I haven’t posted
anything since January, despite my promise then to mend my lazy ways. At that
time, I had the excuse that I had been working two jobs, and that once things
calmed down at work in mid-April, I could hope to blog again. Well, things have
calmed down, but I find my issue now is simply lack of practice.
So to get back
into the swing of things, I offer the post below, which is simply a loosely organized
(and loosely written) set of observations on Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish
Tragedy (1592), which I just finished reading.
“All the world’s a stage”
My impression
while reading the play was that Kyd used the word “world” an awful lot in it,
and that therefore it must have some particular significance as an overarching
motif. However, his usages are various and I could not come up with a common
theme or trope running through them. I began to wonder whether there really
were so many instances, or whether I was just imagining it, so I did a count.
There are 18 instances of the word “world” in The Spanish Tragedy, not
including two instances of variants (more on these shortly). By way of
comparison, I counted 26 in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Now, Hamlet is
a significantly longer play, so a better comparison might be Marlowe’s Doctor
Faustus, in which “world” occurs 33 times (including one of the variants
found in Kyd). Overall then, it doesn’t seem like Kyd was necessarily overdoing
it.
My impression
of overuse might have come from Kyd’s tendency to clump instances together. For
instance, in Hieronimo’s opening soliloquy to Act III, scene ii, it appears
three times, two of them in one line (ll. 3 & 22):
O world, no world, but mass
of public wrongs,
*
* * *
Eyes, life, world, heavens, hell, night,
and day,
See, search, show, send some man, some
mean that may –
(The long
comma-separated list in this rhyming couplet, formed mostly of monosyllables, I
would normally find tedious, but here it does succeed in displaying Hieronimo’s
distracted state of mind and his disjointed thought processes, his son having
recently been murdered. The alliteration in the last line is particularly
effective.)
The sense of
repetition isn’t helped in one case by the fact that Kyd seems to have nodded a
bit, not realizing that the Duke of Castile plagiarizes a line spoken by
Lorenzo several lines earlier in the same scene:
“But for his satisfaction and the world’s”
(III.xiv.90, spoken by Lorenzo)
“And for the satisfaction of the world,”
(III.xiv.150, spoken by Castile)
Turning to Kyd’s
two variants of “world” I mentioned, we should pause to consider the etymology
of the word. It is Germanic. According to the OED, in Old High German the
prefix wer- referred to “man” and alt meant “old” or “aged”, much
as it does in modern German. The basic idea here is that the world and the
things in it exist in time; they age, they grow old. The German verb veralten
means to grow old, outdated, or obsolescent.
Now, the two
variants of “world” in Kyd, occur within the same speech. The first is
“worldling”. In Act III, scene xv, l. 18, Revenge says “Thus worldlings
ground, what they have dreamed, upon.”
I admit I love
this word and shall endeavor to use it whenever I can. But I particularly love
it in the sense in which the editor of my edition of The Spanish Tragedy
defines it: a worldling is simply a mortal. However, if you look up
“worldling” in the OED, you are told that the word refers to someone who
is devoted to earthly pleasures, and wholly immersed in the affairs of the
world. This is the sense that most dictionaries give it. The dictionaries are
not wrong, and the two senses are obviously not unrelated. The notion of the secular
– to switch from the Germanic to the Latinate – has this sense, of the mortal
realm within which runneth the writ of time.
However, I find
Kyd’s editor to be more on the mark here, wherever he got his definition. First,
there is the above etymology of “world” as that which exists in time and ages.
Second, there
is the occurrence of the second of Kyd’s variants of “world” a few lines down
in the same speech after the appearance of “worldling”: “For in unquiet,
quietness is feigned, / And slumbering is a common worldly wile” (ibid.
ll. 24-25). Now here, “worldly” could be taken in its OED sense, but it
is worth noting that the speech comes from Revenge. In The Spanish Tragedy,
most of the acts either begin or end with dialogue in the underworld between
Revenge and the ghost of Don Andrea, and these passages are particularly laden
with occurrences of “world”. Revenge and the dead Don Andrea both dwell in an eternal
realm, so when they speak of the world and make observations on its inhabitants,
they look upon it as that middle place where mortals temporarily (or temporally?)
dwell.
Third, the word
“worldling” also occurs in scene 13 of the B-text of Marlowe’s Doctor
Faustus. It is spoken by Mephastophilis, who refers to Faustus thus:
Fond worldling, now his heart-blood
dries with grief;
His conscience kills it, and his labouring
brain
Begets a world of idle fantasies…
Again, the word
“worldling” is being used by a distinctly other-worldly entity to
describe the inhabitants of the mortal world.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”
Another thing I
noticed as I read Kyd’s play was the use of legal terminology. It’s not so much
that there is a lot of it; it’s that it is anachronistic.
Actually no, not anachronistic; rather, anatopistic (i.e. not erring against
time but against place). What I mean is that the play is supposed to take place
at some undetermined time in Spain. But the legal references are peculiarly
English.
Take for
example the incident in Act III, scene iv, where Pedringano has just been
seized by the watch after killing Serberine. A speech by Lorenzo, at whose
bidding Pedringano committed the murder, contains these lines (ll. 65-66):
And though the Marshal-Sessions be today,
Bid him not doubt of his delivery.
