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RENAISSANCE
John Addington Symonds:



‘During the Middle Ages man lived enveloped in a cowl,’ living by the ‘fixed ideas of
the ascetic medieval Church
...

Improvement through studies, education
...
Middleton responsible for main plot, whilst Rowley wrote first and last
scenes and sub-plot
...

Plot derived from 1621 story collection by John Reynolds – collection of stories about
adultery and murder
...
Patricia Thomson claims that the difference between source and play is the
sense the dramatists bring to the characters of ‘the inevitability of their actions,’ and ‘thus
transform and ill-motivated story of lust, murder and revenge into one of the finest tragedies
of the era
...
’
 Jasperino comments that Alsemero has ‘ne’er rehearsed’ any courtship before; implies
it is a kind of performance
 Antonio plays the role of a fool: stage directions ‘like an idiot
...
Stephen Greenblatt
...
’ Line cradles ‘within,’ mimicking the ‘gentleman’ beneath
the ‘follies
...
’
 Antonio’s performance, his fashioning of himself into a strange ‘shape’ is directly linked
by Isabella to the ‘schools of lunatics,/That act their fantasies in any shapes […]
as their wild fancies prompt ‘em
...

 De F and Beatrice’s melodramatic performance of grief at Diaphanta’s death: ‘burnt,
burnt, burnt to death, sir!’ ; ‘Oh, my presaging soul!’

1

Hypocrisy/duality:
Michael Neill describes the sense of ‘Uncanny’ in the use of doubles: ‘the uncanny world of
Changeling, with its contradictory, double selves’  CHANGELINGS
 Beatrice is ‘transformed into her own dark double’  ‘In what the act has mad you,
y’are no more now
...
’ Allegory for corruption of the
society; and reality lying beneath façade, mask
...

Addressing social customs and financial dealings of London’s new and
prosperous merchant class
...
Popular due to presentation of possible social transformation e
...
Expose consumerism and amorality but celebrate wit and ambition
...
’ Masks/fluidity of identity, self
...
’
Greenblatt argues that because V’s identity is self-fashioned, he is utterly free,
‘liberated even from himself, uncommitted to a single, fixed role
...
’ [Greenblatt]
...
Moral decay at core of the body politic [see castle metaphor]:
 ‘hidden malady’ within Alsemero represents societal concealed corruption beneath
courtly surface;
 Mirrors De Flores’ corruption between his mask of servility, which ‘shelter[s] such a
cunning cruelty’
 Inescapability of sin, temptation: Isabella: one ‘need not gad about to seek her sin’

2

 Jasperino: ‘Tis not a shallow probe/Can search this ulcer soundly; I fear you’ll
find it/Full of corruption’ – core of inner decay
Beatrice associated with holiness  a virtuous façade:
 Alsemero describes meeting her in a church: ‘twas in the temple where I first
beheld her’ – first line establishes religious/moral theme  appropriation of religious
place for courtship and adultery? - if she were not displayed so virginal, so uncorrupted,
maybe her fall would not seem so treacherous to the blinded men? Beatrice is a constant
character – she is rash but intelligent
...
Christopher Hicks: ‘Beatrice ignores and
defies the moral order when it suits her; but then she invokes its protection against De
Flores
...

 A ‘standing toad-pool’ – implying stagnancy, breeding place of corruption, rotten
 Unburdened by conscience: after murder, ‘I feel no weight in’t; ‘tis but light and
cheap’
 He does experience remorse, guilt: ‘I smell his brother’s blood’
Moralistic tone; sin viewed as inter-connected and inevitable
...
Beatrice undergoes Fall from innocence
...

 De Flores ‘make his death the murderer of my honour!’
 Beatrice: ‘Murder, I see, is followed by more sins’
Duality of Language:
T
...
Eliot: ‘Middleton shows his interest—more than any of his contemporaries—in
innuendo and double meanings’ – use of allusion and implication
...
This
duality ‘sums up the moral and poetic theme of the play
...
De Flores imagines her to be promising her a sexual
reward; Beatrice does not recognise his lust for her
...
’ Christopher Hicks
suggests that given her demonstration of cunning elsewhere in the play, her mistake may be
due to a lack of imagination, her failure to comprehend De F’s implied meaning veiled in his
allusions, until he becomes plain - ‘an egotistical single-mindedness, a tragic failure to see
puns’ – her obsession with her own desires causes her to fail to recognise his
...
’ Eyes can be deceiving – superficial love not always rational, imbuing
one’s vision with illusion; self-delusion
...
She
imagines he is ‘wise’ for his choice of his friend, deciding: ‘Methinks I love now with
the eyes of judgement’ – this is a fantasy
...
Imagines him a ‘diamond’ – idealisation
...

