'Low Comedy' and Political Cynicism:

1. In discussing individual disguised-duke plays, critics have felt obliged to acknowledge the manner in which they form part of a so-called 'theatrical vogue' that greeted the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne. 1 The opening act of John Day's Humour Out of Breath, one of the last examples, seems to contribute nothing new to the genre. The plight of Antonio, a usurped Duke of Mantua, recalls the staging of Italian political crisis in plays from The Malcontent onwards. The standard pretext for disguise is the loss of power, forcing the ruler to use covert surveillance to regain his title. Even the choice of the name Antonio lacks any originality in the drama of the period. In her stimulating recent study of the repertory of the Children of the King's Revels, the company that performed Day's play at the Whitefriars in 1607, Mary Bly suggests that the 'borrowed and lame plots' presented by the child actors were unimportant to a coterie audience primarily interested in lewd sexual banter (Bly 1998, 149). 2 Yet, what emerges in Humour Out of Breath is not a bland imitation of earlier political disguise plays, but a radical inversion of their plot conventions. In a revealing departure from the genre, Day casts his duke as a passive whiner who declines to do anything to take back power. The play focuses on the hapless efforts of Aspero, the son of Antonio, to regain his family's dukedom without resorting to a disguise. For although his 'Machiavellian' boy servant notes that it is 'but little policy', Aspero proudly asserts that

                        'twere base to go disguised;
   No, my revenge shall wear an open brow;
   I will not play the coward, kill him first
   And send my challenge after; I'll make known
   My name and cause of coming [. . .]
   Attendance, sirrah; Your low comedy
   Craves but few actors, we'll break company. (Day 1888, I.ii) 3
   

   Needless to say, this is not an effective strategy. His plan to send the Duke of Venice a letter announcing that he is coming to kill him is remarkably unsuccessful – especially because it is surreptitiously observed by the disguised usurper himself. Here, instead of a means to reform the state and acquire self-knowledge, disguise becomes a symptom of the irredeemably corrupt world of the court. In failing to appreciate the connection between 'policy and knavery', underscored by the successful intriguer's own concealment, Aspero is 'too honest' for the task at hand (II.i). Confident in his superior understanding of the realities of power, the ruler of Venice does not even bother to kill such a naïve figure: 'A secret friend's worse than an open foe' (II.i).

2. The comic effect of Humour Out of Breath presupposes a familiarity with disguised-duke plot conventions and their underlying political messages. It is important to note how Aspero's constant metatheatrical references to acting and 'low comedy' underscore the allusion to customary stage practises, emphasizing the contrast with previous plays. By the time that Francis Beaumont wrote The Woman Hater, licensed in the same year as Day's play, there was nothing original about the representation of an Italian ruler on the Jacobean stage. Indeed, Beaumont's prologue openly concedes that his play is rehearsing established theatrical conventions: 'a Duke there is, and the Scene lyes in Italy, as those thinges lightly we never miss' (Beaumont 1966-89, ll. 17-19). 4 What is at stake here is the extent to which the opening exploits audience recognition of generic intertextuality, encouraging expectations the play does not intend to fulfil. The first scene, where the Duke of Milan asks his courtiers to discern the motives underlying his latest covert project, turns on a self-reflexive discussion of the dramatic stereotypes of Italian dukes. The courtiers, evidently familiar with the concerns of earlier disguised-ruler plays, assume at once that he must be preparing 'to cure / Some strange corruptions in the commonwealth' (I.i.11-12). By voicing assumptions that the ensuing action will deal with a 'waightie court plot', the Duke's followers act as a surrogate for the private theatre audience (I.i.9). The Duke, however, abruptly dismisses any political motives: 'You are my friends, and you shall have the cause; / I breake my sleeps thus soone to see a wench' (I.i.28-29). Through the Duke's anticlimactic denial of a desire for reform, staging the departure from earlier plays, the opening of The Woman Hater emphasizes the extent to which the genre was associated with unresolved grievances about court corruption. In common with the Duke of Venice in Day's play, the ruler has no time for an idealistic vision of his activities. He claims his sexual agenda is 'Waightier farre' (I.i.27). Beaumont's generic bait and switch suggests that the disguise plot itself is political, an expression of a failed ideological project.

