Age in Love

by Jacqueline Vanhoutte

  86. Platter, Travels, 221. The queen relied on the analogy in her speeches; e.g., “If I were a milkmaid with a pail on mine arm, whereby my private person might be little set by, I would not forsake that single state to match myself with the greatest monarch” (“Speech at the Close of the Parliamentary Session,” March 15, 1576, in Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 170). For more examples, see Mueller, “Virtue and Virtuality,” 229–31, 243n31. On Cleopatra’s use of the analogy, see also Muir, “Elizabeth I,” 199–200.

  87. Muir, “Elizabeth I,” 199; see also Dash, Wooing, Wedding, 277. Frye even claims Cleopatra is “a counter-historical figure” (Fools of Time, 71). For a useful overview of the deeply divided critical tradition on Antony and Cleopatra, see Deats, “Shakespeare’s Anamorphic Drama.” On the tendency of readings to reflect either the Roman or Egyptian perspectives embedded in the play, see Hirsh, “Rome and Egypt.”

  88. Fitz, “Egyptian Queens,” 297. As Fitz points out, Cleopatra’s first line aligns her with Lear, another ruler for whom love is a form of politics (303).

  89. Nyquist, “Profuse, Proud Cleopatra,” 97–98; Logan, “High Events,” 162.

  90. On Cleopatra as a political figure, see also Dash, Wooing, Wedding, 209–47.

  91. Jankowski, “Egypt’s Queen,” 105.

  92. Dash, Wooing, Wedding, 209.

  93. Blundeville, Profitable Treatise, Q3r.

  94. Bullough, Sources, 216.

  95. “Dead Mans Right,” A4r.

  96. The ability to bracket off one’s subject position is granted primarily to (white) males and an “exacerbation of sexism” is “characteristic of the liberal public sphere” (Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 114). Eley argues that the “category of the ‘public man’ and his ‘virtue’ was constructed via a series of oppositions to ‘femininity,’” so that the “natural identification of sexuality and desire with the feminine allowed the social and political construction of masculinity,” and “women were to be silenced, to allow masculine speech, in the language of reason, full rein” (“Nations, Publics,” 309). See also Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 65–124.

  97. Lake, “Politics of ‘Popularity,’” 68.

  98. Roach, Cities of the Dead, 80.

  99. Yachnin, “Performing Publicity,” 209.

  100. Adelman, Common Liar, 138.

  101. Plutarch, “Marcus Antonius,” 294–95, 183; Du Laurens, Preservation of Sight, 177.

  102. Like Falstaff, Antony wants to “mock the midnight bell” (3.13.184).

  103. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 23v.

  104. On the play’s generic hybridity, see Neely, Broken Nuptials, 136–65.

  105. Adelman, Common Liar, 135. On Antony as a Herculean figure, see also Waith, Herculean Hero, 113–21; and Bono, Literary Transvaluation, 153–67.

  106. On the Isis and Osiris myth, see Bono, Literary Transvaluation, 150–51, 191–213; Adelman, Common Liar, 81, and Suffocating Mothers, 183–84; and Starks, “Immortal Longings,” 246–47.

  107. Shapiro, Year of Lear, 266.

  108. Lyly, Endymion, 2.1.16.

  109. Sullivan, “Sleep, Epic,” 266. For Cleopatra and Circe, see also Britland, “Circe’s Cup,” 116–19.

  110. “Letter of Estate,” 35. For other examples of this language, see chapter 2.

  111. Allen, Admonition, xviii.

  112. “dotage, n.,” OED online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/56966 (accessed November 3, 2017).

  113. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 24v.

  114. Gosson, Plays Confuted, C8v-Dr.

  115. My reading of this scene, and indeed of the play, is indebted to Rackin, “Shakespeare’s Boy Cleopatra.”

  116. Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, in vol. 1 of Works, 2.3.66–67.

  117. On the ways in which an audience’s reception depends on the manipulation of expectations derived from previous performances, see Carlson, Haunted Stage, 5.

  118. Adelman, Common Liar, 24.

  119. Shapiro, Year of Lear, 236. On the other characters’ tendency to discuss Antony, see also Logan, “High Events,” 161.

  120. “Dead Mans Right,” A4r.

  121. Charnes, Notorious Identity, 122.

  122. No other Shakespearean play has this many messengers (Charnes, Notorious Identity, 106).

  123. Adelman, Common Liar, 24–31.

  124. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 23r.

  125. Barton, “Nature’s Piece,” 6.

  126. Hirsh notes that “Shakespeare makes it difficult for a playgoer to root against Antony and Cleopatra even if outside the theater the same individual would be inclined to condemn behavior resembling that of the lovers” (“Rome and Egypt,” 187).

  127. Waith, Herculean Hero, 115.

  128. Barkan, Gods Made Flesh, 38–39.

  129. Gosson, Plays Confuted, Cr; Starks, “Immortal Longings,” 249. Osiris and Bacchus are often identified with one another; see Bono, Literary Transvaluation, 200.

  130. “Letter of Estate,” 31. News claimed Leicester was “so greate a student of Baccus” that there would be “quaffing in heaven” (148).

