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Blood is the argument: discourses of blood, character, and affinity in early modern drama

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Blood is the argument: discourses of blood, character, and affinity in early modern drama

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Content BLOOD IS THE ARGUMENT: DISCOURSES OF BLOOD, CHARACTER, AND AFFINITY IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA by Lauren Weindling A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL   UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)   May 2017 © Lauren Weindling 2017 !ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction Mingling Bloods and Vampiric Fleas 1 Chapter 1 Bloody Romance: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and 54 Corneille’s Le Cid Chapter 2 When Blood Cries: Incest and the Logic of Blood Affinity 112 Chapter 3 Bed Tricks and Bloodlines, or All’s Well that Ends with a Baby 163 Chapter 4 Problematic Jessica: Love of Dissimilarity in 215 Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice Epilogue When Blood Confounds Desired Distinctions 240 Bibliography 246 !iii Acknowledgements When Heather James first told me “your project is about blood” several years ago, I didn’t believe her. But, as I soon learned, one should always believe Heather; and blood became a far more capacious, productive, and unwieldy thing than I ever imagined. Thus I must give thanks for all of the help that I received throughout the course of this project, such that it didn’t hemorrhage uncontrollably and devolve into a tangled, bloody mess. First and foremost, I owe thanks to my chair, Heather. Her astute commentary and criticism pushed my work much further than I ever could have accomplished on my own. She never gave up on my scholarship or became impatient with me — even as she gave me the same note for the third time and I was ready to “play the umpeer.” The Merchant chapter too would not have existed without her persistence. The cogency and clarity of this project is the product of her guidance. And I will always remember our long conversations over tea in her home surrounded by furry companions. My other committee members and mentors likewise deserve commendations. Bruce Smith gave encouraging feedback during my qualifying examination that helped this project take shape. Antonia Szabari made certain that I carefully considered my theoretical and methodological apparatus, and that I never lost sight of my comparative literature roots. Rebecca Lemon has lent a friendly ear and invaluable, pointed feedback when I needed it most. Her marginalia always found its way to the bleeding wounds, and gave me the tools to patch them. Lastly, thank you to Margaret (Tita) Rosenthal, whose support is immense: from taking the time to generously line- edit my chapters, to countless hours spent in her office discussing Italian drama and pedagogy, to offering me books off her shelf and a place to stay in her home. Tita, if I ever make it in this profession, it will be, in part, thanks to you. A whole host of institutions deserve my gratitude for ensuring that I had a roof over my head, food to eat, and wine to drink while completing this work: the Provost’s Office at the University of Southern California, the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, and the Gold Family Fellowship. My fourteen-pound corgi-chihuahua, Raymond, also thanks you for feeding him during this time. I have had the good fortune of finding many wonderful colleagues during my graduate studies. Anna Rosensweig, amidst her busy postdoctoral fellowship, graciously helped me prepare my piece on Corneille for publication. Penelope Geng has provided wonderful commentary, proffered examples of her own work whenever I needed a model, and tolerated me following her about like a lost puppy at my first SAA. She has been the academic equivalent of a secret weapon, and this small thank you does not match her generosity. Many thanks to the USC Early Modern Writing Group (Michael Benitez, Megan Herrold, Ashley Kramer, Amanda Ruud, and Betsy Sullivan), whose eyes have graced this entire project in some of its bloodiest and most mangled iterations. And an extra special thank you to the “Early Modern Ladies” for their support, both intellectual and emotional. I count myself truly lucky to have them in my corner. !iv Finally, a big thank-you bear hug to Devin Toohey not only for all of his helpful feedback, but also for being one of my most vocal cheerleaders. Just when I felt that I might fully succumb to impostor syndrome, his enormous vote of confidence has kept me going. To my family, thank you for letting me stay up into the wee hours of the morning as a child so long as I was reading, for humoring/tolerating my outbursts of strange tidbits of information over the last few decades, and for supporting my pursuits no matter how bleak the job market seems. And last but not least, to my partner Michael, thank you for your unshakable belief not only in this project, but also in me. I could not do this without you. !1 Introduction: Mingling Bloods and Vampiric Fleas It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. - John Donne “The Flea” (3-4) The conceit of Donne’s “The Flea” (1633) paints a romantic, albeit strange, image of two lovers’ sexual consummation contained in the body of a small, blood-sucking insect. This poem capitalizes on the early modern belief that the mingling of two bloods was the byproduct of sexual intercourse; mingling bloods was the material foundation for unitas carnis upon marriage’s consummation (becoming “one flesh” sometimes also called commixtio sanguis or “mixing bloods”). As Donne describes, “This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is” (12-13). This vision of union, simultaneously idealized and disturbing, 1 imagines a marriage in which both parties are equally affected, fundamentally changed by the other, no longer “you” or “I,” but part of this new, blended marriage unit. The central conceit of “The Flea” thus depends not only on this belief, but also on the assumption that there is something unique, distinct, and individual about a person’s blood. His/her character, nature, or person is somehow carried or embodied therein such that the poem’s speaker can say “this flea is you and I,” as well as implore the lady not to kill their blended person within the insect for “Though use make you apt to kill me, / Let not to that, self-murder added be” (16-17). But, of course, Donne’s poem is an argument crafted to seduce a woman. First the speaker demonstrates that within the body of the flea they are effectively already married, and they no longer need to preserve the beloved’s virtue; the flea “pampered swells with one blood made of two, / And this, alas, is more than we would do” (8-9). The poem’s argument exposes Quotations from “The Flea” are from the seventh edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 1 !2 that the “natural” workings of blood are, in fact, subject to rhetoric. The male speaker manipulates this discourse of natural philosophy in order to attain his desires — in this case, sex. Rather than denoting or describing fact, based on some objective truth, the vocabulary of blood is just that, a vocabulary, and therefore subject to manipulation. Put another way, the principles of blood’s nature, though seemingly intractable, are in fact part of a system used to claim or justify power and privilege in the social arena, albeit with real and often violent consequences. I call this system throughout this dissertation an “ideology of blood” because it is a collection of then-unquestioned beliefs about the world, though now considered false. Patricia Canning aptly defines ideology as, a particular social, political, or cultural story or collection of stories […] a series of ideas that we make plausible in order to make sense of our conditions of existence, however obscure those conditions may seem to us, or indeed, others. That said, ideology is not only a mental phenomenon; it has very real manifestations because it is primarily a social practice […]Thus one of the fundamental ways by which ideologies are constructed, perpetuated and even opposed is through discourse. (1-2) In this case, understandings of blood’s physiological characteristics inflected how early moderns understood both personal identity and social position: to what kind of groups does a person belong and what does this say about him/her. Alternatively put, this collection of beliefs provided a way to make sense of the differences between, and the worth of, individual persons or groups. 2 This ideology then justified the existence of a social hierarchy by claiming its basis in an This definition is based upon that of Tamás Demeter, who uses very similar language to describe the ideologies of 2 “knowledge-making practices” in early modern Europe: “more or less explicit ways of making sense of these practices, justifying their relevance, and circumscribing the sphere of legitimate inquiry and its applications” (1). This definition of ideology seems to capture what many other early modern scholars mean when using it to pick out a particular belief system relating to power structures, be it scientific, political, religious, or cultural in nature. See for instance, the collection of essays Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe (1994), Peter Dear’s “What is the History of Science the History of?: Early Modern Roots of the Ideology of Modern Science” (2005), another edited collection Intersections: Conflicting Values of Inquiry: Ideologies of Epistemology in Early Modern Europe (2014), and Patricia Canning’s Style in the Renaissance: Language and Ideology in Early Modern England (2014). !3 essentially unchangeable bodily material, i.e. in blood; and it further circumscribed social groups by explaining how blood could circulate amongst these persons. To elaborate on this second point, this ideology of blood has a few key tenets, which I will sometimes term logics, regarding how blood functions to prescribe affinities between persons, thereby limiting access to particular social groups. First, those who share the same blood (i.e. kin) have a natural affinity for one another determined by said consanguinity, or, “like likes like.” By extension, those persons who have similar blood, marking similarities in race/ ethnicity, socio-economic class, and virtues or character traits, will likewise have a natural affinity for one another, thereby providing a biological foundation for appropriate romantic relationships and marriage matches. Every Jack will find his Jill; chivalrous, noble men will love virtuous, noble women, peasants others of their kind, birds other birds, and fish fully satisfied with their like in the ocean. Second, differences between bloods provoke natural aversion, or, “like dislikes unlike.” This second principle both promotes and justifies distinction, separation, and hierarchy amongst those of differing bloods. Moreover, since affinities are determined by blood, individuals are not responsible for their dislike of difference; after all, there is presumably no changing an innate predisposition. And lastly, the third tenet, bloods mix or mingle together in marriage, bridging any prior gap or difference to create a new admixture and bloodline. This mixture of blood engendered by sexual consort dictates and completes an erotic, romantic, and spiritual love between the two persons, while simultaneously founding a new blended family unit in the creation of progeny, or new kin. The process then starts all over again, and the next generation acts in accordance with these same logics. !4 Anxieties about identity and community membership ran rampant in an early modern Europe fraught with political and religious struggles, the uncertainties of a burgeoning merchant economy, and the simultaneous freedom and threat of newfound social mobility, especially in the new urban centers. Likely in light of this rapidly changing social landscape, the ideology of 3 blood persisted as a means to solidify and stabilize the boundaries of particular social and political groups. In short, if blood embodies the virtues of nobility, then it justifies the nobility’s preservation of power and the hegemonic status quo as this system, quite literally, reproduces itself via endogamy. In this historical moment, invoking bloodlines usually maintained differences, distinctions, and boundaries between people, and justified the privilege of some over others; but it achieved this end by appealing to a vocabulary of affinity and likeness, namely whom one is like and whom one will like. 4 Baldassar Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1527), for example, gives voice to these prevalent assumptions about the value of bloodlines. While Count Ludovico, on the whole, cites nobility as a prerequisite for the ideal courtier based on social pressures — that a noble feels the need to live up to his name and lineage for fear of dishonor that a commoner would not experience and he will act better as a result — he nevertheless returns to a basic tenet of blood’s ideology, namely that “as a general rule, both in arms and in other worthy activities, those who Jean Howard and other scholars of this period also gloss the atmosphere of the early modern period as one of 3 anxiety. As Howard explains, “Social mobility, unmooring people from their fixed identities and fixed stations, was a fact in the period, but a troubling one, as was the emergence of protocapitalist economic practices. Many of the most powerful social institutions of church and state were invested in maintaining an official ideology of stasis and fixed identity, if not for themselves, then for those whose mobility or theatrical self-fashioning they found troubling” (10). My work thus participates in Marjorie Rubright’s bibliography on the role of likeness in conceptions of identity, 4 including the works of Frances Dolan, Jonathan Dollimore, Jean Feerick, Kathryn Schwarz, Laurie Shannon, and Valerie Traub, which discuss likeness in representations of religion, race, sexuality, gender, and friendship. Rubright discusses the role of similarity, affiliation, and proximity in the context of Anglo-Dutch relations and the formation of English national identity in her book, Doppelgänger Dilemmas. !5 are most distinguished are of noble birth, because Nature has implanted in everything a hidden seed which has a certain way of influencing and passing on its own essential characteristics to all that grows from it, making it similar to itself” (Book 1, 54). Likewise, while those of good birth 5 can become degenerate, one requires some innate worth in order to reach the highest level of excellence: “Just as even with unceasing diligence and careful training the latter cannot usually be made to bear fruit, so with only the slightest effort the former reach the summit of excellence” (Book 1, 54). The very first interlocutor to disagree in this dialogue, Gasparo Pallavicino 6 proclaims, Let me say that I do not believe that nobility of birth is necessary for the courtier. And if I thought I was saying something new to us, I would cite many people who, though of the most noble blood, have been wicked in the extreme, and, on the other hand, many of humble birth who, through their virtues, have won glory for their descendants. And if what you have just said is true, namely, that concealed in everything is the influence of its first seed, we should all be of the same character, since we all had the same beginning; nor would anyone be more noble than another. In fact, I hold that the various gradations of elevation and lowliness that exist among us have many other causes. […] I fully concur with what you said about the happiness of those endowed at birth with all the perfections of mind and body; but this is seen among those of humble origins as well as those of noble birth, since Nature has no regard for these fine distinctions. On the contrary, as I have said, the finest gifts of Nature are often found in persons of very humble family. Therefore, since this nobility of birth is acquired neither through talent nor through force or skill, and is a matter for congratulating one's ancestors rather than oneself, it seems very odd to insist that, if the courtier's parents are of low birth, all his good qualities are spoilt and the other qualities you have mentioned are insufficient to In the Italian, “Però intervien quasi sempre, che e nelle arme e nelle altre virtuose operazioni gli uomini piú 5 segnalati sono nobili, perché la natura in ogni cosa ha insito quello occulto seme, che porge una certa forza e proprietà del suo principio a tutto quelle che da esso deriva, ed a sé lo fa simile” (Book 1, 34). “Questi si come per assidua diligenza e bona creanza poco frutto per lo piú delle volte posson fare, cosí quegli altri 6 con poca fatica vengon in colmo di summa eccellenzia” (Book 1, 35). !6 bring him to the height of perfection: these being talent, good looks and disposition, and the grace which makes a person always pleasing at first sight. (Book 1, 55-6) 7 Gasparo’s rebuttal depends, first and foremost, upon numerous counterexamples to the Count’s assumption. It then suggests that even if it were true, all persons originate from the same seed, that of Adam and Eve, and thus asks from whence would these distinctions arise. Lastly, since virtues are fundamentally individual, merit should be awarded to individuals, not families or ancestors. After Gasparo’s rebuttal, however, Count Ludovico reiterates his initial claim, which he deems perfectly logical “since it stands to reason that good should beget good” (Book 1, 56). 8 His statement sounds much like an identity principle, having rhetorical force by virtue of its axiomatic quality, a kind of self-evident truth. This principle is neither obvious nor proven, but Castiglione’s courtiers will continue to operate with this assumption for the remainder of their debate and the text. Yet Gasparo’s comment lingers, offering an alternative to this prevailing, conventional perspective. As the dialogue continues, Gasparo shows himself to be a marginalized character, even a villain of sorts on account of his resolute misogyny. Consequently, the reader can easily repudiate his suggestions and recommendations. Yet potentially due to this marginal status, “dico, che nel Cortegiano a me non par cosí necessaria questa nobilità; e s’io mi pensassi dir cosa che ad alcun di 7 noi fosse nova, io addurrei molti, li quali, nati di nobilissimo sangue, son stati pieni di vizii; e per lo contrario molti ignobili, che hanno con la virtú illustrato la posterità loro. E se è vero quello che voi diceste dianzi, cioè che in ogni cosa sia quella occulta forza del primo seme: noi tutti saremmo in una medesima condizione, per aver avuto un medesimo principio, né piú un che l’altro sarebbe nobile. Ma delle diversità nostre e gradi d’altezza e di bassezza credo io che siano molte altre cause […] Confermo ben ciò che voi dite felicità di quelli che nascon dotti dei beni dell’animo e del corpo: ma questo cosí si vede negl’ignobili come nei nobili, perché la natura non ha queste cosi sottili distinzioni; anzi, come ho detto, spesso si veggono in persone bassissime altissimi doni di natura. Però non acquistandosi questa nobilità né per ingegno né per forza né per arte, ed essendo piu tosto laude dei nostri antecessori che nostra propria, a me par troppo strano voler che se i parenti del nostro Cortegiano son stati ignobili, tutte le sue bone qualità siano guaste, e che non astino assai quell’altre condizioni che voi avete nominate, per ridurlo al colmo della perfezione; cioe ingegno, bellezza di volto, disposizion di persona, e quella grazia che al primo aspetto sempre lo faccia a ciascun gratissimo.” (Book 1, 36-7) “perché ragionevole cosa è che de’boni nascano i boni” (Book 1, 37-8). 8 !7 Castiglione’s dialogue can, in a sense, sneak in this viewpoint with little worry, while nonetheless making it rhetorically compelling. The genre of the dialogue enables Castiglione to air multiple, conflicting, and even iconoclastic voices, thereby offering a space for social critique of widespread, capacious, and powerful assumptions, while protecting himself as an author from scrutiny. Like the dialogue, drama offers a similar venue for multiple voices, and thus the potential for ideological critique and presenting alternative viewpoints. I contend that the drama in England, France, and Italy provided a forum for interrogating these pan-European assumptions about blood. By performing the ideology of blood in a theatrical space, plays could demonstrate that blood merely provides an argument for a person’s character and station rather than a determination; or, otherwise put, this vocabulary does not track incontrovertible truths, but it instead functions as part of a cultural discourse, which can be manipulated by careful usage and rhetoric in the pursuit of power, influence, and sometimes love, in all social relationships. It’s true that the theater undoubtedly played a role in ideological production, especially given the influence of the royal censor. Yet as Jean Howard demonstrates in her seminal work The Stage and Social Struggle, clearly “drama enacted ideological contestation as much as it mirrored or reproduced anything that one could call the dominant ideology of a single class, class faction, or !8 sex,” and thus it made space for the voices of marginalized groups (7). Theater sometimes did 9 affirm the values of the patriarchy and aristocracy, but, much like the early modern dialogue, it could represent a variety of competing interests, providing a natural place for skepticism and non-compliance with prevailing cultural assumptions. 10 I thus take for granted, as Stephen Greenblatt does, a similarity between literary (or in my case theatrical) characters and the identities of early modern persons. Namely, drama shows 11 theatrical characters negotiating the ideologies and discourses of contemporary society, Howard justifies this view, which runs counter to the work of Francis Barker, Michel Foucault, Jonathan Goldberg, 9 Stephen Greenblatt and Christopher Pye, to name only a few, by pointing to two very salient points. First, the crown’s censorship didn’t always work. Periodic “clampdowns” suggest that the theater often tried to promote interests that were antithetical to those of the state (14). Second, the public theater surely represented popular viewpoints as well since, as a group-defined commodity, it required the economic support of a primarily popular audience. Certainly, most of the plays treated in this dissertation were performed in the public theater: Romeo and Juliet at the Theater in Shoreditch by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Le Cid at the Théâtre du Marais, ’Tis Pity at the Cockpit Theater, and likely La Sorella but of course little is known about that play. Shakespeare’s All’ s Well has no known performance history before the eighteenth century. And Machiavelli’s La Mandragola has a contested first performance either a court setting for Lorenzo de Medici or for the festivities of Carnival. Two of my plays in consideration, however, were likely performed for the first time at court: Middleton’s No Wit/Help at Whitehall and Shakespeare’s Merchant at King James’s court. However, I’d insist that even in the context of a court performance, given that outright critiques were most often made by minor characters, playwrights could usually get away with it. One distinction between my view and Howard’s is that Howard keeps her discussion of stage plays limited to the realm of politics, asking what or whom a particular representation would benefit (8). I, on the other hand, and maybe naively so, still wish to see a possible ethical injunction or judgement on the part of the playwright, and the tone of my project reflects that attitude. In this respect, my work resembles the methodology advocated by Paolo Valesio in “literary semiotics.” I, like 10 Valesio, believe that the literary text and its analysis has the capacity to critique ideologies. As he outlines, “Ideology lies at the two extremes, with regards to texts: it is both what the text says (sometimes shouts) explicitly, and what the text carefully avoids even mentioning. Ideology, then, is the discontinuity between the too-loudly-said and the unsaid. […] The semiotician’s task is to make the objective contrast explicit. By saying the unsaid, first of all; and then by carefully analyzing the conflicts between the unsaid and what is loudly proclaimed on the surface; finally by showing how the materially produced, concrete signs of the text manage, if closely studied, to demystify the loudly- said, and to hint at the unsaid. To do a critique of ideologies means then, essentially, to bring to the light of day the relationships between the semiotic trajectories which the surface on the text and those which do not” (11-12). Although I advocate for socially conscious (and even critical) playwrights, I may not, like Chris Fitter, want to fully commit to a “radical Shakespeare” since I believe that the bard’s stance towards blood’s ideology is somewhat more complicated and tempered, for Shakespeare might be sympathetic to the losses incurred by characters/persons connected to this discourse/ideology. And unlike Fitter’s discovery of a radical Shakespeare, my study examines not specific political issues, but rather a larger structure of hegemonic power, resembling in this respect Jonathan Dollimore’s Radical Tragedy (1984). Nevertheless, my own inquiry undoubtedly gives Shakespeare a forward-thinking, critical stance. Stephen Greenblatt, of course, attributes this similarity to an awareness in the period of what he calls, “self- 11 fashioning,” but one could likewise use the vocabulary of performance or even participation to describe the practice of citing particular codes or discourses. !9 struggling within or bristling against them, just as the social persons of their audience do. As theorist Paolo Valesio describes in his “Practice of Literary Semiotics,” social persons produce signs in their social system, though they are equally conditioned by them, and thus, these discourses can be both a source of power and a limitation. At a distance from the action onstage and thus with a measure of detachment, the audience observes the variety of ways in which characters use, invoke, and manipulate this blood discourse to achieve their desired ends; the plays thereby encourage a measure of self-awareness about this ideology beyond the stage. In the plays that follow, some characters become creative within the confines (i.e. within the rules and vocabulary) of blood’s ideology: Romeo hopes to establish a new blended bloodline to dissolve the supposedly inherited enmity established by their families’ blood; Giovanni invokes blood’s discourse to justify a love that goes beyond a seemly affinity for his sister, Annabella; Helena hopes that by secretly bedding her beloved Bertram, thereby mingling bloods, she can affect a love between them; and Jessica marries Lorenzo in the hopes that she will materially divorce herself from her father’s Jewish blood. Yet, as the examples show, these dramas likewise expose that investment in blood’s discourse, and agreeing to play the game by the established rules, can have tragic, even disastrous, consequences just as often as it assists individuals in achieving their desired ends. Yet other characters see the limits of these discourses and search for an alternative. They realize that the game as fundamentally flawed, rigged even, and ask whether it is worth playing. These persons do not gain advantage from the existing (aristocratic) social system, and !10 consequently they become most open to, as I will term it, thinking otherwise. Disenfranchised 12 and unprivileged, these characters fall into two somewhat predictable camps, namely women and non-elites (ordinarily servants, mechanicals, or clowns). And their voices can be heard in this dramatic space, which isn’t usually available to them outside of the playhouse. They dare to ask whether blood must truly determine a person’s nature, his/her allegiances, his/her love. Must it determine anything of consequence? Could we smell roses by other names and is blood the result if we don’t (Romeo and Juliet and Le Cid)? Might we signify bodies however we please regardless of biology, or might all men be basically alike (La Sorella, No Wit/No Help Like a Woman’ s, and ‘Tis Pity She’ s a Whore)? Are affinities based in consanguinity after all (All’ s Well That Ends Well and La Mandragola)? And lastly, could love be found in difference rather than in similitude (The Merchant of Venice)? All of these voices ultimately point to the same answer: to paraphrase the King of All’ s Well, blood does confound distinction. The drama that I will consider in this dissertation, therefore, has a few lines of social critique. First, that the period’s natural philosophy and other cultural discourses about blood provides a convenient narrative that further permits and substantiates the elite’s claim to power, privilege, and authority. Second, that this discourse should be subjected to scrutiny since it is an incredibly powerful and capacious one with adverse and even violent consequences (e.g., limitations regarding whom a person can These usually minor characters function similarly to what Paolo Valesio calls the interprétant in his literary 12 semiotics. Specifically, that there is a kind of roman à clef for the text, a moment of suggestion that gets close to the “unsaid,” or what cannot be said given a particular ideological framework (17). !11 love, and violence required to purge bloodlines from various sources of contamination). And 13 lastly, that we might benefit from sympathizing with, and hearing the communities that would challenge these prevailing assumptions. However, despite these critical gestures, these plays likewise intimate that finding alternative vocabularies to society’s present ideology (thinking otherwise) is unbelievably difficult, often ineffectual, and sometimes requires great sacrifices. In short, these dramas call for the dismantling of an ideology of hierarchy and stasis, but they recognize that the path to social change will be difficult and hard-fought. Rhetorical Self-Fashioning vs. Bodily Determinism This study of blood participates in a long history of criticism that examines how early modern persons understood identity or character, either in relation to (and potentially determined by) bodies or as a product of performance like Stephen Greenblatt’s “self-fashioning.” Studies 14 of early modern discourses of bodily determinism in relation to “character” have taken a few different tacts. One aims to show the origins of “inwardness” or a psychological interior such as Katherine Eisaman Maus’s work on theater, Jonathan Sawday’s on early modern dissection, and I will briefly mention that although I will primarily focus on blood as an ideology based in discourse, this 13 dramatic critique often involves material blood, and as a result, the use of stage blood to make this point about violent consequences. I agree with Lucy Munro, who suggests that the use of realistic stage blood is not for the sake of spectacle alone, it is furthermore, “not the product of Elizabethan proto-naturalism. These are not ‘realistic’ scenes, crude or otherwise; they display instead a calculated use of gory spectacle in pursuit of very particular narrative ends” (85). Theater historians have disagreed about the materials used for stage blood with diverse arguments for animal blood, vermillion or cosmetics, vinegar, red wine, and paint. See Leo Kirschbaum, Lucy Munro, Andrea Stevens, and especially the published proceedings from the Stage Blood Roundtable at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater History Seminar in 2006. Renaissance Self-Fashioning is the most famous, though one should also include the important work of Joel 14 Fineman. Related to this line of research are those studies which examine how authors cite a variety of cultural codes, multiplying variations and layers, in order to create a character with a sense of individuality and psychological depth. See J. Leeds Barroll on the early modern character in conversation with theological discourses, Elizabeth Fowler’s study of layered “social persons,” and Julia Lupton’s recent study of Shakespeare’s use of character types placed in a variety of generic positions. Then there is also a camp that rejects any sense of “clearly bounded self” in the Renaissance, be it Burkhardtian or postmodern in formulation, as for instance John Jeffries Martin’s work Myths of Renaissance Individualism. For an extensive review of the scholarship on identity, see A.J. Piesse’s entry in A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (2010). !12 Michael Schoenfeldt’s on early modern poetry’s citation of the humoral body. Another strain of 15 criticism focuses on specific discourses that reduce or materialize personality/identity in bodies: most notably Gail Kern Paster’s work on the humors wherein “humoral predisposition is an emotional style, a characteristic affect” (17), Maurizio Calbi’s study of specific types of early modern bodies (e.g., the aristocratic female or male homosocial body), or David Hillman and Carla Mazzio’s edited collection of studies that examine the investment and stabilization of meanings in particular body parts. Thus, in thinking about a specific bodily material, this 16 project builds upon the latter of these two strains, focusing on blood as an extremely capacious signifier that, according to early modern discourses, materialized all aspects of a person: personality, character, identity, and even “soul.” Katherine Eisaman Maus’s seminal work, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, explores early 15 modern society’s anxiety about an inability to perceive the “true” person, a hidden interior in contrast to a theatricalized, artificial exterior. She then searches for a widespread explanation for the emergence of this “inwardness” topos, citing two possible motivations: the early modern desire to know invisible religious difference in the aftermath of the Reformation when, “they are not distinguished from their neighbors by language, skin color, ethnic background, or habits of dress,” and the new urban space populated by strangers (problems of coneys, etc.) in which it is difficult to know another (18-26). Jonathan Sawday cites the emergence of “the very sense of selfhood” in early modern dissection and a history of the body as a field of inquiry. Sawday successfully demonstrates that interiority appears to be fashioned paradoxically by looking into another’s body. He points to the definition of “autopsy,” which meant both the inspection of a dead body and more generally “seeing with one’s own eyes, personal observation” (6-7). One could then ask what happens when this body is taken apart or examined according to its parts. Katherine Park’s work on “holy autopsies” shows one way in which body parts became signs for saintly character in a new culture of dissection. Michael Schoenfeldt too tracks the desire to “express psychological inwardness materially” by highlighting how early modern poets pointed to the body, and especially humoral psychology, to articulate psychological states (1-2). He describes his own project, “I intend to show how in early modern England, the consuming subject was presumed by Galenic physiology, classical ethics, and Protestant theology to conceive all acts of ingestion and excretion as very literal acts of self-fashioning” (11). Schoenfeldt thus places himself opposite Foucauldian-heavy new historicist models in order to emphasize that this discourse gave individuals agency, or self-control in a literal sense. The humoral body was not merely Paster’s “pathological leaky body,” but one that can be controlled by the individual with temperance (11). I happen to agree with both Paster and Schoenfeldt on this matter. Like most discourses, Galen’s humors were invoked as an instrument of societal repression as well as individual agency. My own study seeks to embrace this tension. As Gail Kern Paster argues in her work Humoring the Body, “Behaviors were understood as the expression of the 16 interaction of the four qualities, because behaviors were understood to be — at least in part — an expression of the four humors. [...] they altered the character of a body’s substances and, by doing so, organized its ability to act or even to think” (13). Maurizio Calbi, on the other hand, will insist upon studying historically and culturally specific bodies that exist in “historically specific coordinates of power such as gender, eroticism, ‘race’ and status” (xiv). David Hillman and Carla Mazzio’s edited collection is entitled The Body in Parts, including work from the editors as well as from Nancy Vickers, Marjorie Garber, Stephen Greenblatt, Katherine Park, and Katherine Rowe, to name only a few. !13 Yet my work likewise straddles those scholars who look to performative aspects of identity in the early modern period. Unlike costume, rhetorical mastery, or Castiglione’s sprezzatura, however, blood’s ideology conveniently disguises itself as bodily determinism even though this discourse is part of the “self -fashioning” toolkit, regardless of whether or not early modern persons are conscious of its rhetorical status. In other words, the fashioned identity as Greenblatt depicts it, “a distinctive personality, a characteristic address to the world, a consistent mode of perceiving and behaving” was attributed to bodily determinism but, in fact, was discursively constructed by the appeal to this discourse/ideology in the first place. The case of blood is thus a bit different than some of those discourses cited by Greenblatt since these appeals were potentially less “self-conscious,” or at least less self-aware that they were fabrications rather than descriptions of fact. I now turn to a historical overview in order to illustrate blood’s 17 ubiquity as well as its utility as a vocabulary for character. In pulling evidence from primary sources and secondary historical sources not only from England but also from many countries of the western continent (France, Italy, Germany, etc.), I aim to illuminate a shared cultural sensibility and to demonstrate the enormous reach of this discourse. Blood’s ideology appears to be invoked by all of these cultures in similar circumstances for similar reasons — which would likewise explain a shared dramatic, critical response to this ideology in my countries of concern. Greenblatt does acknowledge that within the agency of self-fashioning is also the awareness of being fashioned, 17 “the experience of being molded by forces outside of one’s control” (3). It moreover involves, “a concrete apprehension of the consequences for human expression — for the ‘I’ — of a specific form of power, power at once localized in particular institutions — the court, the church, the colonial administration, the patriarchal family — and diffused in ideological structures of meaning, characteristic modes of expression, recurrent narrative patterns” (6). !14 Bloody Discourses, A Historical Background Blood as More Than Humor Blood was commonplace in the early modern world. The average person saw blood far more frequently and in greater volumes than we do today, with many bloody events taking place at home such as childbirth, menstruation, bloodletting, butchery, and more. Blood was thus first and foremost a bodily fluid studied by natural philosophers. Material blood in a ubiquitous Galenic framework was one of the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile); its mixture established the complexion or temperament of an individual. In theory, a physician could “discover” a person’s dominant humor by examining how that person’s body responded to the elements and to disease. For example, bodies predisposed to over-heating had a large amount of yellow bile in their systems, which could manifest itself in an aggressive personality. The healthy person, in both mind and body, had the ideal balance or mixture of all four humors. Yet blood was always viewed as superior to the other three. For Galen, blood is the most “natural” of the humors, and even though all are necessary for a well-balanced mixture or temperament, the other humors tend towards imbalance or pathological excess (Hankinson 219). Men of sanguine 18 temperaments, for instance, were prone to live longest, and while the other humors were only visible during illness, blood could also be a marker of health (Camporesi 17, Balizet 14). Moreover, as stated in Levinius Lemnius’s De miraculis occultis naturae (1559), “in force and value, blood lies far above the other three humours, as long as it remains pure, clean and clear,” This assumption led the twelfth-century scholastic philosopher, William of Conches, to the conclusion that a 18 sanguine or balanced temperament was practically impossible to achieve, and as a result all animals are melancholic, choleric or phlegmatic (Conticelli 61-2). !15 for if too thick, people become fierce, cruel, and even inhumane, typical of “rougher professions” (Santing 422-3). Yet early modern thinkers likewise distinguished blood as humor from blood as such since, rather confusingly, “the human blood which is discerned when a vein is opened contains all four humours,” as explained by Lemnius in The Touchstone of Complexions (c.1505-68) (Santing 427). Blood was the “the medium through which all humors traveled through the 19 body. Blood results from the perfect application of the body’s innate heat, and the other humors emerge as scorched or cooled by-products” (Balizet 13). Blood was the in-between state of all other bodily fluids; i.e. the cow eats grass which becomes cow blood, that becomes the milk that the human drinks to become part of his/her own blood and temperament, seemingly justifying the old parable “you are what you eat” (Keller 103-4). Reproductive bodily fluids (semen and 20 menstrual blood) were also variants of blood; and because early moderns believed that conception was the combination of semen and menstrual blood — both of which contained all four humors necessary for creation — blood was the source of life (Camporesi 84-6, Hankinson 218). This second “blood” is roughly equivalent to a person’s individual or unique temperament, made more plausible because the number of humoral admixtures were theoretically infinite. The Even in an Aristotelian interpretation of blood, Andreas Cesalpino distinguishes between blood the humor and 19 blood the material in the veins, the second of which “was considered to be a sanguineous mass consisting of a mixture of pure blood with a lesser proportion of the other three humours. [...] This was a concoction that combined blood and spirit, the latter drawn by the lungs from the air and brought into the heart. He sometimes called this ‘perfected’ or ‘matured’ blood” (Santing 432). Galen outlines in Book I Ch. X of On Natural Faculties that food transforms to blood, which then becomes flesh, 20 bone, etc. in order to be assimilated. The long process of alteration necessary for this assimilation, he explains, is why there are so many different organs involved in digestion (35). Interesting side note: the assumption that like can only be assimilated with its like leads him to advocate a diet of meat over vegetables because the former is already of flesh and blood (36). As far as I know, this has not been taken up by advocates of the Atkins or Paleo diets. !16 complexion or temperament indicated by or embodied in one’s blood was thus unique and highly individual, effectively corresponding with one’s soul. This equation of complexion/temperament with individual identity and life force contributed to the notion of blood as “something that could have spiritual content and could be configured as ‘pure,’ with the possibility of transmitting inherent qualities” (Guerreau-Jalabert 10). In Germany, for instance, blood was etymologically connected to a blooming flower, 21 standing for the living human as well as life more generally (Linke 44). In the early modern imagination, “Blood was the seat of the soul — that invisible, elusive principle (abstract, but not without its inexpressible physical concreteness) — that was deemed to ebb and flow in hiding, swelling and diffusing in the oily liquid of life” (Camporesi 32). This “hemocentric” theory 22 may have originated with the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, but it gained popularity since it was partially accepted by Aristotle in De partibus animalium (Conticelli 55, 60). Of course, Galen later expresses this conception of the soul in his work, The Capacities of the Soul Depend on the Mixtures of the Body. Although the nature of this “dependence” isn’t entirely clear, he does proffer that the “soul actually is precisely this: the mixture of the body,” which 23 follows his starting assumption that young children must differ from each other in the substances The Empedoclean theory also came to this conclusion based on the logic that blood “since it contains the four 21 elements, it can also think them, therefore it can think the whole of nature” (Conticelli 57). The belief in blood’s intrinsic power as a material life force is evident, for example, in the discussion of witchcraft 22 trials outlined in Albrecht Dürer’s personal diary. It was commonly held that “suspected witches, once captured, could be rendered powerless either by extracting their blood directly or by whipping them to the point of blood effusion [since] blood was the presumed medium of magical potential” (Linke 45). One can gloss Galen’s view on the body/soul relationship according to two theses, namely that “the soul (or its 23 faculties) follows the mixture” or that it is the mixture (Singer 33). But the most conservative version to attribute to Galen is that of the “reciprocal effect of bodily state, usually conceived in terms of mixture, and of mental capacity or activity” (Singer 28). Of course, some scholars do attribute to Galen the second more extreme view, a relatively determinist picture, even though the individual could take action to manage their bodily mixtures (Donini 196, 201-2). And, in my mind, this second version seems to be the one that the early moderns favored. !17 of their souls precisely because of their diverse capacities that cannot be the result of education (Galen Capacities 386, 375-6). According to the theory, the soul joined with blood via the spirits “a kind of vapour, streaming or smoking from the thinnest and most active part of the blood” (Sugg 3). Numerous early modern scholars reiterated this principle, including Thomas Adams, Thomas Bilson the bishop of Winchester (1604), Helkiah Crooke in his Microcosmographia (1615), and the Spanish scholar and martyr of the Reformation, Michael Servetus (Sugg 18, Balizet 12). This belief has a pagan precedent because the Greeks “thought that the blood was the residing place of the thumos, the organ of feeling with an independent inner voice which figures, for example, in Homer,” namely when Odysseus gives those in Hades blood to drink so that he may speak with them (Cherpack 10, Conticelli 57). Yet blood’s connection to the soul or life-breath likewise has origins in the Old Testament’s discussion of sacrifice, further solidified by the Christian belief that the divine blood of Christ brought humanity’s salvation (Delille 136-7, Camporesi 14). 24 Consequently, the health of one’s soul was inextricably linked to the health of one’s body. Galen states in his treatise Character Traits, “the knowledge of the soul, however, from which comes its fineness, knows the elements of which the body is composed and from which the affections of the soul are generated, composed and increased. The knowledge of this is followed by discovery of their treatments” (162). Galen advocates for bodily management which would better the soul for the mixtures themselves are consequent on the original formation and on well-humoured daily regimes, and these things mutually increase each other. So, to be sure, people who I am purposely avoiding talking about blood in the context of the eucharist and thus in Catholic-Protestant debates 24 of this period. Not that this context for blood is unimportant to the early modern imagination, but it is apart from the blood that dictates identity and affinity, which is my central interest. !18 become sharp-spirited because of the hot mixture then fire up their innate heat by their sharpness of spirit; and those who are well-balanced in their mixtures, having well- balanced motions of the soul, are assisted towards good humour. (Galen Capacities 408-9) Levinus Lemnius’s Touchstone of Complexions follows in this Galenic tradition, explicitly framing itself as a manual for every person to know his individual “habit and constitution.” Lemnius judges, “it right needful also to have a diligent eye and respect to the body, leaste (otherwise) it should be a burthen to the Soule, and hinder it from matters of more wayte and worthines” (Ch. 1, Englished by Thomas Newton 1576). The period envisioned humoral management as a whole, and phlebotomy especially, as a way to control and adjust one’s soul, preparing oneself for goodness and salvation by ritually cleansing the humors at the close of seasonal cycles (Camporesi 27). Bloodletting theoretically would purify the blood as a means by which “along with faded humors, the ‘passions’ — those agents of evil and of physiopsychological imbalance [e.g. sins of carnality, lust, sloth and churlishness] —could be constrained to spurt away” (Camporesi 28). Nicholas Gyer, both a theologian and clergyman, discusses the benefits of bloodletting in his manual, The English Phlebotomy (1592): “First it maketh glad those that are pensive. Secondly, it appeaseth such as are angry. Anger is especially caused through mixture of much yellow choler with blood. And sadness, by commixture of much melancholy with blood” (36 qtd. Belling 38). Hence, in this Galenic worldview, there was no 25 discernible difference between the spiritual and the medicinal, the physiological and the theological. Catherine Belling outlines two reasons that blood must be let out, too much (plethora) and bad or diseased blood 25 mixed with contaminants (cacochymia); the former can lead to the latter, but the type of problem influences how the blood should be purged from the body, either indiscriminately or from a particular part (51-2). !19 Blood then does not simply operate as a metaphor in this period, but the difference between signifier and signified collapse in reference to blood and other bodily fluids. Scholars of early modern bodies such as Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson have argued that one cannot separate the body and soul in this period, in an explicitly pre-Cartesian moment (“Shakespeare and Embodiment”). As Charles Taylor has argued about the Galenic 26 framework, “black bile doesn’t just cause melancholy; melancholy somehow resides in it. The substance embodies the significance” (189, qtd. Paster 5). Echoed by the more recent work of historians like Simon Teuscher, [F]lesh and blood in the scholarly tradition of the Middle Ages can neither be equated with metaphor nor with biological facts in the modern sense. The concepts arose from and functioned within a system of knowledge radically different from ours, in which descriptions of natural entities (such as animals, plants, flesh, or, for that matter, blood) were not separated from descriptions of the symbolic meanings attributed to them. (85) Although works like William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628) on the circulation of the blood pose an empirical challenge to older scientific discourses, there continues to be an “intricate 27 connection between theological and medical epistemology that characterized anatomical treatises in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” (Balizet 12). Even though a Galenic framework is in contention in the period, amidst a plurality of belief-systems, “certain educated Christians Other scholars, of course, have countered this basic premise. For instance, Richard Strier problematizes conflating 26 the literal and metaphorical, arguing that they may not have been understood as one in the same. Moreover, he reminds us that the Galenic discourse was likely not a “master discourse” but actively questioned in the period (“Two Responses to “Shakespeare...” 16). Carla Mazzio also asks us to consider traditions of mind/body split that already existed in the early modern period (Platonic, Christian, and ascetic traditions) when considering the body (“Two Responses...” 18). Even though Harvey is often framed as a sole iconoclastic genius, using empiricism to fly in the face of medical 27 and philosophical authorities, Harvey frames his own work as simply explaining what Galen had already found. Moreover, his contribution to the discourse about blood is, in many ways, confined to its motion and not so much the nature of blood itself. For instance, he believed, as Galen did, that blood was the source of vitality (Miller 106). Whether his contribution could accommodate the belief that blood is particular to an individual and his nature is unclear. Harvey only draws distinctions between bloods on the level of species. !20 persisted in their attachment to older notions of body and soul, with seemingly flagrant disregard for the narrative grids of progress later imposed by historians of science and medicine” (Sugg 12). In sum, blood persisted as more than metaphor despite changing scientific and philosophical discourses. A Nobility of Blood: Character Traits Materialized and Lineage In this formulation outlined above, blood literally carried characteristics or traits passed down from one generation to the next; it was “a repository of sacred principles and properties, the locus of a family’s virtue and social standing. A family was animated across time by the self- same properties of blood and temperament, constituting a single organic body capable, in theory, of infinite reproduction” (Feerick 14). Nobility, therefore, was not merely a social station (although it included material advantages like lands and rights), but was also a natural predisposition carried in blood indicating gentility, bravery, refinement, politeness, and the like. 28 A Germanic belief about the special power of shared blood, took this assumption to an extreme, holding that the members of a particular kin group derived supernatural (superior) abilities from their common link in blood, such as the power to ensure good crops, victory in battle, and the ability to heal certain diseases. Based on such beliefs, membership in social groups was explicitly defined by the unity in blood. (Linke 54) Yet in addition to materializing positive character traits, the discourse of bloodlines or lineage also privileged the preservation of the material bloodline over and above its individual members. As historian Lawrence Stone explains, Certainly, many thinkers contested this notion. Boethius provides the classical critique of hereditary nobility in his 28 The Consolation of Philosophy, which claims that humankind must all have the same origin (Crouch 148). Later Dante Alighieri adamantly argued in the Convivio (The Banquet) that nobility could not be inherited by blood “for the divine seed does not descend into a stock or family-line; it descends rather, into individual people, and ... it is not a family-line that makes individuals noble, but individuals who ennoble a family-line” (qtd. Pearce 39). And as mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, Baldesar Castiglione likewise debates this point in Il Cortegiano. !21 [A]llegiance to lineage and kinship creates a system which gives priority to the permanent interests of the ‘house,’ its maintenance, continuity, function and economic well-being for century after century. The living members, the kin, are regarded as no more than the trustees of the lineage’s name, property and blood. (29) The privileging of blood over person not only serves as the foundation for the logic of the blood feud, but also explains some of the seemingly fetishistic treatment of blood throughout the cultural products of the period — as well as many of the otherwise puzzling motivations of characters in early modern drama (Corneille’s Chimène, Shakespeare’s Bertram and Helena, and Ford’s Giovanni for starters). Consanguinity, Inheritance, and Mixed-Blood Progeny The notion that blood embodies or materializes certain character traits has a profound effect on theories of procreation and the possibilities of blood mixing, taking for granted “the key idea that like engenders like” (Sabean 153). According to Germanic folklore, one could even verify consanguinity by dropping some blood on the bones of some remains and if the bones absorbed the blood, then the two parties shared a bloodline (Cherpack 10). The conventional conception of European kinship is “based on the idea that an individual is composed of a substance — more or less explicitly thought of as blood — that comes in equal parts from two parents” (Sabean & Teuscher 5). Evidence for belief in equal blood mixing comes from incest 29 proscriptions in canon law wherein “counting degrees proceeds equally through paternal and Even Aristotle’s view should not be simplified to male form and female pure matter, instead: “As with semen, the 29 menstrual blood contained a potential version of the organs abstracted from blood, but a potential of a lower, more material order than that of the seminal dynamis. If the female made no contribution in terms of form then all offspring would always resemble the male parent, but Aristotle was only too well aware that this was not the case” (Russell 27-8). !22 maternal lines” (Sabean & Teuscher 5). Galen’s formulation of generation supports this 30 assumption since both male and female sperm, two forms of blood, contribute to the fetus, suggesting a roughly equal composition (Sabean & Teuscher 9). Observations of physiological similitude seemed to favor this formulation for “offspring could neither reproduce one nor the other parent precisely, but nor could it bear no resemblance at all. The similarity with respect to any one part was said to correspond to the quantity of semen from each parent for that part” (Russell 25). There were, nonetheless, conflicting views about the amount of blood inherited from each parent, especially since many scholars were eager to emphasize patrilineal descent. For example, some argued that semen was the primary transmitter of “pure” blood (Sabean 153). Or, in an argument for women breastfeeding their own children, a mother’s milk, although a form of her blood, was “constituted by her husband through the act of generation” (Sabean & Teuscher 10). 31 Hence, while most scholars of the period claim that nobility is passed down by the father and not the mother, notions of blood-mixing clearly still remained. Stefano Guazzo (1574), for instance, held that mixed marriages would debase blood, producing less courageous children (Delille 129). The historians Sabean and Teuscher, however, cite several problems with using this model as the sole means of 30 understanding kinship relations in the period. For example, they point out that the Fourth Lateran council’s (1215) refusal to distinguish between prohibitions about marrying kin based on consanguinity or affinity means that this distinction is not as clear or clean as one might expect (5). Moreover, although there is a mention of the four humors shared between husband and wife, blood is not mentioned explicitly and thus the notion of blood-mixing is potentially a stretch (5). And yet, as I’ve shown above, if the four humors do mix, then the blood that flows through the veins is what has mixed as the medium/conduit for these humors. In sum, though this may not be the only model with which to understand kinship in the early modern period, it is nonetheless an important one. David Sabean maintains that come the seventeenth century any sense of an equal blood-mixing disappeared in 31 favor of protecting patrilineal descent: “Maternal blood only become actuated by a male spark, concept, idea, or form, such that the blood of the children is, ironically, essentially paternal” (163). Valeria Finucci likewise cites the notion that blood mixing was unequal across gendered lines with women’s blood more affected than their male counterparts. She explains that women’s “flesh was thought more humid, wet, porous, and penetrable than men’s, and they had too many orifices; thus they were more able to pollute and be polluted. But then male semen, being refined blood, was theoretically always putrifiable (female semen, of course, was already putrefied as menstrual blood); and blood too could become corrupted through mixture with, say, bile” (26). !23 Moreover, most discussion of breast-feeding placed a great deal of emphasis on the mother’s blood and the kind of qualities or characteristics it contained. Since breast milk came from the 32 menstrual blood which had nurtured the fetus, [T]he nursing mother thus continued to shape the child in her own image; according to these theories, she ceaselessly rooted her own qualities in him. […] this idea prompted doctors to recommend — if the mother was out of the question — the choice of a nurse who resembled the mother. This was obviously considered a lesser evil, preferable in any event to animal milk — goat’s milk or cow’s milk — which might degrade the little man- to-be and push him in the direction of the brutes. These respected authors [e.g. Lorenzo Gioberti’s Errori Popolari] add that the intimacy born of nursing would forge indestructible ties between mother and child. (Klapsich-Zuber 161) Often authors cite a kind of racial discourse to make this point more forcefully. For example, Matteo Palmieri says in his dialogue Della vita civile, Nature in all its perfection nourished the baby in the womb with his mother’s blood, and now this blood has moved upward to her breasts. No other food can be as good, and if the substitute is too far removed from the mother’s characteristics then the child will become like a stranger, just as the white lamb suckled by a black sheep turns dark and the lamb given suck by a goat not only develops coarse, tough hair but sees its body desiccated, its voice and habits changed. (qtd. Bell 128-9). In this context, then, marriage to someone of like blood was immensely important for the maintenance of familial lines and the preservation of its virtues in progeny. Of course, this notion that mothers would breast-feed their children in light of these considerations was more of 32 an ideal than a reality; wet-nursing was a popular and common practice in the period. Evidence from ricordanze [diaries] of Florentine merchants (1300-1530) suggests that there is little concern over principles of contamination or the inheritance of unwanted character traits from wet nurses’ breast milk: “the first criteria in the choice of a nurse were not her moral qualities. Girls who had been seduced, ‘bestial’ Tartar slavewomen, or mothers who had abandoned their children all made good nurses if their milk was ‘young’ and abundant. In fact, the social identity of the nurse often seems of little importance to parents” (Klapsich-Zuber 141). One reason why wet-nursing was so popular, in spite of the advice literature, might have to do with the downplaying of the mother’s role and material contribution to the child in the first place: “we can explain the remarkable absence of the mother in all that pertains to her children’s nurses: the father took responsibility, both material and spiritual, for assuring the development of his seed. This was how Florentines proclaimed the superiority of the paternal ‘blood,’ transmitted in the act of generation, over the blood and the milk with which the mother, then the nurse, would nourish the child” (Klapsich- Zuber 162). !24 Unitas Carnis and Commixtio Sanguis: Mixing Blood in Marriage A child’s blood was not the only matter at issue in the rite of marriage, however. The saying that two would become “one flesh” (unitas carnis) (Gen. 2:24) appears to have been taken literally. And if not effected in the moment of marriage’s sacrament, this process was at least presumed to take place during the sexual intercourse of its consummation. Just as Adam and 33 Eve were literally of the same flesh (Eve pulled from Adam’s rib) in the first marriage in Eden, 34 becoming “one flesh” was not limited to the generation of matter (i.e. a child) in sexual reproduction, but was also the byproduct of matrimonial union “which was manifested in the As many historians have noted, the precise beginning of marriage has a long history of intense theological, 33 political, and social negotiation in the period: did it begin at the ceremony or upon its consummation? In the early middle ages, Papal Law said that marriage only involved mutual mental consent and rejected the relevance of physical consummation whatsoever, but this would change over the following centuries (Brundage II 12). The Decretals of Pope Alexander III (c. 1159) — the marriage doctrine that remained practically unchanged until 1563 — viewed sexual intercourse as essential to binding a marriage. As historian James A. Brundage notes, “A consummated marriage was indissoluble, but an unconsummated exchange in consent, even in the present tense, might be voided by subsequent actions of the parties. Sexual intercourse between spouses changed the nature of their union from consensual but still potentially dissoluble marriage into a more perfect union that was in principle indissoluble” (Brundage IX 72). In the socio-economic sphere of marriage in late medieval and early modern England, the completion of marriage seems to be understood as consummation in practically every case; what was in dispute was whether or not sex becomes licit after the spousal, after the public church ceremony, or at a date specified much later when the bride was escorted to the groom’s house (and sometimes not even then) (Peters 84-86, Adair 146). The Protestant Reformation, on the one hand, looks to make the marriage contract a purely verbal affair, one that must be spoken in the present tense. As Balizet remarks, “The ‘reformation’ of marriage had the effect of replacing, in the eyes of the Church, the private act of sexual consummation with the public performance of solemnization as evidence of the marital union” (28). Nonetheless, sex remained a central component of marriage even in the Protestant context, leading “Luther to advocate divorce in the case of impotence, adultery, desertion, absolute incompatibility, or the refusal of a spouse to have sex” (Wiesner-Hanks 63). And certainly consummation seems to be at marriage’s center as many sue for divorce on the basis of non-consummation, even after very lengthy legal marriages (Adair 177). The implication seems to be that regardless of the Catholic/Protestant divide, a marriage was not really a marriage without the material act of consummation. This romantic or idealized vocabulary of unity in marriage is fraught, as feminist critics encourage us to 34 remember. As Fran Dolan notes, Genesis provided the idealized vision of union in the one-flesh model and “while this fusion is supposed to transcend any differences between the two spouses, at least in the raptures of conjugal congress, the differences between the individuals involved bedevil conceptions of the couple. Two become one, we are told, but only by means of compromise, friction, and loss. Since equality is understood as encouraging battles of the will, only a hierarchy, according to which one submits to the other, can resolve conflicts so that the occasional or apparent achievement of union becomes possible” (Dolan 26). Catherine Belsey likewise notes a dark hue in the Edenic imagery cited in discussions of marriage: “The documents of the period repeatedly compare the state of matrimony to life in the Garden of Eden: marriage based on true love is an earthly paradise, a glimpse in a fallen world of the happiness otherwise irretrievably lost. The comparison offers an ideal and idealizing account of the conjugal relation. At the same time, however, it brings with it an excess of meaning [namely, the threat of woman’s betrayal and the Fall] which calls into question the very ideal it proclaims” (Belsey 59). !25 sexual union between the marriage partners but was not limited to that” (Guerreau-Jalabert 71). Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (5:25-8) provides biblical support for a one-flesh model that literally melds bodies for “[H]usbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (qtd. Bell 236). Calvin in his commentary on 1 Corinthians also advocated this model as a way to emphasize the necessity of marriage, saying that “a 'man without a wife was half a man', and that only together did “l’homme et la femme font l'homme tout entier,' unified by marriage into one entity” (Lipscomb 351). And ideally, in one flesh was 35 one will, forging unanimitas, the bringing together of “multiple desires and potentially conflicting needs into a single will in a harmonious and loving marriage” (Bell 226). 36 This discussion of shared flesh changes to one of blood possibly due to Old Testament references that connect blood to the soul (Delille 136-7). In the fifteenth century, “people began to speak of lineages mixing their blood upon the conclusion of a marriage alliance” (Teuscher 12). The vocabulary of sexual intercourse changed from copula carnalis to commixtio sanguinis (the mixing of blood), and “the more the treatises accentuated blood as the constitutive substance of consanguinity, the greater their interest in the details of when and how substances merge during sexual intercourse” (Teuscher 95-6). Authors explicitly equated semen with blood and posited that a woman might also need to ejaculate blood of sorts in order to complete this process (Teuscher 96). These “widespread assumptions about the exchange of fluids in intercourse Even Puritan writers viewed “sexual intercourse as the wellspring of marital plenitude, the primary means by 35 which two become one, and yet each is more rather than less. Through sexual congress, the ideal of ‘one flesh’ might be constantly recrafted and primal unity restored” (Dolan 47). Interestingly, the conflict between male friendship and marriage was reflected in two different and competing 36 images of togetherness: “the marital bond that leads to the biblical "one flesh,” and the classical bond of amicitia that produces "one soul in two bodies” [emblematizes] the tension between these two relationships in early modern English culture” (Chaplin 268). !26 always point to a substantial, carnal, physical link that carries moral weight” (Sabean 156). Certainly blood seems central to the symbolism of the wedding ceremony since “the placement of the wedding ring on the fourth finger of the left hand […] took its meaning from the traditional belief that a vein ran from the ring finger directly to a woman’s heart” (Balizet 31). 37 This belief in the mixture of bloodlines prompted a degree of ambiguity between consanguineous and affinal relations — i.e. kin by blood and kin by marriage — in which there was potentially little distinction. In theory, even relations by marriage were consanguineous. Old Norse, for instance, has a linguistic trace of this literal belief wherein “kinsmen by marriage are referred to not only as ‘sib-folk’ but also as ‘minglers of blood.’ […] Standard terms for kinsfolk in Germanic languages refer to relatives by both marriage and birth” (Linke 55). The ambiguity/ imprecision of kinship vocabulary mirrors this wide and loose system of blood connections. As David Cressy articulates, The language of kinship in England was (and is) limited and loose. The basic relational terms — uncle, father, daughter, cousin, etc. — were used without precision or consistency. […] Female offspring and the wives or widows of sons or stepsons could each be addressed as ‘daughter.’ ‘Daughter-in-law’ could mean a son’s wife (more commonly simply called ‘daughter’) or a stepdaughter, a spouse’s daughter by a former marriage. ‘Uncle’ could indicate any male relative of an ascending generation, and ‘nephew’ one of a descending generation, without strictly referring to a parent’s brother or a sibling’s son. (Cressy 66) Thus the belief that blood-mixing purportedly occurred between spouses, for one, explains why marriage interdictions aimed at preventing incest include both consanguineal and affinal kin (Guerreau-Jalabert 72). In marriage and its consummation, one’s body becomes a vessel for this Balizet’s study outlines that as the Protestant Reformation sought to redefine marriage as a holy estate removed 37 from the private realm of oaths and consummation or blood, “Shakespeare articulates the fluidity of marriage contracts through blood, inviting an expression of the nuptial bond as the most basic but problematic unit of private life” (24). !27 new mixture of bloods, and one’s person or identity becomes susceptible to change, or, to use a more anxiety-laden vocabulary, contamination or corruption. As Torquato Tasso mentions in his Householder’ s Philosophie, “Matrimonie maketh equall many differences” (qtd. Cook 41). Luckily then, a person’s blood presumably dictated affinity for others like her. Like liking like helped to mitigate the potential threats of blood-mixing. Or, otherwise stated, blood that carried nobility would dictate love for fellow virtuous nobles in order to produce more virtuous and noble children. Most early-modern scholars dispensing advice about marriage emphasized 38 equity and parity in social status, in part because it presumed an equality of values, temperament, and compatibility resulting in love. For instance as early as the twelfth century, Andrew the Chaplain — a clergyman on the fringe of the court of King Philip II of France (1179-1223) — includes in his treatise Tractatus de amore (c. 1180) a moralization of hierarchy and class difference. He insists upon rankings in exclusive, ascending levels with boundaries that should not be crossed, just as species should not mix because “social groups had common mental and physical characteristics” (Crouch 241). An example from early modern Italy, Leonardo Fioravanti’s Dello specchio di scientia universale (1564) insists that “bride and groom should be Historians debate the extent to which this advice about ideal marriage pairings actually bore out. Ann Jennalie 38 Cook remarks on “the Elizabethans’ increasing difficulty in adhering to either the ideal of intrinsic worth or the ideal of absolute equity in the choice of a mate. […] the increasing costs of their rank led peers to seek heirs or heiresses as spouses. As for the ambitious, wedding the right mate offered a ready shortcut to status and power. Lawrence Stone’s research shows the growing supremacy of wealth in aristocratic marriages, though it reveals decided limits on how far down the social scale a noble family would go, regardless of the lure of riches” (46). Alan Macfarlane advocates the predominance of individual choice in coupling especially given the absence of codified rules: “No substantial evidence has yet been produced to show that there were ever strong kinship rules any ‘elementary structure,’ concerning whom one should marry. Certainly by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such a structure, it it had ever existed, was gone. Likewise, evidence of rules forbidding marriage between different ranks in the social hierarchy is difficult to find from early on” (329). However, the absence of explicit rules doesn’t mean that these persons didn’t face strong ideological pressures which were naturalized in blood. Likewise, as historian Lawrence Stone mentions, marriage partners deemed acceptable (i.e., adequately similar) by kinship networks likely led to relatively successful marriages: “love is rarely blind, in the sense that it tends to be channelled along socially acceptable lines, towards persons of the other sex of similar background. This greatly increases the probability that an arranged marriage, provided it is not undertaken purely for mercenary considerations and that there is not too great a discrepancy in age, physical attractiveness or temperament, may well work out not too badly” (104). !28 of equal blood. This rule may not bring you total happiness, but at least it will result in your avoiding the worst disasters and scandals that arise from an unhappy marriage” (qtd. Bell 215). Likewise Robert Crofts in The Lover, or Nuptiall Love (1638) preaches, “choose such as are of equall yeeres, birth, fortunes, and degree, of good parentage, and kindred, of such a countenance, complexion and constitution, as best agrees to our love and disposition” (qtd. Cook 40). Yet this advice also frequently references a kind of material (in)compatibility. Philip Gawdy, esquire of the body to both Elizabeth and James I, wrote in a letter, “it is thought very fytt and conuenyent that euery man now sholde marry within his owne element” (qtd. Cook 45). The term “element” here can simply mean “the surroundings in which one feels at home” or “source of origin” (OED 12), but it likewise indicates the matter of substances involved in one’s composition (OED 2). Ludovico Dolce’s Della institutione delle donne (1545) makes an explicit comparison between pairing similar personality types with pairing similar species. He advises, [G]ood companionship is most likely among equals, so do not try to marry your daughter to someone either superior or inferior to yourself in rank. A household where there is no love quickly falls to ruin. The second rule is that the prospective couple should be of similar personality and habits. You can’t expect a wolf to live together happily ever after with a lamb, and the same goes for people. (qtd. Bell 218) Dire warnings accompany the act of pairing like with unlike as is the case with Daniel Rogers’s Matrimoniall Honour (1642), which says, [W]hen a poore party meets with a rich, a well-bred one with a rude and illiberal, a curteous with a froward, a bountiful with a miserly, a noble with a base; one from the court with another from the cart or the shop; a proper and personable, with a deformed, crooked or dwarfe, what a disproportion doth it cause, and a kind of loathsomnesse? (qtd. Cook 40) Rogers’s comments on matrimony caution that hatred between the members of the couple is the result of pairing unlikes; however, his vocabulary of “disproportion” and “loathsomnesse” !29 similarly intimate his own feelings of distaste or disgust for these unlike pairings. And his list, which spans from an incompatibility in personality to social and bodily ones, has the effect of conflating all of these considerations. John Ferne’s character Bartholus in The Blazon of Gentrie (1586) voices this position even more adamantly. He admonishes that even if the woman of lower class is worthy on other grounds such as beauty or wealth, yet for all this, heere is a disparagment, an is ins the vnequall coupling in yoke of the cleane Oxe, and the vncleane Asse, an iniurie not onely done to the person of the yong Gentleman, but eeke a dishonor to the whole house from which he is descended, and that vppon his reason in that nobilitie, shoulde bee ioyned with ignobilitie: so that the issue of their kinsman, discended as it were, of Abraham and Agar, should seeme but halfe noble, nay but halfe a man monstrous in kinde, and degenerated from the rest of his family: and hereby the house suffereth a lamentable diminution and rebatement of her Noblenes, even in that ligne, which ought to be the chiefest honor to the same. (9-10) Half-noble mongrels harm not only the noble gentleman, but rather his entire house and bloodline. It is best for the bird not to love a fish, however beautiful she may be, in order to avoid creating half-men “monstrous in kinde.” Love/Affinity and Sharing Blood Affinity or sympathy between those of similar blood only increased for those who shared the same blood, a philosophy which substantiated love and loyalty amongst family members as well as romantic love between spouses. In fact, the “mingling of blood is sometimes supposed 39 to be a direct cause of mutual sympathy ... even in Europe there are traces of the belief that a few drops of blood transferred from one person to another inspire the recipient with friendly feelings” Mary Floyd-Wilson’s work, Occult Knowledge, seemingly does not place affinity in blood, insisting that the 39 humoral framework is capacious, though it will not explain all emotions, “one’s humoral complexion cannot function as an indicator of hidden sympathies and antipathies” (7). Yet, as I’ve outlined, blood seems not only to embody humoral complexion but also an extra quality including, as she describes, the hidden “sympathies found in nature determine the enigmatically close connection one may feel with another person” (7). As Levinus Lemnius glosses in The Secret Miracles of Nature, knowledge of these affinities must be gained by experience since appearances are insufficient for their discovery; but there is nevertheless an assumption that these likes will come together (7). !30 (Eduard Wesermarck qtd. Cherpack 10). “Natural love” between parents and their progeny was a commonplace. Gasparo of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, for instance, reiterates the importance of a woman’s chastity to ensure knowledge of true offspring, for if not, “the bond would be dissolved that binds the whole world through the blood, and through each man’s natural love for what he engenders” (176). The well-known “cri du sang” [cry of blood], an established trope of 40 the romance genre, presupposed that this natural affinity would be so strong between consanguineous kin that one could miraculously identify long-lost relatives. Pomponazzi in his De Incantationibus (1556) describes the physiological basis for this phenomenon whereby “the blood of one person produces vapors which enter the bloodstream of another person through the pores” (Cherpack 11). As Clifton Cherpack notes, [I]t appears that at least a portion of the public cherished this theme because they believed it to be a real phenomenon. This credibility may have been fostered by constant reiterations of the theme in literature, or by the analogies described above between instinctive recognition and widely disseminated theories of psychology and doctrines of sympathy. (12) In another strange application of this assumption, Francesco Barbaro, in his treatise “On Wifely Duties,” suggests sharing a wet-nurse as a means to foster sibling-like affinity between playmates due to the shared consumption of the same breast-milk, i.e., blood (Bell 129). Finally, consanguinity seemingly had the capacity to carry affinity (or familial responsibility) across oceans. Edward Johnson, a migrant to Massachusetts and author of Wonder Working Providence It is difficult to know the status of this opinion in Castiglione’s text given the misogynous speaker, but the trope 40 nonetheless functioned. Yet as Patricia Crawford notes, the connection between shared blood and natural affection was complicated due to concerns for legitimacy: “Ideas about blood add another strand to the complexities in men’s relationships to their children. Although shared blood made for ‘natural’ affection between father and child, the metaphor disguised complex paternal attitudes. Unless a man were married to the mother, he usually found it easier to deny any responsibility. Even though the father had a blood connection to an illegitimate child, neither he nor his contemporaries would expect the same natural affection as for his legitimate child” (Crawford 131). !31 (c. 1630), idealizes “kindred blood that binds the bowells of affection in a true lover’s knot” when articulating how colonists naturally miss their kinsmen (qtd. Cressy 47). 41 Moreover, from a lexical standpoint, the etymology of “affinity” serves as a case study for the ambivalent notions yoked in the period’s conception of blood and kinship. The Latin etymon affinitāt-, affinitās has a set of divergent definitions, though they understandably connect. In classical Latin it designates a relationship by marriage and in post-classical Latin it is also designates neighborhood or adjacency. The Anglo-Norman etymon however — afineté to later become French affinité — began to absorb a far more conflicting set of definitions. At first it meant “from a neighboring region” (1160), which seems to give rise to meanings of connection, mutual dependence, or alliance. About a century later, it designated a relationship by marriage (c. 1260), often used in contrast to consanguineous relations, such as those seen in debates around incest prohibitions in canon law. It then extends to our contemporary sense of likeness concerning a relationship between people based in their similar characters and tastes (1283), but then also more generally a similarity or resemblance (1286) that later includes structural resemblances between species of animals, plants or minerals (1538). Connections based on similarity then understandably came to be applied to friendly relationships (c.1355). It is in this sense that the word extended to signify our sense of liking or attraction to a person or thing, natural inclination, or sympathy (as early as 1600). This trend continued to include spiritual (non-familial) connections between godchildren and their godparents (early 15th century). But then despite the long history of the word’s application to non-familial relationships in explicit contrast to those of consanguinity, in the early fourteenth century “affinity” was applied David Cressy likewise provides many examples of colonists appealing to even very remote or affinal kinship 41 relations in their attempts to establish roots and curry favors in New England (47). !32 to family or kin, explicitly designating a blood relation. Affinity’s etymology is, to put it mildly, curious. However, this confusion makes a great deal more sense when one considers the discussion of blood and kinship relations in the natural sciences. If blood mixes upon consummation then there is no difference between affine relations and consanguineous ones. Moreover, if kin are related based on similar blood, then this logic naturally extends to discussions of likeness in character, as well as the assumed natural attraction between those who are like in character. So in addition to familial love or affinity resulting from consanguinity, blood had a well- established connection to romantic or erotic love. In a variation of the Venus and Adonis myth, Adonis’s flower was originally white, only stained red by blood from Venus’s foot which she herself pierced with a thorn in her rush to his aid (Linke 50-1). Similarly in a German myth — recorded in 1790 but evidently circulating prior — the red rose (the symbol of romantic love) was red on account of Amor’s blood. The story goes that looking for a flower that would suit the celebration of his mother Venus, Amor only found a silver rose. When he went to pluck it, the thorns cut his finger and the rose was permanently stained with his blood (Linke 51). Outside the realm of myth, natural philosophy held that the process of falling in love involved blood, as for instance described by Giambattista Della Porta’s Magia Naturalis and Marsilio Ficino’s De Amore. Although one fell in love through sight, the spirits “caught” through the eyes transmute into blood that then dictates affection or sympathy (Sugg 45). One could then explain attraction in “purely material (and perhaps selfish) terms. You are attracted to another (at one level) !33 because they have quite literally taken something of yourself” (Sugg 42). Also, those that had 42 sanguine temperaments were most susceptible to the passion of love and love sickness, as articulated by Arnaldo da Villanova, the first medical doctor to write a treatise on love sickness titled De amore qui heroicus nominatur (c.1300) (Ciavolella 69). Pierre Le Loyer likewise 43 notes in his work Des spectres (1586): “the most furious love which physicians know is Heroic love which is wont to overtake heroes and men of valour in whom the sensual element abounds because they have a greater share of earthly spirits and a body filled only with hot and wicked blood” (qtd. Céard 43). The fact that blood was a key ingredient in superstitious and magical practices around love potions provides further evidence of a widespread belief of a material basis for love and affection. Laurent Joubert’s Erreurs Populaires (1578) mentions the popular superstition that “women in some places command the midwives attending the birth of a daughter to save the ‘vedille’ or ‘nombril’ (navel cord), so that in later years they can make a powder of it to give to the man whom they would like to fall instantly in love with their daughters” (Wack 20). The logic was that the umbilical cord, carrying blood from the infant girl in utero, would determine Falling in love on account of exchanging blood vapours as outlined by Ficino meant that “by the same means 42 lovers are subject to dangerous depletion of those spirits lost in the act of gazing, as well as to diseases of the blood brought about through the poisoning properties of foreign vapours deposited in the veins” (Beecher 55). Likewise, love madness was cured by physiological means: “bewitchment could only be cured by draining off the poisoned blood through phlebotomy, by purging of the black biles, or by coitus to draw off the offending surfeit of sperm. Included in his regimen of cures were recommendations for exercise, sweating, and intoxication. Finally there was therapeutic marriage, or at least the physical joining of the lovers that automatically cures the disease” (Beecher 56-7). The marked similarity between this process and the one involved in the cri du sang helps to explain some later incest plots wherein characters’ claim that they unfortunately misunderstood kin recognition with falling in love at first sight. And as one can see from a physiological perspective, there appears to be no clear line between the phenomenological experience of these two processes, only that the first marks a connection that’s already there and the second establishes a blood connection in that moment. Villanova claimed that love was a desire born when man had a superabundance of humors, especially blood, 43 exacerbated in hot and humid climates. The overabundance of blood necessarily provoked a notable increase in semen production, or a “venereal complexion” and these humors must be evacuated otherwise they do great harm to the individual. Villanova furthers that it didn’t help to have a sedentary lifestyle or have, fatty, hot and humid foods, or in other words, men who were rich and noble were particularly prone (Ciavolella 69-70). !34 her future beloved if ingested. Some love magic suggested that when using the blood of criminals who had been recently executed, their spirits could be called upon to “hammer” the resistant beloved and drive them to the lover (Ruggiero 115-6). Evidence of another practice comes from a confession made to the Holy Office in 1584: “Giulia, the daughter of Ludovico di Verona, […] offered to spill the blood of her intended lover two-fifths for herself and three-fifths for the eclectic mix of damned and divine spirits that she called on to help her” (Ruggiero 247n50). In theory, the mixture of their two bloods together — a parody of unitas carnis resulting from sexual consummation — would create the elixir necessary to call on the spirits who would cast the love spell. Sex, marriage’s consummation and the completion of unitas carnis, was thus likewise presumed to inspire romantic love. For if similar blood inspired liking amongst those of the same character/social type, and consanguinity inspired affinity and familial love, then as logic would dictate so much greater must the love be between those who have the exact same blood after their bloods have mixed together. As Lawrence Stone notes, “the distinction between love and sex was not clearly defined, the latter word to describe the purely physical act not being generally employed. The phrase ‘to make love’ is a relic of this early linguistic ambiguity” (644). And even though Catholic theologians didn’t generally emphasize sex as the means for inspiring spousal affection, nonetheless the basic premise that “sex equals affection encapsulates the belief that sex is a crucial element in human relationships, especially marital relationships, because it is both an expression of love and a source of emotional bonding between man and woman”; and this premise arguably has the greatest foundation in the thought of Jesus of Nazareth — as opposed to, for example, ’tis better to marry than to burn from Corinthians 1 (Brundage II 9). !35 Moreover, sex as the foundation of matrimonial love — the latter phrase providing a euphemism for the former — was endorsed by texts such as Flaminio de’ Nobili’s Trattato dell’amore umano (1556) and Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio's introduction to his collection of novelle Hecatommithi (1565) (Giannetti 210). Hence whether it be affinal love determined by consanguinity or erotic love founded in newly mingled blood, there was a clear precedent for the basic assumption that like not only engendered like, but liked like. Bloody Discourses of Stability Upon completing this picture of blood’s ideology, we can thus easily see how this discourse functioned to establish and reproduce hegemony. Foucault in The History of Sexuality might put the rhetorical power of blood best: “A society of blood — … of ‘sanguinity’ — where power spoke through the blood: the honor of war, the fear of famine, the triumph of death, the sovereign with his sword, executioners, and tortures; blood was a reality with a symbolic function” (147). Catherine Belsey’s work on the loving, nuclear family articulates this phenomenon, Whatever is customary comes in due course to seem natural. Moreover, since in a free society the explicit imposition of norms and regularities appears authoritarian and thus elicits as much resistance as conformity, when we make rules we call them nature, so that nonconformity can be stigmatized as unnatural. (Belsey xiv) And indeed, the discussion of blood and preoccupation with the quality of one’s blood lineage appeared to intensify in a time of social change in an effort to solidify social power. Although !36 this principle began in the Middle Ages, there is evidence that this discourse about agnatic 44 lineage increased in the early modern era to stabilize the boundaries of particular groups: Speaking of blood rather than of flesh appears to liquidize the bodily substances of kinship and to facilitate processes of mixing and dilution. Nevertheless, the notion of being of the same blood paved the way for exclusive conceptions of belonging. Thus being of one blood, or of the right blood, became a precondition of belonging to the nobilities and the patriciates at the passage to the early modern period. (Teuscher 101) Historian Gerard Delille posits, Naturalist theory, which rested on the idea that qualities are transmitted through “inheritance” and so describe, classify, and perpetuate particular and definite human groups, began to assert its position vigorously in a debate that blended the definition of nobility with social orders, social mobility, the place and function of kinship, the nature and role of blood. (129) This trend seemed to spread throughout Europe. The German historian Georg Kugler, for instance, notes the obsession with blood in the Hapsburg dynasty, producing numerous incestuous marriages. Given how often lands shifted hands in the period, there was a need to invest power in something else like blood, which cannot be taken or annexed in the same way (Kugler 122). Yet I will focus here on the countries of interest to this project. Early Venetian 45 humanists defended the discourse of nobility carried by blood accompanying the closure of the Venetian republic’s noble order in 1403. This closure prevented the purchasing of titles and thus Anita Gurreau-Jalabert posits that a renewed attention to blood in the mid-14th century might mean that 44 “beginning in the thirteenth century, and even more in the fourteenth century, an evolving medieval society tackled the problems of defining groups and of establishing criteria for delimiting their contours (with the illusion of being able to “close” groups) with new vigor” (75). David Crouch places the trend of a self-conscious assertion of nobility even earlier: “The change in levels of literacy and symbolism meant that the noble man and noble woman of 1300 were much more self-conscious in their search for individual distinction; the means to express their aspirations were more diverse; their understanding of their place within their class was much more acute; and the means they had to draw connections of peerage and lineage were considerably more sophisticated than they had been in 1000” (Crouch 123). Interestingly enough, in addition to proclaiming that their blood was royal and, therefore, meritorious, the 45 Hapsburgs understood their blood to be melancholic, which they believed to be a suitable temperament for a ruler, military commander, artist and scholar (Kugler 132). !37 the possibility of rich commoners’ participation in government (Pullan 157). For instance, 46 Francesco Barbaro in On Wifely Duties (1416) asserts aristocrats’ duty to preserve their lineages through marriage in order to maintain the inheritance of ruling offices in Venice’s Republic, for they “have inherited the right to rule and a responsibility to provide future rulers through marriage” (D’Elia 28). Similarly historian Anthony D’Elia observes a greater emphasis on genealogy in wedding orations composed by the humanists of Renaissance Italy. These orations effectively acted as propaganda — justifying and solidifying the power of ruling elites by claiming the inheritability of attributes (65-72). John F. Padgett likewise demonstrates that 47 endogamy was a guiding principle in Italy in an effort to stabilize social position among the elite, even though it didn’t always work to prevent social mobility in republican Florence. 48 André Devyver has shown a similar impulse to invoke blood purity in France in 1560, when the Count of Rochefort called for the end of ennoblements. Desiring to close the noble order, he claimed the ancient prerogatives of blood as the medium of psychic and moral virtues; this included bravery and strength inherited by the ancient conquering Franks, thus justifying their monopoly on military power (7). Devyver demonstrates that the myth of Frankish blood Pullan notes one exception that “only over the years 1646-1718, when the Republic was heavily involved in 46 protracted warfare for the defense or reconquest of possessions in the eastern Mediterranean, did the nobility openly violate on a large scale the principle that rank could not be bought” (157). A strange and interesting consequence of this trope is the privileging of nobility over religion, though “such 47 unusual interpretations were expected in an audience that valued antiquity and nobility of blood more than a strictly Christian view of history. Better to trace one’s roots back to Attila the Hun than to a Christian nobody” (D’Elia 72). Padgett notes that “Multiple, inconsistent stratification logics [wealth, political office, and age of family] made it 48 very hard demographically to find someone to marry who was similar to you on all three dimensions at once. By marrying intentionally into a family that was similar on one dimension of status, one usually married unintentionally into a family that was dissimilar on other dimensions. […] Florentine elites, like elites everywhere, tried to close social mobility doors behind them. But their inability to converge on a single dominant criterion of status twisted their inconsistent closed-elite intentions into open-elite mobility for others. This created political turmoil, but it also renewed Renaissance Florence elites” (359). Yet this difficulty wouldn’t apply to other political situations that would have a greater confluence between diverse measures of power. !38 gains more force towards the end of Louis XIV’s reign. This was in part due to the nobility’s continued impoverishment but also because of the decline that they suffered in prestige as a function of the court at Versailles, augmented by the work of Boulainvilliers. In England too, 49 works like James Ferne’s The Blazon of Gentrie (1586) proffers advice for the English nobility, disparaging those that stand upon “the vaine ostentation of noblenes and bloud, thinke themselues without vertue most truely noble” and insisting upon a nobility of character (Epistle to the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple). Yet the text also contends that the highest brand of 50 nobility depends on the body in addition to merit and virtues: For as gentleness of blood, with ungentleness of mind, can not make the person perfectlie noble: so on the other part, the worthy merits of any man, borne of vnnoble parents, can not make him a perfect Gentleman, although thereby he may condignly deserue by lawe, to possesse both ensigne and title of Gentlenesse. (23) It likewise reminds its readers that: the Innes of Court at their inception only permitted Gentlemen of blood “for to the mind, inclining towards vertue, it auayleth much to be borne of gentle bloud”; and the most perfect of gentle blood required at least five lines of descent. Lastly, it provides an extremely long list of privileges that these bodies afford to Gentlemen in contrast Devyver’s work traces this discourse of blood, positing that it became a kind of racial superiority which persisted 49 in the 19th and 20th centuries and was translated as antisemitism. According to this theory, the purified blood of nobility becomes attached to a racial myth of aryan superiority (10). Uri Linke also marks blood’s continued import as a sign of power and privilege into the modern era’s biologist/racist system of heredity, especially looking towards Nazi Germany. Art historian Rebecca Zorach, on the other hand, notices a roughly simultaneous push against this ideology in France’s iconography of blood in the period. She maintains, “The association of blood with nobility — a heretofore facile equation — would change with the growth of noblesse de robe (noble status gained through administrative posts, necessary to maintain a growing governmental apparatus) and the sale of offices. V oracious popular devotion to the materiality of the ever-abundant blood of Christ’s wounds caused consternation for reform- minded theologians” (Zorach 33). A great thank you to Deborah Shuger who pointed me towards this treatise. 50 !39 to the commonwealth (24, 87). In sum, one might characterize Ferne’s message as follows, 51 “nobles, your bodies afford you the potential for virtue and a great deal of privilege, please start acting accordingly.” Clearly, his text is symptomatic of a moment when the nobility are anxious about their status and they thus assert it more forcefully. There were, nevertheless, difficulties built into these discourses for those who desired to solidify and limit power in particular bodies. Blood discourses could stabilize qualities or character traits, but blood itself was likewise subject to change and flux in these formulations. For one, there was the possibility of degeneration, namely that a bloodline could be progressively watered down. Sir Thomas Elyot’s book The Governor (1531) discusses a variety of material practices aimed to help noble families avoid this degeneration of noble blood and encourage their children’s noble temperament (Feerick 16). Additionally, as part of the humoral discourse in which the body remains an open system, a person could be susceptible to change with his/her climate. With the beginnings of the exploration era and colonial transplantation, this 52 susceptibility might become a larger concern, as discussed in Juan Huarte’s The Examination of Men’ s Wits (englished 1594) (Feerick 17-19). Yet despite difficulties with blood discourses, talk Ferne does, however, mention a few complicating factors for the nobility of England particularly in the second 51 portion of this text, “Lacies Nobility,” which outlines the genealogy of a particular family. In this section, he reminds readers that there are effectively two types of nobles in England, the old nobility of English stock and the nobility created by the Norman conquerors. He summarizes, “for the Conqueror to pull out of the memory of the English posteritye, the sweete estate and quiet lyfe wherein they liued, and ito inure them to his Norman fashions, did disgrade the Englishe Nobilitye, chaunge the forme of the gouernment, alter the lawes & the language of this Nacion, and insteede thereof enobled his owne people with diuers dignities, made a new fashion of gouernment, instituted his Norman customes and commaunded his language to be spoken generallye by all: so that after this so straunge an innouation, hee created many new Lordes and Earles: and therefore for the manifestation of the familye and bloud of the Lacyes, we must haue accesse to some of these stockes and familyes, which receaued their nobility and honour, by the gift of the conqueror, and of his posterity, kinges of this realme” (28-9). As a result of this displacement, there may be some people lurking in the commonwealth that have this older, noble blood. This view of Hippocrates is endorsed by Galen: “I too praise Hippocrates. For who does not observe that the 52 bodies and the souls of people in the northern regions have a quite opposite disposition to those of people near to the fiery zone? Or who does not know that those between the two — those who inhabit the well-mixed country — are better in their bodies, in the character traits of their souls, their intelligence and discernment, than those people?” (Capacities 400). !40 of blood prevailed, popping up everywhere from appeals to sympathy, loyalty, and shared traits amongst kin, to justifications for loving or hating another, to concerns for the integrity of a person’s body or personality. The nobility cited blood for the purposes of socio-economic hegemony, but this vocabulary was, as we have seen, far-reaching and capacious. Blood was thought to dictate many qualities of a person, contributing to a person’s social or economic status as well as his/her sense of self and with whom he/she belonged. And the drama of this period brings blood’s multi-faceted discourse into play, and likewise, open to scrutiny. Blood on our hands: Literary Critical Companions and Methods This project participates in a resurgence of interest in early modern blood over the last decade. Roland Greene examines blood as one of his Five Words, a new philological project tracing its “semantic envelope” and outlining its conceptual transformation from “religious, chivalric, and cosmological values into a new one with scientific, social and racial ones” (10). 53 While Greene studies blood’s changing signification, other critics have isolated more specific aspects of the blood discourse/ideology, a conversation to which this project contributes. Jean Feerick examines blood in order to discuss a transitional moment for racial discourses from terms of blood to those of skin color. She maintains that the latter was invoked as a means to destabilize or unsettle the former, drawing attention away from socio-economic difference within Older meanings of blood such as nobility, sacrifice, heroism, and emotions like love and passion do persist in the 53 early modern period, but their authority will be questioned with the downfall of the particular discourses that supported them: the decline of feudalism, the Reformation, and the increasing popularity of experimental science (in this case the “debunking” of Galen to find the circulation of blood). Greene glosses the transformation as a move from ipseity, concern of how the self fits into a universal order/natural system, to identity, or how one is the same as or similar to others, which inspires a material attention to blood in new symbolic regimes of family, class and race (110). Greene’s treatment of literary texts is ultimately similar to mine, Greene uses four literary texts to show how many authors call attention to material blood and contest, reject, or complicate existing meanings, exposing tensions amongst them: Marguerite de Navarre, George Gascoigne, Shakespeare’s Merchant and Cervantes. !41 the nation to racial differences without it. Janet Adelman has published on blood as a religious/ 54 ethnic discourse in relation to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. In this study, she contends that the play’s preoccupation with blood is connected to the early modern racialization of the Jew, which was the product of anxiety about the blood lineage shared by the two religions. And Ariane M. Balizet examines instances of blood in the domestic space and its relationship to gendered identities. In particular, she demonstrates that Renaissance dramatists used domestic, 55 material blood (female menstruation, blood-letting, bleeding hymens, bloody childbirth) to speak to ideologies of kinship and nation — as emblematized by the ideal, middle-class, Protestant marriage — and to voice “anxieties regarding masculine identity [and authority] vis à vis domesticity as well as the misogynistic fear of women’s bodies and spaces that fueled such anxieties” (4-5). All of these works attend to blood’s ideology and its participation in the 56 production of hegemonic structures of one sort or another; I build on this work in my investigation. In so doing, I deploy an explicitly socio-economic vantage point, taking particular Feerick says of her book Strangers in Blood, “My book demonstrates how this charged fascination with blood’s 54 fluctuating principles under the pressures of migration and resettlement were anything but innocuous. By focusing on blood’s alterability and indeterminacy, writers were actively interrogating its status as transcendent signifier, the cornerstone of social hierarchy structuring England from within. They contributed to the remaking of a substance that was intimately connected both to their place within a social hierarchy (i.e., as elite, middling, or base men) and to their sense of themselves as English. In effect, their representations ruptured the attachment of blood and social power and established the conditions for modern notions of race” (21). Balizet continues to draw a distinction between philosophical blood and material blood, wherein the first is a 55 metaphor of the second (3). Yet, I don’t think that these two bloods divide so cleanly, and it is the strange collapse of signifier and signified that seems to cause so many problems, resulting in the reduction of persons to their material bodies. Balizet speaks of blood as part of a discourse of shaming mechanisms (similar to Gail Kern Paster’s work on the 56 leaky, pathological body): “Certain kinds of involuntary bleeding, such as hymeneal or parturient bleeding, come to stand for elements of domestic formation (the wedding night initiates a marriage; childbirth expands a family), especially in light of the fact that, while bloodstained linens may appear onstage, events such as sex and childbirth cannot. But the ideological utility of blood in domestic matters is always destabilized by cultural suspicion of women’s blood” (15). Regarding menstrual blood too, anxieties prevailed “first, that it was a sign of pollution, and second, that it was in some way essential to human reproduction” (16). Thus as a whole, in early modern theater, “Women’s inability to control their excess blood was staged as an expression of cultural shame, more than the blood’s potential to kill, corrupt, or pollute” (17). !42 interest in social classes. Thus even as this project will address the feminist and racial effects of blood logics that concern Adelman, Feerick, and others, I also seek to extend the conversation into the realm of socio-economics more broadly with a focus on class difference. Moreover like Balizet’s work on blood’s role in drama, I examine plots of courtship, love, and marriage which provide the testing ground for blood’s ideology, which is at issue when negotiating new social alliances. After all, this ideology naturalizes and thus justifies power held by particular bodies and consequently, it advocates endogamy in order to reproduce these power structures. Blood’s ideology concerning affinity and whom one should love — understood as which bodies will naturally like one another — provides a means to separate people into species of sorts, not only based on skin color, religion, or sex, but also based on class. My project thus investigates how blood’s ideology permitted early modern persons to invest blood with both meaning and the agency to determine societal relations. And though the period’s natural philosophy presumed that these logics merely described facts, early modern persons perpetuated and manipulated these discourses for particular ends. Consequently, while I attend to the purported agency of bodily matter, as do some recent eco-critical or new materialist scholars), this agency is conceived in this way by humans and their social constructs. As imagined by early modern persons, blood has the power to determine human identities, but the period’s drama demonstrates a degree of awareness that this is an ideology with a socio-political agenda. Moreover, I tend to agree with Julie Solomon, as she outlines in her article “You’ve Got to Have Soul..,” that “[R]ather than supporting the idea that Shakespeare simply endorses the materialist psychology of his age, Shakespeare’s ironic representations of humoral explanation [...] suggest that early modern psychology was not simply reducible to a material base” (198). !43 Solomon’s work aims to complicate the early modern view of the soul by explaining its existence along a spectrum between a Galenist viewpoint and an Aristotelian-Thomist one. The Aristotelian-Thomist soul seemingly has more agency or control than the materially determined Galenic soul, as the work of Paster or Schoenfeldt assumes. I do not disagree with her that there is inevitably a spectrum and that we cannot take a determinist-Galenic view as the definitive view of everyone in the period. However, I also agree with Paster, Rowe, Floyd-Wilson and others that this determinist viewpoint was ubiquitous. I’ve chosen to focus on the Galenic side of this spectrum for the sake of moving the conversation to a slightly different question, namely what did these kinds of assumptions or conversations allow or permit? What kinds of problems did they create and how did dramatists expose those problems or attempt to negotiate a way out of them? In short, though this discourse is pervasive and widely influential, it is nonetheless a discourse and one that early modern persons could either invoke or search to think beyond. Finally, in examining drama not only of England but also of France and Italy, I hope to call attention to blood’s ideology as a pan-European phenomenon as well as to foster awareness of the ways in which dramatists from these traditions responded to this ideology by engaging in similar methods of critique. My comparative groupings in this study are organized according to a particular formal unit —providing, what I have called, a “limit case” — such as a plot device, premise, or theme, even if one text did not strictly “influence” the other according to a traditional source-study model. The terms used to describe a relationship of influence between texts are 57 This process is not all that dissimilar from the one used by Rosalie Colie in her final book, Shakespeare’ s Living 57 Art. She describes her method and subject matter: “I have chosen a single topic dealing with some formal aspect of a play or plays — the operations of styles or genres in counterpoint; the use of stereotypes in building a character highly original in stage-practice; various manipulations of a mode (the pastoral) rich in potentialities — trying to see in what particular ways Shakespeare shaped works that are, still, noticeably “unique.” Whenever possible, I have tried to look at an earlier work as a control for the work principally studied” (7-8). !44 many — borrowing, imitation, allusion, or translation — but they all implicitly presuppose knowledge of the author’s psychology, sometimes trending towards a rhetoric of intentionality, and my own work is occasionally guilty of such rhetoric. Reminiscent of the “Yale school of Renaissance criticism” (including scholars like Thomas Greene, Margaret Ferguson, and David Quint), my methodology acknowledges a source to then shed new light on the borrowing 58 literary text. The key difference, however, is my aim to avoid privileging one text over the 59 other in the comparison, especially as I consider non-English materials. For although I have the utmost regard and admiration for the work of Lorna Hutson, her comparisons have Shakespeare as their end goal. While I envision my audience to be primarily early modern scholars of 60 English literature, I invite my readers to view these non-English texts for the interest that they hold for the historical period, but without regarding a (re)interpretation of the English, usually Shakespearean, text as the exclusive payoff. Thus appealing to a formal unit as the basis of comparison offers one alternative to searching for evidence of direct influence and opens up a more flexible means for comparing national traditions (e.g., Rosalie Colie’s “genre-theory” and Claudio Guillén’s “literature as This term was coined by François Rigolot. 58 For instance, a relatively conventional source study in some respects, Greene’s Light In Troy calls attention to a 59 particularly explicit early modern practice of borrowing, imitatio. As the antidote to source studies, Julia Kristeva’s “intertextuality,” might appear to be the most attractive comparative method since it relaxes the requirements for the historical certainty of influence and promises the most fluid model for comparing texts across time. However, it often sounds like a catch-all term for any kind of textual relation, and it potentially permits too many comparisons such that they may cease to be informative. And yet intertextuality, does not seem to push so far as anachronism, as does applications of contemporary theory to literary texts. This model doesn’t presume explicit historical connections, but it promises a productive pairing whereby one text can illuminate the other’s message or philosophical aim. This method characterizes nearly any application of theory to literary scholarship (marxist readings, psychoanalytic criticism, a use of Foucault or Derrida). But this manner of work, endorsed by scholars like Jonathan Goldberg, Carla Freccero, and Madhavi Menon in Queer Studies, has recently been termed “Queer Temporality.” See her article, “On Not Being Deceived: Rhetoric and the Body in Twelfth Night,” which compares the 60 Shakespeare play with its Italian forebear, The Academy of Siena’s Gl’Ingannati, as one key example. !45 system”). My formal units resemble what Louise George Clubb would call “theatergrams,” such as basic plot premises, characters, and the like. Indebted to Clubb’s work, my own formal units 61 develop more robust source studies connections. I will, for instance, make an effort to trace some textual basis for commonality in each comparative chapter, even though finding “influence” isn’t the primary objective. Moreover, these formal units of comparison have been activated for (new) historicist ends. Although unlike some new historicist methodologies — which primarily look at the influence of non-literary texts or allusions and foreground the near-contemporaneous or micro-history — my interest in this project is not to illuminate a highly specific cultural moment but a more general, wide-ranging, and pervasive pan-European phenomenon: blood’s ideology as a naturalized discourse that contributed to the elite’s hegemony. 62 One model for blending a formalist methodology with historical considerations is Douglas Bruster’s “bricolage,” but in lieu of the more neutral “quotation,” I would like to offer 63 Melissa Walter has extended Clubb’s theatergrams to include those plot devices or tropes that originate from 61 novellas, what she dubs “novellagrams,” which “transport narrative and symbolic material across national and generic boundaries (among Italy, France, Spain, and England, and from narrative to drama)” (63). Douglas Bruster attempts to define New Historicism in Quoting Shakespeare: “Characterized as a procedure, new 62 historicist analysis tends to fasten onto part of a text contiguous with something outside that text, reading contemporaneous events, documents and phenomena beside and into literary works: a novel and a scientific lecture, a play and a riot, a poem and a battle. Such readings see various objects as interinanimated by proximity: comparing them tells us more about a culture than would reading either of the objects in isolation” (29). As he has discussed at length, this aspect of new historicist criticism often results in a kind of synecdochal reading in which the part, the identified cultural borrowing, stands in for a new reading of the whole, setting aside most other textual influences, or looking to only one textual quotation with its cultural outside but then ignoring another quotation which might contradict the first (4-6). Bruster defines bricolage as a collection of quotations which can include “such discrete components as words, 63 events, and identities” (4). The study of these quotations and their patterns in a given text provides a fuller sense of an author’s “position” or cultural world. In short, by answering the question “what is the play made of?” we might answer “what does it mean?” (14). Bruster acknowledges that this isn’t some revolutionary methodology but rather “a qualification of current ways of reading” (51). !46 the metaphor of kinship or consanguinity. This metaphor is by no means a new one, for 64 scholars of genre theory have borrowed the concept of family resemblance from Wittgenstein for a long time. David Fishelov productively developed the metaphor by insisting on prototypical 65 or core members of a genre family with a “common ancestry” to capture the more robust connections between members of the generic family. Traditional source studies too have 66 invoked family metaphors in order to establish a father-son relationship: the source influences the character of the text borrowing from it, which emulates it, incorporates it for some new end, or rejects it. Otherwise stated, the borrowing text has “inherited” some trope, theme, style, or diction; some characteristic of the father is present in its literary progeny. Yet, taking a cue 67 from the early modern conception of blood, and the work of Fishelov, one might see the father- son relationship as one type of blood-relation among many. I don’t presume to be the first to use this metaphor of familial relation, though I might be the first to explicitly 64 connect it to blood. In Louise George Clubb’s article (2010), which looks back at her work on “Shakespeare’s kinship with Italy’s theater,” she says that reading the Italian plays of the Renaissance “reveals a plurality of generations and combinations of features that suggests more complicated genetic connections and illuminates a method of composition different from imitation of discrete sources, one based instead on the existence of a repertory of theatergrams and of a default structure for each genre in which to combine them” (16-7). She hints at a kinship metaphor several other times throughout the article as well. Elizabeth Fowler articulates the older, and somewhat looser concept of family resemblance as applied to genre 65 theory as follows: “Representations of a genre may then be regarded as making up a family whose septs and individual members are related in various ways, without necessarily having any single feature shared in common by all” (Fowler 41 qtd. Fishelov 123). Fishelov outlines his addition to this tradition, “I will argue that literary genres are perceived as structured 66 categories, with a ‘hard core’ consisting of prototypical members. These prototypical members are characterized by the fact that they bear a relatively high degree of resemblance to each other. Second, by focusing on the analogy between the internal structure of literary genres and that of families one can establish a ‘genealogical’ line of literary genres, i.e., the series of writers who have participated in shaping, reshaping, and transmitting the textual heritage established by the ‘founding father’ of the genre, including the dialectical relationship of the ‘parents’ and ‘children’ in genre history.” (abstract) Carla Freccero’s work on Rabelais, Father Figures, is one interesting application of this father-son metaphor to 67 textual relations. She uses the tools of psychoanalysis, Lacan especially, to demonstrate a common relationship that literary texts have with their inspirational “fathers”: the new literary text may desire to reject the father (which imposes authority and even limitations), though it nevertheless must cite and engage with the literary father for self- authorization. Interestingly, Freccero’s content and method map onto one another quite clearly, as does my own method and theme. !47 Certainly direct inheritance plays a role in the way that texts speak to each other, but this may not be the only way. Some texts could be called spouses, siblings, or cousins. Blood offers a model of relationality that is more fluid (pun intended) since consanguinity presupposes affinity not limited to the relationship between patriarchs and their progeny. Consequently, though one text has not directly influenced another in my pairings, by tracing their shared formal unit back to similar origins or ancestors, the texts could be said to belong to the same family. And just as the physical blood shared between kin was said to determine some shared characteristic, so consanguinity provides a particularly compelling metaphor for textual relationships that have a similar question or preoccupation. Or to state it differently, my application of this kinship model offers a means to compare texts from the same “genealogy” not diachronically but synchronically. Using the metaphor of kin to characterize a group of texts with common stakes offers a more pliable model for comparison, allowing for both comparisons across national boundaries and a long early modern time frame — from the very early sixteenth century and the Italian theater of Machiavelli to the French theatrical renaissance of Corneille in the mid- seventeenth. By using formalist tools to enlarge the scope and increase the flexibility of source study’s methodology, I hope to productively discuss “kin” plays. In so doing, I aim to show that despite cultural or national boundaries, placing these plays in conversation sometimes reveals a greater similarity between them than with their respective sources due to a shared cultural critique, a shared testing of an ideology’s limits. Chapter Summaries: Pushing Blood’s Ideology to its Limits This dissertation is comprised of four chapters that explore how drama sought to critique the beliefs of blood’s ideology by exploring particular limit cases in plots of love, courtship, and !48 marriage. As noted above, not only do tales of love provide occasion to examine the premise that blood determines affinity, but also whether, according to this logic, the rite of marriage changes an individual’s very nature when her blood mixes with that of her spouse. These plays ask, for instance, can a person fall in love with his/her predetermined enemy as in the case of a blood feud? Would incest be the logical conclusion of the assumption that a person should love someone most like him/herself? Could a person force love and connection by way of mixing bloods in sexual consort (via a bed trick)? Or could one use a stand-in for conception since blood plays no role in prescribing either familial relation or affinity? And lastly does the process of unitas carnis actually dissolve differences, and could love, in fact, be based on difference rather than similarity? Chapter one, “Feuding Bloods and Romantic Love: Romeo and Juliet and Le Cid,” examines two plays wherein the protagonists’ romantic love combats with familial loyalties dictated by a blood feud. Romantic love in these circumstances is the occasion for the characters’ reexamination of blood’s ideology, either to embrace its terms or imagine some alternative picture. Although according to most all measures the lovers are extremely well suited — to borrow Shakespeare’s phrase, both are “alike in dignity” — the logic of blood in these plays not only insists that blood carries predetermined enmities but also assumes that one would adopt a spouse’s blood, and thus his/her character, in marriage. In both cases, tragedy results from the characters’ inability to escape the parameters and vocabulary of this discourse, which the playwrights make manifest in the violence of the play’s action and blood’s literal spillage onstage. Both works expose the literal blood necessarily sacrificed when honoring consanguinity in this way. Or, in other words, duties to blood dictate violence. Even the blood-mixing upon !49 Romeo’s marriage to Juliet, their effort to establish affective relations between the warring families, cannot prevent the inevitable, violent consequences of assuming this ideology: purging the families’ enmity by spilling blood from Juliet’s body. Or maybe worse yet for Corneille’s Chimène, the prospective blood-mixing with her beloved Rodrigue would render her guilty of patricide. Though disenfranchised female characters suggest that by rejecting these principles altogether the romantic love could survive — if, as for Juliet, nothing is in a name, or, as for the maidservant Elvire, mounting bloodshed should dissuade these actors from further pursuing their bloody logics — their resistance is ultimately squashed by the tragic propulsion of blood’s ideology. Chapter two, “Incest: Blood Affinity’s Frightening, Logical Conclusion” considers three incest plays, two comedies (Giambattista della Porta’s La Sorella and its English analog, Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/Help Like a Woman’ s) and one tragedy (John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’ s a Whore). Despite their vastly different endings and whether the incest is realized, all of them employ the premise of sibling incest to critique the logic that affinity or love arises from consanguinity. They ask, what happens when the notion that ‘like likes its most like’ is taken to its natural conclusion? Does the love between consanguineous family members always threaten to bleed into an all- encompassing, erotic love when both are founded upon shared blood? These incest dramas expose the folly of the period’s desire to maintain a closed system via endogamy (marriages between like persons), whereby those in power keep their power. Those comedies that avert incest, by revealing proof that infants had been swapped at birth, seem to endorse the status quo of blood’s importance, solidifying consanguineous ties by establishing affinity amongst kin as well as by ensuring bodily difference in the name of avoiding the unnatural act of incest. But !50 beneath this endorsement is likewise the suggestion that bodily distinctions mean very little, exposing the ultimately rhetorical nature of the contemporary discourse of blood that solidifies existing power structures. Tis Pity’s tragedy, on the other hand, explicitly considers this logic of consanguinity and affinity, staging the violent, horrifying consequences that result from this investment in bodies if one cannot find alternative vocabularies for personal identity or love. Chapter three, “Bed Tricks and Bloodlines, or All’s Well that Ends with a Baby” compares two plays featuring allusions to biblical bed tricks that are orchestrated, and 68 seemingly justified, in the name of producing an heir of a specific bloodline: Shakespeare’s All’ s Well that Ends Well and Machiavelli’s La Mandragola. The biblical bed trick here is the test case for blood’s value; in this case, God himself designed blood’s ideology and subsequently the intrinsic virtue of some blood is so powerful that even a bed trick is permissible. Otherwise stated, blood’s ideology, and its support for naturalized hierarchies, carries God’s sanction. These plays interrogate this tradition not only because blood does not determine any character of particular worth, but they also, respectively, question whether blood inspires affinity as the ideology promises, and whether one might relinquish blood’s import to kinship structures for the sake of pragmatism. For Shakespeare’s class-conscious protagonist Bertram, the humble Helena must share his blood and produce a child of it (only achieved by sexual intercourse which he has denied her) in order for him to entertain loving a person “unlike” himself. Helena then fulfills his lettered challenge, fully believing that the bed trick would win her love. Yet the play’s unromantic ending ultimately disproves their logic. And though the Countess and the King The bed trick is a trope wherein a person is tricked into sleeping with someone by thinking that it is someone else. 68 Some well-known examples include Tamar tricking Judah into conceiving a child and thus founding the House of Israel (Gen. 38), and Uther Pendragon sleeping with Igraine disguised as her (newly deceased) husband in order to conceive King Arthur. However, there are likewise numerous comedic examples from Boccaccio’s Decameron and other dramas of the period. !51 search for alternative ways of thinking about personal worth, alliance, and love, Lavatch the clown offers a greater critique of this ideology. Not only does it fail to satisfy the characters’ desired ends, but the notion that blood determines love has ridiculous consequences. Furthermore, while this assumption functions to solidify class distinctions, blood, as Lavatch reminds us, should be a great equalizer among persons. In comparison, Machiavelli’s skeptical play makes clear that even though a child is crucial for the continuation of a family’s lineage — and thus the foolish husband, Messer Nicia, willingly allows his beautiful wife, Lucrezia, to bed another man for its conception — the particularities of that child’s body, and subsequently the notion of preserving an all-important bloodline, is of no real import when social signification ultimately determines identity. The fourth chapter, “The Problematic Jessica, Love in Difference” somewhat departs from my comparative method (and my primary emphasis on family legacy or social class) in order to treat a single, overtly bloody, Shakespeare play: The Merchant of Venice. I do this because this play quite explicitly stages the workings of blood’s ideology. It begins with the question, how might one explain, in light of this system, the love between Lorenzo and Jessica since Lorenzo should, by all accounts, dislike the Jewish, alien Jessica. Jessica’s ambiguity, in fact, acts as a fulcrum for one of the play’s central questions, which is, how does blood’s ideology actually function? Much like the other plays, Merchant exposes blood as fundamentally rhetorical, invoked by opposing sides around the issue of Jessica’s ambiguous identity. One camp talks of her remarkably similar body and blood to provide proof that she was already Christian- like, thereby explaining Lorenzo’s attraction to her. Others insist on Jessica’s persistent consanguinity with her father. Finally, Jessica herself appeals to the logic of unitas carnis (much !52 like Helena in All’ s Well) in order to sever her blood’s connection with her Jewish father by becoming a fully Christian wife. Yet none of these characters appeal to this ideology successfully because Jessica cannot be absorbed into the network of affinity and connections; after all, consanguinity does not actually dictate affinities. Moreover, the principle of unitas carnis fails to dissolve difference, and Jessica never truly becomes fully like her husband Lorenzo. Nevertheless, by staging the romantic relationship between Jessica and Lorenzo that evidently does not function according to the logic of likeness, Merchant entertains a love that falls outside of blood’s ideology, one based in difference that can potentially disrupt the status quo. By way of closing, I should say that I don’t want to imply that when these plays acknowledge these principles of blood as discursive rather than factual, that these playwrights see their work as completed. Or, in other words, if everyone simply recognized blood’s discursiveness that this would necessitate positive change. In fact, these playwrights appear to recognize the difficulty of escaping the current ideology and finding a better alternative. Certainly exposing certain assumptions as discursive, rather than physiological and determinative, allows for greater freedoms and mobility. This is especially the case in this period when those in power appealed to these ‘truths’ in order to maintain existing exploitative social structures. But as the plays themselves show, some voices or persons may not be served by the revelation of blood’s rhetorical basis. Our sympathies may even remain with these characters: Chimène would clearly be averse to casting aside the principle of her consanguineous duty, even if it affords her love; Helena’s realization of the rhetorical rather than actual value of shared blood can only disappoint after she has expended a great deal of effort to win Bertram’s love; and Lucrezia is coerced into sleeping with another man upon her acceptance that her blood and honor !53 no longer matter. Discourses, after all, are just that, tools to be used for good or ill. Those that reduce or limit persons, their choices, actions, loves, based purely on their bodies, in my mind, will certainly have greater difficulty promising potential happiness. Yet the dismissal of these principles isn’t without its difficulties. One can expose the blood logic as ideological construct, and thus as something capable of change, but an alternative ideology, or how to best change it, has yet to be established or discovered.   !54 Chapter 1: Bloody Romance, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Corneille’s Le Cid “Tis but thy name that is my enemy”- Juliet on her balcony (Romeo and Juliet 2.1.80) With this line Juliet launches the lyrical, and yet iconoclastic, speech at her window that flies in the face of the tragedy’s premise; this premise is based in the abiding logic of the deadly feud between the two families, namely an enmity determined by their blood. According to Juliet, the young lovers have no reason to be separated by this familial rancor: it is not Romeo’s blood, but only his name, “Montague,” that is her enemy. The revolutionary thought is Juliet’s suggestion that Romeo’s character is determined or materialized by his blood, which thus does not dictate his relation to her or the Capulets. Even though, as David Crouch notes, the blood feud was exceptional in England even by the twelfth century, the logic of blood behind it persisted in Shakespeare’s England. In Romeo and Juliet the characters invest in the still widely held assumptions of blood coming from a multitude of intertwined discourses — from treatises on nobility and marriage, to religious doctrine, to natural philosophy including Galenic humoralism, to myth and even magic or superstition — which inspire (and justify) this feud. For them, shared blood corresponds with shared personality traits, shared responsibility for any crimes committed, and lastly, shared affinity for similar persons and enmity towards dissimilar ones. Only a change in blood could generate a change in character. Yet in the window scene of Shakespeare’s play, Juliet establishes herself as a tragic heroine capable of taking on and resisting the terms in which her family and society see the blood feud: she recasts it as a game of names. Blood, she speculates, is not a defining substance but rather a rhetorical tool, one used to perpetuate hostilities that continue to endanger the lives of both Capulets and Montagues. Juliet thus emerges as a figure who, by virtue of her youth and !55 desire to love, can see beyond the assumptions and limitations of her society. And yet Juliet’s iconoclastic voice and reason are eventually overwhelmed by the residual discourse of blood that permeates Verona. Both Romeo and Juliet, with the aid and guidance of Friar Laurence, attempt to correct the blood feud within its framework: by establishing new consanguineous connections between the families through marriage. But to play the game by the established rules means assuming its literal, violent character. In this case, to end the blood feud requires purging hatred from the feuding families’ bloodlines. At the end of Shakespeare’s play, the spectacle of Juliet’s stabbed, bleeding body in the Capulet tomb drives this point home viscerally: Juliet as well as the alternative viewpoint she represents are sacrificed to an ideology of blood that Juliet so poignantly discredited. 69 Hence rather than attribute this tragedy to the inevitable workings of Fate, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet engages the dramatic tradition of tragic sacrifice as catharsis — here presented as a barbaric bloodletting of an innocent young girl — in order to suggest that the persistence of blood’s ideology requires violence and, in this case, blood sacrifice. For as with the classical 70 example of Euripides’s Iphigenia, though the tragic hero (here the tragic couple) makes the 71 “correct” choice in terms of the ideological framework at hand, the nature of the sacrifice made calls the larger value-system into question. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet thus plays out the Though rarely highlighted in stagings of Romeo and Juliet, this scene should likely resemble Titus’s bloody hole. 69 As Catherine Belling tells us, “Metaphors of social or political bleeding were underpinned by the sense in which 70 blood was a literally continuous link between individual human bodies and public states or hereditary bloodlines. The humoral system as it was understood in the Renaissance was a coherent part of the Neoplatonic paradigm in which the matter of each human person — each microcosm — was continuous with the matter of both social and wider, natural macrocosms. Individual and social bodies could be analogous because of a quite literal interpermeability of bodies across different scales in a humoral cosmology” (84). This play was available to early moderns via Erasmus’s Latin translation where it was published alongside 71 Hecuba by the title Hecuba et Iphigenia in Aulis (1509). Although not in dramatic form, the story was likewise available in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 12). !56 Galenic terms of the blood feud, which endure in his contemporary England, in order to demonstrate the violent cost of this logic of blood that secures kinship and social structures. The play thus encourages the audience to consider Juliet’s alternative conception of identity, which was sacrificed due to the characters’ choice to uphold this violent ideology. This visceral and gruesome scene — mentioned no less than three times in the span of thirty lines — contrasts with earlier iterations of the Romeo and Juliet plot, wherein blood is rarely mentioned although it is at the heart of the bloody enmity. In fact, in most versions Juliet does not stab herself, she instead dies of sadness or, sometimes, leftover poison. But both 72 Shakespeare’s play and Corneille’s Le Cid take the central premise from this story, a tension between romantic love and familial loyalties, and increase blood’s dramatic presence. Both plays speak to a world in which this tale is not simply a tragedy of star-crossed lovers, but a conflict between the young protagonists’ love and contemporary assumptions about blood’s determination of affinities, responsibilities, privilege, and power. Most of the characters fully invest in and ascribe to blood’s ideology as material truth requiring blood-spillage, even though both dramas call upon the audience to view these appeals as rhetorical rather than factual. The tragedy in both plays illustrate that the conviction that blood literally determines enmity and difference only requires more blood spilt, perpetuating violence. In Shakespeare’s Verona, this discourse only creates more bloodthirsty Tybalts who genuinely believe that their bodies cannot do otherwise but hate and destroy another family’s bloodline. In Corneille’s Le Cid, Chimène’s refusal to marry her love Rodrigue may forever interrupt the promised romantic ending, yet her Juliet stabbing herself with a dagger is actually one of Boaistuau’s important revisions of the tale. However, 72 surprisingly, even in his revision he doesn’t make much of the bloody result of her suicide. I will expand upon the sources for both Shakespeare and Corneille’s plays and justify their comparison in the transition between the two sections. !57 complaint carries enormous weight if the theories of shared blood are taken seriously, as she does. If one’s blood physically determines one’s character, and blood is mixed in marriage, then husband and wife ultimately come to share the traits, and thus the crimes, of one another. And in Chimène’s case this crime would be patricide. Chimène clings to this ultimately destructive discourse even though it conflicts with her prospective future happiness as well as King Fernand’s ordinance. She feels the pull of her father’s blood on the ground, as though in her body, and she must continue to demand retribution for her father’s murder not only to save herself, but also her entire bloodline, from “eternal reproach.” Both plays, however, also present characters who attempt to invoke this blood discourse towards a different end — supporting the central romantic love, or at the very least, peace. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Friar Lawrence hope that once married, the mixing of the two bloodlines could end the blood feud by establishing new ties of affinity between the families. And although their scheme is “successful,” it does not escape the violent consequences of this materialist ideology. For the social reintegration of the two families comes at the cost of blood spilt in the Galenic framework, Juliet’s bleeding body serves as the mechanism for the humoral purging of the familial enmity. In Le Cid too both the Infanta and the King look to interrupt the blood feud’s destructive logic, but they also fail to escape this discourse fully. While this play has often been read as the political struggle between older aristocratic appeals to independent power and the rising absolutist monarch, Le Cid highlights that despite these political differences, both sides of this divide use a vocabulary of blood to establish their identities and appeal to authority. King Fernand’s royal bloodline — in addition to his dependence upon the aristocracy to spill Moorish blood — means that he cannot completely squelch the aristocracy’s concern for their !58 own blood, Chimène’s ‘point of honor,’ regardless of the problems that it poses for his kingdom. Both the blood feud and the monarch’s national security require blood and, consequently, violence. But finally, both plays make space for an alternative outside of these blood-soaked discourses; a small crack in which the audience can recognize the rhetorical status of blood as opposed to factual, and therefore, the possibility for a way out of the violent consequences of blood. In this case, a few women, marginalized and easily disregarded due to their sex as well as their social position, voice this alternative though they ultimately fail to change the course of these tragedies. As mentioned above, Juliet’s balcony scene questions and endeavors to reject the principle of inherited enmity, flirting with the notion that the difference between her and her love might be in name only and not in physiological difference. But unable to fully elaborate this alternative picture, she, persuaded by Romeo with Friar Lawrence, becomes overwhelmed by the social pressures of blood’s ideology. In Corneille’s play as well, Chimène’s servant Elvire alone suggests that the escape from the violence of blood discourse, the escape promised by a romantic conclusion, necessitates a wholesale rejection of this ideology. This escape requires that one reject the bloody vocabulary of both of the nobility and the aristocracy, insisting on a space outside of the existing dialectic. One cannot merely command that the blood feud cease, as the King declares in the interest of his own power, but one must explicitly recognize the violent byproducts of defining others, or oneself, by blood. Of course, Elvire’s moment is fleeting and her voice is disregarded. !59 Comparing Kin Texts, Earlier Iterations of the Romeo and Juliet Plot A study that places Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet alongside Corneille’s Le Cid, though founded in a seemingly natural thematic comparison, would be inconceivable according to traditional source study. This might be why this comparison, as far as I can tell, has not yet been pursued. Shakespeare’s play couldn’t have “influenced” Corneille’s in any direct fashion because Shakespeare was unknown to seventeenth-century France. The plays of the French Renaissance were translated into English and performed at court after the Restoration, but there appeared to be very little material traveling from England to France. Most likely, Shakespeare’s work became known to the French reading public in 1776 with M. Le Tourneur’s translations, although V oltaire also knew of him and the playwright Jean-François Ducis rewrote many of Shakespeare’s tragic plots. But regardless of how he got there, it is clear that Shakespeare 73 didn’t make it across the channel until the eighteenth century. Yet, if we look to the plays’ shared subject matter — a young couple torn between passionate love and allegiances determined by bloodlines — we can trace this premise to some probable common sources. For instance, Kenneth Muir’s suggested sources for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are not limited to Arthur Brooke’s prose version (1562). He also identifies the central plot in several Italian sources: Matteo Bandello’s novella (1554), Luigi da Porto’s version (1530), and Luigi Groto’s dramatized rendition titled Hadriana (1578). However, the most 74 See John Doran’s “Shakespeare in France.” 