Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England

Gabriel A. Rieger

Penetrating Wit

Sex and Satiric tragedy in early Modern england

Studies in Performance and early Modern drama

general editor’s PrefaceHelen ostovich, McMaster University

Performance assumes a string of creative, analytical, and collaborative acts that, in defiance of theatrical ephemerality, live on through records, manuscripts, and printed books. the monographs and essay collections in this series offer original research which addresses theatre histories and performance histories in the context of the sixteenth and seventeenth century life. of especial interest are studies in which women’s activities are a central feature of discussion as financial or technical supporters (patrons, musicians, dancers, seamstresses, wigmakers, or ‘gatherers’), if not authors or performers per se. Welcome too are critiques of early modern drama that not only take into account the production values of the plays, but also speculate on how intellectual advances or popular culture affect the theatre.

the series logo, selected by my colleague Mary V. Silcox, derives from thomas combe’s duodecimo volume, The Theater of Fine Devices (London, 1592), Emblem Vi, sig. B. the emblem of four masks has a verse which makes claims for the increasing complexity of early modern experience, a complexity that makes interpretation difficult. Hence the corresponding perhaps uneasy rise in sophistication:

Masks will be more hereafter in request,and grow more deare than they did heretofore.

no longer simply signs of performance ‘in play and jest’, the mask has become the ‘double face’ worn ‘in earnest’ even by ‘the best’ of people, in order to manipulate or profit from the world around them. the books stamped with this design attempt to understand the complications of performance produced on stage and interpreted by the audience, whose experiences outside the theatre may reflect the emblem’s argument:

Most men do use some colour’d shiftFor to conceal their craftie drift.

Centuries after their first presentations, the possible performance choices and meanings they engender still stir the imaginations of actors, audiences, and readers of early plays. the products of scholarly creativity in this series, i hope, will also stir imaginations to new ways of thinking about performance.

Sex and Satiric tragedy in early Modern england

Penetrating Wit

gaBriel a. riegerConcord University, USA

© Gabriel A. Rieger 2009

all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

gabriel a. rieger has asserted his moral right under the copyright, designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing companyWey Court East Suite 420Union Road 101 Cherry StreetFarnham BurlingtonSurrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405england USa

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Datarieger, gabriel a.

Sex and satiric tragedy in early modern England: penetrating wit. – (Studies in performance and early modern drama)1. English drama – Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500–1600 – History and criticism. 2. English drama – 17th century – History and criticism. 3. English drama (Tragedy) – History and criticism. 4. Satire, English – History and criticism. 5. Dramatists, English – Early modern, 1500–1700 – Language. 6. Discourse analysis, Literary. 7. Language and sex – Great Britain – History – 16th century. 8. Language and sex – Great Britain – History – 17th century.i. title ii. Series822’.0512’0903-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Datarieger, gabriel a.

Sex and satiric tragedy in early modern england: penetrating wit / by gabriel a. rieger.p. cm. — (Studies in performance and early modern drama)

includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4094-0029-5 (hardback: alk. paper)1. English drama (Tragedy)—History and criticism. 2. Sex in literature. 3. English drama—

Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500–1600—History and criticism. 4. English drama—17th century—History and criticism. 5. Satire, English—History and criticism. I. Title.

PR658.T7R55 2009822’.0512093538—dc22

2009030060ISBN: 9781409400295 (hbk)ISBN: 9780754698791 (ebk.II)

For ireneFor her discourse, it is so full of rapture,

you only will begin then to be sorryWhen she doth end her speech, and wish, in wonder,

She held it less vain-glory to talk muchthan your penance to hear her: whilst she speaks,

She throws upon a man so sweet a look,that it were able to raise one to a galliard

that lay in a dead palsy, and to doteon that sweet countenance; but in that look

there speaketh so divine a continence,as cuts off all lascivious and vain hope.

Her days are practic’d in such noble virtue,that sure her nights, nay more, her very sleeps,are more in heaven, than other ladies’ shrifts.

Let all sweet ladies break their flattering glasses,and dress themselves in her.

(John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi 1.2.112–27)

This page has been left blank intentionally

contents

List of Figures viiiAcknowledgements ix

introduction: Sex, Stoicism, and Satyre: the roots of Satiric tragedy 1

1 “You Go Not Till I Set You Up A Glass”: The Death of Elizabeth and the Languages of Gender 29

2 “deep ruts and Foul Sloughs”: Sexually descriptive language and the Narrative of Disease 53

3 “I’ll Have My Will”: Frustrated Desire and Commercial Culture 77

4 “I Am Worth No Worse A Place”: Service, Subjugation, and Satire 101

Conclusion: Erotic Aggression and Satiric Tragedy 125

Appendix 131

Works Cited 133Index 139

list of Figures

2.1 Albrecht Durer, “The Promenade” 1497. Reproduced by permission of The Cleveland Art Museum 131

2.2 Hans Holbein the Younger, “The Countess” 1538. Reproduced by permission of the Beinecke rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 132

acknowledgements

the volume which you now hold is the product of a long and arduous process of composition and revisions. the author would like to thank, in no particular order, the following people who have made invaluable contributions to that process.

i would like to thank Professor tom Bishop: the value of your criticism and advice cannot be overstated.

i would like to thank also Professor christopher Flint, who provided guidance when it was most needed, and Professor Heather Meakin, who generously spent many hours teaching me how to read, and to think, like an academic.

i would like to thank Professor Barbara riebling, who taught me more than anyone about the profession and who, with patience, encouragement, and wit, introduced me to the almost unbearable pleasures which literature can produce. Would that god would allow me to be such a mentor to my students as you were to me.

i would like to thank Professor William o’neal, who helped me to acquire the historical method which allowed me to provided context for my arguments. i hope my students enjoy taking my classes even half as much as i enjoyed taking yours.

i would like to thank Professors russ Bodi, robert Fleissner, david george, Sandra Logan, Hillary Nunn, Joseph Sullivan, and all of my fellow members of the ohio Valley Shakespeare conference, whose support and encouragement have meant so much to me.

i would like to thank Professor William Siebenschuh, for providing valuable assistance when it was sorely needed.

I would like to thank Jeremy Garman, Sean Gordon, Matthew and Jennifer Klempner, and Joseph Pavlovitch, for giving me valuable advice and support when it was most needed.

i would like to thank my parents, Paul and nancy rieger, for their love and support, for reading to me when i was a child, and for never doubting that i could accomplish the goals that i set.

i would like to thank my wife, irene, whose love and encouragement mean more to me than anything. thank you for the work you did in editing this book. Without you, this project might never have been completed.

lastly, i thank god for the opportunities He has given me, and for the wonderful people with whom He has surrounded me. i am unworthy, but i am grateful. Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.

This page has been left blank intentionally

introduction Sex, Stoicism, and Satyre:

the roots of Satiric tragedy

While there have been a number of works examining renaissance satire and satiric tragedy, as well as several recent studies on renaissance attitudes toward sexual conduct and gender, there have not been any thorough examinations of the role of sexually descriptive language in satiric tragedy. this is surprising when one considers how frequently this language is employed on the renaissance stage, especially in satiric tragedy. Satiric tragedians use sexually descriptive language in various ways and with various motives. these varying motives, however, potentially complicate analysis of how the satiric and the erotic intersect. For example, the amatory hymns of Romeo and Juliet are certainly sexually descriptive language, but so are the general denunciations of Mercutio, or Hamlet’s very specific attacks against his mother and Ophelia. Examining these various modes of representation, this study interrogates the ways in which sexually descriptive language serves satiric aggression, paying particular attention to sexualized slander and mockery, frequently engaged through languages such as titillation, insinuation and obscenity. Throughout, I define such sexually descriptive language as language that describes, either explicitly or implicitly, sexual conduct, its consequences and / or the resulting moral judgments it generates.1

Hamlet’s condemnation of Ophelia is a particularly illustrative example. In 3.1 Hamlet, having denied his love for her, directs her to “a nunnery” and rhetorically asks her if she would “be a breeder of sinners” (3.1.121–22). The prince’s sexually descriptive language can here be read in one of two ways, either as an injunction against generation (if the word “nunnery” is read literally as convent where her chastity will be preserved) or as an implicit accusation of whoredom (if the word is read ironically as a brothel). the prince’s sexually descriptive language is protean; it can take on different, indeed oppositional, meanings depending on the listener. As Harold Jenkins notes in his footnote to the scene in the second Arden edition of the play, “awareness of this [duality] may add a bitter under current as the dialogue proceeds” (282 n121). It need not do so, however. It allows the prince to express two oppositional notions simultaneously, both of which are suited to the sterility implicit in his next question, “wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”

By constructing ophelia as “a breeder of sinners,” the prince implies that all women breed sinners, and thus that all men are sinners bred. this sets up

1 as i begin this study, it is important to bear in mind that while sexually descriptive language must necessarily reflect the sex act, it is nevertheless equally necessarily divorced from the actual experience of sex. the early modern theatre can never stage actual sex, not least because all of the actors are male, and thus the languages of sex must act as essential substitutes.

