Sex, money, marriage, - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Sex, money, marriage, mothers, morality, and death

Thomas Middleton

(1580-1627)Slide2

1599

Microcynicon

: Six Snarling Satyres1600 The Ghost of Lucrece1604-6 Michaelmas Term1605 A Trick to Catch the Old One1605-6 Timon of Athens (with Shakespeare)1606 The Revenger’s Tragedy1609 The Two Gates of Salvation (treatise on Calvinism; rep. 1620 as The Marriage of the Old and New Testament)1611 The Roaring Girl (with Thomas Dekker) The Lady’s Tragedy 1613 A Chaste Maid in Cheapside The Triumphs of Truth1614 Masque of Cupids (lost; for the marriage of Robert Carr and Frances Howard)1616 The Witch1617 The Triumphs of Honour and Industry1620 Hengist, King of Kent1621 Women Beware Women1622 The Changeling (with William Rowley)1624 A Game at Chess

Selected Writings

(dates often uncertain)Slide3

[Lucre’s] Wife

I have a plot in my head, son;

i’faith, husband, to cross you. Sam Is it a tragedy plot, or a comedy plot, good mother?A Trick to Catch the Old One (2.1.347-9) (c. 1606; printed 1608) Slide4

Leantio

Honest wedlock

Is like a banqueting-house built in a garden, On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight To cast their modest odours; when base lust With all her powders, paintings, and best pride, Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.(WBW, 3.1.89-94)Slide5

Narrative parallels

Runaway marriages Forced marriages (attempted and actual) Failed attempts to lock women up Illicit sex leading to pregnancy Repentance and spiritual reawakening Abrupt change of tone and dramatic style at endSlide6

Structured around significant communal ceremonies and rites of passage

Chaste Maid

Celebrations for christening of Baby AllwitFirst attempted wedding of Moll and Touchwood JuniorOff-stage marriage of Tim Yellowhammer and the ‘Welsh gentlewoman’‘Funeral’ of Moll and Touchwood transformed into a weddingWomen Beware WomenAnnual solemn procession of the Duke, Cardinal and States of FlorenceDuke’s banquet for Bianca, including the display of Isabella to the Ward in song and danceProcession for the wedding of Bianca and the Duke, disrupted by the CardinalWedding masque transformed into mass slaughterSlide7

Groups of characters interlinked by sex and money with one acting as a linchpin

Sir Walter

WhorehoundFather to Mistress Allwit’s children; maintains the AllwitsRival suitor to Moll Yellowhammer with Touchwood JuniorBrings his Welsh ‘niece’ to marry off to Tim YellowhammerIs heir to the Kixes unless they have children (provided by Touchwood Senior)Believes he’s killed Touchwood Junior in a duelLiviaSister to Fabritio and Hippolito, aunt to Isabella, friend and collaborator with GuardianoBrings Bianca and the Mother to her house so the Duke can ‘seduce’ the formerArranges for her brother Hippolito to seduce her niece IsabellaPersuades Isabella that her interests will be served by marrying Guardiano’s WardSeduces LeantioArranges the final masqueSlide8

Touchwood J

. My knight, with a brace of footmen,

[aside] Is come, and brought his ewe-mutton to find A ram at London; I must hasten it, Or else pick a famine; her blood’s mine, And that’s the surest. Well, knight, that choice spoil Is only kept for me.(CM, 1.1.131-6)Leantio Canst thou forget[aside] The dear pains my love took? How it has watched Whole nights together, in all weathers for thee […] And then received thee from thy father’s window Into these arms at midnight; when we embraced As if we had been statues only made for’t […] And kissed as if our lips had grown together.(WBW, 3.2.248-50, 254-6, 258)Slide9

Yellowhammer

The very posy mocks me to my face:

‘Love that’s wise Blinds parents’ eyes!’ I thank your wisdom, sir, for blinding us; We have good hope to recover our sight shortly; In the meantime I will lock up this baggage As carefully as my gold: she shall see As little sun, if a close room or so Can keep her from the light on’t.(CM, 3.1.35-43)Leantio At the end of the dark parlour there’s a place So artificially contrived for a conveyance, No search could ever find it. When my father Kept in for manslaughter, it was his sanctuary. There will I lock my life’s best treasure up, Bianca.(WBW, 3.1.243-8)Slide10

Sir Walter

Why have you used me thus, unkind mistress?