73 For more information on the development of this plot, see Jill Levenson’s “Romeo and Juliet before 74 Shakespeare.” For references to other possible novella sources prior to the da Porto version, see Luigi Monga’s “Romeo and Juliet Revisited...”. !60 interesting source for my purposes is a French “translation” of Bandello, one of six tales in 75 Pierre Boaistuau’s Historiques tragiques (1559). Given Boaistuau’s infamy as the editor who botched Margueritte de Navarre’s Heptaméron, Corneille’s familiarity with this text is not terribly far-fetched. Moreover, Boaistuau likely imitated Adrien Sevin who had rewritten the da Porto version with a pseudo-Greek setting in 1542, and which, according to many other scholars, likely influenced Corneille’s Le Cid. After all, Corneille’s Spanish source text, Guillén de 76 Castro’s Mocedades del Cid (1618), focuses on the complicated action and violence rather than the psychological struggles of the two lovers in the clash of love and duties to one’s lineage. 77 But even setting these genealogical possibilities aside, by tracking the many formal similarities between the English and French renditions of this theme, these two early modern plays likely share a common literary bloodline, which, in this instance, suggests similarly bloody preoccupations. It seems to me that both traditions engage with this plot in a similar cultural moment in which assumptions about blood are in dispute. By putting translation in scare quotes, I mean to indicate translation both in its most literal sense (in this case 75 translated into French by Belleforest and Boaistuau), and in the larger sense of a reinterpretation or rendition but which can involve, especially in this instance, quite substantial changes in content. Olin Moore’s information on Adrien Sevin as Corneille’s precursor comes from H. Hauvette. Hauvette notes that 76 this Juliet, named Burglipha, is more torn between love and duty than the Shakespearean iteration, “elle est partagée entre son amour et son devoir; elle est au martyre ‘de voir pour elle son cher frère mort et son amy pour tel mesfiact fuytif, dont il convenoit le prendre en mortelle haine’” (334). She, unlike Shakespeare’s Juliet, is distinctly angry: she calls him a traitor and says that he merits strangling. It is in this context that Hauvette points to Sevin’s Burglipha as a likely predecessor for Corneille’s Chimène: “Il est impossible de ne pas songer à la situation de Chimène poursuivant, par devoir, le meurtrier de son père. Les Français n’avaient pas à apprendre des Espagnols ce que c’est que le point d’honneur” (334). However, Gustave L. van Roosbroeck has argued in The Cid Theme in France in 1600 that the love versus honor 77 trope, as well as the psychological emphasis, is already present in a novel by A. du Périer La Haine et l’amour d’Arnoul et de Clayremonde. He maintains that this is the true origin of both Castro and Corneille; the two French texts, in many ways, are far more similar than Cid’s resemblance to the Spanish drama (including tendencies towards character analyses and making the force of passion subject to explanation and intellectualization). The greatest difference between them is one of genre. Roosbroeck’s findings, however, don’t really disturb my larger point, which is that a “Romeo and Juliet” myth influenced Le Cid’s plot. Périer’s novel, in some senses, is closer to Romeo and Juliet’s premise because the violence is set in the context of a long-standing blood feud rather than begun by an act of political competition. !61 Furthermore, both early modern plays make similar departures from their sources, the greatest one being an increased emphasis on blood: the blood feuds were made bloodier. Blood’s increased presence in comparison to their sources should provoke the audience to look at how blood functions in these plays more closely. Earlier versions tend to downplay the family feud except as background, a necessary obstacle for the young lovers; the blood feud operates as premise for this tragic plot and not as a central preoccupation. This holds true for Bandello’s novella, “La sfortunata morte di due infelicissimi amanti che l’uno di veleno e l’altro di dolore morirono, con vari accidenti” [“The unfortunate death of two unhappy lovers who die, one of poison the other of sorrow, with various accidents.”] (Part II Novella ix). Here it is not the 78 blood feud as such which has made the families so angry, but rather the fact that so many have died as a result. The “sanguinolente nemicizia” [the bloody feud] is one not necessarily 79 inherited via blood, but one created by bloody violence. The blood feud’s status as premise rather than emphasis holds for Boaistuau as well. The introductory summary to the tale depicts the tragic conclusion as the inevitable outcome of passionate love, in which lovers die “par une trop excessive joye” [“by a too excessive joy”] (61). It is one tale among many which proves that one can die “par les furieuses flammes du trop ardent amour” [“on account of the furious flames of a Translations provided here are for the ease of those who speak neither Italian nor French. All translations for this 78 section are my own unless otherwise noted. Many will sound a bit awkward in English, but I have often done so purposefully in order to give the reader the closest sense of the original. Bandello sets the scene,“Furono giá al tempo dei signori de la Scala due famiglie in Verona tra l’altre di nobilitá e 79 ricchezze molto famose, cioè i Montecchi e i Capelletti, le quali tra loro, che che se ne fosse cagione ebbero fiera e sanguinolente nemicizia, di modo che in diverse mischie, essendo ciascuna potente, molti ci morirono cosí di Montecchi e Capelletti come di seguaci che a quelli s’accostarono; il che di piú in piú i lor odii accrebbe.” [“There were already of the time of the Scala lords, two families in Verona, among the others of nobility and wealth very famous, namely the Montecchi and the Capelletti, who amongst themselves, that when there was not cause for there to be a proud and bloody enmity of the manner, in various quarrels, each one being powerful, many Montecchi and Capelletti died in this way, as with their followers as with them, they accosted each other; that more and more their hatred increased.”] (370-1). !62 too ardent love”] and by a reversal of Fortune (61). When Boaistuau does describe the blood 80 feud, he gives it a blatantly social origin, the result of inevitable competition between families of similar rank. Since in both tales the blood feud provides a necessary obstacle for the romantic, 81 tragic narrative, the hope that marriage will make peace between the two families is framed as an afterthought. Bandello’s Fra Lorenzo desires to conduct the marriage because “con questo 82 mezzo si persuadeva poter pacificare insieme i Capelletti e i Montecchi” [“with this means one will persuade and can pacify the Capelletti and the Montecchi together”] (380). But in the same breath he adds a political motivation, namely a hope to please his ruler by putting an end to the infighting. There is no mention of blood or any concern for bodies coming together. Thus these different versions of the original tale all attend to the reality of the blood feud, namely that these are social factions in competition with one another that violence exacerbates. Shakespeare and Boaistuau describes the tragic turn as Fate betraying the two lovers, “la fortune (envieuse de leur prosperité) 80 tourna sa roue pour les faire trebucher en tel abisme qu’il luy payerent l’usure de leurs plaisirs passez par une trescruelle et trespitoyable mort” [“Fortune (envious of their prosperity) turned her wheel in order to make them stumble into such an abyss that would pay for the use of their past pleasures with a very cruel and pitiable death.”] (82). Boaistuau narrates, “mais ainsi que le plus souvent il y a envie entre ceux qui sont en pareil degré d’honneur, 81 aussi survint-il quelque inimitié entr’eux, et combien que l’origine en fust leger et assez mal fondé, si est-ce que par intervalle de temps s’enflamma si bien qu’en diverses menées qui se dresserent d’une part et d’autre, plusieurs y laisserent la vie” [“But just as most often there is envy amongst those who are of similar rank, so too there occurs some enmity between them, and regardless of how light and ill-founded its origin, if over an interval of time it is aggravated in many intrigues that one faction and the other rise up against each other, many will lose their lives to it.”] (64). For instance in Bandello’s novella Giulietta muses, “Io ho pure piu volte udito dire che per gli sposalizi fatti, non 82 solamente tra privati cittadini e gentiluomini si sono de le paci fatte” [“I have many times heard it said that with marriages made, not only between private citizens and gentlemen was there peace established ...”] (377). However, she does not mention blood as central to this reasoning. It is a simple social fact that marriages sometimes work to effect peace between rival factions. The tale’s ending likewise illuminates the subordinate character of making peace between the two families. The resolution of the blood feud, though cited as motivation, receives little emphasis. It says only, “Il che fu cagione che tra i Montecchi e Capelletti si fece la pace, ben che non molto da poi durasse” [“This was the cause/occasion that between the Montecchi and Capelletti peace was made, well that not much after then survived.”] (408). In Boaistuau too, the peace effected between the two families is cited as a secondary reason for the lover’s union, “car peut estre que ceste nouvelle alliance engendrera une perpetuelle paix et amitié entre sa famille et la mienne” [“Because maybe this new alliance will engender a perpetual peace and friendship between his family and mine.”] (73). !63 Corneille’s drama, on the other hand, will expose that the characters’ investment in this discourse is both material and violent. In keeping with the lack of emphasis on the blood feud, the characters of these tales do not foreground blood affinities amongst family members. For example, Boaistuau’s Juliette apparently views her connection to her parents as something easily ignored or removed. She tells Rhomeo that by me recevant pour vostre femme et legitime epouse, vous aurez telle part en moy que, sans avoir egard à l’obeyssance et reverence que je doy à mes parens, ny aux anciennes inimitiez de vostre famille et la mienne, je vous feray maistre et seigneur perpetuel de moy et de tout ce que je possede, estant preste et appareillée de vous suyvre par tout où vous me commanderez. (75) By receiving me as your wife and legitimate spouse, you will have such a part in me that, without having any regard for the obedience and reverence that I owe to my parents, nor for the ancient enmities of your family and mine, I will make you perpetual lord and master of me and all that I possess, being ready and equipped to follow you wherever you command me. Rhomeo will have “telle part” in her [“en moy”] such that he will be master over her, and their marriage will remove any consideration for reverence to her parents or for the enmities between their families. While her language gestures towards the lovers becoming one flesh, there is no such fleshy relationship to her family. She describes her connection with her parents as a social action, or as reverence due, and not a material, consanguineous connection. Rhomeo further affirms that their kinship relations are practically a matter of choice; one can remember them and honor them or not. He remarks to Julliette prior to consummating the marriage that they can now live “sans nous amuser à rememorer noz anciennes miseres” [“without concerning ourselves with remembering our former miseries”] (81). If Boaistuau’s Rhomeo and Juliette conceived of these blood ties as physiological, and thus determining their allegiances in the same way that it !64 determined their physical appearance (as do Shakespeare’s and Corneille’s characters), then they could not speak thus. Generally, if blood is present in these texts, then it is not the marker of kinship relations but rather the byproduct of violence. And even then, as previously mentioned, 83 it is less prevalent in the dénouement. Blood generally takes a backseat as violence’s obvious 84 outcome, and the conflict is essentially social in nature. There are, however, a few important exceptions to this general pattern, an occasional reference to blood that hints towards a deeper exploration of the blood discourses at work. Shakespeare and Corneille’s adaptations of the Romeo and Juliet premise build on these suggestions. During Bandello’s balcony scene, for instance, Romeo insists that he would never allow Giulietta’s dishonor, “perché io per conservarlo chiaro e famoso com’è mi ci affaticherei col sangue proprio” [“because I, in order to preserve its clarity and honor, would strive as if it were my own blood”] (378). His promise to labor for her honor as he would for his own blood insinuates a physical connection established between them — maybe one forged by falling in In Boaistuau’s version, in fact, the first time that blood is mentioned it is as “bloodthirsty.” The narrator recounts 83 that everything will change for these lovers at the Easter Holiday since, “les hommes sanguinaires sont volontiers coustumiers, apres les bonnes festes, commettre les meschantes oeuvres” [“bloodthirsty men are willingly accustomed, after nice feasts, to commit evil deeds”] (82). The next mention of blood appears in a long list of body parts strewn about after the great fight: “la terre estoit tout couverte de bras, de jambes, de cuisses et de sang” [“the earth was covered with arms, legs, thighs, and blood.”] (83). Moreover, when Bandello’s Romeo tries to stop “la zuffa” (the quarrel, brawl) between the two families, he pleads with Tebaldo that they be good citizens and not spill any more blood “ché pur troppo sangue s’è sparso” [“because too much blood is already spilt.”] (383). Boaistuau’s Rhomeo too, in trying to break up the fight, doesn’t mention any love that he holds for the opposing side. He rather mentions the great shame and scandal that they should feel for putting the republic in disorder, and asks Thibault to be content with the amount of blood already spilt: “sois content de tant de sang respandu et de tant de meurtres commis le passé” [“be content with so much blood spilt and so many murders committed past”] (83-4). Neither Romeo character proclaims a newfound kinship with Thibault nor hints that his marriage with a Capulet should have changed the status quo. Instead, Romeo could have just as easily cited this justification for peace without loving Giulietta/Juliette. Bandello’s Giulietta dies of “dolente” and there is no blood involved whatsoever. Boaistuau’s Julliette does stab 84 herself: “Et ayant tiré la dague que Rhomeo avoit ceincte à son costé, se donna de la poincte plusieurs coups au travers du cueur” [“And having pulled the dagger that Rhomeo had belted to his side, gave herself with the point many blows through the heart.”] (113). But surprisingly, Boaistuau’s rendition doesn’t emphasize the bloody byproduct. Additionally, it is true that Shakespeare’s tomb is a good deal bloodier because in Boaistuau’s rendition there is no skirmish with Paris, and thus no blood around the sepulcher prior to Julliette’s awakening. !65 love at first sight. Boaistuau’s version pushes these blood discourses further during Julliette’s 85 tirade against Rhomeo. In a lengthy monologue, she vilifies him for having broken their promise to one another. She asks, “Mais si vous estiez si affamé du sang des Capellets, pourquoy avez- vous espargné le mien” [“But if you were so hungry for Capulet blood, why did you spare mine?”] (86); she then inquires why he would seek to crown his victory over her with her cousin’s blood: “La victoire que vous aviez eue sur moy, ne vous sembloit-elle assez glorieuse, si pour la mieux solenniser elle n’estoit couronnée du sang du plus cher de tous mes cousins?” [“The victory that you have had over me, did it not seem to you glorious enough, if to better solemnize it wasn’t crowned by the blood of my dearest cousin?”] (86). Hence, though 86 primarily in the context of blood-thirsty, these references presuppose that Capulet is a blood type indicated by the possessive, the blood of the Capulets [“des Capellets”]. Julliette’s question might finally acknowledge a connection between herself and her family dictated by their consanguinity, which has a hold over her despite what she and Rhomeo promised: to renounce all familial honor or loyalty. This Julliette also suggests she may be in conflict with herself after Rhomeo has murdered Thibault. She insists that she cannot live without him and should accompany him to exile; there is no other option for her since “je me suis faicte ennemye de moy-mesme, me desdaigne et contemne” [“I have been made enemy to myself, disdain myself and condemn myself.”] (90). This sense of turning against oneself is clear in Shakespeare’s exposition of Juliet’s dismay upon Tybalt’s death [“I am not I if there be such and ‘Ay’], and See introduction for more information about blood mixing upon falling in love through the eyes, outlined for 85 example by Marsilio Ficino. This moment in Bandello might also point towards, though in a far less extreme fashion, Rodrigue’s offer to die by Chimène’s hands in order to salvage her honor, which he has tainted by killing her father. This lament provides evidence for Boaistuau’s Juliette as a character that resembles Corneille’s Chimène, and thus 86 provides more textual evidence for a possible borrowing. !66 Corneille too will cite this notion with the potential conflict in Chimène’s blood if she were to marry Rodrigue. Though one play did not directly influence the other, both Shakespeare and Corneille elected to expand upon brief hints at a physical or visceral interpretation of blood’s ideology in order to underscore how it functions: the belief that blood determines one’s person and affinities has bloody consequences regardless of whether or not the person citing it has good, non-violent intentions. And as the female minority voices demonstrate, it would be better to acknowledge this as a discourse, to acknowledge its basis in rhetoric rather than scientific fact, and then abandon it altogether. Romeo and Juliet: The Great Blood Purgation Shakespeare sets his tragic tale in a literally blood-soaked world. The blood feud is not merely a footnote allowing for the central tragic action, rather it is made explicitly violent and bloody. The conclusion of Romeo and Juliet is not typically remembered as a gory spectacle, however. The Chorus might prepare the audience for Juliet’s death, but it does not obviously presage a bloodbath. Nonetheless, Juliet’s blood evidently splatters the stage at the play’s close. As theater historian Lucy Munro notes in her extensive catalogue of stage blood, the stage direction that “Fryer stoops and lookes on the blood and weapons” in (Q1597) indicates that stage blood was likely used (“Stage Blood Round Table” 30). Moreover, blood is mentioned several times in the dialogue in a compressed time span. “The ground is bloody,” the Chief Watchman observes, just before he finds “Juliet bleeding, warm and newly dead” (5.3.172,175). Even more strikingly, Lord Capulet gasps at the sight of his daughter’s body, “Oh Wife, look how our daughter bleeds!” (5.3.202). Lord Capulet’s exclamation should call the audience’s 87 Lucy Munro continues that more than 150 plays contain directions for wounding of some kind, which suggests 87 the use of stage blood, especially when dialogue explicitly directs their attention to it (“They ate…” 78-9). !67 attention to a shocking display, and it further asks them to remark that she bleeds. Yet the play’s performance and scholarship often sterilize this aspect of the play, and disregard the textual suggestions of a blood bath reminiscent of those in Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy. 88 Even Jennifer Low’s work, which importantly calls attention to the placement of Juliet’s body onstage, or Ramie Targoff’s piece that comments on the inconvenient presence of Paris at the Capulet tomb, do not attend to Juliet’s bleeding. And because the bloody language of 89 Shakespeare’s play text is likely a considered addition to the sources, I would like to take up what Capulet’s exclamation suggests: that there is something particularly horrible, noteworthy, and tragic about the spectacle of Juliet’s bleeding body. Juliet’s blood onstage, I believe, 90 emphasizes the tragic consequences of the blood discourse by way of presenting a literal purging of the bloody enmity. Prior Romeo and Juliet scholarship has treated the play’s emphasis on blood within the framework of the blood feud, which, thanks to historical studies like Edward Muir’s examination of the vendetta in Friuli, can be glossed in socioeconomic terms. As Muir demonstrates, preserving aristocratic honor embodied in bloodlines was often an excuse for other, more practical disputes over property, feudal dues, taxes, political appointments, etc. When Romeo and Juliet scholarship addresses the blood feud in the context of these larger societal structures or For example, in Baz Luhrmann’s popular Romeo + Juliet the presiding image is Juliet dressed in a pristine white 88 shroud surrounded by lit candles (even after she has shot herself in the head). R.A. Foakes writing on the violence in this play likewise pays little attention to blood, which is unsurprising given that he analyzes the play alongside Luhrmann’s film. Ramie Targoff sees the conclusion’s lack of romanticism as another mechanism to express the central message 89 about love as carpe diem: “What Shakespeare gives us in Romeo and Juliet is a couple that resists all of the conventional forms of consolation available for spouses confronting their mortality, a couple that will stake everything on the pleasures of “one short minute” without anticipating anything more” (35). I am, in fact, reviving a very old intervention and reading made by Leo Kirschbaum on Shakespeare’s use of stage 90 blood, though he examines Julius Caesar and Coriolanus; he argues that when blood does appear onstage we should take it seriously, as important as poetry, character or plot, and not write it off as spectacular, popular excess. !68 pressures, it often loses sight of the emphasis on blood’s materiality in the play. Paul Kottman, 91 for instance, has recently recalled Hegel’s influential proposal that the political setting subjects the lovers to violent chaos, and the lovers, either deservedly or undeservedly, reaped the unfortunate consequences of rejecting social confines and familial duties. Feminist critics have 92 developed this line of interpretation, suggesting that the play highlights problems of masculine identity; violence and aggression is a necessary evil that allows men to prove themselves as men, and the lovers are simply caught in the crossfire of this social mandate. Alternatively, the blood 93 feud’s violence has been interpreted in light of contemporary political riots and class conflicts, 94 or changing definitions of “civility” in the early modern period. Lastly, Susan Snyder holds 95 that Romeo and Juliet condemns the social system of the blood feud by noting its similarities to For arguments that attribute the tragic plot to the workings of Fate as a cosmic force, emphasizing dreams, 91 portents, etc., see D. Douglas Waters, “Fate and Fortune in Romeo and Juliet,” The Upstart Crow 12 (1992): 74-90. For formalist scholarship which views the lovers pulled by their tragic genre, see William C. Carroll, “‘We were born to die’:‘Romeo and Juliet,’” Comparative Drama 15.1 (1981): 54-71; Martha Tuck Rozett, “The Comic Structures of Tragic Endings: The Suicide Scenes in Romeo and Juliet and Anthony and Cleopatra,” Shakespeare Quarterly 3.2 (1985): 152-164; and Harry Levin, “Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1960): 3-11. Yet other scholars have argued that the lovers are subjected to violent chaos of the political setting (see Ruth Nevo 92 “Tragic Form in Romeo and Juliet”), or that they, deservedly or undeservedly, reaped the unfortunate consequences of rejecting social confines and familial duties (see Harry Levin’s “Form and Formality...”, and Lawrence Stone’s The Family, Sex, and Marriage 1500-1800). Paul Kottman’s article, “Defying the Stars...”, aims to revise this common interpretive paradigm that the tragedy is “a conflict between lovers’ individual desires and the reigning demands of family, civic, and social norms in relation to which those desires are formed” (1). He instead maintains that “Romeo and Juliet is the drama of a struggle for individual freedom and self-realization, and this drama has a tragic structure. However, the tragic core of our self-realization springs not from our personal struggles with external social or natural necessities but from the dawning realization that nothing, not even mortality, separates or individuates us absolutely. This awakening leads Romeo and Juliet to the realization that, if they are to claim their lives as their own, they must somehow actualize their separateness for themselves, through one another” (5-6). All of the interpretations above set aside the foundation of Romeo and Juliet’s conflict of interest, namely the blood feud. See Coppélia Kahn’s article “Coming of Age in Verona,” and her book Man’ s Estate, Marianne Novy on 93 “Violence, Love and Gender...”, and Robert Appelbaum’s “Pressures of Masculinity.” See Chris Fitter’s “‘The quarrel is between our masters and our men’... ”. 94 See Glen Clark’s article “The Civil Mutinies...”. 95 !69 Althusser’s “ideology,” maintaining that the feud-system, like other ideologies, “is not in fact predicated on any substantive difference between Montagues and Capulets.” 96 But while this treatment of the blood feud can explain a great deal about the play, it does not fully satisfy Romeo and Juliet’s negotiations with blood, which not only pertain to familial enmity but also to love and their marriage. The lovers imagine that their marriage will end the blood feud due to its material component, namely mixing bloods upon becoming one flesh. I agree with Snyder that the play as a whole, using Juliet’s voice, criticizes the blood feud by exposing it as discursive; but I maintain that of great importance to the play’s drama is the fact that the characters nevertheless invest in a strong, substantive difference between them. To understand the play’s critique of this blood discourse, we must reinvest the characters’ ideology Snyder elaborates that ideology creates meaning by fabricating differences in name to solidify certain social 96 imperatives such as “the obligation to maintain one’s honour by avenging insults, the obligation to contract a suitable marriage and adapt appropriately to the married state”(90-1). Edward Muir’s study of the early modern Venetian vendetta, Mad Blood Stirring, does cite a biological basis for the revenge narrative: “When sufficiently endangered or provoked, a man’s mad blood stirred, producing an irresistible flare of choler or anger, that emotion biologically induced by what we would call the fight response. Renaissance society greatly valued the fight over the flight response; whereas fighting always produced risks, a failure to resist perceived antagonisms guaranteed shame, a social calamity perhaps more disastrous than any other for a man’s relations with his fellows, as shameful for him as impurity for a woman. Whatever the encouragements of Christian morality, a man best avoided shame and preserved honor by answering anger with anger, insult with insult, injury with injury, death with death” (xxvi). It bears repeating that I don’t disagree with Snyder’s claim about how ideology actually works; my contention with her reading is that it doesn’t consider the physical, literal stakes that underpin the feud’s logic for the play’s characters. We agree on the basic point that “the norms [of society] themselves bring about the tragedy” (95). Peter Holbrook’s reading of the play, in his book Shakespeare’ s Individualism, is the most recent version of Snyder’s argument. He maintains that in this play, “Your name is your enemy. The lovers want to make their own lives, but Verona is completely hostile to individuality: you are a Montague (or a Capulet) and that obliges you to behave in this way, marry this person, follow this occupation, and so on, endlessly. Names are lethal” (217). Dympna C. Callaghan likewise attends to ideology in her reading, that of desire and romantic love, though hers emphasizes the play’s role in ideological production rather than its critique. !70 with its literal sense: their conception that blood embodies “Montagueness” or “Capuletness.” 97 The ideology of blood assumes first, that there is a material difference between bloodlines, and second, that blood has the agency to determine either enmity or affinity. These underlying assumptions beneath the blood feud require further analytic attention. The Montagues and Capulets hold that blood materially differentiates persons, substantiating both their identities and the perpetual enmity between their families. This investment, moreover, sustains violence by ascribing agency (and thus blame) to the blood that determines this enmity. In Shakespeare’s Verona, this discourse only creates more bloodthirsty Tybalts who genuinely believe that their bodies cannot do otherwise than hate and destroy another family’s bloodline. Moreover, the belief that blood determines one’s person and affinities has bloody consequences regardless of whether or not the person citing it has good, non-violent intentions. Romeo and Friar Laurence hope to end the violence of the blood feud, but they do so Matthew Spellberg’s recent article in ELR (2013) operates with a premise entirely antithetical to my own. For 97 him, “In Shakespeare’s Verona, the means of understanding the world has been largely divorced from its material referentiality. Language itself has been lifted away from bodies and sensations; instead it hinges upon itself for definition” (63). In this account, the lovers Romeo and Juliet by using a vocabulary of dreams reinvigorate language with sensation and feeling; but though this project escapes the arbitrariness of the blood feud, it is also a naturally violent proposition. Like Snyder, I agree with Spellberg that “language twists and manipulates nature. The predominance of speech over touch is a central concern in a play that is tragically about the determinism of naming” (76). However, as I hope to show, the characters fail to realize this problem as such; if the problem was one of language then like Juliet, they could acknowledge that names could be changed. However, the characters appear to see their bodies acting out an enmity beyond their control. !71 within the existing ideological framework. They embrace the belief that blood determines 98 identity and simply hope that a new blood admixture — effected by the process of unitas carnis (becoming ‘one flesh’) in marriage, and the mixed blood generation to follow — will forge peace between the two families by establishing new ties of affinity. And although their scheme 99 “works” since it is the final bloody spectacle that prompts the two patriarchs to forge peace, its success is highly problematic. The social reintegration of the two families comes at the cost of 100 blood spilt when operating within blood’s materialist ideology and its Galenic framework. In short, the familial enmity that contaminates the bloodlines of these two houses must be violently I would be willing to add Lord Capulet to this list based on Robert Watson’s recent work about Capulet’s “lost 98 compromise,” wherein he likely comes to Romeo’s defense even after his murder of Tybalt (3.1.184-88 in Q2), though ignored in most editions. But, of course, Lord Capulet’s compromise like the Friar’s might be well- intentioned, but it does not escape society’s existing, flawed discourse as his daughter’s speech attempts. In some ways, mine and Watson’s projects are very complimentary, as Watson agrees that “Shakespeare was inviting mistrust of the formative consciousness underlying the feud and its analogues by provoking mistrust of, and impatience with, the rhetorical antitheses used to express it” (80). Yet, to my mind, Watson uses language very like the Friar’s in order to support the marriage project of the young lovers: “The most persistent and pervasive theme of the play could be described as an effort — almost alchemical — to use erotic heat to reconcile bluntly opposed and thus mutually exclusive elements into a mysterious compound that converts two into one that amounts to more than two ones could be, with a goal of immortality” (60). But when looking through the lens of the blood discourse, this romantic/ erotic picture sounds far less appealing. Like Watson, I see a tension between Shakespeare’s Veronese society and the lovers, but I hope to show that both sides of this binary are actually dependent on the same faulty discourse, and, therefore, are not quite so antithetical after all. Ariane Balizet interestingly glosses this marriage in a similar way, although her concern is with the ideology of 99 domesticity as it pertains to kinship and larger social structures. Balizet reads the marriage of Romeo and Juliet as an effort to join (pun joint-ure) and heal dismembered physical, domestic, political bodies (i.e. the blood feud), and in effect this marriage is concluded after the lovers’ death with the two patriarchs joining hands in a second marriage ritual. Yet as she notes, “Romeo and Juliet’s dead bodies, however, underscore the fundamental fallibility and very real dangers presented by fantasies of early modern domestic order” (“Enamoured of thy parts”). Namely, if the man is the head of the house and the household is a unified functioning body then dismemberment figures an anxiety about the dissolution or disorderliness of the domestic space, the man’s loss of authority in his household. Wendy Wall has likewise pointed to other aspects that might trouble a person’s satisfaction with the closing 100 reconciliation. She remarks that in both Q1 and Q2 this “passage concerns competitive expenditure, each ratifies the protagonists’ marriage after the fact, and each asserts fatherly control in a moment of grieving chaos. In each, the fathers turn to the task of rehabilitating degenerates, those unruly teens refusing to bear the proper marker of the ancestral mold” (162). While I agree with some of these observations, I disagree with the nature of the lovers’ failure. Namely, I believe that the problem is their investment in a faulty ideology that they tried to adapt to their own desires, but it came at a cost. !72 purged, let out of the family body via the bloodletting of Juliet, sacrificed to this very belief system. 101 102 Tragically, the possibility for an alternative voice, outside of these blood-soaked discourses, dies with Juliet. It is she who interrogates the principle of inherited enmity, flirting with the notion that the difference between her and her love might be in name only. Yet, she is 103 ultimately overwhelmed by the social pressures of blood’s ideology. This play proffers Juliet’s dream as an alternative vocabulary with which to understand identity and affinity. However, this dream is dashed, in a heap at the bottom of the Capulet tomb. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet does not close with a comedic celebration of social reintegration. Rather, evoking the tradition of tragic sacrifice with Juliet’s body encourages the interrogation of the means of the play’s closure. Blood’s ideology, when played out to the letter, appears to demand either the blood feud’s violence into perpetuity or this manner of sacrifice. And this sacrifice is especially tragic because it might have been avoided by entertaining Juliet’s suggestion to doff a name. The play’s opening chorus at first appears to utilize the sonnet structure to formally mirror the tidy closure that will redeem the deaths of the “star-crossed lovers” with the families’ In one sense, Shakespeare appears to abide by the appropriate subject of tragedy from an Aristotelian standpoint; 101 noble persons and thus noble bloodlines and issues of succession is intrinsically tragic. I’d like to thank Rebecca Lemon’s students (Fall 2014) for this astute observation. Douglas Trevor’s work also engages with humoralism in Romeo and Juliet in “Love, Humoralism and ‘Soft’ 102 Psychoanalysis.” However, his article aims to expose the problems with a strictly humoral analysis of the play. Although if we push the implications of Galenic discourse, namely that Juliet has in marriage incorporated Romeo’s blood into her own body, then we may find another, more compelling reason for this reading. Wolter Seuntjens likewise favors interpreting references to humoralism literally. Though a historical overview of this scientific framework and its connection to theories of passion constitutes the bulk of his article, he uses Romeo’s description of love as smoke as his inroads to this discussion. For a completely different take on the body’s symbolism as a “grotesque body” see Roland Knowles, “Carnival and Death in Romeo and Juliet: A Bakhtinian Reading.” Or, for an examination of the competing forces of medicine in the play, see William Kerwin’s chapter “Drug Cultures” in Beyond the Body. For an interesting reading of the affordance of objects and environments, as opposed to bodies, see Julia Lupton’s reading of hospitality in the play. To acknowledge this discourse as such, in the context of this project, means to acknowledge it as distinct from 103 material reality, in this case that blood does not literally determine persons. !73 reconciliation. Yet the chorus simultaneously hints at the bloody purge to come and the 104 sacrificial nature of this tragic narrative: Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whole misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. Since both families are “alike in dignity” and thus have similarly worthy noble bodies, Romeo and Juliet could be deemed an appropriate match. In fact, the existence of a feud itself speaks 105 this appropriateness, since feuds often stem from similarities in socio-economic status leading to competition. Although these two households insist upon their differences, especially as embodied in their blood, which substantiate and perpetuate their feud. The prologue swiftly establishes 106 the literally bloody atmosphere by calling attention to the “unclean” hands of these warring As Tiffany Stern notes, opening choruses were, more often than not, designed primarily for the purpose of early 104 runs of the performance. They told the audience the play’s plot just in case the actors faltered. Most of them, therefore, were cut upon publishing. Hence the fact that this chorus survives is noteworthy and merits attention. An alternative way to gloss this line is not as a similarity in socio-economic status, but as a similarity by virtue of 105 hating. As Dympna Callaghan argues, “In this passage the symmetry between the houses suggests an ominous familial resemblance. The ancient blood they share is bloodshed of enmity. They are star-crossed by a common inheritance — the brutal engagement that has in enmity mangled and enmeshed the blood and loins of their houses so that, as Kay Stockholder has argued, their relationship verges precariously on the incestuous” (75). The generational aspect of the blood feud is clearer in this text, signified in the third line, “From ancient grudge 106 break to new mutiny,” in contrast to Q1’s version, “From civil broils broke into enmity,” which doesn’t emphasize a tradition of infighting. A few notes on Q1: throughout this section I will record differences in Q1 in the footnotes, omitting moments that do not differ at all. I have modernized the spellings from Q1 for the sake of ease. These quotations come from the Huntington’s copy printed by John Danter [and Edward Allde] in 1597. !74 factions. It then connects the physical blood spilt to the principle of inheritance along 107 bloodlines, the “fatal loins” which here proves “fatal” to the lovers. Yet rather than leave the 108 audience with the notion that the families ended the blood feud solely on account of the lovers’ death, the prologue restates this plot point. The break in the otherwise highly regular iambic 109 pentameter with the spondee “which, but” further calls attention to this rephrasing. The lovers’ 110 death is not a simple “wake up call” that this blood feud has lasted too long, but it is the only means by which the “rage” could be “removed,” as if the death literally purges this familial hatred. “Nought [nothing] could remove” this rage except this particular circumstance, much like a leech might draw out a choleric humor. This figure of speech thus subtly figures the lovers’ death as a humoral blood-letting, dispelling the familial violence once and for all by shedding blood that is both Capulet and Montague at once. Shakespeare’s Galenic end, determined from the play’s outset, demonstrates that to take on these assumptions about blood — as that which determines characters, kinship, loyalties, and love — means to assume all of the material consequences of its logic. The Oxford English Dictionary’s entry for “civil” actually cites this line from Romeo and Juliet under the 107 definition ““Of or relating to citizens or people who live together in a community; relating or belonging to members of a body politic.” Yet, interestingly, its citation substitutes “civil warre” for “civil blood.” It is unclear from which version this substitution originates, since even the recent Folger digital edition does not gloss “blood” as a word that varies. But if, in fact, “warre” was at some point changed to “blood,” then the word should carry greater weight, encouraging the audience to envision blood literally covering the families’ hands, rather than treating the blood feud abstractly. For a longer consideration of early modern civility, see Glen Clark. I might likewise proffer that the “loins” taking the adjective “fatal” thus assume responsibility for this fatality 108 and seemingly not the “stars” of the following line. This complicates the picture for those who would argue Fate’s agency in this tragedy. The Prologue in Q1 is not only shorter (two lines short of a sonnet in fact), but it has a very different order to the 109 lines and does not use a vocabulary of removal. Rather, in reference to the familial anger it states “And death- marked passage of their Parent’s rage, / Is now the two hours traffic of our Stage” (9-10). I would like to thank the undergraduates of Rebecca Lemon’s senior Shakespeare seminar (Fall 2014) for this 110 metrical analysis as well as for their enthusiasm and support. !75 This logic of blood can only result in a world of Tybalts: persons who feel licensed to engage in violence since they are supposedly provoked by their bodies. The addition of Tybalt’s dialogue with Lord Capulet to the masque scene — for Tybalt doesn’t make an appearance in the versions of Bandello, Boaistuau, and Brooke — renders the force and impact of Galenic vocabulary in Verona explicit. While one could argue that this addition simply heightens the dramatic tension between Tybalt and Romeo, its conspicuous absence in prior versions and its emphasis on the role of the body in the family feud encourages closer consideration. Tybalt believes in blood’s agency to determine his choler, for otherwise he has no independent reason to dislike Romeo in particular. Lord Capulet demands that Tybalt not quarrel with Romeo, but Tybalt insists that his body demands differently: “Patience perforce with willful choler meeting / Makes my flesh tremble in their diff’rent greeting” (1.4.206-7). Tybalt’s choler will dictate his actions because his blood’s enmity for that of Montague is insatiable and enduring, over which he supposedly has no control. The opening of the third act then explicitly connects the physiological experience of choler with blood’s matter that provokes anger and violence. Benvolio, looking to avoid a quarrel with the Capulets, asks Mercutio if they can leave since “if we meet we shall not scape a brawl, / for now these hot days is the mad blood stirring” (3.1.3-4). Benvolio’s speech invokes the Galenic precept that the physical 111 environment will only further aggravate the “mad blood,” inevitably provoking fighting between the two antagonistic bloodlines. These moments contain seemingly innocuous references to Galen’s ubiquitous theory, used so casually that they are practically evacuated of any genuine, In Q1 Benvolio makes a similar comment, though this reasoning is largely implied. He only says briefly, “The 111 day is hot, the Capels are abroad.” !76 literal significance. These passing remarks, however, reinforce an ideology that absolves the individual actors of personal responsibility, invoked to allow for and excuse any violent action. Throughout the play, therefore, this Galenic notion that blood has agency paves the way for the humoral bloodletting of Juliet’s body, wherein the blood that is supposedly responsible for familial enmity must be removed. And the staging of literal bloodshed emphasizes the intensely visceral way in which the blood feud operates. When blood assumes the blame for perpetuating the cycle of violence as opposed to individual actors, this logic results in Juliet’s blood sacrifice. From the play’s outset, Prince Escalus calls for the end of Verona’s blood feud by threatening, “On pain of torture, from those bloody hands / Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground” (1.1.89-90). Of course the weapons themselves are not “mistemper’d,” but rather, this adjective extends metonymically to the blood within the bloody hands, which theoretically has a humoral imbalance. The familial enmity has contaminated the bloodlines thereby instigating violent action. The characters ceaselessly appeal to blood and its demands especially after the “bloody fray” resulting in the death of Tybalt. As the call of the Capulet family “blood for blood” illustrates, blood is here the agent of these demands not the individual persons or actors (3.1.152-3, 155). Moreover, since no individual agent need take responsibility for this demand, bloodlines will continue to demand violence indiscriminately. The Prince laments this feature of the blood feud in his response to Lady Capulet, inquiring, “Romeo slew him [Tybalt], he slew Mercutio. / Who now the price of his [Mercutio’s] dear blood doth owe?” (3.1.186-7). 112 The Prince’s mention of a “price” might also reference the law of the wergild or “man-price” as a means to 112 control and limit revenge killings. This law required that the offending party pay a price for the man killed in order to satisfy the victim’s family without blood for blood. However, the Prince does not expressly establish this practice in the play’s context; and certainly the call of blood for blood by the Capulet family means that such a custom is not already in place. One should note that this moment is absent in Q1. As an aside, the Prince’s worldview resembles that of Le Cid’s King Fernand, which I will demonstrate later in this chapter. !77 His rhetorical question reveals the fact that the blood feud obscures personal responsibility; and once the individual agents responsible are re-inserted in the discussion, the question remains about who should pay. Yet this question has no clear answer, for clearly no individual can be held entirely responsible when they conceive of themselves as vessels for a collective identity. To take on this responsibility, as Juliet does in the conclusion, has a clearly tragic result. Nonetheless, Romeo and Juliet further accentuates the degree to which this belief system remains fundamental to Veronese society (and Shakespeare’s), since it cannot be divorced from the basic assumption that kinship is based in consanguinity. Moreover, the foundational nature of this assumption means that it remains extremely difficult to extricate oneself from this ideological system, as Juliet will try, though fail, to do. Even the most vocal opponent of the blood feud’s violence, Prince Escalus, struggles with relinquishing its underlying logic — the very personal, physical connection between those who share blood — when his own blood is at stake. He mourns for his kinsman Mercutio, “My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a- 113 bleeding” (3.1.193). In addition to highlighting the blood of Mercutio’s dead body onstage, his blood, marked by the possessive pronoun “my,” is not simply metaphorical but physical on account of his consanguinity. The general obsession with possessives, which insists that a person’s blood is shared with his/her entire bloodline, clearly permits this perpetual enmity. In other words, an individual’s blood requires the protection of his kinsmen’s blood since it is his own blood spilt. And this logic functions across generations. Lastly, individual actors need not take any measure of responsibility for their hatred and the continuation of the blood feud. Prince As Dympna C. Callaghan suggests, Escalus might not wish to eliminate blood altogether but rather “to control 113 the flow of blood, a metonym for lineage, class, and succession — the very essence of the patriarchal imperative” (75). !78 Escalus's claim that his blood issues from Mercutio’s body makes it impossible for him to maintain his ideal, removed position above the bloody fray, and impossible for him to insist that the feuding families abandon their convictions. According to this system wherein consanguinity defines kin, a person’s blood determines this course, which could not be otherwise thereby foreclosing the potential for change. This materialist ideology thus can only have violent, material consequences. Blood’s ideology does have a mechanism for establishing affinity and likeness in marriage: mixing bloods when becoming one flesh. Yet even here the belief that love has a material foundation has the potential for unforeseen, violent consequences. While typically the love and marriage of Romeo and Juliet has been read as oppositional to the families’ blood feud, Shakespeare’s play demonstrates that their marriage as the blood feud’s solution (termed a “holy physic”) rests on the same logic. Namely, this solution concocted by Friar Laurence and Romeo is equally dependent on the faulty Galenic precept that blood has agency, thus remaining squarely within the existing ideological framework. The only difference between the two camps is that Romeo and the Friar hope that blood could determine affinity rather than enmity. And it is precisely because blood does not operate literally but only discursively — though with unfortunately literal consequences — that the sacrifice of Romeo and Juliet to this ideology is so tragic. Creating new consanguineous ties would theoretically dictate new affine relationships between the two families to overturn the familial enmity. Romeo thus embraces the dominant discourse, although towards a different, more peaceful end. Romeo calls marriage a “holy physic” to cure his wound of love (2.3.47-8). But Friar Laurence takes up this vocabulary and endows it with a different literal sense: “In one respect I’ll thy assistant be,” he promises Romeo, “for this alliance may so happy prove / To turn your households’ rancor to !79 pure love” (2.3.86-8). According to Galenic natural philosophy, in the act of marriage two bodies become one and their bloods mix, or when “Holy Church incorporate two in one” (2.5.37). 114 And, as the Friar’s logic runs, this new bloodline should forge new consanguineous connections and thus pacify the households’ rancor. Encouraged by the Friar, Romeo accepts the premise 115 upon which the blood feud is based: that he and Juliet are defined by their bloodlines, an embodied Montague or Capulet character, and that this blood has agency. However, he believes that this blood could incite love just as easily as it could provoke hatred and violence. Romeo’s 116 appeal to “holy physic” thus represents the struggle to end the violence of the blood feud without forfeiting the existing vocabulary for understanding kinship and affinity. Yet by this logic, the enmity of the blood feud cannot simply disappear by establishing new consanguineous ties, rather, the blood that embodies and determines the enmity must be purged. The conflict between Romeo and Tybalt is thus not simply another eruption of the blood feud, but it is rather a conflict over how to understand or interpret the “agency” of blood. In other words, does blood incite hatred or love? Romeo insists that blood determines the sentiments between people, having agency in the same fashion that it does for Tybalt, only directed towards Q1’s small change in this line’s wording makes a pretty significant difference. In this version, the Friar says that 114 the two shall not be alone “Till holy Church have joined ye both in one.” While this wording still gets at the principle of unitas carnis, the verb “join” doesn’t quite capture the element of mixture that “incorporate” does. Todd Pettigrew’s recent work on medical practice in Shakespeare, Shakespeare and the Practice of Physic, 115 demonstrates that Friar Laurence would have been read as a particularly irresponsible and incapable medical practitioner (109-10). I agree with Pettigrew’s reading in that the Friar certainly fails to fully understand the consequences of the discourse he cites, still reducing persons’ identities to their bodies in a way that is ultimately destructive. For an interesting, albeit unconventional reading of Friar Laurence as the tragic hero whose flaw — wavering from his Catholic faith and moral council to take on the role of Magus — brings about the young lovers’ tragedy, see Jill Kriegel. Of course, Romeo has always been susceptible to believing in a material basis for love. When expressing his love 116 for Rosalind, Petrarchan tropes take on a humoral color: “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, / Being purg’d a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes, / Being vex’d a sea nourished with loving tears” (1.1.193-5). Embodied love has become a bodily humor with several physical states as part of the body’s balance. It likewise assumes agency in this formulation. Nothing much has changed after his marriage to Juliet, except that love is embodied by blood instead of smoke. !80 a more harmonious end. For instance, this newly forged mixture of Montague and Capulet blood should, in theory, incite Tybalt to abandon his quarrel due to their new consanguinity. Romeo pleads with him, Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee Doth much excuse the appertaining rage To such a greeting. Villain I am none, Therefore farewell, I see thou know’st me not. (3.1.63-6) 117 Romeo here hints that his “reason” to love Tybalt is his new blood bond with Juliet; and this new bodily makeup, his new Capulet kinship, fights against the “rage” which he would otherwise feel. He concludes that Tybalt must not “know” him as anything other than a villain, certainly not as his new family member. But just as Romeo and Juliet’s bodies did not act as they should 118 have during the masque, i.e. by provoking immediate enmity, neither does Tybalt’s body recognize his newfound (spiritual if not yet material) consanguinity with Romeo. Romeo’s persistent conviction in the ideology of blood further helps to explain his histrionics as he struggles with how to relate to Juliet after killing her cousin. Despite the clear failings of blood’s ideology and its Galenic workings, Romeo’s assumptions both that blood determines sentiment and that his actions have inflected the material blood he shares with Juliet is key to reading this scene. His appeal to violence to fix his current situation with Juliet, moreover, evidences the degree to which his logic resembles Tybalt’s. As he sees it, now that he Q1’s version differs slightly, though without any significant implication for this reading. It reads, “Tybalt the love 117 I bear to thee, doth excuse the appertaining rage to such a word: villain I am none, therefore I well perceive thou know’st me not.” However, it also contains a second plea from Romeo in this same vein only a few lines later: “I do protest I never injured thee, but love thee better than thou canst devise, till thou shalt know the reason of my love.” Paul Siegel maintains that the sexual love between Romeo and Juliet is one instance of love’s larger cosmic force 118 which will ultimately expel the hatred and disorder in Verona’s society. Thus, for him, Romeo’s attempt to make peace with Tybalt can be explained by this Christian, cosmic love emanating from his relationship with Juliet (386). However, Romeo’s insistence that Tybalt recognize or “know” him seems to better support my own gloss. !81 is responsible for the murder of her kinsman, Juliet’s love for himself, solidified by their “one flesh,” conflicts with her affinity for her kin, likewise determined by consanguinity. The two sentiments are seemingly unable to coexist in the same body, and he believes that he must spill his own blood to satisfy her. Romeo asks the Nurse how Juliet fares “with blood remov’d but little from her own?” (3.3.95). For even if not directly from her body and not in the manner that Romeo intended, Juliet’s blood has been removed by proxy of Tybalt’s death. Juliet should have lost blood in the form of her maidenhead upon the consummation of their marriage, but she has lost her kin instead. Romeo subsequently offers to purge his own blood in an attempt to remedy this conflict, and in retribution for his crime against her. On hearing that his name has hurt her, he exclaims, as that name’s cursed hand Murder’d her kinsman. O tell me, Friar, tell me In what vile part of this anatomy Doth that name lodge? tell me, I may sack The hateful mansion. (3.3.101-7) 119 The stage direction immediately follows: “He offers to stab himself, and Nurse snatches the dagger away” (3.3). Romeo goes to stab himself, “the hateful mansion,” because he believes 120 that his name lodges somewhere. The name “lodges” in his anatomy, specifically embodied by his blood, which he immediately undertakes to spill as reparation since he has caused his blood to act against hers. It is precisely this manner of thinking that then governs the logic behind 121 The Q1 version differs some though with the same effect: “As if that name shot from the deadly level of a gun, / 119 Did murder her, as that name’s cursed hand / Murdered her kinsman. Ah tell me holy Friar / In what vile part of this Anatomy / Doth my name lie? Tell me that I may sack / The hateful mansion?” This stage direction, one of the most detailed, exists even in Q1. 120 Peter Holbrook explicitly cites Romeo’s “hateful mansion” in his discussion of the play, but insists that “His 121 name is not in his body, not intrinsic to him” (217). But hopefully I have shown that Romeo as well as the other characters believe his name to be in his body even if it isn’t true. !82 Juliet’s bleeding body at the play’s close: the enmity is in the blood which cannot be assuaged unless removed. In Romeo’s struggle, the play illustrates the violent consequences of viewing one’s blood as the material that contains hatred and sins committed. One cannot bestow upon blood this kind of agency, even in the hopes to foster love, since this logic permits the blood feud in the first place. In other words, giving blood agency means that blood can call for blood. The play thus encourages the audience to interrogate blood’s ideology as the foundation for kinship and existing social structures when it can only foster and apparently justify violence. Even though Juliet’s actions inevitably come to accept Romeo’s blood-inflected terms, she is the first, and truly only, critic of blood discourses in the play. Certainly, to call Romeo something other than a Montague would solve the problem of her family’s resistance to her desired match, but her speech likewise suggests an alternative, non-naturalized conception of identity and sentiments, one not determined by the blood running through one’s veins or anything other than names. Juliet first wrestles with the existing vocabulary of the blood feud, one of innate sentiments, upon first discovering Romeo’s identity: “My only love sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen unknown, and known too late!” (1.4.255-6). Her grief only makes sense given the tradition of blood ties and the assumption that like should like its like. And yet her lament also speaks to the central paradox of her love for Romeo. If blood indeed worked according to this assumed affinity mechanism, then she would not have fallen in love with Romeo at first sight. Her Capulet blood would have negatively reacted to his Montague blood even if it could not precisely report his identity. In short, it would not have been “unknown.” Juliet should have intuitively hated Romeo, but she didn’t. While Romeo seeks to accommodate !83 this love that defies natural philosophy within the existing system, Juliet flirts with an unconventional outlook that abandons these terms altogether. Shakespeare’s play uses Juliet’s voice to offer the iconoclastic alternative to, and potential escape from, the existing violent system of blood. This is not altogether surprising because Juliet is young, and likely not yet fully indoctrinated. Moreover, she is a woman, and consequently remains outside of the predominantly male realm of the blood feud. From this vantage point then, Juliet can suggest that the problem might merely be one of naming. She and Romeo may not actually differ in blood or body, dictating how they must feel and act, but rather their difference might be an arbitrariness of signifiers. As she imagines herself speaking to Romeo, she casts family belonging not in terms of consanguinity which cannot be changed, but rather in terms of the choice to assume a name: “Deny thy father and refuse thy name; / Or if thou wilt not be but sworn my love / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (2.1.76-8). This suggestion contradicts the tenets of blood’s ideology, according to which it is impossible for her to be anything other than a Capulet. But if one can deny the responsibilities of kinship by refusing a name, then this, as the play suggests, is the only mechanism to refuse the call of blood for blood: refuse membership and thus responsibility on the basis of consanguinity. Juliet makes this point even more explicitly: Tis but thy name that is my enemy, Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is not hand nor foot Nor arm nor face, O be some other name Belonging to man. (2.1.80-4) 122 Q1’s speech differs somewhat: “Tis but thy name that is mine enemy, / What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot, 122 / Nor arm nor face nor any other part./ What’s in a name? ...” (II.i). It then immediately launches into the rose sequence and omits any kind of circular definition for Romeo. !84 Juliet’s speech aims to reject the premise that bodies, or their parts (blood here implied), dictate identity, sentiment, and thus violent action. While Peter Holbrook sees in Juliet’s balcony speech the ability to divorce one’s familial identity from oneself, Juliet’s iconoclasm consists in not 123 only the suggestion that one can discard one’s social identity, but in the very notion that this identity is social, is a name in the first place rather than something predetermined by bodily substance. Unlike Romeo who appeals to his “vile anatomy,” Juliet proposes that the name does not lodge anywhere. She thus begins to fashion a belief system wherein a person can act according to her individual will and desires, rather than be destined to act in accordance with the demands of bloodlines. Developing an alternative picture nevertheless faces one issue addressed in Juliet’s speech: the difficulty to know how else to define Romeo. Juliet says simply, “Thou art thyself,” a circular definition. This “thou” could take on some other name, but who or what is “thou”? Who is Romeo if not a Montague? She may not know. Juliet’s monologue at her balcony thus illustrates the struggle to establish a new belief system when inundated and restricted by the vocabulary of a dominant ideology. After all, there does not appear to be space in the play for alternative ways of thinking or speaking beyond the level of suggestion. Certainly, when Juliet attempts to use language creatively in order to reject her father’s proposal to marry Paris, she meets with sound and even violent punishment from him. And Juliet’s inability to fully 124 complete an alternative picture for what constitutes identity, lacking both the resources and vocabulary, results in the sacrifice of Juliet’s possible world to blood’s ideology, and her body with it. See Holbrook 216-7. 123 As Capulet cries, “How, how, how, how, chopt-logic? What is this? / ‘Proud’ and ‘I thank you’ and ‘I thank you 124 not’ / And yet ‘not proud’? Mistress minion you, / Thank me no thankings nor proud me no prouds” (3.5.149-52). Heather James has done a more extensive reading of this scene and Capulet’s hatred of language. !85 Unsurprisingly, there is no receptive audience for her alternative suggestion of names; Romeo does not, after all, take up Juliet’s suggestion to doff his name but rather will marry her as a Montague in an attempt to quell the blood feud. We thus come to Juliet’s embrace of the Friar and Romeo’s solution by presuming an affective connection marked by consanguinity with both her kinsman and her new husband. But remaining within the existing ideology, the play exposes, means that blood must act as the agent of closure and familial peace. Juliet’s exchange with her nurse after the altercation between Tybalt and Romeo exposes Juliet’s investment in her newly shared blood. The Nurse cries about the blood from Tybalt’s body, “I saw the wound [...] A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse, / Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub’d in blood, / All in gore blood, I sounded at the sight” (3.2.52-6). Although this moment should call Juliet’s attention to her cousin’s blood spilt, Juliet misattributes the wound to Romeo. She proclaims that if Romeo has died, “I am not I if there be such an ‘Ay’” (3.2.48). The proclamation “I am not I” sounds 125 like nonsense, but it acutely identifies her imagined conundrum since she would have lost half of her newly married, fused self upon Romeo’s death. The Nurse corrects her that the “bloody, piteous corse” belongs to Tybalt, and hereafter, Juliet struggles between which is the greater sorrow: her cousin’s death or her husband’s banishment. Juliet thus wrestles as Romeo did within blood’s conceptual framework. Her loyalties are quite literally split down the middle because she now shares blood with both the perpetrator and the victim. If “Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood,” then her blood has turned against itself (3.2.71). However, viewing her own struggle 126 as a bodily one has violent implications for it suggests a bodily solution, i.e., purgation. Tybalt’s Q1 omits this line. 125 As I’ll show later, Juliet in this way is guilty of precisely what Chimène is looking to avoid. Due to her shared 126 blood, Juliet is guilty of her own cousin’s murder. In some sense, Juliet has her own blood on her hands. !86 blood, his piteous corpse, determines the bloody and piteous course of the plot to follow: Juliet’s bloody body sacrificed to this bloody discourse at the Capulet tomb. Romeo and Juliet’s acceptance of the existing terms of blood thus explains why the lovers continue to reference blood throughout the play though they oppose the blood feud. And with the lovers’ bloody language, the play presages the bloodletting to come, intimating the couple’s sacrifice to the violent machine of blood’s ideology. Juliet foresees calamity and death before Romeo leaves Verona: “Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. / Either my eyesight fails or thou look’st pale” (3.5.55-7). Romeo responds with a 127 physiological explanation, that she too looks pale because “dry sorrow drinks our blood” (3.5.59). Highlighting this pallor, it turns out, prefigures her loss of blood via bloodletting, for which she must be tragically sacrificed in order to purge the choler of their families. Later, Juliet even offers to spill her blood as a solution to her impending marriage to Paris, proclaiming, this bloody knife Shall play the umpeer, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honor bring. (4.1.62-5) One can easily gloss Juliet’s threat of suicide as merely indicative of her desperation, but Juliet here invokes a long tradition of suicide for honor beginning with Lucrece, purging one’s family honor of sexual shame or, as will be the case with Juliet, their enmity in a tragic sacrifice. In addition, Juliet’s re-staging of Romeo’s prior threat to stab himself reflects her final acceptance Q1 has only two minor variations: “below” for “so low” and “like” for “as.” 127 !87 of the parameters of blood. She has finally succumbed to (or become overwhelmed by) this 128 ideology to which she — and the possibility for an alternative, non-naturalized conception of identity and social structures — must be slaughtered. For, as the play dramatizes, if Veronese society maintains the tenets of blood’s ideology, especially that blood materially embodies familial hatred, then only by spilling the newly mixed blood of Capulet and Montague could the enmity of the two bloodlines be cleansed. The death and blood of Paris onstage at the Capulet tomb, whose presence is otherwise inconvenient, renders visible the necessity of this bloody purge due to the omnipresence and inescapable character of this ideology. Yet rather than mourn Paris as a mere innocent bystander, one should note that the altercation in front of the Capulet tomb occurs as a result of Paris’s mistaken belief that Romeo has come to do “some villainous shame” to the bodies, pursuing vengeance beyond death (5.3.52-5). Accordingly, Paris’s blood marks just how embroiled Verona is in this logic of blood such that Juliet’s alternative is untenable. Although Paris is neither a Montague nor a Capulet, his belief system accords with theirs, and he violently pays for this limited lens. According to Friar Laurence, this is no small amount of blood at that, given its prominence in his language: Alack alack, what blood is this which stains The stony entrance of this sepulcher? What means these masterless and gory swords To lie discolor’d by this place of peace? Romeo, O pale? What else? what! Paris too? On a side note, Katherine Duncan-Jones’s “O Happy Dagger!...” cites this moment and others in order to suggest 128 that Juliet likely uses her own dagger, thus rejecting what she believes is a misleading stage direction by Steevens, who says that it comes from Romeo’s side. Though I’m not particularly invested in Juliet owning this dagger, I appreciate Duncan-Jones gesturing towards this previous suicide attempt in order to stress Juliet’s agency in this matter. Her interpretation accords with other feminist readings of this play that look to give Juliet more autonomy, and view her not as an immature doe-eyed youth besotted with young love as does early Romeo and Juliet criticism (see Carolyn E. Brown’s “Juliet’s Taming of Romeo” as another example). !88 All steep’d in blood? (5.3.140-5) 129 Paris’s blood here stains the stony entrance to the sepulcher, but this blood merely mirrors the figural blood which has already stained the Capulet tomb: the collection of this family’s perpetuation of these bloody assumptions. Thus to return to Capulet’s otherwise odd lament, “Oh Wife, look how our daughter bleeds!” denotes the gruesome consequence of this entire belief system. The scheme of the 130 Friar and the lovers has worked since the purging of Juliet’s blood upon her suicide successfully ends the familial enmity — reproduced linguistically in the last scene since Capulet’s cry marks the final mention of blood. The omission of the word blood from the remainder of the play is otherwise remarkable because the Friar must summarize the entire plot for the grieving families, and the Prince proclaims once and for all that this event must end the blood feud, both of which could easily mention blood. But Juliet’s bleeding truly removes all of the play’s bad blood. 131 As we’ve seen previously, Q1 is generally less bloody in its language than Q2. This likewise applies for the 129 Friar’s monologue here: “What blood is this that stains the entrance / Of this marble stony monument? / What means these masterless and gory weapons? / Ah me I doubt, whose here? what Romeo dead? / Who and Paris too? what unlucky hour / Is accessory to so foul a sin?” Again, Q1 lacks quite the same emphasis on blood. Lord Capulet’s reaction attends to the dagger in his 130 daughter’s body, rather than the bloody result: “See Wife, this dagger hath mistook: / For (lo) the back is empty of young Montague / And it is sheathed in our Daughter’s breast.” Interesting about this moment too is that Lord Caputlet doesn’t appear to be moving towards peace as he intimates that this dagger should be in Romeo’s breast. Without Q2’s exclamation then, the Watchman’s observation of Juliet’s bleeding body is the final mention of blood in the play. Boaistuau’s translation might prefigure this humoral purging, though it remains a suggestion. Here the sadness of 131 the two families washes away the family feud: “les Montesches et les Capellets rendirent tant de larmes qu’avec leurs pleurs il evacuerent leurs coleres, de sorte que deslors il furent reconciliez, et ceux qui n’avoient peu estre moderez par aucune prudence ou conseil humain furent en fin vaincuz et reduicts par pitié” [“The Montesches and the Capellets render so many tears that with their crying they expelled their anger, so that from that moment they were reconciled, and those who had not been curbed by any caution or human counsel were finally defeated and reduced by pity.”] (119). Yet, the important distinction to be made here is that the purging via tears has no bloody implications. !89 All told, the final scene of purgation effectively realizes Juliet’s nightmarish vision of the Capulet tomb, symbolizing Veronese society and the oppressive force of bloodlines. She envisions this tomb: As in a vault, an ancient receptacle, Where for this many hundred years the bones Of all my bury’d ancestors are pack’d, Where bloody Tybalt yet but green in earth Lies festering in his shroud… (4.3.39-43) This “ancient receptacle” is packed with the bones of her ancestors and the blood of Tybalt, who in life wholeheartedly demanded that Capulet blood be honored by vengeance. This image of Juliet overtaken or suffocated by bloody Tybalt’s “festering” aptly figures and encapsulates a Juliet overtaken by the demands of her bloodline and her blood-obsessed society. For although Juliet’s bloody sacrifice satisfactorily purges the familial enmity, the visual impression of the bloody, tangled mess of the Capulet tomb prevents a clean sense of closure for the audience. 