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 i 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 ii 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. iii 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 iv 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. v 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 vi 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