outlined by classical writers such as Galen in the second century AD.



Outside agents were not seen to be the cause of diseases rather people regarded health as a matter of balance or imbalance, and rigorously treated their bodies to achieve balance. Humoralism saw bodies and emotions as created by a balance of fluids; different levels of which produced 4 types of personality types.

Both personality and health were influenced by changes in one’s humours which in turn were influenced by changes in one’s humours such as air, climate, food, motion of the stars and planets, rest and even passions.

 It was believed that four humours or fluids entered into the composition of a man:

• Blood
• Phlegm
• choler ( or yellow bile)
• melancholy ( or black bile)



According to this belief, the predominance of one humour over the others determined a person's temperament as sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholy. Furthermore, they believed that too much of any of them caused disease, and that the cure lay in purging or avoiding the peccant humour, as by reducing the amount of blood by cupping or reducing the bile by means of drugs.For the Elizabethans, the mind and body were not separated as in Descartes’ philosophy, but were much more intimately linked, agents in each other’s creation.

In Bartholomeus' model madness caused by an excess of choler is called "the frenesie". Its signs are "woodnes and contynual wakynge, mevynge and castynge aboute the eyen, ragynge..." (3). It is caused by the red choler "made lyght with heate of it self... ravysshyd upwarde by veynes, synewes, wosen and pypes" (2). The cure involves bleeding the patient, shaving his head and applying vinegar and ointment to the head. However it also recommends creating a calm environment for the patient, feeding him a sparse simple diet, and "above all things... men shall labour to bringe hym a slepe" (3-4). Kent seems to be aware of this most important part of the cure, and through him we realize that Lear's madness may have been shortlived had he been able to rest before fleeing to Dover

Hysterica Passio

“O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow!”- King Lear

“The mother” was a Renaissance term for an illness that felt like suffocation; characterized by light-headedness and strong pain in the stomach, its symptoms resemble those of emotional trauma, grief, and hysteria.

Malcontents- Liam McNamara

An Introduction to the Malcontent 

Malcontents are central to many Jacobean plays- Jacques in As You Like It or Malvolio in Twelfth Night or The White Devil or Changeling. 

According to Julie Lacey Brooke a malcontent is:

"cynical commentator and judge of a society to which he patently does not belong, as well as, in some cases a rogue disruptor, one who is not only prepared to question but to damage anything and everything that comes within his compass."  

David Gunby argues that malcontents are 'mouthpieces' for satirical parts in drama.

"The malcontent is a man divided within himself. On the one hand he is a blunt, moralist, ruthlessly exposing the vices and follies of mankind. On the other he participates in the viciousness and self-seeking of the world he rails against." 

Learning without Living

Dramatic malcontents were linked to a historical change where aspiring young men were involved in a kind of misery associated with 'relative deprivation' ie they were given career and educational opportunities that they were unable to realise.
As Lord Chancellor Ellesmere writes:
"I think that we have more need of better livings for learned men than of more learned men for these livings, for learning without living doth but breed traitors." 

These men were trained up for a role that did not appear and therefore cynicism was the end result. They prepared too many men for too few places. From 1603 to 1640 universities enrolled under 25,000 students with frustrated intellectuals making up to 15-20% of that amount.

Black Bile and Melancholic Hares

In TWD, the malcontents are social radicals. The historical phenomenon  that produced Sir Francis Bacon's warning that ' there are more scholars bred than the State can prefer or employ' is explored in the play.

Malcontents saw their own status as fashionable, a cynical identity that then fuelled widespread and disproportionate fears about their existence. As Lacey Brooke writes being a malcontent was 'a cult of the young, embodying disaffected decadent youth, perceived by the majority as undesireable misfits."

The outward projection of this image is a fake and pretentious kind of identity that is parasitic upon society.  In TWD Webster challenges the perception of the malcontent in an metatheatrical scene which criticises the crude stereotyping that seeks to undermine their symbolism power.

The characters are seen as ironically commenting on society's understanding of the malcontent. Primarily on the medieval thinking that there was a link between the state of being melancholy and an excess of 'black bile' , and malcontentedness.

The end result is a 'moral panic' about the potential threat of malcontents as a destabilising force that could challenge society's values. Webster seems to challenge the misrepresentation of oppositional elements of society by showing the 2 characters ridiculing the popular perception of the malcontent.