 Alonzo ignores the advice of his brother, and is blind to reality, refusing to acknowledge
Beatrice’s faults, and reconcile truth with his idealised image of her
...
Love =
deceiving
...
Love= preference for fantasy and illusion over reality
...

Madness:
Succumbing to this fantasy, and sacrificing one’s judgement, is a kind of madness
...

De Flores describes his obsession with seeing Beatrice as a ‘mad qualm’
At B’s attentions, De Flores declares: ‘I shall run mad with joy!’
Isabella calls Francisco ‘lunatic lover’
‘Tony’ – Renaissance nickname for madness
...
Views himself as the teacher and they as the students; assumes
the absolute authority of a parent
...
Deborah G Burks argues that Beatrice’s ‘acceptance of her role as De
Flores’s whore is symptomatic of a pervasive fear of women’s desire […] English law treated
ravishment as a crime targeted at propertied men, through a piece of their property, women
...
’ Their affair victimises men: the murdered Alonzo, Beatrice’s father cheated of heirs,
the cuckolded Alsemero, nearly Antonio and Francisco
...

 Jasperino comments that Alsemero has never been caught in ‘snares of beauty’ – men
innocent creatures to be captured; absolves men of responsibility for sexual violence
 De Flores complains Beatrice ‘bates me’ with her beauty; casts himself as passive victim
 Jasperino compares Diaphanta to a ‘vessel,’ a ship: ‘I’ll board her’ – sexual mastery,
likened to conquering, force; objectification
...

 Lack of male self-control – De Flores compares himself to ‘a common Garden-bull’ –
animalistic lack of restraint
 Alibius seeks to control his wife’s sexuality, literally confining her
...

 Patriarchal control over female sexuality; Alibius – ‘in my arms and bosom, my
sweet Isabella,/I’ll lock thee up most nearly
...

 De Flores calls B ‘a round-packed sinner,/As your most ladies are’ –
generalisation
...
Plump ; 2
...

 Alsemero calls Beatrice ‘my absolute treasure’; possessive ‘my,’ objectification
 Female sexuality – Diaphanta ‘devours the pleasure with a greedy appetite’; sex
likened to food: sensual image
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 Beatrice called ‘crying crocodile’ to whom De F is ‘prey’ – reflects double standards,
social stigma surrounding female sexuality; viewed as the temptation
...
Deborah G Burks:
‘Middleton and Rowley created an archetype of the woman-driven-by-desire in the
character of Beatrice-Joanna
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Hides his ‘naked rapier’ – phallic object
...
Foreshadows similar
violence done to Beatrice
...
’
5

The Uncanny
Freud: ‘The uncanny is something which is secretly familiar, which has undergone
repression and then returned from it,’ characteristically revealed in weird repetition, and
causing anxiety
...

o First appears in De Flores’ attempts to ‘thrust’ his own fingers into the ‘sockets’
of her glove, then in the finger of Alonzo which he brings her, and in the
reappearance of the ghost himself, gesturing his hand
...

o Christopher Hicks supports this reading, that Beatrice’s initial revulsion is
obsessive, and that she perhaps unconsciously she engineers her own
exploitation: ‘she picks again and again the words which are tragically capable of
a double meaning
...
’
Uncanny Ghost: De Flores dismisses it as ‘mist of conscience’ suggesting it can be easily
dispersed; causes anxiety and terror in Beatrice: ‘shivering sweat’

THE SPANISH TRAGEDY
-

Thomas Kyd; written between 1582-92

John Cunliffe on Senecan tragedy: ‘Seneca goes to no trouble to make his sensational
themes dramatically effective by clever construction of plot and careful development of
character
...