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England2

his subsequent lines in which he declares himself “indifferent honest” but acknowledges that he could “accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me” before going on to catalogue his faults. the prince’s sexually descriptive language allows him to deploy satiric aggression against ophelia, but the aggression is so powerful and so inclusive that it reflects upon himself, as well. the sexually descriptive language that the prince employs here wounds him as a satirist figure just as it wounds Ophelia as a target of satire.

this scene serves to illustrate some of the peculiar qualities of sexually descriptive language. the language is most often deployed in metaphor; we rarely see descriptions of actual coitus on the Jacobean stage, and when we do see them, they are almost never used for the purpose of satiric aggression. this use of metaphor makes the language malleable; metaphor lends itself to differing interpretations. The language also rebounds in that it wounds the satirist-figure who wields it just as it wounds the target against whom it is wielded. in some cases it is so inclusive that it appears to wound the audience, as well.

acknowledging these peculiarities, this study examines why sexually descriptive language, particularly sexualized slander and mockery, occurs so frequently in satiric tragedy and what thematic purposes it serves. i will argue that renaissance satiric tragedians employ sexually descriptive language because the language lends itself so effectively to satiric aggression. a close association exists in the renaissance between the genre of satire and language which is sexually descriptive, particularly in the extent to which both the genre and the language embody systems of oppositions. Sexually descriptive language frequently exhibits an ambivalence which allows it to express heterogeneous and even contradictory ideas (e.g. desire and loathing, order and chaos, generation and decay), and this ambivalence fits with the oft-observed ambivalence of the satirist, who both condemns and resembles, or participates in, what he scorns. Sexually descriptive language in its various forms serves four purposes for the satiric tragedian: one, it allows him to raise questions central to the construction and regulation of social and political order in the period; two, it enables him to engage imagery of sexual disease and contagion in an expression of bodily contempt and metaphoric corruption; three, it permits the aggressing satirist a figurative and invasive congress with the object of satire, which in some cases is also the object of desire; and four, it provides him with metaphors for exploring the experience and the paradoxical ideology of service and its institutions. in examining these four purposes i will review a broad range of texts by satiric tragedians, moralists, medical writers and critics, paying particular attention to the dramatic works of William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster.

Foreshadowing Tragedy: The Bishop’s Ban

in order to understand the functions of sexually descriptive language in satiric tragedy, however, we must first have some understanding of whence the language sprang. the use of sexually descriptive language in satiric attack has its roots

Introduction 3

in latin satire as well as english verse satire, the genre which i will argue is a direct antecedent of satiric tragedy. Sexually descriptive language had been a vital component of english verse satire for many years, and might have continued to be so indefinitely had not the Elizabethan censors intervened. But late in the spring of 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London came together to issue an edict to the Stationer’s Company to outlaw, confiscate, and destroy a list of poetic and prose satires. among the banned satires were works by christopher Marlowe, John Marston, and an author identified only as “T.M.”, assumed to be thomas Middleton. Some three days later, the proscribed volumes were burned at the Stationer’s Hall (McCabe 190).

Today we recognize these authors as some of the leading dramatists of the early modern period. Scholars can only imagine what a legacy might have been left to us had it not been consigned to the flames. As Charles Ripley Gillette writes:

the destruction must have been exceptionally complete, for very few copies of any of the books on the list are now extant, most of them have disappeared entirely in the original editions. if known at all it is from later editions, which may have undergone considerable revision and the elision of objectionable passages. this, to be sure, is only conjecture, for proof by comparison is impossible. (1:90)

this raises the question of “why?” What was it in these volumes that was so pernicious, so offensive to the church and the crown that it had to be destroyed? The answer is likely complex. What scholars do know is that the decree of June 1 stated directly that “noe Satyres or Epigrams be printed hereafter,” and most if not all of the outlawed works were satires (McCabe 188). The traditional scholarly view was long that the 1599 ban was enacted primarily in response to proliferation of satire. However, as lynda Boose has noted:

…behind this dominant tradition there has always lurked another view which holds that “satire” by itself is not an adequate category to cover all the works listed nor does it account for an equally prominent feature of the banned texts – the newly sexualized, salacious tone with which many of them seem to have been experimenting. (187)

in this reading, the banned texts had in common not only the seditious social and political content we associate with satire, but also a component of sexually charged language which was equally disturbing to the censors. Boose suggests that there was a connection, at least in the minds of the bishops, between writings which were seditious and writings which were salacious (190).

this connection was not unprecedented; many of the earliest satires in the Roman tradition embodied a “sexualized, salacious tone” which underscored the fundamental irreverence of the genre.2 it is easy to see, then, why the satirists as

2 It is important at this point to define some specific terms. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “satire” as a “poem, or in modern use sometimes a prose composition, in which prevailing vices or follies are held up to ridicule.” For the purposes of this inquiry, the word “satire” will be understood to refer to rhetorical attack, be it

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England�

well as the bishops might see such a connection. Sexually descriptive language, especially sexual slander and mockery, is suited to the genre of satire. Both the genre and the language lend themselves to aggression and attack, and both have a certain destabilizing force within society, engaging their audiences (and their authors) on a level that can be simultaneously visceral and intellectual in its aggression. the civic and religious authorities were not blind to the subversive potential of sexually descriptive language and have never been; authoritarian regimes have always worked to censor sexually explicit materials, from augustus’ censorship of Ovid in the first century to the destructions of sexually explicit texts by conservatives of various stripes in our own time.

after their satires were outlawed, some of the satirists redirected their talents toward the stage, a still legal, but nonetheless controversial, form of literary expression. in the face of the bishops’ ban, some of the former satirists became satiric dramatists and carried into their new vocation the same energy, ostensibly seditious impulses, and “sexualized, salacious tone” that had typified their satires.3

Satiric tragedy certainly revives the biting (and often sexually charged) satiric verse of Silver age latin authors such as Seneca and Martial, but the tragedians consistently “better the instruction,” presenting a satiric vision more aggressive and more brutal than much of what we find in the classical tradition. As we will see, much of the aggressive satire on the renaissance stage is not merely biting; it presents a narrative of destruction which is sometimes (as in plays such as Hamlet and The Duchess of Malfi) so destructive as to be nihilistic, even to the point of annihilating the satirist character figure himself.

all of this raises the question of what is the relationship between satire and tragedy. the two genres are closely connected thematically. as alvin Kernan writes:

Satire shares [a] darkly serious view of the world with tragedy – thus the resemblance of the satiric and tragic scenes – and both satirist and tragic hero suffer an agonized compulsion to appraise the ills of the world and cure them by naming them. (21)

dramatic or verse, often (but not always) deployed to a humorous or partially humorous effect. the phrase “satiric tragedy” will refer to those tragedies which present satire or satiric castigation as central to their theme or to the course of their action, particularly plays such as Hamlet, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and The Duchess of Malfi but including any such tragedies for which we might make the case. any references to satiric tragedians will refer to those playwrights of the renaissance period who wrote in the genre of satiric tragedy. the term “satirist character” will refer to a character within a play who expresses satiric invective, as distinct from the “satirist” who writes satire. all references to tragedy or tragedians will be understood to reference those concepts in the renaissance period unless otherwise noted.

3 The theatre was not only controversial; it was, in the eyes of some scholars (and of course some contemporaries, who railed against it as corrupting and subversive of godly order), particularly Jonathan Dollimore, downright subversive. See Dollimore’s Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries.

