Age in Love

by Jacqueline Vanhoutte

  93. Petrarch, Secret, 131; Shahar, Growing Old, 64.

  94. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, 242.

  95. Kamps thinks Malvolio fails to perform his class identity, and goes so far as to classify Malvolio as a “commoner and Toby’s subordinate” (“Madness and Social Mobility,” 235). As the careers of Elizabeth’s favorites show, in a complex and multitiered hierarchical society not every upstart is a commoner, however.

  96. Schiffer, “Taking the Long View,” 30, 19.

  97. Ralegh, History, 127.

  98. Brantley, “Boys Will Be Boys (and Sometimes Girls),” New York Times, November 10, 2013. Brantley specifies that the images conjured are of a “young Elizabeth” but the fifty-something Rylance looks middle-aged even by our standards. I can only think that the usual blindness to male aging in our culture accounts for Brantley’s comment.

  99. Ralegh, “Of Favorites,” Poems, 49.9, 19–20, 122.

  100. Howard, “Crossdressing,” 432. She identifies the treatment of Orsino as “much less satirical” than the treatment of Olivia.

  101. Tennenhouse, “Power on Display,” 84.

  102. The ambiguity regarding Orsino’s rank is usually treated as a textual problem (Schiffer, “Taking the Long View,” 4). My argument implies it might instead be a “functional ambiguity” (Patterson, Censorship, 18). On Orsino’s “equivocal title,” see also Suzuki, “Gender,” 154.

  103. As Dickey notes, “The real bear of the play, etymologically speaking, is Olivia’s other main suitor, the Duke of Illyria, named Orsino from the Latin ursus, and more immediately from the Italian orsino” (“Shakespeare’s Mastiff Comedy,” 273). On Orsino as “little bear,” see also Schleiner, “Orsino and Viola.” Arlidge, Prince of Love, endorses Hotson’s theory that the allusion is to the visiting Duke of Bracciano (First Night, 15). Arlidge and Hotson cite Webster’s The White Devil (1612), which deals with the scandalous lives of members of the Orsini family, in support of this theory. But Webster’s play also compares its Duke of Bracciano to Leicester, suggesting a complex network of connections at work (5.3.153–54). Like Malvolio, Orsino has been identified with a number of historical figures (Gras, “Twelfth Night,” 555).

  104. Leicester to Elizabeth I, January 16, 1570, Calendar of State Papers, 198.

  105. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 73. See also News, 155.

  106. Gascoigne et al., Princely Pleasures, C6r; Leicester’s Commonwealth, 193.

  107. Bevington, “Shakespeare vs. Jonson,” 120.

  108. Harington is fond of the trope as well; see his section on hunting, where he segues from a discussion of dogs to a description of “this captious time” when so many are “readie to backbite every mans worke” (Ajax, 110).

  109. Dekker, Satiromastix, 4.1.133–34. The quip implies that the eponymous isle might have been Gran Canaria, renowned for its mastiffs. It may also have been the island where Elizabeth I kenneled her dogs; as Marcus points out, the play may have explored “likenesses between the Queen’s canines and her courtiers” (“Jonson and the Court,” 31).

  110. Jonson to Cecil, 1605, Works, 2:646.

  111. Aubrey, “Sir Walter Raleigh,” 255. Steggle argues for the legitimacy of Aubrey’s anecdote, concluding that, despite Jonson’s protestations to the contrary, personification played an important role in Every Man Out (“Charles Chester,” 319). Chester was widely associated with the Canaries, lending further credence to the identification not just because Buffone is fond of canary wine (Steggle, 314–16, 322), as Falstaff is, but also because these islands were renowned for the breeding of “bandogs.”

  112. Gras argues that the “derisive treatment” Jonson reserves for Puntarvolo shows his contempt for “stock romantic plots” (“Twelfth Night,” 547). Puntarvolo has been identified with Ralegh, Harington, and Anthony Munday; see Steggle, War of the Theatres, 12.

  113. Jonson, “Appendix A” to Every Man Out, Works, 1:422. Bednarz offers a contrasting reading, in which Every Man Out furnishes a “counter-ideal for what it condemns” (Poets’ War, 64).