Seneca believed in release through viewing of violence
...
g
...
Dost recognize thy wife?’
Thomas Kyd was very well-educated; from a middle-class background
...
Spanish Tragedy became an
Elizabethan classic, hugely popular, and still being performed 50 years later
...
g
...
Employed Senecan devices such as Ghost, stichomythia,
sententiae, furor - ranting, to create the ‘revenge tragedy’ – a genre that went on to dominate
Renaissance drama, producing Hamlet
...
Traditionally, personal revenge was exacted in
repayment of a wrong done to one’s family; one was honour-bound to carry it out – this was
an influence from Anglo Saxon/Danish culture
...
Elizabethan authorities attempted to discourage the
pursuit of private revenge, in favour of justice through the law
...
Kyd himself was a victim of such
surveillance; he was imprisoned in 1593 after an ‘atheistical’ pamphlet was discovered in his
possession, and although released, the tortures he had undergone, as well as a loss of
reputation and patronage, led to his early death in 1594
...


Theatre
‘Here sit we down to see the mystery,/And serve for Chorus in this tragedy
...
i
...
Play within a play – Don Andrea and Revenge are audience to the events
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Spying of Lorenzo creates same metatheatrical effect, an audience to events
...
g
...
H shows audience Horatio’s body: ‘See
here my show; look on this spectacle!’ (IV
...
89)
 Hieronimo asks, ‘And actor in th’accursed tragedy/Wast thou, Lorenzo?’
(III
...
41-42)
...

 A play within a play: Hieronimo- ‘I’ll play the murderer’ (IV
...
133)
...

 Pun on acting/action; Hieronimo- ‘nothing wants but acting of revenge’ (IV
...
30)
...
H- ‘And princes, now behold Hieronimo,/Author and actor in this
tragedy’ (III
...
147)
...

 Irony that in the performance of the play, Hieronimo is finally able to ‘drop his mask’
[Gordon Braden]

Duality of Language
 Language is shown to be untrustworthy, too - contributes to sense of performance and
theatricality; duplicitous masks; doubling

7

 The events of the battle recounted first by Don Andrea, then the Spanish General, then
Portuguese Villuppo – variety of differing perspectives
...
iii
...
Even Horatio’s account of Don Andrea’s death is v different to the General’s,
painting Andrea in a better light; a biased narrative
...
Self-delusion
...
iv
...

 Distrust of figurative language: Balthazar about Horatio-‘in his mouth he carries
pleasing words,/Which pleasing words do harbour sweet conceits,/Which
sweet conceits are limed with sly deceits’ (II
...
124-126)
...
ii
...
Horatio=straight-forward warrior/Lorenzo=deceitful courtier,
capable of disguise and masks
...
Language=mask
...
’ Loses power of lang
...
Hieronimo: ‘wherefore
waste I mine unfruitful words,/When naught but blood will satisfy my woes?’
(III
...
67-68)
...
This is symbolised
at the cutting out of his own tongue, demonstrating a complete abandonment of speech
in favour of violence (IV
...
213)
...

 Final struggles of the play are over language, the Spanish and Portuguese rulers
attempting to force Hieronimo to speak – Gordon Braden has argued that the fact the
play does not end with H’s ‘expansive self-justification’ suggests that ‘Hieronimo’s is the
silence of a guilty man, aware that he cannot justify what he has done’; alternatively, it is
a dignified example of ‘Stoic heroism
...
Bitter irony in Bazulto’s petitioning of him to exact justice through
the King: the characters are doubled, the crimes committed against them alike: ‘wretched I
in thy mishaps may see/The lively portrait of my dying self’ (III
...
84-85)
...

Hieronimo considers all avenues of revenge before resorting to personal retaliation:
 Hieronimo becomes disillusioned with divine justice: ‘Oh sacred heavens […] How
should we term your dealings to be just/If you unjustly deal with those that
in your justice trust?’ (III
...
5-11)
...
’ (III
...
16-18)
...
Lorenzo’s physical obstruction of Hieronimo has a metaphorical
significance: Hieronimo represents justice, whose route to legality is being impeded by
court corruption
...
’ King of Spain oblivious to events; royal neglect
...
’ (III
...
139)
...
Peter Sacks has described that a societal loss
of faith in the existence of justice took place in Elizabethan era - the government, by mid16th Century, had assumed greater responsibility for administrating justice
...
ii
...
Passive to Fortune
 Fickleness + ruthlessness of Fortune
...
iii
...