132 Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet rather than encourage the audience to celebrate the peace- making patriarchs and social reintegration, prompts them to question the means of this closure, namely blood’s ideology and Galen’s natural philosophy upon which it is based. Endowing bodies and blood with this kind of agency and power means failing to recognize the role that human actors play in constructing the discourse and, therefore, in their capacity to change it. These beliefs after all, despite the absence of blood feuds, apply to Shakespeare’s England as well as Romeo and Juliet’s Verona. Romeo and Juliet thus stages Juliet’s bloody nightmare, but, in so doing, it calls on the audience to entertain Juliet’s imagined alternative dream, wherein one might call a rose by another name. This closure could be manufactured, of course, by stagings that render Juliet’s death more palatable, if not 132 aesthetic. !90 Le Cid: A Tragedy of Talking Blood In one respect, to compare Le Cid to Romeo and Juliet is to examine a similar narrative premise though with a different and, according to some critics, potentially romantic end. In spite of the action’s tragic bloodshed, the play ends with the King’s promise that the blood feud will cease, that the two lovers can be wed and live together happily thereafter. Despite the 133 attraction of this promise, Chimène’s “point of honor” described in graphic detail — “d’avoir trempé mes mains dans le sang paternel” [“to have soaked my hands in paternal blood”] (5.7.1838) — appears to be neither an arbitrary point of contention which she cites to hide her true feelings, nor a mechanism for Corneille to appease the critics of the French Academy. 134 Rather, her complaint carries enormous weight if the theories of blood are taken seriously, as she The scholarship around Corneille’s play can be boiled down to a few basic issues. First is the play’s rather 133 confusing genre: is it a tragedy, a tragicomedy, or a romance? The fact that Corneille changed the genre label, from a tragicomedy to a tragedy after the Querelle du Cid only heightens this debate. For more information on this play’s formal relationship to the mixed genre tragicomedy, see Peter Burger’s article as well as Serge Dubrovsky’s Lacanian reading. R.J. Nelson, on the other hand, characterizes Le Cid as a romance, and Cordell Black contends that the ambiguity of genre mirrors the play’s central theme, “the fragility and impermanence of the state of happiness seemingly achieved by the protagonists” (73). A second issue is what is the characters’ relationship with feudal codes, namely, do they truly hold them or are they simply compelled by the social pressures of duty? And thirdly, how should one explicate the play’s inconclusive denouement; does the marriage ever take place and, if it does, is it a happy occasion? In fact, the first two issues ultimately turn on one’s primary reaction to the play’s close, which depends upon one’s answers to yet another subset of questions: Does Chimène consent to marry Rodrigue or is her hand forced by the King? If she does “consent,” why does she? Is her “point of honor” mere show? Is she challenging the timing between her father’s death and her marriage to his killer (suggested by Lacy Lockert), or the marriage as such? A critic’s answers will color her reading of the play as a whole. For instance, if one interprets Chimène as actively desiring the marriage with Rodrigue and only voicing dissent due to social pressure, then one can read into Le Cid the desired, albeit morally scandalous, romantic conclusion (see William Kibler, R.C. Knight, and Mohammed Kowsar). On the other hand, one can seriously consider the inconclusive nature of the marriage as well as Chimène’s concern and silence at the play’s close, likely signifying a lack of consent (see Octave Nadal, H.C. Ault, David Clarke, and John Trethewey). A critic’s answer to these questions may also vary depending upon the version of the play that he is reading (1637 or the revised, final edition of 1660). I will be using the 1660 edition as Corneille’s final word on the subject and because it is the most well-known, though I acknowledge that it presents a certain difficulty for my proposed time frame. Many critics emphasize the differences between the two versions for historical reasons, especially given the querelle that the play began between the author, Richelieu and the French Academy. Yet I am inclined to agree with C.J. Gossip’s analysis of the two editions. Gossip holds that the changes made to the denouement in the second version don’t amount to much. And since the end is one of the few moments that would make a significant difference for the play’s interpretation, there appears to be little disparity. This is especially the case for my purposes since the attention to blood and conflict remains the same in both. R.C. Knight makes this point as follows: “Corneille has written into Chimène’s part (but only in 1682) some 134 words of protest in the hope of placating the prophets of bienséance (1805 ff.); but it is difficult not to be affected by the buoyant optimism of the last words of the play, which Corneille never altered” (21). !91 clearly does. If one’s blood physically determines one’s character, and blood is mixed in marriage, then husband and wife ultimately come to share the traits, and thus the crimes, of one another. In this case, if Chimène’s blood were to mix with Rodrigue’s, then she would be guilty of patricide. Chimène clings to these reservations because though the King can pardon Rodrigue, his blood cannot be changed by royal sanction. Seemingly contrary to her self-interest, she 135 clings to this ultimately destructive discourse in the name of her own honor and sense of integrity, saving both herself and her entire bloodline from “reproche éternel” [“eternal reproach”] (5.7.1837). After all, the pathos of her plea to terminate her relationship with Rodrigue cannot be assuaged or alleviated by the gesture towards a comedic conclusion. If we recognize in this moment the seriousness of the characters’ ideology — namely that blood is a substance that literally determines identities, duties, and affinities and that explicitly makes demands — then Chimène’s final speech and the uncomfortable nature of the dénouement becomes clearer. Viewing the talk of blood in this play as not merely metaphorical but as 136 One might also suggest that a woman cannot distinguish or define herself except by whom she marries; Chimène 135 cannot find a place in the King’s discourse of blood, spilling Moorish blood for that of her nation. She is thus stuck since in the act of marriage her blood will mingle with his, and this blood will define her as her father’s does. Other critics who treat blood explicitly in Le Cid generally hint towards my reading, namely the literal or 136 physical pull of blood as conceived by the play’s characters. But the comments are brief, and these critics have not pushed these observations towards my conclusion. For instance, Octave Nadal agrees with my reading that the characters believe these codes to be inextricable from them in a literal way. He describes, “Inféodé à la communauté, Rodrigue ne peut se dérober au devoir de vengeance, commandé par la race, le sang et les soins paternels. Il ne pourrait y songer sans horreur. La solidarité de clan s’accorde chez lui avec la solidarité familiale. Rodrigue est l’héritier d’une lignée, d’une maison. Ce lien du père au fils a la force de la nature et du sang. L’entente est intime, organique” [“Indebted to the community, Rodrigue cannot relinquish himself from his duty of vengeance, commanded by his ancestry, blood, and paternal concerns. He couldn’t think of it without horror. The solidarity of the clan for him accords with family solidarity. Rodrigue is the inheritor of a lineage, a house. This relation from father to son has the force of nature and blood. The agreement is intimate, organic”] (163). Nadal posits that this force holds for Chimène as well. However, Nadal doesn’t dwell on this comment and its effect on the rest of the play, or what that means for Chimène’s prospective marriage. David Sabean also says “A central aspect of the rhetoric in Corneille’s representation of the dynamics of kinship has to do with blood as a vector of alliance. Although sometimes this can be understood metaphorically, the widespread assumptions about the exchange of fluids in intercourse always point to a substantial, carnal, physical link that carries moral weight” (156). Sabean’s observation does not lead, however, to a new reading of the play so much as provides evidence for a larger historical claim. Or, he doesn’t attend to why it matters that this moral weight is carnal or physical rather than metaphorical. !92 embodied or fleshy gives new weight to Chimène’s refusal and supports reading Le Cid as a tragedy, despite its “comic” ending. In fact, I’d contend that a comparison of Le Cid to Romeo and Juliet should expose that Corneille’s play is far more bleak than critics have traditionally glossed. Moreover, attending to the materiality of blood also prompts us to re-examine the play’s standard gloss as a conflict between the doctrine of the nobility and that of the monarch. Chimène’s “point d’honneur” highlights that blood’s ideology is more powerful than either the aristocracy or the monarchy that cite it to substantiate their authority. Much like the fate of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, “it is the characters’ fate to be caught up and trapped in their own code” (Bornedal 168). 137 The classic political reading of Le Cid characterizes the play’s struggle as one between the older feudal power structures of the aristocracy (Chimène’s point of honor), and the emergent absolutist monarchy. Paul Bénichou, for instance, understands Corneille’s dramatic corpus as embodying “l’esprit aristocratique” [“the aristocratic spirit”], which includes rebelling against the aristocracy’s humiliation by royal authorities. Thus, for Bénichou, although Le Cid reinstates the King’s power at the close, it nonetheless reflects a certain nostalgia for this older feudal political system. Bénichou and other scholars generally speak of these competing value- 138 systems in a disembodied way, but these systems are very much attached to bodies; and when On this small point, I agree with Peter Bornedal. The quotation is his, but the comparison to Romeo and Juliet is 137 mine. On the whole, Bornedal views the King’s command to Chimène as one of ultimate benevolence, the deus ex machina that allows the characters to escape the tragic consequences of their own code. But this reading depends on his basic assumption that the code of honor is primarily about debts paid and maintaining a “name” (synonymous with honor), a value which outweighs all else. If we take the role of blood literally, and the mandate to maintain it, as Chimène surely does, then the King’s proclamation does not look so generous. See Paul Bénichou’s Morales du grand siècle p.68-73. 138 !93 examined in this light, the two opposing sides are not so antithetical as most readings assume. 139 Corneille’s persistent emphasis on blood — the word “sang” appears no less than forty times in the space of the play — emphasizes the violence necessary to perform blood’s ideology on both sides of the political divide. And even though blood does not cover the stage as it does for Shakespeare, Corneille’s play, like Shakespeare’s, enlarges blood’s presence in order to encourage its examination and consequently to emphasize this violence. In stark contrast to the life-giving blood also cited by the French court in this period, honor and identity carried in 140 blood demands blood spillage to maintain — whether in the context of the aristocratic blood feud or in the King’s new body politic. Although the aristocracy and the monarch cite blood discourses towards contradictory ends, they invest in similar assumptions with similarly violent consequences. Rodrigue must salvage the honor in his father’s veins; and blood likewise demands violence from Chimène, mandating death to the man responsible for spilling her family’s Elliott Forsyth, for example, underlines the “puissance trancendante” of the older feudal honor code in Le Cid, 139 the “devoir se venger,” though he, like many other scholars, views this discourse as primarily a disembodied one of ideals, especially glory (393). In a more recent study of the play’s relationship to fidelity, Christy Pichichero (2015) sees this political conflict in a very different way, illustrating fidelity as part of a larger political game, “as a blurry space of contestation, negotiation, and adaptation” (32). Thus she glosses, “We shall see that while Corneille portrays a functioning political fidelity between Rodrigue and his king Don Fernand, he simultaneously reveals it to be a highly strategic performance implemented to manage conflict and to gloss over self-interested and at times dangerously adversarial interactions with a veneer of hierarchical order and personal affection” (33). By contrast, historian Kristen Neuschel’s understanding of nobility and honor is also material or embodied, though not in blood or physiology so much as in embodied experience: “For warrior noblemen in the middle of the sixteenth century, ‘politics’ was not distinct from living. And living as a noble in relation to other nobles was a very intimate business of physical familiarity and interdependence; it meant sharing food and weapons and shelter, it meant knowing one another face to face and relying on another’s physical daring and personal audacity” (4-5). But while her study tracks the transformation of honor from based in action to based in words, I would say that honor is not without a material foundation in blood which persists even after her period of study, the sixteenth century. See, for instance, Rebecca Zorach’s Blood, Milk, Ink and Gold. 140 !94 blood. Chimène does not see her prospective marriage to Rodrigue as a solution to the blood 141 feud. Instead, she recognizes that to incorporate Rodrigue’s blood into her body through marriage would mean that she becomes responsible for his character, his actions, his sins, and one cannot simply excuse the sin of patricide. Moreover, despite his good intentions to 142 promote both peace and love, King Fernand is equally dependent on blood discourses for his own identity and authority as (absolute) monarch. He can attempt to argue that his royal blood — the blood of the nation, as he puts it — matters more than that of the nobility. Yet if he holds the same premise, that blood matters, then all blood matters and the King cannot convincingly apply this principle to his body alone. So long as these characters depend upon and invest in these discourses, regardless of their side in this political divide, blood will not change, blood will demand more blood, and future generations will be infected by the same violent requirements and demands. The alternative to this dialectic, to have a future without blood, necessitates rejecting this bloody ideology entirely; defining others’ by their bodies here only yields violence, whether in a blood feud or in a holy war against the Moors. In this case, Le Cid offers another woman, one similarly disenfranchised due to her station, to voice this alternative: the maidservant Elvire. Placing the voice of peace, previously reserved for the humanist heroes of Garnier’s drama, in Elvire’s mouth is both to place an enormous emphasis on this small moment Although I disagree with R.J Nelson’s reading as a whole, by framing the play’s conflict in terms of love he 141 comes upon something interesting. He contends that the lovers respond to the dishonor of their respective families due to some manner of natural or instinctual reaction and not a dry, rational sense of duty or honor. Nelson explains, “Chimène, and to a lesser extent, Rodrigue, are striving to make a choice not between love and duty, but between two kinds of love. [...] Yet, if anything, the only duty involved in the complex character of the ‘Corneilian hero’ is the duty to his derived sense of self.” (77). Nelson calls this sense of self “love as honor,” but one could easily deem this the love and affinity dictated by consanguinity. This comparison isn’t a perfect one. Rodrigue’s murder of the Comte occurs before a prospective marriage to 142 Chimène, whereas Romeo doesn’t kill Tybalt until after he and Juliet have married. However, it is still true that Romeo would be guilty via blood inheritance of any and all Capulet blood spilt even prior to his personal act of violence. The predicament for Juliet should be roughly the same. !95 and to render it inconspicuous. Like Juliet, her voice has no apparent influence on the play’s conclusion, and thus both endings appear equally bleak. After the conflict breaks out begun by a violent slap across the face, blood’s ideology dominates the play’s remaining discourse amongst the nobility. The two patriarchs, and Don Diègue especially, quickly invoke the belief that blood materially distinguishes families and dictates both characteristics and affinities, reminiscent of the possessives littered in Shakespeare’s play. Moreover, with these affinities come violent duties to one’s family and 143 oneself, which are imposed upon the young lovers despite their independent feelings. Don Diègue rehearses several assumptions about how blood functions when he calls upon his son to avenge him. He importunes, Je reconnais mon sang à ce noble courroux, Ma jeunesse revit en cette ardeur si prompte, Viens, mon fils, viens mon sang, viens réparer ma honte; Viens me vanger. (1.5.264-7) I recognize my blood in this noble rage; my youth revives in this ardor so prompt. Come, my son, come, my blood, come to retrieve my shame—come to avenge me! Don Diègue here not only equates his blood with his son, marked by the parallel construction “viens mon fils, viens mon sang,” but because his son carries his blood he also must have inherited the same personality traits, his “noble courroux” and “ardeur.” And as Rodrigue’s blood Contributing to the blood discourse’s atmospheric quality, and thus its oppressive force, is the fact that the 143 characters cite other discourses which attach persons’ characters to their bodies, for instance metoposcopy the science of reading a person’s character in the lines on his/her forehead. One example is Le Comte’s reference to Don Diègue and his valor when considering his son Rodrigue an appropriate suitor for Chimène, “Ses rides sur son front ont gravé ses exploits, / Et nous disent encore ce qu’il fut autrefois” [“the furrows on his brow bear witness to [lit. have engraved his] exploits, and tell us still what he formerly was”] (1.1.21-2). This is only one example of several though I’ll refrain from listing all of them here. The English translation above and all others, unless otherwise noted, are from Roscoe Mongan’s translation originally published by Hinds & Noble Publishers in 1896 now available on Project Gutenburg. I have chosen Mongan’s prose translation since it is the most literal, but on the whole I recommend Richard Wilbur’s translation (Mariner Books 2009) for a more enjoyable read that best approximates Corneille’s lyricism. !96 has dictated his identity and personality, it must also dictate his actions. Revenge demands spilling blood to wash away dishonor as Diègue spells out, “Ce n’est que dans le sang qu’on lave un tel outrage, / Meurs, ou tue” [“it is only in blood that one can wash away such an insult; die or slay”](1.5.274-5). Diègue’s argument, of course, relies on the assumption that Rodrigue inherits the stain of his offense due to their consanguinity, and therefore to avenge his father is to avenge himself: “Enfin tu sais l’affront, et tu tiens la vengeance, / Je ne te dis plus rien. Venge-moi, venge-toi” [“In short, thou knowest the insult, and thou holdest [in thy grasp the means of] vengeance. I say no more to thee. Avenge me, avenge thyself!”] (1.5.286-7). Don Diègue does not frame his request as merely something that a son should do out of duty to his father, but rather Rodrigue and he are materially connected and so his son likewise requires vengeance. After the Count’s death, Don Diègue further foregrounds his own body that has been cleansed by his son’s action, telling his son “Touche ces cheveux blancs à qui tu rends l’honneur” [“Touch these white hairs, to which thou restorest honor!”] (3.6.1036). Here the grammatical construction makes clear Diègue’s emphasis on the body; his honor belongs to or resides in his white hairs since the white hairs are the vessels of adulation and not himself. Diègue’s engagement with this discourse here, and as a whole, stresses his belief that blood operates literally. He praises his son for the act that confirms their blood/lineage, “et ton illustre audace / Fait bien revivre en toi les héros de ma race” [“and thy brilliant prowess causes the heroes of my race to live again in thee!”] (3.6.1029-30). Though a moment of praise, Don Diègue’s compliment also functions as a hefty demand. The heroes of his entire lineage, “ma race,” depends on Rodrigue; they live on only “in him.” His body, his blood is of utmost !97 importance not only for himself and his father, but for an entire family history. And it is this expectation which ultimately convinces and compels Rodrigue. Both Rodrigue and Chimène assume blood’s ideology, and though conflicted, they do so willingly because, when blood is understood as the physiological foundation of one’s person and appropriate affinities, it must trump erotic love. Blood conceived in this way necessarily dictates and determines without regard for any other social considerations. For instance, Rodrigue voices this reasoning after a lengthy internal debate: “Que je meure au combat, ou meure de tristesse, / Je rendrai mon sang pur comme je l’ai reçu” [“Whether I die in the combat or die of sadness, I shall yield up my blood pure as I have received it.”] (1.6.343-4). Rodrigue must put love aside because his blood will not change; his basic nature, his integrity as an individual endures no matter the manner of his death. According to blood’s logic, therefore, material purity of the family honor must be his primary concern since his blood belongs not only to his individual person. It is a force greater than himself which cannot be changed by his love for Chimène. Rodrigue fully internalizes these assumptions regarding consanguinity and even (re)cites them back to the older generation. He berates Chimène’s father for his actions, asserting that his blood is the source of the ardor which the Count once admired, the same blood he shares with his father: “Cette ardeur que dans les yeux je porte, / Sais-tu que c’est son sang? le sais-tu?” [“This fire which I carry in mine eyes, knowest thou that this is his blood? Dost thou know it?”] (2.2.401-2). Repeating twice “sais-tu” — particularly brash since he addresses his elder using the more informal “tu” — Rodrigue’s challenging tone highlights his internalization of this !98 discourse. According to blood’s logic, therefore, material purity must be his primary concern 144 since his blood and its honor is shared. And this discourse apparently justifies his future actions: killing the father of his beloved. Once completed, Rodrigue’s subscription to the blood feud incites Chimène’s response in kind, for she likewise accepts the violent injunctions of her blood. Chimène cannot reject 145 familial duty as mere metaphor, not even in the name of love for Rodrigue or devotion to the safety of her country. Blood’s ideology equally implicates her noble body even if she lacks the capacity to act on it as Rodrigue does. She too believes in the physical power of her father’s blood and its connection to her own; this blood, an intractable part of her, cannot be denied or set aside. When asking the King for justice with Rodrigue’s death, she forcefully underlines blood’s power: Sire, mon père est mort; mes yeux ont vu son sang Couler à gros bouillons de son généreux flanc, Ce sang qui tant de fois garantit vos murailles, Ce sang qui tant de fois vous gagna des batailles, Ce sang qui tout sorti fume encor de courroux (2.8.659-63) Sire, my father is dead! My eyes have seen his blood gush forth from his noble breast—that blood which has so often secured your walls—that blood which has so often won your battles—that blood which, though all outpoured, still fumes with rage at seeing itself shed for any other than for you! It is difficult to identify the precise historical moment of the popularization of “vous” as formal address distinct 144 from “tu.” As linguistic scholar Johannes Helmbrecht notes, “it is plausible to assume that this convention was developed during the Middle Ages around the courts of the French crown and the aristocracy” (190). Others locate its increased usage in the seventeenth-century French courts. In either case, it is likely that this distinction should hold in the cultural imaginary of Corneille’s audience. Rodrigue seemingly supports Chimène’s reaction to the blood feud, agreeing that he should die, and further 145 maintains that he should die by her hands until the very end. He offering himself for sacrifice until the very last moment, right before Chimène asks the King if she must marry him. !99 The first feature to note is that, after proclaiming her father dead, his blood is her very first charge. Secondly, her description of this blood is extremely visceral, flowing in “gros 146 bouillons” from his flesh. While one might argue that this gruesome description acts as mere rhetorical flourish to underscore the violent nature of Rodrigue’s crime, the physical nature of the blood discourse throughout this play asks the audience to take this bloody description more seriously. Thirdly, Chimène’s use of anaphora repeats the word “blood” three times over. The blood here becomes the subject of her proclamations: it protected the kingdom’s borders; it won battles; it still fumes with rage. Blood calls for action, not metaphorically. She describes her father’s blood speaking to her, Son sang sur la poussière écrivait mon devoir; Ou plutôt sa valeur en cet état réduite Me parlait par sa plaie, et hâtait ma poursuite; Et pour se faire entendre au plus juste des rois, Par cette triste bouche elle empruntait ma voix. (2.6.676-80) His blood upon the [surrounding] dust dictated [lit. wrote] my duty; or rather his valor, reduced to this condition, spoke to me through his wound, and urged me to claim redress; and to make itself heard by the most just of kings, by these sad lips, it borrowed my voice. This could easily be glossed as a conventional symbol of her familial duty. But the heroine’s account of blood in these lines is more than mere poetic device. Chimène’s language not only emphasizes blood’s material presence spilt in the dirt, but also figures blood as agent which calls for action, and does so literally since “sang” is the speech’s subject with its own “bouche,” the wound. Her father’s blood speaks to her on account of their consanguinity but then borrows One might argue that the situation between Rodrigue and Chimène is not perfectly symmetrical because Don 146 Diègue appeals to his living bloodline, whereas Chimène speaks to blood spilled. Both nevertheless point to the connection between their parents’ blood and their own and hold that blood is greater than themselves, which is the most important factor. !100 (“empruntait”) her voice to speak for itself in a public forum. Blood has agency in this drama, an agency that Chimène recognizes when she calls on ‘le sang par le sang” [“blood for blood”] (2.8.692). Her actions are not hers alone, but are instead compelled by her bloodline, a force larger than herself. Blood hastens her pursuit and there is no evidence that she has the ability to refuse its directive. The familial blood dictates her actions and commands her to speak for it, just as a god might speak through a possessed human host. Blood calls for blood seemingly in spite of human volition. When Don Rodrigue asks to be killed by Chimène with his own sword, she exclaims, “Quoi! du sang de mon père encor toute trempée!” [“What! still imbrued with the blood of my father!”] (3.4.858). And only a few lines later she insists that this is likewise her blood, “Il est teint de mon sang” [“It is dyed with my blood! (italics mine)] (3.4.863). Chimène thus makes no distinction between her blood and her father’s. Like Rodrigue’s acceptance of this discourse outlined by his father, if Chimène assumes this discourse, then she has no choice but to suppress any love for her enemy and plead for his blood to cleanse her own. These lovers thus understand this mandate as a matter of personal integrity in part because it comes from within themselves, the very substance/essence of their noble beings. As other scholars have noted, the young lovers accept this “devoir du sang” in part due to a double bind (5.2.1592). For in order to be worthy of the beloved’s love, the lover must maintain his/her honor, even if doing so entails violence towards the beloved or his/her family. According to 147 this line of reasoning, Rodrigue begs Chimène to kill him, insisting that only her hand can do it. In order for her to be worthy of his love, she must kill him to remove the stain of dishonor from her own. Rodrigue pleads, “Plonge-le dans le mien, / Et fais-lui perdre ainsi la teinture du See especially Octave Nadal’s reading of Rodrigue’s love in Le sentiment de l’amour dans l’oeuvre de Pierre 147 Corneille. !101 tien” [“Plunge it in mine, and cause it thus to lose the death-stain of thine own.”] (3.4.863-4). The stain of her family’s blood and thus hers, “le tien,” can be washed away by spilling his own blood. Like the language’s parallelism, the system is one of perfect parity, and cruelly, what is best both for her and their love is that he be repaid in kind. Rodrigue later explicitly reframes this demand in terms of honor, “Immole avec courage au sang qu’il a perdu / Celui qui met sa gloire à l’avoir répandu” [“Sacrifice with courage to the blood he has lost he who constitutes his glory in having shed it”] (3.4.903-4). A sacrifice must be made to her father’s blood lost, and with this premise she agrees. But the command “immole” takes on an even more disturbing tenor in this scene. The blood of the father assumes a quasi-transcendental status, which requires that one sacrifice to it, threatening some measure of divine retribution if she refuses. And while her romantic feelings might impel her to refuse this task, as others have noted, blood’s hold on the two protagonists is uneven. As a woman it would be considered unseemly for Chimène to affect Rodrigue’s death by her own hand; and seemingly lacking any other male family members, she must continue to call on the King for justice/vengeance (Forsyth 394). Moreover, Rodrigue can kill the Moors and subscribe to the King’s new economy of blood in order to gain his favor, but Chimène lacks this recourse. The Infante on the other hand, unlike the protagonists, sees the love between Rodrigue and Chimène as a possible way to end the feud, as an alternative to this tragic trajectory to which the lovers have subscribed. Much like the Friar’s reasoning in Romeo and Juliet, she entertains this marriage as a means to cleanse the bad blood between them, though problematically, the existing blood discourse cannot support this possibility. She tries to comfort Chimène, Le saint nœud qui joindra don Rodrigue et Chimène, !102 Des pères ennemis dissipera la haine, Et nous verrons bientôt votre amour le plus fort Par un heureux hymen étouffer ce discord. (2.3.473-6) The sacred tie which will unite Don Rodrigo and Chimène will dispel the hatred of their hostile sires, and we shall soon see the stronger [feeling], love, by a happy bridal, extinguish this discord. The Infante’s hope is quite explicit; it is the marriage tie, described as “the sacred knot,” which would dissipate or dispel the hatred between the two families. She further claims that the power of Hymen, the goddess of marriage, should snuff out any discord. If the reference to this sacred tie is at all ambiguous, then the allusion to Hymen clearly implies a sexual bond, mixing of flesh and blood upon marriage’s consummation. Hence, this whole section sounds very much like Romeo’s hope for ending the Veronese blood feud. Yet, Chimène knows that a marriage would not absolve her duty. To incorporate his blood into her own upon marriage would mean to incorporate his character, which wasn’t a problem, of course, until he killed her father. Chimène frankly acknowledges this problem when speaking of King Fernand’s command that she marry the victor of the duel between Don Sanche and Rodrigue. Whoever wins, “De tous les deux côtés on me donne un mari / Encor tout teint du sang que j’ai le plus chéri” [“In either case [lit. on both sides] they give me a husband, still [all] stained with the blood that I cherished most”] (5.4.1659-60). Regardless of the outcome, when married, she would be tarnished by the blood (“tout teint du sang”) of the one that she most cherishes, either her father or Rodrigue. Her strain against the King’s order, therefore, reflects the seriousness of her investment in blood’s nature and agency. Thus as the play concludes, Chimène worries that she will be forced to take on the horrifying consequences of marrying Rodrigue. She asks the King if she must marry him, !103 C’est trop d’intelligence avec son homicide, Vers ses Manes sacrés c’est me rendre perfide, Et souiller mon honneur d’un reproche éternel, D’avoir trempé mes mains dans le sang paternel? (5.7.1835-8) It’s too much to know with his homicide, Towards the sacred Manes it renders me treacherous, And to sully my honor with endless reproach, From having soaked my hands in my father’s blood? 148 Chimène’s language reflects that this marriage would be no small compromise by defiling her honor with an “eternel” reproach. This contamination of her blood not only has implications for the status of her own soul, but also for all of her future kin. Needless to say, she does not conceive of this stain on her honor as a metaphorical one. Her hands would be soaked in “sang paternel”; if not literally, then she nonetheless believes that her body would be compromised in a very visceral sense. If two become one in the sanctity of marriage and their bloods mix, then she is guilty of patricide, as though she herself had stabbed her father! And if this principle of 149 contamination is true, if blood in fact determines and signifies in this way, then the King does not have the authority, much less the capacity, to absolve it. The King’s final pronouncement at the play’s close, however, utterly ignores these implications. He effectively turns a deaf ear to Chimène altogether and instead calls on Rodrigue to hope: Espère en ton courage, espère en ma promesse; Et possédant déjà le cœur de ta maîtresse, Pour vaincre un point d’honneur qui combat contre toi, Laisse faire le temps, ta vaillance, et ton roi. (5.7.1837-40) My translation. 148 Cordell Black comes to this same conclusion that “to agree to marry Rodrigue [...] is tantamount to slaying her 149 father with her own hands,” but he doesn’t underline why it is conceived in this highly visceral way (86). !104 Hope in thy manly resolution; hope in my promise, and already possessing the heart of thy mistress, let time, thy valor, and thy king exert themselves [lit. do, or act], to overcome a scrupulous feeling of honor which is contending against thee. What matters for this hope is Rodrigue’s courage and the King’s promise, since Rodrigue supposedly possesses Chimène’s heart already. And Rodrigue might very well, but that doesn’t mean that he can accommodate Chimène’s concern. As Cordell Black notes, despite the King’s trick that forces Chimène to publicly expose her feelings, “to acknowledge [Chimène’s] love for ‘le Cid’ is not at all tantamount to making the ultimate concession: marriage” (79). Her “point d’honneur” holds far more weight than the King will acknowledge; for her it is not some small point of pride. Despite the King’s appeal to time to assuage her unease, blood’s materiality persists from one generation to the next and it does not change. If the material of her body, the demigod blood, has a power and force outside of her reach, then it is likewise beyond King Fernand’s purview. This belief is a serious problem for his authority. He cannot deny the significance of blood for the aristocracy because he likewise depends on the assumption that blood means something and especially that his own blood holds power and authority. Although King Fernand advocates a romantic conclusion, his command that Chimène marry and relinquish her convictions betrays a double standard rather than a uniform critique of blood’s ideology. His command conflicts with his own investment in blood’s discourse, his royal blood and that of the nation, which both depend upon the same assumption as Chimène’s point of honor, namely blood’s power to signify. The King calls upon his own power and authority to mandate that others relinquish this assumption when it pertains to the blood feud — “un sanglant procédé” [“a bloody practice”] as he calls it (4.5.1452) — simply because it suits his purposes. Yet if his blood signifies, then there is an incongruity to his insistence that the nobility’s blood !105 does not. The King’s stance, therefore, doesn’t fully accord with his promise of a comedic conclusion. To illustrate, the Infante insists upon maintaining the purity of her royal bloodline. Her status as a princess impedes her own love for Rodrigue since her union with a noble would debase her royal blood. Despite some inner turmoil at the beginning of the play, she resolves, “Oui, oui, je m’en souviens, et j’épandrai mon sang / Plustôt que de rien faire indigne de mon rang” [“I remember it so well, that I would shed my blood rather than degrade my rank”] (1.3.85-6). The Infante would rather spill her blood than do anything unbecoming of her blood’s quality (rank), which is the key to the power of the monarchy. However, the Infante wavers once Rodrigue has returned victorious, once he has been named “Le Cid” and thus has possibly obtained worthier blood. She muses to herself, “Et ce grand nom de Cid que tu viens de gagner / Ne fait-il pas trop voir sur qui tu dois régner?” [“And this great name of Cid, which thou hast just now won—does it not show too clearly over whom thou art destined to reign?”] (5.2.1587-8). As she conceives it, this new name is a function of a change in person, and one which was founded in blood. Admitting to her maidservant, “Si j’aime, c’est l’auteur de tant de beaux exploits, / C’est le valeureux Cid, le maître de deux rois” [“If I love him, it is [as] the author of so many brilliant deeds; it is [as] the valiant Cid, the master of two kings.”] (5.3.1635-6). According to the Infante’s formulation, she loves an altogether different man, the author of these exploits, a new blood-borne identity. Like his daughter, the King adamantly expresses his investment in the blood of his nation and his person: the blood of Spaniards in a war against the Moors. For instance, after news of the Count’s death, King Fernand laments his loss of life but especially his loyal career measured in blood spilt for his country, “Après un long service à mon État rendu,/ Après son sang pour moi !106 mille fois répandu” [“After long service rendered to my state, after his blood has been shed for me a thousand times.”] (2.7.643-4). The diction here further emphasizes his personal 150 investment, since the blood was spilt not for his nation or crown but “pour moi.” Earlier in the play, the Infante echoes this attitude towards blood when daydreaming of a Rodrigue who would be worthy of her, “Porter delà les mers ses hautes destinées, / Du sang des Africains arroser ses lauriers” [“advancing his proud destinies beyond the seas, laving his laurels with the blood of Africans!”] (2.5.542-3). The very visceral “watered” or even “soaked” of the verb ‘arroser’ marks the somewhat grotesque and violent nature of the action needed to transform Rodrigue’s nature; it is literally dipped in blood and dripping from the laurel crowns on his head. This repulsive image highlights the destructive center of even blood’s positive symbolism. Moorish blood will be spilt for the preservation of the nation’s lifeblood and that of its King. King Fernand further paints his subjects’ blood as his primary concern, although only as part in parcel of his political body. He explains to his adviser, Un roi dont la prudence a de meilleurs objets Est meilleur ménager du sang de ses subjets, Je veille pour les miens, mes soucis les conservent, Comme le chef a soin des membres qui le servent. (2.6.595-8) A king, whose prudence has better objects in view [than such quarrels], is more sparing of the blood of his subjects. I watch over mine; my [watchful] care protects them, as the head takes care of the limbs which serve it. Caring for his subjects’ blood and well-being is the primary aim, the best [“meilleur”] object emphasized twice over, of the prudent ruler. And via metaphorical extension, their blood becomes his blood as “le chef” of the body politic. But as he admits earlier, his concern for his This value is likewise emphasized by Don Diègue who tells Rodrigue that he has a greater duty to his country to 150 spill Moorish blood than to protect the honor of his beloved, his “vaillantes mains / Se tremperont bien mieux au sang des Africains” [“their valiant hands will be more nobly steeped in the blood of Africans”] (3.6.1093-4). !107 subjects’ blood does not pertain to their sense of honor or individual blood purity, but rather the blood shed in violent combat in service to his nation. The third scene of act four exhaustively renders this bloodshed in Rodrigue’s narrative as “des champs de carnage où triomphe la mort” [“the fields of carnage where death triumphs”] (4.3.1310). Further describing the surprise ambush, Rodrigue recounts, “Nous les pressons sur l’eau, nous les pressons sur terre/ Et nous faisons courir des ruisseaux de leur sang / Avant qu’aucun resiste, ou reprenne son rang” [“We press them hard on the water, we press them hard on the land, and we cause rivulets of their blood to run before any [of them] can resist or regain his position”] (4.3.1300-2). The streams 151 of blood recounted here, after all, are no different than those streaming from the body of Chimène’s father. This play thus does not simply expose the tragedy of some persons caught in an older value system during the transition from one social or political structure to another. 152 Despite the notable political change, both the feudal and monarchical structures invest in a common ideology. Both sides of this power struggle between the aristocracy and the monarch depend upon the premise of blood’s signification; and in both cases this investment is destructive. King Fernand thus holds on to the basic assumption of blood ideology: that blood signifies something, such as the honor of his royal body and, related, the integrity of his Spanish nation. Yet, by way of conclusion, Corneille’s play does make a small space for hope, although not in the form of a prospective marriage between Chimène and Rodrigue as many might Rodrigue seemingly invests in the King’s economy of blood in this moment too as he credits the King and his 151 empire for his own blood: “Je sais trop que je dois au bien de vostre Empire / Et le sang qui m’anime et l’air que je respire, / Et quand je les perdrai pour si digne objet, / Je ferai seulement le devoir d’un sujet” [“I know well that I must for the good of your Empire, and the blood that animates me and the air that I breathe and when I will lose them for so dignified an end, I will only do the duty of a subject”] (4.3.1243-6). This is John Lyon’s argument in his book the Tragedy of Origins. 152 !108 assume. Instead, Chimène’s servant Elvire provides a small opportunity for the audience to recognize blood’s rhetorical status, and, consequently, the possibility for a way out of this violence. She alone suggests that rejecting this ideology entirely which might be the only escape from the bloody results of this discourse and the only potential for a romantic conclusion. One cannot merely insist that the blood feud cease, as the King declares in the interest of his own power, but one must explicitly recognize the violent byproducts of defining others, or oneself, by blood. Seemingly then, only a character who does not stand to benefit from citing this discourse voices a genuine alternative. Elvire may look like a mere stock character, playing the role of the confidante and sometimes chorus. In fact, most critics generally ignore the cast of supporting characters since they don’t garner much sympathetic attention from the audience. Mohammed Kowsar even goes so far as to say that “to be sure there are the two confidantes (Elvira and Leonor), the respective governesses of Chimène and the Infanta, but their personalities reflect the expediency of convention so faithfully that not a single perception of any consequence is emitted by either character” (291). But upon closer examination, Elvire voices the only bloodless option. Elvire’s question to Chimène articulates the ultimate critique of the blood feud’s nonsensical logic: Que prétend ce devoir? et qu’est-ce qu’il espère? La mort de votre amant vous rendra-t-elle un père? Est-ce trop peu pour vous que d’un coup de malheur? Faut-il perte sur perte, et douleur sur douleur?” (5.4.1689-92) What means this duty, and what does it hope for? Will the death of your lover restore to you a father? Is one [fatal] stroke of misfortune insufficient for you? Is there need of loss upon loss, and sorrow upon sorrow? Rather than look to bodies and who or what they determine, she instead belabors the physical consequences of maintaining these discourses, loss on loss and woe on woe. She asks a very !109 simple question, what is to be gained? Elvire’s concern should resonate for Corneille’s 153 audience on account of recent historical events: the enormous bloodshed caused by the civil wars of religion (a conflict of faith but also of noble factions), as well as King Charles IX’s probable role in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. While blood’s discourse might permit the 154 nobility and monarch to maintain and stabilize power, providing a material foundation for their virtues and privileges, it also, as Elvire notes, produces more hurt. Elvire’s moment of resistance, though brief, resembles speeches of humanist heroes, for instance, Agamemnon’s call for peace in Robert Garnier’s La Troade (1579). Placing the voice 155 of peace, previously reserved for the humanist heroes of Garnier’s drama, in Elvire’s mouth is both to place an enormous emphasis on this small moment and to render it inconspicuous. Giving Elvire the critique of blood’s ideology, in one sense, is most fitting; for unlike her mistress Chimène, Elvire is in no way implicated in the power structure supported by blood’s ideology. However, on account of her social position, her voice is likewise muted and ignored, preventing her words from having any immediate impact on the plot. Blood’s voice overpowers her own. Nevertheless, Elvire’s words expose that defining others’ by their bodies can only yield violence, whether that be violence to the bodies of an opposing family (as mandated by the nobility) or As Clifton Cherpack notes in his work on the trope of the “cri du sang,” Elvire’s skepticism and critique of this 153 discourse is depicted more clearly in other tragedies by Corneille. For the lovers of Le Cid, the power of blood lies squarely on the side of reason, duty, and honor which they take very seriously, but “for many Cornelian characters, while they seem to recognize the privileges and responsibilities attendant upon blood kinship, are quite cynical about their sanctity” (Cherpack 34-5). For more information on these historical narratives, see Kristen Neuschel and Arlette Jouanna. 154 In this moment, Agamemnon staunchly opposes Pyrrhe who is intent on sacrificing Polyxene to fulfill his father 155 Achilles’ will. Agamemnon exclaims, “Quelle execrable horreur? Qui veit jamais cela / Qu’un homme trespassé dans sa tombe eust envie / D’un autre homme vivant, de son sang, de sa vie? / V ous rendriez vostre pere à chacun odieux, / Le voulant honorer d’actes injurieux” [“What an appalling horror? Who could ever want that, that a man trespasses in his tomb would want another man living, of his blood, of his life? You would give back your father to someone odious in wanting to honor injurious acts”] (3.1451-56). !110 excessive violence upon Moorish bodies (as charged by the monarchy). As Corneille’s Le Cid seems to suggest, if both the aristocracy and the new monarchy invest in blood, then, despite the promise of a romance realized, this play is truly a bloody tragedy born from blood. Conclusion: A Woman’s Voice Corneille and Shakespeare’s similarly bloody renditions of Romeo and Juliet’s central conflict, a tension between romantic love and familial loyalties, explore the violent necessities of performing discourses which not only demand blood for blood, but which also insist that a person’s blood dictates his/her affinities. They ask, does my blood truly dictate that I kill my beloved’s father? Could my blood turn against itself if I marry my father’s enemy? Am I guilty of murder, patricide? These plays remind the audience that a literal investment in these discourses, though it may materialize and thus solidify social duties, authority, and power, has immensely troubling complications. And in either case, it doesn’t end well; even those who look to cite blood discourses for positive ends fail. The mixing of bloods in marriage is not a way out of a tragic framework for Romeo and Juliet, and neither is the King’s insistence on marriage, since his own interests likewise appeal to blood and violence. Only a rejection of these logics outright appears to promise a space for romantic love rather than the blood feud’s violent and tragic propulsion. Yet, that these dissenting voices are women, both doubly discounted by society, makes change very difficult to affect. Shakespeare’s heroine Juliet is both a woman and exceedingly young, a mere thirteen years old. Thus her voice, one not yet fully indoctrinated, can see an alternative to society’s present. Juliet represents a different future, but here a future which has been tragically sacrificed to the status quo. For Le Cid, a serving woman remains the only character disadvantaged and thus untainted by blood’s ideology. This disenfranchisement !111 encourages this “thinking otherwise,” but which likewise diminishes the capacity for her words to have any influence in the confines of the play. But maybe, the audience could hear them, looking to possibilities beyond the existing, flawed and violent system. The dramatic space renders their voices audible even if their society does not.   !112 Chapter 2: When Blood Cries, Incest and the Logic of Blood Affinity Say that we had one father, say one womb (Curse to my joys!) gave both us life and birth; Are we not therefore each to other bound So much more by nature? By the links Of blood, of reason? Nay, if you will have’t Even of religion, to be ever one, One soul, one flesh, one love, one heart, one all? — Giovanni to Friar Bonaventura, John Ford, `Tis Pity She’ s a Whore (1.1.29-34) At the beginning of Ford’s‘Tis Pity, Giovanni’s speech begins as a seemingly customary expression of love for one’s blood relations; but a potentially conventional expression of sibling love quickly turns into an unconventional, high-flown declaration of an all-encompassing erotic love for his sister, his perfect beloved given her biological similarity to himself. Most scholars gloss this moment, as well as Giovanni’s arguments for incest in general, as either a perversion or some misunderstanding of Neoplatonic language. But what if Giovanni isn’t mistaken? 156 What if incest weren’t a perversion so much as an extension of these “links of blood”? If kin love one another on account of shared blood, and a similarity in blood/nature was presumed to be the Neoplatonism founded by Plotinus in the classical period fused Plato’s philosophy with religious, Pythagorean, 156 and other doctrines. The basic principle, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, is as follows: “Plotinus conceived of the universe as an emanation of the One, the omnipresent, transcendental Good derived from Plato’s Parmenides. The One gives rise to the realm of *nous (ideas, intelligence), and that in turn to soul, or souls, some of which sink into bodies” (258-9). Of course, in the early modern period these ideas took on a Christian flavor with the work of Boethius in the medieval period, and later influenced discourses on love with the work of Marsilio Ficino. With regards to love, Neoplatonism suggested that an individual could become one with his or her beloved, integrating their souls together in a manner that allows one to have some access of the One. They, furthermore, achieve this union by virtue of their likeness. As Marsilio Ficino outlines in his Commentary on Plato’ s Symposium, “Likeness is a certain nature which is the same in several things. For if I am like you, you also are necessarily like me. Therefore the same likeness which compels me to love you also forces you to love me. Moreover, the lover removes himself from himself and gives himself to the beloved. Therefore the beloved takes care of him as his own possession” (Speech II, Ch. 8, 57). !113 foundation of erotic love matches, then what (other than a taboo of course) could prevent the 157 conclusion of incest? When re-examined in the larger context of contemporary assumptions about blood, incest (especially sibling incest) provides the limit case for the assumption that we have a natural affinity for those with whom we share blood. If love is based in likeness, then a person would, theoretically, most like the person who is most like him/herself; in which case, one would expect siblings, having exactly the same blood, to harbor erotic love. Moreover, sibling 158 incest is functionally similar to the logic of unitas carnis. If married spouses love one another as a result of their shared blood post-coitus — effectively becoming kin as the material foundation for their erotic love — then the love between siblings is theoretically no different, except that they don’t require sexual relations to accomplish it. Incest, therefore, is the result of affinity’s logic when taken to its natural conclusion — if, as Giovanni says, the “links of blood” are extended to those “of reason.” Critics have glossed the profusion of incest plots in the early modern period in a variety of ways, but as Richard McCabe remarks, these explications have something in common, namely “a genuine and sometimes courageous willingness to think the previously unthinkable, to question prevailing theories of family and state, to lend voice to suppressed misgivings and It’s easy to see how comments about love based in likeness of persons, like Ludovico Dolce’s Della institution 157 delle donne (1545) could only be improved by perfect likeness. Dolce advises, “the prospective couple should be of similar personality and habits. You can’t expect a wolf to live together happily ever after with a lamb, and the same goes for people” (qtd. Bell 218). Robert Crofts in The Lover, or Nuptiall Love (1638) similarly preaches, “choose such as are of equall yeeres, birth, fortunes, and degree, of good parentage, and kindred, of such a countenance, complexion and constitution, as best agrees to our love and disposition” (qtd. Cook 40). For just as it would in marriage, so too with siblings the “mingling of blood is sometimes supposed to be a direct cause of mutual sympathy” (Eduard Wesermarck qtd. Cherpack 10). Undoubtedly, blood could function similarly in other iterations of incest. The Oedipus myth, for instance, could 158 easily be retold as his mistaking a cri du sang (his blood’s natural affinity for his kin, in this case his mother) for an erotic attraction. However, I’m specifically interested in sibling incest because it captures the limit of this logic: blood’s attraction to its exact likeness. This project will thus set aside parent-child forms of incest that are of interest to Freudian or psychoanalytic readings. !114 challenge the normative doctrine of nature itself” (141). For instance, incest could be demonized as the mark of the consummate sinner (Lois Bueler); the ultimate Faustian dream for the person who believes himself to be above the law; or the fulfillment of a narcissistic desire (Paul Edgar Smith and Charles Forker). Alternatively, it might reflect an anxiety about knowing one’s kin in a period when children were routinely shipped off to wet nurses or caretakers; or, it could be a brand of wish-fulfillment for emotional intimacy when relationships, especially between siblings, were vexed given the practice of primogeniture and the unequal distribution of economic resources (Charles Forker). Incest might likewise be the natural outcome of the ideal of Christian “universal siblinghood” (Marc Shell); or it might even provide a space for female agency as the sibling relationship best approximated perfect equality between partners (Maureen Quilligan). Yet most criticism interprets incest as the desire to be exempt from society’s mandate of exogamy as famously outlined by Claude Levi-Strauss. As Bruce Boehrer notes, shoring up 159 social, political, or economic resources would have been particularly appealing in this historical moment because the Renaissance literature of incest develops during a period (roughly from the first quarter of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth) in which the established ranks of English gentry and nobility come under increasing pressure from an upwardly mobile underclass, and in which the official equipment of English government is progressively stripped of its investiture in the family. (13) Yet to build upon Boehrer’s observation, incest isn’t simply the perfection of endogamy, it is the natural conclusion of the aristocracy’s already endogamous practices and the logics that support their hegemony, namely a doctrine of nature whereby blood prescribes affinity. Or put another Kentston Bauman’s recent dissertation extrapolates upon incest’s potential relationship to concerns of a national, 159 racial identity. The desire for endogamy, albeit an extreme version, would protect England’s identity, threatened in this historical moment by increased contact with foreign others and the possibility of miscegenation. !115 way, in this framework incest is not properly monstrous since it so closely resembles acceptable, and even ideal, conceptions of familial and spousal love. Drama featuring incest (particularly between siblings) exposes the folly of the elite’s intense desire to maintain a closed system to remain in power. These plays critique the elite’s endogamous establishment, one wherein noble persons claim that they cannot help but love their likes, thereby abdicating any responsibility for the reproduction of this system and their hegemony. Or in other words, the social system reproduces itself via reproduction, and the elite attributes the status quo to the biological and inescapable workings of bloodlines. Incest drama thus not only demonstrates the lunacy of this logic, but also the ultimately rhetorical workings of appealing to bloodlines as opposed to a true biological determinism. Comedies averting incest — like Giambattista della Porta’s La Sorella (c.1590) and Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/Help Like A Woman’ s (1612) — appear to endorse the status quo by maintaining bodies’ importance: both in establishing affinity amongst kin (the cri du sang) and avoiding the taboo by ensuring that those in love are not consanguineous siblings (with birthmarks as proof). And while these romantic tropes ordinarily bring about a satisfactory comedic conclusion, their employment in these plays opens up a problem for these methods rather than closes it down; they suggest that bodily distinctions mean very little, exposing the fundamentally discursive nature of blood that purportedly solidifies existing kinship groups and power structures. For in these plays, most of the cris du sang turn out to be incorrect, and, in fact, characters invoke blood as it suits them. Della Porta’s play successfully averts the incest threat, primarily, by swapping names. And Middleton’s No Wit takes this suggestion even further, lacking any mention of blood movements or verifying birthmarks intended to distinguish the two !116 girls; it instead proffers a more pragmatic attitude towards identity that merely amounts to “name and place” (5.1.463). This alternative account of identity-formation thereby undermines blood’s ideology which serves as the biological foundation for the elite’s worthiness. Moreover, No Wit suggests that blood’s discourse obscures the actual motivations beneath kinship structures and love, namely wealth, which by virtue of its ability to circulate, can easily be divorced from the bloodlines of the elite. Hence even in the case of incest-averted and appropriate matches happily concluded, the entire system supporting the elite’s endogamy and hegemony begins to fall apart. John Ford’s tragedy of sibling incest, in a sense, turns the incest-averted plot inside out by asking what might happen if there were no deus ex machina to forge a comedy. ‘Tis Pity She’ s A Whore (1630) considers the assumptions about blood affinity from another vantage point, illustrating the tragic repercussions of taking this principle to its natural, uncomfortable conclusion. Giovanni appeals to logics of blood such that shared blood physically pulls siblings together in body and soul within the Neoplatonic framework — just as magnets are attracted to one another beyond their control. And though the people of Parma, and the Friar especially, 160 fight against Giovanni’s interpretation and application of blood’s logic, they fail to provide a genuine alternative. Blood’s ideology is so powerful and capacious that by appealing to any component — for instance that blood determines both class and character — a person is rendered incapable of finding an alternative to even its most extreme application. Reminiscent of the workings of tragedy in both Romeo and Juliet and Le Cid, Ford stages the violent consequences that result from this investment in bodies. In this case, a man can not only blame his body for his Magnets, of course, do not provide a perfect metaphor because, as we know, opposite poles attract and similar 160 ones repel each other. Nonetheless, as a natural force that cannot be broken or overcome, this metaphor is still useful. !117 attraction to his sister, but his body can also (apparently) justify the violence that he does to her, even excavating her heart. This particular selection of plays is not motivated merely by theme, for there is a potential kinship relation between these three plays. As first noted by Renaissance scholar D.J. Gordon, Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/Help Like a Woman’ s appropriates Della Porta’s plot. And this connection provides a possible point of transmission between Della Porta’s play and Ford’s. Yet this isn’t to suggest a purely literary lineage or teleology. Rather, the connective 161 threads provoke a common consideration: that incest might be the product of prevailing blood logics. Incest does provide theatrical appeal —an opportunity for shock and awe by breaching a fundamental taboo — but what these plays highlight is that the monstrosity onstage (either real or potential) is not the incest per se, but rather the ways in which blood’s ideology leads to society’s (re)production of itself, and its oppressive structures, over and over again. The connection between Middleton and Della Porta went unnoticed until D.J. Gordon’s comparative article in 161 1941 (Clubb 289). Radcliff-Ulmstead cites strolling Italian companies in London to explain Della Porta’s influence on English drama: “The comic repertoire which Italian companies brought to the British Isles consisted not only of improvised plays but also of regular erudite comedies like those of Neapolitan Giambattista Della Porta, whose works were widely imitated in university circles and on the London stage during the Jacobean era” (238). Louise George Clubb has likewise attempted to trace La Sorella’s presence in England. First, she points to the appearance of these commedia dell’arte troupes as well as a scenario version of this plot available in the Correr Collection (274). Clubb nonetheless admits that it’s unlikely that this scenario version accounts for the actual transmission of this play, since the most obvious adaptations contain far more detail and proximity to the original source than the scenarios would have provided (275). John Jowett, in his recent introduction to the play in the collected works of Middleton, comments that Middleton likely read Della Porta in the original Italian given the many linguistic echoes (780). This dramatic link between Italy and England is especially important in the case of Ford, since most scholars believe that his primary influences were English. If Ford were unfamiliar with Della Porta, then Middleton’s play would be the natural vehicle for the sibling incest premise. Lisa Hopkins and Simon Barker, by contrast, cite Middleton’s Women Before Women and the relationship between the character Isabella and her uncle Hippolito as the inspiration for the incest plot (3). Lisa Hopkins mentions No Wit briefly, though she insists on the difference between the diffused threat in the one, and the explicit and voluntary incest in the other, making it uniquely threatening (6). Yet rather than discount this comparison due to the unrealized versus realized distinction, I hope to show that by focusing on the premise of sibling incest we might draw some interesting conclusions. !118 La Sorella (The Sister), or Is She? Giambattista Della Porta’s La Sorella, at first glance, appears to be a fairly straight- forward play that depends on incest’s horror as well as the truth of bodies’ testimony (both to avoid incest and to establish the romantic conclusion). Yet the play’s baroque quality of extremes, which no doubt contribute to the play’s lack of popularity amongst scholars, might likewise encourage an investigation of the premise of sibling incest. Della Porta has been studied primarily in reference to his works in natural philosophy, especially Magia Naturalis (1558) and De humana physiognomonia (1586), but he was an equally prolific playwright and wildly popular in his time. The Italian scholar Giorgio Pullini’s comments might explain this dearth of criticism. He says of Della Porta’s drama, 162 I soggetti non presentano alcuna originalità di concezione e, oltre ad essere pesantemente ripresi dalla tradizione classica e dalla novellistica medioevale, si ripetono con insopportabile monotonia. Non c’è opera che si salvi per novità di invenzione e non c’è, quindi, opera che conservi un interesse per la scena a noi contemporanea, all’infuori di esperimenti intellettualistici o di elevata e ristretta esplorazione culturale. (299) The subjects do not present any originality of conception and, other than being heavily taken from the classical tradition and that of the medieval novella, repeat themselves with insupportable monotony. There is no work that saves itself by novelty of invention and there isn’t, therefore, a work that preserves an interest in the plot for a contemporary audience, apart from intellectual experiments or elevated and narrow cultural exploration. (my translation) Potentially resulting from this type of dismissal, most studies of Della Porta’s theater have been limited to Gli Duoi Fratelli Rivali, a potential source for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About In fairness, I should note that Pullini’s comments are pulled from an article in which he claims that Della Porta’s 162 innovation is the “stile di transizione” [“style of transition”] between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, characterized by an “espressione più viva” [“more lively expression”] (299). !119 Nothing. And La Sorella in particular has received little scholarship, though it is occasionally 163 referenced as a source for Middleton’s No Wit. Pullini’s comments above, while undoubtedly harsh, aren’t unfounded. Della Porta’s plots and conceits aren’t novel, but I would maintain that his composition is. Della Porta deliberately plays with these tropes not purely for the sake of melodrama, but for the sake of the plot’s greater questions, in this case, those about the importance of blood and bodies, hardly a “narrow cultural exploration.” Yet, since this play will be unfamiliar to most readers, I will briefly rehearse its plot here. The young Attilio is sent abroad by his father Pardo to search for and ransom his mother and sister who were lost at sea and captured by Turks many years ago. En route to Constantinople to find them, however, Attilio is distracted by a beautiful young slave woman named Sophia. After falling madly in love with her, he uses the ransom money that his father gave him to buy her freedom. He then brings Sophia home with him to Nola and lies to his father, telling him that this is his sister Cleria and that his mother, sadly, has died. All goes well for the lovers as they live under the same roof as “brother and sister”; until, that is, Pardo decides to marry Attilio to Sulpizia, who is the beloved of Attilio’s best friend Erotico. The drama begins with Attilio begging his crafty servant Trinca for help out of this conundrum. With a few misunderstandings along the way, ultimately all parties decide that they can convince Pardo to marry “Cleria" to Erotico in addition to the planned marriage. Then after a wedding ceremony conducted by an This scholarship begins with Louise George Clubb’s translation (1980), and includes work by Robert S. Miola 163 Shakespeare and Classical Comedy: The Influence of Plautus and Terence (1994), Michele Marrapodi Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Theories: Anglo-Italian Transactions. (2010), and Salvatore di Maria The Poetics of Imitation in the Italian Theatre of the Renaissance (2013). A dissertation by Nicole Prunster treats Della Porta’s theater in more detail in a structuralist examination of his oeuvre. However, she only alludes to La Sorella in passing, saying that it becomes predominantly a comedy due to the large sections of comedic plot, even though it plays with melodrama at moments. She then turns to discuss more typical tragicomedies and thus does not discuss the play in depth. !120 actor, all four lovers can live under the same roof, swapping brides at night until the old man kicks the bucket, at which point, each can marry his true beloved. This scheme only requires that Trinca thwart the marriage designs of the braggart soldier Trasimaco, who desires Cleria, by harming the credibility of Trasimaco’s marriage broker, the parasite Gulone. Everything goes according to plan until Pardo’s old friend from Turkey shows up proclaiming that Pardo’s wife Constanza is alive, and that Attilio never made it to Constantinople. Constanza herself then returns home. Yet after she hears about Attilio’s love for Cleria/Sophia, she agrees to participate in the scheme and pretend that this woman is her daughter for Attilio’s sake. The two women meet and (bum bum bum) it is the real Cleria! Attilio is, of course, completely distraught, but insisting that he cannot relinquish his love for his sister, he decides to exile himself instead. Only by happenstance a nurse maid quarrels with her master, and she reveals the secret that Cleria/ Sophia is actually Sulpizia. The two were switched at birth so that “Cleria” (in fact Sulpizia) would have a better life. Moreover, her uncle Orgio decided to go forward with the actual incestuous coupling of Attilio and “Sulpizia” (in fact Cleria) for his own monetary gain. All true identities are revealed by verifying birthmarks, each man can have the woman that he loves, and (hooray!) a double wedding. Commenting on Della Porta’s work as a whole, Sergius Kodera suggests that both his drama and natural philosophy “became such a success because [they] naturalized (and thereby legitimized) the social realities of many other members of educated elites in the various absolutist cultures of Europe” (35). La Sorella’s final insistence on the body’s import certainly leaves room for this interpretation, since birth-marked bodies provide evidence that the two lovers are not consanguineous siblings. The limited scholarship on La Sorella in particular !121 generally falls into two camps. The first strand of criticism views the theme of incest as the opportunity for a formal experiment, exploring how the models of Roman New Comedy and the commedia erudita might be inflected by tragic elements and pathos within a new genre that borders on the baroque (sometimes called tragedia con fin lieto). A second group of scholars 164 view Della Porta’s play as a “satire directed against Church morality” by staging the murky lines of incest (LePage 343). In this view, the incest plot becomes a venue for Della Porta to voice his criticisms of the Church because the Pope had already formally censured his scientific writings (Poulsen 188). But upon closer examination in the context of blood and love, the play seems to use this trope of romance to critique both incest and the logic of blood affinity. Although the plot’s saving grace (the reveal of the crib-swap) sanctions the central love plot as natural rather than monstrous, it feels fabricated since, by thwarting generic expectations, the play persistently undermines incest’s gravity. Incest is the play’s central question, but because La Sorella consistently draws our attention away from the act and its “horror,” it invites the audience to question its status as sin as well as blood’s assumed import that underlies it: that blood meaningfully determines identity or affinity. In general, the characters treat kinship connections quite casually. Even when they appeal to these principles in earnest, be it reading birthmarks or Louise George Clubb, in addition to her primary goal of examining influence, glosses Della Porta’s use of incest 164 in this way: “Although Della Porta has not yet moved from marvelous situations and caricatures to marvels of virtue and feeling, he packs the various reconciliations in Sorella with pathos and serious emotions, and develops the threat of incest hanging over the lover melodramatically, if not tragically” (201). Donald Beecher’s introduction to the play’s translation likewise emphasizes its formal elements including Della Porta’s use of discovery (anagnorisis) and reversal (peripetia) as his means to incite emotion and wonder in the audience. He further argues that incest would have served as one of the greatest obstacles appropriate for inciting a high level emotion, and, moreover, that Della Porta would have expected his audience to feel horrified at its discovery (379). The fact that Della Porta’s use of incest was likely one of the first comedies to do so, would support Beecher’s reading. Rachel Poulsen ultimately follows this tradition, arguing that Della Porta’s mannerist, baroque work is a formal experiment in which he tests the limits of mimesis (190). !122 the cri du sang — the ‘alarm bell’ which depends on the body’s natural affinity for its kin — the play quickly exposes the failure of these processes and, subsequently, their status as essentially rhetorical. Ultimately the characters, and Attilio especially, cite blood connections and affinity as it suits them — in this case, a performance to cover up other sins such as abandoning his family members (in favor of bringing home a new girlfriend), or explaining his supposedly incestuous attraction (for his girlfriend-turned-sister). Hence as the clowning subplot of La Sorella intimates, bodies and blood mean very little since they are the products of signification rather than determining factors themselves. Moreover, since Cleria and Sulpizia were initially switched because a lower-class family wanted to provide their biological daughter with greater opportunities, the exposure of blood’s fundamentally discursive character evacuates its argumentative force in the context of social class. Specifically, bodies can no longer take responsibility for determining the existing social structures and maintaining the status quo. Yet the characters’ continued reliance on bodies likely results from their belief that in a world of deception bodies are more reliable than persons. To begin, for a play entitled The Sister, its structure — including its manipulation of generic conventions and the nature of its agon or central problem — greatly de-emphasizes incest. This curious shift in attention thus questions the gravity of incest’s larger ideological framework, namely that blood determines both one’s identity and affinity for kin. From the opening of the play, the audience would likely not anticipate a story of incest, but rather a comedy in which “Cleria,” her false identity as long-lost sister to Attilio, is finally revealed as Sofia, the serving girl with whom Attilio fell in love. In this imagined, more conventional romance plot, once Sofia’s “true” identity is revealed, and Attilio’s father Pardo discovers that !123 she is not kin, Pardo could both pardon his son (after the safe return of his real wife and child, of course) and bless the love match. This is the standard Roman New Comedy plot that the audience expects because although the play begins with Sophia playing the sister, the issue at hand is not properly incest but scheming lovers trying to overcome social obstacles. In short, the dramatic focus (agon) is the fact that this “feigned” sibling relationship blocks their potential union because Attilio has been promised to Sulpizia. Despite the hint from the title, the actual incest threat crops up quite late in the play, only with Constanza’s reveal (4.2). Rachel Poulsen observes that given the delay of this revelation, viewers witness all but the incestuous act itself, and that they are encouraged to imagine. By withholding the fact of the lovers’ consanguinity until after the vicariously imagined consummation takes place, Della Porta makes the audience complicit in their deeds. Viewers are thus forced to examine their own responses, judgements and relationship to the contested category of ‘natural law’ in a particularly vexed and immediate way. (189) Then, once the incest is revealed, the play does not abide by the conventions of incest- averted comedy or cavalier drama, wherein upon the discovery of the unwitting incestuous desire, “brother and sister respond to moral law by giving up their sexual love for each other, they promptly bestow themselves on others” (Bueler 125). In Della Porta’s play, Attilio does not relinquish his love for his ‘sister’ Cleria. His “incestuous” love persists even though he promises to flee so that he cannot further act on it. Attilio laments just prior to hearing the reversal of his fortune, “Niuna buona nuova può esser per me, se non che Cleria fusse mia moglie; ma ciò non potendo essere, dunque non è buona per me” [“No news is good unless Cleria becomes my wife, but this cannot be, therefore no news is good for me”] (5.6). He has insisted that his love 165 All quotations of La Sorella in the original Italian are from the Gutenburg Project and, consequently, are without 165 page or line numbers. The translations provided are my own in order to provide a more literal rendition of the Italian, though they are based on Bruno Ferraro and Donald Beecher’s translation in the collection Renaissance Comedy: The Italian Masters. !124 cannot be arbitrary and refuses to embrace a socially acceptable alternative. As he says, nothing else will ever be good, and he thereby casts incest in a romantic light and rejects the disgust reaction, as Ford’s Giovanni will do. Other characters disregard the “horror” of incest for pragmatic reasons. Balia’s disclosure of the secret, the deus ex machina that allows for the non- incestuous coupling of Attilio and Cleria, reveals that uncle Orgio would have permitted the actual incest for his own profit. The lack of concern over the incest taboo exhibited by both Orgio and Balia should encourage us to re-consider the status of incest as abomination. 