  114. The generic designation “Comicall Satyre,” Jonson’s own, appears on the title page of Every Man Out (1600); Works, 1:249.

  115. Jonson, “Appendix A,” Works, 1:421.

  116. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 186–87.

  117. Blundeville, Profitable Treatise, Or.

  118. Marcus, “Jonson and the Court,” 32.

  119. Baiting all the characters, “the play . . . reproduces the arbitrary and inconclusive nature of a baiting contest” (Dickey, “Shakespeare’s Mastiff Comedy,” 272).

  120. Greenblatt, Will in the World, 83–84.

  121. Sidney, Defence of Poesy, 245.

  122. McDonald speculates that “the rise of dramatic satire probably aided Shakespeare in making the transition from comedy to tragedy” (Shakespeare and Jonson, 72), a transition heralded by the bifurcated portrayal of Orsino and Malvolio.

  123. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 45.

  124. On Malvolio’s threat as a rebuttal of Jonson’s theories, see Bednarz, Poets’ War, 192.

  125. Berry, “Twelfth Night,” 119.

  126. See also Bednarz, who argues that Shakespeare “followed Jonson’s example” in order to “contradict him” (Poets’ War, 179).

  127. Berry, “Twelfth Night,” 114.

  128. Sidney, Defence of Poesy, 230, 233.

  129. Berry, “Twelfth Night,” 4. Not all readers are so moved by Malvolio; Barber derides Lamb’s response as a “romantic and bourgeois distortion” (Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, 255–56). On the conflicted critical responses to Malvolio, see Schiffer, “Taking the Long View,” 10.

  130. As Gras notes, “The Orsino plot line is implicitly connected with poetry and the theater by imagery concerning theatrical role-playing” (“Twelfth Night,” 559).

  131. Boym, Future of Nostalgia, 13.

  132. Karreman, “Passion for the Past,” 153.

  133. Boym, Future of Nostalgia, 4.

  134. Goldring, “Portraiture, Patronage,” 183.

  135. Stanivuković, “Masculine Plots,” 126.

  136. Boym, Future of Nostalgia, 52.

  137. Boym, Future of Nostalgia, xvi.

  138. Callaghan, Paster, and Howard argue that Olivia is punished; however, she is also rewarded, Levin observes, with the nontraditional marriage that she has sought all along (Heart and Stomach, 137). Sir Toby does not say that Olivia wishes never to marry—just that she does not wish to marry someone who can claim superior status.

  139. On amity between Orsino and Viola, see Osborne, “Marriage of True Minds,” 100.

  140. Greenblatt, Will in the World, 83.

  141. Castiglione, Courtier, 340.

  142. Martin, Constituting Old Age, 113–25.

  4. Antony

  1. All references to Shakespeare are from the Riverside Shakespeare. All references to Middleton are from the Works.

  2. Carlson, Haunted Stage, 8.The strongest evidence for typecasting practices in early modern theater involves comic roles (Bentley, Profession, 206–33).

  3. Mullaney, “Mourning and Misogyny,” 152.

  4. See also Neill, who argues that Vindice’s anger is focused on the “illegitimate son and the transgressive mother” (“Bastardy, Counterfeiting,” 398).

  5. Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 24.

  6. Cuff, Differences of the Ages, 115.

  7. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 48r.

  8. Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 24.

  9. Among those who do make connections are Mullaney, who finds it “tempting” to identify Hamlet’s mother and Elizabeth (“Mourning and Misogyny,” 148); and Erickson, who argues that “Queen Gertrude functions as a degraded figure of Queen Elizabeth,” with Hamlet reflecting Essex (Rewriting Shakespeare, 86). For Essex, see also Patterson, Popular Voice, 11, 27, 93–94. Leicester is rarely mentioned in this context, even though he was Essex’s stepfather, and thus provides a point of comparison for Claudius. Recent critics have generally em
phasized that Hamlet is acutely “aware of its late Elizabethan status” (Mullaney, 149).

