The Arc of Character: Medieval Stock Types in Shakespeare's English History Plays August 2011 ...

295 Pages·2012·1.63 MB·English

by  Myra Emily Wright

The Arc of Character:
Medieval Stock Types in Shakespeare’s English History Plays

August 2011
Karen Oberer
Department of English
McGill University, Montréal

A thesis submitted to McGill University
in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
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Abstract

This dissertation focuses on practices of stock characterisation as they are
represented in literature and drama of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in
England, with particular emphasis on the transformations of social types from
medieval literature to early modern drama, specifically Shakespeare’s English
history plays. Its wider focus is on the social context in which medieval authors
created their characters, and on the conventional construction of medieval
characters from what Elizabeth Fowler defines as “social persons.”
I argue that stock characters allow for permeability between past history
and present performance. Attendant on their deployment in literature and drama is
their recollection of past literary and cultural traditions. This is why Shakespeare
employs them to such great effect in his English history plays: stock characters
have an overt purchase on the past that makes history more socially immediate to
early modern audiences. Shakespeare’s stock characters recall medieval
privileging of family and community, and thus are particularly suitable to the
English histories’ narratives of a country subsumed by family tragedy.
The dissertation focuses on four social persons which Shakespeare uses to
construct stock characters: the Garcio, the Alewife, the Corrupt Clergyman and
the Romance Heroine. He employs these social persons in four characters: the
Bastard Faulconbridge in King John, Mistress Quickly in the second “tetralogy,”
Cardinal Beaufort in the first “tetralogy” and Queen Isabel in Richard II. This
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dissertation is intended to provoke reconsideration of the stock characters as “flat”
stereotypes, and to elaborate upon their complex roles in literary and dramatic
history.
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Résumé

Cette thèse examine la représentation des personnages types dans la littérature et
le drame en Angleterre du quatorzième au seizième siècle en mettant
particulièrement l’accent sur les transformations des types sociaux entre la
littérature médiévale et le drame de la Renaissance, surtout dans les pièces
historiques britanniques de Shakespeare. Au plus large, la thèse porte sur le
contexte social dans lequel les auteurs médiévaux ont façonné leurs personnages
et sur la fabrication conventionnelle des personnages médiévaux à partir des
« personnes sociales » telles que définies par Elizabeth Fowler.
Les personnages types, je soutiens, créent un espace de perméabilité entre
l’histoire du passé et la performance au moment présent. L’emploi de ces
personnages dans la littérature et dans le drame est associé à leurs souvenirs des
traditions littéraires et culturelles du passé. C’est pourquoi Shakespeare s’en sert
si bien dans ses pièces historiques : les personnages types ont une prise sur le
passé qui rend l’histoire plus immédiate sur le plan social pour les spectateurs de
la Renaissance. Les personnages types de Shakespeare rapellent l’emphase sur la
famille et la communauté pendant l’époque médiévale, ce qui les rend
particulièrement appropriés aux récits des pièces historiques d’un pays subsumé
par la tragédie familiale.
Cette thèse porte sur quatre personnes sociales à partir desquelles
Shakespeare fabrique des personnages types, soit le « garcio », la femme du
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tavernier, le curé corrompu, et l’héroïne des histoires romanesques. Il a recours à
ces personnes sociales dans quatre personnages, soit le bâtard Faulconbridge dans
La vie et la mort du roi Jean, Madame Quickly dans la deuxième tétralogie,
Cardinal Beaufort dans la première tétralogie, et la Reine Isabel dans Richard II.
Le but de cette thèse est de provoquer une reconsidération des personnages types
comme des stéréotypes « plats » et d’élaborer sur leurs rôles complexes dans
l’histoire littéraire et dramatique.
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Acknowledgements