166 Richard McCabe notes with regards to this moment, Society is seen to connive for purely mercenary reasons at the very relationships it professes to condemn. Once the marriage is financially exogamous — joining together two previously unrelated fortunes — little else matters. Attilio’s moral ‘horror’ is hereby undercut by society’s cynical pragmatism. (136) Though the horror and threat of incest is seemingly the play’s central concern, especially at its close, the play’s plot-structure gives it little weight or prominence, thereby encouraging the audience to question not only whether incest is a sin, but also whether bodies or blood determine much of anything, much less justify endogamous practices amongst the elite. And while the incest-averted plot routinely depends upon the belief that bodies testify to the truth of persons’ natures — that faces, hearts, and birthmarks can be read as reflections of genuine differences to allay the threat — the play repeatedly highlights the moments when these As D.J. Gordon underscores, one of the key differences between Della Porta’s text and Middleton’s version in No 166 Wit is that Sunset did not know about this trick whereas Orgio does, and Sunset therefore would only have allowed the incest to go forward unknowingly (413). !125 assumptions fail. The play should establish that bodies accurately report the truth in order to 167 lay the foundation for the play’s conclusion, but it doesn’t. Pardo, for example, depends on reading faces accurately when searching for a reason to disregard his friend’s report that his son has been lying. He rationalizes, “Certo che dovea star ubbriaco; e già lo tengo per tale, che stava rosso nel volto” [“Of course he must have been drunk; and indeed I maintain it as such, that he was red in the face”] (3.4). But Pardo has re-constructed this evidence after-the-fact to suit his own desires. And even if his friend Pedolitro were somewhat red in the face, it would not necessarily signify that he was lying or unreliable; the audience already knows that he wasn’t. Later Pardo claims “che con più d’una guardatura ho confrontato l’imagine tua con quella che nel cuor impressa mi lasciasti” [“that with more than one look I compared your image with the one that I left engraved on my heart”], which confirms his wife Constanza’s identity (4.3). In this instance, the image imprinted on his heart testifies correctly, but theoretically this principle should have applied to his daughter as well — either Cleria whom he raised, or Sulpizia, his biological daughter — and he remains unable to identify either of them. According to the play’s lovers, the body bears testimony of one’s emotional state, character, and love for another, 167 though these appeals generally flop. Erotico assures Balia of his love for Sulpizia by insisting upon her astonishing beauty that corresponds to her soul: “nella maestà del suo volto vi riluce una spezie d’imperio reale, che mi risveglia l’animo a gran desidèri di gloria e m’innalza con gli occhi dell’intelletto a considerar quella dell’animo suo senza pari” [“in the majesty of her face shines in a manner of imperial and regal, that awakens my soul to great hopes of glory and raises me with the eyes of my intellect to contemplate this from her soul without equal”] (1.2). Erotico’s invocation of the physiognomic trope kalokagathia, i.e. that beauty necessarily signifies inner virtue, is meant in all seriousness. Della Porta’s references to physiognomy are unsurprising given his scientific endeavors including his most famous work De Humana Physiognomonica (1586). However, while Della Porta likely invested in this scientific theory, his drama is often in tension with it, suggesting that these scientific logics might be rhetorical rather than purely descriptive. And as a common trope of love poetry, his citation betrays its rhetorical status rather than scientific fact. Balia uses this same vocabulary of bodily testimony to emphasize the harm that Erotico has done to her mistress on account of spurning her. She chastises him, “E dove or nella sua faccia si veggono scolpiti i trofei e le spoglie della vostra crudeltà” [“And where in her face one sees carved the trophies and spoils of your cruelty”] (1.2). Erotico also explains to Balia his predicament: his inability to satisfactorily prove his love to Sulpizia. He laments, “quel ritratto, che mi sta nel cuor dipinto per man di amore col pennello della imaginazione, sta più vivo nel mio core, che non ci sta l’anima istessa” [“this portrait, that remains in my heart painted by the hand of love with the pen of imagination, remains more alive in my heart than the soul itself that does not stay there”] (1.2). Erotico insists on visual evidence of his love, proof in an imprint on his body, but which, unfortunately, his beloved cannot see (at least not without a horrific dissection that would render the discovery moot because he would perish in the process). !126 Issues and ambiguities that arise from reading bodies reach their peak in the moment that should allay the incest threat: the reading of birthmarks to verify Balia’s testimony. Without an accurate reading of marks, there is no way to distinguish between the girls. But since the play has already rendered the act of reading bodies suspect, the play’s conclusion remains suspicious. Upon revealing the crib-switching plot, Balia references Sulpizia’s features as proof of her true parentage in order to convince Pardo that she is his biological daughter: “Sulpizia vostra è di pel rosso, come voi sete; gli occhi azurri, come i vostri; e il volto simile al vostro” [“Your Sulpizia has red hair, like you; and blue eyes, like yours, and a face similar to yours”] (5.2). Sulpizia’s appearance is, in fact, a miniature copy of Pardo. Althoug apparently this is not enough, so Balia cites a very particular birthmark on Sulpizia’s body as the most reliable identifier: “e se ben vi ricordate, ha una macchia rossa nel braccio sinistro, come goccia di vin rosso” [“And if you well remember, she has a red mark on her left arm, like a red wine stain”] (5.2). Pardo does not comment on the fact that he has missed Sulpizia’s remarkable resemblance for these many years. Instead, this strange mark satisfies his desire for evidence. He exclaims, “O Dio, veramente mi ricordo di quella macchia rossa; […] e nella vostra Cleria mai più ve l’ho vista” [“Oh God, truly I do recall this red mark; [...] I’ve never seen such a mark on Cleria”] (5.2). Sulpizia’s new biological mother Constanza then verifies that these birthmarks testify to their relationship. One might find it suspicious, however, that Constanza is entrusted with verifying the ‘true’ daughter on the basis of identifying birthmarks that neither the audience nor the other characters see. Constanza, after all, has already demonstrated that she is willing to lie for her son’s happiness. Trinca too references these birthmarks when he promises Attilio that his crisis has been averted. Trinca affirms, “A signali Constanza ha trovato vero quanto ha detto” [“The signs Costanza !127 found true just how she [Balia] said”] (5.6). But what if Sulpizia had not been graced with this wine-stain? The fact that the deus ex machina rests upon a birthmark is not only troubling, but it also highlights the fact that blood’s supposed capacity to dictate affinity for one’s kin has failed to correctly inform the characters of consanguinity. To put it bluntly, the cri du sang is a sham. Just as faces and hearts don’t reliably indicate fact in La Sorella, the cri du sang — the notion that one’s body can intuitively know or sense kin because one’s blood communicates love — is more rhetorical than biological, thus cracking the physiological foundation and justification for maintaining existing socio-political structures, which are managed through kinship relations. After all, the play’s beginning depicts a world in which kinship has little ethical sway. And if blood ties determine any affinity at all, it is minimal at best. Attilio has coarsely forsaken the quest for his mother and sister in favor of using his father’s ransom money to free his beloved Sophia from slavery. When Attilio relates the story to his friend Erotico, he describes his reaction upon falling in love, exclaiming “Che madre? che sorella? che viaggio?” [“What mother? What sister? What journey?”] (1.3). As previous scholars have noted, one should feel horror at this disloyal and wrongful act; Attilio has utterly disregarded the importance of blood ties. But the play’s other characters don’t appear fazed. Erotico, for instance, does not voice any moral objection to his friend’s behavior. Only a short moment later, Trinca’s plan to overcome the lovers’ obstacles contains an equally crass treatment of kin. To assuage Attilio, who is concerned that he and Erotico will be trapped in pretend marriages according to the scheme, Trinca promises, “e bisogna scambiar le mogli fin che vive il vecchio, il qual non potrá viver molto” [“It is necessary to switch the wives only as long as the old man is alive, certain he will not likely live much longer”] (1.3). Or in other words, “don’t worry, your father will likely die soon, and !128 then you and Erotico can marry the right women without any issue.” Attilio, evidently satisfied, has little concern for his brethren. The principle that blood determines some kind of overwhelming love for one’s kin, much less one that would potentially result in an overflow of erotic desire and incest is highly suspect in this context. 168 The cri du sang is invoked to explain Attilio’s unwitting incestuous desire but only after discovering Cleria’s “true identity.” Constanza reveals the sibling incest using extremely visceral language, pointing to her body and their joint conception. She sadly reports to him that they were “conceputi d’un istesso seme, portati nove mesi e partoriti dal medesimo ventre mio” [“conceived by the same sperm, carried nine months and birthed from the same womb of mine”] (4.5). Trinca also emphasizes bodily connection when revealing the “incest” to Erotico, “Cleria è sua vera sorella carnale” [“Cleria is his true flesh sister”] (4.6). Only after this persistent emphasis upon their consanguinity does Attilio subscribe to this belief. He laments, “Ahi, che tanto movimento di sangue, che mi occupò il core nella prima vista, stimava che fosse dalla tua bellezza; ma era dalla forza del sangue, perché eravamo nati di un medesimo sangue” [“Ay, that such a movement of the blood that overcame my heart at first sight, I gathered was from your beauty; but it was from the force of blood, because we were born from the same blood”] (4.5). Born of “un medesimo sangue” [of the same blood], Attilio either believes that he mistook the cri du sang for erotic love, or, as his language suggests, his natural affinity for his sister transmuted into erotic love since his body registered it as such. Attilio further supports this premise by insisting that love cannot be transferred and that love objects are not arbitrary. After It does seem strange that the lovers would be so concerned with having the appropriate legal status of marriage 168 given the fact that the couplings of both sets of lovers have been consummated [as Erotico explains, “i nostri amori non son stati sterili,” literally “our loves did not stay sterile” (1.3)]. This might imply that the legal/social recognition of marriage is ultimately more important than the bodily foundations, the consummation and the newfound kinship relation, that it is meant to reflect or signify. !129 Erotico asks Attilio if he could love another, Attilio proclaims simply, “Amor non vuol cambio” [“Love doesn’t want change”] (4.5). According to the logic of blood affinity, the specific object of love is extremely important; one’s blood naturally responds to its like, which, though it possesses the possibility for incest, cannot be changed. Attilio butts against the incest taboo, but since he firmly believes in the equation of blood and love, he insists that he cannot love otherwise. As the audience will soon discover, however, this isn’t true! Attilio and Cleria are not siblings, and Attilio merely cites this logic to explain what he thinks he knows. The cri du sang invoked to explain incest as a natural extension of blood’s ideology is hereby called into question since his body has not determined his love for Cleria after all. Attilio’s love is not the cri du sang’s only failure; blood repeatedly fails to operate as advertised in making kin known. The cri du sang that should allow Constanza and Attilio, mother and son, to recognize one another fails (4.2), and Pardo likewise appeals to blood affinity only after the discovery of his ‘true’ daughter Sulpizia. Following the report of the tell-tale birthmark, he marvels, Ma io non conseguisca mai desiderio di mia vita, se, sempre che ho visto Sulpizia, non mi sentiva un certo movimento di sangue per la persona, tra carne e pelle, e non potea imaginarmene la cagione. La natural veramente facea l’ufficio suo. But I never deduced the longing of my life, if, always when I saw Sulpizia, I didn’t feel a certain movement of blood for her person, between flesh and skin, and I couldn’t imagine the cause. Nature truly does her office. (5.2) Pardo claims to have felt this cri du sang for his daughter Sulpizia all along, although his final words on this subject expose just how ridiculous this sounds. He here exclaims, “nature was truly doing its office,” but nature clearly didn’t achieve this office. The girls’ true identities went unknown and unacknowledged for years. If Pardo’s blood was supposed to “move” in a way to !130 get his attention and signal kinship, then it did a poor job of it. Blood clearly does not have the agency that the characters take it to have, and thus kinship, if dependent upon naturalized affective feelings, may not amount to much, certainly not enough to justify existing socioeconomic structures that depend upon the force of these connections. 169 This principle of blood affinity becomes especially suspicious because the one theory that would explain, and by virtue of assigning blood agency potentially excuse, incest falls flat; one’s body does not reliably communicate love for one’s kin as the cri du sang would suggest. Long before the real incest threat appears, Trinca appeals to blood’s affinity in order to explain Attilio and Cleria’s amatory behavior, which bothers Pardo as overly affectionate and thus inappropriate. Trinca seeks to appease Pardo, insisting “son sorelle e fratelli carnali al fine, e il sangue tira e fa l’ufficio suo” [“they are sisters and brothers of flesh in the end, and blood pulls and does its office”] (1.5). In this case, Trinca believes that he is lying, for he’s still under the impression that the two are not siblings, but his use of the adjective “carnali” is purposefully ambiguous. It could mean of the same flesh or ‘lawful issue’ as John Florio defines in the World of Wordes, but it could also signify carnal, as in a sin of the flesh. Trinca here cites the ubiquitous logic that blood acts as an agent of attraction; it quite literally “tira” [pulls] thereby simply performing “l’ufficio suo” [its office]. In response, Pardo voices his concern about this natural affection and anticipates concerns about incest, suggesting that sibling affection can bleed into erotic attachment. He grants, “Io non voglio che non trattino insieme con molta amorevolezza, Pardo mentions this idea in a moment of dramatic irony when he invokes the metaphor of kinship to speak about 169 the close relationship between love and obedience: “l’amor e l’ubidienza son sorelle carnali” [“Love and obedience are blood sisters”] (1.5). Attilio, according to this logic, ought to do what his father says, but the plot has already shown this not to be the case. Attilio has snubbed both familial love and obedience to his father’s wishes in rescuing Sofia/Cleria rather than his own family. Hence, Pardo has either used an inappropriate metaphor, or the metaphor might insinuate that “blood sisters” mean very little. !131 ma in fin ad un certo termine onesto e di creanza, e non con modi cosí disonesti e di scandalo a chi li vede” [“I don’t want that not treat each other with much affection, but there is in the end a certain limit of honesty and decency and not with ways so dishonest and of scandal to whomever sees them”] (1.5). Sibling affinity should have a certain end point, one that is both “honest” and “decent.” But notably neither adjective connotes a natural barrier, only a social one; it is, as he says, ultimately about whomever might see them. Hence the comedic subplot, though it would appear completely unrelated, provides a foil to the incest plot by further demonstrating that bodies themselves are subject to signification. Bodies are not impervious to rhetoric and manipulation; it matters how they are read, but they do not determine their own signification. This secondary clowning plot, featuring petty fighting between the parasite Gulone and the braggart soldier Trasimaco, may seem to provide purely comedic relief as part of the lazzi tradition. But the central position of this subplot should draw our critical attention since it occupies much of the play’s dramatic space, the majority of the second and third acts. In the context of the fools’ argument about their respective preoccupations — food for Gulone and women for Trasimaco — there is little difference amongst bodies. Gulone insists, “Non ci è differenza tra l’amor mio e il tuo: io fo l’amor con vitelle mongare, tu con vacche: carne ami tu, carne ancho io: tu cruda e io cotta” [“There is no difference between my love and yours: I make love with tender calves and you love cows [also sluts]: you love meat, I love meat too: you have it raw and I have it cooked”] (2.2). This could merely be a misogynistic joke, of course, but it also establishes a spectrum of being on which there is little difference between species, much less persons. Later, Trasimaco calls the value of blood into question by boasting of his supposedly superior qualities and lineage. He insists, “son cavaliero !132 da tutti i quarti: cerchesi nel mio parentado” [“I’m a knight from all the quarters: look in my pedigree”] (3.6). While Trasimaco can assert his lineage or “parentado” all he likes, he true to the braggart soldier type is all show, just like his many letters from princes worldwide which are likely forged. Lastly at the play’s structural center, Gulone and Trasimaco’s battle reveals the folly of appealing to the body as testimony since it is subject to arbitrary, and self-interested, signification. Trasimaco, preparing to fight with Gulone, dubs his body the proof of both his physical prowess and his bravery, bound to send adversaries running after only a glance. He even gives himself a blazon of sorts: Come egli si vedrá intorno questa statuaccia del mio corpo, queste spallaccie di Atlante, con questi torreggianti gamboni, con queste nerborute braccia fulminar la mia taglianasi, troncabraccia e mietigambe, tu vedrai i motivi che fará. Considera se son bravo, vedi che viso sfreggiato. How he will see around this great statue of my body, these shoulders of Atlas, these towering large legs, with these sinewy arms stunning, my nose-cutting, my arm-dicing, my leg-mowing, you’ll see what he does. Consider if he’s brave, look at this [my] gashed face. (3.7) Trasimaco’s description of himself, however, is promptly undermined by his decisive failure in an indecorous fight with Gulone, who leaves him with an abundance of bruises. But in an attempt to save face, Trasimaco concocts a story of an ambush. Attilio’s servant Trinca rejects the story having witnessed the scuffle firsthand: “l’ho visto con questi occhi!” [“I saw it with these eyes!”] (3.9). Yet, Trasimaco counters, “Ch’i lo può saper meglio di me, che ho patito le maladette bòtte su la braccia, sul collo e su le spalle” [“Who could know it better than me, who suffered the wretched bumps/bruises on my arms, my neck, my shoulders”] (3.9). Eye-witness testimony, in theory, should verify fact, but Trasimaco knows that it is simply a war of words. !133 Although bodies apparently testify to the truth, Trasimaco has shown how these bodies can be easily re-signified as one pleases. In light of this comedic foil, La Sorella insinuates that incest might likewise be a social proscription rather than a natural barrier. Sulpizia’s wine-stained birthmark might be no different than Trasimaco’s bruise, conveniently remembered to signify her “true” identity and bring about the comedic close. The characters’ language similarly hints towards this possibility that signification matters more than bodies, that the threat of incestuous coupling is solved more so by swapping names than by swapping babies. For example, although Constanza believes in the gravity of Attilio’s consummated incest, she nevertheless describes it as “la tua infamia e vitupèro” [“your disgrace and shame”] (4.5). Rather than calling it a sin, these words emphasize an anxiety about reputation or social shame rather than a spiritual concern. The role of society, as opposed to nature, likewise figures prominently in Attilio’s complaint about the incest taboo. He bemoans, “Per esser tu troppo congionta meco, è forza che da te mi disgiunga. O leggi, o costumi umani a me contrari!” [“For you being too joined with me, it’s forced that I separate myself from you. O laws, O human customs set against me!”] (4.5). These are human or societal dictates, “customs” or “conventions” even, and not those of God or Nature, at least according to his account. And despite all previous talk of blood, one might ask how much it matters in comparison to a name. Attilio laments about the incest in this way: “Quel nome di Cleria che fu prima lo spirito della mia vita, or è morte della mia vita” [“The very name ‘Cleria’ that once gave the spirit of my life, now is the death of my life”] (4.6). While Attilio previously had to call “Sofia” (her name as a servant girl) by his sister’s name “Cleria,” it is still curious that Attilio loves her as Cleria. And finally, Attilio’s account of the miraculous discovery highlights the fact !134 that the transformation is one of signifiers: “O stupori, o meraviglie grandi, che da moglie mi diventi sorella e da sorella moglie!” [“O wonders, o great marvels, that from my wife she has become my sister and from my sister a wife!”] (5.6). Relationships are a matter of appellations, and with Sulpizia now Cleria and Cleria now Sulpizia, everyone can have his cake and eat it too. In closing, despite the characters’ continual reference to bodies’ determination of persons and their affinities — logics which both give the incest taboo meaning and reconfigure incest as the natural extension of kinship — Della Porta’s La Sorella time and again picks away at the facade of these beliefs. It exposes a different principle of identity underneath: one based in signifiers and names. Signifiers, after all, successfully functioned to transform the girls’ identities for years so that an impoverished girl might have a better upbringing. And if based merely on signifiers, then the hegemony of the noble classes loses its persuasive power. The nobility cannot simply point to their bodies as responsible for the reproduction of the status quo: their affinity for a closed system to the point that it flirts with incest. But then, the play likewise provides a brief explanation for one of the motivations behind blood’s ideology. The characters appear to hold onto blood logics — that blood “moves” to notify familial love and that a birthmark can finally sort out any confusions about identity — because bodies seem to be more reliable than persons. In a moment of misunderstanding and miscommunication, Balia, the nursemaid and a minor character, expresses her anxiety. Alone on stage she gives this monologue: “O mondo immondo, o mondo tutto piano di fallacie e d’inganni, or chi può vivere in te, che sia sicuro delle tue insidie? O etá maladetta, o credeltá, o barbarie, che a pena può adeguarsi col pensiero!” [“O dirty world, o world so full of lies and deceits, now who can live in you, who is safe from your tricks? O wicked state, o cruelty, o barbarity, who has pain can adapt himself to this thought?”] !135 (2.5). Who can adapt herself to this horrible, deceptive world? It proves extremely difficult to adapt, which is seemingly why early modern persons look for ways to compensate, seeking infallible methods to manage this insidious world. In this case, they hold onto the belief that bodies could reliably indicate persons, that bodies and the blood within themselves could accurately report kin and/or allies, similar persons with whom they can ally themselves so as not to compromise their power and position. And what in Della Porta remains at the level of suggestion becomes far more explicit in Middleton’s translation. In No Wit identity resides entirely in “name and place” divorced from bloodlines. The play, moreover, intimates that blood’s discourse hides the actual motivations beneath kinship structures and love, namely wealth, which by virtue of its flexibility can easily pass hands and be divorced from the bloodlines of the elite. “Englishing” Della Porta’s Plot: Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/No Help Like a Woman’s Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/Help Like a Woman’ s appropriates Della Porta’s plot, and 170 like Della Porta’s comedy, the scholarship on this play, especially regarding the incest-averted or Twilight family plot, has been limited. As Kenneth Muir explains, [T]he qualities of the play are theatrical, rather than poetical, and this has made literary critics undervalue it; and one may suspect that they are shocked by the callous behavior On the whole, Middleton’s rendition makes only a few changes with respect to the original incest-averted plot, 170 but it shifts the setting/context significantly. Firstly, the change from Italy to England means that the Turks have been replaced by the Dutch. The role of the Nurse is removed as well as the secondary clowning plot between the parasite and the braggart soldier; the latter is replaced by another comedic character, the fool Weatherwise who overly invests in the almanac. Lastly, and most significantly, Middleton adds the primary plot involving the wealthy widow of Sir Avarice Goldenfleece and her many suitors. Kate Low-water, arguably the play’s protagonist, decides to cross-dress and suit for the lady’s hand in order to obtain the inheritance that has been denied to her husband, the widow’s relative. D.J. Gordon explicates the relationship between the two plots as follows: “The title of the play is No Wit, no Help like a Woman’ s. Each plot is an illustration of this thesis: it is Mistress Low-water who tricks her enemy and helps her brother; it is Lady Twilight who rescues her son from the mess he has got into. And it is Lady Goldenfleece who finally resolves the lovers’ difficulties” (414). John Jowett echoes this sentiment in his recent introduction, explaining that the play centers around women taking control and the key men are all essentially ineffectual (779). !136 and by the doting imbecility of his mother. Nevertheless, it is a crowded, lively and varied comedy which does not deserve its neglect. (158-9) 171 Thus a more sustained analysis of this secondary plot reveals that as Middleton imports Della Porta’s sibling incest premise, he further emphasizes the feeling of ambivalence towards the incest threat from the Italian original. D.J. Gordon remarks on this point, 172 We do not feel in these speeches that Middleton is lingering over the fact of incest, as della Porta certainly does. On the contrary, we have the impression that everyone treats it in a rather cavalier way. Lady Twilight is even more summary in dismissing it than Constanza was. (411) Gordon, in my mind, misconstrues Della Porta’s stance on incest, but it is fair to say that Middleton’s attitude more explicitly dismisses incest’s “horror.” This shift in tone to a more 173 obvious, comedic register is due, in part, to to the nature of the incest’s reveal. Della Porta reserves it for the very end; we have no hint of the crib-switching until the concluding deus ex machina. In No Wit, on the other hand, while we may not know of the possible incest threat or that the secret involves crib-swapping the two girls, Lady Goldenfleece gives the audience an Following Muir’s observation there have been some very interesting New Historical studies (e.g., those by Mario 171 DiGangi, David Bergeron, and Marjorie Rubright), but most are tangential to this project since they do not address the Twilight plot in any great detail. For the play’s literary, editorial, and performance history, see John Jowett’s article and recent introduction to the play in Oxford’s Thomas Middleton The Collected Works. For readings that focus on the play’s Wooing Widow plot, see Caroline Lockett Cherry’s work examining the play’s female characters, as well as Mario DiGangi’s work examining the homoerotic relationship between the Widow and Mistress Low- water. For an interesting reading of the influence of civic pageantry on this play, see David Bergeron. And lastly, for an explication of the Dutch merchant, see Marianne Montgomery’s article on the emissary and chapter three of Marjorie Rubright’s Doppelganger Dilemmas. Most previous studies grapple, in one way or another, with the uncomfortable tone of Middleton’s play, which I 172 have glossed with respect to incest though scholars have explored other alternatives, especially the play’s genre. Michelle O’Callaghan’s reads the play as a parody of the Renaissance romance genre. George Rowe similarly contends, “Middleton suggests that the harmonious conclusion toward which comedy develops is an unnatural and unreal fiction” (24). He thus glosses the incest plot as the product of an uncomfortable union between nature and comedy. Swapan Chakravorty also takes this genre play to more serious ends, contending that “Middleton’s method of subjecting romance conventions to the behavioral mechanics of city comedy has the contrary effect of foregrounding the reality of coercion and power” (108). In fact, one might suggest that Middleton’s play embraces a certain love between siblings that flirts with incest 173 since it outweighs conjugal love. In the play’s conclusion, Beveril, instead of exclaiming how fortunate he is to be bound to his love the Lady Goldenfleece, expresses how much he loves his sister Kate: “Whoever knew more happiness in less compass? / Ne’er was poor gentleman so bound to a sister / As I am” (5.1.471-3). !137 indication that there is a secret about their identities (1.1). The audience can then anticipate the secret’s reveal which will resolve whatever plot complications follow. Yet there is a critical, satirical point to Middleton’s dismissal of incest’s horror, namely that it builds on the social critique made by Della Porta. No Wit, by experimenting with this limit of blood’s ideology, further demonstrates how blood and bodies provide little means for distinguishing or determining persons; and in so doing, the play undermines the basis for the elite’s hegemony and its perpetual reproduction via endogamy. As John Jowett observes about the nature of identity in the play, It is important here that in both plots a character is available to double with one of the marriage partners. Philip’s supposed and real sisters are dangerously interchangeable (Middleton gives the women’s fathers the virtually synonymous names Sunset and Twilight), and the evasive device of the stand-in marital partner links this resolution with that of the Low-water plot. (780) Building on Jowett’s observation, people are interchangeable not merely as love objects but as people in general. Even though the incest premise assumes that consanguinity matters (and the cri du sang depends upon it), Middleton’s play exposes this notion of blood-determined love to be an utter farce. No Wit thereby exaggerates the point from Della Porta's source text that language has a greater role to play than bodies in identity-formation. Consequently, the play similarly undercuts the physiological basis for kinship and biological affinity, which serves as the justification for endogamy (like likes its like) that ensures the elite’s reproduction of their hegemony. This argument then inflects the Wooing Widow plot, which likewise critiques this socioeconomic system based in blood. The drama around the re-marriage of the wealthy Lady Goldenfleece not only exposes that avarice is the primary motivation in making marriage matches, and not a concern for pairing like persons, but also that wealth, not bodies, dictates !138 “worthy” persons and wealth is fluid and fungible. After all, the figure of the wealthy widow is so threatening to society, in part, because if she has no heir from her first husband, the wealth can be separated from its “rightful” bloodline. Just as Kate Low-water’s cross-dressing demonstrates the flexibility of gender, so power and privilege can be divorced from bloodlines. Middleton imports several aspects from La Sorella in the name of furthering Della Porta’s social critique. The first is the casual, bordering on crass, attitude towards kin that undermines the belief that familial affinity based in consanguinity could be confused with, or extended to, erotic love and incest. Additionally, this apathy towards kin utterly contradicts the elite’s justification for their closed kinship networks. Both of these logics are out of place in a world wherein Philip can forego rescuing his mother and sister in favor of his beloved. When Philip reports to his friend Sandfield how he was able to bring Grace home, he says, “Pish easily” since he simply told his father that his mother was reported dead (1.1.94). And this account doesn’t bother Sandfield one bit; the two of them are far more concerned about maintaining their friendship than their familial relationships. As George Rowe remarks, “No one acknowledges 174 the seriousness of what has been done; no one seems to care about ‘injuries’ to family which make Philip’s difficulties with Sandfield insignificant in comparison” (117). Thus it is difficult in this context to understand how bodies dictate, and then communicate, affinities for kin when these affinities receive little consideration. Middleton then translates problems with the cri du sang from the Italian source, namely that blood fails to communicate kinship relations accurately, though Middleton makes these issues even more obvious. As with Pardo, Sir Oliver Twilight makes explicit reference to this In his reply to Philip, Sandfield apologizes for having assumed that his friend was pursuing his own beloved 174 Jane: “Let me admire thee, and withal confess / My injuries to friendship” (1.1.100-1). !139 trope upon seeing his wife for the first time: “Oh, my reviving joy! The quickening presence / Makes the sad night of threescore and ten years / Sit like a youthful spring upon my blood” (4.1.1-3). But just as in La Sorella, blood fails to incite recognition between separated mother and son; instead, it requires verbal testimony (2.2). Moreover, Middleton further complicates the mother-daughter recognition scene. What is an immediate recognition of her daughter in the Italian original, is here delayed. Lady Twilight says after seeing Grace, “Methinks the more I look upon her, son, / The more thy sister’s face runs in my mind” (4.1.174-5). Having already faked a recognition in front of her husband for her son’s benefit, she recognizes her daughter only upon hearing Grace’s story: “Oh, I begin to feel her in my blood! / My heart leaps to be at her” (4.1.189-90). But if the body could truly identify its progeny as a feeling in one’s blood (cri du sang), then Lady Twilight should have known her daughter almost immediately from intuition or bodily stirring. Furthermore, the play calls this exclamation into question because, as the audience will later discover, Lady Twilight and Grace do not actually share blood at all. To further complicate matters, Philip, incensed by his mother’s words, wants verification of the body instead. He exclaims, Her words? Shall bare words overthrow a soul? A body is not cast away so lightly. How can you know ‘tis she? Let sense decide it; She then so young, and both so long divided. (4.1.230-3) His argument, of course, is undercut on two fronts. First, the cri du sang has already been exposed as unreliable. And second, what he later accepts as the actual proof of Grace’s identity is the ring that his mother gave to Grace, which Grace then gave to Philip in marriage, and thus not !140 a confirmation of Grace’s body (4.1). Having to abandon the notion that shared blood would cry out, the characters ultimately rely on language and signification in the process of identification. Middleton thus suggests that these kinship ties are the products of signification rather than biology. After all, just prior to this scene when Philip plots with his own mother about continuing the charade, he urges her, “Say but she is my sister, and all’s well” (2.2.163). His entreaty not only devalues his true blood relations, but it also brings forth language’s role in establishing kin via performative utterance. Middleton’s No Wit, therefore, makes the critique of Della Porta’s play — that blood fails to prescribe identities — more explicit. The characters, in the end, privilege language over and above bodies, suggesting an alternative principle of identity formation which undercuts the elite’s reliance on blood’s ideology for their hegemony. This argument can be seen most clearly in the conclusion of the Twilight plot. Early in the play when Lady Goldenfleece debates whether or not to divulge the secret of the switched girls, she betrays that she basically sees very little difference between them; she favors pragmatic signification over any concern for true kinship relations. She resolves that the difference between Jane and Grace “‘tis now no more / Than like mistaking of one hand for t’other” (1.1.188-9). Her use of metaphor describes the two girls as though they were both attached to the same body, and consequently, without any material difference between them. Although what material difference supposedly exists between the two girls is even further confused by the fact that they are consanguineous to a degree, for “both were nursed together” (4.1.139). Nonetheless, Lady Goldenfleece uses a wildly inappropriate 175 analogy in the context of an incest threat, wherein one’s material body and bodily difference is See pages 22-23 in the historical section of the introduction for information on kin or affine relations made by 175 virtue of sharing a nursemaid. !141 immensely important to classifying and thereby avoiding the unnatural act. Yet as 176 Goldenfleece suggests, what material difference there is between the two girls shouldn’t, or doesn’t, matter. Once Lady Goldenfleece finally reveals the secret in the final scene, she says simply “now each has her right name and place” (5.1.463). Middleton’s conclusion is thus 177 even more ambivalent and anti-climactic than Della Porta’s since it lacks any mention of blood movements or birthmarks meant to verify the girls’ identities. This significant departure from the original suggests that identity amounts to “name and place.” In the context of Middleton’s play at large then, the sibling incest threat — one limit case for the principle of blood affinity — demonstrates that if identity is not determined by bodies but by name and place, then wealth, not bloodlines, dictates privilege. After all, just as with the original Della Porta text, the children were swapped for the purposes of socio-economic advancement. Mistress Sunset “changed the children, kept your [Sir Twilight’s] daughter with her, / And sent her own to you for better fortunes” (5.1.446-7). This switch not only exposes 178 that a child’s biology dictates neither kinship nor affinity — for the Twilights and Sunsets loved their respective children no less when ignorant of the switch — but it also reveals how powerful, It is true that Lady Goldenfleece is ignorant of the impending marriage plans that would effect incestuous 176 relations, which somewhat absolves her in comparison to Della Porta’s Orgio. Even the language that marks them compromises their very particularity. Just as Sir Oliver Twilight goes to 177 complete the “appropriate” marriage matches, he says pointing at Jane, “This? For my son,” to which Lady Goldenfleece responds, “Oh back, sir, back! This is no way for him!” (5.1.414-5). Not even names, but rather empty signifiers indicate the girls — “this,” a pronoun that doesn’t even disambiguate persons from things. Kate Low-water intuits this motivation from the very beginning of the play in her attempt to untie the mysterious 178 riddle of the two girls at which Lady Goldenfleece hints. She says to her “cousin” Jane, “And now I’m put i’th’mind on’t, I believe / It was some piece of land or money given / By some departing friend upon their deathbed, / Perhaps to yourself, and Sir Oliver’s daughter / May wrongfully enjoy it” (1.2.49-52). Kate’s suggestion is not far from the truth, though what has been stolen is even more serious than she imagined, for it is a stolen heritage, birthright, bloodline. Later in an aside to herself, Kate murmurs, “Sure in that oath of hers there sleeps some wrong / Done to my kinswoman” (1.2.63-4). And this is true; however, her real kinswoman benefited from this swap, and she refers to the wrong girl unknowingly. !142 yet foolish, is the ideology of blood. Namely, it demonstrates the lengths that one would go in the name of providing a better life for one’s biological offspring. The incest plot in this frame becomes especially strange considering that clearly wealth, in addition to, and reflected in, “name and place,” dictates the girls’ respective worths and not lineage. In fact, as the switch evinces, the entire system of blood that preserves the elite’s hegemony can no longer be tied to bodies at all. Turning to the Wooing Widow plot, the same principle holds. The widow is a prime object to be wooed precisely because she “owns” the wealth, privilege, and power of her former husband, and without an heir, this wealth can now be divorced from its “proper” bloodline. Furthermore, this separation is possible because the bloodline had no intrinsic privilege or worth to begin with. It is no wonder, then, that in Middleton’s No Wit, avarice is the central motivation in marriage and not a proper matching of like persons. Wealth (not blood) dictates love, and property (not bodies) is joined and exchanged in the process of unitas carnis. Avarice is the guiding principle behind what is deemed an appropriate marriage match in the world of No Wit, which is a notable departure from the conventional doctrine of matchmaking touted in the marriage treatises of the period: pairing like characters, i.e. those similar in station, lineage, bloodline. For instance, Lady Goldenfleece wishes for both Jane 179 and Grace, “A fair contented fortune in your choices, / And that you happen right” (1.1.181-2). And though “fortune” could simply indicate well-wishes, “fortune” is a loaded word for a Lady Goldenfleece, however, shows some concern for this older way of thinking in her own selection of a suitor. 179 When the newest suitor (Kate Low-water in drag) appears, the Lady’s first question is “What is he, sir,” to which the servant responds, “He seems a gentleman” (2.1.155). Although the what/who distinction is not as defined in this period (see the work of Sylvia Adamson), this “what” seemingly refers to kind, type, or even species of person, in this case one of gentility and, therefore, someone worthy of her time and attention. !143 woman whose former husband made his fortune by “fleecing” others. Sir Gilbert, the 180 villainous suitor, likewise discloses his real motivations for pursuing the widow: “for my love, / In matching with the widow, is but policy / To strengthen my estate …” (1.2.125-7). Of 181 course, the audience would know that this admission characterizes nearly all marriages between elite persons, involving a lusty widow or no, especially in the changing economic market that requires liquid assets, as opposed to property, to maintain social position and “strengthen estates.” Sir Oliver Twilight’s motivation for matching his daughter Grace is the most extreme 182 example of an avarice that ignores all other principles of matchmaking, for he promises Grace to Weatherwise solely because the fool requires no dowry. The trickster Savourwit outlines the situation, And yet, because the fool demands no portion But the bare down of her smock, the old fellow, Worn to the bone with a dry covetous itch To save his purse and yet bestow his child, Consents to waste [her on] lumps of almanac stuff. (1.1.115-19) Savourwit, in an attempt to carry out the plot to pair Grace with Sandfield, at least nominally, tries to speak reason to Sir Oliver. He begins by giving generally well-regarded advice to pair like persons in marriage: “there’s no proportion, height, or evenness / Betwixt the equinoctial and your daughter” (1.1.201-2). Sir Oliver, however, responds with the single-mindedness of his Kate Low-water, albeit falsely, attributes a similar motive to Lady Goldenfleece with regards to the secret about 180 the girls’ swap. She says to Jane, “The course of her whole life, and her dead husband’s, / Was ever full of such dishonest riddles / To keep right heirs from knowledge of their own” (1.2.45-7). Citing Lady Goldenfleece’s greed as motivation is reminiscent of Orgio’s in the source text. And though Goldenfleece is innocent with regards to this plot, Mistress Low-water is right to complain of the widow’s greed that overrides her duty to her kin when distributing her late husband’s wealth. Sir Gilbert, of course, is not only nefarious by dint of this avaricious ambition, but also because he intends to 181 then be unfaithful to Lady Goldenfleece after marrying her by taking Kate Low-water as his mistress. See Lawrence Stone and Alan Macfarlane on this change in the marriage market in the early modern England. 182 !144 avarice, saying, “I can abide no word that ends in portion; / I’ll give her nothing” (1.1.205-6). 183 While Sir Oliver is clearly ridiculed for his view that marriage does not pertain to likeness, proportion, or fitness, his “covetous itch” marks nearly all of the players. And this itch, in fact, motivates the vocabulary of fitness in station and bloodline in the first place. Thus rather than likeness in blood dictating love and affinity — which is, after all, the entire premise of the incest plot — wealth inspires love in Middleton’s play, just as, Middleton would likely contend, it does in the world outside the playhouse. Although Jane assures her cousin Kate that “Love not by wealth but by desert is prized,” Kate knows better that the two aren’t clearly distinguishable (1.2.30). The conversion of wealth into love is most obvious in a 184 comedic context, wherein Sir Gilbert bribes Pickadille: GILBERT. […] Honest Pickadille, thou wast wont to love me. PICKADILLE. I’d good cause, sir, then. GILBERT. Thou shalt have the same still; take that. [Gives him money] PICKADILLE. Will you believe me now; I ne’er loved you better in my life than I do at this present. (3.1.155-60) Here the “cause” for loving is explicitly money, and love grows in direct correlation with the amount of money involved. This same assumption then applies to the more serious dealings of match-making. For instance, Sandfield, still hoping to receive some kind of dowry for marrying Grace, asks of Sir Oliver, “Faith, something sir; / Be’t but t’express your love”; but Sir Oliver replies, “I have no desire, sir, / To express my love in that way, and so rest satisfied” (1.3.10-12). Savourwit is thus forced to change tactics. He then convinces Sir Oliver of the worth of Grace’s virginity, her 183 “jewel” (1.1.221), and that Sandfield will likewise take it without a dowry. Even wit is defined in terms of wealth as if this is the common denominator to which all things, persons, even 184 virtues can be reduced. Wit here is defined as thriftiness. Mistress Low-water when looking for a wit asks Pickadille for advice about where to find one; he says he will go to an ordinary: “Because those that go to an ordinary dine better for twelve pence than he that goes to a tavern for his five shillings; and I think those have the best wits that can save four shillings and fare better too” (2.3.232-5). !145 Hence though Sir Oliver refuses to transmute his love into money, he nonetheless holds that Sandfield’s love can be equated with a monetary value, namely the dowry that he will forego. The slippage between wealth and love then takes center stage in the conclusion of the Wooing Widow plot. Kate has revealed herself and Lady Goldenfleece is now aware of the 185 trick; with their brief marriage, Kate is able to regain the wealth that was “stolen” by Sir Avarice Goldenfleece and to transmit the remaining wealth to her own family by orchestrating the marriage between the Lady and her brother, Beveril. Lady Goldenfleece is somewhat perturbed by this trick, but Kate reproaches, What matter is’t? ’Tis the same man was chose still, No worse now than he was. I’m bound to love you; Y’have exercised in this a double charity, Advanced my brother and restored mine own. Nay, somewhat for my wrongs, like a good sister, For well you know the tedious suit did cost Much pains and fees; I thank you, ’tis not lost; You wished for love, and, faith, I have bestowed you Upon a gentleman that does dearly love you; That recompense I’ve made you. (5.1. 366-76) Kate thus reminds her that the widow said she wanted love — as she swore after the revelation of Sir Gilbert’s plot, “I’ll never covet titles and more riches, / To fall into a gulf of hate and laughter. / I’ll marry love hereafter, I’ve enough / And wanting that, I have nothing” (2.1.391-4) — well, now the Widow has bought it. Wealth, therefore, dictates affinities between individuals, not some similarity in character or species of person marked by blood. This exposure hence One benefit of equating love with wealth is that this provides the mechanism by which Mistress Low-Water can 185 teach Lady Goldenfleece a lesson: what it is like to experience want and lack. Lady Goldenfleece laments after Kate has rejected her, “I never knew what beggery was till now. / My wealth yields me no comfort in this plight. / Had want but brought me love, I’d happened right” (5.1.83-5). !146 undercuts the elite’s appeal to bodily determinism to justify their worth and the closed social system, broaching incest, that it permits. Blood’s ideology presumes that like bloods result in love between similarly worthy persons. Then both persons contribute to the creation of a mixed meritorious bloodline in sexual relations and create a new generation of elites. As an example of this precept, when discussing the bride-swapping plot, Savourwit warns that the young men can kiss their nominal wives, “but pray take heed you be not kin to them” (1.1.143). Savourwit thus explicitly equates having sex with the creation of kinship structures, namely that the one is the mechanism of the other. Yet if wealth dictates affinities rather than likeness, then it follows that marriage and unitas carnis isn’t about establishing biological kinship structures by exchanging blood in sexual relations. Rather it concerns establishing social networks by combining and exchanging property. And this conception of marriage makes it possible for two women to marry. The legal, social marriage that takes place between Kate Low-water and Lady Goldenfleece is never consummated; there was no unitas carnis, which means that theoretically this marriage could be annulled, especially since Kate reveals herself as a woman. But it is not annulled on that account as one would expect it to be. Instead, the union must be dissolved by a divorce and a splitting of assets, which, as Kate rightly remarks, are legally hers: “Are not both mine already? You shall wrong me, / And then make satisfaction with mine own?” (5.1.224-5). Pepperton comments on the strangeness of this act, expressing his disbelief “Parting of goods before the bodies join?” (5.1.264). But while this circumstance is strange in the context of blood’s ideology, the Wooing Widow plot reveals that the process of two becoming one is not about physical consummation, but about the transfer of wealth or property. Wealth and not bodies undergirds marriages, both the motivation for matches !147 and the act of marriage itself. Hence the double plot of No Wit critiques the current socio- economic system and the ideology of blood that supports it. First the incest-averted plot undermines the role of blood in the formation of identity and kinship structures; it thereby subverts the assumption meant to ensure endogamy and thus reproduce hegemony based in and limited to certain, elite persons and bloodlines. The Wooing Widow plot then exposes that which the ideology of blood should hide: that privilege is based in the transmission of wealth, which provides a far more fluid and permeable system than that of bloodlines. Where Della Porta’s La Sorella initiates the suggestion that signifiers dictate identity such that the hegemony of the noble classes loses its biological foundation, Middleton’s No Wit furthers this argument by pointing to the repugnant motivation for this ideology as well as the actual matter involved, not blood but wealth. By way of transition, and to further propose Middleton’s No Wit as a point of departure for Ford’s tragedy, I would like to signal one notable amendment to Della Porta’s plot, which is the brief mention of a potential child of incest. Savourwit remarks in an aside that the bride- switching plot is time-sensitive since they must hide Grace’s pregnancy, her impending “round belly” (1.3.34). Savourwit later briefly reminds Philip: “The meat’s too hard to be minced now; / She breeds young bones by this time” (2.2.93-4). Middleton’s drama, however, does not dwell on this fact, which is especially surprising since Grace’s child has the potential to be the monstrous product of incest when this threat appears. But just as the play dismisses incest’s horror, so too would a disgust response be misplaced upon the literal threat of a monster. One maybe should direct disgust, however, towards this child as a symbolic monstrosity: as the product of a !148 completely closed system of power that reproduces its dominion indefinitely. Ford’s play takes 186 up this detail and further fulfills the plot premise of sibling incest to show the tragic potential lurking within the belief that blood will know and love another most like itself. ’Tis Pity dramatizes that this ideology enacts a kind of violence which is extremely difficult to circumvent if one holds any of its tenets. Sharing Blood and Bleeding Hearts in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore In staging the consummation of sibling incest only threatened in the comedies, John 187 Ford’s tragedy considers the violent consequences of the investing in the assumption that blood determines affinity. As Lisa Hopkins aptly remarks, ’Tis Pity is easily the counterpoint to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “both plays feature young lovers attended by a nurse and a friar, but this time the marriage is too much within the family rather than too far outside it” (“Silence and Suffering” 202). I would further suggest that this plot turned inside-out marks the two plays as limit cases on either side of the spectrum of blood logics. Giovanni invests in Admittedly, I mention this to highlight a further point of comparison, though my analysis will not take up 186 Annabella’s unborn baby in detail. Claudine Defaye has examined how Annabella’s pregnancy creates a problem for Giovanni’s incestuous love: “Parenthood, which is a risk and a test because it implies an unavoidable opening up of the couple otherwise centered on itself — a risk that a woman feels most acutely through the changes in her body and in her moods — is precisely denied to the incestuous couple of ‘Tis Pity that must rely for its persistence on its own dedication. Annabella, who has vowed to be a lover, is betrayed by the biological claims of her own nature” (37). I find her comments very apt given Giovanni’s possessive character, thus giving further weight to the motivation behind his murderous intentions. Literary scholarship has demonstrated many other possible influences. For instance, Ford’s play might include 187 elements of city comedy (see Verna Foster and the influence of Middleton’s Women Beware Women). For comments on Ford’s choice of setting, see Simon Barker on Italy as a place of excess and appetite, Janet Clare on private revenge, and Keir Elam on courtesans. Lisa Hopkins has connected ‘Tis Pity to many historical sources such as a rumor of incest in Ford’s family history, the incestuous ill-doings of the Borgia and Hapsburg families, Sannazaro’s encomium on Venice, and William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628). This list of potential sources also includes numerous Shakespeare plays: Romeo and Juliet (Kenneth Muir, Brendan James Lewis, Simon Barker, Robyn Bolam, Raymond Powell and Lisa Hopkins), Othello (Raymond Powell), Richard III (Lisa Hopkins), and even A Midsummer Night’ s Dream (Lisa Hopkins). !149 the vocabulary of blood affinity, highlighting incest’s romantic potential ; but’Tis Pity 188 subsequently illustrates that tragedy lurks within blood affinity’s limit case: when the principle of “like likes like” reaches its natural, uncomfortable conclusion. According to this picture, the magnetism and love between family members threatens to bleed into an all-encompassing erotic love since the blood shared by siblings is functionally no different than that shared by spouses. Or, as Giovanni himself argues, it wouldn’t make sense that this principle has an arbitrary end point as it gets closer to fulfillment. And ’Tis Pity — like both Shakespeare’s tragedy and the comedies of Della Porta and Middleton — emphasizes that if blood has agency to determine characters and affections, it does so because the characters believe these principles to be true, not because they are biologically founded. These logics seek to shore up existing kinship and social networks, maintaining power in the hands of the aristocracy due to their basis in an “unchangeable” biology. Yet, rather than avert the incest in a comedic space, Ford’s tragedy shows that there is a monstrous, violent quality to the reproduction of exact likeness and its hegemony. Many critics have glossed Giovanni’s citation of blood’s discourse as a misunderstanding (of icons as proffered by Laurel Amtower, or of aristocratic discourses as proposed by Terri Clerico) or a perversion of this vocabulary (as a symptom of theatrical decadence suggested by Carla Dente, as the mechanism of Ford’s satire held by Mark Stavig, or as a distortion of Levi- Strauss’s gift-giving principle put forward by Pompa Banerjee). Terri Clerico, in particular, views Giovanni’s literal interpretation of the Neoplatonic discourse as evidence that, given his My gloss remains in tension with other more romantic (and sympathetic) characterizations of the protagonists’ 188 love. See Arthur and M.K. Kistner, Alan Brissenden, and Dorothy Farr. It’s not necessarily that I look to morally condemn Giovanni any more than the plays’ other characters, although I do dislike him; but I maintain that his love and the assumptions that support it are problematic. !150 status as a merchant social climber, he apes a discourse that he doesn’t fully comprehend in an effort to elevate himself to noble status. It is true that, as she says, “the political intricacies of sexual and social advancement find their way onstage in the guise of half-hidden fantasies of absolute power unremittingly drenched in the language of blood” (405). Blood’s ideology, after all, is the sexual means for social advancement, or better yet, for social stability by virtue of promoting endogamy. Yet Giovanni does not misunderstand the discourse; his application of noble discourses merely highlights their literal underpinnings: shared blood physically pulls siblings together in body and soul as like should like its most like. Incest is, as noted by Susan Wiseman, “the hidden precondition of platonic language” and, as I maintain, of blood’s language too (186). And though other characters, the Friar especially, may fight against this particular 189 application of these beliefs, for them blood still embodies a person’s nature and the status of his/ her soul. Thus still steeped in this vocabulary, these characters provide no real counterpoint to For a more extensive demonstration of Giovanni’s citation of the “cult of love” and the (Neo)Platonic discourse, 189 see G.F. Sensabaugh to whom my reading is indebted. Yet Sensabaugh also argues that Ford himself firmly believes in this discourse of love above all, which excuses all manner of sins: “An analysis of his plays will show how seriously he adopted the tenets of the cult and how firmly he believed in its ethical casuistry” (211). This reading, however, would imply that the audience should sympathize and fully excuse the characters’ actions, which seems highly unlikely. On a related note, Narcissism undoubtedly underlies Neoplatonic love since to love someone most like yourself is not all that different from loving yourself in another. Many scholars take up this comparison (see Richard McCabe and Charles Forker). Lesel Dawson argues, “In ‘Tis Pity, Ford fuses Platonic and narcissistic love, offering not a satirical caricature of misused Neoplatonic theory, but a complex vision of the way in which these two discourses intertwine” (141). In fact her project ultimately leads her to the same reading that “Giovanni follows the idea that ‘likeness generates love’ to its logical conclusion” (144). Her interpretation, however, doesn’t touch on the cultural and socio-economic context of this thinking. !151 Giovanni’s worldview. The language of blood is so all-encompassing, as Carol Rosen reminds 190 us, that it applies “both to the violence and lust of Parma and to the blood-ties and rites of purification enacted by Giovanni and his sister” (359). As a result, the play seems utterly incapable of escaping it. Moreover, as Michael Neill and others have described, “what is extravagant about ‘Tis Pity […] is not so much its metaphors themselves as Giovanni’s violent literalization of them”(165). But I maintain that the most terrifying aspect of Giovanni’s limit case is that he highlights the already literal and violent character of this ideology, one that in the hands of the elite permits oppression and exploitation. Any disgust or moral condemnation of Giovanni’s character, therefore, should be redirected towards the ideology that he merely cites to it fullest capacity. Just as Della Porta’s Attilio laments, though mistakenly, that his cri du sang swelled into erotic feeling, Giovanni understands incest as the natural outcome of blood’s attraction to or liking of its like. As his father Florio says regarding his match for Annabella, “my care is how to match her to her liking” (1.3.10). Of course, this choice of words disturbingly foreshadows his children’s incest, for to match Annabella to her “liking” might involve pairing her with her “likeness,” pairing those who already share blood. Giovanni illustrates that if Neoplatonic philosophy — which romanticizes lovers as perfect mirrors of one another — is combined with Like many critics, I’ve chosen to focus my attention on Giovanni’s character more so than on Annabella’s, but 190 there is some wonderful feminist criticism of this play. Susannah Mintz argues that for Annabella, sibling incest offers a space for possible agency, potentially fulfilling a desire for parity with a partner. However, Giovanni has not bought into her picture, believing himself to be father, husband, ruler over Annabella. As a result, she must capitulate to the overarching patriarchal framework that results in her ruin. Mintz (influenced by Boehrer’s Lacanian reading) thus anticipates Maureen Quilligan’s gloss of incest two years later. Nathaniel Strout claims that the play’s tragedy “results from the expectations placed on [Annabella] as a woman” (164). Society expects her continual deference to male authority, which unfortunately for her not only runs counter to her desires, but the authorities also contradict one another and “it is impossible for her to enact the ideal woman for all three men at once” (172). Susan Wiseman’s work also focuses on society’s regulation of the female body, wherein “the meaning of the female body [is located] within the dominate discourses of religion and courtly love, and her act of will in committing incest with her brother is ultimately subsumed into the civil discourse of whoredom” (188). !152 assumptions about blood — that blood holds or embodies the soul and similarly determines affinity for its like — then the incest taboo would appear to be an arbitrary limit to what theoretically should be the most perfect iteration of love. Or alternatively, one could say that the siblings are already materially joined, so what is to prevent their sexual relations? As I mentioned in the chapter’s introduction, Giovanni opens the play considering the tension between the assumptions about blood and the incest taboo. He says to himself, Say that we had one father, say one womb (Curse to my joys!) gave both us life and birth; Are we not therefore each to other bound So much more by nature? By the links Of blood, of reason? Nay, if you will have’t Even of religion, to be ever one, One soul, one flesh, one love, one heart, one all?” (1.1.28-34) The incest taboo, marked by parentheticals of an aside or pause, illustrates the intrusion of this limit to Giovanni’s desires, literally severing the sentence in two. Saying that they have the same parents is to “curse” his “joys.” But the “links of blood” likewise play into the fantasy of complete union with the love object, to be “one all.” Giovanni, in a sense, has merely taken the romantic model, and especially that of the unitas carnis, one step closer to perfection. If blood- mixing is part and parcel of sexual consort which already involves each partner acquiring a bit of the other, then to share the same familial blood from the outset would further dissolve any and all individual distinction. This complete dissolution of difference to reproduce sameness, after all, seems to be the ultimate aim of blood’s ideology, which is to replicate the status quo. Giovanni further elaborates on the fulfillment of the Neoplatonic ideal in incest when he seduces Annabella, insisting that Nature pre-determined their love: “Wise Nature first in your creation meant / To make you mine; else’t had been sin and foul / To share one beauty to a !153 double soul” (1.2.236-8). From “one beauty” we must infer that, though not identical twins, these siblings are so alike that they physically mirror one another. Giovanni’s language draws upon physiognomic assumptions, whereby a single appearance necessarily corresponds to a single soul. In his mind, Nature in her wisdom could not have created two things so alike, sharing one beauty, if she had not meant for them to ultimately share one soul in sexual consort. He 191 extends this reasoning to blood’s discourse: “Nearness in birth or blood doth but persuade / A nearer nearness in affection” (1.2.239-40). If blood has a magnetic pull, then greater similarity in blood would only effect greater affection, being not only near but nearest. Or, as he deduces, “If hers to me, then so is mine to her; / Since in like causes are effects alike,” effectively summarizing the “like likes like” principle (2.5.25-6). They are like one another so they will like one another. In light of this logic, Giovanni understandably characterizes the prohibition of incest as a social convention, an arbitrary limit inconsistent with Nature’s design. He asks, Shall a peevish sound, A customary form from man to man Of brother and sister, be a bar ‘Twixt my perpetual happiness and me? (1.1.24-7) He alludes to the appellations of “brother and sister” not as products of Nature but rather of custom, forms from “man to man” and mere “peevish sounds” that bar the fulfillment of his desires. In keeping with this conviction after having sex with Annabella, Giovanni proclaims that Clearly Giovanni’s rhetoric also has a religious bent, and many scholars have explored Ford’s play in relation to 191 historical religious commentary. Bruce Boehrer and Laurel Amtower remark on the similarity of Giovanni’s language to Catholic metaphysics and rituals; Giles Monsarrat suggests that Giovanni has been predestined to damnation in a Calvinist framework; and Richard McCabe explains that Giovanni “regards his sister’s contrition as a betrayal of the private religion intended to supplant its public equivalent” (232). In consort with these readings, one could argue that the lovers search for religion where there otherwise is none (see Robert Ornstein and Larry Champion). And William Hamlin understands the play’s subject of incest as a test case for questioning the status of moral knowledge, thereby advocating for the doctrine of Skepticism. !154 she is “no more sister now” (2.1.1). Yet his desire to discard sibling labels as a way to reject the incest taboo stands in tension with the logic of their love. That is, the terms brother and sister pick out a particular blood