  131. Quinn, “Celebrity,” 156, 159.

  132. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 72.

  133. “abstract, adj. and n.,” B3b, OED online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/758 (accessed November 3, 2017).

  134. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15.929, 950.

  135. Logan, “High Events,” 159. On Antony as an “exemplary antihero,” see Starks, “Immortal Longings,” 244.

  136. See also Starks, who writes that although Antony’s “role is based on a rejection of traditional masculinity and heroism, it is, nevertheless, a male rather than a female role” (“Immortal Longings,” 244); and Neely, who finds that “heroic activity” in Antony is never “feminized” (Broken Nuptials, 146).

  137. Knox, First Blast of the Trumpet, 11.

  138. Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 177. See also Sullivan, “Sleep, Epic,” 270.

  139. According to Bono, Antony here “decisively reverses Roman values” (Literary Transvaluation, 187).

  140. Bradley writes, “the passion that ruins Antony also exalts him, he touches the infinite in it” (Shakespearean Tragedy, 87). Many have agreed; see, e.g., Waith, Herculean Hero; or Brower, Hero and Saint, 316–43.

  141. Barton, “Nature’s Piece,” 6.

  142. As Neely notes, it also recalls the earlier reference to Antony as Cleopatra’s fish (Broken Nuptials, 157).

  143. See, e.g., Barton, “Nature’s Piece,” 7; and Rackin, “Shakespeare’s Boy Cleopatra,” 208. For more on critical attitudes towards Antony’s suicide, see my “Antony’s ‘Secret House of Death.’”

  144. News, 155–58; see also chapter 2.

  145. Rackin, “Shakespeare’s Boy Cleopatra,” 209–10.

  146. Loomis, Death of Elizabeth, 1, 47–82. On James and Octavius, see also Yachnin, “Courtiers.”

  147. Petowe, Elizabetha quasi vivens, B3r.

  148. Herbert, Englands Sorrowe, C3r.

  149. Petowe, Elizabetha quasi vivens, B3r.

  150. Chettle, Englandes Mourning Garment, D2v. See also Loomis, Death of Elizabeth, 67.

  151. On the relationship between onstage and offstage weeping, see Steggle, Laughing and Weeping. Laughter and tears were considered “contagious” in the period (5).

  152. Rowlands, Ave Caesar, A5r.

  153. Chettle, Englandes Mourning Garment, C3v.

  154. Manningham, Diary, March 27, 1603, 216.

  155. “Henry, Earl of Northumberland, to King James,” in Correspondence of King James VI, 55.

  156. Manningham, Diary, April 1, 1603, 221.

  157. Sidney, Astrophil to Stella, 49.14, in Major Works, 172.

  158. Herbert, Englands Sorrowe, C4v.

  159. Chettle, Englandes Mourning Garment, D2v-r. See also Eggert, Showing Like a Queen, 131.

  160. Adelman, Common Liar, 25. See also Brower, 328–29.

  161. Loomis, Death of Elizabeth, 6.

  162. Loomis, Death of El
izabeth, 44. Antony delivers these lines about the deceased Fulvia, concluding “The hand could pluck her back that shov’d her on” (1.2.127). At the risk of sounding like Ben Jonson’s picklocks, I would say that this glances at the rumors concerning the death of Leicester’s first wife, Amy Robsart.

  163. Leicester’s Ghost, 81.

  164. “Dead Mans Right,” A4v.

  165. Herbert, Englands Sorrowe, Dr.

  166. Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 177, 186.

  167. Boym, Future of Nostalgia, xvi.

  168. Norton, prefatory materials to Plutarch’s Lives, 3v.

  169. Carlson, Haunted Stage, 3.

  170. Bacon, quoted in Rowe, “Minds in Company,” 47.

  171. Blundeville, Profitable Treatise, Or.

  172. Anton, Philosophers Satyrs, 46–47.

  173. Adelman, Common Liar, 53.

  174. Although I argue from different grounds and towards different ends, I agree that Antony and Cleopatra “reaches toward a new kind of masculinity” (Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 190).

  175. Mullaney, Reformation, 19.

  176. Bono, Literary Transvaluation, 209. On Antony as the “primary” object of desire in the play, see also Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 177.

  177. Barton finds that Cleopatra “here bestows upon Antony an heroic identity so colossal, but also in a sense so true” (“Nature’s Piece,” 20).

  Epilogue

  1. Atwood, “Gertrude Talks Back,” 16–19, 17.

  2. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 75.

  3. “Letter of Estate,” 29.

  4. For Elizabeth’s influence on the strong female characters of Jacobean drama, see Loomis, Death of Elizabeth, 119–61.

  5. Webster, Duchess of Malfi, 1.1.209.

  6. Bacon, “Endymion, or the Favourite,” Wisdom of the Ancients, 717–18.

  7. Cavendish, “CXXIII,” CCXI Sociable Letters, 244–45.

  8. Guy, Elizabeth, 397, 61.

  9. Guy, Elizabeth, 147.

  10. Erickson, Rewriting Shakespeare, 91.

  11. Levin, Heart and Stomach, 79.

  12. Erickson, Rewriting Shakespeare, 91.

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