Introduction 5

Satire is concerned with aggression against vice and folly, and these are the central concerns of renaissance tragedy, as well. an examination of renaissance tragedy reveals that it is frequently, if not always, satiric because it exposes, and punishes, human crimes. that said, while almost all tragedy incorporates satire as part of its texture, not all tragedy is usefully defined as satiric tragedy. Satiric tragedy is a specific subgenre of tragedy which highlights its satiric content, typically through the use of a satirist character who gives voice (and frequently action) to satiric attack. not all satiric tragedy highlights this satiric content in the same ways or for the same reasons, but all satiric tragedy, as this study will define it, includes a satirist character who gives vent to satiric invective.�

Having defined what this study means when it refers to satiric tragedy, we must now define its parameters. We might productively do this by examining the two essential categories of satirist characters on the renaissance stage. these two categories can be loosely defined as aspirant satirist characters, i.e. characters who aspire to a position of favor with those whom they attack, and deposed aristocratic satirist characters, i.e. characters who have fallen or been disenfranchised from positions of honor. the deposed satirist character acquires a different perspective on the society over which he once ruled or in which he once moved, a perspective that is both broader and more philosophical than that of the aspirant satirist. His satire conveys a sense of frustration to be certain, but it is a frustration born out of his lost position and, in a broader sense, the general breach of order which produces the satiric impulse. deposed satirist characters are embittered, and at times they express their bitterness in intensely sexualized language, but they do not on the whole evince the same agonized desire for the world that they satirize as do the aspirant satirist figures; rather, they deploy their satire as a means of establishing a perspective on the world over which they once ruled. the aspirant satirist character is crucified by desire, like the speaker in Catullus’ poem LXXXV; this appears untrue for the deposed or alienated aristocratic satirist, such as Hamlet, lear, Vindice from The Revenger’s Tragedy, and govianus from The Maiden’s Tragedy.

For example, after having his position in elsinore undercut, Hamlet ruminates satirically on the problems of social inequality in 4.3 when he observes that the “fat king” and the “lean beggar” are “but variable service—two dishes, but to one table” (4.3.22–3). He continues this motif in 5.1.235 with his observation that all men achieve equality in mortality and that even “imperious caesar” was reduced to clay after his death and might have been used as spackling. likewise lear, after

� While not all tragedies with which this study will be concerned have been conventionally classified as satiric tragedies, all of them contain such powerful and aggressive satirist figures that we can nevertheless see them as part of a larger continuum. all of the tragedies with which this study is concerned are tragedies with a strong satiric voice. even those plays which are not entirely satiric, such as The Changeling and Othello, still introduce a powerful satiric element. thus for the purposes of my inquiry, i am electing to call these tragedies satiric tragedies, although they might also be called simply tragedies with a strong satiric element.

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England6

losing his position, observes bitterly that the true image of secular authority is a vicious dog and that what passes for justice in the world is actually a travesty in which “the usurer hangs the cozener” (3.2.89). Being deposed, Lear suddenly sees the hypocrisy of the world clearly.

in other satiric tragedies, such as The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, the satirist character is an aspirant, one who is consumed with desire for what he does not have. these are tragedies in which the satirist character “rails against those things which he wants,” as antonio notes of Bosola. in these tragedies we see the satirist character torn between desire and loathing, between attraction and repulsion. He is drawn toward his targets even as he is, at least ostensibly, disgusted by them. this tension between the two poles provides his satiric invective with much of its force.

Perhaps the central distinctions between tragedy, in its broadest sense, and satire are that satire employs wit and rhetorical stratagem in order to mount its aggression, while tragedy need not necessarily do so, and renaissance tragedy always ends in violence, while satire need not necessarily do so. the two genres overlap, and this has been so since satire’s inception. this may serve in part to explain why some of the satirists, deprived of their craft by law, reacted as they did. the satirists’ solution to the bishops’ ban took the logic of satire to an extreme that was endemic to the genre. Prohibited from expressing their castigations in the form of verse satire, some of these writers turned their attentions to the stage where they could express satiric sentiments at the remove provided by drama.

Vita Proba: The Tradition of Classical Satire

it is not surprising that renaissance writers were fond of satire, since it is the only literary genre believed to have originated with the romans, the society that so fascinated renaissance intellectuals. the use of sexually descriptive language has been associated with the genre of satire from its inception, but the specific origins of that genre remain obscure. Since the genre of satire was thought by the romans to include a variety of ideas, they appear to have accepted satura (a stuffed dish) as the root of the word (Highet 953). The most prominent of the Roman satirists, Juvenal, reinforces this derivation when he writes in the first satire that “quidquid agunt homines, votum timor ira voluptas gaudia discursus, nostra farrago libelli est” [“all the doings of mankind, their vows, their fears, their angers and their pleasures, their joys and goings to and fro, shall form the motley subject of my page”] (68). Satire was by definition eclectic.

intensifying the critical function of ancient satire, renaissance writers latched onto the classical association of the word with satyrs, the lecherous demi-goat attendants of dionysus who pronounced sexual indecencies along with poetry and sagacious philosophy. the satyrs were themselves of a piece with the genre of satire in that they, like roman satire, were a motley combination of different physical forms; they were a mixture of goats and men. Whether or not the word satura traces its actual etymology from the satyrs, the fact that the ancients believed

Introduction 7

this to be so serves to underscore, and perhaps to partially explain, the genre’s historically close association with sexually charged language and expression.5

it may underscore something else, as well. in the roman conception, satire was both a means of abuse and an expression of high art. thus it was complex, even divided. Like the figure of the satyr, it joined together the virile (high art – in the literal sense of its classical root virtus) and the base (ribaldry) with no apparent tension between the two. From its inception, satire was a juxtaposition of seeming antitheses.

this association of satura with the satyrs is further reflected in the fact that satire, in addition to being a genre unto itself, was also a strong component of roman drama. livy notes in Vii.ii that the earliest roman dramas were impletas modis saturas, or “medleys full of rhythms” (Livy 99). There has been some critical dissent regarding the significance of this account, but it does provide a foundation for considering drama as a vehicle for satire. as gilbert Highet notes: “Poetic and dramatic satura may have grown out of the same impulses and shared some central qualities” (953), but a more direct connection between classical verse satire and the dramatic tradition occurs in classical athenian drama.6

as attendants to dionysus, the satyrs were closely associated with the dramatic arts and, beginning in about the year 500 B. C., a curious sub-genre of drama known as the “satyr play” was added to the tragic cycles presented annually at the dionysia. Unlike the tragedies, which were somber in tone and chronicled the sufferings of the great heroes, the satyr plays were written with an eye toward coarse comedy. While the tragedies employed a chorus comprised of human beings or divinities, the satyr plays’ choruses were comprised of satyrs who were denoted as such by the enormous red leather phalli that hung from their belts. these adornments served to emphasize the absurdity and the coarse sexuality of the chorus, characteristics which were evident in the dramas themselves. the satyr plays depicted elements of ancient legends which were either grotesque or were made to appear grotesque.7 this was in keeping with the essential character of the satyrs, who were always regarded as being disposed to irreverence and open ridicule.

Renaissance writers were aware of this tradition. As Ben Jonson notes in his footnote to Oberon:

the nature of the satyrs the wise Horace expressed well in the word when he called them “laughers and mockers” [Ars Poetica 225], as the Greek poets nonnus [Dionysiaca xxxvii.415–17], etc. style them “fond of jeering.” They were conceived and thought of as not only sarcastic but also prone to love ….(548–9)

5 See The Oxford Classical Dictionary ed. Simon Hornblower, et al, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

6 This connection exists more in spirit than in practical influence, since the Renaissance dramatists were, with a few exceptions, unlettered in greek.

7 See also Erika Simon’s “Satyr-plays on vases in the time of Aeschylus” in Donna Sparks’ The Eye of Greece: Studies in the Art of Greece, as well as Arthur Wallace Pickard-cambridge, “tragedy,” and gilbert Highet, “Satyrs,” both in The Oxford Classical Dictionary.

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England8

the satyrs were themselves satiric in that they were prone to inflicting ridicule and rhetorical invective upon their targets. at the same time they were constructed as lecherous in that they were quite literally “goatish,” and “prone to love.” added to this, the association of satura, or roman satire, with the satyrs provides a close association of satire with drama, as well as sexually descriptive language.

the romans apparently embraced this association. in her landmark study The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, amy richlin notes that:

… As the Romans believed satire to be quintessentially Roman (Quint. Inst. 10.1.93), so the arenas of sexual humor [in satire] derive from certain Roman local institutions: politics, the law courts, public spectacles, and the recital halls…. Some meters [of satire] – the versus quadratus (trochaic septenarius) and scazons – were so closely associated with sexual humor or with invective that their names could be used to denote the topic (64–5).

Sexually descriptive language and sexual invective were not ubiquitous in roman literature; they were restricted in their uses to certain occasions and genres, such as satire. Sexually descriptive language takes on additional power because of this restriction.