Nobody knows as well as I do how much a dissertation is not the work of one
person alone. There would have been simply no way for me to begin, continue
and finish this dissertation without the love and support of many, many people.
First, of course, I must thank my parents, Eileen and William Oberer, without
whom I probably would have given up long ago. I thank my brother Dave and
sister-in-law Pamela who listened repeatedly to my thoughts and concerns
throughout the years. From the McGill academic community, I acknowledge
gratefully the support of Prof. Paul Yachnin; the Shakespeare and Performance
Research Team and the Making Publics Project; my Compulsory Research Project
supervisor Prof. Jamie Fumo; and all of the professors who supported me along
the way, especially Prof. Allan Hepburn, who secured funding for me. I also
appreciatively acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council, which funded a productive research trip to the Shakespeare
Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2009.
Most valuable to me during my time at McGill has been the people I have
met in the program and who have provided me a wealth of love and support: Amy
Scott, Joanne Holland, Chelsea Honeyman, Jake Walsh Morrissey, Will Sweet, J.
Shea, Myra Wright, Sarah Skoronski, Emily Essert, Hilary Havens, Joel Deshaye,
Caroline Krzakowski and Greg Phipps. Prof. Jen Drouin and Guillaume Veillette
translated my abstract, for which I am very grateful. I am also grateful for the
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continued support of pre-PhD friends Anita Simanic (and family), Laura McKay,
Sarah Bunnell, Brenda Inglis and John Batey. Thank you for proving to me that
most friendship is not feigning, most loving not mere folly.
The greatest and most heartfelt thanks go to Prof. Wes Folkerth, whose
unfailing encouragement and positive attitude frequently gave me the confidence
to continue with my project even when I felt over- (and under-) whelmed by it.
Contents

Abstract i

Résumé iii

Acknowledgements v

Introduction 1

1. The Medieval Garcio and King John’s Bastard Faulconbridge 24

Language and its Effects: Rusticity, Scatology and Irreverence 28
Social Critiques 39
Liminality and Dramatic Effect 53

2. Called to a Reckoning: Mistress Quickly and the Medieval Alewife 65

Cultural Anxieties about Alewifes and Tapsters 72
Literary Representations of Medieval and Tudor Alewives 78
Piers Plowman 80
Betoun the Brewstere 87
The Chester Alewife 92
Gammer Gurton’s Needle 101
Tom Tyler and his Wife 104
Mistress Quickly 107
Reckoning, Knowing, Indeterminacy 111
Mistress Quickly and Alewife-anxiety 114
Hal’s Education: Quickly as Mistress
in the “Devil’s Schoolhouse” 120
“Time’s Subjects” and “Timeless Women” 124

3. The Corrupt Clergyman: Shakespeare’s Cardinal Winchester 135

Late Medieval Sermon Literature: When Preachers Attack 143
Estates Satirists Take on the Clergy 148
Chaucer’s Pardoner 160
The Tudor Chroniclers 171
Human Agency: Kinship, Family, Nepotism 172
Moral Principle: Exemplarity 179
Divine Guidance: Judgements of Man and God 185
Eleanor’s trial 186
Gloucester’s trial 189
Final Judgement: Winchester’s death 191
Shakespeare’s 1 and 2 Henry VI: the Corrupt Clergyman on stage 195
Nepotism 201
Exemplarity 208
Judgement and Justice 216

4. Queen Isabel: Arthurian Romance Heroine Caught
in English History 228

“There she made overmuch sorrow”:
Romance Heroine as Mourner 233
“But soft, but see, or rather do not see / My fair rose wither”:
Isabel’s “Quest” 240
The Romance Heroine’s Verbal Power 242
Making Peace 246
Samuel Daniel’s Civil Wars, Book 2 249
Failures and Successes of Chivalry 254

Conclusion 258

Bibliography 264
1

Introduction

I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment, and against this fire
Do I shrink up.
– King John 5.7.32-34

King John describes himself as a collection of characters written on a parchment,
shrivelling up from the fire, or fever, that consumes him. “Character” in the early
modern period almost exclusively referred to the character inscribed on a page, a
distinctive mark impressed, engraved, or otherwise formed (OED def. 1.a.). The
mention of “a parchment” here may be meant to recall a famous scene not portrayed
in Shakespeare’s play: John’s signing of the Magna Carta at the forcible behest of
his barons. John, like history itself, is a mutable form, a character impressed upon
his audience by an industrious playwright. What is shown and what is suppressed in
the play informs the audience’s perception of historical fact. John is not a stock
character because he is not defined primarily by one or two social roles, but his
personal reflection in the above lines illustrates the contingency inherent in both
characterological and historical (re)construction. Stock characters in Shakespeare’s
histories often draw attention to the artificial nature of historical reconstruction,
particularly in play endings, where poetic closure is imposed upon continuous
historical narrative. That stock characters lack psychological “depth” is a frequent
critical assumption; my dissertation aims to prove that their inscription of changing