Representations and negotiations: Texts, images, and authority in early modern England

Historical Journal

Volumn 42, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 853-881

  Sharpe, Kevin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 70450069165     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X99008675     Document Type: Review

References (236)

1. For one of the finest studies see J. H. Elliott, The revolt of the Catalans (Cambridge, 1963).
2. See too my 'Crown, parliament and locality: government and communication in early Stuart England', in Politics and ideas in early Stuart England (London, 1989), pp. 75-100.
3. Cited in Raymond Williams, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (London, 1976), p. 127.
4. See M. Foucault, The order of things (London, 1971);
5. M. Foucault, Discipline and punish (London, 1977).
6. L. Hunt, The family romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1992);
7. cf. J. Fleigelman, Prodigals and pilgrims: the American Revolution against patriarchal authority (Cambridge, 1982).
8. I am currently researching a.study of representations of authority and images of power in England, 1500-1700.
9. See my Reading revolutions: the politics of reading (forthcoming).
10. H. Love, Scribal publication in seventeenth century England (Oxford, 1993), p. 165.
11. See my 'Remapping early modern England', in Remapping early modern England (Cambridge, forthcoming), ch. 1.
12. For criticism of this emphasis on hegemony, see D. Shuger, Habits of thought in the English Renaissance: religion, politics and the dominant culture (Berkeley, 1990), especially introduction.
13. S. Greenblatt, Shakesperian negotiations (Berkeley, 1988).
14. See, for example, E. Freund, The return of the reader (London, 1987);
15. S. Suleiman and I. Crossman, eds., The reader in the text: essays on audience and reception (Princeton, 1980).
16. See, for example, J. Dollimore, Radical tragedy: religion, ideology and power in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Brighton, 1983);
17. J. Dollimore and A. Sinfield, eds., Political Shakespeare (Manchester, 1985).
18. Cf. J. Drakakis, ed., Alternative Shakespeares (London, 1985).
19. The most important of these is A. Patterson, Censorship and interpretation: the conditions of writing and reading in early modern England (Madison, WI, 1984).
20. J. H. Forse, Art imitates business: commercial and political influences in Elizabethan theatre (Bowling Green, OH, 1983);
21. W. Ingram, The business of playing: the beginnings of the adult professional theater in Elizabethan London (Ithaca, 1992);
22. D. Bruster, Drama and the market in the age of Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1992);
23. J. Haynes, The social relations of Jonson's theatre (Cambridge, 1992).
24. Forse, Art imitates business, p. 30.
25. Ibid., p. 16.
26. Bruster, Drama and the market, p. 1.
27. Forse, Art imitates business, p. 27.
28. Forse points out that Shakespeare made c. £289 from acting in the year 1610-1:, compared to £29 writing: 'he was an actor who invested in property and wrote some plays on the side'. Art imitates business, pp. 58-61.
29. On the argument that Shakespeare performed female roles, see ibid., ch. 3.
30. Ibid., ch. 2 and p. 232.
31. Ingram, The business of playing, pp. 68-70.
32. Forse, Art imitates business, p. 7.
33. Bruster, Drama and the market, p. xi.
34. Bruster quotes John Hall: 'Man in business is but a theatrical person, and in a manner but personates himself, ibid., p. 7.
35. Bruster explores in Elizabethan theatre the relationship, currently being discussed by critics of eighteenth-century England, between commodification and sex.
36. Haynes, The social relations of Jonson's theatre, pp. 5, 7-8. Haynes points out that former critics such as L. C. Knights suppressed these aspects of early modern theatre, not least as a consequence of their own 'feudal' sympathies and values.
37. Ibid., p. 12.
38. On Dekker and Deloney, see especially D. Margolies, Novel and society in Elizabethan England (London, 1985);
39. L. C. Stevenson, Praise and paradox: merchants and craftsmen in Elizabethan popular literature (Cambridge, 1984).
40. Stevenson, Praise and paradox, passim.
41. Haynes, Social relations of Jonson's theater.
42. Jonson, Bartholomew fair, 'The induction on the stage'.
43. Ingram, The business of playing, pp. 78-79.
44. Ibid., p. 84.
45. Ibid., p. 90.
46. Ibid., p. 80.
47. Ibid., ch. 3 passim.
48. Ibid., cf. 'Eddies of the Essex episode', in Forse, Art imitates business, ch. 9.
49. Ibid., pp. 33, 41.
50. W. Prynne, Histrio-mastix: the player's scourge; or actor's tragedy (1633), pp. 742-3.
51. University College, Lóndon, Ogden MSS, Bacon-Tottel collection 7/18 f. 153; on Drake, see my Reading revolutions.
52. D. Smith, R. Strier, and D. Bevington, eds., The theatrical city: culture, theatre and politics in London, 1576-1649 (Cambridge, 1995), sets out promisingly to study the 'dramatic aspects of politics' as well as the politics of theatre, but the first is inadequately treated.