relation which supposedly determines their erotic love to begin with, such that they could not help but love each other. He thus apparently contradicts himself only a few lines later, telling Annabella that her heart is “a heart whose tribute is thy brother’s life” (2.1.5). While Giovanni’s application of Neoplatonism to incest is novel, his attitude towards incest as a flexible concept is not exactly unprecedented. After all, the church routinely made exceptions to incest prohibitions for the purposes of royal marriages: King Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon being one prominent example. Giovanni takes advantage of this 192 precedent to convince Annabella to disregard the taboo, promising, “I have askt counsel of the holy church, / Who tells me I may love you; and just / That since I may, I should; and will, yes, will!” (1.2.241-3). Not only has he lied, of course, but also just as his logic in favor of loving Annabella functions based upon an ambiguity between familial and romantic love — one that serves his society in the perpetuation of appropriate kinship structures — so too does his interpretation of the holy church’s (pretend) permission rest upon ambivalence of the phrase that he “may love.” Nevertheless, Giovanni’s logic isn’t some misunderstanding or misapplication, for incest naturally follows as love’s perfection rather than its limit, rendering the taboo wildly inconsistent. As Rachel Poulsen points out in her discussion of La Sorella, early moderns regarded incest as “natural law,” 192 though it was likewise known that its actual boundaries were determined by Church and State depending on societal need for exogamy or kinship ties. She reiterates that “it was not unheard-of for dynastic families to grant special permission from the pope to solemnize marriages that were technically against the law” (185). Moreover, the Church already has a vexed relationship to incestuous relationships due to their prevalence in Genesis: Abraham, Lot, Noah, Judah, Amnon, Cain, Abel, and so forth (see Bauman 15-16). !155 So although Giovanni is undoubtedly invested in assumptions about blood, a closer look shows that this ideology is rhetorical and open to manipulation. Calling the audience to witness Giovanni’s rhetorical usage of this ideology then encourages the realization that the love of sameness and the reproduction of the status quo is not the inevitable outcome of Nature; rather, it is the means for those in power to maintain their power. Giovanni’s love is no more determined by his body than is the aristocracy’s power, or supposedly intrinsic worthiness of power, determined by theirs. To emphasize blood’s rhetoricity, Giovanni dismisses aspects of blood’s ideology that do not immediately suit his purposes, such as the importance of Annabella’s maidenhead: I marvel why the chaster of your sex Should think this pretty toy called maidenhead So strange a loss, when, being lost, ‘tis nothing, And you are still the same. (2.1.9-12) His condescension is surprising first because he has so forcefully emphasized the pull of Annabella’s blood in his reasoning, and second because the maidenhead is incredibly important in the context of this discourse — as both the material embodiment of honor and the first bit of blood to be exchanged in the unitas carnis of marriage’s consummation. But since, in this case, concern for the maidenhead conflicts with his goal, he proclaims it a “pretty toy” that when lost “is nothing.” Giovanni will, however, make a great deal of the maidenhead later when it suits him, pronouncing that it signifies his privilege to Annabella based in physiology, which takes precedence over the legal claim of her new husband. He insists, She is still one to me, and every kiss As sweet and as delicious as the first I reap’t, when yet the privilege of youth Intitled her a virgin. (5.3.8-11) !156 His proclamation implies that by virtue of having taken her hymen, Annabella is still effectively his (“one to me”), although this assertion blatantly contradicts his prior repudiation of her maidenhead. Giovanni clearly cites blood’s discourse as it suits his desires in a particular moment, and the dramatization of this blatant usage should call attention to it as such. Ford’s play shows that blood is subject to manipulation, for it is decidedly not a force that has dictated Giovanni’s erotic love for his sister. But despite the fact that Giovanni’s citation of this ideology signals its discursive status, Ford’s Parma fails to provide an alternative to Giovanni’s worldview and its ultimately violent outcome because it holds the same principles. Moreover, whatever distaste one might hold for Giovanni’s character (which to be perfectly candid, I do), this aversion should be applied to the ideology itself. Undoubtedly, Parma is corrupt as other scholars have underlined ; yet I want to 193 frame this issue not in terms of corruption but of faulty logics and assumptions that plague both Giovanni and his society at large. In Parma, blood marks both class distinctions and individual 194 character, a person’s “true nature.” These assumptions support Giovanni’s claim that 195 Richard McCabe cites this corruption as the reason for our sympathy with the protagonists, who are merely 193 scapegoats for Parma’s corrupt world. As Verna Foster explains it, “Such is the society that comprehends the tragedy of Giovanni and Annabella, a society that can offer them no acceptable alternative to one another and in which it is demonstrably impossible to live uncorrupted” (193). Bruce Boehrer’s book Monarchy and Incest has a similar explanation for the play’s tragedy: “Giovanni and Annabella exist in a moral vacuum, surrounded by fools and knaves, for all practical ends abandoned by God and the church, and not even subject to any sort of regular surveillance [...] They emerge as private individuals inhabiting a space of spiritual seclusion, and within that space they reconstruct justice, mercy, and even God out of the most readily available materials: each other” (123). Obviously, blood’s relation to class distinctions plays a large role in the competition for Annabella’s hand. The 194 Cardinal even pardons Grimaldi and his mistaken murder of Bergetto on account of his blood, “He is no common man, but nobly born; / Of princes’ blood,” whereas those of lesser blood like Vasques have no such considerations (III.ix.57-8). Terri Clerico’s reading takes up this aspect of the blood discourse at length, so I will leave that to her. My argument thus is in conversation with existing criticism on the problem of epistemology in ’Tis Pity and 195 searching for truth in the body (see Lisa Hopkins’s “Knowing their loves” and Zenón Luis-Martínez). For the play’s relationship to dissection and the anatomy theater, see Hillary Nunn and Christian Billing. See note #44 for more information on scholarship specifically treating the heart as the locus of truth/identity. !157 Annabella’s blood marks her as his perfect mate rather than contradict it. Soranzo, for instance, clearly invests in the notion that Annabella’s blood embodies her (im)moral character. Upon discovering Annabella’s pregnancy, he drags her onstage proclaiming her a whore and promising to revenge himself on “every drop/ Of blood that runs in thy adulterous veins” (4.3.1-2). In Soranzo’s mind, her actions have tainted her character/body as well as his, for as he laments to Vasques, “in this piece of flesh, /This faithless face of hers, had I laid up / The treasure of my heart!” (4.3.106-8). Even though he doesn’t explicitly reference their blood-mixing upon marriage, he clearly envisions his connection with Annabella as bodily, laying his heart in her face. He further imagines his own blood at stake on account of her former indiscretions: “All my blood, / Is fired in swift revenge” (4.3.149-50). This revenge, moreover, can only be satisfied 196 with her blood: “blood shall quench that flame” (5.4.27). Blood’s vocabulary and logics have saturated this society, and thus Giovanni’s logic is equally as valid as Soranzo’s. Furthermore, just as Giovanni claims that shared blood is the agent of his erotic attraction, consequently alleviating both him and Annabella of any responsibility for their incestuous desires, so too do the other characters believe that blood has agency and thus culpability. Florio characterizes the duel between Grimaldi and Vasques as spurred by “your disordered bloods” (1.2.25). Hippolita likewise blames blood, both hers and Soranzo’s, for their affair and the murder of her husband. She characterizes Soranzo’s wrong as his “sensual rage of blood,” and contends that she only agreed to conspire with him due to “the devil in my blood” (2.2.29, 74). Richardetto, albeit falsely, assumes that Annabella’s “sickness” (in fact, her Vasques looks to counter Soranzo’s reasoning in an effort to counsel patience, insisting “She is your wife: what 196 faults hath been done by her before she married you, were not against you” (4.3.81-3). By definition, Annabella cannot have been faithless or adulterous on account of actions done prior to the marriage contract. !158 pregnancy) is attributed to “a fullness of her blood,” an excess causing heightened sexual desire for which marriage is the only cure (3.4.8). And Soranzo blames his own blood — “my blood’s on fire” — for his vengeful desires (5.2.26). In this society wherein blood is accountable for nearly everything, Giovanni’s extension of this logic to incest is not out of place. The Friar then might contend with Giovanni’s application, but he invokes the same vocabulary when describing the procedure of repentance, thereby providing no genuine alternative to Giovanni’s worldview. As Robert Ornstein notes, in general “the Friar’s worldly ‘realism’ does not clash with his other-worldly piety; it is instead a direct consequence of it. His literalistic mind views morality wholly in terms of crime and punishment; he regards sin with the mentality of a criminal lawyer” (209). I would extend this point to say that the Friar’s thinking and method of rejecting incest doesn’t escape the ideological framework that makes the incest possible. After hearing about Giovanni’s incestuous desire, the Friar begs him, Cry to thy heart; wash every word thou utter’st In tears, and if’t possible, of blood: Beg heaven to cleanse the leprosy of lust That rots thy soul, acknowledge what thou art. (1.1.72-5) Based upon the assumption that blood and the soul are intrinsically linked, the Friar calls for some manner of humoral blood-letting. But plainly, Giovanni’s love for Annabella, at least as 197 he claims, is based upon this same conflation; shared blood indicates a shared soul in the most perfect occasion of Neoplatonic love. Additionally, in accordance with the Friar’s vision of penitence, Annabella’s blood is the ink of her letter of contrition — “this paper double-lined with Terri Clerico sees Friar Bonaventura’s suggestion of blood-letting as metaphorically equated with exogamous 197 marriage rather than repentance (430). Nonetheless, our arguments are potentially complimentary since exogamous marriage would change the nature of one’s blood and thus potentially cleanse its sinful character in the process. I would note too that there is a rather uncanny resemblance of this Friar to that of Romeo and Juliet. !159 tears and blood” — which the Friar conveys to Giovanni in order to encourage his repentance in kind (5.1.34). The Friar draws attention to the ink’s medium: “the blood’s yet seething hot that will anon / Be frozen harder then congeal’d corrall” (5.3.25-6). His remark draws an analogy between the newly spilt blood and fresh repentance that will become hardened and more resolute with time, especially with the coral (a symbol of marital loyalty and commitment) of her new marriage to Soranzo more established. Giovanni recognizes this blood, “‘Tis her hand / I know’t, and ‘tis all written in her blood” (5.3.31-2). Yet the ink of Annabella’s letter merely reminds Giovanni of his own investment in her blood. This bloody ink acts not as the means of repentance, as the Friar intends, but as the agent of their attraction. Therefore, the Friar’s lack of an alternative vocabulary permits Giovanni’s final, violent application of this discourse. Notwithstanding Florio’s desire that the rivalries for his daughter’s hand will not “cause the spilling of one drop of blood,” the violence that dominates the play and especially Giovanni’s conclusion exposes that these bloody logics have ultimately bloody outcomes (1.2.63). Violence in general is even termed “being bloody,” as, for example, Vasques encourages the Banditti to “be bloody enough” (5.4.3). The play’s bloodbath begins in earnest halfway through the play’s action when Grimaldi kills Bergetto; this scene both foregrounds and foreshadows the bloodiness of the play’s remainder, pouring out from both sides of Bergetto’s body (3.7). The Friar notes a 198 similarly ominous moment with the death of Hippolita at Annabella’s wedding banquet: “I fear the event; that marriage seldom’s good / Where the bride-banquet so begins in blood” (4.1.108-10). Of course, the Friar’s wording eerily foreshadows Annabella’s own death, Bergetto describes the event with some surprise, “I am sure I cannot piss forward and backward and yet I am wet 198 before and behind,” and “O, my belly seeths like a porridge pot!” (III.vii.12-13, 20). Then the moment before he dies, he asks, “Is all this mine own blood?” (III.vii.32). Although this first bloody death has a comedic tone, its visceral and overwhelmingly bloody spectacle marks the play’s turn for the worse. !160 her bloody heart on a platter for a near-literal banquet of the bride. Giovanni’s monologue 199 while looking upon Annabella’s dead body explains his motivations for her murder as a result of his adherence to the logic of blood. He professes that he “killed a love for whose each drop of blood / I would have pawned my heart” (5.5.101-2). While his statement could express regret for what he has done, this interpretation would contradict the conviction with which Giovanni performs the final scene. As McCabe clarifies, Giovanni rejects Annabella’s right to terminate the relationship, and he is, therefore, prepared to kill her to save her honor from her “adulterous” marriage (238). To take this observation one step further, Giovanni believes that her murder saves the honor carried in her blood by purifying it. Killing her and spilling this blood would purge her of said connection to Soranzo and, consequently, her infidelity to their own love. 200 According to Giovanni’s gloss, Annabella’s heart “trimmed in reeking blood” carries his own within it: “‘Tis a heart,/ A heart, my lords, in which is mine entombed. / Look well upon’t” (5.6.10, 26-8). The blood they share, the love this blood demands, and their hearts subsequently imprinted with the proof of this love, all come to literal fruition. Ford’s‘Tis Pity She’ s A Whore thus illustrates that incest is the realization of the combined logics of blood affinity and Neoplatonic love. Moreover, tragedy stems from the literal application of these principles since Parma’s society apparently cannot provide a counterpoint to Hillary Nunn and Pompa Banerjee both gloss this moment as the extension of Giovanni’s Neoplatonic fantasy, 199 incorporating Annabella’s substance, her heart, into himself by eating it. For more extensive readings on the heart’s iconography and emblematic status, see Lesel Dawson, Laurel Amtower, Lisa Hopkin’s “Speaking Sweat,” Donald K. Anderson, Denis Gauer, and William Slights. As Slights comments in his book The Heart in the Age of Shakespeare, “Horror always attends upon the futile attempt to make visible the secrets of the heart. The self that resides in the heart finds magnificent expression in the early modern language of the heart, but is inevitably, spectacularly destroyed by the surgeon’s knife. The occluded self, consumed by lust, jealousy, or despair, and very occasionally comforted in the inner sanctum of the heart, is repeatedly discovered to view by the poets and dramatists of the period” (35). Many scholars also cite this moment of stabbing as a violent, symbolic representation of their sexual relation. As 200 Hillary Nunn describes, “Giovanni plunges his knife through the surface of Anabella’s living body, declaring her entire inner physical being as his domain” (146). !161 Giovanni’s worldview. A vocabulary of blood remains the currency of character, love, and even salvation. Blood’s ideology, as invoked by the elite, can further ensure that love, loyalty, and power stays in a limited number of hands by promoting endogamy for a class’s preservation. And as Ford’s play suggests, the tragic consequences of this ideology pushed to its limit should call our attention not to the monstrosity of the act of incest but to the logic that supports it. Only one brief moment in the play might question this state of affairs by rejecting the assumptions of blood’s ideology. However, it’s not a particularly appealing moment in part because it is voiced by the character literally named “whore.” After Annabella confesses her incestuous love to her nursemaid Putana, her confidante quickly replies that it’s no great matter for “if a young wench feel the fit / upon her, let her take anybody, father or brother, all is one” (2.1.48-9). Putana holds that “the fit” of sexual desire makes all love objects arbitrary; consequently, incest doesn’t particularly matter because neither does the sexual partner. Putana’s view utterly contradicts the very intentional choice of love object, based upon blood affinity, that Giovanni and Annabella believe justifies their incest. Her worldview may be crass, and it certainly lacks the romanticism that Giovanni’s viewpoint encourages. Yet, this acceptance of any and all persons might nevertheless be preferable to society’s obsession with the particularity of bodies that justifies the hardening of class boundaries, an obsession that likewise has Giovanni’s disturbing application lurking beneath it. Perpetuating A Species, Reproducing Hegemony The trope of sibling incest speaks to the aristocracy’s intense desire to maintain a closed system, which they achieve by supporting an ideology of blood that naturalizes endogamy: love based in likeness. Comedies averting incest — though they apparently endorse the status quo by !162 upholding bodies’ importance in order to dissolve the incest threat — suggest that the distinctions in bloodlines mean very little. These comedies expose the rhetorical nature of these differences either by calling bodily markers into question (Della Porta), or by rejecting them all together in favor of “name and place,” revealing wealth to be the alternative foundation of identity and affine structures (Middleton). John Ford’s tragic completion of this premise stages the violent consequences that result from this investment in blood, the monstrosity of not incest necessarily, but of the ideology that permits this conclusion. Blood’s ideology, especially its principle that “like likes like,” has allowed hegemonic structures to literally reproduce themselves, and those that cite it can disavow any responsibility for its oppressive consequences. One could envision the nobleman articulating his position as follows: we, the nobility, are in power because we are intrinsically worthy, and that isn’t our fault but it is the consequence of our bodies; you, the commonfolk, cannot participate in this social network on account of your inferior bodies, and you cannot join this system through marriage because nobles aren’t attracted to commoners, in the same way that birds and fish are incapable of mating. As these plays suggest, however, incest exposes the monstrosity of this logic for what it is: a false, though powerful mechanism of oppression.   !163 Chapter 3: Bed Tricks and Bloodlines, or All’s Well that Ends with a Baby The trope of the bed trick, in one light, fundamentally questions the importance of a body’s specificity, demonstrating that bodies and persons can be easily substituted for one another in the dark. But ironically, the divinely-sanctioned bed trick tradition gives moral weight to bodies and the blood that they carry. The worth of this child, one of a specific bloodline destined for greatness in a sacred genealogy, permits the otherwise morally questionable means. The most germane example is Tamar; the divinely-appointed mother of the House of 201 Israel, Tamar tricks Judah because she is without an alternative recourse to conceive a child (Genesis 38). According to the demands of a leviterate marriage, Tamar must sleep with her late husband’s relative, in this case his father Judah, in order to provide an heir for her deceased spouse. The lineage of the House of Israel must continue in a Judeo-Christian context, wherein this bloodline will ultimately produce King David and then Christ. God’s blessing or sanction of this bed trick is not merely a question of moral justification, but it further highlights the importance of bloodlines. This biblical story demonstrates that blood has intrinsic worth and produces worthy persons, and apparently this is part of God’s design. In a sense, the biblical bed trick is the test case for blood’s value; it demonstrates that God designed blood’s ideology and that the intrinsic virtue of some blood is so powerful that even a bed trick is permissible. In other words, it would seem that in this context blood’s ideology, and the naturalized hierarchies it supports, carries God’s sanction. This chapter asks: how might staging a divinely-sanctioned bed trick — orchestrated to preserve a specific bloodline — further question or frustrate assumptions One should note, then, that this is not Lee Edelman’s Child with a capital “C.” Though it may bear some 201 similarities — after all, the biblical tradition has this child ensuring the future of this bloodline’s manifest destiny to produce a line of kings — this child is not, in and of itself, the ultimate good (embodying the virtues of Hope or Futurity). Instead, this child is the embodiment of a particular familial lineage into the future, conceptualized as a continuity in blood. !164 about kinship and affinity? For one, what is the value of perpetuating a bloodline in the first place? Is consanguinity a requisite foundation for the affective and social ties of kinship? If, as the logic went, parents’ bloods mix in the act of copulation for the child’s conception, does it logically follow that this must foster affection between the father and mother, regardless of whether or not a person knows his partner in the moment? Or, alternatively, will merely the facade of consanguinity, a name, suffice for social organization? Dramatic allusions to this biblical bed trick may assuage the audience’s moral compunctions regarding the use of deception to arrive at a comedic conclusion. But both Shakespeare’s All’ s Well That Ends Well and Machiavelli’s La Mandragola (The Mandrake Root) cite the divinely-sanctioned, biblical bed trick in order to subject this ideology of blood at its foundation to interrogation and critique. In these plays, the bed trick does not emphatically affirm blood’s value as it does in a biblical context, but it rather exposes blood’s lack of intrinsic worth. Not only does blood not determine anyone of particular merit — after all, is there any intrinsic value to producing a child for the morally distasteful Bertram or Nicia the fool? — but blood also fails to function as its ideology presumes: both in its alleged capacity to inspire affinity (between spouses as in Shakespeare’s All’ s Well) and in its function as the basis for the family unit (as in Machiavelli’s play). Moreover, the characters of both plays cite the biblical bed trick and blood’s logic behind it to serve ultimately rhetorical, or pragmatic, ends — to ward off unwanted marriage partners, to entrap a spouse into affine bonds, or to conceive a child for the sake of socio-economic gain. Shakespeare’s All’ s Well stages the divinely-sanctioned bed trick by way of Boccaccio to trouble the status of blood’s ideology since it fails to operate as the characters believe and as God !165 supposedly designed. Blood’s ideology in this play is not merely some hobbyhorse of the elitist Bertram, but it deeply influences all of the characters. It particularly affects Helena who appeals to this ideology and the bed trick in the hopes of forcing a connection between herself and Bertram, secretly consummating her marriage to become like him and no longer beneath him. Shakespeare’s All’ s Well invites us to see, however, that because Helena appeals to an ultimately hollow system, her attempt to force a connection between her lowly self and the ennobled Bertram founders. And yet as the Countess and King discover, it proves extremely difficult to think outside of this system, even as they recognize that blood’s ideology fails to accommodate the incorporation of persons who are worthy of alliance and love. Lavatch the clown then presents a possible critique of this ideology. Not only does it fail to satisfy the characters’ desired ends, but the notion that blood determines love has ridiculous consequences. Moreover, blood might appear to solidify class distinctions, but it should be a great equalizer among persons. What remains at the level of suggestion for Shakespeare becomes more explicit for Machiavelli. La Mandragola cites this biblical bed trick but without mentioning bloodlines at all; it thereby exposes that blood has no intrinsic worth, nor does it play a role, other than a rhetorical one, in the foundation of kinship networks. Put another way, the omission of the bed trick’s moral — that blood is worth something — demonstrates that this discourse is rhetorically convenient rather than biologically necessary. The Friar cites God’s permission to convince Lucrezia to bed a stranger, not to perpetuate Nicia’s bloodline. Machiavelli’s play embraces a pragmatic, iconoclastic attitude towards bodies, blood, and families. Lucrezia’s husband Nicia simply needs a child to name as his own. In general, the divinely-sanctioned bed trick emphasizes the extent to which God will venture for blood, and this sanction is rhetorically !166 convenient for those persons whose blood embodies their power and privilege. Yet these playwrights place pressure on this limit case either implicitly or explicitly, and they thus undermine its foundational assumption. Furthermore, if blood doesn’t determine worth, then the elitist agendas that this ideology supports likewise fail. An All-important Bloodline, Boccaccio’s Divinely-Sanctioned Bed Trick Both plays cite, albeit in different ways, this biblical, moralized strain of the bed trick, but literary scholarship has yet to compare Machiavelli’s La Mandragola (The Mandrake Root) to Shakespeare’s All’ s Well given the former’s peculiar lack of influence upon English drama. 202 Despite the great mobility and influence of Machiavelli’s political writings, this play seems to have escaped the purview of the European Renaissance community at large, at least until the Seemingly limited historical work has been done to trace either La Mandragola’s reception in Tudor England, or 202 an explanation for the lack thereof. Ronald Martinez, for instance, cites the play as “a remote source of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline,” but he doesn’t give any indication of how it got there (206). Victoria Kahn has recently done a great deal of work on Machiavelli’s reception in Europe, though she makes no mention of the play, focusing instead on The Prince and The Discourses. Yet as historian Michael Wyatt notes, the publisher John Wolfe printed the Mandragola in England in a collection including Machiavelli’s L’asino d’oro in 1588 (191). Although as Ian Moulton points out, John Wolfe’s Italian works, while published in England, may have been designed primarily for export because Machiavelli was on the Prohibited Index of 1559 (305). Of course, if most of these copies were exported rather than read by an English audience, this would explain why La Mandragola might not have influenced English drama as one might expect. Michael Wyatt also claims that the comedy influenced John Florio’s English- Italian Dictionary A World of Wordes, though it’s unclear how much of this is conjecture (231). Robert Williams makes a case for the play’s influence on Middleton’s Touchwood Senior plot in The Chaste Maid of Cheapside (c. 1610), although this case is based on the plays’ similarities (385). Lastly, though the play may have been available in the Italian original, I’ve yet to find any word about an English translation. !167 mid-seventeenth century. Nonetheless, the two works likely share a common source or ‘kin’: 203 Boccaccio’s Decameron. Boccaccio’s tale of Giletta di Narbona (III.9) is a well-documented source for All’ s Well, and La Mandragola likewise owes a debt to the Decameron’s bed 204 tricks. While Boccaccio’s tale of Giletta may not explicitly mention the necessity of 205 perpetuating a bloodline, God manifestly orchestrates and condones this bed trick like its biblical forebear. Moreover, the two children that result from the protagonists’ coupling carry the visible The Mandragola has a sizable performance history in Italy both before and after Machiavelli’s appearance on the 203 Index Librorum Prohibitorum of 1559, instituted by Pope Paul IV , though performances were probably limited to Italy. The play “enjoyed prestigious early performances (Rome 1520, Venice 1522, and Florence 1526) and was anthologized [with other drama] both early (1525) and later (1554) in the century; it was performed by the Accademia Olimpica in Vicenza in 1564” (Martinez 206). For more on the performance history of this play, especially in Venice, see Giorgio Padoan. The play’s print history, however, is another story. The play’s manuscript dated 1519, found amongst the papers of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was only discovered in the 1960s (Beecher 103). Mario Monaco has meticulously outlined the many editions and difficulties in dating. The first three Italian editions likely date around 1524, though the first dated editions include one in Venice (1531) and another in Florence (1533) (114-7). This play may not have circulated as widely because the comedies were often excluded from collected editions of Machiavelli’s work, such as that by Bladiana (1549) published in Florence (118). The first Italian collected edition of all of Machiavelli’s works together probably appeared sometime between 1609 and 1619, and this was not reissued until later in the century (1629, 1645, and 1650) (118-9). More editions of this play were available throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although there was still little literary criticism (119). La Mandragola was translated into French, however, because Machiavelli’s condemnation by the Catholic Church was far less felt in France than Italy; Jean de la Fontaine did an adaptation for one of his tales, but the play may not have been translated in full until Briencourt (1664) and then by Rousseau in (1725). Nonetheless, for every one French translation of La Mandragola there were six of the Il Principe (120-1). Though one can make a case instead for William Painter’s translation of Boccaccio’s tale in The Palace of 204 Pleasure (1566) (1.38), frankly the two versions differ very little (Muir 172). Kirsten Inglis makes the case that the problematic nature of All’ s Well might be the fact that Shakespeare was not only inspired by III.9, but also the stories that surround it in Painter’s translation (81). Shakespeare’s changes to the Boccaccian source are well-documented. Aside from the Parolles subplot, the play adds a starker class difference between Bertram and Helena. Boccaccio’s Giletta comes from a wealthy family and has several attendant suitors fighting for her hand since being a wealthy physician’s daughter was practically the equivalent of a knighthood (Cassell 78-9). The King’s related speech on nobility in birth or virtue is another Shakespearean addition. Scholars, strangely, have not cited Giletta’s tale specifically as a source for Machiavelli’s play, even though both 205 bed tricks have a child as their desired outcome. The small exception to this claim is the work of Kirsten Inglis who names this tale and (3.6) as the common sources for Machiavelli’s play, Marston’s The Malcontent and Shakespeare’s All’ s Well in her Master’s Thesis. However, rather than focus on the bed trick’s biblical cast, she cites the cuckold figure as the common thread, which leads her to rather different results. The seminal work by Radcliff- Ulmstead repeatedly cites various novelle from Boccaccio’s Decameron as sources, and Charles Singleton cites Boccaccio’s influence but without pointing to any specific novella. Gay Bardin’s more recent work cites three novelle in particular as fundamental: Lodovico and Madonna Beatrice (7.7), Ambrogiuolo and Ginevra (2.9), and Ricciardo Minutolo (3.6) (5). Salvatore di Maria makes a strong case for the last of these three. However, one should note that it’s a different kind of bed trick: Catella goes in to the baths believing the man to be her philandering husband, but she instead finds Ricciardo who blackmails her into keeping it secret and continuing their affair. !168 imprint of their father, proof that they are products of his bloodline. The plot seemingly translates the divine bed trick in a straight-forward manner, as framed and recounted by Boccaccio’s moralizing narrator Neifile, but the novella’s details and its frame likewise encourage questioning God’s support for this action and its import, as do the plays that come after. The summary of Boccaccio’s tale is as follows. Giletta (a physician’s daughter), raised with Beltramo (the young Count of Roussillon), falls hopelessly in love with him. After refusing all other suitors to her family’s dismay, Giletta decides to take action to acquire her love. Upon hearing of the King’s terminal illness and knowing that she can cure him, she uses this skill to her advantage, thereby allowing her to ask the King for her choice of husband. Beltramo, upset that she is of lower rank, submits to the King’s order but refuses to consummate the marriage. He then runs off to Florence and falls in love with a poor gentlewoman. Beltramo promises to return to Giletta, however, if she can fulfill a seemingly impossible task: procure his family ring and produce a male heir. Following Beltramo to Florence, Giletta convinces the mother of this poor gentlewoman to agree to a bed trick, substituting herself so that she may conceive a child for Beltramo as well as gain his ring. The scheme completed, Giletta brings home not one male heir but two! Throwing herself at his feet she says, “ecco nelle mie braccia non un sol figliuol di te, ma due, ed ecco qui il tuo anello. Tempo è adunque che io debba da te, sí come moglie esser ricevuta secondo la tua promessa” [“Lo in my arms not one son only but twain, gotten of thee, and on my finger thy ring. Tis time then that I be received of thee as thy wife according to thy word”]. The tale then concludes with complete assurance that Giletta has satisfied the Count’s 206 Citations from Boccaccio in the original Italian as well as the translation comes from Brown University’s 206 Decameron Web (and thus are without page numbers). The English translation posted there is by J.M. Rigg, originally published in London in 1903. !169 terms, verified by the physical similarity between himself and his children: “Il conte, udendo questo, tutto misvenne, e riconobbe l’anello e i figliuoli ancora, sí simili erano a lui” [“Whereat the Count was all dumbfounded, recognizing the ring and his own lineaments in the children, so like were they to him” (italics mine)]. Beltramo subsequently welcomes back both Giletta and his twins, and they all live happily ever after as all’s well that ends well. In this narrative, not only is Giletta’s bed trick a licit consummation of their marriage, but the tale’s narrator persistently alludes to God’s sanction and support for Giletta’s impregnation. The queen for storytelling day three, Neifile, looks to reconcile propriety with the heroine’s wit and ingenuity by moralizing the tale and bringing attention to God’s hand. She effectively transforms a novella — a genre that ordinarily emphasizes everyday or ‘real life’ situations — into a bible story. Giletta plainly conceives the twins by God’s grace in this narrative. Although Giletta sleeps with Beltramo numerous times, the narrator insists that this repetition allowed Giletta to procure the ring. The twins, by contrast, were conceived quickly: “Ne’ quali primi congiugnimenti affettuosissimamente dal conte cercati, come fu piacer di Dio, la donna ingravido in due figliuoli maschi, come il parto al suo tempo vent manifesto” [“In which first commingling, so ardently sought by the Count, it so pleased God that the lady was gotten, as in due time her delivery made manifest, with two sons”]. But of course while the narrator Neifile can assert that Giletta’s conception pleased God, the characters’ language exposes that they have no such knowledge or certainty of God’s sanction. For instance, as the King finally concedes to Giletta’s cure, he muses, “Forse m’è costei mandata da Dio” [“Perchance she is sent me by God”]. Giletta might have God’s dispensation, but there is no assurance only a !170 “maybe” [“forse”]. Later Giletta convinces the poor woman’s mother by portraying the trick as God’s work, but not without a similar sense of reservation and the same ‘maybe’: Forse mi farà Iddio grazia d’ingravidare; e cosí appresso, avendo il suo anello in dito e il figliuolo in braccio da lui generato, io il racquisterò e con lui dimorerò come moglie dee dimorar con marito, essendone voi stata cagione. Perchance by God’s grace I shall conceive, and so, having his ring on my finger, and a son gotten of him on my arm, shall have him for my own again, and live with him even as a wife should live with her husband, and owe it all to you. (italics mine) Thus even God’s emissary is uncertain about the moral status of her actions. Neifile will work very hard to assure the audience that the act is sanctioned, but the characters, who are unaware of God’s permission, enact the bed trick regardless. The tension between the certainty of the narrator and the uncertainty of her characters throws the “moral,” the virtue and necessity of Beltramo’s children, into relief. Although it matters greatly to Neifile, from the characters’ perspective, God’s warrant may not matter. The character Giletta invokes this tradition in order to serve her purposes nonetheless. Like the characters’ language, the placement of this novella in the Decameron also disturbs Neifile’s moralistic enterprise. As Howard C. Cole convincingly demonstrates, Boccaccio tinges Neifile’s gloss of the Giletta story with irony given its surrounding tales. While all stories of the third day end happily, it is “usually because the protagonist is rewarded for his cleverness, not his goodness” (28). Furthermore, “if the queen was looking ahead to her heroine, whose designs would be blessed by God, many of her subjects look back to Alatiel, who used God as an excuse”; the tale’s immediate context in the Decameron thus casts Neifile’s religious exegesis into doubt (20). Both Shakespeare and Machiavelli’s plays translate Boccaccio’s tongue-and-cheek depiction of Neifile’s biblical bed trick into drama — a genre that removes the !171 moralizing narrator altogether and thereby further interrogates God’s support for this bed trick that affirms blood’s ideology. If blood ceases to operate as promised then, as Shakespeare’s play suggests and Machiavelli’s asserts, God did not in fact bestow blood with the power to determine worth. Maybe the ideology is fashioned by men and is thus insubstantial, rather than of divine design. All’s Well That Ends Uncomfortably Well Shakespeare’s All’ s Well plays out Boccaccio’s biblical bed trick to the letter, though with an even greater attention to the importance of bloodlines as the embodiment of worth. Blood indeed motivates the heroine to orchestrate a bed trick. However, there are two notable differences: first, the child/bloodline is the motivation insofar as sharing blood with her spouse promises to forge a romantic connection, and second, God is noticeably absent from this play, which calls the sanction of the bed trick, and the ideology of blood which supports it, into question. In the context of All’ s Well criticism, these claims are undoubtedly contentious as many scholars view Helena as a Christ-like or Marian figure, which resonates with the morality or miracle play. Michele Osherow, in particular, maintains that Helena’s bed trick, which plainly 207 references the tradition of Biblical matriarchs and particularly the story of Tamar, divinely sanctions her deception. I agree, of course, with Osherow’s identification of this allusion; but while for Osherow this allusion answers the problematic character of Helena’s bed trick, I believe that Shakespeare alludes to Tamar in order to interrogate its foundational assumption. Like Boccaccio’s novella, several moments in All’ s Well disturb our faith in an explicit divine sanction. For one, as Wilcox notes, Helena “uses devotional vocabulary more frequently with See Carl Dennis, Claire McEachern, Helen Wilcox, and Alison Findlay. 207 !172 reference to her very earthly love for Bertram than for the adoration of God” (144). Second, though the King’s cure conspicuously references Heaven’s will, not only might this not characterize Helena’s motivation, but this also does not guarantee its extension to the bed trick. Helena might frame the bed trick in terms of her God-given role as ‘dower’ to Diana 208 (4.4.19-20) and she might assure the widow to “doubt not” whereas Giletta allows room for doubt, but as the Boccaccian source text reminds us, it is God’s will that Giletta conceive a child, not his will for her to provide the impoverished gentlewoman with a dowry (Wilcox 145). Third, it is clearly not the work of God that motivates Diana and the Widow to agree to this scheme, but rather, as Godshalk puts it, “the money helps soothe the Widow’s anxiety lest her reputation be stained by her complicity” (65). Lastly, and most importantly, the fact that Helena’s initial, and likely primary, motivation for the bed trick is her desire for Bertram calls the preeminence of bloodline preservation, as is the case with Tamar, into question. The child, at least for Helena, is the means and not really the end; her true desire is the love that should arise from commingling her blood with Bertram’s. Yet this end likewise depends upon her credence in blood’s ideology as a part of God’s design. Helena truly believes that she is different in kind from Bertram; she simply finds a mechanism, a loop hole if you will, by which this could change, namely becoming like Bertram in becoming one flesh. W.L. Godshalk calls attention to the lack of God in Helena’s motivation for the cure despite the talk of God as its 208 agent: “Although religious aspects of the cure are emphasized and Helena publicly announces: ‘Heaven hath through me restored the king to health’ (I.63), she is not brought to Paris by thoughts of God” (64). Michele Osherow, however, claims that God’s absence in All’ s Well is due to a parallel absence in Tamar’s story: “A striking difference in Tamar’s story is that the heroine does not seek the aid of God, nor are we told that he facilitates her pregnancy. On the contrary, God repeatedly eliminates Tamar’s husbands making her pregnancy all the more remarkable” (165). I suppose I take issue with two aspects of this account. First, the divine sanction of Tamar’s bed trick, due to her status as biblical matriarch, is already a foregone conclusion whether or not it is specifically referenced in this story. Second, given that Boccaccio includes a very explicit divine sanction via the narrator Neifile, one would expect its presence in Shakespeare unless there were a specific reason not to include it. !173 If, as some scholars speculate, the play’s previous title were Love’ s Labors Won (written as the companion play to Love’ s Labors Lost), then the play might be asking “could one win 209 love?” For All’ s Well’ s Helena, the child’s bloodline matters because given her knowledge of natural philosophy as a physicians daughter, she knows that the mixed bloodline will bring her happy ending and the love she desires. Bertram’s mandate to produce a child shares in this common assumption, maintaining that for Helena to be a “true wife” and to obtain his affections requires the marriage’s consummation. Only sexual congress by mixing their bloods and producing a child from this new admixture, would dictate his affections and sympathies. In other words, Helena must share Bertram’s blood to become like him in order for him to entertain loving her, even though he apparently has no intention of doing so. While Bertram cites the blood discourse in order to maintain the hierarchy and difference between himself and the lowly Helena, she hopes to establish a connection between them via consanguinity. And with this bed trick now evacuated of God’s explicit stamp of approval, the ideology of blood that undergirds it becomes subject to critique. For while the conclusion’s discomfort may result from the formal differences between drama and Boccaccio’s novella, the difficulties Shakespeare likely composed All’ s Well with this title some time between 1590 and 1592. It was only revised as 209 All’ s Well That Ends Well around ten years later c.1602 (Claire McEachern Introduction to All’ s Well in The Complete Pelican Shakespeare). !174 of fairy tale tropes onstage, and a profound dislike for one or both of the protagonists, it 210 211 may also stem from a purposeful staging of this ideology’s failure. By failing to bring the play to a satisfactorily comedic close — in this case, any hint of future happiness for the protagonists — the play exposes that consanguinity fails as the foundation for familial affine relations. And this failure then troubles blood’s ideology more generally. God may neither support blood’s ideology, nor have designed a system in which bloods determined diverse species of persons as elites would have it. As Helen Wilcox briefly entertains, the term “grace” in this play may in fact indicate “social preferment” rather than “the gift of God” (147). Moreover, blood may not be a 212 divinely-ordained biological fact unless, as Lavatch suggests, it dictates mankind’s universal sin rather than his worthiness over others. The very quick change of heart on Bertram’s part, for example, is much easier to stomach in the novella genre. 210 Beltramo’s change of heart happens in one clause in which Beltramo “laid aside his harsh obduracy” [“pose giú la sua ostinata gravezza”]. Moreover, as Howard Cole notes, “In a world in which the wonders of God are directly performed and where even the nobility join the humble heroine’s tearful pleading, it is difficult to reject Neifile’s conclusion that ‘thenceforth, he honored her as his wife and loved and cherished her above all else’” (27-8). Many Shakespeare critics have commented on All’ s Well’s experimentation with genre: Steven Mentz and Pamela D. Stewart (the “Doctor She” plot of the Italian novella and “Idolator” plot of the Cupid/Psyche myth), Gerard Gross (comedy under the lens of realism), Ian Donaldson (the “paradox of comedy”), Alexander Leggatt (conflict between romantic and realist genres), Robert Turner (a failed attempt at a “prodigal son” play), W.L Godshalk (the Morality play), Regina Buccola (popular beliefs about fairies), Patricia Parker (the early modern tradition of verbal copia), and Louise Georgo Clubb/Michele Marrapodi (mixture of a variety of Italian topoi or “theatergrams”). Older criticism of this play has often turned upon how scholars interpreted the two protagonists and with whom 211 they sympathized. R.B. Parker shows how both characters are unlikable because they must ultimately compromise their respective masculine and feminine ideals (masculine honor of prowess in war and female honor as chastity in love) in order to reach a union. But more often, the debate focuses on Helena as either a saint (see M.C. Bradbook and Harold Wilson), or a crafty, scheming, social climber (see Richard Levin). The latter of these readings are aided by the more obviously scheming character of Boccaccio’s Giletta, who clearly sees the King’s disease as an opportunity to procure Beltramo as her husband. And recently, Eric Nicolson has demonstrated Helena’s roots in female character types from the commedia dell’arte (especially the prima donna innamorata) and possible similarity to actual Italian traveling actresses, to explain the more troubling aspects of her personality. Most contemporary critics, however, look to move beyond this dichotomy by placing Helena in the historical context of gender relations, though still accounting for discomfort or dislike of her character (Marliss Desens, Carolyn Asp, Ellen Belton, Eileen Cohen, Kathryn Schwarz, and David McCandless). Barbara Traister, Catherine Field, and Kent Lehnhoff all underscore that the problem is Helena’s engagement with medicine, making her akin to either a female mountebank or a prostitute, which would have been unnerving to an early modern audience. Helen Wilcox makes this comment about the multivalence of the word “grace” in the play, despite arguing for its 212 staunchly spiritual nature. But given the play’s discomfiting tone, it would seem that we should gloss “grace” as the former rather than the latter. !175 This reading diverges from previous scholarship on the play’s attention to blood, which has often presented Bertram’s concern for his blood either as an excuse to conceal some fear of Helena’s sexuality, or as a metaphor for social class rather than its embodiment. For instance, 213 Robert Miola views blood as a mechanism by which to depict Bertram as snobbish and a man who “values too highly external trappings and pays too little mind to that within which passeth show” (29). The exception to these readings is Berkeley and Keesee who have provided the 214 most comprehensive analysis of blood-consciousness in All’ s Well as it relates to historical social and scientific discourses (especially as outlined in Galen’s On the Natural Faculties and Aristotle’s Generation of Animals). They importantly highlight that Bertram represents conventional wisdom, and further demonstrate the characters’ literal investment in these discourses throughout the play, but they finally reach a politically conservative view of Shakespeare, who, they claim, generally supports this ideology of blood. Yet just because the 215 characters believe in an ideology, does not mean that the play endorses it. As John Love convincingly argues, blood or class-consciousness functions as the play’s source of darkness: See especially Janet Adelman, Michele Osherow, Carol Thomas Neely, Alexander Welsh, John Adam, and W. 213 Speed Hill. For Garrett Sullivan, blood discourses are an obstacle to the process of self-forgetting, a forgetting of one’s 214 dictated place, in order to reconstitute a new identity in relation to one’s own desires. He claims that Helena forgets herself (symbolized by her father’s death) and translates her desire for Bertram into a socially acceptable perpetuation of society, i.e. marriage, which would allow her to bridge social difference (59-60, 61). Lisa Hopkins work on Shakespearean marriages accords with this reading, as she says, “In many ways, I would 215 align Shakespeare here more closely with an aristocratic ethos, which minimized the role of love within marriage, and stressed instead compatibility of background” (9). She continues that “the one relationship never tolerated is that of ‘disparagement,’ or the crossing of class barriers” (11). Ann Jennalie Cook reads All’ s Well similarly. Cook not only believes that the original audience may have actually sympathized with Bertram and that “Endowing Helen with virtue, resourcefulness, and aristocratic approval while emphasizing Bertram’s immaturity and immorality has seldom pleased modern audiences. But Shakespeare’s own spectators may have required clear proof of a nobleman’s ignobility in order to accept his marriage to a heroine of common birth when the union is presented in a sober courtly context” (65). Yet Berkeley and Keesee further use this framework of blood to attack Helena’s character, arguing that she accords with the stereotypes of baser blood in the period, and therefore giving credence to Bertram’s beliefs. Berkeley and Keesee insist on Helena’s similarity to Parolles regarding her self-interest and ambition. They likewise maintain that Helena conforms to the class stereotype of “egocentric and destitute of love toward family members,” as well as being more melancholic (253). !176 “Class debases the characters of Bertram and Helena throughout the play, and in the final scene it determines their fates and that of Parolles, despite the measure of virtue and vice each character possesses” (520). An examination of blood discourses thus exposes that all of the characters 216 are tainted by the existing vocabulary for (class) identity and affinity, even those liberal-minded ones who search for alternatives. And since both protagonists invest in an ultimately unfavorable and hollow ideological system, nothing really ends well at all. This is not a product of either character’s individual flaws, but it is a result of the particular discourse to which they both subscribe. All’ s Well’s characters grapple with the assumption that persons accord with their bodies, and especially that a person’s parents have translated virtues through his or her bloodline, which then dictates his/her character and affinities (i.e., loving others like themselves). The young 217 protagonists not only embrace this vocabulary but fetishize it. Although they have different motivations — and Helena, given her position, may feel that she has no other option but to play the game by the established precepts — they both mistakenly believe that the right heir would John Love makes this observation in his larger argument that explains the comedy’s unsatisfactory conclusion. 216 He notes that while in most comedies the source of darkness is usually embodied in one alien character (e.g., Jacques or Malvolio) who can be exiled at the play’s end in service of the romantic conclusion, in All’ s Well there is no one character to exile. Kirsten Inglis’s study of All’ s Well in her Masters Thesis contains a similar reading of the play as a critique of 217 naturalized hierarchies. However, though the thrust of the argument is similar, she reaches a very different conclusion, commenting in particular on the power of the King and the source of divine authority. For one, her reading sympathizes to a degree with Bertram and notes that Helena and the King operate as foils of one another. Namely, Helena “by obscuring and mystifying the source of her healing power, Shakespeare by extension questions the ultimate source of monarchial power as well,” especially the role of God or Providence in this equation; which is particularly germane in this period when James has to take power even as there is a more tenuous hereditary link between himself and Queen Elizabeth before him, no longer a direct line of succession” (88). !177 establish affinity between them. The right child is supposedly conceived, but this ending is 218 profoundly uncomfortable, and blood clearly fails to deliver on its promise of love and happiness. The Countess and the King begin to see the failures of this ideology, namely that it cannot accommodate love or favor for those who may merit it but do not have the right blood. However, their proposals are restricted by their continued use of blood’s vocabulary. Thus once blood is emptied of its purported agency and deprived of its divine author, Lavatch’s comedic foil furthers this critique, pointing towards the ridiculous implications of the logic that blood materially determines love. Lavatch instead puts forward the notion that blood might determine sin but likely not worth, i.e., that which would justify a bed trick as it does in the bible. The play opens by citing the basic assumption that consanguinity determines a shared character and virtue, or at least it would ideally. As a result, some bloodlines might be worth more than others, and worth the employment of a bed trick as is the case for Tamar’s House of Israel. In the Countess’s blessing to her son before his departure to Paris, she reminds Bertram of his envisioned, inherited personality. She bids farewell, Be thou blessed, Bertram, and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape. Thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness Share with thy birthright. (1.1.61-4) In this respect, my reading is friendly to certain feminist interpretations of the play outlining how Helena must 218 negotiate existing codes of patriarchy. See especially Marliss Desens, Carolyn Asp, and Garrett Sullivan, but also Kathryn Schwarz, Theodora Jankowski, David McCandless, and (in a certain light) Janet Adelman. I emphasize this point about their similarity because most critics have read Helena and Bertram as diametrically opposed. This particularly applies to feminist readings of All’ s Well that identify a “sisterhood” of female characters all working together towards Helena’s goal (see Carolyn Asp, Alison Findlay, Michele Osherow, and, to a degree, Janet Adelman). As Asp describes, “In the process of pursuing Bertram, Helena has come to experience the loyalty, support, and kindness of women who not only never doubted her but who never failed her. What began as a pursuit of a man developed into a transaction among women” (59). Yet I believe that the different positions or viewpoints divide more cleanly along generational lines (Helena/Bertram vs. King/Countess), rather than coalescing around gendered camps. As I hope to show, Helena and Bertram, in fact, share assumptions about blood’s role in determining identity. !178 Her blessing assumes that Bertram’s blood and virtue work together as a unit in order to succeed his father in both shape and manners. Though distinct, blood and virtue are inseparable, as the first carries the second. Of course, if his blood actually determined his moral character and actions, then it would not be “contending” for empire so much as firmly holding it. But 219 Bertram nonetheless accepts the belief that his blood and his “virtue” are intertwined. It is thus no surprise that he becomes sensitive about his marriage to Helena, for he has been led to believe that to fail his blood is to fail in these other moral virtues. The King reiterates this ideal correspondence when referencing Bertram’s inheritance, one of both body and personality. He addresses Bertram, Youth, thou bear’st thy father’s face. Frank nature, rather curious than in haste, Hath well composed thee. Thy father’s moral parts Mayst thou inherit too! (1.2.19-22) Here, one inherits “moral parts” as one might inherit a nose or a chin; but the King’s wish also hints that these moral parts may be distinct from the inheritance of physical beauty, that these two aspects are not inherited simultaneously, at least not as the Countess’s blessing regarding “blood and virtue” would hope. If the biblical bed trick, therefore, depends upon the perpetuation of a virtuous bloodline, wherein the child must take after his father, then it is a problem for this allusion that Bertram doesn’t fully resemble his own father in virtuous action. But both 220 Moreover, Bertram would not require reminding from his mommy if he had inherited this virtue. Regarding the 219 analysis of this line, many scholars would claim that blood is actually in contention with virtue, a seemingly natural reading of the sentence, though it doesn’t entirely make sense in the context of Bertram’s inheritance to which the Countess refers. Thus, I would maintain that it remains ambiguous with what the blood and virtue are contending. In my mind, it maybe his baser nature that the Countess doesn’t wish to acknowledge. David Bergeron likewise glosses Bertram’s failure to resemble his father, though he does not explain it as a 220 potential failure of bloodline. For him, this play turns around absent fathers whose memories the characters must sustain and uphold: “The moral and psychological search for a father defines one of the plays’ serious narrative issues and helps delineate the difference between Helena and Bertram” (169). Helena succeeds; Bertram fails and refuses to connect to potential father figures throughout the play. !179 Bertram and Helena nonetheless buy into these assumptions about blood determining both love and worth. Unlike other glosses of this play, I maintain that Bertram and Helena have both absorbed blood’s ideology behind the biblical bed trick, perpetuating this vocabulary and, consequently, naturalized and divinely-ordained class hierarchies. Bertram, of course, is the more adamant 221 defender of this view because according to blood’s ideology, he has the most to lose from this prospective marriage. As Claire McEachern notes in her introduction to the play, 222 While the social barriers to the union of Helena and Bertram can be removed by the powers — ruler and family — that sustain them, what these powers cannot do is change the way in which Bertram’s character has been shaped by them. Bertram actively disdains her, not for who she is, but for what she is: beneath him. (566) Shaped by society’s ideology, Bertram asks the King why he and his integrity, which he conceives of as bodily, should pay for the King’s health: But follows it, my lord, to bring me down Must answer for your raising? I know her well; She had her breeding at my father’s charge. A poor physician’s daughter my wife? Disdain Rather corrupt me ever! (2.3.111-15) Traditionally in Roman New Comedy, or its later Italian iteration the commedia erudita, the father figure 221 advocates for the socially appropriate marriage alliance whereas the younger generation (the noble youth and a peasant girl, sometimes a prostitute) scheme for a love match. Garrett Sullivan has argued that Bertram’s investment in blood can be explained by an explicitly masculinist 222 worldview: “The concept of blood anchors the period conceptions of patrilineage; it figures aristocratic descent in terms of blood’s passage through women from one generation of men to another, blood that can be contaminated by women but which in its purity signifies only as a marker of male identity” (63). While this is true, I hope to show that Helena sees blood as equally relevant to her own identity. Theodora Jankowski’s article on the importance of hymeneal blood has a similar spirit to Sullivan’s. She explicates that if the “bleeding bride” is all that matters to patriarchy (the proof of virginity turned fetishized hymen) then women become easily interchangeable. !180 Despite a likely degree of equity in their “breeding” at his “father’s charge,” marriage would not simply be a “disdain” or a social slight, but a corruption of himself via his blood. According to 223 contemporary beliefs, Bertram “through repeated copulation with Helena would improve her blood,” but to the detriment of his own (Berkeley & Keesee 252). To mix bloods would be a contamination for “ever.” As further reason not to marry, Bertram insists, “I cannot love her, nor will strive to do’t” (2.3.144). Lack of love, of course, is no reason not to marry, and his excuse sounds irrelevant. However, according to the logics he has imbibed, Bertram speaks to a kind of bodily incompatibility. He cannot ‘love’ her, hold any sympathy or affection, on account of his superior body. In his mind, like cannot like unlike. Moreover, “striving to do’t” would mean compromising his own superiority; it would mean consummating the marriage and mixing their bloods but to his own impairment. Bertram ultimately gives in, 224 I find that she, which late Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now The praised of the king; who, so ennobled, Is as ‘twere born so. (2.3.169-72) His words, however, are clearly empty and do not reflect a genuine change of heart. Bertram constructs the final simile to indicate that he accepts Helena as his wife as though she were born a noble, but his rhetoric also calls attention to the very fact that she was not born of noble blood, but base. Even though Bertram must participate in the social rite of marriage, Bertram proclaims Bruce Smith approaches this reading by noting that Bertram’s “decampment to Florence has less to do with 223 personal repugnance toward Helena than with avoiding legal consummation of a marriage to a social inferior” (171). Of course, he sees this contamination in legal rather than bodily terms. In Boccaccio’s version, the narrative acknowledges that Beltramo finds Giletta beautiful, likewise making the 224 sudden conversion at the close more palatable. Moreover, as the text notes earlier, Giletta is extremely desirable, having already turned down many suitors. !181 “I will not bed her” since he can prevent the consequences of its consummation (2.3.268). 225 Bertram upon leaving for Italy stipulates his return to Helena in a letter, which reads, When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband but in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never.’ (3.2.56-9) In order for him to be a true “husband” and have affection for Helena, he must consummate their marriage. The sexual act would affect the mixture of their bloods that would, once shared, 226 establish an affection between them as well as conceive a child of this new admixture — his heir. The ring merely represents this exchange symbolically — just as it does during a marriage ceremony when placed on the fourth finger of the left hand — but the important exchange for Bertram is really one of blood. Of course, he has no intention of entering into this exchange, and his appeal to blood speaks to his desire to maintain difference between them. Helena’s love for Bertram might incline her to reject the traditional discourses barring her from this union, but surprisingly Helena likewise believes in a bodily difference between herself and Bertram, which physically blocks their union. She accepts the parameters of this discourse, agreeing to play Bertram’s game and reenacting the bed trick of biblical matriarchs who similarly value blood. In so doing, Helena takes advantage of the loophole outlined in Bertram’s letter in order to force a connection between them. What she fails to realize, however, is that since mixing blood does not actually make her like Bertram, the scheme will not work to determine love as she R.B. Parker, by contrast, glosses Bertram’s refusal to bed Helena as a fear of losing his “manly marrow” in sex 225 and marriage, as Parolles mentions. However, I think it’s important to note that Parolles has voiced this concern and not Bertram. This talk of being a ‘true husband’ is unique to Shakespeare. For Boccaccio, Beltramo employs terms of 226 cohabitation: “io per me vi tornero allora ad esser con lei che elle questo anello avrà in dito, e in braccio figliuol di me acquistato” [“For my part I will go home and live with her, when she has this ring on her finger and a son gotten of me upon her arm”]. !182 intends. At the play’s outset, Helena speaks of herself in relation to Bertram as if he belongs to a different species — in her rendition of the commonplace “A bird may love a fish but where would they live?” In Helena’s more violent version, she laments, “Th’ambition in my love thus plagues itself: / The hind that would be mated by the lion / Must die for love” (1.1.92-4). Helena reiterates the problems of her baser body when conversing with Parolles. He asks her why it is a pity that she only wish him well, and she replies it is a pity, That wishing well had not a body in’t Which might be felt; that we the poorer born, Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, Might with effects of them follow our friends, And show what we alone must think, which never Returns us thanks. (1.1.180-85) Unlike wishing, Helena desires to manifest her love physically, to take her love out of the realm of thought and put it into the material world, that of the “body.” It is a problem with her body, being both “poorer born” and female, that means she cannot do anything other than wish since she lacks the authority to change the terms of the discourse. Moreover, one could easily read this moment as a veiled desire to sexually consummate her love for Bertram since with “effects” she might “follow our friends.” The “effects” of consummation, the commingling of blood with Bertram, would allow her to become something other than she is by obtaining a new and better blood. 227 Although Helena seeks an elevation in station, she expresses this hope as a natural one rather than a social one (unlike Parolles for example) — a hope for nature to bring together like things although they are of unlike fortunes. She pines, “The mightiest space in fortune nature Kathryn Schwarz likewise sees this moment as pointing towards the bed trick saying, “The fantasy of 227 materialized desire anticipates the bed trick that yokes body to wish” (207). !183 brings / To join like likes, and kiss like native things” (1.1.220-1). Her wish operates according to the same logic as Bertram’s: that like will like like natively. Since nature only mates equals, she must believe that her desire reflects some native similarity though there would appear to be none. Or, at least, their mating can solidify a likeness between them and thereby establish a reciprocal love. That Helena puts faith in the same blood assumptions as Bertram is further evidenced by her commentary during her husband-selection. She says to the fourth lord, “You are too young, too happy, and too good, / To make yourself a son out of my blood” (2.3.95-6). It remains unclear whether or not this remark should be read sarcastically because, after all, if she truly believed this, then she shouldn’t submit Bertram to this indignity either. Yet, Helena has nonetheless accepted that the creation of mixed-blood progeny would ultimately benefit her, making her (more) “like” the man of her liking. In her mind, to forge a connection to her beloved requires a metamorphosis of sorts into a different type of being or species. And though the important exchange for both Bertram and Helena is one of blood, All’ s Well stages this exchange as one of fetishized rings, a symbolic token established in Bertram’s lettered ultimatum, pulled from the Boccaccian source. Nevertheless this act of displacement 228 illuminates something important about blood, namely that it is a matter of signification anyhow since Bertram isn’t actually attracted to his like. For instance, when Helena schemes with the Widow about how to obtain Bertram’s ring, she says, Now his important [importunate] blood will nought deny That she’ll demand. A ring the county wears That downward hath succeeded in his house Janet Adelman also views the ring as a symbolic placeholder for either patrilineal descent or the child begotten 228 by Helena’s body of his descent (81). Carol Thomas Neely agrees that “the two rings participate in all these sexual contracts. They embody the sexual, social, and emotional aspects of marriage and symbolize their fragmentation and degradation” (82). !184 From son to son some four or five descents Since the first father wore it. (3.7.21-5) The ring clearly stands in for Bertram’s blood or lineage, and it is actually the blood she needs as the means of both her self-transformation and the determination of his affinity. Yet she cannot mention her real motivation in what would be a cruder description of the sexual act. Yet 229 Helena’s scheme also exposes a difficulty for the multivalent nature of the blood discourse. Lust inspires Bertram’s persistent “importunate” blood, and it dictates the attraction of Bertram’s blood for Diana, which allows the bed trick to function. But Diana is not of noble birth, she lacks even a dowry. Bertram’s affinity for someone unlike himself, inspired by his lusty, sinful blood, reveals the falsity the “like likes like” logic which supposedly motivated his objection to marrying Helena in the first place. Bertram’s elitist logic that maintains class distinctions 230 through endogamy quickly unravels, even if it is apparently the only means to effect the “ending well.” Just as the biblical bed trick demonstrates God’s sanction of blood’s ideology, All’ s Well’s bed trick appears to support the importance of bloodlines with the protagonists’ endorsement. And just as the biblical bed trick has a blessed conclusion, so should All’ s Well’s bed trick effect a happy, romantic one. This ‘happy’ ending’s uncomfortable tenor, however, throws these Interesting too, in this moment, is the specification of Bertram’s noble lineage going back four or five 229 generations. This number was considered the minimum for qualifying as nobility in the French court of this period. This small moment then might acknowledge how nobility is fashioned over time and not simply born. But given the serious tone with which Helena treats concerns for blood, I would read this detail as the playwright’s moment to take Bertram down a peg rather than indicative of Helena’s opinion. I’m not the first to notice this logical inconsistency. Anthony Cassell also notes that one issue for the class 230 consciousness of Boccaccio’s Beltramo (as well as Shakespeare’s Bertram) is that he’s willing to fornicate with a penniless girl of even baser station than his own wife (73). Cassell, however, might be misreading Boccaccio since even though the Florentine girl is penniless, she is nevertheless a gentlewoman. The text narrates, “il piú innamorato uom del mondo d’una nostra vicina, la quale è gentil femina, ma è povera” [“he is in the last degree enamoured of one of our neighbors here, who is a gentlewoman, but in poor circumstances”]. Bertram, therefore, still appears to be more hypocritical than Beltramo. !185 assumptions about blood into relief. The logics of blood’s ideology have been played out to the letter, but the conclusion stages this ideology’s failure to deliver on its promises; blood is neither inherently worthy nor has it determined affinity. At the beginning of this final scene, upon the prospect of being permitted to marry a woman more worthy of his station (Lafew’s daughter Maudlin), Bertram claims that it was his contempt, his “scornful perspective,” that turned Helena into a “hideous object,” and since having lost her, he “ha[s] loved” (5.3.47-55). Yet given his lukewarm reaction to the surprise that Helena is not dead after all, Bertram must be feigning love in this moment in order to curry favor with the King. Furthermore as Gerard Gross notes, we shouldn’t take this expression of love seriously because Bertram has lied about everything else up until this point and we have no indication that he has changed (268). His reticence later in 231 this scene likewise disproves his previously cited justification about affinity based in blood. If consanguinity determined affinity, Bertram, having already bedded Helena unbeknownst to him, would love her. Her blood mixed with his would dictate an affinity for her, which he could not otherwise explain. His assumptions about blood, if true, would justify a rather sudden change in heart and “perspective,” but this proves to be mere lip-service to the King. The bed trick’s status as a limit case has not proven blood’s power but debunked it. Fittingly then, just when Helena should be reiterating her flesh — which she now shares with Bertram both having consummated their marriage and having conceived new flesh in her belly — her reveal instead suggests disillusionment. She first calls herself a shadow: “‘Tis but the shadow of a wife you see” (5.3.304). Although her pregnant body onstage carries a measure As countless scholars have shown, the addition of Parolles to the All’ s Well plot means that he must serve as foil 231 to Bertram. Parolles’ scene of shaming, being exposed as an empty man of hot air, should act as the means for Bertram’s learning or conversion. However, as many readers have found, while it should work this way, it clearly doesn’t. !186 of visual proof in most productions, technically only her words with Diana’s testimony 232 guarantee her conception of a child for Bertram, a fact that Helena emphasizes. Theoretically she would want to highlight her changed physique, but instead she presents Bertram with his letter, his word, and says, “This is done” (5.3.310). This strange reversal of expectations might intimate that Helena is already disenchanted, already aware that her body (the blood exchanged in the bed trick) will not have the hoped-for effect. Bertram then doubles down and requires more as part of a condition for loving her, demarcated by the all-important “if clause.” He concedes, “If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, / I’ll love her dearly — ever, ever dearly” (5.3.312-3). 