Age in Love

by Jacqueline Vanhoutte

  27. Doty, Shakespeare, Popularity, 4–18.

  28. See, e.g., the portrait included in Ralph Lever’s The Philosophers Game (1563).

  29. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 8.

  30. Golding, “To . . . Lord Robert Dudley,” 4v. Like Golding’s Ovid (see chapter 2), his translation of Bullinger’s A Confutation of the Popes Bull . . . against Elizabeth (1572) reproduces the Dudley bear badge.

  31. Blundeville, Profitable Treatise, D3r; “To the Ryght Noble Erle of Leycester,” A2. The final quote comes from a poem printed on the title page, which also reproduces the Dudley bear badge. On Leicester’s clients presenting him as an exemplar, see Rosenberg, Leicester, 51–52; and Vanhoutte, “Itinerarium.”

  32. Francis Bacon to the Earl of Essex, October 4, 1596, in Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, 2:44.

  33. Lake, Bad Queen Bess?, 11.

  34. “Letter of Estate,” 25, 27, 30.

  35. Briefe Discoverie, 49–50.

  36. Doty, Shakespeare, Popularity, 47–49. As subsequent chapters show, these patterns explain why “personalized satire” came to be represented as “animal-baiting” (Scott-Warren, “Bear-Gardens,” 80n50). Notably, Vincentio’s complaint refers to Lucio’s slander that the “old fantastical duke of dark corners” is an expert “woodman” (Measure for Measure, 4.3.156–62).

  37. On Shakespeare’s tendency to invite audiences to scrutinize political phenomena, see also Kastan, Shakespeare after Theory, 109–27.

  38. Gosson, Plays Confuted, C8v-Dr.

  39. Briefe Discoverie, 110.

  40. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 186; Lake and Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 6.

  41. Wittek makes the case for “the formative function of Shakespeare’s theater in the news culture” (Media Players, 1); on political competence, see Kisery, Hamlet’s Moment.

  42. Wittek, Media Players, 3. The Jacobean “discourse of favoritism”—a major strain of which looked back on Leicester—prepared the ground for the transformations described by Habermas by giving “symbolic expression to deep and recurring political tensions inherent in the ongoing centralization of the state” (Perry, Literature and Favoritism, 4, 33).

  43. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 27. Others have found Habermas’s emphasis on the “critical reasoning of private persons on political issues” (29) overly restrictive; e.g., Wilson and Yachnin take a “post-Habermasian” approach to the topic, which “focuses on a plurality of publics rather than on a single public sphere” and “is interested in accidental and unintended outcomes as much as intended ones” (introduction, 7). See also Yachnin, “Performing Publicity”; and Doty, who argues that what matters is not “the quality and depth of the arguments” but the fact that “private people . . . are talking about the political sphere on a significant scale at all” (Shakespeare, Popularity, 137).

  44. Castiglione, Courtier, 146, 204, 106.

  45. Wotton to Sir Edmund Bacon, July 2, 1613, Letters and Life of Sir Henry Wotton, 2:32–33.

  46. Blundeville, Profitable Treatise, N2r, Q3r.

  47. Shannon, Sovereign Amity, 151–53.

  48. Blundeville, Profitable Treatise, Or, Q3r. For the commonplace that women are natural tyrants, see, e.g., Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet.

  49. Sidney, “Defense of Leicester,” 252.

  50. Perry, Literature and Favoritism, 9. Perry identifies Shakespeare’s Henry V with this “dream” but thinks Falstaff “an attempt, perhaps, to exorcise the specter of Richard II’s wanton favorites” (7). For Falstaff as reflection of Elizabeth’s minions instead, see chapter 3.

  51. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 40, 62.

  52. See, e.g., Baldwin, Organization and Personnel, 290–92; Duncan-Jones, Shakespeare, 31–61; and Streitberger, “Personnel and Professionalization,” 346.

  53. Greenblatt, Will in the World, 48–51.

  54. Duncan-Jones, Shakespeare, 14.

  55. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 67.