From the Malcontent to the 'Punk' 

Lacey Brooke draws a link to the Punk movement which was 'an ambiguously glamorous and vicious reputation' that appealed to some and repelled others. According to Jackie Moore in 1979 production of TWD by The Acting Comapny, New York, Flamineo was 'dressed like a punk rocker sporting a dog collar and spiked hair."

Ecocritical reading of King Lear- Nick Johnston Jones

The fuck is ecocritical? Who the hell wakes up in the morning and goes: 'you know what I truly desire an ecocritical reading of 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' Hell to the no. Anyway doesn't matter because I still have to do it anyway. 

Ecophobia

"Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all?"

The last example of animal imagery in a play that contains more references to nature than any other play. Ecophobia is contempt for the natural world. The overwhelming majority of animal references in KL are negative - denigrating both humans and animals through cruel association. 

Goneril and Regan are particularly on the receiving end....

• "Detested kite! thou liest"

• “she hath tied / sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here [points to his heart]” 

• "struck me with her tongue, / Most serpent-like, upon the very heart"

• “‘twas this flesh begot those pelican daughters” 

Dogs are used most followed by horses and both of these are mentioned in Lear's final cry of despair. 

Dogs - stressed servility and savagery

Horses- modes of transport

Edmund tells the Captain to execute Lear and Cordelia and he replies:

"I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats./ It it be a man's work, I'll do it." 

He rejects the horses's role and lowly station + embraces the evil assignment as 'man's work'. Animals are consciously wicked but men are- who should we rate higher in the 'moral' order? 

Initial fertile descriptions of the land as: 

"With shadowy forests and with champains riched, With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads" but after the landscape is described as barren and inhospitable with Gloucester anxiously pointing out "For many miles about There’s scarce a bush." Man and the natural world appear to be fundamentally at odds in the imaginative universe of KL. 

Montaigne's challenge to 'the natural world' 

KL's last line implies a hierarchy of contempt with rats coming last. Chain of Being where animals were placed below man. But Montaigne challenged this long- established paradigm, questioning the 'natural order' and suggesting that man was not necessarily superior to animals.  

Shakespeare's references to cannabilsm echoes Montaigne's sentiments. Montaigne's ideas were gaining currency in the new Jacobean era which underlines the disruption that radical new ideas were causing in a country already rocked by religious and political upheaval. 

Montaigne concluded that man's belief in their innate superiority over animals was juxtaposed to the natural world that was its main weakness. This is clearly seen in the storm scene...

The storm scene symbolises Lear's rage and contempt for everyone. Lear sees the storm as a cosmic reaction to his situation. The ranting , thunder and violence conflate his character with the storm. Shakespeare uses storms to suggest links between human and natural disruption. Normally there's a supernatural dimension but no in KL, it is independent of human agency. 

Steve Mentz writes: "the play mocks human faith in an orderly universe' and the storm represents 'disequilibrium'. 

Nature and the Gods

Nature and Gods are inseparably intertwined. Characters ascribe metaphysical or religious significance to the natural world. 

Characters appeals to nature or the gods reflect the delousional beliefs of the characters who only see what they want, choose what they want to believe. 

'Nature legitimises greed and cruelty, the case of of the evil characters, or that nature abhors and punishes these qualities, in the case of the good."

Confusion reigns + the storm continues as Lear is stripped of his sanity. Lear's arrogance is evident "Blow winds and crack your cheeks.." but he still thinks the storm is about him. The storm is indifferent to human affairs as the Fools points out: "Here's a night pities neither wise men nor fools." But Lear remains in the grip of his ego and stubbornly asserts that he is 'more sinned against than sinning'.

Without morals, or without a moral? 

Lear exhibits some compassion during the storm, belated sympathy for 'poor naked wretches' and the error of his reign. He poses many existential questions

" Is man no more than this?" which echoes Montaigne's "Miserable man: whom if you may consider well, what is he?" 

Play makes clear that humans are equally capable of being good or evil. Though to what extent good or evil are 'natural' human qualities is hard to judge. Shown by Edmund who has a change of heart at the end, vowing "Some good I mean to do/ Despite of mine own nature." Ever the rebel his final defiance is his own nature. 

KL shows us a world where man and nature are fatally opposed. Storm scenes dramatise this but the negative presentation of animal kingdom is also a key note in the terrible menagerie of pain. In depth of this agony Lear is reduced to a bestial state: "Howl, howl, howl, howl". Bitterness of play's ending is not softened in any way. 

Edgar's final injuction is to 'Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say" interpreted as a sing that old ways are challenged, but offers only the faintest glimmer of hope on a darkening stage as the dead march sounds. 

