John Ford

The primal bonds of family unite young lovers in John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Opposed to father, state, and church (see Giovanni's atheistic/agnostic comments), as well as the possible exogamous marriages for the young heroine, the brother-sister lovers' violation of the sexual taboo prohibiting incest participates in the play's overall anarchist bent. This bleak tale foregrounds incest with a sympathy almost unique to the period, and so the references to “blood” that proliferate in the text signify both the too-close bonds of kinship between the young lovers and the violence endemic to the plot.

This textual “bloodiness” literally problematizes incest: too-close DNA. Giovanni's early reference to the womb raises the issue of the Elizabethans' view of twin incest in the womb. Giovanni speaks of the first to the Friar: “Say that we had one father, say one womb / (Curse to my joys!) gave us both life and birth; / Are we not therefore each to other bound / So much the more by nature? By the links of blood, of reason?” (1.1.28-32).1 Shelly Errington, in her study of Southeast Asian tribal societies' beliefs that twins had incest in the womb, points out that, for royals, such births did not carry the same stigma as for commoners: “Incest or its compromise act, close marriage, in short, is a statement about status” (403). Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene refers to the same belief: “These twinnes, men say, (a thing far passing thought) / Whiles in their mothers wombe enclosd they were, / Ere they into the lightsome world were brought, / In fleshly lust were mingled both yfere” (Book 3, Canto 7). Giovanni and Annabella, born of the same parents (father and womb), still break an early modern taboo in their sexual relationship, though not in the womb.

Blood suggests equality in other manners, as the gentlemanly suitors use it as a term of rank and social status. Soranzo tells his rival, previous to an insult, “May be thou art / My equal in thy blood” (1.2.39-40). The young bloods desiring to gain some of Florio's property in the form of his daughter's dowry engage in this verbal (and otherwise) jousting to indicate the importance of their evolutionary imperatives. They focus on exogamy, suggesting in contrast to Giovanni's subversive argument that bloodlines need diversity to remain healthy. By turn, Florio, in his rebuke to the suitors, exclaims, “Have you not other places but my house / To vent the spleen of your disordered bloods?” (1.2.24-25). To him, their duels reflect poorly on their nature (their bloods), although, to the suitors, such duels necessarily weed out the inferior.

The violent action that concludes the play also enacts “bloodiness” - the literal spilling of blood and heating of blood in anger that follows the revelation of the incest (too-close blood relations) that has subverted the health of Annabella's exogamous marriage (to promulgate bloodlines). For example, upon learning of Annabella's incest, Soranzo exclaims, “All my blood / Is fired in swift revenge” (4.3.149-50). Giovanni, like his young rivals, also enacts “bloodiness” violently, as does Annabella, only upon her own body, writing a letter in her blood to Giovanni (5.3.31-32). Annabella enacts the ideal of early modern femininity in her repentance, particularly in her acceptance of guilt and shame (compare to Giovanni's defiance!). Annabella internalizes the violence of bloodiness: she takes no vengeance on others.

Blood, therefore, in an incestuous linguistic twinning, metaphorically represents not only existing social structures (the marriage mart), but also the anarchic drive that threatens them (the incest). Giovanni claims for his forbidden love the ultimate power in a blend of incestuous passion and avenging fury: “Here, here, Soranzo, trimmed in reeking blood / That triumphs over death, proud in the spoil / Of love and vengeance!” (5.6.10-12). The triumph of sterile celibacy over fertile sexuality in the conclusion, as the Cardinal claims the goods and possessions of the dead lovers, all of them, and the father too, enacts the ultimate tragedy. Blood thins.

References:

Errington, Shelly. “Incestuous Twins and the House Societies of Insular Southeast Asia.” Cultural Anthropology 2.4 (Nov. 1987): 403-444.

Ford, John. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology. Ed. David Bevington et al. New York: Norton, 2002. 1911-67.

Spenser, Edmund. The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser. London: Grosart, 1882. .

Monday Madwoman: Edith Craig

Edith "Edy" Ailsa Geraldine Craig was the daughter and frequent collaborator of the great Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry (they are pictured together at left). She was a silent film star, a costume designer, an actress, and a theatrical pioneer. She was also a memoirist and museum curator at Smallhythe, her mother's home.  For a time, she was involved in publishing and the feminist bookstore and cultural center the International Suffrage Shop.