3. The early modern theatre's preoccupation with 'waightie court plot[s]', using predominately Italian settings to rehearse anxieties about political volatility and institutionalised abuses, reflects the hopes and concerns that arose during the final years of the reign of Elizabeth I. The intrigues of the Earl of Essex underlined the insecure position of the ageing monarch, adding to existing worries about the transition of power after her death. The fortunes of Sir Robert Cecil, a byword for political corruption at the time, exposed Elizabeth's inability to control government patronage. 5 As the optimism which welcomed the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne suggests, there was a pent up desire for stable government and the restraint of abuses. 6 It is significant that Fulke Greville and Sir John Coke, the treasurer and deputy treasurer of the Navy at the time, immediately advanced radical proposals for action against corruption after Elizabeth's death (Young 1986, 25). The craving for political reform comes to the fore in Thomas Middleton's earnest treatment of the disguised-duke genre in 1603's The Phoenix, where a young prince demonstrates his right to the throne through his surreptitious study of offenders. The focus of Middleton's play is the effort the prince makes 'to look into the heart and bowels of [the] dukedom, and, in disguise, mark all abuses ready for reformation or punishment' (Middleton 1964, I.i.100-2). The dramatic function of the future ruler becomes, as he learns of the threats posed by treasonous and corrupt officials, the establishment of good government. The problem for Greville and Coke was that, in contrast to the noble ambitions of Middleton's prince, their call for reform was 'a gross miscalculation' of the new political situation and they were soon driven from office (Young 1986, 26-31). As with the courtiers in The Woman Hater, the naval administrators failed to interpret the true intentions of their ruler.

4. The English publication of Basilikon Doron in 1603, permitting James's new subjects to anticipate his behaviour, reflected the same cultural interest in the exercise of royal authority that fostered the popularity of political material in the theatre. 7 During the period of transition, as the project of the new monarch remained a matter of speculation, Italianate disguised-duke plays gained particular prominence. The reputation of Italy for crisis, reinforced by the circulation of Cinquecento political thought, made the peninsula an ideal setting for rehearsing such domestic anxieties. 8 Historical evidence and claims in the frontispieces of published editions underline that, prior to the performance of Measure for Measure before James on Boxing Day, 1604, there had already been court performances of Middleton's The Phoenix and John Marston's The Malcontent. 9 Each of these early examples of the genre treats disguise as an opportunity for social and political renewal. Although Marston may well have composed his drama of Genoese court intrigue for the boys' company at the Blackfriars before the death of Elizabeth, it is telling that the King's Men were eager to appropriate a work with such relevant concerns. Indeed, The Malcontent turned out to be one of the most influential plays of the time, a success on the public and private stages and available in three published quartos in 1604 alone. Despite the care Marston takes to deny any topical references in the preface to the quartos, refuting those who have been 'overcunning in misinterpreting me' (Marston 1964b, l. 14), his challenge to the vices of the court clearly appealed to audiences at the start of the Stuart period. 10

5. While Jeremy Lopez has argued that 'virtually every play in Renaissance drama announces its genre quite explicitly' (Lopez 2003, 5), parodies offer a unique perspective on the circulation of theatrical conventions. The subplot of Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, written and performed in 1614, marks the persistence of the association between political disguise plots and the idea of reform. Much of the parodic effect of Justice Overdo's decision to go 'disguis'd (as the careful magistrate ought) for the good of the republic, in the Fair, and weeding out of enormity' (Jonson 1979, V.ii.92-4) arises from the breach of decorum, with the hubris of a minor justice of the peace claiming a role reserved for great men. In seeking to 'see, and not be seen', Overdo claims that his important position prevents him from controlling the conduct of his officers: 'This we are subject to, that live in high place: all our intelligence is idle' (II.i.46, 36-7). However, I would argue that on a more fundamental level Jonson's rehearsal of previous disguise plots turns on the anachronism by that time of the optimism the character displays 'for detection of... enormities... in Justice' name and the King's; and for the Commonwealth!' (II.i.45-50). The allusions in the play's induction to the clichés of old dramas, mocking 'he that will swear Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays yet', indicate that the disguised-ruler play is being included in such scorn for outmoded, discredited forms (107-8). Consistent with his derision of audience members whose theatrical taste 'hath stood still', Jonson parodies a dramatic genre associated with a specific political moment (109-11).