53. Ibid., pp. 62, 66.
54. Linda Peck and Keith Lindley fail to historicize Marston and Massinger not least because they fail to consider the relation of play to world. See Theatrical city, pp. 117-32, 183-92.
55. M. Butler, 'The outsider as insider', in Smith, Strier, and Bevington, eds., Theatrical city, pp. 193-208.
56. See my 'Remapping early modern England', ch. 2.
57. Strier, 'From diagnosis to operation', in Smith, Strier, and Bevington, eds., Theatrical city, p. 233.
58. On the' theatricality of Strafford's trial and the pamphlet literature it engendered, see T. Kilburne and A. Milton, 'The public context of the trial and execution of Strafford', in J. Merritt, ed., The political world of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, 1621-1641 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 230-51.
59. D. Hirst, 'The drama of justice', in Smith, Strier, and Bevington, eds., Theatrical city, p. 247.
60. M. Grossman, 'The dissemination of the king', in Smith, Strier, and Bevington, eds., Theatrical city, pp. 261-2;
61. cf. K. Sharpe, '"So hard a text"? Images of Charles I, 1616-1689' (forthcoming).
62. J. Milton, Eikonoklastes, ed. M. H. Hughes (Complete prose works of John Milton, III, New Haven, 1962}, p. 406.
63. See K. Sharpe and S. Z wicker, eds., Politics of discourse: literature and history of seventeenth century England (Berkeley, 1987), introduction;
64. E. Miner, The Cavalier mode from Jonson to Cotton (Princeton, 1971).
65. See C. Brown, ed., The poems and masques of Aurelian Townshend (Reading, 1982);
66. J. Kerrigan, 'Thomas Carew', Proceedings of the British Academy, 74 (1988), pp. 311-50;
67. K. Sharpe, Criticism and compliment: the politics of literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, 1987);
68. T. Corns, 'The poetry of the Caroline court', Proceedings of the British Academy, 97 (1998), pp. 51-73;
69. T. Corns, ed., The Cambridge companion to English poetry, Donne to Marvell (Cambridge, 1993).
70. J. Loxley, Royalism and poetry in the English Civil Wars: the drawn sword (Houndmills, 1997).
71. See, for example, Coronae Carolinae quadratura (Oxford, 1636), where poets refer to royal births that 'do come so fast' and empathize: 'we feel her pangs' (pp. iv, AIV, 132).
72. Loxley, Royalism and poetry, pp. 32, 34.
73. T. Raylor, Cavaliers, clubs and literary culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and the Order of the Fancy (Newark, DE, 1994), quotation, p. 101.
74. Loxley, Royalism and poetry, p. 64.
75. Ibid., pp. 64-5;
76. M. Butler, 'Politics and the masque: Salmacida spolia' in T. Healy and J. Sawday, eds., Literature and the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 59-74.
77. Raylor, Cavaliers, clubs and literary culture, p. 166.
78. A true relation of his majesties reception and royal entertainment at Lincoln (1642).
79. Loxley, Royalism and poetry, p. 84.
80. l Ibid., p. 123.
81. T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge, 1991), p. 39;
82. Milton, Eikonoklastes, p. 339.
83. Loxley, Royalism and poetry, pp. 130-2;
84. The king's cabinet opened (1645, Thomason E293/28).
85. See also Joad Raymond, 'Popular representations of Charles I', in T. Corns, ed., The royal image: representations of Charles I (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 47-73.
86. Loxley, Royalism and poetry, pp. 141-5.
87. S Raylor, Cavaliers, clubs and literary culture, p. 186.
88. I suggested that this move posed problems in '"An image doting rabble": the failure of republican culture in seventeenth century England', in K. Sharpe and S. Zwicker, eds., Refiguring revolutions: aesthetics and politics from the English revolution to the romantic revolution (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 25-56.
89. Loxley, Royalism and poetry, pp. 181-2.
90. Raylor, Cavaliers, clubs and literary culture, ch. 11.
91. Loxley, Royalism and poetry, p. 234.
92. See J. Raymond, The invention of the newspaper: English newsbooks, 1641-1649 (Oxford, 1996);
93. Dagmar Freist, Governed by opinion: politics, religion and the dynamics of communication in Stuart London, 1637-1645 (London, 1997).