When employing sexually charged language, the roman satirist positions himself as a scourger of vice, and as richlin points out, as such he must remain aloof from the target he castigates if he is to maintain credibility. the roman satirist, for all of his engagement of sexual language and vice, must not appear debauched. In addition to this, the aggressive Roman satirist (such as Juvenal) works in extremes; he opposes one extreme to another. thus, if the target of the satire is effeminate, the satirist who attacks it must be virile; if the target is debauched, the satirist must be chaste (183). As Richlin notes:

the persona of the narrator is similar for all the types of roman sexual humor. not only is he male and roman, he is on the offensive…. the message of even the mildest sexual humor is: look what these others are up to. But much of this humor is not mild, and the element of threat is correspondingly great (65).

The satirist’s aggression (“he is on the offensive”) is central to his purpose. He uses aggressive, sexually descriptive language to castigate and thereby correct his target. in order to be effective, however, the satirist must position himself as a normative figure and define his targets against himself. Thus he is quick to define himself as morally upright, like Martial in his introduction to Book i, “lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba” – [“wanton is my page; my life is good”] (32). In his castigation of vice and his distancing himself from debauchery, the satirist has much in common with his contemporary figure in Roman literature, the stoic. The stoic is by definition a man detached from the desires of his world (particularly sexual desires), and this detachment provides the stoic satirist with a privileged position from which to attack. this tradition of stoicism will inform the writing of english satire, as well.

Introduction 9

We see this posture of stoic detachment enacted repeatedly in english satire, although the satirists of the english renaissance, especially the dramatic satirists, engage this posture with a difference. in renaissance dramatic satire the posture of stoic detachment, when it is adopted, is often unmasked by the play as the product of radically different emotional and political circumstances: it becomes a defense as much as a moral attitude. Satirist figures such as Vindice in The Revenger’s Tragedy use the guise of stoicism as a means of distancing themselves from the apparently discomfiting effects of desire. The stoic posture here resembles that of the classical satirist, except that in the case of the Renaissance satirist figure the posture is exposed and undercut by dramatic circumstance.8

Part of the force of the sexual, especially sexually descriptive language, lies in this exposure and undercutting of the satirist figure’s stoic (or moralist) posture. Sexually descriptive language, especially mockery and sexual slander, has power: the power to seduce, insinuate and destabilize. This power is particularly suited to satiric aggression, and particularly suited to the cultural instabilities of renaissance society. this is an issue which i will explore in more detail in the coming chapters.

the association of stoicism and satire on the renaissance stage has its antecedent in roman satire, as well. at times the roman satirist and the stoic are more than merely similar, they are indistinguishable. the best example of this is Seneca the younger, who embodies the dichotomy of the roman satirist – the ascetic who engages debauchery, the philosopher who constructs corrupt dramatic worlds in order to castigate the crime and folly he sees around him.9 in this castigation the tragedies of Seneca may be read as having satiric elements, even if scholars have not conventionally done so. the plays have in common dramatic landscapes in which the force of unchecked passion brings men and women to bloody grief; the jealous rage of Medea results in the deaths of her children, while the fury of atreus produces such cosmic disorder that it literally blots out the sun. the playwright uses his dramatic art as a vehicle, then, to express his moral perspective and, specifically, to attack crime (in this case unchecked passion) as he sees it. Read in this light, the tragedies of Seneca are, if not satiric tragedies, at least tragedies which evince satire as one part of their dramatic texture.10

8 gordon Braden’s Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition (Yale, 1985) acknowledges the impact of stoicism on both Shakespeare and Webster, while robert evans addresses the philosophy’s impact on the drama of Ben Jonson in his Jonson, Lipsius, and the Politics of Renaissance Stoicism (Wakefield 1992).

9 another dichotomy embodied in the character of Seneca may be found in the charges of corruption leveled against him during the reign of the emperor claudius, as addressed in the Annales of tacitus. tacitus. The Annals of Imperial Rome. trans. Michal Grant. Penguin: New York, 1989. 304.

10 Braden, while he does not adhere strictly to the reading of the tragedies of Seneca as satiric, does acknowledge the “obvious justifications for such an approach.” He directs the reader to norman Pratt’s Seneca’s Drama, which provides a more thorough overview of this tradition. Braden 29.

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England10

In the figure of Seneca one can see how close are the stoic and the satirist; they are literally the same person. Seneca is, as gordon Braden notes, “the starting point for a distinct and important line in dramatic history that can usefully be spoken of as the Senecan tradition” (62). That tradition encompasses both the satiric and dramatic impulses of the artist, and brings them together in the single entity of dramatic satire. Senecan imitation was so common on the renaissance stage that the satirist thomas nashe mentions him in the preface to robert greene’s Menaphon, famously remarking that: “… english Seneca read by candlelight yields many good sentences – as ‘blood is a beggar” and so forth. and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, i should say handfuls, of tragical speeches.”(85) nashe’s mordant praise attests to the fact that Seneca was still a favorite of renaissance playwrights, presumably because he was a favorite of renaissance audiences. as we have noted, the vehicle through which the roman stoic / satirist such as Juvenal or Seneca attacks his targets is frequently sexually descriptive language, and because renaissance dramatists depended on classical antecedents in general, their approach to satire drew on this ancient roman tradition. as the english satirists strove to emulate their roman models in form and tone, they emulated them in the use of sexually descriptive language, as well.

Style and Substance: The Cankered Muse and the Practice of Satire

this leads us to the question of why the poets of the english renaissance were so drawn to the practice of satire, and indeed what it means to be a satirist. this is a question which has engaged some critical commentary over the years, but the definitive judgment has been largely that of Alvin Kernan that satire is not “merely a literary form” but rather a “basic attitude toward life which eventuates in those gestures and works we call satiric” (viii-ix). In Kernan’s construction, however, this “basic attitude” is presented in a persona through which the satirist “makes every effort to repudiate the Muse” and to emphasize the “down-to-earth quality of himself and his work”; however:

[t]he very vigor of these efforts and their continuous appearance in satire suggest that they are themselves stylistic devices used in a perfectly conventional manner to establish the character and tone traditionally thought appropriate for the satiric genre. Paradoxically, the claim to have no style is itself a trick of style employed by nearly every satirist, and his realistic touches are themselves satiric conventions. (4)

Kernan reads in all satire a set of common traits which suggest similarities among all satirists. these traits include an outsider’s posture, a positioning of the satirist as apart from the corrupted world, as one who is disenfranchised in some appreciable way. this would seem to coincide with what richlin observes of classical satire, and what we might likewise observe of renaissance verse satire.

to Kernan, these common traits suggest that the practice of satire is a constructed performance, that the satirist is a poet merely playing a role and that

Introduction 11

the critic need not, indeed should not, read any further significance into the satiric posture. Kernan cautions that satire is “not a direct report of a poet’s feelings and the literal incidents which aroused those feelings,” but is rather “a construct of symbols – situations, scenes, characters, language” that the satirist assembles to express his “particular vision of the world” (ibid.). in short, satire is merely a persona, a mask which the satirist might take on or put off at will. this view is correct in some cases. one assumes that some of the poets who worked in satire did so not out of any sense of personal injustice or contempt for the corrupted world, but rather as a means of engaging with a fashionable art form. indeed, it seems unlikely that every author listed in the Bishops’ Ban had a burning desire to castigate folly and vice.

Building upon this notion, Kernan writes that it would be “nonsense to argue, as the biographical critic does, that all authors of satire are straightforward, honest, pessimistic, indignant men who dislike ostentatious rhetoric, come from the country, and have simple moral codes”; rather, Kernan sees each of these attributes as “a function of satire itself, and not primarily an attribute of the man who writes satire” (22). Kernan makes a compelling point, but I find his explanation of satire insufficient to explain the kind of violent, sexually charged satiric rhetoric we see in some renaissance satiric verse and in the most powerful of the renaissance satiric tragedies. indeed, in order to explain that virulence we must look back to the writings of one prominent renaissance satirist, george gascoigne, who provides a different, but compelling, insight into the satirist’s craft.

We see in the tradition of roman satire a tension between the aggressive and corrective impulses of satire, a tension which may help to in part explain the subsequent close association of satire and tragedy. there is a real violence in satire, at least when it is at its most aggressive and sexually charged, and we see a similar violence in tragedy. the violence in satire is directed against the target, but it is also a force larger than any specific target, a force so large that it threatens to engulf the society in which the satirist operates and even the satirist himself. this may partially explain why the satirist is so often vulnerable to charges of sedition and why his satire so frequently takes the form of self-loathing. This violence is explored more clearly in satiric drama than in verse satire, since its performative aspects are highlighted. in satiric drama the satiric process and the posture of satire are themselves dramatized, shown to be, as Kernan might suggest, one posture among others. Before we can address this posture, however, we must return momentarily to the bishop’s ban and the tradition of satiric tragedy which followed it.