6. With the dialogue that went on between different playwrights, appealing to audiences of courtiers and Inns of Court students well versed in theatrical conventions, it is logical to assume that the evolution of the disguised-ruler plot structure in the years following the accession of James I is significant. Michael Shapiro has shown in his valuable study of the children's companies that it was common in the private theatres to parody established genres (Shapiro 1977, 228-31). In works like Edward Sharpham's The Fleire and John Day's Humour Out of Breath, offering pointed references to the Jacobean court, the typical situations and ideological agendas of earlier plays are mercilessly ridiculed, as corruption and cynicism are confirmed rather than abated by the furtive actions of disguised rulers. What makes the use of parody important for literary criticism, apart from any question of aesthetic value, is that it is intertextual for both author and reader. 11 By responding to the patterns set out in canonical works, as the self-reflexive agendas of the plays we have looked at make clear, the Jacobean parodies offer a privileged insight into the reception of the disguised-ruler play by professional dramatists and regular theatregoers. Despite all the claims about the death of traditional source studies, as materialist and historicist criticism has encouraged the study of a wider variety of potential parallels and influences, most studies of the cultural background of early modern English drama continue to be author-centred. 12 The concern is the author's direct and indirect recollection of literary and historical precedents, rather than how those precedents may implicate readers and audiences in the period. What is at stake in my approach is the extent to which the dramatic strategies of individual plays anticipate audience recognition of specific dramatic conventions and ideological issues. For although regular theatregoers may not have recognised the relationship of a play like Measure for Measure to distant individual sources, such as an untranslated novella in Cinthio's Hecatommithi, the explicit use of the disguised-duke genre draws on the immediate context of the Jacobean theatre repertory.

7. The ideological implications of previous disguise plots become the subject of Edward Sharpham's The Fleire, where the great innovation is to bring a super-sophisticated usurped Duke of Florence to a clearly defined Jacobean London. In Sharpham's play, performed in 1606 by the Children of the Queen's Revels, the Florentine ruler explicitly observes the court of James himself, rather than that of a distant Italian state. When asked why he came 'out of Italy into England', the Duke provides a self-reflexive gloss on the early modern drama's treatment of political issues within an Italian context: 'Because England would not come into Italy to me' (Sharpham 1986, I.iii.258, 259). 13 What the novelty of a domestic setting demonstrates is the importance of location in previous disguised-duke plays, where the settings allude to city states already prominent in English studies of Italian political crisis. It is significant, for example, that the unstable state of Ferrara in The Phoenix evokes the historical circumstances surrounding the collapse of the Este family rule in 1598. 14 In response to widespread curiosity about events in Ferrara, Giacomo Castelvetro, the Italian tutor of James in Scotland, produced a manuscript about the reasons why the Este lost power. 15 As the circulation of texts by Machiavelli and Guicciardini during the period suggests, there was a significant market for texts explaining the lessons to be learned from the failures of Italian leaders. 16 The process of learning from Italian precedents in domestic political thought has much to do with the manner in which political disguise plays focus on the covert scrutiny of court vices and failed states. The observation by a disguised duke of another ruler's court had already been used in the plot of Marston's Fawn, where the humour comes from the observation of the inept courtship of the leader of Urbino, another failed city state whose lost court was celebrated in Castiglione's nostalgic Cortegiano.

8. Given that The Fleire is a product of a series of quotations and revisions of previous plays, part of the pleasure of the audience, especially for the cognoscenti, must have come from the possibility it offers for intertextual interpretation. In focusing on its lack of originality, Christopher Gordon Petter has suggested that 'the apparent [dramatic] faults of The Fleire could be explained away by adopting a theory of parody' (Sharpham 1986, 215-220). Indeed, it is telling that Sharpham was a direct contemporary of Marston at the Middle Temple, home of a thriving literary community, because much of the play alludes to Marston's previous works. It has often been noted, for example, that Antifront, the name of Sharpham's Duke of Florence, alludes to that of Duke Altofront in The Malcontent. The change is indicative of the parodic strategy at work here, with the prefix 'Alto', referring in Italian to something high or lofty, replaced with a term of opposition. And the fundamental opposition between the satiric agendas of the two dramatists consists in the local specificity of Sharpham's political satire, where Marston's prologue to The Malcontent seeks to deny that his play has any topical references, even to distant Genoa. For although there are signs of the imitation of plot elements from Marston, with the spontaneous renunciation of the usurping ruler in The Fleire echoing that of Duke Pietro in The Malcontent and the squalid subplot of homicidal prostitutes drawing on The Dutch Courtesan, Sharpham's court satire is much more savage and direct.