Intellectual and Cultural Context- Webster's Sources

Webster was a magpie who read widely and kept extensive notes and this can be evidenced through the extent of intertextuality seen in his plays.

Dent analysed The White Devil and was able to compare it to its literary sources.
Monticelso: Well,well such counterfeit jewels. Make true ones off suspected.
I'll type the rest later

Dent concluded "the extent of Webster's borrowings was extraordinary even for the age in which he wrote."
Webster had heavy use of non-original material should not be thought as unthinking plagarism or artistic laziness. As John Russell Brown argued "his restless mind was constantly leading him to repeat and modify what he had written."

Webster used his audience familiarity with many of his sources to "bond" particular cultural resonances  or associations to the utterances of his characters ."

An example of this is when Cornelia quotes from KL as she weeps over the corpse of her son in V + Ophelia as she goes mad so the audience hears two voices at once. Memories of earlier plays inflect the meanings of those they make their own.  In her fried and madness C borrows the tragic stature of the earlier Shakespearean characters.

Many characters echo recognisable proverbs + Richard Allen Cave argues that would have given the effect of " a character seeking comfort + security in proverbial wisdom which the audience with its greater awareness of the play's action knows to be cruel illusion"

Dent notes that Flamineo's speeches are drawn from Michel de Montaigne allowing the character "to effect a nonchalance in evil he thinks a sign of sophistication and to pretend an easy familiarity with Bracciano as of two men of the world conversing with one another."

Webster's key sources were:

• Historical Vittoria Accoramboni
• Desiderius Erasmus- Fungus (The Funeral) 1526
• Pierre Boaistuau- Theatrum Mundi
• John Florio - A Letter Lately Written from Rome 
• Fugger Newsletter

Intellectual and Cultural Context- Women and Misogyny

In Shakespeare's Cymbeline there is a violently misogynistic tirade

"There's no motion that tends to vice in man but I affir

It is the woman's part.... The woman's; flattering, hers;deceiving hers;

Lust and rank thoughts; hers, hers; revenges

Ambitious, covetings, change of prides, disdain

Nice longing, slanders, mutability"  

This speech shows a set of ideas that were disturbingly common during the Jacobean period. 

The idea that women were inherently sinful is found in the first book of the Bible. In the story of Adam and Eve. God was angry at Eve's disobedience and devises a punishment. 

"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children: and they desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." 

The story was used as 'both the justification and the cause of woman's subjugation." (Dympna Callaghan) An example of this is the Elizabethan text The Praise and Dispraise of Women where the author remarks "Eve did first transgress, whose fault brought us in thrall." 

Women had a clear hierarchical position and were subordinate to men. A Godly Form of Household Government describes it as 'a monstrous matter... for the wife to rebel against the husband... a disobedient wife is like a body refusing to obey its own head." The Place of Pleasure by William Painter makes it clear that women were expected to be submissive and deferential. "as soon as she steppeth out of the right tract... thrust herself into infinite troubles" 

The early modern women notes Lisa Jardine 'has no means of escape: any single act which does not square with this emblem of passive and dutiful behaviour condemns the individual as fallen from the pedestal." 

During the Jacobean period it was common for women to defend themselves in ecclesiastical courts from accusations of being a 'whore', just as Vittoria does in the play. 90% of cases concerning a female plantiff involved her sexual reputation

Women were defined primarily according to their relationships with men, whether daughter, wife or widow. This idea central in the Book of Genesis- God creates Eve by taking a rib from Adam. The independent, assertive woman was seen as an aberration: the masculine woman bold in speech and impudent in action was described as 'most monstrous.' in the Man Woman (an anonymous pamphlet in 1620) 

Webster depicts a highly sexist and patriarchial world. B and Francisco dominate their respective dukedomes + characters like I are symbolic bargaining tokens rather than active individuals in their own right. Play is skewed towards a male perspective. Male characters are allowed long soliloquies whilst female characters are not. Also all female characters would be played by male actors. 

Play gives expression to misogynistic ideas

• Monticelsco invective against whores in the trial scene
• Flamineo has a sexist commentary throughout

A key theme is the deceitful and duplicitious nature of women. Vittoria is repeatedly deceptive. 

But, just because Webster depicts a misogynistic world it doesn't mean that he endorses its values. Vittoria is a strong and potentially sympathetic female characters whose victimisation at the hands of powerful men might provoke outrage and indignation in the audience. 

