Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T22:54:18.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“I Ask Your Voices and Your Suffrages”: The Bogus Rome of Peele and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2016

Paulina Kewes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay provides a contextual reading of Titus Andronicus, paying close attention to the play's collaborative authorship. Peele and Shakespeare are shown to have manufactured a superficially compelling but in reality utterly fake image of the Roman state as an imaginary laboratory for political ideas, especially the elective principle. Topical allusions and deliberate anachronisms encourage the audience to relate the subject matter to the present, viz., late Elizabethan England in the throes of a succession crisis and rent by confessional divisions. Unlike Peele's solo works, which exhibit a potent anti-Catholic bias, Titus remains confessionally elusive. The play invites the audience to reflect on the viability of particular modes of succession without committing itself either way, and shows that it is not institutional structures and processes but those who use and abuse them that make the difference to the state of the polity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 78 , Special Issue 4: Shakespeare's Politics in Honor of the 400th Anniversary of his Birth , Fall 2016 , pp. 551 - 570
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kewes, Paulina, “History Plays and the Royal Succession,” in The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's “Chronicles,” ed. Kewes, Paulina, Archer, Ian W., and Heal, Felicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 493–509 Google Scholar.

2 On the oblique application of Roman history to the question of succession in other forms of writing, see Kewes, Paulina, “Henry Savile's Tacitus and the Politics of Roman History in Late Elizabethan England,” Huntington Library Quarterly 74 (2011): 515–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 542–49; “‘A Fit Memoriall for the Times to Come…’: Admonition and Topical Application in Mary Sidney's Antonius and Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra ,” Review of English Studies 63 (2012): 243–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Romans in the Mirror,” in Mirror for Magistrates in Context: Literature, History and Politics before the Age of Shakespeare, ed. Archer, Harriet and Hadfield, Andrew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 126–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Translations of State: Robert Persons, the Succession, and Roman History,” forthcoming in Ancient Rome and Early Modern England, ed. Paulina Kewes.

3 Bullough, Geoffrey, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols. (London: Routledge, 1957–75), 6:3–33 Google Scholar; on the play's debt to Herodian and Livy, see Hunter, G. K., “Sources and Meanings in Titus Andronicus ,” in Mirror Up to Shakespeare: Essays in Honor of G. R. Hibbard, ed. Gray, J. C. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 171–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further discussion of the influence of Livy, see Culhane, Peter, “Livy and Titus Andronicus ,” English 55 (2006): 1–13 Google Scholar; and of Herodian, see Liebler, Naomi Conn, “Getting It All Right: Titus Andronicus and Roman History,” Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 263–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Shakespeare and Peele may have been inspired to turn to Herodian by Higgins, John's use of the same historian in The Mirour for Magistrates … newly imprinted, and … enlarged (London, 1587)Google Scholar: see Kewes, “Romans in the Mirror.”

4 Titus Andronicus, ed. Bate, Jonathan, Arden 3rd series (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar, 5.1.76 and 21, and introduction, 16ff. Unless otherwise specified, all further references will be to this edition.

5 “Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans,” Shakespeare Survey 10 (1957): 32 Google Scholar.

6 In the first quarto, The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus (London, 1594), stage directions and speech prefixes promiscuously label Saturninus sometimes as king, sometimes as emperor (see sig. E1r for an instance of each), a point erased (and unrecorded) in Bate's edition which uses the prefix “Saturninus” both before and after his elevation to imperial dignity.

7 On Peacham's drawing, see Bate, introduction, 38–43. For a perceptive analysis of the two writers' differing engagement with romanitas, see Hammond, Paul, “Shakespeare as Collaborator: The Case of Titus Andronicus ,” in Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in the Republic of Letters: Essays in Honour of Richard G. Maber, ed. Scott, Paul (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 195–210 Google Scholar.