Back to the Bishop’s Ban: The Fall of English Satire and the Rise of Satiric Tragedy

all of the great satirists of the late sixteenth century wrote satires after the model of Juvenal, filled with invective and engaged with both public and private vice. The bishops’ ban of 1599 changed all of that. On the first of June, the listing of banned texts was posted and a few days later the texts were collected and burned.

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England12

the decree states no reason for the ban. three days later a second document was posted listing the banned texts that had been destroyed, as well as a handful of texts that had been granted reprieve.11

It is difficult to say with any certainty why certain texts did not escape the flames; there is no evidence on which to base judgment. Scholars have traditionally maintained that the bishops’ ban was an injunction against satire alone and that any texts which were banned were so banned owing to some measure of satiric content. this view, however, is not entirely satisfactory. as Boose has noted, many of the banned texts do not appear to have been satiric at all. She suggests another strain of thinking on the matter which holds that the satires in question were banned because they were not only seditious; they were also salacious.12 Some of the banned volumes listed on the decree are not, at least nominally, satires at all; they are merely pornography.

that might have been reason enough for the censors to ban them. the Elizabethan censors apparently tended to conflate the salacious with the satiric in their condemnations. Perhaps this is nowhere better illustrated than in the case of George Gascoigne. In 1575, Gascoigne courted state injunction when he attempted to circumvent the censors by publishing his poetry himself in order to circulate it to a broader and less discriminating audience. the poet had already been censored in 1573 for his “wanton speech and lascivious phrase” in his collection of poems A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, and he tried unsuccessfully two years later to publish a slightly edited version in the form of The Posies of George Gascoigne. this text was not accepted for publication either, probably because the poet referred to it in text as his “Poemata Castrata, gelded from all filthy phrases.” The remark was subtle, but apparently pointed enough to further irk the already irritated censors. as Boose writes:

What seems to be crucial in the Gascoigne case is that he was one of the first tudor poets to breach courtly decorum by publishing his own work, thus explicitly seeking a wider, less elite readership than manuscript circulation could afford. in doing so, he announced his intention to disseminate to a mass readership a book that contained as sexualized a discourse as anything yet written:

…. [B]ecause he had used an amoral, sexualized narrative set in contemporary time and inscribed within a loose allegory of courtiership as a form of complex courtesanship, the work apparently invited the kind of intrigue that condemned it to be read as libelous …. (191).

11 among the texts which were granted reprieve were the Caltha Poetarum, Hall’s Satires and Willobie’s Adviso. among the books which were burned were included Pygmalion, The scourge of vilany, the shadow of truth, Snarlinge Satires, davies’ Epigrams, Marriage and wyvinge, and Joyes of Marriage (Boose 189).

12 See Bruce Smith’s Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England in which the author notes that the bishops “knew how easily scourgers could be seduced by their sexual subjects and how easily the seducers could turn into scourgers of moral authority” (Smith 164).

Introduction 13

The Elizabethan censors were apparently at least as concerned with how Gascoigne’s book could be perceived as they were with its actual intention, especially since the poet was planning to publish the text, rather than simply circulating it in a manuscript. in doing this, gascoigne essentially created a new site for satire – the site of hostile sexual language, i.e. sexualized satire (ibid.).

Gascoigne’s engagement with sexualized satire is not merely an interesting literary matter in itself; it also provides a potential framework for the later uses of sexually descriptive language in satiric tragedy. gascoigne used sexually descriptive language initially to titillate and amuse his audience, and later to claim a kind of moral position from which to attack vice. Finally, by the end of his career, embittered by his experiences with censorship, he used it to express violent frustration and discontent. a closer examination of gascoigne’s circumstances makes this clearer.

gascoigne’s literary career was closely bound to the court; practically everything he wrote in his later career was intended to curry its favor. He finally succeeded in this in 1575 when, following his performance at the Kenilworth pageants, he was rewarded with a royal commission. However, as richard Mccoy has noted, gascoigne’s “creative autonomy diminished as his proximity to power increased” (31). He strove mightily to achieve preferment, and the cost of that preferment was, largely, the surrender of his creative and poetic identity, an identity which had been vital, satiric and aggressively erotic. it is worth noting, however, that gascoigne did not surrender that identity without a fight, at least not immediately.

The Raysor of Restrainte: The Satiric Seity of George Gascoigne

When Flowres was initially published in 1573, it was condemned on the grounds of slander and obscenity, or as gascoigne himself describes it in his prefatory letter to the verses, addressed to “the reverende divines,” “some of [the verses] have not onely bene offensive for sundrie wanton speeches and lascivious phrases, but further I heare that the same have beene doubtfully construed, and (therefore) scandalous” (3). The verses were apparently “scandalous” as much for their thinly veiled satires of court life (and potentially recognizable court figures) as for their obscenity, and were perhaps most “scandalous” for the ways in which they brought the two qualities together.13 the primary source of contention in the verses appears to have been the lengthy narrative The Adventures of Master F. J., a bawdy and spirited story of courtship and sexual deception in which the author appropriates the framework of courtly conduct and preferment, melding together the social and the sexual in a manner which the censors could not abide.

The Adventures of Master F. J. tells of the courtship between the titular character and his mistress, Elinor. F. J. sends verses to his mistress and she purports not to

13 gascoigne obliquely addresses this concern in his letter to the “reverende divines” in which he acknowledges that some readers have been moved to “busie conjecture” regarding the identities of his poetic creations (7).

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England14

understand them, largely because the verses are rhetorically convoluted. this is not surprising, since the culture of social and linguistic expression at court was predicated on duplicity and misdirection.14 in keeping with the conventions of courtly discourse, F. J. dissembles his intentions and Elinor pretends to mistake them. As McCoy notes, the lovers’ exchanges are characterized by “the lapse of clever innuendo into confusing mystification” almost from the outset of the narrative (34).

in The Adventures of Master F. J., romantic compliment becomes a means of securing courtly favor. indeed, the entire apparatus of courtly interaction is constructed as an elaborate game of seduction. the narrative is intensely concerned with the construction of identity through language, particularly through the use of language to intentionally misdirect. the narrative is playful, to be certain, but in the midst of its play it expresses a common condemnation of court life, one familiar to any reader of Jacobean satiric tragedy: the court is consummately deceptive. Denizens of the court speak in flatteries, riddles or evasions, but they never speak the plain truth. there is also an apparent core of dissatisfaction in the work; indeed, the author submitted his narrative twice for publication. In the first version F.J., rejected by his lover, declares that the “Sea hath fish for every man” and resolves to laugh at his mistress when she is eventually stranded by the “tydes of turning time.” The second version features a darker ending in which F. J. dies of his debaucheries and the author claims to have related his tale to serve as an “ensample to warne the youthfulle reader” away from sexual vice (McCoy 38). This second ending suggests in “The Adventures of Master F. J.” a note of satire, or at least a note of ambiguity. the author seems to be attempting in this poem to do two things simultaneously: to tell a story of playful and sometimes comic eroticism while simultaneously delivering a moral exemplum in the fashion of a satirist.

the second version of gascoigne’s narrative expresses an obvious dissatisfaction with the dissipations of court life, but this dissatisfaction is also faintly embedded in the first version of the poem. In both versions we see F. J. frustrated and growing more sexually aggressive as his love affair with elinor degenerates. at one point he actually rapes her (although she treats this as part of their courtship game). In both versions of the story, the characters are depicted as being trapped by their coy language and sexual inconstancy and in both versions of the story the fruits of their love affair are betrayal and dissatisfaction. “The Adventures of Master F. J.” can then be read as what Salzman calls “a comedy of manners with a sting in its tale” (xi). it might also be read as a witty, erotically charged social satire.

Witty though “The Adventures of Master F. J.” is, the Elizabethan censors did not find it amusing. It was outlawed as soon as it was published. Two years later, perhaps emboldened by his newfound preferment, gascoigne resubmitted the work

14 in his study entitled Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England (Princeton, 1978) Daniel Jarvitch argues that “the effectiveness and appeal of duplicity in court conduct” lent itself to a privileging of rhetorical ambiguity (Jarvitch 66).

Introduction 15

with a few minor revisions. this new collection of verses, he declared in his letter to the censors, was “poemata castrata” which their “reverend judgements” would find “gelded of all filthie phrases” (6). The poet’s assurances notwithstanding, the verses had not in fact been gelded; indeed, they had scarcely been circumcised and they were once again rejected in 1575. The poet never again submitted the verses for publication. as Mccoy writes:

Elizabethan orthodoxy required a more abject surrender, and Gascoigne complied with such works as The Droome of Doomesday. For the remainder of his short literary career, he cranked out works which were either grimly moralistic or insipidly occasional. His virtue was rewarded with government patronage and employment, a somewhat happy ending briefly enjoyed before his death in 1577 (32).

the rest of gascoigne’s poetic output consisted almost exclusively of “primly moralistic, didactic treatises” like the aforementioned “the droome of doomes Day” and “A Delicate Diet, for Daintiemouthde Droonkardes” (Boose 190). the works are conventional and largely uninteresting, with perhaps one notable exception.

that exception is a lengthy verse satire entitled “the Steele glas,” a work dismissed by Boose as “insipidly moralistic” and yet nevertheless one whose vitality rivals anything the poet produced in his youth. in this lengthy poem, the poet gives evidence once again of the energy and poetic sensibility he had displayed in “The Adventures of Master F. J.”, albeit in a different vein.

The speaker of the satire is Satyra, a creature of indeterminate gender (in ded a dame, / Or at the least, a right Hermaphrodite) and the child of “Playne dealyng” and “Simplycitie.” Satyra’s twin sister is “pleasant Poesy” who marries a “lusty ladde” named “vayne delight.” gascoigne speaks obliquely of vayne delight’s origins, noting that he was reared in a place “where pleasures did abound” and adding as an aside, “I dare not say at court for both myne eares.” the poet makes here a wry allusion to the conventional punishment for slander, a mutilation the specter of which will haunt the satire to its conclusion. the voice of this poem is not the cowed court toady familiar from the poet’s other later works; rather, it is aggressive and mordantly confrontational. as the satire progresses, it becomes even more so.

Vayne delight marries Poesy and takes her away from her sister, Satyra. Poesy, growing lonely, sends vayne delight to seek her sister and bring her back. He does find her, and while he has her “farre from friendly help” he rapes her. at this point Slander arrives on the scene like an unscrupulous defense attorney and claims that Satyra has “entist Delight,” and as a result Satyra is confined “in cage of Myserie.” Not content with these two violations, rape and confinement, vayne Delight proceeds to “cut out [her] tong, with raysor of restraynte / Lest [she] shoulde wray, this bloudy deede of his.” even after she has lost her tongue, however, Satyra is able to “sing a verse” to “reprovers deedes reprove.” Her rhetorical powers are curtailed, but they are not entirely eliminated. the entire narrative echoes closely the ovidian myth of Philomela, albeit twisted to a darker allegorical purpose.

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England16

It is difficult to mistake the poet’s intention here. In this satire, he appropriates the conventional trappings of didactic allegory (as satiric tragedians would do in the generation following, most prominently perhaps thomas Middleton in The Revenger’s Tragedy) and refashions them into something more brutal and more frighteningly aggressive than anything his readers could have expected. the erotic wordplay of gascoigne’s earlier poetry is transformed into allegory that is anything but erotic; the slyly alluded sexual dalliances of “the adventures of Master F. J.” become a violent rape (as opposed to the courtship game of that narrative) while the playful phallic imagery of that poem is transformed into a horrifying mutilation, a metaphoric castration of satire by the “raysor of restrainte.”

the poet here presents a particularly interesting study in the circulation of violent aggression around the question of satire. indeed, the narrative of “the Steele glas” creates a new mythology, in this case a mythology explaining the origins of satire in sexual aggression. Satire, in this mythology, is the product of simplicity; it is provoked to expression by the willful outrages of vanity. the child of simplicity cannot abide the crimes of vanity; they represent an intimate violation, a rape, and they move satire, or perhaps the satirist, to reaction. Vanity cannot stand to suffer correction for its crimes, however, and employs slander against the satirist. Slander then robs satire of its power by enforcing of restraint, which censors the satirist and allows vanity to escape his strongest censure. the restrained satirist can still attack vanity, but not with his full force.

this narrative is telling for a number of reasons. First, it exposes how gascoigne, a satirist, sees himself. Second, it provides a vision of the function and capabilities of satire in the larger world. lastly, and arguably most importantly, it highlights the close relationship that the satirist sees between the practice of satire and sexual aggression, a relationship which we have seen already in the roman tradition as well as in the Elizabethan tradition and which we will see revisited throughout the satiric tragic cycle of the early seventeenth century. in gascoigne’s construction, sexual aggression and satire are fundamentally linked because satire is born out of sexual aggression. in this instance, of course, sexual aggression is directed toward Satyra; it does not spring from her. By presenting the narrative in this way, Gascoigne makes Satyra a victim, and in so doing perhaps justifies some of the vicious sexualized rhetoric the satirist will employ.

as gascoigne’s poem progresses, the author contemplates the nature of satire, the “looking glasse” in which “euery wight” can see his imperfections reflected. He contemplates the various glasses that might serve for the composition of satire, such as “common glasse,” “Berral glasse” (with “foyles of louely brown”), and “christal glas” which “shewes the thing, much better than it is”, before finally rejecting all of them as too mild and flattering to reflect the current debased age. Finally, he decides upon “the steele glas” that “lucylius” bequeathed to those “that loue to see themselues.”

Having settled upon his “trustie glasse of steele” the poet does something remarkable, at least by the standards of sixteenth century verse satire. He looks directly into the steel glass himself, allowing it to reflect him in all of his

Introduction 17

imperfections. He sees his “folike fauor frounst / With foule abuse” and notes his reflections as those of a “Philosopher, foolishly foredone.” He is so disgusted at the image reflected in the glass, an image “so much vnlike that I most seemed” that it is only the force of reason that keeps him from “defac[ing]” the face and casting his corpse “downe headlong in dispaire (149).”

Such naked, aggressive self-loathing is rare in English verse satire; it reflects a sentiment frequently implied but seldom articulated, that the satirist is himself corrupted and debased. gascoigne’s satiric vision is pitilessly inclusive, enveloping himself along with his intended targets. We see in this spirit of inclusion a forebear of the great satirist figures of seventeenth century satiric tragedy, figures such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Middleton’s Vindice and deFlores, and Webster’s Bosola, who express a scarcely concealed (and sometimes, as in the cases of Hamlet and Bosola, unconcealed) self-loathing as they rhetorically (and physically) attack their corrupted targets.

Whence then stems this peculiar self-loathing? Such critics as have addressed the issue have been more or less in agreement that the source of gascoigne’s rage in The Steele Glas is a feeling of constraint, of disappointment and frustration born out of his social and material conditions. gascoigne, like those satiric dramatists who followed after him (including Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Webster), was the product of a middling social background. He was an eldest son who enjoyed the benefit of a strong education, first at Cambridge and then later at the Middle temple at the inns of court. despite his education, however, he was not able to secure a firm place at court and turned instead to military service, as a mercenary in England’s wars against the Dutch. When he finally did achieve some small measure of the preferment he sought, the triumph was bittersweet. as richard Mccoy notes:

gascoigne was rewarded for his surrender of creative autonomy with courtly patronage and employment, and, while his works lost their literary vitality, they functioned more effectively as forms of self-promotion. Nevertheless, feelings of servility and emasculation marred his ascent….He inveighs bitterly in “the Steele glas” against the court, the “raysor of restrainte,” and nearly every Elizabethan social institution, but he still cannot escape their thrall.…Courtly success had its rewards, but the costs to Gascoigne’s self-esteem and art were also palpable (52).

“The Steele Glas” reflects Gascoigne’s dissatisfaction with the costs of his rewards and his larger social circumstance, and he expresses that dissatisfaction through aggressively sexualized satire. Gascoigne was forced to censor himself, to fit into a narrow stricture of poetic decorum and, if the brutal and aggressively sexual satire of The Steele Glas is any indication, that stricture chafed him bitterly.

In “The Adventures of Master F. J.”, Gascoigne deploys a subtle satire against court life, but his satire is divided. it is both a condemnation and an engagement of erotic play, and this division creates tension. the tension makes for a narrative that is uneasy in some respects, but it also provides that narrative with much of

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England18

its energy. in the poet’s later works, such as “the Steele glas,” there is also a division. the poet takes the role of Satyra, the victim who is raped, mutilated and abandoned, but he is also the aggressor, the satirist who can “reprovers deedes reprove” in the form of satiric attack. in his verses, gascoigne uses sexually descriptive language, that is to say language which describes the acts of sex, be it erotic sexual metaphor (as when he describes F. J.’s seduction of Elinor as the lending of “a pen”) or violent sexual narrative (as when he describes vayne delight’s rape and metaphoric castration of Satyra) as a means of enjoying two sets of benefits. The use of sexual language allows Gascoigne to play both the erotic poet and the moralist, both the victim of abuse and the satiric aggressor. gascoigne uses the complexities of sexual language to facilitate these dualities he enjoys, and he is not alone in this.