9. By repatriating the Italianate stereotypes of court corruption, The Fleire explicitly deals with unequivocally domestic abuses. Sharpham devotes much of the Second Act to the Florentine's response, as an expert on statecraft, to the Jacobean court. When he learns more about the local scene, The Fleire comes to regard 'this foolish nation' with contempt:

   I saw a Farmers Son sit newly made a courtier, that sat in the presence at cardes,
   as if the chaire of state had bin made of a peece of his fathers Barne-doore:
   O tis a shame:
   I would have state be state in earnest and in game. (II.i.223-228)

   In referring to 'the presence', denoting that the events described took place before the English monarch, the dramatist makes sure that the Florentine's criticisms of the court appear to be directed at King James. The specific criticism of the behaviour of a 'newly made' courtier picks up, as was common in period satire, on the widespread unease about James's prodigality with honours. However, with the parallel between 'the chaire of state' and the country squire's 'Barne-doore', Antifront goes on to target the ruler's failure to maintain appropriate standards of royal decorum. 17 There is also a remarkable passage attacking James on the level of policy, as a would-be courtier, prompted by Antifront's queries, ponders the implications of Anglo-Scottish union:

   I did pray oftener when I was an Englishman, but I have not praid often, I must confesse since I was a Brittaine: but doost here Fleire? canst tell me if an Englishman were in debt, whether a Brittaine must pay it or no? (II.i.233-6)

   While playwrights were already mocking the new King's ambitions, Sharpham's juxtaposition of an Italianate disguised-duke plot, focusing on the observation of abuses, with a Jacobean setting adds extra resonance to his rendering of local complaints.

10. One of the striking aspects of The Fleire, alongside the specific topical satire, is the squalid means by which power is acquired and maintained. Instead of sitting on the fringes of the court as a malcontent figure, Sharpham's disguised Duke of Florence exploits the activity of his two daughters as prostitutes, installing himself unbeknownst to them as their enthusiastic pimp. The approach of traditional criticism to the play is best described by the term disgust, filled as it is with lots of prudish comments about a 'lack of moral purpose' (Leggatt 1973, 120). 18 There is no question that, as Bly has argued in relation to the Whitefriars plays, sleazy sexual material had a wide commercial allure (Bly 2000). On a political level, however, what is significant here is that the parody of the disguise plot focuses on the vices of the ruler himself, not just the treasonous and corrupt officials condemned in earlier plays. It is clear that Antifront, untroubled by considerations of female or personal honour, will do anything to regain power. Sharpham's approach underlines the idea of the instability of royal authority, already implicit in the concern with treason and usurpation in plays like The Malcontent and The Phoenix. And where Antifront's return to the role of Duke owes to the coincidence that the son of his usurper is a particularly gullible client of his daughters, easily pushed into marriage with a notorious prostitute, we end up very far from the rhetoric of divine right.

11. By focusing on incongruous dynastic unions, the idea of the disreputable acquisition of power persists in Humour Out of Breath. While Day and Sharpham were writing before the great controversy surrounding a possible Spanish match for Prince Henry, the long term anxieties about the fate of Elizabeth I ensured that the issue of arranged marriages was already familiar in English society. 19 The function of marriage for both dramatists is to consolidate political gains, as otherwise unacceptable alliances serve to ensure the usurped father's return to his dukedom. Indeed, the similarities between the satirical concerns of the two works are such that it has been speculated that Sharpham may well have contributed to the composition of Day's later work (Borish 1934). In depicting marriage as a political act, not all that far from prostitution, Day and Sharpham introduce young daughters of Dukes who have little to do with the typical blushing virgins in other early modern plays. While Florimel is not a prostitute, like the daughters in The Fleire, she is undoubtedly a sexual predator and Aspero's delusions of honourable conduct in the world of Italian power politics do not survive his encounter with her. In addition to all her bawdy double entendres, she is the person who succeeds in convincing Aspero to disguise himself and enter into court intrigue. Aspero's sisters are not much better, quickly linking up in exile with seeming shepherds, and the Duke of Venice threatens to send them to the bordello. Nonetheless, everyone marries everyone at the end of the play and Mantua's pathetic old ruler returns to power.

12. It is significant that the restoration of the usurped ruler in Day's play is prompted ultimately by a popular uprising in the city, not by a heart-warming acceptance of love, effective Machiavellian intrigue, or the judicious reform of abuses. The pragmatic Duke of Venice merely accepts that his forces of occupation cannot resist the rebelling citizens, at that moment, and decides to secure his influence over the state for the time being through the dynastic marriages. There is no sense in which Antonio's experience has given him a better understanding of the realities of power, endowing him with the means to avoid further crises. Indeed, Aspero's aristocratic contempt for the 'iron-handed plebians' who have loyally rescued his family's fortunes offers little hope for the future of Mantua: 'the popular voice is like a cry of bawling hounds' (V.ii).