 Even Kings are ‘ever subject to the wheel of chance’ (III
...
5)
...
Katharine Eisaman Maus: ‘the
characters sense of freedom and control is a wishful delusion, as empty as the box’ …
...
’
Morality of revenge:
 Isabella represents Christian view of revenge: ‘The heavens are just; murder cannot
be hid;/Time is the author both of truth and right,/And time will bring this
treachery to light
...
vi
...
Passive acceptance; typically ‘feminine’
 Paradox in pursuit of revenge
...
’
 Lily Campbell argues that Renaissance audiences would have condemned revenge as
Christians and therefore been deeply suspicious and critical of Hieronimo
...
Hieronimo abandons faith in divine justice
...

 Therefore revenge tragedy ‘complicates the issues of justice’ [Maus]; the revenger is
often initially blameless, but this cannot fully exonerate him from responsibility for his
own crimes
...
’ [Maus]
...

 It is impossible to either completely endorse or condemn Hieronimo’s actions; Kyd
ensures that we sympathise with inner turmoil in his emotional, despairing soliloquys
and evident grief: ‘Here lay my hope…my heart…my treasure…my bliss
...
‘The vengeance into which the hero descends in no
longer morally superior to what is being avenged
...

Contemporary Revenge TragediesTITUS ANDRONICUS (1592):




Excessive violence verges upon parody of the genre; use of ‘schreirede’ = colourful
ranting
...
Allegorical scene shooting arrows into heavens: ‘Terras Astraea Reliquit
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Takes matters
into own hands
...
’ Internal rhyme: sense of finality, completion
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Legal route not possible: Claudius in control of Denmark
Elizabethan upper classes believed one was honour-bound to pursue revenge
...
’
Hamlet is Wittenberg student; aware of humanist ideas
...
’ Requires proof, endless brooding
and thought
...

Reflection of the conflicts between Humanist thought and Calvinist ideas of predestination; Renaissance = reaction against Calvinism

Nobility and CLASS
Personal vengeance as social rebellion Katharine Eisaman Maus has argued that in order for the protagonist’s moral
quandary to be of interest to the audience, his dilemma must be reflective of some ‘widely
experienced anxiety
...
’ Pedringano’s expectation
to be saved by his master, which is disappointed, reflects a trope of Renaissance tragedy,
of the hero being wronged by someone who out-ranks him; Horatio murdered by
Lorenzo
...
Portuguese subplot – Portuguese Viceroy has the power to
exact revenge on whom he chooses  rash decision to have Alexandro murdered, with
little evidence; contrasts to the painstaking efforts of Hieronimo to petition the Spanish
King, and then plot and organise the murders
...
’ Taking the law into one’s own hands demonstrates a lack of faith in the system 
t/f, ‘blood vengeance subverts the power of the crown’ [Maus]
...
’ (I
...
48)
...

 Dual role of the revenger: the revenger seeks to restore balance and justice to the social
order, but undermines it at the same time; ‘double bind’ [Maus]
Hieronimo and Horatio are not of high birth, and rely upon the patronage of the king,
wielding no influence of their own – they distinguish themselves through their hard work
and skill; appear to be achieving their own social advancement
...
Gordon Braden:
play documents the ‘problematics of morality and self-respect’ – Hieronimo chides himself,
‘for shame’ to ‘neglect’ his duty to his son; Bel-Imperia also chastises his delay
...
i
...


Religion
Description of Underworld v pagan; not a Christian world
...
A pre-Christian
world; able to explore primal and medieval ideas of vengeance?
Katharine Eisaman Maus claims that religion is not attractively presented in the play;
the Underworld ‘seems as capricious and nepotistic as the court of Spain: it reproduces
rather than compensates for the defects of this world
...

However, arguably the religious dimension, and presence of Ghost allows a degree of
catharsis to the end of the play; although all characters are dead, the good will be rewarded
and the bad punished, allowing for an element of didacticism
...
/For here though death doth end their misery,/I’ll
there begin their endless tragedy
...
v
...