233 Bertram does not specify what it means to “know this clearly”; yet one may assume perhaps (like Helena’s Boccaccian predecessor Giletta) it would be a child that looks unquestionably like himself, one that is indisputably of his own blood. Although just as Bertram does not satisfactorily resemble his father’s “moral parts,” so too might this heir disappoint. The moral necessity of perpetuating this particular bloodline is not obvious. Moreover, Bertram’s words are an excuse and not a profession of love. Finally, and maybe the greatest disappointment for the audience looking for a romantic close, is that Helena accepts these conditions, even allowing stipulations for divorce in a new verbal contract. The marriage contract, supposedly concluded and finalized by the physical For a performance history of Helena’s pregnant belly, see Kathryn M. Montcrief’s chapter, “'Show me a child 232 begotten of thy body that I am father to': pregnancy, paternity and the problem of evidence in All's Well That Ends Well,” in the collection Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (2007). This couplet is the cause for much spilled ink since the reading of the play’s conclusion hinges upon it. Eileen 233 Cohen and Ian Donaldson note that the “if” is a problem, but they try to gloss over it by pointing to the unknown future of the play. Michele Osherow, Gerard Gross, Howard C. Cole, and John Love, however, all agree that the “if” contributes to the unromantic ending of All’ s Well. As Cole puts it, “To promise eternal love in exchange for a fuller explanation may be eminently reasonable, but it is psychologically and emotionally fraudulent. If Shakespeare is attempting to make Bertram’s third repentance ring true, he is not working very hard at it” (133). Jean Howard glosses the uncomfortable ending somewhat differently, underlining that the goal of this marriage in the play is social reproduction, which has very little to do with personal happiness (57). !187 consummation during the bed trick, is clearly not binding. Helena establishes the new terms of their arrangement in her response, “If it appear not plain, and prove untrue, / Deadly divorce step between me and you” (5.3.314-5). This is hardly the beginning of marital bliss. The protagonists’ attitude towards the fulfillment of their marriage and Bertram’s contract seems to be purposefully unpleasant, a legal arrangement rather than a physical, intimate one. For Helena, the promises of blood’s logic — that she in marriage would become like him, that the fish would sprout wings and fly, and that her transformation would inspire love — have gone unfulfilled. 234 Throughout the play the Countess and the King begin to interrogate these beliefs, recognizing their failures since the logic of ‘like likes like’ built into blood’s ideology prevents the incorporation of (or affection for) meritorious difference in the character of Helena. These characters remain, however, entrenched in and thus limited by blood’s vocabulary, which prevents any genuine change. The Countess, for one, uncouples love from consanguinity in 235 Any love between them is deferred to the uncertain future, a point to which Helena herself seems to allude after 234 the bed trick’s and conclusion. Her own end completed, she pauses for a moment to ponder her scheme. She muses, But, O strange men! That can such sweet use make of what they hate, When saucy trusting of the cozen’d thoughts Defiles the pitchy night! so lust doth play With what it loathes, for that which is away: But more of this hereafter. This monologue suggests that seemingly after the conclusion of the play, the “hereafter,” Helena will further contemplate this sorry state of affairs — that in the dark, lust is blind. Furthermore, as her successful completion of the bed trick has shown, bodies are interchangeable in a way that undermines her hopes. The comments of the Countess, in particular, depart from the original source since she plays no role in the 235 Decameron. Robert Miola convincingly shows that the older generation scheming to help a young and unorthodox love inverts the conventions of Terence’s New Comedy (27). But this point might require a qualification. Julie Solomon notes that although the older generation is more open to change for the sake of knowledge, “it is important to view the older generation’s destabilization of distinctions between nature and culture as an effort to extend the life of the social order with which they are familiar” (158). !188 her description of Helena’s “adoption.” The Countess tells Helena that she has a “mother’s 236 care” even though “You ne’er oppressed me with a mother’s groan” (1.3.144, 143). Helena did not come from her body, but the Countess can nonetheless pronounce, “I say I am your mother” (1.3.150). Her performative declaration suggests that one can become a mother simply by proclaiming it so, and that the label has little to do with bodies. The same principle applies when the Countess denies that the absence of consanguinity bears upon her love for Helena. She announces, “If she had partaken of my / flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother, I / could not have owed her a more rooted love” (4.5.10-12). Love need not be “rooted” in blood or flesh. Yet as in the case above, this vocabulary persists even when the Countess aims to deny blood’s determinations and implications. Renouncing her son after he has abandoned Helena, she uses blood’s terminology: “He was my son, / But I do wash his name out of my blood, / And thou art all my child” (3.2.65-7). The Countess figures the process of disownment as a material one. It somehow involves a change to her blood in order to divorce mother from son, thereby dissolving any prior affinity between them determined by their consanguinity. Moreover, her pledge to wash away Bertram’s name/identity presumes that this name is somehow embodied in the blood that they share. Whether the Countess understands this process of blood purification literally or Erin Ellerbeck calls attention to the Countess’s use of a grafting metaphor in order to suggest a new connection, 236 an adoptive one, between herself and Helena, thereby competing with the nature metaphors that describe consanguineous connections. Ellerbeck explains, “Grafting represents a different method of familial production and conveys the possibility that people who are not related by blood or marriage might become part of the same family tree. By deploying a set of natural and genealogical associations in service of human adoption, Shakespeare’s horticultural metaphor attempts to explain the practice of adoption while allowing audiences to see the potential for unusual familial formation that lies within a mixed family” (313). While I agree with Ellerbeck’s reading of the Countess’s comments, she goes on to equate the Countess’s views with Helena’s: “All’ s Well features female grafters and excludes men, to a degree, from family generation and formation, thereby moderating heteronormative and biological methods of procreation. Helena is not only an adopted daughter but also eventually a wife who deliberately joins herself to a new familial stock” (308). I’d contend that Helena still feels the need to join the family stock, to become of one blood, mating the hare and lion, and she may not share the Countess’s opinions. !189 merely as a metaphor, it is a metaphor that must be expressed in the corporeal terms of consanguinity wherein sharing blood does dictate affinity for kin. The Countess hopes to split love from blood and embrace Helena instead, but she has not escaped its terms. Her society, which organizes people according to bloodlines, seems to mandate the Countess’s persistent emphasis upon the bodily difference between herself and Helena, despite her love that clearly transcends these limitations. The King’s attitude towards blood possesses a similar degree of equivocation. He searches for a means to reject Bertram’s resistance to wedding Helena based upon their supposed material difference, but he has difficulty expressing an alternative worldview confined as he is by blood’s vocabulary. In response to Bertram’s refusal, the King insists that ‘Tis only title thou disdain’st in her, the which I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods, Of color, weight, and heat, poured all together, Would quite confound distinction, yet stands off In differences so mighty. (2.3.116-20) As M.C. Bradbrook notes, since the King’s speech occupies the structural center, it should likewise be the center of our attention as the play’s “moral.” This reflection on blood’s nature marks the inability to distinguish differing bloods visually from one another, and further insists that these differences might be based in name only. However, the King hasn’t denied that there might, in fact, be differences, only that those differences in “color, weight, and heat” would confound distinction if all mixed together. In fact, scientific discourses of the period would support the belief that Helena’s base blood would have been perceived as darker, less sweet, and thicker (Berkeley & Keesee 251-2). But for the King, if there are differences, one cannot identify them though they be “so mighty.” By juxtaposing the title, which he can “build up,” with the !190 “confounding” nature of blood, the King implies that these differences are not physical but social. Yet the enumerated distinctions remain, and the King’s language has not explicitly 237 dispelled the belief that blood determines them. The ambiguity persists as the King perseveres in his quarrel with Bertram, maintaining That is honor’s scorn Which challenges itself as honor’s born And is not like the sire. Honors thrive When rather from our acts we them derive Than our foregoers. (2.3.132-6) But his account of honor has not denied that one can inherit qualities such as honor. It has only established that honor fares better when obtained by action. Similarly, the King insists on his ability to bestow his honor where he chooses — “It is in us to plant thine honor where / We please to have it grow” (2.3.155-6). Yet by using a botanical metaphor, honor still sounds like 238 a trait based in material, as though the King could create honor via mixed-blood cross- Boccaccio’s rendition of the King’s attempt to convince Beltramo, by contrast, is not so forward-thinking. He 237 acknowledges that status may matter, or at least it exists, but he maintains that Beltramo would undoubtedly be happier with a woman who loves him very deeply: “‘Sí sarete,’ disse il re ‘per ciò che la damigella è bella e savia e ammavi molto; per che speriamo che molto piú lieta vita con lei avrete che con una donna piú alto legnaggio non avreste’” [“‘Nay, but you will,’ replied the King; ‘for the damsel is fair and discreet, and loves you well; wherefore we anticipate that you will live far more happily with her than with a dame of much higher lineage’”]. Julie Solomon remarks that the King is often read as quite fickle and arbitrary. He adamantly refuses Helena’s 238 new-fangled medicine, convinced by his conservative doctors, but quickly insists upon his ability to “create” nobility only to contradict himself later when he says that he is merely validating Helena’s innate virtue (157-8). This vacillation makes it “difficult to assess the ontological status of nobility or of ‘honor’” (158). !191 pollination. Both the Countess and the King begin to search for alternatives to the language of 239 consanguinity to describe affine relations and worthiness since this language cannot accommodate Helena. But they ultimately remain limited by this vocabulary and thus cannot devise a fully satisfactory alternative. The comedic interludes of the clown Lavatch, on the other hand, provide one mechanism for critiquing this system from the outside. While seemingly unrelated asides, these act as a foil for the central action by poking holes in the prevailing assumption that blood (pre)determines both a person’s character (sometimes imagined as a species of person) and his/her affinities. As I have noted elsewhere, the character most likely to be disregarded or ignored is often the only character to suggest a genuine critique of the existing social system. In this case, Lavatch’s dark comedy should shed light on the citation of blood discourses throughout the play, especially as it pertains to solidifying social class. Lavatch first critiques the belief that sharing blood inspires sympathy, which supposedly occurs when becoming ‘one flesh and blood’ — the assumption that will prompt Helena’s resort to the bed trick. He illustrates its folly given the fact that it could have counter-intuitive results. He reasons for the Countess, Helena’s request to select a husband identifies a potential reason for the King’s ambiguity, namely a concern for 239 the continuity and preservation of royal blood. She dictates that as repayment for her cure, Thou shalt give me with thy kingly hand What husband in thy power I will command. Exempted be from me the arrogance To choose from forth the royal blood of France, My low and humble name to propagate With any branch or image of thy state; But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow. (2.1.194-201) When establishing her terms, she specifies that she can choose anyone but royal blood. In fact, she spends twice as much time outlining what she will not ask of him: compromising his own royal lineage. Her clause may reflect a genuine reticence about blood on the King’s part. But it might, more tellingly, reveal her own. One could see in this plot the King’s similarity to Corneille’s King in Le Cid. Both Kings mandate that one party marry another because he says so, and both could very well remain invested in blood discourses as it pertains to royal lineage. However, the King of All’ s Well doesn’t appear invested to the same degree. !192 He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend: ergo he that kisses my wife is my friend. (1.3.45-9) Lavatch succinctly shows that according to this logic, one should love the man who cuckolds him. A worldview that produces this result is clearly flawed; but his fellow characters 240 seemingly cannot understand the larger implications of his comedy. But not only is the logic behind love based in consanguinity unsound, if character or worth is to be determined by blood, as the biblical bed trick suggests, then one might look to another part of the bible to find that blood and flesh is far more likely to determine sin than it is merit or virtue. Arriving onstage to ask the Countess for permission to marry, he explains, “I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you / and all flesh and blood are, and indeed I do marry that / I may repent” (1.3.36-8). Lavatch’s comment highlights that flesh does not distinguish 241 men from one another but rather functions as a great equalizer. In a religious context, all are descendants of Adam and consequently of original sin. Lavatch here evokes the rough equivalent of the common rhyme critiquing inherited nobility: “When Adam dug and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?” Though couched in a comedic scene, and slightly less threatening as a result, Lavatch’s request for marriage should call attention to Bertram’s class sensitivity later in Peggy Simonds, to elucidate this passage, cites the Elizabethan marriage ceremony in the Book of Common 240 Prayer (1559): “So men are bound to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife, loveth himself. For never did any man hate his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord doth the congregation: for we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones” (qtd. Simonds 48-9). As Carol Thomas Neely has mentioned, Lavatch “wittily reconciles the church’s belief in the corruption of the 241 flesh with its upholding of marriage as a sacramental and spiritual union rooted in a fleshly one” (83). !193 the play. Moreover, as we witness with Bertram’s susceptibility to the bed trick, it is his 242 “importunate” blood that defines him; and his lustful nature is, as Lavatch jokes, common to all men. Lavatch’s gloss exposes that blood neither establishes affinities nor biologically determines differences as Bertram would have it. The play thus intimates that if blood serves these functions then it does so on account of rhetorical efficacy not truth value. Moreover, the appeal to the biblical bed trick to support and justify blood’s ideology is at odds with the more obvious reading of God’s opinion regarding human flesh: that is is all equally meritorious given that it is all equally sinful. Consequently, All’ s Well might suggest that there is no such biological hierarchy of persons built into God’s design as the ideology would claim. Shakespeare’s allusion to the divinely-sanctioned bed trick, rather than stress blood’s significance and power, has used this test case to expose that blood’s substance has no bearing upon affection or intrinsic worth. Both Bertram and Helena look to blood’s ideology to understand their prospective coupling and with good reason, for, as the biblical bed trick stresses, bloodlines are extremely important. As Helena says, God allegedly designed a world “to join like likes,” and those of different classes, having different bloods, are akin to different species. But this play intimates that blood’s ideology with supposedly divine support is instead a convenient ideology for elitist agendas, especially since in a biblical context flesh is just as likely to prescribe original sin as it is to designate intrinsic worth. Yet without an alternative vocabulary for conceptualizing relations between persons — as the Countess and King reveal — it will be John Love likewise maintains that Lavatch the Clown is the greatest social upstart of the play, exposing the 242 darker implications of class that will not matter for the “narrow gate” to heaven (526-7). One could read a similar point into Lavatch’s riddle with a the “bountiful answer,” one that will answer all questions. He compares the “bountiful answer” to a chair that will house any butt, “It is like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks — the pin buttock, the quatch buttock, the brawn buttock, or any buttock” (2.2.16-18). Thus the metaphor may delineate differences in butts, but they are, nevertheless, all butts. !194 difficult to establish a new state of affairs that doesn’t separate persons according to purported material differences. However, as Machiavelli suggests, one might simply choose to ignore this vocabulary altogether. Bloodless Babies and Magical Mandrake Roots In the case of Machiavelli’s La Mandragola (c.1518), alluding to the biblical bed trick 243 inserts a necessary “ends justifies the means” framework for producing a child — Lucrezia’s husband, her mother, and a morally questionable priest are all convinced to put Lucrezia in bed with another man for the all-important pursuit of creating an heir. Yet Machiavelli’s play illustrates that this heir is necessary not by virtue of his blood, but by virtue of his name. In order for a divinely-sanctioned bed trick to function properly, blood should matter not only because it is the “moral” of this genre, but also as the marker of legitimacy, as a father’s assurance that his legacy, a literal piece of himself, will survive. What becomes abundantly clear throughout the 244 the play, however, is that even though a child (a body) matters, the bloodline does not; the import of consanguinity to the family’s social function is exposed as a great hoax. In the Mandragola, blood does not, in fact, prescribe familial or social structures. Aside from needing a male for the mandates of patriarchy, so long as the son is signified as Nicia’s, it doesn’t matter whether there The precise date of the play’s first performance is unknown. Radcliff-Ulmstead and others place the date of 243 composition around 1518 given its reference to the Turks in Act III (118). However many scholars debate whether it was written for festivities honoring Lorenzo de Medici Jr.’s return from France with his wife Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne in September, or alternatively if it was composed for the season of carnival earlier that year alongside two other comedies including Il Frate by Lorenzo Strozzi, as reported in a letter by Alfonsina Orsini (Bertelli & Innocenti xxi-ii). For an extended discussion of the dating controversy see Antonio Sorella p. 9-17, and Robert Black p. 186-9. Robert Black settles on some time between 1515 and 1517, or during Machiavelli’s time at the Ruccellai gardens. It’s also true that, according to conventional blood discourses, Nicia’s status as a middling lawyer means that his 244 bloodline has very little inherent worth anyway. But especially since he views himself as more than middling status, he theoretically should care about sharing blood with his heir, which would dictate responsibility and love between father and son. !195 is any biological truth to this claim. Nicia can pass down both his name and his wealth to, as he calls him, the naccherino [“little brat”] all the same. The citation of the biblical bed trick, therefore, is entirely rhetorical. Moreover, in omitting blood from this allusion, Machiavelli’s play evacuates the worthy “end,” blood’s ideology, of its worth. Machiavelli’s translation iconoclastically suggests that a body does not determine a particular role; God could not have designed the world with a hierarchy of bloodlines because a body can be made to signify whatever or whomever one likes. And absent its divine design or endorsement, blood’s ideology crumbles. Lastly, just as Helena must feel a great deal of disappointment at the failure of blood’s ideology, so too is Lucrezia deprived of a locus for personal integrity or agency, in the form of bodily chastity, if the particularity of bloodlines and their purity no longer matter. Existing scholarship on Machiavelli’s La Mandragola aims to integrate the play with his political philosophy about “proper rule” as outlined in Il Principe and I Discorsi. Unsurprisingly, Machiavelli’s texts of political theory offer an attractive method for unpacking a somewhat perplexing play. Although sometimes interpreted as a specific political allegory, most of these 245 political readings, conducted by scholars of political philosophy and literary critics alike, ultimately amount to “who is the savio (the savvy political leader)?”, or even, who might be the Carnes Lord details a highly specific political allegory, wherein Lucrezia represents the Florentine populace, 245 Nicia the hereditary prince Piero Soderini, and Callimaco is the Florentine aristocrat Bernardo Ruccellai. For Lord, this allegory “shows that Machiavelli’s preoccupation with princely rule is not an opportunistic reaction to changed political circumstances after the fall of the republic in 1512, but derives from his own experience of weakness of the Soderini regime as well as his rejection of the republicanism of the aristocratic opposition to Soderini” (166). In Parronchi’s allegorical reading by contrast, Callimaco is Duke Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lucrezia is Florence, and Nicia is still the past gonfalonier Soderini. Robert Black, on the other hand, sees Nicia as a scion for the Calfucci family (191). For a more general allegory, Joseph Mazzeo understands Machiavelli’s play as a hypothetical perfect diplomatic solution in which all sides get what they desire (125). For a possible Christian allegory of the play, see Giovanni Aquilecchia. For an overview of the many possible allegorical readings of the play see Antonio Sorella, p. 17-43. !196 stand-in for Machiavelli himself? These readings provide competing arguments for the 246 protagonist lover Callimaco, the trickster-parasite Ligurio, the exceptional Lucrezia, and even the duped lawyer Nicia. The elaborate ploy to impregnate Lucrezia is subsequently glossed as a 247 tale of renewal, a comedy that celebrates rebirth out of degeneration by establishing a new society ruled by this savio. Ezio Raimondi’s version of this reading is most famous, though it is echoed by others including Salvatore di Maria, for whom Nicia’s infertility is symbolic of cultural stagnation until Callimaco rejuvenates the community, and Theodore Sumberg, who argues for an intellectual rebirth wherein “Callimaco, the new Prince [is an aristocrat] by intellect Augustus Mastri reads Ligurio as Machiavelli, and revises the allegorical reading, demonstrating that the play is 246 what would have taken place if Lorenzo de Medici had taken Machiavelli’s advice (The Prince) or brought him in his service, namely a more successful marriage between himself and Florence where he was quite unpopular (5). Joseph Francese likewise sees the play as the revenge of the meritocrat (Ligurio), one of minor station that forces his own will on others, especially “grand” citizens; and Ligurio is able to succeed in this fictional world where Machiavelli failed. Patricia Vilches sees the savio in all of the characters, all of whom are stand-ins for Machiavelli himself, though especially Lucrezia who like “the segretario seeks accommodation in Florentine society. Bending his own republican ideals and ingratiating himself to the Medici who will allow him to achieve that goal” (8). Paul Corey, sees Machiavelli in two characters specifically: “Ligurio represents Machiavelli’s more practical role as an adviser to politicians, and Nicia represents his role as the spiritual founder of a new world order that has subsequently come to be called ‘modernity.’” (200-1). Similar to Nicia, “Machiavelli is forced to procreate indirectly, through his writings and through those who will teach his writings. Others will perform the actual procreating, but those ambitious youths who accept his teaching will be his children” (201). For arguments on behalf of Callimaco, see Salvatore di Maria, Theodore A. Sumberg, and Guido Ruggiero. For 247 arguments for Ligurio, see John Bernard, Franco Fido, Timothy J. Lukes, George Thomas, Jane Tylus, and Gay Bardin. Joseph Barber in an early piece, though not looking for a “prince,” notes that some of Ligurio’s linguistic techniques reflect certain “regole che non falliscono mai” [rules that never fail], which were formulated in Machiavelli’s political works (“La Strategia Linguistica” 388). For supporters of Lucrezia as the donna di virtù, see Joseph A. Barber’s “The Irony of Lucrezia,” Jack D’Amico, Giulio Ferroni, Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Heather Wright, and Alexandra Coller. Or for Yael Manes in her feminist reading summarizes the play in this way: “La mandragola dramatizes a reality in which virtù in the sense of manliness is not an attribute of males, but is performed by the females. It is a case study of a fatherless reality: the complete corruption of the patriarchal foundations of society (i.e., the ordini of religion, law, and arms), the lack of masculine virility, and the absence of male authority and virtu create a reality in which the female-as-mother is the prime mover” (41). Lastly, and most surprisingly, for supporters of Nicia as deceptively cunning, see Harvey Mansfield, Valeria Finucci, Guido Ruggiero, Michael Palmer and James F. Pontuso. Wayne A. Rebhorn, by contrast, identifies two species of men in the play, confidence men (Callimaco, Ligurio and Frate Timoteo) and dupes (Nicia and Sostrata). For him, La Mandragola is a tale of Lucrezia’s transformation into the “perfect confidence woman” (45). Francesca Sparacio refuses to identify any single character as the savio, but suggests that each character displays the quality of virtù, the ability to take advantage of fortune to serve their own desires, in turn, which is part of the play’s grand joke on the audience who is searching for the singular ruler. !197 who will use the new science to overthrow the existing nobility and their ancient ideas” (330-1). 248 Alternatively, scholars cast the play as a satire of this Florentine ‘rebirth.’ This more pessimistic “establishment of dystopia” reading can be found in Ronald Martinez’s work that compares Lucrezia to Livy’s Lucretia. Jack D’Amico along similar lines acknowledges that 249 “Lucrezia, unlike a young man, cannot escape the city and its customs, no matter how corrupt they become” (270). Yet when considering both of these readings one should remember that 250 the child from this union will be Nicia’s in name, which means that this scheme, in fact, perpetuates the existing social order. In this light, the play’s end does not establish some For this reading of a societal rebirth see also William Kennedy who reads the comedy as a kind of rhetorical 248 argument, and one in which the audience participates in Callimaco’s triumph of wit over the old ways of a staid society (366-8). See also Salvino Bizzarro. Alternatively, this could be the triumph of youthful lust and desire over obstructions as is the usual case with erudite comedy, as Robert Williams maintains, or the power of desire to disrupt the status quo, as Martin Fleisher holds (387, 380). Finally for an interesting reading of the Prince’s role as scapegoat in the revitalization of society, see Carlo Celli’s reading of the carnivalesque in Machiavelli. Ronald Martinez posits that if Lucretia is the sacrificial victim for the rebirth of a new and better state (the 249 Roman republic), then Lucrezia’s rape, figured as the mandrake root’s simultaneous poison and cure, “is itself an etiology of a new community, albeit one founded not on historical sacrifice but on the rational calculation of private advantage, on acquisitiveness or guadagno” (10). Melissa Matthes engages in a similar compare/contrast with Livy’s rape of Lucretia as Martinez, except that her reading has a far more optimistic conclusion, maintaining that Lucrezia is not raped but seduced to establish this new community, which accords with Machiavelli’s political theory at large. Catherine Conners has another feminist reading of the revision of Livy, maintaining that Lucrezia is not Lucretia but rather Brutus, the man who feigns weakness (in this case, she feigns Christian virtue and chastity) until he can take advantage of Lucretia’s death and the violation of her virtue by Sextus to overthrow the Tarquins and establish the Roman Republic (here, renegotiating for herself a new household). Jack D’Amico also suggests that Lucrezia’s virtù calls for a revision of Livy, proposing that “Lucrezia’s conversion of Callimaco from lover- tyrant to lover-prince must also be seen in the contest of prudent self-interest raised to the level of the common good, of something judged to be good because it prevents rather than causes ruin of family or state” (262-3). Paul Corey sees Mandragola as a rewrite of Livy, but not a dystopic one; he rather suggests that Machiavelli would not ascribe to the qualities of manliness, civic-mindedness, and chastity lauded in the Livy since “Machiavellian virtù is measured by effectiveness — by the ability to act in ways that ensure success regardless of what is required” (173). Mera J. Flaumenhaft has a similar reading. George Thomas depicts the moral as essentially “all’s well that ends well” (an ironic coincidence, of course), 250 wherein the end fulfills a public good even if the means are immoral, deceitful, and hypocritical (193). See also Michele Marrapodi and Mera J. Flaumenhaft on the corrupt, pragmatic ethic of La Mandragola, as well as James Atkinson who claims, “Ultimately it is intellectual chicanery that galls Machiavelli. He regards the sophistry represented by the perversion of the power of reason in Ligurio and Fra Timoteo as an affront to mankind” (19-20). Interestingly, Joseph M. Knippenberg suggests that this newly established society has a new religion that resembles Protestantism. For a history of the critical interpretation of the play as a moralistic satire, see Carlo Dionisotti’s “Appunti sulla Mandragola.” !198 fundamentally new society. As Salvatore di Maria has noted, “The play’s society, too, in its resolve to survive, does not hesitate to adjust its values and to avail itself of any means at its disposal, including the foolish messere and the ignoble friar” (“Machiavelli On Stage” 186). Nicia’s heir simply maintains the status quo that requires offspring for the perpetuation of the ruling classes. The satire, if you will, exposes the discursive quality of these ideologies which 251 sustain the status quo. It might be “dystopic” but it always was; Machiavelli simply brings out the practical or functional attitude towards talk of consanguinity and kinship in Florentine society. Thus while I don’t want to suggest that Nicia is the Machiavellian savio secretly pulling strings under a facade of stupidity, I would grant his character an awareness of his social 252 system’s actual requirements, namely that appearances matter more than facts. As Salvatore di Maria points out, one of Nicia’s defining flaws is his excessive concern for appearances and disregard for truth (“Ethical Premises” 29). The play might imply, however, that this is neither a One could gloss this moment as literary theorist Stephen Guy-Bray does in Against Reproduction, whereby “to 251 produce a child is to reproduce a particular vision of society” (15). Analogously, David Glimp outlines in his book Increase and Multiply, “Characterizing any endeavor as reproductive likewise calls people to task for their actions, insists that they are obligated to conduct themselves and others in a responsible manner so that what they do will stabilize rather than disrupt families, communities, the church or the polity” (xx-xxi). Harvey Mansfield is most famous for the suggestion that “the aging messere is a shrewd individual who uses 252 others to achieve his goal, namely, to have an heir” (144). Mansfield cites several reasons why Nicia might be the savio; for instance, Nicia’s orders the morning after coincide with Lucrezia’s suggestion to continue the affair, seemingly using Callimaco as his “lion” and Ligurio as his “fox” in order to effectuate his plans. Additionally, Nicia is supposedly the first to actually devise several of the plot’s details even if Ligurio enacts them. Mansfield also expresses disbelief about Nicia’s inability to recognize Callimaco, believing that the reference to Nicia’s having read Boethius is real rather than feigned. If true, then he might have “learned” from this example about how to conquer Fate. Palmer and Pontuso likewise suggest that Nicia is simply “playing the fool” to achieve his ends. For another rendition of this argument, see Paul Corey. Lastly, Valeria Finucci characterizes Callimaco as Nicia’s “sperm donor” but she takes these observations in a psychoanalytical direction, looking at the play’s sexual stakes in order to paint a picture of male anxiety. In this reading, Lucrezia’s poisonous womb, symbolically connected to the female spider who eats her mate after copulation, threatens castration. Nicia, as the “true Machiavellian,” is merely happy that he doesn’t have to have sex with Lucrezia and her poisonous womb in order to impregnate her (115-6). Antonio Sorella’s study also provides the mythic background of the mandrake root and the venomous woman, claiming that this may have spoken to Lorenzo de Medici for whose nuptials this play was potentially performed. !199 fault nor a symptom of Nicia’s folly because appearances might be all that matter anyway. If appearances matter more than truth — since, as Jon Snyder suggests, ultimately appearances (dis)simulated dictate a person’s identity — then Nicia may not be so foolish to insist upon them. There is no question that Nicia is a dupe, but it may nevertheless be the case that he is, 253 as his name suggests “the Victorious,” for to be recognized as a father is the relevant 254 consideration regardless of the child’s true parentage. Nicia needs progeny, but sharing blood 255 with his progeny doesn’t matter if this child’s identity is the product of signification. As 256 opposed to trying to wash a name from blood as does All’ s Well’s Countess, La Mandragola’s characters pragmatically take for granted that blood is a material without a name attached, a material that exists prior to signification. And as a result, they don’t bother to mention it, even though it is the moral foundation upon which the biblical bed trick stands. Sharing blood with a son, guaranteeing the perpetuation of his biological lineage, does not affect the child’s ability to inherit Nicia’s wealth and assume a place as his son in society, which would grant Nicia honor, Jon Snyder describes dissimulation: “Early modern dissimulation involved first and foremost the exercise of 253 strict self-control over the expression of thoughts, emotions or passions. As a practice of self-censorship, dissimulation assisted those who sought not to reveal or disclose anything of their own interiority, but were at the same time intent on not uttering any untruth to others” (6). Dissimulation, therefore, was different from lying outright. It was closely tied to rhetoric: “Dissimulation offered a range of techniques for safeguarding one’s secrets by rendering them unreadable or invisible to others. Through the disciplined use of reticence, taciturnity, diffidence, negligence, omission, ambiguity, irony, and tolerance (that is, pretending not to have heard something), dissimulators aimed to frustrate any outside attempts to connect their words and gestures to their true inner state” (6). See Renzo Sereno for his note on the etymology of Nicia’s name. He suggests this name could simply be ironic, 254 but it might be genuine since Nicia seems to succeed after all. Paul Corey sees this strand of thinking in the play as well, suggesting that “Machiavelli places virtue and vice in 255 the realm of ephemeral ‘appearances,’ which have no real content outside of what they can get you” (195). As Yael Manes would note, this likewise exposes that patriarchy is utterly dependent on women fulfilling their 256 roles as mothers. !200 his primary desire. Nicia needs a “chunk of flesh,” a body to signify and nothing more (3.4, 93). 257 While it is true that much of Nicia’s concern for appearances in the play generates comedic relief — for instance, the social caché that comes with speaking Latin (even if it’s nonsense) or perpetually name-dropping — his insistence upon titles should prompt the audience to appreciate that public performance and social recognition are, in fact, the key features of identity, and not bloodlines. For example, Nicia lectures Ligurio that he should address ‘doctor’ Callimaco by his proper title “maestro,” saying, “Non dir così, fa’ il tuo debito. E, se egli si offende, si tolga pure la cinghia” [“Give his due title, and if he doesn’t like it, he can ignore it”] (2.1, 82). The title is a man’s due, and, effectively, all that he has to distinguish himself from others; to ignore it altogether is to deny any such distinction. Ligurio’s failure to address the ‘maestro’ correctly means that he ignores or denies his “debito” (due or debt), his obligation to acknowledge the social distinction between himself, a parasite, and an illustrious physician (and, consequently, the distinction between himself and the illustrious lawyer Nicia!). As Nicia seems to recognize, status is based upon social distinctions. And what are these social distinctions but titles? One could easily ignore Nicia, and gloss this moment as a bit of foolishness, but even the language of the prologue supports his view that “honor” is a thing of outward show or performance, primarily dependent upon others’ recognition. The prologue describes the ‘honorable’ Callimaco, “Costui, fra tutti gli altri buon compagni, / A’segni ed a’ vestigi / L’onor The translation of La Mandragola is by Laura Giannetti and Guido Ruggiero in their edition Five Comedies of 257 the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). The in-text citations first show the act and scene numbers, followed by the page number of this translation. !201 di gentilezza e regio porta” [“Above all other good men, he exhibits the signs and ways of a gentleman worthy of honor”] (Prologue, 73). That which indicates his “gentilezza” (courtesy or gentility) as well as “regia” (princeliness or royalty) are “segni” (signs) or “vestigi” (marks or traces). The prologue does not imply that Callimaco’s merits are intrinsic traits bestowed by birth. He appears to be worthy of honor and, therefore, he is. In this framework, Nicia’s obsession with these appearances or social niceties in the search for recognition is not so foolish as we might presume. Later when accompanied by Siro to collect his wife’s urine sample for a fertility test, Nicia expresses his desire for status and laments the lack of respect from his peers: “Il fatto è che in questa terra chi dei nostri pari non è legato a quelli che hanno il potere, non trova un cane che gli abbaia” [“In this city, people without status, people like me, can’t even find a dog willing to bark at them”] (2.3, 84). In order to have status someone must talk about him, 258 but Nicia’s present situation is so dire that not even a dog will acknowledge him. One way for Nicia to expand his social influence and to create ties to those with power is to have a child of his own name, which, despite six years of marriage to a young, noble bride, has yet to be produced. All of Nicia’s emphasis on signs and status should throw into stark relief the song between the second and third acts, containing the basic premise “ignorance is bliss” that supposedly pertains to Nicia. The song remarks on the lucky Nicia,“L’ambizione non lo preme, / non lo muove il timore, / che sogliono esser seme / di noia e di dolore.” [“Ambition does not press him, / Fear does not move him, / Which normally are the seeds / of suffering and pain”] (89). Yet the claim that Nicia has no worries in life because he has no ambitions must be false given both the lengths to which he’s willing to go for an heir and his hyper-awareness of Both Guido Ruggiero and Joseph Franchese suggest that Nicia’s frustration likely mirrors Machiavelli’s own in 258 his state of exile (143-4, 167). !202 appearances and titles. Even if one grants that Nicia may be blissfully ignorant that the child will not be his biologically, there’s certainly a case to be made that he is willing to take the risk that it isn’t (see especially Harvey Mansfield and Valeria Finucci). Nicia is aware that a child’s presence solidifies honor, though the particulars of that child’s body might be inconsequential. Moreover, though the play’s opening frames the couple’s desperation as something that Callimaco can exploit in order to bed Lucrezia, the play quickly brushes Callimaco’s desire aside to emphasize the child’s production. Lucrezia’s future pregnancy is no longer a means to 259 Callimaco’s end, even though his desire is the impetus for the whole scheme. Instead Callimaco’s desire is the means to the procreative end. For even if Lucrezia’s infertility may be a hoax, this justification made available by the biblical bed trick ceases to be only a front. The difference is that in Machiavelli’s transposition of this biblical bed trick, the trope ceases to prove the importance of bloodlines. Instead, bloodlines are abandoned in favor of pragmatic solutions to the problems and fixations of wealth and social status; God’s sanction merely provides a cover. As Ligurio explains to Callimaco, in order to overcome Lucrezia’s virtue one must use, “la voglia che lui e lei hanno di avere figliuoli, che, sendo stata sei anni a marito, e non n’avendo ancor fatti, ne hanno sendo ricchissimi, un desiderio ch muoiono” [“the longing that he and she share to have children. After being married six years without having any and being extremely rich, they’re dying to have them”] (1.1, 76). Since both Nicia and Lucrezia supposedly share this want, both may be ultimately convinced that the end justifies the means. They need “figliuoli” for succession. Since they are “ricchissimi” (extremely rich), they desperately need a child to Salvatore di Maria agrees that Callimaco’s desire is not really at the center of the action: “To be sure, love is the 259 ostensible force behind the scheme to secure the success of Callimaco’s goal; however, the actual focus of the play is not so much on love, but on the personal motives that cause each character to take part in the scheme” (“Machiavelli on Stage” 180). !203 inherit this wealth. Messer Nicia repeatedly affirms this desire and desperation, lamenting “Pure io ho tanta voglio d’avere figliuoli, che io son per fare ogni cosa” [“Still, I want so much to have children that I’m ready to do anything”] (1.2, 79). He even tells Frate Timoteo, “Io non ho figliuoli, e vorre’ne, e per avere questa briga vengo a dare impaccio a voi” [“I do not have children and wish to have them, and in order to acquire this problem I have come to create problems for you”] (2.2, 83). Children have become Nicia’s sole preoccupation and it is a “impaccio” (trouble, fixation) that he will now pass onto Frate Timoteo. In fact, one could say that the entire bed trick scheme functions on account of Nicia’s single-minded fixation becoming contagious. One by one, each of the characters assents to accomplish this end. For instance, Lucrezia’s mother, Sostrata, buys into the necessity of having children at all costs: “Se, ad avere figliuoli, voi non avete altro rimedio che questo, si vuole pigliarlo [take it], quando e’ non si gravi la conscienzia” [“If in order to have children there’s no other option, we must do this as long as we all agree that it doesn’t weigh on anyone’s conscience”] (3.1, 89). She, like Nicia, has set aside moral qualms so long as it is assured to work. Fra Timoteo too agrees “noi condudereno questo parentado questa sera” [“we’ll complete the coupling this evening”] (3.8, 95). Here the term “parentado” indicates that what matters is parenting a child, creating family or kin, by effecting the coitus between Lucrezia and Callimaco. Fra Timoteo thus conveniently sets aside two small matters: first, that this coupling involves adultery, and second, that the “parentado” created that evening would not be biologically Nicia’s, which utterly defeats the purpose of the bed trick in the biblical context. And whether for the preservation of his lineage or no, Nicia himself insists upon seeing the plot all the way through to the end, including “testing the merchandise.” Nicia feels the need !204 to subject the garzonaccio (the “big stud”) to scrutiny, supposedly checking his health but also ensuring that the coupling takes place. Nicia explains, “volli toccare con mano come la cosa 260 andava” [“before I left, I decided I should feel to make sure that everything was going as it should”] (5.2, 111). And he continues that he only left after “Tocco e sentito che io ebbi ogni cosa” [“I had touched and felt everything”] (5.2, 112). Nicia’s testimony implies that he felt the garzonaccio’s member to ensure that the young man had an erection and that the act was accomplished. Nicia in single-minded obsession sees past his own cuckolding, staying up all night imagining “del bambino, che me lo pare tuttavia avere in braccio, el naccherino!” [“the baby boy, whom I can practically already feel in my arms, the little brat!”] (5.2, 112). Thus despite some talk of sons, references to children throughout the play 261 conspicuously lack any reference to consanguinity or concern for family lineage traditionally Nicia when explaining himself to Ligurio insists, “poi volsi vedere s’egli era sano; s’egli avessi avuto le bolle, 260 dove mi travavo io?” [“I wanted to see if he was healthy. If he had syphilis, where would that have left me?”] (5.2). Yet as he describes the young stud’s genitalia, “ma tu non vedesti mai le più belle carni: bianco, morbido, pastoso [smooth]! E dell’altre cose non ne domandate” [“but you’ve never seen more handsome flesh — white, soft, comely! And about the rest, don’t ask”], it is clear that Nicia’s touched his member in a fashion not purely for the purposes of a medical examination (5.2). Di Maria hints at Nicia's possible homosexuality, originally posited by Alonge: “Nicia’s obvious pleasure in describing how he saw and touched the ‘young rascal’s” male organs (5.2), suggests that he indeed harbors latent homosexual tendencies” (“Prose to Stage” 142-3). While I won’t argue against the notion that Nicia enjoyed himself and the moment certainly flirts with homoeroticism, it might likewise demonstrate his concern, his willingness to take a “hands on” approach to check for potency and fertility. After all, Nicia may feel the need to inspect the garzonaccio’s member because Avicenna “warned that too small a penis was perhaps insufficient to guarantee pleasure in women: the result could be disastrous for reproduction, since lack of female ejaculation meant no procreation” (Finucci 20). While ‘who’s your daddy’ apparently never presents an issue, the child does need to be a boy in order to satisfy 261 the social demands of patriarchy. Callimaco promises to Nicia, “se, oggi ad un anno, la vostra donna non ha un suo figlio in braccio, io voglio avervi a donare duemila ducati” [“if a year from today your wife is not carrying her little baby boy in her arms, I will give you two thousand ducats”] (2.6, 86). Later, Nicia responds to the good news that Fra Timoteo has agreed to help convince Lurezia, asking “Fia egli maschio?” [“Will the child be a boy?”] (3.8, 95). The child’s masculinity seems to be Nicia’s only requirement: the one way that the body does matter is that it needs a penis. A girl would produce heirs for another family, but a boy could inherit his wealth and carry his name. Fra Timoteo, after having ‘convinced’ Lucrezia to agree to the plan, congratulates Nicia, “V oi vi beccherete un fanciullo maschio” [“You’re going to have a son”] (3.12, 99). Of course, the Italian is far more crass since “vi beccherete” roughly translates to “cuckold” or “buck for yourself.” Many other scholars of early modern Italian drama have shown that playwrights demonstrated gender performativity as well. See, for instance, the work of Lorna Hutson, Laura Giannetti, and Pamela D. Stewart. Even this bodily requirement could be fudged with signification, but I’ll leave this point at the level of suggestion because, at least in this play, the emphasis on a baby boy persists in the language. !205 conceived. It becomes clear that the progeny merely fills a slot, fitting into a designated social role, which does not require any biological specificity — completely disregarding the moral justification of the bed trick in the biblical tradition. As Nicia yells at Lucrezia, “S’io credevo non avere figliuoli, io arei preso più tosto per moglie una contadina” [“If I’d known that we wouldn’t have children, I would have rather married a peasant woman capable of bearing them”] (2.5, 85). The translators here insert the relevant information to help modern audiences, but the original merely says “I would have taken a peasant woman as a wife.” Nicia here underlines that the child is more important than a woman’s honor and gentility. According to blood discourses, however, Lucrezia’s honor should matter a great deal to Nicia because it would ostensibly have a bearing on the character of his children. As we witnessed with Bertram, typically for men who are conscious of their honor and status, a peasant woman simply would not do since her inferior blood would contaminate the familial line. But as Nicia, and Machiavelli’s play at large, 262 suggests, who really cares? Society’s recognition of a woman’s honorable station might be important from both a legal and social standpoint. But, as Lucrezia will be asked to accept, a woman’s nobility makes very little difference if she has no child, or put another way, if patriarchy cannot glean the benefits of that honor. For as La Mandragola proposes, signification — rather than nature or blood of divine design — determines persons. For example Ligurio’s scheme to test Fra Timoteo, though a seemingly unrelated digression, uncovers the way in which society’s pragmatic signification disregards the biological. Ligurio, in order to evaluate whether Fra Timoteo can be swayed to engage in morally suspect activities and participate in their plot, asks the friar to agree to an Intellectuals like Stephano Guazzo and John Ferne provide two such examples of this tradition, see the 262 introduction p. 27-29. !206 abortion in the name of “tutto l’onore di casa sua” [“the honor of his [Nicia’s] house”] (3.4. 92). Firstly, the honor “of his house” highlights the fact that family matters are first social, a function of living in the same place, rather than consanguinity. Secondly, Ligurio reasons that, in 263 agreeing to this abortion, Fra Timoteo will save the honor of all involved and “voi non offendete altro che un pezzo di carne non nata, senza senso, che in mille modi si può sperdere” [“you’ll be offending nothing but a chunk of unborn flesh, without feelings, which could be lost all the same in a thousand ways”] (3.4, 93). Of course, Ligurio’s description of a fetus would not be so shocking in the period as it is today; an abortion was not considered homicide until the child was “ensouled,” formed or “quick” (i.e. capable of movement). In this period there existed a kind 264 of moral grey area in which there was an indefinite but fairly certain time, a window of opportunity as it were, during which a woman could end what we call a pregnancy, and neither she nor her contemporaries regarded the act as an abortion. Taking a drug for delayed menstruation was just that and nothing more. (Riddle 27-8) After all, menstruation could end for all kinds of reasons and Galenic medical theory emphasized the need to restore the natural flows of a blocked body (Terpstra 86). Yet this gray zone only Nonetheless, it is true that this spatial metaphor quickly comes to designate biological connection, as “of the 263 same house” does in English so does “casata” (family lineage) in Italian. To be fair, from a moral and theological standpoint, it was never as simple as “no soul, no sin.” The historian 264 Nicholas Terpstra explains, “preachers, theologians, and churchmen never accepted this simple correspondence and aimed to close what laymen might take as a loophole. The scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas argued that terminating any pregnancy was still ‘a serious sin,’ even if only the removal of an animated fetus was murder” (89). Additionally, as the early modern period progressed, the toleration of abortion waned, possibly due to decreasing theological tolerance or political motivations to promote population growth. For instance, the ordinances of Bamberg 1507 ruled that any woman who brings an abortion on herself is guilty of a crime and to be severely punished, even if it was not equivalent to homicide (Riddle 126-7). The Catholic Church also aimed to close the abortion loophole. The Catholic theologian Paul Laymann (1574-1635) asserted that “one who took or gave something ‘maliciously’ to prevent contraception or ensoulment (what we would call early-term abortifacients) ‘commits not a true but a quasi-homicide and sins mortally’” (Riddle 162). Moreover, arts related to birth control or abortion became associated with witchcraft: “Women who knew the herbs of healing were candidates for accusations of sorcery and witchcraft. Those who practiced midwifery were especially vulnerable because they knew poisons that controlled fertility and could cause harm” (Riddle 137). What information was available was somewhat hidden in Herbals (i.e. manuals). !207 further supports the point that signification matters over biological fact and how one refers to this fetus becomes all the more important. At this point, technically a month too late, a person 265 should judge this woman pregnant, and terminating this pregnancy would be deemed not only immoral but also murderous. Referring to the fetus as “a chunk of unborn flesh,” however, rhetorically permits the abortion. The performative utterance creates a loophole. Ligurio’s description thus exposes that the hunk of flesh only matters on account of its signification. Lucrezia then is the last to agree to the scheme due to her belief in the importance of God’s warrant and a body’s inherent worth, especially the worth of her chaste body in God’s eyes. The biblical bed trick emphasizes the import of virtuous bodies and bloodlines; and yet Lucrezia appears to recognize that even if those around her cite this tradition, she would compromise her own virtuous body by participating in it. Other characters claim that her deep desire for children should promote a favorable attitude towards this plan. Nicia tells Siro, “E non è dire che la non abbi caro di fare figliuoli, che la ne ha più pensiero di me” [“And one shouldn’t say that it isn’t dear to her to have children, and she has thought of them more than me”] (2.5, 85). Yet Nicia is hardly a trustworthy source, and he likely projects his own desire onto his 266 wife just as he has imposed it upon everyone else around him. Lucrezia may want a child, but she never explicitly says so. She does, on the other hand, plainly express reticence about the moral compromises involved in the means of begetting this child. When speaking to her mother and Fra Timoteo about the scheme, she exclaims, Ligurio’s timing, describing the woman as four months pregnant, is either a mistake, or it might be too late on 265 purpose! The prevailing theory was that the fetus was “ensouled” approximately 40-90 days after conception (Terpstra 88). My translation here is more literal than that of Giannetti and Ruggiero. 266 !208 di avere a sottomettere el mio corpo a questo vituperio, ad essere cagione che un uomo muoia per vituperarmi; che io non crederrei, se io fussi sola rimasa nel mondo, e da me avessi resurgere l’umana natura, che mi fussi simile partito concesso. (3.10) To give up my body to this dishonor and to cause the death of the man who dishonored me — even if I were the last woman and earth and it fell to me to start the human race all over again. I don’t think I would be allowed to do it. (96) Here, Lucrezia explicitly questions the logical inconsistency that characterizes the biblical bed trick, at least as it would be applied in this case. Namely, a bloodline’s import is deemed so important that it warrants a bed trick, yet it requires the compromise of a woman’s chastity that God has deemed equally morally valuable. Even in the case that God has divinely sanctioned this bedding as God did for Lot’s daughters in order to repopulate the world — preserving maybe the most important of all bloodlines, that of the human race — the possibility of bodily dishonor renders its morality suspect. Lucrezia twice emphasizes her belief that this compromise would 267 be a bodily one and consequently, deeply personal: first to submit “mio corpo” (my body) and again “vituperarmi” (to vituperate/shame me). To submit her body is no small thing if, according to God’s design, her bodily virtue is equivalent to her soul’s virtue. Fra Timoteo seeks to change Lucrezia’s mind and solve this conundrum by revising the biblical bed trick so as to disregard bloodlines and to divorce the soul from the body. The biblical bed trick is recast as a way to procure not a specific child or bloodline, but instead a soul for God. This revision is revolutionary for it evacuates the biblical bed trick of its central message: God’s investment in bodies and blood. Yet Fra Timoteo ignores the bed trick’s original purpose because it suits his own purposes to do so — having already taken money from Ligurio in return In a more conventional reading of the bed trick’s divine sanction, Michelle Osherow explains the Lot story as 267 follows, “while the elder daughter’s acts are despicable, her motives are good. Her son becomes the forebearer of kings” (162). !209 for his participation in the scheme to persuade Lucrezia. Instead, the friar will emphasize God’s blessing for the sake of a child, though seemingly any child would do. As he explains to Lucrezia, the good of her child is a soul for God: [“che voi ingraviderete aquisterete una anima a Messer Domeneddio” [“you will become pregnant and gain a soul for God Our Father”] (3.11, 97). Or, in the Friar’s mind, Lucrezia has two “ends” that should motivate her to acquiesce. He expounds, “il fine si ha riguardare in tutte le cose. Il fine vostro è di riempire una sedia in paradiso, accontentare vostro marito” [“one must consider the end of every action: your goal is to fill a seat in paradise and to satisfy your husband”] (3.11, 97). Although the soul of the child matters, the body that houses that soul may not. Both of these ends simply require an ass to fill a seat, and this Lucrezia can accomplish by bedding a person other than her husband. As Mera J. Flaumenthaft suggests, the conclusion functions as a kind of parody of the holy family, only with Callimaco instead of God acting as the father (54). And thus even the ultimate bed trick, the conception of Christ, is not immune to society’s pragmatism. The biblical bed trick is subjected to rhetorical manipulation, and, furthermore, evacuating the import of blood’s substance renders the entire ideology hollow. Lucrezia’s compromise of her bodily integrity, however, is not easily won. She likewise does not seem particularly happy about this pragmatic change in worldview, although her thoughts and motives are notoriously difficult to unpack. Those scholars who imagine that Lucrezia willingly embraces this new state of affairs based on the “signore, padrone, guida” [“lord, master, guide”] speech (5.4, 113) should remember that this speech is recounted second-hand by Callimaco, a less than reliable narrator who is incredibly interested in hearing !210 precisely these words from Lucrezia in order to satisfy his own ego. Richard Andrews has 268 gone so far as to suggest that “Machiavelli is not actually very interested in what Lucrezia thinks or feels about the transformation that she undergoes” (25-6). And he further claims, I do not think that any real attention is paid to the possibility that a Lucrezia in real life, as opposed to a stage Lucrezia, might actually feel a personal repugnance and outrage at the rape which is effectively practiced on her. The principal significance of her moral collapse is the dishonour done to her husband and to patriarchal values. (26) Yet it seems to me that patriarchy, though one devoid of a biological foundation, is precisely what is being upheld. And Lucrezia, by contrast, is now deprived of the only thing over which she had some measure of control, namely her body. As Melissa Walter notes, by staging Callimaco’s entrance to Lucrezia’s room, and her body, this play “can model in physical space the abstract issue of individual integrity. The room provides an intermediate, concrete model for the problems of bodily and personal integrity and interpenetration that are at stake in these dramas of national and personal identity” (68). Thus to obtain a better sense of Lucrezia’s feelings to this compromise of her integrity, one should examine her only appearance onstage post-coitus (5.5). Nicia, after complaining that Lucrezia seems a little testy, marks his surprise since the previous night she seemed “mezza morta” [“half dead”]; to this she responds, “È la vostra cortesia” [“That’s thanks to you”] (5.5, 114). One might say that part of Lucrezia did die, the chaste body containing only her blood and her husband’s. Or alternatively, the part of her died which believed that her bodily honor meant something. Fra Timoteo upon greeting her, Maristella de Panizza Lorch, for example, views Lucrezia’s concession as a willing choice to embrace sensual 268 enjoyment so long as it’s in the service of procreation (256-6). Guido Ruggiero, in a similar vein, credits Callimaco with convincing Lucrezia to bed him. Ruggiero suggests that, though we don’t witness them, Callimaco must have been very convincing (152). But I’d first like to trouble the assumption that we can trust Callimaco’s word for what we as the audience have not witnessed. Moreover, it would seem that Lucrezia’s presence in the bed in the first place means that she has already conceded to this scheme and whatever “convincing” that Callimaco employs is of minimal import. !211 wishes, “che Dio vi dia a fare un bello figliuolo maschio!” [“may God grant you a handsome son!”] (5.6, 114). The Friar’s blessing appears to be the only thing that disagreeable Lucrezia agrees to that morning, marked by her reply “Dio el voglia!” [“God willing!”] (5.6, 114). The child, supposedly conceived by God’s decree, is the only thing to which all parties agree. Lucrezia finally concedes, citing (though maybe ironically) God’s blessing, even though, like Boccaccio’s Giletta, she has no real assurance that this is true and a strong suspicion that it isn’t. Lucrezia’s concession might be explained by, in addition to the Friar’s counsel, Sostrata’s lesson that it is always possible for a person to return to social a-signification, losing the status of personhood. Sostrata urges, “Non vedi tu che una donna, che non ha figliuoli, non ha casa? Muorsi el marito, resta com’una bestia abandonata da ognuno” [“Don’t you understand that a woman who doesn’t have children doesn’t have a secure home? If her husband dies, she is left like an animal, abandoned by everyone”] (3.11, 97). Sostrata’s reality-check operates on two levels. On a superficial level, Sostrata highlights the harsh reality for a woman who doesn’t produce children. But beneath that, her description of the transformation from woman to 269 animal elucidates something more, namely that “ognuno” (“everyone”) surrounding a person is what determines his/her status as human, as something other than animal. Reminiscent of Nicia’s earlier comment about the barking dog, Sostrata implies that without this social recognition, a person is nothing more than a beast, and the nature of said beast now does not matter any more than does the chunk of unborn flesh. This reasoning, in conjunction with Fra Timoteo’s promise of absolution, is the last scene prior to Lucrezia’s acquiescence to the bed trick scheme. It seems Salvatore di Maria agrees that Sostrata’s role in convincing Lucrezia is about her concern for her daughter’s 269 well-being, not moral shortcomings or her colorful past, as well as a kind of pragmatism (“Machiavelli On Stage” 185-6). Yael Manes alternatively reads this moment as Sostrata’s demonstration of virtù because she dismisses conventional virtue, looking to practical effects and taking advantage of the occasion. Moreover, Sostrata is the one that Lucrezia finally listens to (21-3). !212 then that this might be the final key to her acceptance: the realization that her bodily integrity will not matter if she is cast out, and her society fails to recognize this chaste body. La Mandragola’s scheme to impregnate Lucrezia effectively evacuates the biblical bed trick of its justification; the body of the heir and his blood should matter to sanction this deception, although here consanguinity clearly makes no difference and the child serves a functional role. The body is simply a locus for this signification in a world wherein appearances, not a biology of God’s design, ultimately dictate one’s place. Lucrezia’s conservative belief that her bodily integrity/chastity dictates her honor, independent of rhetoric or social recognition, has no place in this world. La Mandragola thus disturbs blood’s ideology and its purported divine backing. It exposes that the socio-political status quo of “Firenze vostra” [“your Florence”] has a faulty premise, thereby undermining the social groups who depend upon a vocabulary of consanguinity to both establish and maintain social power (Prologue, 73). The morally 270 questionable characters of La Mandragola’s Florence acknowledge the fluid and rhetorical value of this discourse in the maintenance of social boundaries. Yet the evidence of some reticence on Lucrezia’s part highlights a complicated stance towards blood’s ideology. As for Corneille’s Chimène, blood’s conservative ideology — in this case, the bodily foundation of chastity — holds for Lucrezia meaning and agency albeit in a rather limited way: power over her own body. In light of this new, pragmatic, and fundamentally rhetorical world, Lucrezia is seemingly forced I am by no means the first to view this play in terms of a socio-political critique of nobility and hereditary power, 270 see especially Jospeh Francese. Moreover, as Kirsten Inglis suggests, this play is “at once Machiavelli’s satire of the very ideals of virtuous leadership he had optimistically hoped to inspire in Lorenzo de Medici with Il Principe, and as political satire — as a scathing denunciation of a political system in which the foolish and corrupt become rich and powerful by virtue of their birth rather than their wits while true political thinkers are relegated to positions as base functionaries” (28). Yet, I believe that this play isn’t only a critique of hereditary nobility and power structures (or as I would term them, blood logics), but it additionally exposes that inheritance/biology beneath this structure is baseless, for nobility doesn’t actually function in this way. !213 to relinquish this autonomy. Although her motives (unlike Helena’s) are clearly ambiguous, I remain unconvinced that Lucrezia’s acceptance is a happy one, even if the young lover Callimaco may be some recompense. Regardless of Lucrezia’s wishes, she ultimately submits to society’s reality, namely the status of herself (her honor) and her children as socially signified, entirely divorced from blood. Justifying the Bed Trick and Blood Exchanged in the Dark Both Shakespeare’s All’ s Well That Ends Well and Machiavelli’s La Mandragola allude to this biblical bed trick in order to question its moral, namely that it is blood’s intrinsic worth that determines worthy persons. These plays expose that blood has neither the worth nor the agency ascribed to it; blood neither determines affinity or character (as with All’ s Well), nor the parameters/coherence of the family unit in society (as in the Mandragola). Instead, as Shakespeare implies and Machiavelli asserts, the biblical bed trick tradition is simply another tool in a rhetorical arsenal used to accomplish desired ends: an exit strategy for Bertram, a consummated marriage for Helena, sex for Callimaco, and a child and social recognition for Nicia. And if love and worth are not biologically determined and these features are rather socially signified, then this was clearly not of God’s design as Tamar’s story would indicate. In short, the biblical bed trick by upholding of blood’s worth had a great deal of use value for the early modern elite. And these playwrights in tarnishing blood’s ideology undermine the elite’s foundation for the preservation of class hierarchies; furthermore, they leave God’s endorsement of this system open to question and skepticism. This skepticism then might allow for a better, alternative system of social organization that doesn’t naturalize, and render permanent, differences and distinctions. !214 And yet, though rejecting blood discourses would appear to benefit both heroines — upon considering the emotional status of the heroines seriously and the plays’ push towards pathos — the playwrights’ stance towards this ideology becomes more complicated. Exposing blood as rhetorical would serve both heroines in the long run. In the case of All’ s Well, it would deprive Bertram of an excuse to object to Helena’s love, for they would no longer be materially incompatible. And for La Mandragola’s Lucrezia, it would alleviate generally oppressive strictures of female conduct. Yet All’ s Well’s uncomfortable, unromantic close implies that Helena has realized the sad, disappointing truth about her invocation of blood, namely that it did not work to establish the love that this system promised. Helena may be misguided, but it is nonetheless unfortunate that she, in spite of all existing social barriers, found a way to satisfy her desires within the given ideology, only to be disappointed. Similarly, though Lucrezia might benefit from the bed trick scheme, affording her both a young lover and a child, La Mandragola encourages the audience to feel profoundly uneasy about a society that coerces Lucrezia, without regard for her own feelings about the loss of her honor. After all, if she accepts that her bodily integrity does not matter, she renounces the little agency that she once had in this context if nowhere else. Women, it seems, are collateral damage of both blood’s ideology and, potentially, the new system that would replace it. Both Shakespeare and Machiavelli intimate not only the difficulty of relinquishing older vocabularies of blood, as we see with the Countess and King of All’ s Well, but also the problems and losses for those disenfranchised who nevertheless found a degree of meaning in an otherwise oppressive social system. Blood’s rhetorical status, although true, doesn’t benefit Helena or Lucrezia in the world of these plays. Thinking otherwise is not only difficult but might warrant attentive re-thinking.   !215 Chapter 4: Problematic Jessica, Love of Dissimilarity in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice “There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory, more between your bloods than there is between red wine and Rhenish.” — Salarino (3.1.35-8) 271 Out of context, Salarino’s infamous comparison could easily be taken to refer to Lorenzo and Jessica, two “star-crossed” lovers by dint of their material incompatibility. But of course, Salarino’s contentious comment refers to Shylock’s purported bodily difference from his daughter Jessica, which he believes substantiates their divergent characters. In his mind, despite their consanguinity, only a material difference could explain why Jessica has not inherited her father Shylock’s temperament and (stereotypically) Jewish traits. This proclamation is more or less metaphorical since these more obvious physical differences stand in for a physiological difference that one cannot see. Namely, the text gives no indication other than this quote that there is a visible difference between Shylock and Jessica’s complexions, and we can safely 272 assume that their bloods would not resemble white and red wines respectively if spilt upon the stage. And yet what Salarino’s exclamation implies is that in order for blood’s ideology to function as they believe it does — i.e., in order for Jessica to be a woman worthy of Lorenzo’s love and for their coupling to make sense according to the principle that ‘like likes like’ — Jessica must be different from Shylock in order to be sufficiently like Lorenzo. Salarino’s proclamation asserts, and in some respects produces, this distinction. But this exchange betrays the ultimately rhetorical function of blood’s ideology, and, moreover, calls our attention to A.R. Braunmuller in the Complete Pelican Shakespeare opts to maintain three distinct characters (Salarino, 271 Solanio, and Salerio) following M.M. Mahood’s edition, rather than combine Salarino and Salerio as is often customary. I have decided to keep the three characters as well because it provides a nice foil for my argument. Namely, Jessica’s uniqueness and individuality stands out even more in contrast with these minor Christian characters who can be, and clearly have been, so easily conflated. It’s possible to stage this difference as a visible and racial one in casting these parts. But this is probably not a 272 choice made very often, and in my mind, with good reason since Salarino’s statement seems more rhetorical than anything else. !216 Jessica as a problematic figure, a cipher with which to approach the talk of blood throughout the play. This chapter is a slight departure from those before it, for Merchant addresses blood as 273 it relates to religious or ethnic difference rather than family legacy or social class. No doubt, the comparison between Jewishness and social class — both of which are (supposedly) embodied in blood — is particularly salient since both are invisible but are nonetheless affirmed as biological differences. As Janet Adelman and others have noted, Jews were presumed to be visually 274 distinct (darker skin, curly hair, big noses), but of course, the Fourth Lateran Council demanded markers in clothing precisely because bodily markers were insufficient and unstable. Moreover, this invisible difference, in some sense, permits blood’s ideology to function in the first place. It permits the nobility to assert biological difference and distinction from the hoi polloi despite the fact that there exists no visual component or mechanism by which to prove that difference. This invisibility also permits one to claim a bodily transformation upon becoming one flesh; one spouse becomes like the other as bloods mix despite the fact that there is no accompanying perceptible change, which benefits both Helena and Jessica who claim just such a transformation. Thus in the case of both Jewishness and social class, blood’s ideology naturalized and maintained differences otherwise unmarked, and then propagated these distinctions via endogamous practices. Additionally, just as the early modern elite would have been anxious to delineate and control access to their social position in a new money market, so For one, this chapter is not comparative and thus I have chosen to set aside source material. There is a possible 273 Italian novella source for this play’s Jessica-Lorenzo plot, Masuccio di Salerno’s Il Novellino (1476) that is available in Bullough’s Narrative and Dramatic Sources for Shakespeare, but no dramatic companions of interest in this case. I’m choosing to set aside visible racial difference that was also conceived of as difference in blood in the period. 274 As I mentioned in the introduction, Jean Feerick’s Strangers in Blood is a wonderful resource on this issue. !217 too would this anxiety apply to Jewish communities who would, according to most measures, carry an enormous amount of social power. Hence, although Jessica’s Jewishness is what 275 motivates blood’s discourse in the play, Merchant is of interest for this project because this issue activates more general concerns around blood’s ideology. In this case, does love (both romantic and familial) only accommodate likeness as this system to which the characters subscribe suggests? Can like only truly like its like, or could one love in difference? And might this different brand of love be preferable? As Frank Whigham says in reference to the pairing of Portia and Bassanio, “Carefully restricted social and sexual intercourse played major roles in this ideology of harmony, which presented itself as a natural model of reciprocal interaction” (115). Blood’s ideology — a 276 naturalized model for dictating affinity between persons thereby encouraging endogamy — contributes to this picture of harmony and stability by perpetuating likeness over difference and (potentially) discord. For example, the Prince of Morrocco appeals to this logic in an effort to Certainly, Shylock’s characterization might be one way to vilify a Jew who became too big for his britches. In 275 Merchant especially, these bodily differences have very little to do with religion and everything to do with money and status. Both main plots are, after all, set in motion by Shylock’s loan to Antonio, a loan predicated upon Shylock’s difference. Shylock’s body dictates his inability to own property and therefore loans with interest to make money. Furthermore, flesh and money are seemingly translatable: Shylock conflates his daughter with his ducats; Portia’s body and her dowry are similarly confused; and the promise of Antonio’s flesh can be deemed as collateral for a loan. As René Girard maintains, “Human flesh and money in Venice are constantly exchanged for one another. People are turned into objects of financial speculation. Mankind has become a commodity, and exchange value like any other” (92). And Karen Newman puts the point as follows, “The commercial language to describe love relationships common in Elizabethan love poetry and in The Merchant of Venice displays not only the economic determinants of marriage in Elizabethan society, but England’s economic climate more generally — its developing capitalist economy characterized by the growth and expansion of urban centers, particularly London” (23). Lastly, as Thomas Moisan importantly notes, Lancelot’s discussion of the rising price of pork demonstrates that “godliness and riches are linked, that Christianity and the economic interests of the commonwealth are in harmony” (203). Frank Whigham glosses the whole play in light of performing status and belonging, thus highlighting that these 276 aristocratic and religious discourses are not only similar, but are functionally the same: “The Merchant of Venice anatomizes this social rhetoric through parallel focuses of inclusion and exclusion. As style reveals relation with one’s equals and discrimination from one’s inferiors, so the plot enacts these concepts in linear fashion. The marriage plot chronicles Bassanio’s courtship and assimilation into the elite; the trial plot depicts Shylock’s critical invasion of their preserve of power. These actions are parallel, because each focuses on the promulgation of instrumental style, culminates in an interpretive trial, and results in the clarification of social identity” (94). !218 woo Portia by proving their similarity. The Prince petitions her, “And let us make incision for your love. / To prove whose blood is reddest, his [a competitor’s] or mine” (2.1.6-7). Morocco believes that blood is the means to prove his worthiness of Portia’s love. Morocco’s citation disregards his difference in complexion by presenting an alternative material that would authenticate his similitude and thus his worth, namely a nobility of blood. Morocco’s appeal 277 fails, but Shakespeare’s Merchant also presents an alternative to this vocabulary. Merchant critiques blood’s ideology by first exposing its mechanism to the audience and then proffering an alternative, albeit potentially disruptive, way of thinking. First, like some of the plays in earlier chapters, it invites the viewer to see this ideology’s rhetorical nature, since nearly all of the characters cite differences in blood towards conflicting ends, and none with much success. Second, the play invites us to further question the principle of affinity by staging the romantic relationship between Jessica and Lorenzo, which evidently does not function according to the logic of likeness. And in this respect, Merchant offers one of the greatest critiques of this logic thus far; it entertains a love that falls outside of blood’s ideology, one based in difference that can potentially disrupt the status quo. For in light of blood’s ideology, how does one explain the love between Lorenzo and Jessica? Lorenzo should, by all accounts, dislike the Jewish, alien Jessica. And in general, As Lawrence Normand notes, the Prince of Morrocco “invokes the human body as a place where certain 277 disputed questions can be tested and decided” (55). Frank Whigham provides an interesting alternative gloss of Portia’s rejection of the Prince of Morocco, wherein she finds him offputting due to his outdated mode of performing worth: “The action of Morocco opens with his statement of defiant insecurity regarding his skin color. He dresses in white, and declares his blood is as red as that of any blond’s, asserting inner virtue over outward defect. He converts his color into a virtue by assimilating it to fierceness […]. His imagery of martial exploit and confrontation is in the style of early Elizabethan rant, which is ineffective with this young sophisticate. The world of physical action and martial valor, the natural violence of the she-bear and the lion, are all unwelcome in Belmont, legitimate only as figurative language” (98). !219 Jessica’s character has proven to be extremely problematic for critics. Jessica is a seemingly 278 superfluous addition to Shakespeare’s narrative source, her status as a foil for Portia is also a 279 contentious one, and, finally, she often strikes audiences as simply unlikeable. Moreover, if 280 281 Shylock’s character and Jewishness remains problematic, this especially applies to Jessica and 282 the question of whether or not she can convert to Christianity. Much like the characters onstage, critics are split in their opinion of Jessica’s Jewishness. One camp sees Jessica’s conversion as The difficulty of assimilating Jessica is, interestingly, mimicked by her name, which is thought to have been the 278 first use in English. Nominally, she is the first of her kind. There is no daughter in either of the commonly cited sources for Merchant: Il Pecorone or The Ballad of 279 Geruntus. Rather, Jessica’s predecessor is likely Abigail from Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (Drakakis 145-6); for an extended comparison of Jessica and Abigail, see Maurice Charney and Joan Holmer. Beatrice D. Brown cites literary predecessors in popular tales from medieval exempla of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. And as John Hale reminds us, “Jessica, to my mind, is Shakespeare’s largest and most significant addition to the Bondholder’s role. It is worth mentioning that she has seven scenes, her father five. She shares only one scene with him” (191). In fact, her role more closely resembles the “quintessential attributes of heroines in romance comedy — male disguise, giggling about it, participation in a masque, abandoning family for a lover” (Hale 191). And yet many productions elect to omit a great number of Jessica’s scenes. Most famously Sigurd Burkhardt, insists that Jessica and Lorenzo offer a perfect counterpoint to Portia and 280 Bassanio, creating an effect of chiaroscuro: “Their love is lawless, financed by theft and engineered through a gross breach of trust. […] They are spendthrift rather than liberal, thoughtless squanderers of stolen substance; they are aimless, drifting by chance from Venice to Genoa to Belmont. […] Where ever we look, the Jessica-Lorenzo affair appears as an inversion of true, bonded love” (253). John Drakakis believes that Jessica’s character takes on some of the negative aspects of the mercantile marriage contract that would otherwise be applied to Portia (157). Nicoleta Cinpoeș, however, draws a close comparison between the heroines: “Despite their outward obedience, both women display a degree of agency (albeit subversive) which, I suggest, manifests precisely in their theatrical and financial initiative (or risk) both in defrauding their fathers and in deviating from their wifely part” (142). For more Portia criticism, especially pertaining to her role in the homoerotic relationship between Antonio and Bassanio, see Lawrence Hyman, David Shalkwyk, Karen Newman, and Lars Engle. For more discussion of the casket test, see Harry Berger. For more on Portia and the trial scene, see Rebecca Lemon and Sigurd Burkhardt. Camille Slights presents this as the key issue because Jessica’s conversion and Christian ethics cannot fully 281 justify her immoral actions. Furthermore, one cannot deny the pathos of Shylock’s moment of anguish over the loss of Leah’s ring (359-60). Even if one can find evidence to counteract accusations of greed and frivolity, “she is undeniably disloyal” (364). Although in an effort to salvage her character, Slights insists that Jessica is “a character who elicits the audience’s good will and yet disturbs it with moral doubts. The design of the play directs us to be glad that Jessica loves rather than hates, to approve her decision to reject her father’s values and to ally herself through Lorenzo with those of Portia, but to regret the pain and loss that accompany her choices” (360). I’m purposefully setting aside Shylock and the “Jewish question” criticism by and large, for Jessica’s 282 “Jewishness” here is the impetus for asking a different question about the workings of blood’s ideology. Thus the demonization or rescue of Shylock’s characteristic Jewishness is too much to take on here. See James Shapiro, Lawrence Normand, Kenneth Gross, Jerome Friedman, and Bernard Glassman. !220 successful, either insisting on her similarity to the Christians, or suggesting that because she is 283 a woman she is capable of conversion unlike her father. The other party maintains that her 284 status as a Jew lingers in her blood, activating all kinds of anxieties about the English, 285 Christian subject. 286 Kim Hall, for instance, buys into the “like likes like” logic of blood’s ideology, maintaining that the fact that 283 Jessica loves a Christian means that she cannot possibly share her father’s blood. Joan Holmer claims that Jessica’s successful conversion to Christianity foreshadows the promise of the second coming: “The higher value of the spirit permits Jessica and Lorenzo to transcend through intermarriage the boundaries of the flesh (tribe and nation), whereas Shylock would insist on those boundaries, preferring for Jessica’s husband a native son […] over loving an alien like Lorenzo” (124). Irene Middleton notes that most productions of the play favor this gloss of Jessica’s character whereby she is always already Christian, having these traits prior to her conversion and elopement (298). According to scholars like Mary Metzger, early moderns held that Jessica could convert while Shylock cannot 284 because his body carries visible marks of Jewishness, i.e., his circumcision. Moreover, Jessica can easily be incorporated because she can take her husband’s name, and thus be socially integrated into Christian society (59). Lindsey Kaplan suggests that Jessica’s bodily conversion is successful in an Aristotelian framework wherein women are not only more pliable, inferior, and passive, but also Jessica’s body would not contaminate Lorenzo’s Christian bloodline for his future children. Kaplan asserts that Jessica “offers the example of a successful convert, one who accepts the superiority of Christian culture in her dual act of conversion and marriage. In contrast to her father, who troubles Christian difference and superiority, Jessica will not threaten or challenge the Christian community. Jessica’s mother, her antecedent in medieval constructions of Jews, provides the solution to early modern England’s problem of imagining a successful conversion of the Jews” (30). Brett Hirsch claims that despite linguistic attempts to make Jessica alike, these attempts are unsuccessful: 285 “whether on the scaffold, stage, or page, the sincere conversion and successful assimilation of all Jews in the early modern English imagination was ultimately treated with suspicion or as a joke, regardless of whether they were male or female, father or daughter” (“Counterfeit”). James Shapiro says of Jessica’s character: “Lorenzo’s exchange with Jessica […] raises the possibility that the obedient and converted Jewess who had to disobey one man and one set of religious principles to embrace another might revert to her true Jewish nature” (159). Janet Adelman insists upon Jessica’s persistent, bodily Jewishness as it activates Christian anxieties about their Jewish heritage, saying, “Even as she herself would convert to Christianity, then, Jessica’s name carries the potential reminder that the fleshly lineage of Jesus comes from his Jewish mother. But if the Jewish womb is the bearer of the Jewish lineage that must authenticate Jesus’s status as the Messiah, it is also the symbolic repository of the fleshy remains that should be left behind; and this double valence reiterates the double valence of Judaism within Christianity” (69). Similarly for Michelle Ephraim, “the Christians disparage Jessica’s Judaic origin precisely because of an underlying anxiety about its value: the alleged goal is for her to share their rejection of Judaism, and yet the play suggests too that Jessica stands for that which they cannot definitively ascertain and possess. As signifier of the womb that is the Judaic and the origin of the Christian self, the Jewish mother underscores the Jewish daughter’s symbolic role in revealing the Christian essence of God’s Word to her audience as well as her ability to deceive with her body, and thus, to also expose this interpretive mastery as merely theatrical illusion” (135). For instance, as Janet Adelman suggests, “the relation between the Christian and the Jew in Merchant turns 286 crucially on blood: on the Jewish blood lineage of Christianity, on Jessica’s inability to rid herself of her father’s blood, and […] the spectacle of the Jewish convert to Christianity requires desperate remedies of a proto-racism and contradictory desire that the Jew continue at all costs to play that bloody role assigned to him by the Christian” (37). Kim Hall argues that Merchant attends to England’s anxiety about national identity being contaminated on account of foreign difference: a “Christian fear of being consumed by a guest/alien who has been allowed into the home/ country. Economic exchanges with an outsider like Shylock open up Venice to sexual and commercial intercourse with strangers; this breach brings with it the threat of economic upheaval and foreign invasion. Social activities such as eating and marriage resonate because of the already permeable borders of the Venetian economy” (95). !221 Both critical camps are at least partly correct. As we have seen throughout with drama’s exploration of other limit cases, Shakespeare’s Merchant exposes blood as fundamentally rhetorical, invoked by opposing sides around the issue of Jessica’s ambiguous identity for competing ends. Lorenzo, Gratiano, Salarino, and Solanio talk of her remarkably similar body to their own, especially complexion and blood, to provide proof that she was already Christian-like. And this similarity explains Lorenzo’s attraction to her. Others’ insist on Jessica’s continued bodily difference and consanguineous connection to her father; these include Shylock, Launcelot, and in certain instances Lorenzo. Lastly, Jessica herself appeals to the logic of unitas carnis (much like Helena in All’ s Well) in order to sever her blood’s connection with her Jewish father and thus become a fully Christian wife. Jessica hopes to determine her own affinity and identity via sexual consort. The play seems to underscore, however, that Jessica remains a problem. The vocabulary of blood’s ideology fails on all fronts since she cannot be absorbed into the existing network, for consanguinity does not in fact dictate affinities. This failure is especially the case 287 because, contrary to her desires, Jessica never becomes fully like her husband Lorenzo; the two are never fully in concord, never truly alike. Merchant thus highlights that the principle of unitas carnis fails to dissolve difference, though Jessica and Lorenzo nevertheless love one another. And if love exists between them, then it is a love not explained by the logic that love springs from likeness. Their love is rather grounded in difference. Like Salarino’s use of the wine metaphor with which this chapter began, several characters insist on Jessica’s physiological Christianity such that she would be sufficiently like Irene Middleton notes that this conflict over Jessica’s signification can either be played up or resolved in 287 costume choices, for instance in the “continuance of Jewish elements,” once she reaches Belmont (303-5). Similarly many productions choose to visually isolate Jessica from the action of Belmont in staging (Drakakis 145). !222 Lorenzo; and in so doing, they shore up this logic of blood’s ideology. As Janet Adelman puts it, “[Jessica] must be rhetorically constructed as fair by Lorenzo and the other Venetians in order to enable her gentile-fication and thus Lorenzo’s theft of her” (Blood Relations 83). These 288 characters emphasize her white skin or “fairness,” and gentility to insist that her body determined her virtuous (i.e., Christian) character. They thus declare that she is not only not a Jew, but also deserving of Lorenzo’s love. Or put differently, they insist that Jessica was always already Christian in order to explain Lorenzo’s affinity for her since, according to the “like likes like” logic, Lorenzo could not love her otherwise. As Elizabeth Spiller puts it, “Lorenzo believes that he can see inside Jessica for precisely the reasons and in precisely the terms that Morocco would see Portia inside the golden casket. Jessica’s fairness becomes the romance confirmation of her innately Christian soul” (154). Upon receiving Jessica’s letter, Lorenzo is the first to insist upon her whiteness and fairness as evidence of virtue: “I know the hand. In faith, ’tis a fair hand, / and whiter than the paper it writ on / Is the fair hand that writ” (2.4.12-14). The first “fair” presumably refers to Jessica’s penmanship meaning “attractive,” and the second designates the pallor of her skin, so pale that it “out-whites” paper. Lorenzo’s doubling of “fair” and the likely hyperbolic comparison of her skin to paper betray an insecurity or need to overcompensate, a Lindsey Kaplan suggests that this discussion of Jessica’s fairness, etc. suggests that if she is not already 288 Christian and not Shylock’s true flesh and blood in their minds, then it at least indicates a soul that is ready for conversion (4-5). !223 need to prove (or rhetorically fashion) her worthy by making the supposed similitude of her blood visible. 289 And the insistence on Jessica’s bodily similarity isn’t limited to fairness, for the characters speak more generally of her ethnic classification, her biological membership to Lorenzo’s group by dubbing her “gentle,” thus alluding to the jew/gentile distinction. Lorenzo sends Lancelot with the directive, “Tell gentle Jessica / I will not fail her.” (2.4.19-20). Gratiano too just prior to Jessica’s elopement exclaims, “Now by my hood, a gentle and no Jew!” thus prompting Lorenzo’s proclamation of love “Beshrew me but I love her heartily!” (2.6.51-2). In this moment, Lorenzo’s weak oath “Beshrew me but…” hints at Jessica’s difference, for the “but” indicates that the “I love her heartily” is in contrast to something else, presumably the antipathy that he should feel for a Jewish girl. This proclamation of love is, therefore, prompted by Gratiano’s assent to Jessica’s likeness. Or in other words, with Gratiano’s affirmation of Jessica’s acceptability — due to her membership in the group of “gentles” rather than Jews — Lorenzo feels licensed to express his love, for it is now appropriate. 290 Lindsey Kaplan assumes that this bodily difference is meant in earnest, namely that Jews were believed to have 289 darker skin but in Jessica’s case her fairness implies “the female convert’s willingness implicitly codes her as authentically Christian and white” (19). I instead believe that it speaks to an anxiety about bodily difference and a discursive over-compensation due to this anxiety. Nonetheless, the easy, ideologically conservative equivocation between pallor and virtue is likewise seen in Morocco’s failure of the casket test. As Lawrence Normand notes, “Morocco’s unsuccessful negotiation of the casket test results from his ideological orthodoxy, which holds that there should be a correspondence between the fairest lady and the fairest metal” (61). Elizabeth Spiller comments on the relationship of race to the genre of romance in general, and how the threat of miscegenation in Merchant comments on both: ““The rhetoric of appearance that typifies the romantic comedies is concerned primarily with genealogy: outer appearances manifest inner essence not just as a consequence of birth but through the act of birth itself. Yet, at the same time, the romantic comedies also suggest that ultimately all that matters in the social world is outer appearance. This established interaction between romance and comedy, between imagination and reality, changes when an account of race as visible difference produced through the imagination enters the generic dynamic in The Merchant of Venice” (145). For more discussion of race in The Merchant of Venice, see Kim Hall, Elizabeth Spiller, and Lynda E. Boose. Adelman likewise reads this moment as “a gentile and no Jew” which establishes, in her mind, an impossible 290 method of translation/conversion. She explains that even in Jessica’s attempt to become a Christian, she could never first be a gentile and thus could never be a Christian (75). !224 The declaration of Jessica’s likeness to uphold the logic of affinity based in similarity also takes the form of asserting the difference between her and Shylock. Here advocates employ a vocabulary of distinct species. Solanio comments upon the fact that Jessica must have had a temperament to prompt her running away: “And Shylock for his own part knew the bird was fledge, and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam” (3.1.26-8). The first gloss of Solanio’s metaphor depicts Jessica as a bird capable of flight, punning on her flight from Shylock’s home by pointing to a “complexion” or temperament that dictated this action. Yet this metaphor simultaneously reveals the vocabulary of species that often characterizes blood’s ideology. Jessica’s body is so different, so unlike her father, that this bodily difference dictated her leaving him to find others of her kind. Or to further Solanio’s pun, one might say “birds of a feather flock together.” Although he doesn’t use this vocabulary of species, Lorenzo too underlines Jessica’s temperamental difference from Shylock. After the elopement, Lorenzo rejects Jessica’s consanguinity with her father by refusing to refer to him as such; when later recounting their love story, Lorenzo simply says that she stole from “the wealthy Jew” (5.1.15). And he suggests that a temperamental difference from Shylock dictated her flight and her love for himself, continuing “And with unthrift love did run from Venice / As far as Belmont” (5.1.16-17). According to blood’s logic, Jessica’s love for Lorenzo is evidence that she did not inherit the trait of miserliness, stereotypical of jewry like her father. Otherwise stated, Jessica might not only be prodigal in her love for Lorenzo, giving too much, but this trait of prodigality makes it possible both for her to love him and for him to requite this love. Thus, in an effort to make sense of this otherwise inappropriate romantic match, this group of characters contend that Jessica must be !225 like them: fair, gentle, virtuous, and consequently Christian. For the alternative would be to acknowledge that this tenet of blood’s ideology doesn’t hold, or at least to admit that there must be exceptions to this law of nature. And by calling attention to the likewise ineffectual citation of this ideology by the opposing camp, Merchant invites the audience to entertain this alternative explanation, namely that love is not determined by likeness after all. Given Jessica and Shylock’s consanguinity, others will cite blood’s ideology — that shared blood should indicate shared character and affinity — to insist upon Jessica’s Jewishness and difference. Shylock especially continues to lay claim to Jessica in these terms after her flight, exclaiming “My own flesh and blood to rebel!” and “I say my daughter is my flesh and blood” (3.1.31, 34). The first exclamation expresses his surprise, for how could one’s own 291 flesh rebel against itself? If consanguinity dictates affinity and loyalty, how is Jessica’s rebellion even possible? And the fact that Shylock even has to question what should be an impossibility according to the laws of nature reveals its failure. Shylock’s second exclamation then is a protest that reflects his need to forcefully reassert their consanguinity with “I say,” a telling turn of phrase since it indicates a performative utterance. Shylock’s contention comes immediately prior to Salarino’s famous wine metaphor, and the phrase “I say,” though meant to be an intensifier, betrays the fundamentally rhetorical nature of both Shylock’s protest and Salarino’s retort. Ultimately, this is a fight over Jessica’s signification because no individual claim to bodily determinism on either side rings true. Jessica seemingly can’t be assimilated into either of these camps, Jewish or Christian. Interestingly, while “flesh and blood” always appear as a pair in Shylock’s speech with reference to 291 Jessica, he forgets that these bodily materials are inseparable when it comes to his bond with Antonio, an oversight that Portia uses to her advantage. !226 But it isn’t only Shylock who insists upon Jessica’s difference; despite all of the attempts to pronounce Jessica like the Christian Lorenzo, even after their marriage Jessica is different, distinct, and apart. For one, she is called the “infidel” upon her entrance to Belmont (3.2.218). Gratiano asks that Nerissa welcome this “stranger”: “Nerissa, cheer yond stranger, bid her welcome” (3.2.237). Notably, though also a newcomer to Belmont, Lorenzo doesn’t merit the label of stranger, only the “her,” Jessica. Additionally, there is no indication that Nerissa does welcome the stranger, either in a verbal response or a stage direction. Even in an attempt at integration, this gesture emphasizes Jessica’s difference and her special need of welcome or incorporation. Lorenzo too has difficulty completely divorcing Jessica from her familial line and thus ignoring or erasing her difference. Looking to highlight the contrast between Jessica and Shylock, Lorenzo simultaneously reasserts their consanguinity. He says of Shylock, If e’er the Jew her father come to heaven, It will be for his gentle daughter’s sake; And never dare misfortune cross her foot, Unless she do it under this excuse, That she is issue to a faithless Jew. (2.4.33-7) Shylock’s salvation or Jessica’s misfortune both hinge upon their consanguinity, a connection between them that cannot be undone. Jessica will always be “issue to a faithless Jew” regardless of either her initial merit or her conversion. Finally, Lancelot’s (potentially) humorous exchange with Jessica regarding her incapacity to be saved accentuates the anxiety surrounding her body’s persistent, intrinsic Jewishness. As Lancelot asserts, “the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children,” absenting a “bastard hope” that she is not Shylock’s daughter (3.5.1-2). Yet true to Galenic form, Jessica notes that not even this would be enough: “So the sins of my mother should be visited upon me” (3.5.11-12). !227 To this Lancelot responds, “Truly then, I fear you are damned both by father and mother. Thus when I shun Scylla your father, I fall into Charybdis your mother. Well you are gone both ways” (3.5.13-16). By virtue of consanguinity and the principle of commixtio sanguis (mixing 292 bloods in progeny), Jessica’s Jewishness cannot be escaped. Her only hope is that she can invoke this same principle to argue that her body can become like Lorenzo’s by marrying him. Like Helena of All’ s Well, Jessica hopes that marriage and its consummation (unitas carnis) could make her like Lorenzo and thus a Christian; and in making unlikes alike, marriage could subsequently divorce her blood from her father’s. Jessica insists during her exchange with Lancelot, “I shall be saved by my husband. He hath made me a Christian” (3.5.17-18). And despite his joke about Lorenzo’s culpability for the rising price of pork, Lancelot does not 293 explicitly deny Jessica’s claim, for it is based on the same logic as his Scylla and Charybdis metaphor. Jessica’s profession that she will assume Lorenzo’s blood, and thus his likeness, in 294 the act of marriage, is fundamentally no different than asserting her similarity with her parents also based in consanguinity. Jessica’s appeal to blood’s ideology to serve her own ends, seems no different (or less valid) than those who insist on her necessary similitude or her persistent difference. It just so happens that all of these appeals are based in a falsehood. Yet she insists that For an argument in favor of importing Galen’s assumptions about psychophysiology over Aristotle’s, see Brett 292 Hirsch’s “Counterfeit Professions.” Joan Holmer reads Lancelot’s comment quite differently. She believes that Jessica’s transformation sits squarely 293 in the spiritual realm rather than the material one. She glosses, “Lancelot’s literalistic humor about the rising price of pork comically perverts the value of conversion because he elevates the physical over the spiritual, esteeming flesh more than souls, as Jessica and Lorenzo do not” (129). When Lorenzo arrives on the scene shortly thereafter and Jessica relays the conversation, Lorenzo doesn’t 294 exactly contradict Lancelot or promise Jessica’s salvation. Instead, he simply retorts that Lancelot has himself gotten a Moor/Negro pregnant (3.5.33-5). !228 her love will make her different from her father, and, throughout the play, her love for Lorenzo emphasizes this act of separation or escape. 295 Jessica’s love, in fact, foregrounds Lorenzo’s difference in conjunction with her desire to sever herself from Shylock, seemingly both in space and in body. She first envisions her elopement as an end to her imprisonment, an escape from Shylock’s “house of hell” (2.3.2). Lorenzo also reports that as part of her love letter, “She hath directed / How I shall take her from her father’s house”(2.4.29-30). Lancelot’s rhyme too — coyly hinting at the elopement to 296 come behind Shylock’s back — succinctly glosses Jessica’s attraction to Lorenzo: “There will come a Christian by / Will be worth a Jewès eye” (2.5.41-2). Jessica’s attraction and Lorenzo’s 297 worth is explained by this difference, namely his status as a Christian and not a Jew. As Adelman remarks, Though [Jessica’s] escape from her father’s house to her lover fits conveniently into the conventions of a romance plot, her speech is not of love-longings of a typical romance heroine: Lorenzo is invoked not as the solution to the problem of Jessica’s erotic desire but as the solution to the problem of being her father’s daughter. (71) For, after sending Lancelot away with the letter for Lorenzo, Jessica does not pine away for her love as we would expect in this moment. She instead speaks of her father, their problematic consanguinity, and her hope to foster a new connection: Alack what heinous sin is it in me To be ashamed to be my father’s child. Whether this means that Jessica doesn’t love Lorenzo is unclear. I certainly would not commit myself to that 295 claim, but the play could be convincingly staged this way, and certainly many scholars hold this viewpoint. One might also note that the means of Jessica’s escape, her cross-dressing, also involves becoming “like” 296 Lancelot in gender, at least temporarily. While I wouldn’t want to read into this per se, this moment might call our attention to another pair who loves each other by virtue of likeness, Antonio and Bassanio. On this “queer marriage” in this play, see Arthur Little’s contribution to Shakesqueer. Lancelot’s rhyme could easily be played in a teasing manner, or alternatively with a kind of earnestness for 297 Jessica’s future well-being, since he previously deemed her a “sweet Jew” (2.3.11). !229 But though I am daughter to his blood, I am not to his manners. O Lorenzo, If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife, Become a Christian and thy loving wife. (2.3.16-21) Jessica’s monologue first acknowledges her own unnatural situation in light of blood’s ideology: feeling ashamed of her own father. In order to make sense of this unnatural occurrence, she further aims to distinguish or divorce bodies/blood from actions/manners, namely greed and anti- sociability. While she maintains that her consanguinity does not determine her character, in her mind the mechanism for this detachment is also naturalized. The “strife” of her unnatural situation, her body and character out of sync, will be corrected by becoming a “loving wife.” And though never explicitly stated, becoming a “loving wife” hints at both copulation and its result, mixing bloods with her new husband. Jessica reiterates this hope for physiological separation from her father just prior to her elopement: “Farewell, — and if my fortune not be crost, / I have a father, you a daughter, lost” (2.5.55-6). Once she and Lorenzo are married, Jessica believes, she will be different enough from her father that these titles given to consanguineous relations need no longer apply. After her marriage then, in her report to Portia about Shylock’s intent to take Antonio’s pound of flesh, she distances herself from the Jewish people, calling them “his [Shylock’s] countrymen” (3.2.285). Having supposedly transformed in the process of unitas carnis, she is 298 no longer of that tribe. She is no longer a Jew, in her mind, and no longer need be ashamed of a material connection with Shylock. She is now like of her love as she believes it should be. Of Adelman reads Jessica’s report about the seriousness of Shylock’s threat similarly, “Jessica here attempts to 298 ingratiate herself into the company from which she is excluded not only by confirming their sense of her father’s bloodthirstiness but also by defining his ‘countrymen’ as specifically his, not hers — as though her conversion (however questionable in itself) could have the effect of changing her country along with her religion and thus could enable her inclusion as one of Bassanio’s countrymen after all” (74). !230 course, her appeals to blood’s ideology are equally as rhetorical as those of her opposition. Rejecting the label of “daughter” and disassociating herself from the Jewish “countrymen” are, after all, linguistic acts not material ones. Thus the varied and contradictory appeals to blood’s ideology throughout Shakespeare’s Merchant expose its fundamentally rhetorical nature; in the end, the discourse is too pliable and ceases to resemble biological truth. As a result, it fails to accommodate Jessica’s person into a network of like persons on either side of the divide. Yet the question still remains: if Jessica is not fully incorporated by Lorenzo’s Christian blood and is not sufficiently like him, then what explains their love if love is limited to the attraction of like persons? The coupling of Jessica and Lorenzo in Merchant invites us to consider the possibility of a love based on difference rather than similitude, evidenced in part by Jessica’s attraction outlined above. It is certainly plausible, as many scholars have suggested, that Lorenzo and Jessica don’t love one another. For 299 instance, as Gratiano remarks regarding Lorenzo’s tardiness for the elopement, “And it is marvel he outdwells his hour, / For lovers ever run before the clock” (2.6.3-4). It is also possible that Lorenzo is better suited to a woman more like himself. His exchanges with Portia, for example, Most critics’ skepticism pertains to the potential economic motivations for Lorenzo and Jessica’s elopement. As 299 Lawrence Hymen reminds us, “Nor should we forget how intimately this love affair is bound up with a more earthy gold than is found the the heavenly spheres. To see the play as a unified action is to realize that there is no clear separation between generous love and selfish love, between those who take and those who give, between the lead and the gold” (115). And as Brett Hirsch puts the point, “At best his love for her is cool – his friends even comment that he is late for his own elopement – at worst, he is no better than a thief who, like the rest of his fellow Venetians, tolerated the Jewish aliens only as long as their money was plentiful and in supply. After he and Jessica have eloped and married, Lorenzo – as well as the other Christians – no longer refers to her as ‘fair’, presumably either because her ‘fairness’ is now self-evident or, more plausibly, that the words have already served their purpose. For Lorenzo, women are ‘fair’ as long as they offer financial benefit: Portia and Nerissa are ‘fair ladies’ (V .1.294) when they deliver the deed of gift to him and Jessica” (“A Gentle” 128). Nicoleta Cinpoeș actively reads Jessica’s elopement as a double fraud and the relationship between the pair as “transaction-like,” though “Jessica is equally clear that her interest is in salvation by becoming a Christian(’s wife)” (141-2). !231 seem to be more transparently romantic. In general, the love between Lorenzo and Jessica 300 remains unclear because there are very few outright declarations of love between them. 301 Yet there is evidence to suggest that Lorenzo embraces Jessica’s difference, as she does his. His attraction to her is not an affinity for one like himself as the prevailing logic would dictate. Lorenzo explicates his love for Jessica as one of distinction: she is unlike anyone else, divorced from connections, having independent virtues revealed by her actions. He divulges to Gratiano, Beshrew me but I love her heartily! For she is wise, if I can judge her, And fair she is, if mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she hath proved herself; And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true, Shall she be placed in my constant soul. (2.6.52-7) As Irene Middleton remarks, this scene in performance is “played lightheartedly, encouraging the audience to see Jessica as — following the text — an acceptable object of desire for a young Christian, and — in sympathy with modern views — still Jewish” (301). Although what might appeal to the modern audience about this passage is not Jessica’s persistent Jewishness, but the fact that Lorenzo loves her individuality. True, Lorenzo’s pronouncements of Jessica’s virtues are For instance, when Portia asks him to safeguard her estate in the name of his love for her, he responds “Madam 300 with all my heart; / I shall obey you in all fair commands” (3.4.35-6). Or for example, when looking to bait Jessica for a compliment by praising himself, Lorenzo compares himself to Portia: “Even such a husband / Hast thou of me as she is for a wife” (3.5.76-7). Lorenzo and Portia seem ripe for comparison, seemingly more alike than the two lovers. As Irene Middleton notes, productions often look to emphasize the romance of Jessica and Lorenzo’s 301 relationship which “override the text’s suggestions of greed, scheming, and social advancement in favor of youthful rebellion, desirability, and love” (301). !232 contingent, “if” he can judge her and “if” his eyes have not deceived him. Yet despite the 302 hypotheticals, Lorenzo’s rhetoric firmly founds his love upon his own judgements and not on anyone else’s. Jessica’s true nature is based upon her actions, she hath “proved herself,” if not necessarily to anyone else, at least to him. Finally, he concludes (“and therefore”) that Jessica is not like anyone else but only “like herself,” to then be joined with his constant soul. Lorenzo’s love of Jessica’s uniqueness betrays a love of difference rather than similarity; and in accordance with that kind of love, it would be unfitting for that difference to dissolve, or for her to be perfectly assimilated upon their marriage. Lorenzo and Jessica’s unlikeness bears itself out in their interactions, both before and after their marriage. Clearly Jessica and Lorenzo stand in stark contrast to Portia and Bassanio, 303 who, even in disputes, are poetically in accord. For example, their debate about whether or not to delay the casket test involves one person picking up the trope or poetic phrase put down by the other. After Portia’s monologue asking Bassanio to “tarry,” their exchange goes as follows: Bassanio: Let me choose For as I am, I live upon the rack. Portia: Upon the rack, Bassanio! then confess What treason there is mingled with your love. Bassanio: None but that ugly treason of mistrust, Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love: Brett Hirsch reads Lorenzo’s profession of love for her as tainted since it is tempered extensively by conditional 302 statements (“Counterfeit”). Lawrence Dawson, by contrast, earnestly believes that Shakespeare has given us reason to believe in Lorenzo’s love for Jessica; he insists that there is not an issue with the conditional but rather “the constancy of Lorenzo’s soul is thus guaranteed by the virtuous features — wise, fair, and true — Jessica brings to it” (179). Frank Whigham explains that Bassanio’s success in wooing Portia is due to his demonstration of stylistic affinity 303 and thus a similarity in rank: “Bassanio’s choice of the leaden casket is the culmination of all the motifs suggested so far: by the demonstration of stylistic class affinities Bassanio wins marital bliss, a splendid fortune, and a solid class grounding. The scene is set with a series of allusions to artistic signs of harmony. They conduct a witty duet, cleverly playing variations on the Petrarchan theme of love torture, creating an effect not dissimilar to the sonnet spoken by Romeo and Juliet. As they test and reveal their verbal affinity, they establish social congruence and foreshadow a decorous love match” (100). !233 There may as well be amity and life 'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. Portia: Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak anything. Bassanio: Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. Portia: Well then, confess and live. (italics mine) Portia and Bassanio pick up one another’s expressions and even repeat key vocabulary, signaling that despite their quarrel they are of one mind. In yet another example, the heated disagreement over Bassanio’s loss of the ring has both of them creating quartets that “ring” together, for all four lines end in “ring” (5.1.193-7, 199-202). If in Portia and Bassanio’s relationship of the main plot the audience is invited to celebrate a love based in likeness, then Jessica and Lorenzo’s subplot asks us to imagine an alternative or otherwise, illustrated by the very different manner in which these lovers relate to one another. The lovers’ mode of communication, a kind of tit-for-tat banter, arises not from affinity or agreement but conflict. Their love might, in fact, spring from this tension between opposites, made evident in their language of teasing questions, contradictions, and refusals to play the game according to the terms that the other has set. In their first exchange onstage, Jessica asks Lorenzo to confirm his identity, and when he identifies himself — “Lorenzo, and thy love” — she responds, “Lorenzo, certain, and my love indeed, / For who love I so much? And now who knows / But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours?” (2.6.28-31). Lorenzo first confirms his identity and then their love, which Jessica does in kind; but she follows this verification with a rather awkward, teasing set of rhetorical questions. Her question “for who love I so much?” could be glossed in two different ways. Is she asking about whom she loves, which she has seemingly already affirmed with the comment “indeed,” or does she ask for whom she loves? Is she in love !234 for Lorenzo’s sake or for her own? Her second rhetorical question about her belonging remains uncertain given this “whether,” especially if we take the line break to indicate a significant interruption. Jessica might ponder, for a long awkward pause on “who knows…” before recollecting herself to bring her attention back to “but you Lorenzo.” Lastly, Lorenzo’s response is not yes I do know you’re mine, but “Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art” (2.6.32). Both Jessica and Lorenzo in this exchange tease by withholding direct confirmation of love. And rather than perfect concord, neither fully play along with the terms of exchange set by their partner. Neither Jessica nor Lorenzo in this dialogue take the other’s bait as an opportunity to affirm their love but rather deflect, passing off the responsibility either to the other person — no one knows if I love you, but you — or to a higher power, “Heaven.” But this mode of discordant communication persists after their marriage, which poses a problem for Jessica’s logic: that she would become a “fully Christian wife” and thus like Lorenzo upon becoming one flesh and blood. And nowhere is this dissenting relationship more evident than in the “In such a night” dialogue of act five, scene one. One could view this moment as two lovers collectively composing a lyric. Like Romeo and Juliet’s sonnet construction at the masque, their “fittedness,” albeit of opposites, finds poetic reflection in the fact that they share lines as seen below: Jessica: In such a night Did Thisby fearfully o’ertip the dew, And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself, And ran dismayed away. Lorenzo: In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love To come again to Carthage. Jessica: In such a night … (5.1.6-12) !235 Sharing poetic lines indicates a certain agreement, especially visually. But it could likewise indicate a kind of brusque interruption on each lover’s part — one intrusion after another in this game of poetic exhibition. Moreover, in the selection of allusions, one assumes a kind of concord since both select tragic love stories. Yet Jessica’s selection emphasizes flight, while Lorenzo’s paints a scene of longing for return; as a result, even the content is discordant. This discord characterizes Jessica and Lorenzo’s banter in this scene, becoming a one-up-manship of wit as Jessica’s “I would outnight you” betrays (5.1.23). The critical interpretation of this scene, which struggles with the ambiguous status of Jessica and Lorenzo’s relationship, is quite polarizing. Many critics insist that the couple alludes to these love stories to mark their successful avoidance of the tragic outcomes. Others believe 304 that these allusions foreshadow a tragic ending for the mismatched, interfaith couple. Of the 305 latter opinion, Sigurd Burkhardt glosses the allusions from “In such a night” as follows, “what John Hale glosses, “The litany of lovers […] mentions instances of the tribulations of lovers, not because they 304 apply, but because they do not. Lorenzo and Jessica can warble (respectively) of the separation of Troilus and of Dido from their faithless lovers because they themselves are not separated, hence not thinking about betrayal either. When they bring themselves into the litany, they do a crossover, woman naming man and vice versa. Ovid is being appropriated for love-expression, not subpoenaed to help cast a blight. So these lovers are being authorized, as it were, to give us the play’s backward look at the strife now ended” (195). Joan Holmer claims that “these tragic endings may be better understood as ominously reflexive, suggesting what might have been when Jessica and Lorenzo describe that on just such a night some three months ago they hazarded their stealthy elopement. In such a night in Venice these present Christian lovers, unlike the past pagan lovers to whom they allude, escaped tragedy so that they now enjoy together such another night in Belmont” (130). Elizabeth Spiller likewise reads Jessica and Lorenzo as a successful cross-cultural marriage in contrast to the romances cited, which they revise: “Achieving the union that their antecedents could not sustain, Jessica and Lorenzo provide in some sense an alternative, happy ending to those other stories. They do so, however, not by transcending racial difference and its threat of otherness but by domesticating it, as their role as symbolic gatekeepers to Belmont suggests” (155). Lawrence Danson notes, “it is precisely the movement out of legend into the realm of living flesh and blood that averts the tragic […] when the artificial world of mythical lovers has melted into this present night when Jessica and Lorenzo, confident in each other’s love, can convert the language of shrewishness and slander into the word of forgiveness” (176-7). Janet Adelman insists that “their such-a-night threnody on doomed relationships (particularly exogamous 305 relationships) underscores the fragility of theirs” (76). Mary Metzger agrees, “the Jessica of act 5 may be read not as an alternative and fully integrated Jew but as a homeless figure that suggests the dangers of consummating a relationship across such differences. In this reading she becomes an emblem of postcoital regret” (59). And likewise David Goldstein says that this litany “challenges the very possibility of absorbing aliens within the body politic, and of equalizing power relations more broadly” (331). !236 we are given is the genealogy of fly-by-night love: betrayal (Troilus and Cressida), disaster (Pyramus and Thisbe), desertion (Dido and Aeneas), sorcery (Medea) and theft (Jessica)” (255). As Catherine Belsey works out, the already suspicious allusions are made even more so because the scene does not select from their tragic narratives moments of reciprocal happiness. On the contrary, Troilus is represented on the walls of Troy, sighing his soul towards the Greek camp and the absent Cressida. Thisbe is fearful and dismayed, Dido already deserted. Medea, gathering enchanted herbs, has not yet murdered her children in revenge for Jason’s infidelity, but the text hints at her demonic powers and begins her characterization as a witch. (42) But what seems most evident about “In such a night” is that all of the stories present beautiful visuals in the snapshots, if not reflecting particularly happy moments or particularly happy endings. Additionally, all of these stories capture couples that should not have loved for one reason or another, but loved nonetheless, thereby highlighting numerous counterexamples to the “like likes like” logic of blood and affinity. These stories may not have ended well, but the insistence that love is based in similitude cannot accommodate them either. Furthermore, Jessica and Lorenzo’s perpetual difference extends to different renditions of their own love story; consequently, what begins as light teasing turns into a more substantial disagreement since the two have conflicting narratives of their elopement. Lorenzo recounts the night as one of theft from a wealthy Jew, to which Jessica responds by accusing him of false 306 oaths of love: In such a night James Shapiro reads this moment in a negative light, highlighting Lorenzo’s anxiety about the possibility of 306 Jessica’s future treachery turned against himself, especially in light of the earlier allusion to Medea: “Even a cursory knowledge of the story of Medea would have enabled Elizabethan theatergoers to recognize that she was an emblem of a daughter who abandoned her father and her culture in marrying her husband (whom she would soon betray and abandon, after his own betrayal of her)” (158-9). !237 Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, Stealing her soul with many vows of faith And ne’er a true one. (5.1.17-20) In recalling the previous scene, the audience never witnessed these “vows of faith” so it is questionable whether or not they occurred; but it is telling of their dynamic that Jessica’s knee- jerk reaction is an accusatory one. Lorenzo, of course, replies in kind. He promises forgiveness in the present night for the sin of slander, of which he is accusing her in the same breath: “In such a night / Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, / Slander her love, and he forgave it her” (5.1.20-2). If Merchant offers a depiction of Lorenzo and Jessica’s love, these lines are 307 undoubtedly it: an image of two strong-willed people bickering while gazing at the shining moon only to be interrupted by “the footing of a man” (5.1.24). This alternative love is not contented concord, but born of discord. Lorenzo even expresses a certain willingness that they might not be incorporated into the larger community, as he suggests that they remain outside upon the group’s return to Belmont: “Let’s in, and there expect their coming. / And yet no matter: why should we go in?” (5.1.49-50). Or to rephrase Lorenzo’s question, why interrupt this moment? And yet even in this teasing, and possibly playful moment, there is no peace or perfect integration for the two lovers for Jessica remains distinct. At the conclusion of the “in such a night exchange,” Lorenzo recasts this moment as one of concord and peace. He launches into revery, How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here we will sit and let the sounds of music Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven … (5.1.54-8) Mary Metzger suggests, on the contrary, that this debate illustrates their own potential future tragedy. Lorenzo’s 307 reading emphasizes thieving and betrayal, while Jessica’s pertains to “the difficulty of establishing trust between persons of different religions, colors, classes, and especially genders that is played up in the rest of act 5” (60). !238 Lorenzo depicts this moment as one of togetherness and harmony, both looking at the moon and sky and listening to music while seated together. But the imperative, “sit, Jessica,” indicates that she did not initially accept his invitation to sit together in “we will sit” which, if she had done so, would reflect a shared will and mind — that which should have happened according to the principle of unitas carnis. But instead she resists, and one could easily stage her standing. Moreover her response, “I am never merry when I hear sweet music,” might indicate, as many scholars suggest, a real incompatibility (5.1.69). This incompatibility absolutely reflects the 308 lovers’ dissimilarity, but it does not necessarily dictate that they cannot love. In fact, maybe Jessica dislikes “sweet music” because she dislikes harmony; she might prefer the discordant flavor of her love with Lorenzo over one of perfect, though potentially more boring, concord. In short, it isn’t simply that they began unlike, she a Jew and he a Christian, and marriage must make them alike. Their dissimilarity endures, and so might an alternative, other form of love than that which blood’s ideology advocates. As Jessica remains apart and unassimilable by blood’s discourse cited throughout the play, Merchant critiques blood’s ideology by asking the audience to see its function as rhetoric, not fact, exposed as such by this unique case. Sharing blood, either by consanguinity or by marriage, does not determine agreement or harmony. Just as blood failed to dictate agreement or affinity with her father Shylock, so Jessica’s relationship with Lorenzo is no different when the marriage bond generates consanguinity. Furthermore, by staging a relationship wherein the lovers are continually at odds, Merchant presents a love that defies blood’s ideology, raising the Janet Adelman and Brett Hirsch go so far as to suggest Jessica’s continued Jewishness. They claim that Jessica’s 308 disposition isolates her from Belmont and aligns her temperament with that of Shylock earlier in the play, hearkening back to his own displeasure with mirth (2.5). !239 potential for disruptive (i.e., cross-cultural) romantic relations and, consequently, disruptive social relations. Blood’s ideology fails to determine affinity and thus fails to bestow Jessica with a proper place of belonging, which might have unfortunate consequences for Jessica. As many productions highlight, Jessica may be no less isolated in her relationship with Lorenzo than she was in her father Shylock’s house. Yet, a love unconnected to blood might also permit greater personal freedom and choice, which might result in disruption and discord, in this case, the dissolution of clear, “biological” boundaries. One caveat of course for this reading is that, Jessica and Lorenzo’s relationship occupies the place of a secondary (or even tertiary) plot. Portia and Bassanio are the play’s golden children; seemingly perfectly suited, their love involves no such disruption. The presence of Jessica and Lorenzo, however, draw attention to the fact that there is some difference between Portia and Bassanio too, for the “perfect” pairing from a socio-economic standpoint would be Antonio and Portia. Or, as queer criticism has noted, there could be more affinity (similarity of character) between Antonio and Bassanio. Consequently, the impact of social difference for Jessica and Lorenzo calls us to see how the dominant logic of Venice magnifies some differences while glossing over others in the interest of reproducing the status quo. Embracing a love found in difference, this alternative proffered by Jessica and Lorenzo, is obviously not an easy task. After all, this prospect ends quite poorly for Othello and Desdemona. The degree to which this alternative is tenable in the face of ideological pressures remains an open question. Jessica might be able to determine the object of her love and affection, her body might not dictate it for her, but even when proven false, blood’s ideology may continue to have a hold.   !240 Epilogue: When Blood Confounds Desired Distinctions …Strange is it that our bloods, Of color, weight, and heat, poured all together, Would quite confound distinction, yet stands off In differences so mighty. (King, AW, 2.3.117-20) I revisit the words of the King in All’ s Well That Ends Well as I conclude because they encapsulate the project of blood, or any discourse of bodily determinism. Society seems eager to find justification or grounds for the “differences so mighty,” namely social, economic, political, and religious differences. Yet grounding these differences in bodies may not be a project that provides answers; and, even if it provides answers, what are the motives of this pursuit? This dissertation has examined early modern drama of England, France, and Italy as a forum for interrogating beliefs about blood: blood as the material embodiment of individual character; as the marker of lineage, status, or worth; and as the material that, when sufficiently similar or shared (i.e. consanguinity), determines affine relations. These beliefs, stemming from all manner of disciplines and texts — philosophical, scientific, religious, advice manuals, political treatises, superstitions, and so forth — blend together to create what I have called an “ideology of blood,” namely a system of ideas that substantiated and perpetuated the elite’s claim to power. I have argued that by exploring certain limit cases for these assumptions, including blood feuds, incest, bed tricks, and interfaith love, these early modern plays demonstrate that blood merely provides an argument for a person’s character and social position rather than a biological determination. The metaphor of consanguinity likewise provides a useful trope to consider plays that were not likely in direct conversation with one another, but that are “related” because they interrogate a pan-European phenomenon using similar textual sources or tropes. !241 First, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid examine a romantic love that defies the premise of a blood feud. When the lovers belonging to two quarreling families should naturally hate one another but do not, they struggle to make sense of and satisfy their love within the confines of this ideological system, though their attempts are ultimately unsuccessful. Plots of sibling incest — including Giambattista Della Porta’s La Sorella, Thomas Middleton’s No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’ s, and John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’ s a Whore — take the notion that blood determines affinity to its logical, albeit uncomfortable, conclusion: if like likes like, then like should like its most like. These incest plays either expose that this logic, and the cri du sang, is false; or they play out that logic to expose its violent character such as taking literal possession of the beloved’s heart. Shakespeare’s All’ s Well That Ends Well and Niccolò Machiavelli’s La Mandragola both allude to the biblical bed trick, in which this deception is divinely sanctioned to perpetuate a given bloodline. Yet their allusions suggest that not only does blood not determine worth, but also that consanguinity (affected by exchanging blood in copulation, i.e. commixtio sanguis) doesn’t determine affection, be it romantic or familial. Finally, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice interrogates whether love is truly based in a similitude of blood by staging the love story of a Christian and a young jewess, whose distinctiveness is her main virtue and appeal. In these plays blood functions discursively, manipulated by the careful usage of rhetoric, as demonstrated by the characters onstage; and thus blood is not a physical diagnosis of one’s character as the science of the period claimed. Moreover, all of these works propose that this discourse should be subjected to scrutiny since it is an incredibly powerful one with adverse, and even violent, consequences. !242 Yet despite the gestures of critique in these plays, they also suggest that finding alternatives to the ideology of blood is an arduous task. The voices of marginalized groups, predictably women and non-elites, present views outside of this system. V oices from the margins ask whether blood truly determines a person’s nature, his/her allegiances, his/her love. The answer, quite simply, is no, it does not. However, finding an alternative vocabulary to society’s discourse of blood is both extremely difficult, and often ineffectual. An alternative discourse, for instance, may not fully satisfy Chimène who might take issue with marrying the man who killed her father, even if she isn’t directly implicated by sharing blood with his murderer. An alternative discourse certainly would not satisfy Helena, who without the claims of consanguinity through sexual congress would be left without recourse to win Bertram. And Lucrezia still finds herself manipulated by the norms around her even when her society abandons the notion that blood determines character or kinship. Jessica and Lorenzo might benefit, but as it stands, they continue to struggle even in the paradise of Belmont endowed with Shylock’s riches. Thus, the plays themselves appear to recognize that these critiques have a limited amount of power. Even if the contemporary audience judged these criticisms to be both justified and correct, would ideological changes always benefit those we judge to be most challenged and oppressed by the given social and political forces, or would there simply be new oppressive paradigms created in their place? Looking forward to our own time then, traces of this ideology of blood still exist in other problematic discourses. The supposed force of consanguinity or biological kinship continues to underwrite legislation regarding legal guardianship; for instance, a biological parent has a legal right to visitation except in extreme circumstances, and a child is often sent to live with a distant !243 relative upon a parent’s passing instead of a close family friend. Blood percentages are still used to determine tribal membership, and thus property rights, in Native American populations. Similarly, the connection between blood and religious/ethnic identity remains entrenched in the Jewish tradition. Membership in the Jewish community is determined by matrilineal bloodline, and conservative and orthodox conversion practices for men still involve blood (though I will spare you the gory details). Interestingly, this also plays out in cases of surrogacy; Jewish families looking for a surrogate require a Jewish woman since blood, and not solely genetic connection, plays a role in the religious identity of their future child. Blood feuds likewise find 309 a contemporary analog in the policy of “blood in blood out” for the Bloods’ gang; this policy is frighteningly literal as blood spillage is required for membership — either by taking a beating from current members or spilling a non-Blood’s blood — and membership can only be terminated with death, “blood out.” Furthermore, maxims like “blood is thicker than water” reflect the common belief that consanguinity prescribes special duties and affections. Although seemingly innocuous, this 310 assumption seems to presume that affinity has a material basis, and is reminiscent of the “like likes like” logic. Hence endogamy too, to some degree, continues to be valorized as a mechanism of social and cultural preservation, even if it has shed its explicitly biological component. There are some surrogacy agencies that are explicitly designed for this purpose. One such 309 organization, A Jewish Blessing, describes their mission in this way: “A Jewish Blessing's team is familiar with the many intricacies of Jewish Law, which can affect families seeking to fulfill their dreams of having a Jewish child.” Their outline their qualifications for surrogates as follows: “You may be a good candidate for Jewish intended parents if you are between the ages of 21 and 42 years, of Jewish lineage from your mother…” (http://www.ajewishblessing.com/). The history of this proverb is likely entrenched in blood’s ideology. The equivalent saying in German 310 first appeared in the medieval beast epic Reinhart Fuchs (Reynard the Fox) around 1180. By 1670, it appears in John Ray’s Collected Proverbs. !244 Western society may no longer view interracial, interfaith, or intercultural relationships as involving biological incompatibility, as it once did, but there is nevertheless real pressure to marry within one’s station, be it racial, religious, ethnic, regional, or socio-economic class. 311 While exogamous couplings like Jessica and Lorenzo seem to proffer the best potential for creating an “otherwise” — a world in which individuals love one another with little to no regard for these classifications — unfortunately “otherwise” has yet to arrive. Beyond blood specifically, contemporary science is still in the business of finding bodily markers, physiological reasons behind our “differences so mighty”: the human genome project. Our DNA, after all, might dictate a great deal about us: our predispositions to particular diseases, our raw intellectual capacities, our personalities as influenced by our hormones, and more. But with this knowledge, what kind of agency (deterministic capacity) do we want to afford the human body? How much meaning should we invest in the “answers” about ourselves and others that this technology provides? I, for one, would not wish to deny the validity of these scientific enterprises, but we might also take a cue from the early modern playwrights and bring a healthy amount of skepticism to the table, both considering the motives behind this search and carefully examining what we will do with the answers. Art might now, as it did then, provide the necessary space for imagining otherwise; a space in which the young girl, the servant, the clown can express something other than the status quo, be it in a wish, a question, or under the veil of humor. For in the search for distinctions and differences in bloods and persons one might forget something crucial, which the clown Lavatch Ralph Richard Banks’s book, Is Marriage for White People?, makes the argument that African 311 American women disproportionately feel these pressures, marrying within their race or remaining unmarried despite rising rates of interracial marriage. !245 demonstrates with his riddle that has a “bountiful answer.” Lavatch compares this “bountiful answer,” the one answer that will serve all questions, to a barber’s chair that will house any butt: “It is like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks — the pin buttock, the quatch buttock, the brawn buttock, or any buttock” (All’ s Well 2.2.16-18). The barber’s chair, where bloodletting was often performed, is theoretically a place that must attend to differences in persons based on the diverse qualities of their blood. 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Asset Metadata

Creator Weindling, Lauren B. (author)

Core Title Blood is the argument: discourses of blood, character, and affinity in early modern drama

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Comparative Literature

Publication Date 03/13/2019

Defense Date 03/03/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag affinity,Blood,Character,class,early modern drama,England,France,identity,Italy,Love,Marriage,OAI-PMH Harvest,Shakespeare

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor James, Heather (committee chair), Lemon, Rebecca (committee member), Rosenthal, Margaret (committee member), Szabari, Antonia (committee member)

Creator Email lbw91986@gmail.com,weindlin@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-349434

Unique identifier UC11256136

Identifier etd-WeindlingL-5138.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-349434 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-WeindlingL-5138.pdf

Dmrecord 349434

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Weindling, Lauren B.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA