by Steven Moore
Only in two places do the eyes unglaze and pay closer attention: one is when Boyle narrates the colorful, elaborate ceremony of the oracle (4.2), which occasions some interesting discussions of the nature of interpretation. The priest tells Artabanes that he misinterprets the oracle, which parallels his misinterpretation of Parthenissa’s actions earlier in the novel, underscoring the tendency of people to interpret phenomena subjectively rather than objectively. The other occurs in the dead center of the novel (3.3), where Artavasdes and a Roman general debate the merits of a kingdom versus a “Commonwealth,” such as the one established by Cromwell in 1649. Boyle argues both sides well with numerous examples pro and con from ancient history, reflecting his own indecision: he opposed Charles I but was disappointed to see the Commonwealth turn into a dictatorship, and he later supported Charles II’s return to the throne in 1660.
Sheppard and Boyle merely allude to the Civil War; several other authors took it as their principal theme, turning to the romance genre in order to express their dangerous political views under the guise of harmless fiction. The half-dozen surviving ones are all romans à clef, a popular genre at the time with sophisticated readers, who enjoyed unlocking literary works that relied on keys, ciphers, cryptograms, and other ploys.30 Most of these political novelists were royalists, and hence had to resort to obfuscation to avoid censorship, or worse, from Cromwell’s regime. Plus the genre allowed them to idealize their aristocratic heroes, to make a romantic adventure out of dirty politics.
Apparently written in 1645 though not published until a decade later, Theophania announces its strategy in the subtitle: “Several Modern Histories by Way of Romance, and Politically Discoursed Upon.”31 By “Romance” the author primarily means Sidney’s Arcadia, and secondarily Barclay’s Argenis. Like the former, it begins with the rescue of two shipwrecked princes, physically resembling Sidney’s Musidorus and Pyrocles, by a local lord of Sicily, the setting of the latter. Over the next four days we hear their backstory, along with that of Sicily, until recently “the envy of her neighbors and the wonder of the whole world,” but now torn apart “by an intestine war” (93). Much of the novel consists of three lengthy recitations that dramatize key historical episodes contributing to the Civil, that is, “intestine war,” which editor Pigeon spells out: “the marriage of Prince William of Orange and Princess Mary; the relationship between the earl of Essex and Elizabeth I and Essex’s fall; and the history of the third earl of Essex, his involvement in the parliamentary cause, and the outbreak of the civil war” (37). Near the end, the princes’ Sicilian host, Synesius (= Robert Sidney, nephew of Sir Philip and Mary Wroth’s brother), analyzes the two theories for the cause of the war—the inevitable result of a flawed political system versus the avoidable result of “the inclinations or imbecility of some few princes, or the corruption of their ministers” (280)—and recommends negotiating with the rebel leader Corastus (= Cromwell). The novel ends abruptly shortly after that, with every indication that a concluding book was suppressed. For that reason, we never learn much about the eponymous Theophania, the idealized love of a visiting knight named Alexandro (= the future Charles II), though her name obviously suggests she represents religion, perhaps even the hope of restoring Catholicism as the state religion, for there’s a strong Catholic bias running through the novel.
The political junkies of the time would have had no trouble identifying the real-life counterparts of the romance figures in Theophania and no doubt appreciated the author’s politically astute take on recent events; but for the modern reader, it is merely a competent romance with a more than usual amount of political discourse. The structure and staging are handled well, the language is fitting, and per the conventions of the genre the male characters are all idealized heroes—though there are some homosexual undertones in the relationship between one of the shipwrecked princes and Alexandro, who alluringly resembles the prince’s absent girlfriend32—and the few females are so idealized that “they make no sport,” as Osborne would say. Perhaps the missing conclusion held some surprises, but as it stands Theophania is a period piece that, like Dodona’s Grove, is of more interest to students of British history than to students of the novel.
If The Princess Cloria (1653–61) is the greatest of these political romances—it is certainly the longest and most complex—that’s because its Welsh author, Sir Percy Herbert (1610–67), was as much concerned with writing a great novel as he was a political allegory. Although he brilliantly dramatizes the political upheavals of England and Europe from about 1640 to 1660 with what commentators have praised as “considerable accuracy,” “displaying a detailed knowledge of secret diplomacy” and offering “a remarkably astute analysis of the power politics of the major European states,”33 Herbert did so by appropriating the oldest story in the book: the confrontation of young, inexperienced characters with the complicated world of adults, and how they mature to meet its challenges.