GENDER:
Bel-Imperia is interesting Renaissance female protagonist; Kyd explores ideas of agency, and
limitations of female autonomy
...
’ Inevitably under the control of men, throughout the play she attempts
to assert her own agency
...

 Men seek to control her sexuality; her brother attempts to orchestrate a match with
Balthazar; to her father and uncle she is a commodity to be traded by powerful men to
their advantage
...

 Animal imagery used to describe her
...
i
...
Image of
penetration
...

 Battle imagery used to describe love Women portrayed as land to be conquered
...
iv
...

Uncanny foreshadowing of danger, preceding his actual death
...
’ (II
...
48-9)
...
Women to be
won/conquered
...
She accepts the murder of her son with passive
grief
...
Driven to self-destruction
...

Bloody handkerchief links the death of Andrea to Horatio to B-I; Horatio’s death to
Hieronimo – repetition, return of the repressed
Hieronimo’s play: similarities of the drama to past events – return of the repressed guilt

UTOPIA
Written by Thomas More, 1516
Humanism – turning away from scholasticism; a revived interest in ancient Greek and
Roman pagan thought, especially devoted to Plato; a rationalist school of thought,

12

contributing prime importance to the human, the rational and autonomous self, rather than
the divine
...
Devotion to
Aristotle; believed in logic over humanism or moral philosophy
...
More
would have been interested in Renaissance ideas about the self and individual agency
...
He became Chancellor in 1529
...

Catholic; observed ascetic monk-like practises such as the wearing of a hair-shirt, fasting
...
Paradoxically, Utopians practise religious freedom
...

Book 1 depicts More’s own society, describing the injustice, inequality and lack of state
support for citizens
...
However, this nurture of the
individual sometimes blurs into oppression: autonomy and freedom is sacrificed – state
surveillance, breaking of the family unit, lack of independent movement
Dominic Baker Smith: the effect and intention of the novel is that it seeks to ‘unsettle
familiar attitudes and prompts acts of political imagination’

FICTIONALISATION:
Dominic Baker-Smith has accused More of ‘sphinx-like’ ambiguity – how much did he
endorse Utopian values?
Duality of names: ‘Raphael Hythlodaeus’; in the Book of Tobit, the Archangel Gabriel guided
the blind Tobias on a journey which results in the restoration of his sight
...
’ ‘Hythlodaeus’ however means ‘dispenser of nonsense’ –
paradox at work in the text – how seriously should we take it?
Other names such as ‘eutopos’ = good place vs ‘outopos’ = no place  suggests difficulties of
the actualization of an ideal
...
’ Similarly, use of
Hythlodaeus as a narrator distances him from the text, and from associating himself with the
critique of society in Book 1, and a celebration of the radical ideas in Book 2; a ‘protective
technique,’ shielding him within a ‘sanctuary of ambiguity’ [Paul Turner]
...

Is Utopia a fantasy or a constructive blueprint?
 H
...
Donner writes: ‘It was not the constitution of commonwealths that More desired
to reform, but the spirit […] they must not be copied, but surpassed by Christian
institutions
...
’ Only a partial endorsement
...
’ Metaphor for Utopian society? An impossible, beautiful
ideal that Western society should strive for, but cannot achieve, held back by the
imperfections of human nature
...
’ If Western society as depicted in Book 1 is a prison, then Utopia is
supposedly its antithesis, a universe of freedom and liberation

WELFARE:
Education accessible to men and women, regardless of class or gender
...
Emphasis upon
‘improving literature’; in line with state doctrine  indoctrination, conditioning
...
’ Rejection of Church
teaching is a humanist liberation from superstition: control and autonomy
...

Liberated from complicated legal code: ‘unjust for anyone to be bound by a legal code’
– More himself was a lawyer; irony? Replaced by simplicity
...

Humanist schools of thought endorsed the vision of communism in Plato’s ‘Republic,’ and
argued that God intended people to live communally, evidenced by the strict poverty of
Christ himself
...
Therefore, this way of living would have been considered ‘the
emancipation of the Christian from human law
...