Power and Persona: Gascoigne and the Satirist’s Art

How, then, are we to read gascoigne’s myth of satiric origins in the face of Kernan’s judgment? is gascoigne’s bitter, haunting narrative of violation and mutilation merely a function of his satiric persona, an attempt to engage with the fashionable poetic genre of the late sixteenth century? Kernan tells us that “[w]e never find characters in satire, only caricatures…,” but a closer examination of The Steel Glas belies this assessment (23). Gascoigne’s satiric persona in that work is recognizably human, achingly so. Indeed, Gascoigne’s Ovidian etiological myth demonstrates for us the limitations of Kernan’s perspective on satire as a “mask” or a controlled rhetorical strategy. gascoigne’s speaker in “the Steele glas” seems rather to be on the verge of losing control; he is violently emotional and driven to self-destruction. There is a strong sense in the satire not of fashionable melancholy but of real melancholy, a dejection that is consummate. gascoigne’s speaker does not posture for his audience, indeed does not engage with any of the conventional elements of fashionable satiric verse.

in gascoigne’s construction, satire is produced not by fashion or the desire to invoke classical models, nor is it provoked by disgust with the larger world; rather, it is produced by frustrated outrage. indeed, satire is an all but impotent gesture, one that is not chosen but rather compelled. the satirist is not attracted to his profession by fashion; he is constrained to it. in gascoigne’s construction, satire is neither a mask nor a persona; it is an almost plaintive whistle, a weak and desperate protest against the intolerable brutality of the world.

Leud Priapians: The Mordant Morality of John Marston

as we have established, among the most prominent of the satiric dramatists were men who had formerly written verse satire. John Marston might be our best starting point here, providing some of the most immediately accessible examples of sexually descriptive language used for social satire. like many of his fellow satiric dramatists, Marston was “[p]rimed by a cultivation, characteristic of the

Introduction 19

Inns [of Court], of radical ideas in philosophy, politics, and the arts” (Sturgess vii) and put these ideas into practice in literature.

Marston provides a useful counterpoint to gascoigne here because while he, like gascoigne, worked in verse satire, unlike gascoigne he was not beholden to court politics, at least not to the same extent. Marston, like gascoigne, uses the framework of erotic poetry to deploy a sexualized satire, but unlike Gascoigne, Marston eventually drops the facade of the erotic poet and presents his satire in all of its naked aggression. an overview of some of his work might make this clearer.

the earliest of Marston’s literary efforts which survives is a book entitled The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s Image and Certain Satires, published in 1598. It includes the titular Ovidian imitation as well as five satires: satires one through three, a verse entitled “Reactio” (a satire on Marston’s rival Joseph Hall), and satire number four. of these, the most immediately interesting to our purpose is “the Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s image,” a poem which has much to say about the relationship between sex and satire, as well as between satirist and audience.

“the Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s image” is a curious poem, at least when regarded on its literary merits. as arnold davenport writes:

nobody has found much to praise in it, and it is generally agreed that it is one of the poorest of the Ovidian, mythological, erotic poems of the late Elizabethan period….it cannot for a moment stand comparison with either [Shakespeare or Marlowe], and indeed, as poetry, it is negligible; but it is an interesting work because its tone and purpose are in dispute (7).

Specifically, the dispute centers on whether Marston himself intended the poem to be a straight ovidan imitation, the purpose of which would ostensibly be titillation, or whether he was aiming at the more sophisticated purpose of reflexive satire, i.e. a satire against his own readers.

Whatever Marston’s purpose, one thing which is not in doubt is the poem’s erotic content. this is hinted in the poem’s dedication to “tHe WorldS MigHtie MONARCH, GOOD OPINION,” the “soule of Pleasure” whom “fleshly Epicures call Vertues essence.” it is made explicit in the poem’s invocation of the “wanton Muse” who “lasciuiously doth sing / of sportiue loue” and “louely dallying.” the poem retells the myth of Pygmalion in detail, lingering on descriptions of galatea’s lips, like which “no lips did seeme so faire” with “So sweet a breath, that doth perfume the ayre” and her breasts, which “like polisht iuory appeare” to Pygmalion’s “admiring eye.” He spends another full stanza describing “Loues pauillion: / Where cupid doth enjoy his onely crowne” and declares that the artist’s eyes “would gladly there remaine.”

In the tenth stanza, Marston abruptly changes his tone when he asks:

Who euer saw the subtile Citty-damein sacred church, when her pure thoughts shold pray,Piere through her fingers, so to hide her shame,When that her eye, her mind would faine bewray.So woulde he view, and winke, and view againe,A chaster thought could not his eyes retaine (54).

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England20

The placement of this stanza seems, at least at first reading, strangely amiss in an ovidian imitation. the poet breaks from his erotic description seemingly as it is reaching the zenith of its intensity (i.e. at the description of “loues pauillion”), tearing his reader away from the voyeuristic pleasures of description to insert a mini-sermon castigating the vice of those (particularly women) who do not hold “pure thoughts” in “sacred church.” the effect of this cannot be but to shame the reader, but it is a shame that the poet has deliberately constructed.

as the poem continues, it becomes progressively more physical, and the poet recounts the artist’s prayer to Venus to grant his beloved life. Venus complies and transforms the statue into flesh so that Pygmalion might consummate his desire for her. However, just at the moment at which one might expect the poem to move out of the realm of the erotic and into the realm of the pornographic, describing the sex act between the artist and his newly living love, the poet draws back. He declares in stanza thirty-three:

and now me thinks some wanton itching eareWith lustfull thoughts, and ill attention,list’s to my Muse, expecting for to hearethe amorous description of that actionWhich Venus seekes, and euer doth require,When fitness graunts a place to please desire.

Again, as previously in stanza ten, the poet interrupts his erotic narrative at just the moment when a reader should be most titillated. in this case, the poet leads the reader to the point in the narrative at which he might likely expect to encounter an explicit description of sexual intercourse, and then he brings the narrative to a halt. instead of providing a pornographic description, Marston issues castigation, chiding the “wanton itching eare” which with “lustfull thoughts and ill attention” anticipates the “amorous description of that action / Which Venus seekes….” In this stanza the poet is directly chiding the reader for his lecherous thoughts, deploying a kind of satire in miniature within the poem. By embedding the satire within the stanzas of his erotic poem, however, Marston has manipulated the reader’s response, setting the reader up to read lecherously specifically so that he can chide him for that reading.

this seems a consummate hypocrisy, but the purpose of this hypocrisy is to highlight another switch-point between aggression and sexual feeling: an aggression expressed through the deployment of sexually descriptive language. it is an aggression we have encountered previously in the writings of gascoigne, albeit to a different effect. the erotic longings aroused by “the Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s image” reach such a powerful level of intensity that, unable to realize themselves in explicit pornography, they can only be discharged as moralizing aggression. There is a duality embodied in Marston’s use of sexually descriptive language here, distinct from the duality we see in gascoigne, but nevertheless related to it. the poet here exposes the close relationship between the erotic and the aggressive, in this case the drive to provoke lechery and the

Introduction 21

desire to castigate it. In this poem, sexual desire that cannot be realized must be transmuted into satiric aggression.

as the poem progresses, Marston employs the ovidian convention of providing a voluptuous description and then suggesting that he has refrained from providing it for the sake of decency. Thus in stanza thirty-five he describes “kind kissing, and more kind embracing” and “the life of dallying” before asking the reader “could he abstaine mid’st such a wanton sporting / From doing that, which is not fit reporting?” After describing the ways in which “arms, eyes, hands, tong, lips & wanton thigh, / Were willing agents in loues luxurie,” he turns suddenly coy in stanza thirty-eight, asking the reader “Who knows not what ensues?” and mordantly entreating him:

…o pardon meyee gaping eares that swallow vp my linesexpect no more. Peace idle Poesie,Be not obsceane though wanton in thy rhimes.and chaster thoughts, pardon if i doe trip,Or if some loose lines from my pen doe slip, … (61).

the effect of this, of course, is to lead the reader purposefully into a lascivious reading and then suggest that the reader is flawed for following that lead. The poet chides the “gaping eares” of his readers and draws a distinction between the “wanton” descriptions he has provided and the “obsceane” description which his reader apparently desires.