  10. Mullaney, “Mourning and Misogyny,” 158. See also Neill, “Bastardy, Counterfeiting,” 413.

  11. Neill, “Bastardy, Counterfeiting,” 410; Leicester’s Commonwealth, 87.

  12. Allen, Admonition, xix. On the tendency of anticourt polemicists to ascribe Circean powers to Elizabeth, see previous chapters.

  13. Mullaney, “Mourning and Misogyny,” 162.

  14. While Orsino seems the most likely part for Burbage to have played in Twelfth Night (Baldwin, Organization and Personnel, 240), Astington suggests he may have played Malvolio instead (Actors and Acting, 37). Both are age-in-love parts (see previous chapter). Lowin was young to play Claudius and Falstaff; however, he had the right physique. See Butler, “Lowin, John.”

  15. Baldwin, Organization and Personnel, 238.

  16. Palfrey and Stern, Shakespeare in Parts, 45.

  17. Jankowski, “Egypt’s Queen,” 98.

  18. Yachnin, “Courtiers,” 4.

  19. Eggert, Showing Like a Queen, 140, 145.

  20. In contrast, ahistorical readings often put Antony at the center of the play; on this critical tendency, see Fitz, “Egyptian Queens.”

  21. Yachnin, “Courtiers,” 7.

  22. Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, in vol. 1 of Works, 3.4.40.

  23. Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, in vol. 1 of Works, 3.5.96.

  24. Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare, 56. On the implication of this male rhetoric, see also Levin, Heart and Stomach, 121. Morris first noted that Cleopatra, in her desire to figure as “president” of her kingdom, recalls Elizabeth I at Tilbury (“Queen Elizabeth I ‘Shadowed,’” 276). Based in part on this evidence, Jankowski argues that Cleopatra emulates Elizabeth in manipulating the fiction of the king’s two bodies, although “unlike Elizabeth, she does this by making her political adversaries . . . her lovers” (“Egypt’s Queen,” 96). Guy is one exception to the consensus that a woman could outrank men by such means (Elizabeth, 11).

  25. Elizabeth I, “Armada Speech,” August 9, 1588, in Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 325–26.

  26. Middleton, Mad World My Masters, 4.2.19, 31; “Letter Exchange Between Sir Robert Cecil and Robert Devereux,” in Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 335.

  27. Loomis, Death of Elizabeth, 79–81.

  28. Tennenhouse, Power on Display, 146; Eggert, Showing Like a Queen, 162.

  29. Eggert, Showing Like a Queen, 160. Shapiro, too, sees Antony and Cleopatra as a “tragedy of nostalgia” (Year of Lear, 266).

  30. Rosenberg, Leicester, 160.

  31. North, “To . . . Princess Elizabeth,” in Plutarch, Lives (1579), 2r.

  32. North, prefatory materials, in Plutarch, Lives, 3–6r. Besides the letter to Elizabeth, these include Norton’s “To the Reader” and his translation of “Amiot to the Readers.”

  33. Boym, Future of Nostalgia, xvi.

  34. Shapiro, Year of Lear, 229.

  35. Plutarch, “Marcus Antonius,” in Shakespeare’s Plutarch, 183, 195. Unless noted otherwise, all references are to this edition.

  36. Logan, “High Events,” 156.

  37. Gosson, Plays Confuted, E8r.

  38. Palfrey and Stern, Shakespeare in Parts, 170. For Ciceronian rhetoric’s use of passions as “critical tools to civil persuasion,” see Rowe, “Minds in Company,” 55.

  39. According to Platter, Elizabeth spoke Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, in addition to English (Travels, 165).

  40. For the citational function of such references, see Belsey, “Myth of Venus.”

  41. Tassi, “O’erpicturing Apelles,” 299.

  42. Kyffin, Blessedness of Brytaine, A3v, B2r. That the Armada made English people think of Actium is further corroborated by Stow, who wrote that the Spanish ships exceed in “number” those “at command of Egyptian Cleopatra” (Annales, 46).

  43. Platter, Travels, 226.

  44. Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 50.

  45. Adelman, Common Liar, 81.

  46. “Elizabeth I Dress,” http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-36301188 (accessed April 4, 2018).