Wherein have I deserved?Yellowhammer […] Tomorrow morn, As early as sunrise, we’ll have you joined.Moll O, bring me death tonight, love-pitying fates […]Sir Walter I never was so near my wish As this chance makes me: ere tomorrow noon I shall receive two thousand pound in gold And a sweet maidenhead worth forty.(CM, 4.4.31-2, 35-7, 48-51)Isabella By’r Lady, no misery surmounts a woman’s: Men buy their slaves, but women buy their masters.(WBW, 1.2.173-4)Slide11

‘Though the match may

seeme

meet in the parents eie, yet he may not force his childe thereto. […] I denie not that parents may vse all manner of faire meanes to moue their children to yeeld to that which they see good for them: but if they cannot moue them to yeeld, to referre the matter to God, and not against their childrens minds to force them. […] For the neerest bond of all is betwixt man and wife; […] man and wife must alwaies liue together: great reason therefore that at the first ioyning them together there be a mutuall liking of one another, lest euer after there be a perpetuall dislike.’William GougeOf Domesticall Duties (1622), sig. Oo2v‘Parents, destroy not your children by matching them to miserable riches.’William WhatelyA Care-Cloth: or a Treatise of the Cumbers and Troubles of Marriage (1624), sig. F5rSlide12

Angel (

turn’d

Diuell) Pride: by thee I fellWhen heere on earth I dwelt too’th pit of Hell:Yet spite of all thy Poysons, I am faireNow in Gods eyes, Women by me Beware.Women Beware WomenWomen, Beware WomenWomen, beware! Women!Slide13

‘Robert Car Earle of Somerset

And the

Ladie Frances his wife’Born Frances Howard, she was previously married to the Earl of Essex, whom she divorced for impotence after undergoing virginity tests; in 1616 pleaded guilty to causing her servant Anne Turner to poison Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London in 1613. The Somersets were imprisoned in the Tower until 1622.Slide14

George Villiers b. 1592

Knighted 1615

Viscount Buckingham 1616Earl of Buckingham 1617Marquis of Buckingham 1618Duke of Buckingham 1623Assassinated 1628Slide15

Frances Coke

c. 1601-1645

1617 m. Sir John Villiers, Viscount PurbeckSlide16

Joseph

Swetnam

, author of the pamphlet The arraignment of lewd, idle, froward, and unconstant women (1615), appears in this play as ‘Swetnam, alias Misogynos’; in the epilogue he is ‘muzzled, hal’d in by Women’ to express his repentance to the women in the audience.Misogynos.And Fortune, if thou be’ist a deity,Give me but opportunity that IMay all the follies of your sex declareThat henceforth men of women may beware.Swetnam the Woman-Hater, 1617-18Slide17

Duke Come, Bianca,

Of purpose sent into the world to show Perfection once in woman; I’ll believe Henceforward they have evr’y one a soul too, ’Gainst all the uncourteous opinions That man’s uncivil rudeness ever held of ’em.(WBW, 3.2.22-7)Slide18

Maudlin

Have you played over all your old lessons o’the virginals?

Moll Yes.Maudlin Yes, you are a dull maid alate, methinks you had need have somewhat to quicken your green sickness; do you weep? A husband. Had not such a piece of flesh been ordained, what had us wives been good for?(CM, 1.1.1-7) Mother Thy sight was never yet more precious to me; Welcome with all the affection of a mother, That comfort can express from natural love.(WBW, 1.1.1-3)Slide19

Vanessa Kirby as

Isabella, Harriet Walter as

Livia National Theatre, 2010Slide20

Penelope Wilton as

Livia

, Peter Guinness as Guardiano, Susan Engel as Mother/WidowRSC, 2006Slide21

Sure I think Thou know’st the way to please me. I affect A passionate pleading ’bove an easy yielding, But never pitied any – they deserved none – That will not pity me. I can command, Think upon that. (2.2.356-61)RSC, 2006Tim Pigott-Smith and Hayley AtwellSlide22

National Theatre, 2010Slide23

Duke

This swerves a little from the argument though: Look you, my lords! (5.2.124-5)Slide24

Livia

descends like Juno

IsabellaAnd after sighs, contrition’s truest odoursI offer to thy powerful deityThis precious incense […][The incense sends up a poisoned smoke.] ’Twill try your immortality ere ’t be long,I fear you’ll never get so nigh heaven again When you’re once down.Slide25

Artemisia Gentileschi

Danae

(1612)‘Throws flaming gold upon Isabella, who falls dead’Slide26

Sir Walter

O, how my offences wrestle with my repentance!

It hath scarce breath; Still my adulterous guilt hovers aloft, And with her black wings beats down all my prayers Ere they be half way up.(CM, 5.1.72-5)Hippolito Lust and forgetfulness has been among us And we are brought to nothing. […] man’s understanding Is riper at his fall than all his life-time.(WBW, 5.2.148-9, 154-5)Slide27

Cardinal

Sin, what thou art these ruins show too piteously.

Two kings on one throne cannot sit together,But one must needs down, for his title’s wrong;So where lust reigns, the prince cannot reign long.RSC, 2006