Why does he do this? the poet effectively exposes his intent in the poem immediately following “the Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s image,” a verse entitled, appropriately enough, “the author in prayse of his precedent Poem” in which the poet abruptly abandons his posture of the erotic poet and turns aggressively satiric. He poses the question: “Hath not my Muse deseru’d a worthy place?” He entreats “luxurio” to “crowne my head with Bayes,” which “wantonly displayes / the Salaminian titillations, / Which tickle vp our leud Priapians.” Here all pretense of erotic titillation has been dropped and the author reveals himself to have been perpetrating a kind of satiric practical joke on his reader, crafting a poem fitted to the “swaggering humor of these times.” He goes on to liken his stanzas to “odd bands / Of voluntaries, and mercenarians” “bedight in warlike equipage; / glittering in dawbed lace accoutrements, / and pleasing sutes of loues habiliments” which, although “puffie as Dutch hose they are within, / Faint, and white liuered as our gallants bin,” “patched like a beggars cloake….” the suggestion here is that the poet’s intention in “Pigmalion” was not, in fact, to titillate but rather to expose and aggressively ridicule the “swaggering humor of these times” and, by extension, those readers who seek it out (Weiss). The poet expresses obvious pride in his satiric achievement, entreating “augustus” to “crowne [his] laureate quill” and in his final stanza making the declaration: “Now by the whyps of epigramatists, / ile not be lasht for my dissembling shifts.”

indeed, rather than be “lasht” for his lewd and disingenuous verses, the poet, like Gascoigne before him, takes the initiative and lashes himself, issuing a reflexive

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England22

attack in the final stanza which seemingly anticipates whatever condemnation his enemies might make of his work. He states his intention to “censure [him] selfe, fore others [him] deride / and scoffe at [him]” as if he had “thought [his] Poem good.” The poet acknowledges that his “lines are froth” and his “stanzaes saplesse be.” the motivation for this strange attack on himself is made clear at the poem’s conclusion, when the poet declares:

thus hauing rail’d against my selfe a while,ile snarle at those, which doe the world beguileWith masked showes. ye changing Proteans list,And tremble at a barking Satyrist (66).

if we take the poet’s assertion at face value, “the Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s image” becomes, not a serious erotic ovidian imitation, but rather an odd experiment in reflexive satire, ridiculing the reader’s lewd desires which the poet himself has worked to stimulate. the satirist compromises himself for the sake of attacking his reader and the “swaggering humor of these times” in which he lives. He commits in his poem the very offense which he would castigate, debasing himself so that he might attack the debasement of his reader. His attack is aggressive in the extreme. indeed, it “snarl[s]” and “bark[s]”, threatening its targets and bading them “tremble.”

Significantly, even in his rage the poet acknowledges his own debasement. After congratulating himself on the supreme achievement of his satire in line thirty-four (“Come, come Augustus …”) he shifts his tone in the last stanza to condemn himself, “lash[ing]” his own “froth[y] lines and “saplesse” stanzas. The tone shift in this stanza is palpable and, the poet implies, done to a purpose beyond simply indulging his rage. By first attacking himself, the poet not only anticipates and thus deflects potential criticism; he also primes himself to attack others. Having indulged in the vice of frivolous and lascivious poetry and condemned himself for it accordingly, he is now primed to “snarle at those, which doe the world beguile.” There a tone of aggressive self-loathing evident in the poem, a tone which spills over into his aggression toward the larger world.

the starting point of Marston’s satire then seems to be a loathing of himself as a product of the age which he condemns. By writing “the Metamohrphosis of Pigmalion’s image,” Marston deliberately sets himself up as a product of his debased age, as one who understands the “fashion” which he is preparing to attack. the effect of this is perhaps disconcerting, but it establishes a tone for the satires which are to follow. consider the example of his Satire i, the satire which opens with the declaration “i cannot show in strange proportion, / changing my hew like a camelion.” this poem picks up where the previous poem left off, chiding the “changing Proteans” and setting the satirist’s persona apart from them. the poet’s targets are “Proteans,” but he himself is constant. there is an irony here, however, because the poet has himself proven Protean, shifting in “the Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s image” from seemingly straight ovidian imitation to aggressive satire, from the provocation of erotic desire to its castigation. the satirist has employed

Introduction 23

two voices in the narrative, and it is left to the reader to attempt to discern which of the two, if either, is legitimate.

For the remainder of Satire i, the poet maintains his posture as satiric moralist, attacking vices such as greed, profligacy and, especially, lechery. The most prominent attack on this latter occurs in the poet’s presentation of “great tubrio,” with his “golden jerkin” and “royal arming coat” whose “resolution / Pricks him” (emphasis mine) to embark on a military campaign. The poet describes this course of action in elevated language before declaring:

… not long since did i viewthe man betake him to a common stew;And there (I wis), like no quaint stomach’d man,eats up his arms; and war’s munition,His waving plume, falls in the broker’s chest….Thou that didst fear to eat poor-johns a space,lie close, ye slave, at beastly luxury!Melt and consume in pleasure’s surquedry!But now, thou that didst march with Spanish pike before,Come with French pox out of that brothel door (267).

Marston here uses sexually descriptive language in order to attack and reduce his pompous target, in this case a specific target representing a broader social type. tubrio is the ostensible warrior who is transformed by his sexual crime. the prick which motivates him is not the prick of honor, but rather his own lecherous desire. the brothel converts his supposed honor into baseness, and converts the trappings of that honor—his finery and his arms—into cash. In both of these instances, sex is the catalyst for transformation. indeed, sex becomes the currency for tubrio’s debasement, the very medium of negative translation. Sex is itself both crime and weapon of castigation, because it is consuming.

the sexually descriptive language which the satirist uses here exposes the duality of the character, specifically the gap between his appearance and his reality. Despite the trappings of honor in which he wraps himself (the “golden jerkin” and “royal arming coat”), “great tubrio” is a syphilitic clown. He is an example of that class of englishmen who have wealth without tradition and without merit, and the fact that he claims the honor of a military campaign to cover the fact that he is seeking treatment for the pox only heightens the distinction between his pretense and his reality and makes him more ridiculous. Marston goes on to describe how tubrio claimed to have seen “‘Hot service’” in essex’ expedition to Cadiz, when in reality the hot service he has seen has been the treatment for The Pox, presumably in a sweating tub.

in this instance we see the satirist using sexually descriptive language to aggressively attack the pretense and deceit of a specific character, and in so doing levying a larger condemnation on a recognizable element of his society. At the same time, the language allows the poet to expose the character’s duality, specifically the separation between his appearance and his reality. in this separation the character

Sex and Satiric Tragedy in Early Modern England24

is not perhaps so far removed from the persona of Marston himself, who creates a disconnect between what he initially represents himself to be (an erotic poet) and what he apparently is (an aggressive satirist).

in addition to this, the use of sexually descriptive language, in this case the language of sexual ridicule, provides him with a rhetoric which enables him to deploy his satire to a comic effect. indeed, the satirist declares at the end of the stanza “O hold my sides! That I may break my spleen / With laughter at the shadows i have seen!” nevertheless, the effect must be complicated by the fact that whatever laughter the reader might direct at the character, he cannot help but recall that he has himself, like the satirist, been ridiculed, as well.

After the Ban: Looking Ahead to Satiric Tragedy

So why then does the satirist mingle his messages in this way? if Marston wishes to deploy aggressive satiric attack, what benefit is there to couching the aggression in sexually descriptive language? Why is so much of the satire we see in the classical tradition, in renaissance verse, and especially on the renaissance stage is so insistently and aggressively sexualized?

as gascoigne’s mythology demonstrates, aggressive satire can hardly help but be sexualized. Satire as a genre is devoted to the exposure and castigation of crime, but a peculiar characteristic of the genre has always been its duality; it engages crime as it exposes it. Sexually descriptive language fits this duality by letting the satirist (like Marston) play the “anti-hero”—being rude, aggressive and sometimes even obscene in the service of virtue.15 Significantly, this is a posture that transcends formal verse satire and turns up in other genres, as well, perhaps most notably in renaissance pornography. the infamous pornographer Pietro aretino adopts this posture in his Dialogues, attacking the corrupted world that his characters inhabit even as he recounts their pornographic experiences. thus, even in pornography we find this odd outbreak of aggression in the midst of sexually descriptive language. the two notions appear to be fundamentally linked from either side, from both the perspective of the moralist and the pornographer.

there is something, then, in sexually descriptive language which lends itself to satiric aggression, and perhaps there is likewise something in satiric aggression that lends itself to expression in sex. The energy of desire engendered by sex is so fierce that if it cannot be realized in actual sexual consummation, it must be expressed in satiric aggression. at the same time, other languages of violent aggression can easily figure themselves as sexual, as The Steele Glas demonstrates. indeed, by

15 Such sentiments were not restricted to satire, at least in the classical tradition. ancient roman Priapea, poems in honor of the god Priapus, frequently took the for