Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Gaveston, Edward II, and Monty Python

Gaveston's initial soliloquies remind me a little of this Monty Python scene...

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

It all comes back to religion

It was really interesting to see how the story of the hog faced woman was treated and how it was framed. It did indeed have a sort of fairy tale quality about it (despite the less than happy ending) and it seemed to be treated as a curiosity for the sake of a curiosity. I found it in stark contrast to the monstrous baby pamphlets. In those, the monstrous birth is of course the subject of the pamphlet, but I found the focus was always on monstrous religion. Ultimately, the monstrous birth was just a means to single out and make a point of religious monstrosities of the time, particularly Catholicism and anti-Independents. And, more generally speaking, monstrous babies served as a curiosity of their own very rarely; they were almost always viewed as a sign of God's wrath towards the parents, England as a whole, humanity in general, etc., and never as just a strange happening.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Don't tease God...

... or else you'll be forced to wander the earth with a cross burnt into your forehead, telling of your fate. Or, more appropriately for our reading, you'll have a deformed twin growing out of your abdomen. Such seems to be the author's implications in "The two inseparable brothers." This ballad is set to "The wandering Jewes Chronicle," the story of the man who shouted at Christ while he was on the cross. The tale goes that this man is the "Wandering Jew" and is forced to wander the earth telling his story, and it is found in many forms throughout literature, such as Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and there are even connections to the famed ghost ship "The Flying Dutchman." Given the Renaissance view on monstrous births, it is almost certain that a conjoined twin, especially one so deformed, was viewed as a sign from God, mostly likely his wrath towards either the fully formed twin, the parents of the twins, or England as a whole. In this way, the fully formed twin would have been the Wandering Jew, the deformed twin the burning cross on his forehead, his burden to bear and story to tell. Both stories involve a man bearing the burden of sin in a physical manifestation, traveling and sharing his tale, his life serving as a warning against tempting the wrath of God. I found it very interesting the author created this subtle link simply by setting this ballad to the Wandering Jew tune, but perhaps it would have been a link more easily recognized by the original audience.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Ranters Monster

I'm amazed at how well crafted The Ranters Monster is as a work of anti-catholic propaganda. It opens with an account of Mary Adams and the terrible things she's done, and her blasphemy would surely have offended many of the original readers. Likewise, the following tales all relate individuals engaged in fornication, blasphemy, or otherwise offending God in general. However, the author, in the very end, includes almost as if it were an oversight "One thing I had almost omited[sic]..." the story of how Mary Adams was a Papist! It is as if the entire pamphlet were to set up a feeling of unrest and proper indignation toward heathen individuals, and then in the very end we find out that, gasp, Mary Adams' worst sin was that she doesn't support Independents! The way the author includes this as if it were an almost forgettable afterthought reinforces its strength - surely the author didn't "almost omit[sic]" this story, and even if (s)he had, the author wouldn't have so casually mentioned his or her near folly. Instead the author does a great job of utilizing language to develop a feeling of unrest, and then at the very end redirect the readers' outrage to a specific group, all while cleverly concealing his or her true intentions: from the start, this work was designed to smear Catholics, not to relate stories of monsters and strange happenings. In fact, it's interesting to see the progression the author creates in Mary Adams. She starts out devout, honest, and little by little falls away from "normal" Christianity as seen by the Renaissance. Eventually she joins varies sects, becomes very sexually promiscuous, and is eventually characterized as completely insane. Given modern knowledge of psychology, it is almost certain Mary Adams had some mental imbalance, but I doubt this would have been known in her own time - in the end, all of her strange and monstrous behavior is credited to her words against the Independents, and it seems pretty clear the author wants the reader to believe that her political/religious views were the sole cause for her insanity and blasphemy.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Alice

Maybe it's because I'm looking for it, but I've found a lot of stuff Marlowe and Shakespeare wrote to be pretty cunningly subversive to Renaissance norms, supporting pretty liberal and open minded philosophies that didn't seem to really exist, at least in any strength, until much later - mostly in the form of ironic or sarcastic caricature of minority groups such as Jews, Muslims, Turks, and women. And, even though Arden of Feversham doesn't have have an author attributed, I feel the same way about this work - especially since many attribute the play to Shakespeare. Alice is an interesting and engaging character much in the same way Matilda is in The Monk; even though she is "bad" and "evil," her character is cunning, complex, and very smart, able to think for herself and work independently for her own means. In this way she also reminds me a little of Tamburlaine.