94. S. Achinstein, Milton and the revolutionary reader (Princeton, 1994).
95. See especially T. Corns, Uncloistered virtue: English political literature, 1640-1660 (Oxford, 1992);
96. N. Smith, Literature and revolution in England, 1640-1660 (London, 1994);
97. L. Potter, Secret rites and secret writing: royalist literature, 1641-1660 (Cambridge, 1989).
98. S. Zwicker, Lines of authority: politics and English literary culture, 1649-1689 (Ithaca, 1993).
99. Ibid., p. 69;
100. cf. D. Underdown, Revel, riot and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England, 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1985).
101. Zwicker, Lines of authority, pp. 88-9.
102. Ibid., p. 89.
103. See Boscabel: or the history of his majesties most miraculous preservation after the battle of Worcester (1660);
104. The royal oak (1660);
105. A. M. Broadly, The royal miracle (London, 1912);
106. W. Matthews, ed., Charles II's escape from Worcester: a collection of narratives assembled by Samuel Pepys (Berkeley, 1966). I shall pursue these texts in Representations of rule.
107. N. Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English tragicomedy, 1660-1671 (Cambridge, 1992).
108. Zwicker, Lines of authority, ch. 4;
109. see too J. Turner, One flesh: paradisal marriage and sexual relations in the age of Milton (Oxford, 1987).
110. P. Laslett, ed., John Locke: Two treatises of government (Cambridge, 1960);
111. R. Ashcraft, Revolutionary politics and Locke's Two treatises of government (Princeton, 1986);
112. J. P. Sommerville, ed., Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and other writings (Cambridge, 1991).
113. Zwicker, Lines of authority, p. 162.
114. See my 'Remapping early modem England'', ch. 1.
115. See my Reading revolutions, ch. 1.
116. J. Gauden, The love of truth and peace (1640, E204/10), p. 27;
117. R. Weil, '"If I did say so I lied": Elizabeth Cellier and the construction of credibility in the popish plot crisis', in S. Amussen and M. Kishlansky, eds., Political culture'and cultural politics in early modern England (Manchester, 1995), pp. 189-212.
118. See Sharpe and Zwicker, Politics of discourse, introduction.
119. See J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, commerce and history (Cambridge, 1985);
120. J. P. Kenyon, Revolution principles (Cambridge, 1977).
121. E. Hundert, 'Performing the passions in commercial society: Bernard Mandeville and the theatricality of eighteenth century thought', in Sharpe and Zwicker, eds., Refiguring revolutions, pp. 141-72.
122. See too Hundert, The Enlightenment's 'Fable': Bernard Mandeville and the discovery of society (Cambridge, 1984).
123. Hundert, 'Performing the passions', p. 170.
124. C. Condren, Satires, lies and politics: the case of Dr. Arbuthnot (Houndmills, 1997).
125. Ibid., p. 125.
126. See B. Cathcart, Were you still up for Portillo? (Harmondsworth, 1997), p. 15;
127. D. Draper, Blair's 100 days (London, 1997), pp. 19-22;
128. Guardian, 28 Sept. 1996 (I owe this reference to the kindness of Joan Tumblety).
129. P. Zagorin, Ways of lying (Cambridge MA, 1990).
130. R. Strong, The Tudor and Stuart monarchy: pageantry. Painting. Iconography Volume I Tudor; Volume II: Elizabethan; Volume III: Jacobean and Caroline (Woodbridge, 1995).
131. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy I, pp. 6, 10.
132. Ibid., pp. 17, 52.
133. See the woodcut from Thomas Cranmer's Catechism (1548), Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy I, plate 10.
134. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy II, p. xii.
135. Ibid., p. 15.
136. C. Haigh, Elizabeth I (Harlow, 1988), p. 148.
137. Ibid.; Strong, Tudor'and Stuart monarchy II, p. 5.
138. Ibid., p. 217.
139. Ibid., pp. 217-23.
140. Strong explains the politics by arguing 'each miniature was a personal vision of his sovereign by the possessor' (p. 236).
141. Ben Jonson said of popular perception of spectacle, 'no doubt but their grounded judgements did gaze, said it was fine and were satisfied'. C. H. Herford and P. Simpson, eds., The works of Ben Jonson (11 vols., Oxford, 1925-53), VII, p. 91.