  56. A supporter of the Duke of Norfolk, quoted in Levin, Heart and Stomach, 78; Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 68, 50–51. Shannon claims favors bestowed on men like Leicester and Hatton bypassed “the evolving system of Tudor ‘meritocracy’” (Sovereign Amity, 146). Arguably, however, promotions of favorites represent a refinement of this system, in which alternate ideas of merit might be glimpsed; see chapter 4.

  57. Platter, Travels, 194.

  58. E.g., MacCaffrey, who claims “Leicester and Hatton were advanced to high office . . . because of their private attraction for the Queen” (Elizabeth I, 457). Later in the same passage, he anachronistically characterizes Burghley and Walsingham as “professionals” and Leicester and Hatton as “amateurs.” Guy emphasizes Leicester’s “flashy good looks,” which Elizabeth found “irresistible” (Elizabeth, 44). Peck also describes Leicester as “the Queen’s creation, above his intrinsic merits” (introduction to Leicester’s Commonwealth, 49). These stereotypes are misogynistic, in that they cast a “powerful woman” as easily “dazzled by a man’s dancing” (Levin, Heart and Stomach, 79). See also Collinson, who argues the stereotype “ignores Hatton’s long political apprenticeship and underestimates his considerable ability; while Leicester, thanks to his many enemies, has been unfairly dismissed and vilified” (“Elizabeth I”).

  59. Montrose, “Shaping Fantasies,” 35.

  60. MacFaul, “Kingdom with my Friend,” 52.

  61. Thomas, “Age and Authority,” 205. See also Taunton, Fictions of Old Age, 127–32.

  62. See, e.g., Thomas, “Age and Authority”; and Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, 70.

  63. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 11r-v. According to Thane, this treatise was “widely read in Europe,” shaping “feelings about old age from the ancient world onwards” (Old Age, 40). See also Taunton, Fictions of Old Age, 1–9; Martin, Constituting Old Age, 10–11, 19–25; and Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 23.

  64. A prosperous old age was the reward for a virtuous life, and “that old age which had no noble deedes to defende it selfe withal . . . was wretched and miserable” (Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 46r). “Flourishing old age” was considered “a continuation . . . of patriarchal manhood”; however, only the righteous might expect to reap its rewards (Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 41–42).

  65. Thomas, “Age and Authority,” 238–39; Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 44–45, 231–45. Extreme old age often produced less enviable social conditions; see, e.g., Taunton, Fictions of Old Age, 38–39, 48–72; Martin, Constituting Old Age, 137–75; Ellis, Old Age, Masculinity, 15–39; and Collington, “Sans Wife,” 185–207.

  66. Shahar, Growing Old, 5–6.

  67. Taunton, Fictions of Old Age, 5; Martin, Constituting Old Age, 18. See also Ellis, Old Age, Masculinity, 15–16; and Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, 45.

  68. The premodern bias against senescent sexuality is gerontophobic only if we privilege the (modern) view that human beings “largely ground” their “identities” upon “sexuality” (Martin, Constituting Old Age, 107).

  69. Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 3. According to Shephard, “Apart from gender, age was the most directly acknowledged difference to inform constructions of normative manhood” (9).

  70. Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 21, 1.

  71. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 21v-22r.

  72. Young men were compared to animals because of their alleged failure to control passions (Thomas, “Age and Authority,” 218).

  73. Shahar, Growing Old, 38.

  74. Joubert, Popular Errors, 117.

  75. Castiglione, Courtier, 338–40.

  76. In advanced senescence, “the physiological changes occurring in the body . . . cause the old man to become childlike” (Shahar, Growing Old, 39). Very old men were likened to women and children—all three groups lacked the heat associated with courage, for example; see Vaughan, Approved Directions, 107, 214; Shahar, Growing Old, 71; and Ellis, Old Age, Masculinity, 17. This amounts to a privileging of men we would consider middle-aged. The “gender
convergence” brought about by extreme age “may have been positive for women but was negative for men” (Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 221).

  77. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 23v-r.