I find myself not really caring that she has her husband killed so much as I find it interesting she believes that love transcends social class and that she is willingly to actively take steps to determine her love life, instead of letting it be passively dictated. The first point is interesting, as Arden condemns Mosby because he aspires to rise higher than he was born, but does so in a way reminiscent of how racial and religious other are lumped, insulting and degrading him in a way that reminds me of how Barbaras and Shylock are treated in the first acts of Jew of Malta and Merchant of Venice, respectively. Interestingly, while this play seems to intially be about an affair and lust and love, Arden and Mosby's conflict revolves around class - that's why Arden hates Mosby, moreso than because of the affair, and in the end when Arden is killed Mosby seeks revenge on insult rather than to woo Alice.

I think it's a contradiction in that women were viewed as the "oversexed" gender in the Renaissance period and yet the view is also that women were relatively passive in relationships during this period. And again, maybe it's because I'm looking for it, but there seems to be a lot of sexual references that vary between clever and blunt, and they all made me laugh a little (my favorite being "Why should he thrust his sickle in our corn...").

As usual, I'll end with my favorite use of language in the play. When Mosby defends himself to Arden, he says "Measure me what I am, not what I was." But he was a tailor, and he uses the term "measure," a pun I don't think I got the first time around but I think is hilarious.

Friday, March 6, 2009

What kind of hero is Tamburlaine?

Tamburlaine himself is a very round and complex character. My immediate reactions were that he was a proto-Byronic hero. Tamburlaine is the hero of the play, is suave and well worded, but there seemed to be something fatally flawed in his character, sort of a Manfred, but bent on the destruction of others rather than himself. After the first few scenes Tamburlaine appears in, he seemed to resemble an Old English hero – strong, conquering, well-worded and invincible, without any true opposition, loss, or weakness. Ultimately, though, I’ve decided Tamburlaine is an Antichrist figure. Tamburlaine resembles both the invincible Old English hero and the tragically, secretly flawed Byronic hero. Despite the fact that Tamburlaine is continually constructed as hero, he is evil, power hungry. In 2.7, Tamburlaine explains his power-lust with great eloquence, “Still climbing after knowledge infinite, … Until we reach the ripest fruit of all.” He is a true Renaissance overreaching hero, and his ambitions seem to go against God’s design – but he’s so damn persuasive that he seduces Zenocrate, his enemies, and even the Renaissance audience by using “white,” pure, frozen imagery to describe the beautiful (ex. Zenocrate), and thusly appealing to Marlowe’s audience. Tamburlaine calls himself the “scourge of God,” and lives a life that parallels but opposes that of Christ. They are both born of rural parents, Christ a carpenter and Tamburlaine a shepherd. I think the most compelling evidence for Tamburlaine as Antichrist involves his followers: Christ drew in disciples with promises of persecution, explaining that they would have to give up their worldly possessions; Tamburlaine, on the other hand, promises crowns, riches, and glory to those that would follow him. Even Zenocrate opposes Mary Magdalene, the former a princess Tamburlaine defiles, the latter a whore Christ figuratively turned into a princess. Tamburlaine even mimics the most contemporary example of an Antichrist. Hitler used the power of words to compel his followers and induce an entire nation into an anti-Semitic fervor, backing up strong words with a strong military presence – but his greatest power lied unmistakably in his charismatic ability to orate. Nevertheless, this all makes Tamburlaine an incredibly round, dynamic character that charms even a modern audience on at least some level.