Although v. few people spoke out about the oppression of women; the play could be ambiguous. 

This was a central debate shown in the pamphlet war in 1615 started by the publication of An Arraignment of Lewd, Idle , Froward and Unconstant Women by Joeseph Swetnam. It was an odd mix of jokes, historical anecdotes, biblical references and misogynistic invective aimed at 'the ordinary sort of giddy-headed young men.' 

Swetnam denounced women condemning them as animalistic, dishonest, disloyal, deceptive and uncontrollable.  

The pamphlet provoked anti misogynistic responses, mostly by women, The satirical play Swetnam the Woman- Hater, Arraigned by Women was published in 1620. The latter was performed at the Red Bull Theatre by the Queen Anne's Men- same company + theatre that staged TWD- but an inversion of the trial scene. 

In his pamphlet he writes: 

• "The beauty of women hath been the bane of many a man, for it hath overcome valiant and strong men"

• Then who can but say that women sprung from Devil? Whose heads, hands and hearts, minds and souls are evil, for women are called the hook of all evil because men are taken by them as fish is taken with the hook" 

• "in their beds there is hell, sorrow and repentance." 

• "women devour them alive, for a woman will pick thy pocket and empty thy purse, laugh in thy face and cut thy throat."

• "They are ungrateful... and cruel yet there were by God created and by nature formed, and therefore by policy and wisdom to be avoided. 

• "aim more at thy wealth than at thy person." 

Intellectual and Cultural Context- Power and Politics in Jacobean England

Jacobean depictions of corrupt and decadent Italian courts were not simply criticisms of a far-off culture on the other side of Europe. The court of James I, by 1612 had developed a reputation as a hotbed of vice and favoritism. The king, himself was renowned for his extravagance.

In one five year period he bought 2000 pairs of gloves and in 1604 spent £47,000 on jewels. He often nibbled handsome young men while hearing the presentation of minsters. In 1606 James and his brother in law King Christian IV of Denmark undertook a 'drunken and orgiastic progress' through the stately homes of the Thames Valley with the latter at one point collapsing 'smeared in jelly and cream'.

Events that cemented the shittiness of James's court occured 1613-1616. But 'The White Devil' was written in 1612 so don't be going and making absolute links. Don't be that dumbass.

The first case was Sir Thomas Overbury who was the secretary and close adviser to Sir Robert Carr (James's favourite court).

• Carr began liasion with Frances Howard, the married Countess of Essex which led to a high profile divorce
• Overbury opposed the match which led to his rapid demise
• Fell out of favour with the King + refused an ambassadorial commission from him in April 1613. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London where he died months later of a mysterious illness
• Rumours of foul play. The governor of the Tower caught Overbury's keeper Robert Weston bringing him poisoned food. 
• Weston put on trial and didn't say anything until he threatened with being pressed to death with weights.  Found guilty and put to death
• Carr and his wife were tried, found guilty but their lives were spared by the King's intervention. 

Widely condemned as an example of gross injustice + of abuse of power + influence. Anne Turner (France's servant) and Gervase Elwes (GOT)  denounced the court. Turner accused the majority of courtiers of 'malice, pride, whoredom, swearing and rejoicing in the fall of others.' 

Occurred after TWD, similarities are striking.

• Like Overbury, Flamineo is a secretary to a great man who acts as a go between
• Like Vittoria, Frances Howard was widely condemned as a whore in a public trial
• Main victims in TWD, as in the Overbury case are the accessories whilst the truly powerful escape punishment 
• Webster's characters speak out against the court

Webster probs knew Overbury pretty well. He dedicated A Monumental Column to Carr in 1612 and in 1615, he contributed to Characters, a collection of vivid descriptions of contemporary character types which was posthumously attributed to Overbury. 

Arbella Stuart

• 1610 James's cousin Lady Arbella Stuart married William Seymour without seeking the permission of James
• James had her imprisoned in the Tower. She never saw her husband again + died in the Tower in 1615 from illness caused by her refusal to eat

This would be fresh in audience psyche. Flamineo seems to directly refer to this incident when he remarks:

"Say that a gentlewoman were taken out of her bed about midnight, and committed to Castle Angelo, to the tower yonder.... would it not show a cruel part in the gentleman porter to lay claim to her upper garment, pull it o'er her head and ears and put her in naked?"

Temporarily collapsing the distance between the fictional Italian court and the real Jacobean one, Webster makes a direct link between Vittoria's abuse as a political pawn and Lady Arbella Stuart's