142. J. M. Osborne, ed., The queen maiesties passage through the city of London, cited by Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy II, p. 44.
143. See also D. Bergeron, English civic pageantry, 1558-1642 (London, 1971).
144. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy II, p. 63;
145. cf. E. Ashmole, The history of the most noble order of the garter (1715).
146. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy II, p. 123.
147. See too D. Cressy, Bonfires and bells: national memory and the Protestant calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London, 1989), chs. 4, 8;
148. R. Hutton, The rise and fall of merry England: the ritual year, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 146-51, 186-7.
149. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy II, p. 141.
150. Such unargued assumptions underlie the widely read P. Zagorin, The court and the country (London, 1969);
151. P. Thomas, 'Two cultures? Court and country under Charles I', in C. Russell, ed., The origins of the English Civil War (London, I973);
152. R. Ashton, The English Civil War, 1603-1649 (London, 1978);
153. and L. Stone, The causes of the English Revolution (London, 1972).
154. I tried to refute these assumptions in Criticism and compliment, ch. 1;
155. see also J. Robertson, 'Caroline culture: bridging court and country?', History, 75 (1990), pp. 388-416.
156. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy III, p. 105.
157. Ibid., p. 105.
158. See G. Martin, 'The banqueting house ceiling: two newly discovered projects', Apollo (Feb. 1994). pp. 29-34.
159. James Robertson points out that in the Long Parliament, Sir Simonds D'Ewes had to ask who Jones was, 'Caroline culture', p. 392.
160. At Carisbrook Charles read Villalpando's account of the reconstruction of the Temple of Solomon in De Postrema Ezechielis prophetae visione (1605)
161. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy III, p. 152.
162. Ibid., p. 181.
163. Cf. my 'The royal image: a comment', in Corns, ed., The royal image, pp. 288-309.
164. Some even read this contestation into Comus; see D. Norbrook, 'The reformation of the masque', in D. Lindley, ed., The court masque (Manchester, 1984), pp. 94-110.
165. Strong, Tudor and Stuart monarchy III, p. 185.
166. E. Skerpan Wheeler, 'Eikon basilike and the rhetoric of self representation', in Corns, ed., The royal image.
167. R. Strong, 'Proceedings of a conference on British art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries', 21 Apr., 1965, typescript at Huntington Library.
168. M. Aston, The king's bedpost: reformation and iconography in a Tudor group portrait (Cambridge, 1994);
169. T. Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991).
170. See A. Griffiths, The print in Stuart Britain, 1603-1689 (London, 1998).
171. O. Millar, The age of Charles I (London, 1972);
172. O. Millar, Van Dyck in England (London, 1982);
173. O. Millar, Sir Peter Lely (London, 1978).
174. F. Haskell, 'Charles I's collection of pictures', in A. McGregor, ed., The late king's goods (Oxford, 1989);
175. S. Barnes and A. J. Wheelock, eds., Van Dyck (Washington, 1994).
176. J. Peacock, 'The politics of portraiture', in K. Sharpe and P. Lake, eds., Culture and politics in early Stuart England (Houndmills, 1994), pp. 199-228.
177. D. Howarth, ed. Art and patronage in the Caroline courts (Cambridge, 1993).
178. S. Foister, 'Foreigners at court: Holbein, Van Dyck and the Painter-Stainers Company', in Howarth, ed., Art and patronage, pp. 32-50, quotation p. 42.
179. R. Lightbown, 'Isaac Besner: sculptor to Charles I and his work for court patrons, c. 1624-1634', in Howarth, ed., Art and patronage, pp. 132-67.
180. D. Howarth, 'The politics of Inigo Jones', in Howarth, ed., Art and patronage, pp. 68-89;
181. this piece nicely complements J. Newman, 'Inigo Jones and the politics of architecture', in Sharpe and Lake, eds., Culture and politics, pp. 229-56.
182. J. Newman, 'Laudian literature and the interpretation of Caroline churches in London', in Howarth, ed., Art and patronage, pp. 164-88
183. quotations, pp. 177, 186.
184. G. Parry, 'The Great Picture of Lady Anne Clifford', in Howarth, ed., Art and patronage, pp. 202-19.
185. See B. Lewalski, Writing women in Jacobean England (Cambridge MA, 1993), ch. 5;
186. cf. M. E. Lamb, 'The agency of the split subject: Lady Anne Clifford and the uses of reading', English Literary Renaissance, 22 (1992), pp. 347-68.