8 Henslowe's Diary, ed. R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 21.

9 See Jackson, MacDonald P., “Stage Directions and Speech Headings in Act I of Titus Andronicus Q (1594): Shakespeare or Peele?,” Studies in Bibliography 49 (1996): 134–48Google Scholar; Jackson, Defining Shakespeare: “Pericles” as a Test Case (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 195–203; Vickers, Brian, Shakespeare, Co-author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 169–80Google Scholar.

10 For the attribution to Peele, see Vickers, Brian, “ The Troublesome Reign, George Peele, and the Date of King John ,” in Words That Count: Essays on Early Modern Authorship in Honor of MacDonald P. Jackson, ed. Boyd, Brian (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), 78–116 Google Scholar, and Forker, Charles R.'s introduction to his edition of The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England by George Peele (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 6–30 Google Scholar.

11 Prologue to The Battle of Alcazar, in The Life and Works of George Peele, ed. Prouty, Charles Tyler et al. , vol. 2 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, line 50.

12 Ibid., line 7.

13 Gazzard, Hugh, “‘Many a Herdsman More Disposde to Morne’: Peele, Campion, and the Portugal Expedition of 1589,” Review of English Studies, n.s., 57 (2006): 19–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Kewes, “History Plays and the Royal Succession,” 499–502.

15 For “Catholic” readings, see Klause, John, “Politics, Heresy, and Martyrdom in Shakespeare's Sonnet 124 and Titus Andronicus ,” in Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays (New York: Garland, 1999), 219–40Google Scholar; Erne, Lukas, “‘Popish Tricks’ and ‘a Ruinous Monastery’: Titus Andronicus and the Question of Shakespeare's Catholicism,” in The Limits of Textuality, ed. Erne, Lukas and Bolens, Guillemette, Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 13 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2000), 135–55Google Scholar; Swärdh, Anna, Rape and Religion in English Renaissance Literature: A Topical Study of Four Texts by Shakespeare, Drayton, and Middleton (Uppsala: Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, 2003), 76–132 Google Scholar. For sensible counters to confessionally partisan interpretations which are nevertheless rendered problematic by their neglect of Titus's collaborative provenance, see Miola, Robert, “‘An Alien People Clutching Their Gods’? Shakespeare's Ancient Religions,” Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 31–45 Google Scholar; and Moschovakis, Nicholas R., “‘Irreligious Piety’ and Christian History: Persecution as Pagan Anachronism in Titus Andronicus ,” Shakespeare Quarterly 53 (2002): 460–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Brooke, C. F. Tucker, “A Latin Poem by George Peele (?),” Huntington Library Quarterly 3 (1939): 47–67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oxford Poetry by Richard Eedes and George Peele, ed. and trans. Sutton, Dana Ferrin (New York: Garland, 1995)Google Scholar.

17 Nelson, Eric, “Shakespeare and the Best State of a Commonwealth,” in Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought, ed. Armitage, David, Condren, Conal, and Fitzmaurice, Andrew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar, 260n26, 256; Hadfield, Andrew, Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics (London: Bloomsbury, 2004)Google Scholar, 132.

18 See Kewes, Paulina, “The Puritan, the Jesuit, and the Jacobean Succession,” in Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England, ed. Doran, Susan and Kewes, Paulina (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 47–70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Hartley, T. E., ed., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 3 vols. (London: Leicester University Press, 1981–95), 3:1–176 Google Scholar; Parry, Glyn, The Arch-conjuror of England: John Dee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, chap. 19.

20 Wentworth to Burghley, TNA, SP12/240/21.i; Kewes, “The Puritan, the Jesuit, and the Jacobean Succession.”

21 Lefranc, Pierre, “Un Inédit de Raleigh sur la Succession,” Etudes Anglaises 13 (1960): 38–48 Google Scholar.

22 ([Antwerp,] 1593); Kewes, “The Puritan, the Jesuit, and the Jacobean Succession,” 60–63.

23 Parmelee, Lisa Ferraro, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Kewes, Paulina, “Marlowe, History, and Politics,” in Christopher Marlowe in Context, ed. Bartels, Emily and Smith, Emma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 147–52Google Scholar.

