Renaissance DRama on the eDge This page has been left blank intentionally 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 Wey court east 110 cherry street Union Road suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, Vt 05401-3818 surrey, gU9 7pt Usa england www.ashgate.com 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 This page has been left blank intentionally 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). This page has been left blank intentionally 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