The first of the novel’s two main narrative arcs traces the development of Princess Cloria (= Mary Stuart, daughter of England’s Charles I), who grows from a sheltered, naïve child to a politically savvy young woman who recognizes she’s a pawn in a geopolitical game and consequently tries to make her own moves, marrying the man of her dreams rather than submitting to a marriage of alliance. Her young husband, Narcissus (= William of Orange [United Dutch Provinces]) matures from an effeminate dandy to an effective soldier who regains his country’s throne. The second arc shows how Cloria’s older brother, Arethusius (= Charles II), grows up in a hurry after the execution of his father and realizes he must resort to cunning and consensus-building to reestablish the monarchy. Herbert tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath under Cromwell in terms of how three privileged but untested teenagers confront the real world and learn to make the negotiations and compromises necessary to survive in that “labyrinth of difficulties.”34
That makes The Princess Cloria sound simple, which it assuredly is not. The reader is thrown for a loop at the very beginning, which concerns a visit paid to King Euarchus of Lydia (= Charles I) by a character named Cassianus (= Charles Louis of the Palatinate [Bohemia]) seeking the king’s help in restoring his usurped throne. (The pacifist king’s reluctance to intervene for a fellow royal anticipates his own abandonment by the crowned heads of Europe when he’s overthrown; the author strongly urges kings to support each other if they want to retain power.) Cassianus falls in love at first sight with Cloria, and since the first 50 pages deal with him—his longings for the princess, the romantic despair that sends him into the forest to take up the pastoral life, his decision to return to politics—the reader assumes the novel will be about his attempt to win Cloria’s hand and his lost kingdom. Instead, he disappears during a shipwreck and is scarcely heard of again. Narcissus is introduced at that point, but in such foppish terms that the reader is surprised to learn he’s the hero of the first half of the novel. Another surprise occurs a few pages later, when we and Cloria are shocked to learn that the shepherdess she recently befriended and cuddles is Narcissus in drag. We both learn that things aren’t always what they seem, and thereafter we’re on guard as new characters and situations appear.
Young Cloria (she’s about 13 when the novel begins) is understandably nervous about sexual matters, which Herbert handles with no-nonsense worldliness, implying sexual naïveté is as dangerous as political naïveté for someone in her situation. After Cloria repulses Narcissus’s physical advances, her governess Roxana—one of the most level-headed characters in the novel—tells her that love “requires as well a satisfaction of the body as the mind” (59). She’s not advising premarital sex—Herbert follows this scene with the cautionary tale of a young woman who was caught in the act by her father, then ran away from home and wound up a ship captain’s whore—but she argues that rigorous virtue is as out of place in the sexual sphere as it is in the political. The novel contains a few other frank and even racy scenes dealing with sex, highly unusual in the high-minded rom
ances of the time, including a hilarious but significant seduction scene: Cloria catches the eye of Osiris, the prince of Egypt (= Spain), who surprises her one day alone in his art gallery trembling before a painting of the rape of Philomela. Hoping to reenact the painting, he villainously twirls the tips of his mustache (inventing that gesture long before it became a cliché) and slowly approaches her, compelling “her to make use of her dainty legs to avoid his importunity, like the flying Daphne from Apollo, which for some space afforded a delightful spectacle, if any had been there to have beheld it, seeing the grave prince with earnestness chase the fearful lady, though he thought it a derogation to his dignity to haste his steps much beyond the custom of his usual walk, for that it was the fashion of his country to seem moderate in every trivial affair” (69–70). Determined “not to be wrought out of his pace,” he keeps up his Mummy-like pursuit until Cloria, somehow, tires out; like a frightened little animal, she suffers him to take her ice-cold hand and murmur sweet nothings before he begins mauling her. For political reasons she has to play nice with him (as Roxana advised), so she negotiates with Osiris and turns “the feared tragedy to a perfect comedy” (70), putting him off with a wordy speech that is a masterpiece of diplomatic double-speak. After Osiris leaves, Cloria beats herself up for not telling him earlier that she was already in love with Narcissus, and for stringing the Egyptian along as Roxana adviced. Gathering “up the scattered remnants of her torn attire” (72), she tries to repair the torn attire of her conscience at the end of this brilliant scene, which crackles with tension and humor.
Cloria still has much to learn, handicapped by what Roxana harshly calls “a willful ignorance that no instruction can inform” (75). Later Cloria passes by an opportunity to marry Narcissus when he comes to Egypt because she insists on the formality of gaining her parents’ permission first, an impractical delay that causes all sorts of future problems: later on Roxana blames the delay and the difficulties that resulted on what she calls Cloria’s “superstitious modesty” (219; cf. 338 and 341). As the novel progresses, Cloria gains more confidence, “contrary to her nature” (138), and eventually can hold her own in political discussions; and while she never abandons her modesty, she modifies it from “superstitious” to politically advantageous. During the Civil War she learns to improvise as she tries to keep out of the hands of rebel forces and unsuitable suitors, at one point dressing as a boy to make an escape (which results in a comic scene where she has to share a bed with a boastful bumpkin). By the time she’s married, and shortly after widowed, Cloria is as grown up as she needs to be to make her way in the world, at which point the narrative turns to her brother’s progress in the labyrinth.