24 Hartley, Proceedings, 3:12.

25 Collinson, Patrick, Richard Bancroft and Elizabethan Anti-Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walsham, Alexandra, “‘Frantic Hacket’: Prophecy, Sorcery, Insanity, and the Elizabethan Puritan Movement,” Historical Journal 41 (1998): 27–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moschovakis, Nicholas R., “Topicality and Conceptual Blending: Titus Andronicus and the Case of William Hacket,” College Literature 33 (2006): 127–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967)Google Scholar, 428ff.

27 Daungerous Positions and Proceedings published and practised within the iland of Brytaine, vnder Pretence of Reformation, and for the Presbiteriall discipline (London, 1593), 3.

28 Patrick Collinson, “Barrow, Henry (c. 1550–1593),” ODNB; Michael E. Moody, “Greenwood, John (c. 1560–1593),” ODNB; Politi, Jina, “The Gibbet-Maker,” Notes and Queries 38 (1991): 54–55 Google Scholar.

29 Walsham, Alexandra, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England, Royal Historical Society Studies in History 68 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993)Google Scholar; Catholics and the “Protestant Nation”: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England, ed. Shagan, Ethan H. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

30 Kewes, “History Plays and the Royal Succession”; Jackson, Richard A., “Elective Kingship and Consensus Populi in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past and Present 44 (1972): 155–71Google Scholar; Salmon, J. H. M., “Catholic Resistance Theory, Ultramontanism, and the Royalist Response, 1580–1620,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. Burns, J. H. with the assistance of Goldie, Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 219–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 See, for instance, Swärdh, Rape and Religion, 76–132, and Bate, introduction, 19–21.

32 Wentworth, Pithie Exhortation, 8.

33 Hutson, “Rethinking the ‘Spectacle of the Scaffold’: Juridical Epistemologies and English Revenge Tragedies,” Representations 89 (2005): 44; Hadfield, Andrew, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 161.

34 James, , Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism, 163; Hutson, “Rethinking the ‘Spectacle of the Scaffold,’” 45; Bate, introduction, 18. For a discussion of Rome's political system in Titus, see Nelson, “Shakespeare and the Best State of a Commonwealth.” Nelson does not address the contextual relevance of the political structures he surveys.

35 In The Life and Works of George Peele, ed. Prouty, Charles Tyler et al. , vol. 1 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952), line 92Google Scholar.

36 OED, s.v., 3a.

37 Arnold, , The Third Citizen: Shakespeare's Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Pithie Exhortation, 13ff., 47.

39 As Pocock, J. G. A. notes, the principate was in fact neither (Barbarism and Religion, vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 27)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Pithie Exhortation, 23.

41 Collinson, Patrick, “The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity,” Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1993): 51–92 Google Scholar, and Collinson, “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” in Elizabethan Essays (London: A. & C. Black, 1994), 31–56 Google Scholar.

42 Persons, Conference, Pt. 1, 230.

43 Craig, “De Jure Successionis Regni Angliae, Libri Duo” (1602), published in English as Concerning the Right of Succession to the Kingdom of England, Two Books, trans. Gadderar, James (London, 1703), chaps. 5 and 6Google Scholar.

44 Hayward, An Answer to the First Part of a Certaine Conference, Concerning Succession (London, 1603)Google Scholar, sig. O1r.

45 Bate's emendation, “his fathers' grave” (5.3.191), obliterates the distinction between the Andronici and the unnamed line of Saturninus.

46 “State Formation, Political Culture and the Problem of Religious War in Britain, c. 1579–1610” (unpublished manuscript). I am grateful to Professor Smuts for sending me a draft of his study before its publication.

47 Heal, “What Can King Lucius Do for You?: The Reformation and the Early British Church,” English Historical Review 120 (2005): 593–614 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Heal, “Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past,” in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Kewes, Paulina (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2006), 105–28Google Scholar.

48 Pithie Exhortation, 102.

49 “Shakespeare and Politics,” Shakespeare Survey 44 (1992): 7 Google Scholar.

50 Kewes, “History Plays and the Royal Succession,” 499–502.