Hythloday describes that at the Utopians discovery of Christianity, they felt their culture
bore similarities: ‘Christ prescribed of His own disciples a communist way of life
...
This prevents loss of life: ‘humane to save
thousands of innocent lives’

RELIGION:
Advocates euthanasia, divorce, marriage of priests, and religious toleration: ‘there are sunworshippers, moon-worshippers, and worshippers of various other planets’
Utopos ‘left the choice of creed an open question, to be decided by the individual
according to his own ideas’ – form of self-expression
Liberality towards religion is striking given that More intolerance for heresy: he conducted
book-burnings of heretical texts, wrote critiques of Reformists, and ‘approved of burning’
[biographer Peter Ackroyd] as a punishment for heresy, executing six Protestant heretics
during his Chancellorship this way
...

Kessler has argued that the policy is political rather than humanist, and therefore More is
not fantasizing about individual autonomy, but practically assessing its political benefits, if
allowed in moderation
...
Kessler argues that More knew the extent to which religious
disagreements could threaten political instability, dividing communities and creating
discrimination and violence
...
’ In Utopia, extremists that are ‘too aggressive,’ disturbing the peace, are
exiled – indicates that it is all about stability, manipulating citizens into docility
...
One MUST
have religion – atheism is dangerous: ‘these people are a threat, for what will restrain them
from doing anything they please?’ [Stephen Greenblatt]
...
Hythloday: ‘if one has ‘no hopes of anything after
you’re dead, you’ll always be trying to evade or break the laws
...

The creed: thank god ‘for letting me live in the happiest possible society, and
practise what I hope is the truest religion
...
’  instructions to take
the book as a blueprint for society? An ideal to aspire to? A suggestion to build upon? Paul
Turner: ‘The Utopian prayer book explicitly allows for the possibility of improvement’

GENDER/SEXUALITY
16

Work shared between men and women; farming labour carried out ‘irrespective of sex’;
education available to all; Hythloday views them as an untapped resource, full of potential
...
’ Women can be priests
...
’ Society has
patriarchal structure: the household comes under ‘the authority of the oldest male’;
‘wives are subordinate to their husbands’
Paul Turner: ‘in sexual matters the penal code is barbarous
...


INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY:
The government’s treatment of its citizens contradicts Renaissance notions of individual
agency, frequently suffocating the individual as well as nurturing it, through tight control
and supervision
...
’ The strong influence the state
wields over the lives of its citizens means that personal liberty is often sacrificed in exchange
for social equality and stability
...

Paul Turner: ‘heavy casualties among the minor pleasures of life, especially the more
frivolous ones’
 Lack of respect for the individual, coldly uprooted: ‘surplus population is
transferred,’ ‘supernumerary adults’ – an indistinct mass rather than individuals
 Young not allowed to sit next to each other at meals, but mixed up with elder generation:
surveillance, preventing rebellious thought – ‘respect for the older generation
tends to discourage bad behaviour amongst the younger ones – since
everything they say or do is bound to be noticed by the people sitting just
beside them’ – watched, scrutinised
...
Paul Turner:
‘lack of personal liberty’; ‘severely punished’ for travelling without a passport
...
Sinister
...
Freedom of
speech did not exist – More himself was executed for expressing an opinion
...

Argues that paradoxically, Christian desire to live righteously is hedonistic, as the righteous
are the happiest; Greenblatt asserts that Utopia is a ‘blueprint’ for the application of
Epicurus’ philosophy, which More believed would ‘liberate all of mankind from its abject
misery
...

 In regards to human happiness, the Utopians apparently ‘take a hedonistic view, for
according to them human happiness consists largely or wholly in pleasure
[…] they defend this self-indulgent doctrine by arguments drawn from
religion
...
’
 ‘what’s the sense in struggling to be virtuous, and denying yourself the
pleasant things in life’
 Pleasure is ‘the natural object of all human efforts’
 ‘we’re naturally impelled by virtue, which by their definition means
following one’s natural impulses, as God meant us to do
...
’ [Stephen Greenblatt]
...
’

Utopia TOPICS:

GENERAL THEMES:

Religion

Legacy of Classical literature

Individual autonomy

Portrayal of religious faith

Gender

Status of the image

Society vs the individual

Hyrbidic genre

Education

Influence of Seneca on English literature

Tradition

Treatment of visual art

Family

Treatment of magic
Power
Government

18

Public and private life
Perspective
Verbal economy
Individual autonomy
Gender
Dialogue
Petrarchinism

19



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