  78. See King Lear, where the forty-eight-year-old Kent describes himself as “not so young . . . to love a woman for singing, nor so old to dote on her for anything” (1.4.37–38); Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 24v; Boorde, Breviarie, 31; and Stubs, Anatomie of Abuses, which attributes the beheading of John the Baptist to Herod’s “foolish dotage” (76).

  79. Stubs, Anatomie of Abuses, 64.

  80. Vaughan, Approved Directions, 70; Boorde, Breviarie, 31. For the regimen that old men were advised to follow, see Shahar, Growing Old, 38–40, who also notes that only men were urged to refrain from sexual intercourse (78); and Ellis, Old Age, Masculinity, 1–3.

  81. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 3r, 43r.

  82. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 51v.

  83. See also Collington, “Sans Wife,” 192.

  84. Thomas, “Age and Authority,” 243.

  85. Bartholomaeus, Batman upon Bartholome, 70; Shahar, Growing Old, 64.

  86. Collington discusses cuckoldry as the plight of older men (“Sans Wife,” 188).

  87. Joubert, Popular Errors, 117. Citing Joubert, Martin argues that the individual “constitution” enabled resistance to social protocols regarding aging (Constituting Old Age, 8).

  88. Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity, 20.

  89. Shahar describes the charivari as a punishment for transgressive sexuality (Growing Old, 80–81). For Sonnet 138 as an instance of “the May-December topos that informs the cuckoldry plots” of Shakespeare’s plays, see Fineman, Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye, 165.

  90. Othello is the exception. It does follow the May-December plot—one reason that I use this play only to illustrate general points about age and sexuality.

  91. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 46v, 33v; conduct manuals reveal “misgivings that, far from being self-contained exemplars, many men constantly worked against the patriarchal goals of order and control” (Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 10).

  92. Hatton to the Earl of Leicester, July 21, 1584, in Harris, Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, 382.

  93. Dyer to Christopher Hatton, October 9, 1572, in Harris, Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, 17. Dyer’s letter gives the lie to Guy, who claims “none of Elizabeth’s contemporaries . . . believed that a woman’s high rank could trump her gender” (Elizabeth, 11).

  94. Taylor, “Social Imaginaries,” 106.

  95. Peck, introduction to Leicester’s Commonwealth, 48. On the peculiar “intensity of personal vilification” directed at Leicester, see also Adams, Leicester and the Court, 50.

  96. Lord Burleigh to Christopher Hatton, July 13, 1581, in Harris, Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, 177; Frye, Elizabeth I, 9.

  97. Montrose, “Shaping Fantasies,” 32.

  98. Eggert, Showing Like a Queen, 2.

  99. Smith, Shakespeare and Masculinity, 104.

  100. Bates, Masculinity, Gender, 1.

  101. Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 171.

  102. Grady, “Impure Aesthetics,” 276, 285.

  103. Dutton, Mastering the Revels, 61.

  104. Hunt, Shakespeare’s Speculative Art, 3.

  105. The most detailed account of Lyly’s influence on Shakespeare is Hunter’s John Lyly, 298–349. Although Shakespeare refers only once directly to Lyly (in 1 Henry IV), his influence is “evident throughout Shakespeare’s comedy” (298). Philippa Berry shows how “the lunar image” of Elizabeth I popularized by Endymion shaped A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Chastity and Power, 134, 144–46). Others have argued for Gallathea’s influence on Shakespeare’s romantic comedies; see, e.g., Rackin, “Androgyny, Mimesis,” 29–41; and Scragg, “Shakespeare, Lyly, and Ovid,” 125–34.

  106. Prologue, Endymion, 7. Lyly urges his audience not to indulge in “pastimes”; however, as Patterson (Censorship, 28–29) and Dutton (Licensing, xi) argue, disclaimers like this are invitations to analogic reading. On Lyly’s fusing of real and fictional figures, see also Bruster, Question of Culture, 65–93.

  107. Gurr, Playgoing, 151.

  108. Doty, Shakespeare, Popularity, 23.

  109. Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, in vol. 4 of Works, induction, 64–65, 103.

  110. Dutton, Licensing, xi.

  111. Privy Council Minutes, August 15, 1597, in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 4:323. On the significance of this title, see chapter 3.

