Table Of ContentRenaissance DRama on the eDge
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Renaissance Drama on the edge
Lisa hopkins
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
© Lisa hopkins 2014
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Lisa hopkins has asserted her right under the copyright, Designs and patents act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
published by
ashgate publishing Limited ashgate publishing company
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
hopkins, Lisa, 1962–
Renaissance Drama on the edge / by Lisa hopkins.
pages cm
includes index.
isBn 978-1-4094-3819-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) — isBn 978-1-4094-3820-5 (ebook)
— isBn 978-1-4724-0581-4 (epub)
1. english drama—early modern and elizabethan, 1500–1600—history and criticism.
i. title.
pR651.h67 2014
822’.309—dc23
2013043322
isBn: 9781409438199 (hbk)
isBn: 9781409438205 (ebk – pDF)
isBn: 9781472405814 (ebk – epUB)
V
contents
Acknowledgements vii
introduction 1
Part I What is an Edge?
1 Walls: the edge of territory 11
2 peter or paul? the edge of the state 29
Part II The Edge of the Nation
3 sex on the edge 51
4 ‘gate of spain’: the southern edge of France 69
5 ‘pas de calais’: the northern edge of France 89
Part III Invisible Edges
6 the edge of heaven 113
7 Jewels and the edge of the skin 135
8 the edge of the World 153
conclusion 171
Works Cited 173
Index 189
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acknowledgements
With thanks to adam hansen for organising the conference on ‘early modern
Dis/Locations’ at the University of northumbria, at which the earliest version of
chapter eight was first delivered, and at which I met John Mabbett who in turn was
kind enough to give me an introduction to nick hodgson of tyne & Wear archives
& museums, who gave invaluable help on antiquarian writing on hadrian’s Wall;
to Oddvar Holmesland of the University of Agder for inviting me to the first
norwegian national conference on early modern studies to give a paper which
eventually became chapter 6, and to my colleague the Rev. Dr Richard Walton
for help with the rivers of paradise section of that; to Veronica popescu, odette
Blomenfeld and Julia Milica of the University of Iasi, Romania for inviting me
to the conference on ‘Wounded Bodies, Wounded minds’ which prompted me to
write chapter 7; to Rory Loughnane and edel semple for their invitation to Dublin
to give the paper which eventually turned into chapter 3; to Laura gallagher and
Victoria Brownlee for their invitation to the Biblical Women conference in Belfast,
out of which Chapter 4 grew; to the staff of the Adsetts library; to Jerry Sokol
for help with jewels; to my former PhD student Andy Duxfield for an extremely
helpful suggestion about The Tempest; and to my colleague matt steggle, who
read the final draft and saved me from myself as far as I would let him, as did
ashgate’s anonymous reader. matt, my other Renaissance colleague annaliese
connolly and my former colleague tom Rutter were as always all hugely helpful.
Finally, as always, thanks to chris and sam.
an earlier version of part of chapter 4 appeared as ‘st helena of Britain in
the Land of the magdalene: All’s Well That Ends Well’, in Biblical Women in
Early Modern Literary Culture, edited by Victoria Brownlee and Laura gallagher
(manchester: manchester University press, 2014); an earlier version of chapter
seven as ‘Beautiful Scars: Jewels in English Renaissance Drama’, Linguaculture
3.1 (2013); and an earlier version of chapter eight in Philological Quarterly
89.4 (Fall 2010). chapter three shares a common ancestry and a small amount
of material with ‘marrying the Dead’, in Staged Transgression in Shakespeare’s
England, edited by edel semple and Rory Loughnane (palgrave macmillan,
2013).
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introduction
What does it mean to be on the edge? it means to be in a state of perilous uncertainty,
anxious to know but not sure whether not knowing might be preferable to what
you eventually find out. It means to be poised between two distinct and potentially
quite different states of knowing or of being, or to be in a liminal position between
two different countries, or perhaps two different time periods, in the sense that
twelfth night is the liminal time between the holiday period of the twelve days
of Christmas and the normal world of work. It means to walk on the wall which
demarcates the space of the city from that of the territory outside it, which might
be merely the surrounding countryside or might be something more savage than
that, or to walk on the cliff and know that there is nothing at all beyond. It means
the boiling point or melting point or tipping point at which something moves or
changes into something else. It means the farthest place on the map, though with
the proviso that this world itself may share an edge with another one beyond. And
it means the places at which the play ceases to be just a play and leaches out into
the playhouse to touch on the experience and concerns of the audience.
in a theatre which probes a number of different issues, the two last of those
edges – the edge of the map and the edge of the play – have perhaps the most
obvious cutting power, particularly in combination. By this I mean that in a
country physically and emotionally scarred by the better part of a century of
religious controversy and conflict, any plot, issue or language that bore on the
vexed questions of faith, choice of confession and possible routes to salvation was
bound to generate an interest that spread beyond the play itself to reverberate in
the auditorium, while the fact that shakespeare and his audiences were themselves
on the edge between the reign of the ‘Welsh’ elizabeth and the scottish James
inevitably focused attention on the relationship between england and other parts
of the British Isles. This concern with the interface between geographical and
spiritual edges was my primary focus a few years ago in Shakespeare on the Edge,
and to a certain extent continues to be so here.1 now, however, i also explore
the potential of some other edges which may intersect with the edge between the
stage and the world beyond it. In Richard III, Queen elizabeth says, ‘i see, as in
a map, the end of all’,2 as if maps could show not just the physical world but also
human destiny. In Shakespeare on the Edge, i suggested that there was a profound
imagined connection between physical and spiritual edges, and i examined
shakespeare’s representations of the borders of england and the extent to which
eschatological overtones were implicit in those representations. In this book, I
return to that idea but expand its parameters both in terms of looking beyond
england and also in terms of the fact that i explore not only geographical borders
but also the intersection of the material and the spiritual more generally, tracing
the contours of the edge which each inhabits, and i look too at authors other than