Arethusius follows a similar path of development: once he learns that he’s being played by the king of Syria (France), he acknowledges “the malicious practices of the world” (286) and begins to resort to dissimulation and politicking to stay alive. For him, the galvanizing event is the execution of his father, which Herbert deliberately places in the dead center of the novel; after that, Arethusius has to negotiate with both the forces that want to crown him and those that want to capture him, leading to a series of battles and adventures in Myssia (Scotland, where Charles II was made king in 1651) and in Europe. He’s aware of the “cunning baits gilded over with deadly poison, the more easily to betray my youth and innocency” that various parties dangle before him (406), but he’s sufficiency mature by now to avoid them. Arethusius’s stumbling block is not “superstitious modesty” but religious doubts. Speaking for Catholic royalists like Herbert, he constantly questions how the gods could have allowed their own anointed to be executed, and wonders why they don’t intervene to assert the “divine” right of kings. He begins to doubt his “Heresian” (Protestant) upbringing and is tempted to convert to the “Delphine” (Catholic) religion, shepherded by the arch-flamin of Delphos (Rome). Herbert doesn’t conceal his religious bias, blaming England’s current problems on its adoption a century earlier of the teachings of John Calvin (here called Herenzius), which not only led to republican agitation but also alienated England from Catholic superpowers like France and Spain (another reason why they didn’t assist Charles I). The Princess Cloria is filled with religious discussions between various characters, and though the gods are dutifully thanked for restoring Arethusius to the throne at the end of the novel, Cloria dramatizes the despairing puzzlement that Catholic royalists felt after the beheading of Charles I in 1649, not unlike that of many Jews 300 years later who wondered how their god could have allowed the Holocaust. (The obvious explanation doesn’t occur to them.) By the time Arethusius makes his triumphant return to Lydia, he is a practiced politician, wise to the malicious world, and won’t be fooled again, by gods or men.
Like Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan appeared the same year the Commonwealth sold Herbert’s estates (1651), inspiring him to take revenge on those Roundheads with this novel, Herbert insisted that an absolute monarchy and omnipotent church were necessary to avoid social chaos, “the world turned upside down,”35 in which class distinctions disappear and each person pursues selfish desires without regard for others. Herbert enacts this on a formal level by constantly switching points of view, allowing a multiplicity of characters to voice their explanations of/reactions to events, jumping from one consciousness to another as the novel progresses. Like Arethusius’s absent god, the author of course has a divine plan, but by shifting points-of-view instead of asserting authorial omniscience he effectively dramatizes the egotism that goads every character, from king to commoner. Roxana explains this in religious terms—“the chief error of our impatience is that we take ourselves more framed for our own sakes than for His service” (66)—and in political terms, every character in Cloria puts his or her “private concernments” (215) above the public good. The novel is named after Princess Cloria because she alone sacrifices herself to the needs of her country; during Arethusius’s triumphant return to Lydia, she is “as it were no more than a passive companion . . .” (606), above the partisan bickering that is still going on between career-minded politicians.
Although The Princess Cloria delves deeply enough into the causes and effects of the Civil War to qualify as a history textbook (albeit with a Catholic royalist bias), Herbert never forgot he was writing a novel. He chose that genre, he tells us in his historically important preface, “since by no other way could the multiplicity of strange actions of the times be expressed, that exceeded all belief and went beyond every example in the doing.”36 Obviously familiar with Sidney’s Arcadia—Cloria concludes with a similar invitation to those with “a better pen and more leisure” to continue his characters’ adventures (614)—along with Barclay’s Argenis and French heroic romances, Herbert modifies their literary devices, discarding some conventions, like the long-winded recitations that “are sometimes continued for five or six hours together without intermission, which to my apprehension appears ridiculous” (preface, 213), and playing along with others. To add drama to his characters’ travels, he’s willing to adopt the convention whereby every sea voyage results in shipwreck or piracy, using it so regularly that, by the end of the novel, the blasé narrator simply says one character sailed to Greece “without any considerable adventure but what a rough sea and some persecution by pirates brought his particular” (584). But he builds on this trope to turn the danger of sailing into a metaphor for psychological states: his principal characters are often said to be in “a sea of confusion” (153, 181) and/or “a vast sea of amazement” (463). Before his execution, King Euarchus is imprisoned in a castle on a peninsula, where his enemies are personified as the menacing sea that surrounds him. The only calm sea voyage occurs at the end, when Arethusius sails to Lydia to be crowned king, symbolically suggesting Lydia will have smooth sailing ahead.