187. V. Hart, Art and magic in the court of the Stuarts (1994), quotation, p. 3.
188. Ibid., p. 17.
189. Ibid., p. 34.
190. Ibid., p. 58.
191. Ibid., p. 190.
192. Ibid., p. 189.
193. See S. Achinstein, 'Milton and King Charles', in Corns, ed., The royal image, pp. 141-61.
194. J. Woodward, The theatre of death: the ritual management of royal funerals in Renaissance England (Woodbridge, 1997).
195. I41 Ibid., p. 11.
196. Ibid., p. 11.
197. Ibid., p. 36;
198. cf. Schoenfeldt, Prayer and power, ch. 5
199. and F. Heal, Hospitality in early modem England (Oxford, 1990).
200. Woodward, Theatre of death, p. 131
201. citing Weever, Ancient funeral monuments (1631), p. 41.
202. Woodward, Theatre of death, pp. 193-4.
203. Chamberlain, to Carleton, 14 May 1619, in N. M. M. Clure, ed., The Utters of John Chamberlain (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1939), 11, p. 237.
204. Ibid., 14 May 1625, 11, p. 616
205. Cromwell's funeral is also important, see The Commonwealth Mercury 18th-25th November 1658.
206. D. Howarth, Images of rule: art and politics in the English Renaissance, 1485-1649 (Houndmills, 1997);
207. R. Strong, Splendour at court: Renaissance spectacle and illusion (London, 1974).
208. Howarth, Images of rule, p. 7. Rubens does in fact appear in Gardiner's index.
209. Howarth, Images of rule, p. 116.
210. Ibid., pp. 166, 217.
211. See too R. Titler, Architecture and power: the town hall and the English urban community, c. 1500-1640 (Oxford, 1991), ch. 6.
212. Howarth, Images of rule, p. 13;
213. cf. the remarks in Sharpe and Zwicker, Refiguring revolutions, introduction.
214. T. K. Rabb, 'Play not politics: who really understood the symbolism of Renaissance Art?', Times Literary Supplement, 10 Nov. 1995, pp. 18-20.
215. T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge, 1991), ch. 16, pp. 111-15;
216. for the frontispiece, see M. Corbett and R. Lightbown, The comely frontispiece: the emblematic title page in England, 1550-1660 (London, 1979), pp. 220-9.
217. The OED cites a seventeenth-century definition of ambition as 'ardent...or inordinate desire to rise';
218. cf. A. D'Andrea, 'Aspiring minds: a Machiavellian motif from Marlowe to Milton', in B. Kunze and D. Brautigam, Court, country, and culture (Rochester NY, 1992), pp. 211-22.
219. For a fine recent discussion, see L. Marcus, The politics of mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, marvell and the defense of old holiday pastimes (Chicago, 1986).
220. For the controversy over the book of sports see Marcus, Politics of mirth, and K. Parker, The English sabbath (Cambridge, 1988).
221. See too E. Duffy, 'The godly and the multitude in Stuart England', Seventeenth Century, 1 (1986), pp. 31-55.
222. See W. Davenant, 'The author's preface to his... friend, Mr. Hobbes', in Sir W. Davenant, Gondibert: an heroick poem; éd. D. F. Gladish (Oxford, 1971)
223. and the discussion in Zwicker, Lines of authority, pp. 17-24.
224. On the large numbers of emblem books in England see P. Daly, The English emblem and the continental tradition (New York, 1988)
225. and M. Bath, Speaking pictures: English emblem books and Renaissance culture (London, 1994).
226. Above p. 870.
227. Watt, Cheap print;
228. M. Spufford, Small books and pleasant histories (London, 1981).
229. S. Anglo, Spectacle, pageantry and early Tudor policy (2nd, edn, London, 1997) preface;
230. Anglo, Images of Tudor kingship (Seaby, 1992).
231. See P. Griffiths, A. Fox, and S. Hindle, eds., The experience of authority in early modern England (Houndmills, 1996), introduction.
232. G. Walker, Persuasive fictions: faction, faith and political culture in the reign of Henry VIII (Aldershot, 1996), ch. 3. Walker share's some of Anglo's scepticism about an orchestrated and effective propaganda programme.
233. Forse, Art imitates business, pp. 33-42.
234. A classic study, of course, is Geoffrey Elton's Policy and police: the enforcement of the Reformation in the age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972).
235. S. Schama, 'The domestication of majesty: royal family portraiture, 1500-1800', in R. Rotbert and T. K. Rabb, eds., Art and history: images and their meaning (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 155-83, quotation, p. 183.
236. See T. Bowers, The politics of motherhood (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 35-89.