In 1919, her Pioneer Players performed Susan Glaspell's feminist classic Trifles (1916), and she oversaw two successful performances in October 1925 of The White Divel at the Scala Theater for the Renaissance Theatre Society. The play had not previously been revived since 1682, according to the production notes.

The Malcontent

M.C. Bradbrook on my favorite:

"Bosola, to the end of his final couplet adds four mysterious words which come from a state far on the other side of despair. 

"Let worthy mindes nere stagger in distrust

To suffer death, or shame, for what is just --

Mine is another voyage.  (5.5.127-9)

Monday Madwoman: Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco

I originally discovered Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco as the author of an essay on Vittoria Accoramboni of The White Devil in her collection Lombard Studies (1902).  (Her picture at left is from that collection.)

Her full name is given as Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington Martinengo Cesaresco, an Englishwoman encountering Italy in the tradition of Ann Radcliffe or John Webster, in fact an Englishwoman who writes apparently exclusively about the country.  In the early 1880s she came to the palace at Salo as a bride, her father-in-law Count Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco.

Webster, the Comedian

Comedies and collaboration.  Alliterative, but do they indeed go together?

For John Webster, the answer seems to have been yes.  His various comedies, such as Anything for a Quiet Life, A Cure for a Cuckold, Northward Ho!, etc., are considered to have been co-written with fellow dramatists such as Middleton and Rowley.

Although I do, of course, most admire the Duchess, it's worth noting a few points that often are glossed over in discussions of Webster:

Attending to Early Modern Women 2012 - Thoughts and Notes

Just some thoughts, notes, ideas, and impressions from an amazing conference:

If you've never been, I highly recommend it, especially if you'll be in the Midwest. It's now located at UW-Milwaukee. What a wonderful privilege to hear from so many senior female scholars. I'm grateful for the kindness of several who took time to speak with me -- including Bernadette Andrea!

This was not my first time at a conference, but this was no ordinary conference. The attendance was mostly female, along with a handful of men including Brian Sandberg, who's also from NIU (History), and who sits on the organizing committee. Loved seeing senior scholars knitting and embroidering in the audiences at the plenary talks. Interesting to watch the differing affects across the levels of power and the way networking was performed. Nerve-wracking to see some of these incredible women in the same room. I learned a lot about the profession just from observing their performances, especially the language and linguistic structures used. There are several plenary sessions where papers are read, and five panel sessions that are workshops in nature, with brief introductions and orienting statements by the panelists and then discussion beginning with some pre-circulated selected texts. My Friday afternoon workshop was particularly interesting to me (at the end).

Deep apologies in advance for the condition of these notes, especially the spelling and capitalization. (Typing on an iPad's touch screen hasn't gotten any easier for me, plus I was working furiously to get it all down.)

From Elizabeth Lehfeldt's plenary talk on Thursday:

Lack of enclosure necessarily transgressive? Male writers of the time would say so, but we don't need to leave that unquestioned. Live in "open reclusion" or "chosen reclusion" -- leave convent or enclosure for business when needed. Convents had secular interests like manners, business, etc. What did that mean? How shape convent as social institution? What was the lived experience?

CFP: Special Issue of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: Contemporary Jacobean Film (deadline: Nov. 1, 2012)

We invite essays from interdisciplinary perspectives that respond (directly or otherwise) to Pascale Aebischer’s discussion of the “preposterous contemporary Jacobean” in discussion of early modern source texts (ca. 1500-1800 – not, for this journal issue, limited to the Jacobean era). Examination of the “contemporary Jacobean” in films might include the use of anachronism, narrative disjunction, radical or extreme subject matter, and irreverence toward their early modern source material. Approaches might include adaptation studies, art history, reception history, genre studies, and historical and theoretical approaches to early modern works and the materials and production of adaptations.

Accepted essays will be published in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Theory and Criticism (Pennsylvania State University Press).

Please send essays no longer than 7500 words to Elizabeth Kelley Bowman, Northern Illinois University (ebowman@niu.edu). The deadline for receipt of essays is November 1, 2012.