  47. Adelman, Common Liar, 65.

  48. Leicester was made Master of the Horse in 1558. He retained the position until 1587, when he was instrumental in securing it for his stepson; see Hammer, “Absolute and Sovereign Mistress,” 45.

  49. Leicester was a prominent patron of players, a feature of his character linked to his rise to power and to his influence over Elizabeth; see previous chapters, as well as, e.g., News, 156, 144; and Leicester’s Commonwealth, 128. The description of Ralegh is Naunton’s (Fragmenta Regalia, 72).

  50. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 56.

  51. Hammer, “Devereux, Robert.” Leicester fashioned a military identity long before his assignments in the Netherlands and at Tilbury; in a portrait that Federico Zuccaro painted for the Kenilworth entertainments (1575), he appears “the heroic Captain who vanquishes Spain and liberates the Protestant Netherlands” (Goldring, “Portraiture, Patronage,” 180).

  52. “Letter of Estate,” 29. Like so much of the chatter about the earl, this bit reflects an image he sought to project. Many of the pictures in his possession had classical themes; at Leicester House, he kept eleven marble busts, one of himself, one of Elizabeth, and nine of Roman emperors; see Goldring, Robert Dudley, 218.

  53. Yachnin, “Courtiers,” 8–9.

  54. Luce, introduction to Antonie, 40.

  55. Mary Sidney, Antonie, ll.10–11, 129, 15, 80–82.

  56. Starks, “Immortal Longings,” 244.

  57. Greville, Sir Philip Sidney, 155–56. On Greville’s biography, see Gouws, “Greville, Fulke.”

  58. Greville, Sir Philip Sidney, 176. See, e.g., Hunter, who argues that the Essex rebellion “turned” Greville’s “general observations into what seemed like particular references” (John Lyly, 149); Bullough, Sources, 216; and Yachnin, “Courtiers,” 9.

  59. Greville, Sir Philip Sidney, 194.

  60. Greville, Sir Philip Sidney, 33.

  61. Naunton, 74; see also Nowell Smith, introduction, x.

  62. Francis Bacon, quoted in Nowell Smith, introduction, ix.

  63. Greville, Sir Philip Sidney, 215.

  64. “Elizabeth to Ralegh,” Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 308; “pug, n.2,” OED online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/154210 (accessed November 3, 2017). For the queen’s pet names, see also previous chapters, especially chapter 1.

  65. Kendall, Robert Dudley, 87; see also Susan Frye, Elizabeth I, 67.

  66. Quoted in Guy, Elizabeth, 328.

  67. Harington, Nugae Antique, 1:358. Lyly likens Endymion to a fish; see chapter 1.

  68. Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, 83.1–9; in Major Works, 59.

  69. Bates, Masculinity, Gender, 14.

  70. Platter, Travels, 193.

  71. Platter, Travels, 228, 182.

  72. Gascoigne et al., Princely Pleasures, C7r.

  73. Adelman, Common Liar, 83. See also Bono, Literary Transvaluation, 167–86.

  74. Guy, Elizabeth, 132.

  75. Elizabeth I, “Armada Speech,” 326.

  76. Nyquist, “Profuse, Proud Cleopatra,” 98.

  77. Adams, Leicester and the Court, 138.

  78. Francis Bacon to the Earl of Essex, October 4, 1996, in Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, 2:42.

  79. Guy, 106.

  80. Mary Sidney, 72, ll.451. Cleopatra echoes this passage when she asks Enobarbus, “Is Antony or we in fault for this?” (3.13.3).

  81. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 187.

  82. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 457.

  83. Morris, “Queen Elizabeth I ‘Shadowed’”; Muir, “Elizabeth I”; and Rinehart, “Shakespeare’s Cleopatra.”

  84. Eggert, Showing Like a Queen, 134–36.

  85. De Maisse, Journal, 59. Other dignitaries were treated to the same ceremony; see Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe, 11–12. Elizabeth appears to have used such tactics since the beginning of
her reign; her 1559 speech in response to a parliamentary request that she marry has her “stretching out” and showing her audience her hand, with the ring signifying her marriage to England. She reprised this gesture in her conversations with the Scottish Ambassador, William Maitland, in 1561 (Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 59, 65).