13. The continuing parody of the disguised-duke plot's ideological concerns makes manifest to what extent the Jacobean theatre environment was aware of how the series of works by different playwrights around 1603-4 formed a genre, with specific types of scenes and conventions. The value of subverting those conventions in later plays was inevitably dependent upon audience recognition, suggesting that the appeal of the changes was their distortion of the political optimism of the first examples of the genre. For although it has often been argued that disguise plots stage the rhetoric of Absolutism, focusing on the duke's divine powers to secure the well-being of the state, these intertextual parodies refuse any positive vision of statecraft. The fundamental absence in both Humour Out of Breath and The Fleire is a sense in which the disguise process creates a more effective ruler, sensible to the affairs of government and the needs of his subjects. Neither Sharpham nor Day gives us the typical final judgement scene where, after observing 'corruption boil and bubble' – as Vincentio comments in Measure for Measure – the reinvigorated duke retakes his rightful place and stages the punishment of offenders (Shakespeare 1991, V.i.320). The omission of this plot element is suggestive because it removes the focus of the genre on reform. One of the central motives for disguise in the conventional disguise plays, as underlined by the ruler's asides to the audience in The Fawn, is that it offers an opportunity to identify and respond to serious state problems: 'Another's court shall show me where and how / Vice may be cured' (Marston 1964a, II.i.565-6). The continual repetition of the term 'reform' in The Phoenix, for example, emerges within the context of a process of political education, where surreptitious observation teaches the young heir about the reality of institutionalized abuses. What the parodies do instead, as we have seen with the opening of The Woman Hater, is stage the frustration of audience expectations. By refusing to represent the installation of good government, leading to the end of court vices, Sharpham and Day respond to a real sense of disappointment about the possibility for political renewal.

Notes

1. Pendleton (1987), 82. Recent accounts of the role of the disguised-duke (or disguised-ruler) plot structure include Tricomi (1989), 13-24, Kamps (1995), 248-273, and Tennenhouse (1982), 143-156. Anthony Kendall has argued that Shakespeare also referred to the disguised-ruler convention in Henry IV. See Kendall (1982), 49-62.

   

2. Her study of the Whitefriars company has appeared in book form. See Bly (2000).

   

3. This Victorian edition does not provide line numbers.

   

4. Although he does not consider the play in detail, Albert Tricomi has cited the line as proof that 'Francis Beaumont clearly perceived something of the pattern' established in previous disguise plays. See Tricomi (1989), 13.

   

5. For corruption in early modern England, see Peck (1990) and Hurstfield (1973), 137-62.

   

6. For the optimism the new monarch inspired in London's literary community, see Norbrook (1984), 195-8. The response in the court is dealt with in Young (1979).

   

7. Ivo Kamps associates the ruler in disguise plays with a general curosity about kingship at the time of James's accession, as suggested by the interest in Basilikon Doron. See Kamps (1995), 248ff.

   

8. For the relationship between Italian stereotypes and audience expectations, see Redmond (2002) and (2003).

   

9. The composition date of Measure for Measure is discussed in Barroll (1991), 119-129. Barroll argues that the composition of plays in 1603 was discouraged by the closure of the theatres due to plague and official mourning for the death of Elizabeth. This may support claims that Marston and Middleton's plays date from before 1603.

   

10. For an account of the address to the reader and the impact of censorship on the printed versions of the play, see Clare (1999), 135-9.

    

11. The intertextuality of parody is discussed in Thomson (1984) and Hutcheon (1984). See also Rose (1979).

    

12. While Robert S. Miola's concept of the paralogue does focus on what an 'audience brings to a text', he defines that audience as the modern community of literary critics studying that text. See his valuable survey of contemporary intertextual criticism in Miola (2000).

    

13. Albert Tricomi has noted the relation of this passage to the disguised-duke tradition. See Tricomi (1989), 23.

    

14. After the death of Alfonso II in 1597, the Este were left without a legitimate heir and the Papacy took direct control of Ferrara. See Chiappini (2001) and Mitchell (1990).

    

15. See Franceschini (2003).

    

16. See Redmond (2003).

    

17. Tricomi has emphasized Sharpham's 'topical daring'. See Tricomi (1989), 23.

    

18. For other accounts disparaging the ethics of The Fleire, see Hunter (1978), Tricomi (1989), 23-4, and Harbage (1952), 196, 208.

    

19. A compelling recent account of the political consequences of Elizabeth's attempts at marriage is Doran (1996). One of the first suitors to be rejected in the 1550s was the son of the Duke of Ferrara.

    

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