  112. Privy Council Minutes, July 28, 1597, in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 4:322.

  113. Dutton, Mastering the Revels, 113. Dutton sees the measures taken by the Privy Council, like the 1598 measure restricting the acting companies to two, as responsive to the commercial interests of these theatrical troupes (Licensing, 24).

  114. In Every Man Out of His Humour, probably censored for including a player who performed the part of Elizabeth (see chapter 3); Endymion and Cynthia’s Revels; The Revenger’s Tragedy; Antony and Cleopatra; and The Merry Wives of Windsor, respectively.

  115. Bevington, Tudor Drama, 1.

  116. See also Dutton, Licensing, xi; and Patterson, who calls attention to the prohibitive function of the intentional fallacy associated with formalist criticism (Censorship, 31–33).

  117. Bevington, 25. As McDonald observes, “it has become axiomatic that satire was foreign to Shakespeare’s natural temper” (Shakespeare and Jonson, 77).

  118. Bevington resists the idea that Titania refers to Elizabeth because it implies “outrageous treatment” of the queen (Tudor Drama, 10). This prejudice persists. Grady proposes that one function of the “western vestal” speech is to “immunize the play from an undesired infernal interpretation of Titania—the Fairy Queen of this play—who might easily be seen, thanks to Spenser, as an allusion to Elizabeth” (“Impure Aesthetics,” 285). I doubt a play can “immunize” itself against well-established associations in this manner. The bias against political readings seems peculiar to Shakespeareans.

  119. Steggle, Wars of the Theatres, 18.

  120. Jonson, Every Man Out, in vol. 1 of Works, 3.1.410–1; “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare,” in Riverside Shakespeare, 97.

  121. Essex to Elizabeth I, May 12, 1600, quoted in Chambers, 1:324–25.

  122. Privy Council minutes, May 10, 1601, Chambers, 4:332. According to Chambers, Richard Tarleton was reprimanded for targeting Leicester and Ralegh in a play (1:324).

  123. Jonson, Every Man Out, 2.3.348–49.

  124. Dutton, Licensing, xvii.

  125. “glance, v.1,” OED online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/78698 (accessed November 3, 2017).

  126. On The Murder of Gonzago, see also Dutton, Licensing, 7; and Yachnin, “Performing Publicity,” 205–8.

  127. Patterson, 11, 18. As long as playwrights veiled matters, the censors applied what Dutton calls the “court standard in their licenses” (Licensing, 6). See also Bednarz, who argues that Shakespeare represents the layering “of an oblique topical subtext” as “a powerful mode of covert communication” (Shakespeare and the Poets’ War, 193).

  128. Patterson emphasizes the reader’s role in determining meaning in this process, since “authors who build ambiguity into their works have no control over what happens to them later” (Censorship, 18). As Dutton notes, in reference to A Game at Chess, “The audience was apparently expected to be able to make sense of composite or multi-faceted allusions which may have no literal or one-to-one relation to person or events, but imaginatively merge disparate materials” (Mastering the Revels, 241).

  129. Carlson, Haunted Stage, 39.

  130. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 11.

  131. In an age given to political applications, Leicester’s preeminence made him a favorite point of reference for decades after his death. One of the few documents offering hard evidence of early modern reading habits, the Earl of Pembroke’s edition of George Chapman’s The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charl
es Duke of Byron (1607–8), contains a marginal note identifying the titular character, a royal favorite, with Pembroke’s great-uncle, Leicester; see Tricomi, “Philip, Earl of Pembroke,” 342. Perry argues that “successive favorites” were “pigeonholed . . . into the same ethically charged stereotypes” devised for Leicester (Literature and Favoritism, 2), although the aging sexuality motif seems not to have transferred over to Jacobean favorites.

  132. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 51.

  133. Middleton, Revenger’s Tragedy, 1.1.34–35.

  1. Endymion at the Aging Court

  1. Bevington reviews the evidence for dating, concluding that the play was performed at court on February 2, 1588 (introduction to Endymion, 8–9).