Now, in one
sense, this is perfectly normal: Hieronimo is the Marshal of Spain, the
magistrate before whom Pedringano will appear. And the “Marshal sessions” would
presumably refer to a session of this magistrate’s court. The usage has an
English ring to it, but the underlying concept could also apply to Spain (for
all I know).
In England
there also existed a Marshal. As part of his duties, he acted as a magistrate
who oversaw criminal jurisdiction within what was called the “verge”. The verge
was defined as the area which at any given time lay 12 miles in any direction
from the King. For purposes of criminal jurisdiction, it was considered part of
the royal household, and the Marshal was an officer of said household. By Kyd’s
time, the verge came to mean the 12 miles around Whitehall, although the
Marshal’s court also travelled along with the royal household when the King moved
about the realm. From this was derived one of the names for the Marshal’s court:
the Court of the Verge. It was also called the Court of the Marshalsea (from
“marshalcy”). For present purposes, there are a couple of interesting things
about this court.
First, its
criminal jurisdiction was peculiar in that it did not deal with all crimes
committed within the verge (that would have made it effectively responsible for
all crime committed in London and Westminster). Rather, it was responsible for
administering justice – criminal and otherwise – between the servants of the
King’s household, “that they might not be drawn into other courts and their
service lost”. In this connection, we might note that the crime in question in
Kyd’s play was committed by a servant (Pedringano) of the King’s niece upon a
servant (Serberine) of the Viceroy of Portugal’s son, who was an honoured hostage
in the Spanish court. Although the servants weren’t directly servants of the
Spanish King, they were servants within the King’s household, which made
it a domestic matter and brought it within the verge and the Marshal’s
jurisdiction.
Second, the
Court of Marshalsea, and the notorious Marshalsea prison associated with it,
were located in Southwark, which also happened to be Elizabethan London’s
theatre district. The Spanish Tragedy’s first recorded performance took
place on February 23, 1592, acted by Lord Strange’s men at Philip Henslowe’s
Rose Theatre in Bankside (built 1587). No doubt, Thomas Kyd would be fairly
familiar with the nearby Marshalsea prison in Mermaid Court.
The prison
brings us to the second line of the quotation above, “Bid him not doubt of his
delivery”. In my opinion, “delivery” here probably had a rather technical meaning,
alluding to a “commission of gaol delivery” issued to royal justices by which they
were to empty the prisons by bringing the prisoners to trial. In other words,
Lorenzo would have been directing his messenger to tell Pedringano that he need
not fear languishing in prison much longer.
Now let us turn
from the criminal to the civil law. In Act III, scene xiii, Hieronimo, who has
the reputation of being a skilled and upright lawyer, is being petitioned by
three citizens to take on their cases. Before proceeding, it’s worth noting
that the very word “citizen” to label these minor characters was likely chosen
for the particular resonance it would have had for an Elizabethan theatre
audience. For them it would have meant specifically a citizen of London. As
such, it would have been a byword for a certain character-type: petty,
acquisitive, small-minded, and litigious. In the following bit of dialogue, we
leave the lofty if violent world of court intrigue among the highborn, and
enter the lowbrow world of merchants and burghers and their little legal
squabbles:
2 CITIZEN Sir, an action.
HIERONIMO
Of battery?
1 CITIZEN Mine of debt.
HIERONIMO Give place.
2 CITIZEN
No, sir, mine
is an action of the case.
3 CITIZEN
Mine an ejectione
firmae by a lease.
HIERONIMO
Content you
sirs, are you determined
That I should
plead your several actions?
1 CITIZEN
Ay, sir, and
here’s my declaration.
2 CITIZEN
And here is my
band.
3 CITIZEN And here is my lease.
They
give him papers
Hieronimo asks Citizen
2 whether his action is for battery — I’m not sure why; maybe he has a black
eye. The way I imagine this scene being acted is that the petitioners are all
clamouring for Hieronimo’s attention and speaking almost simultaneously. So the
battery question gets cut off by Citizen 1’s interjection. Hieronimo then says
to the latter “Give place”, in other words, “Shut up and let Citizen 2 speak”.
It is then that Citizen 2 answers Hieronimo’s question: his action is not for
battery, it is for “the case”.
Here there is
no doubt that we are dealing not with some fictionalized version of Spanish
law, but with unadulterated English common law. By “the case”, Citizen 2 is
referring to an action for trespass on the case. In terms of the forms
of action at common law, battery was also a form of trespass; specifically, it
fell under the writ of trespass vi et armis (“with force and arms”). So
why is this citizen opting for trespass on the case?
Trespass on the
case was a remedy developed over time by judges as a sort of catch-all. In
effect, judges were gradually stretching the older fixed writs of trespass (there
were a few of them) to do substantive justice in cases where the facts did not
quite fit the requirements of those older writs. In such cases, judges might allow
an action of trespass on the case based on some analogy of facts with the
recognized forms of trespass. When you hear “trespass on the case”, think “trespass
on the facts of the case”. (Roman law had something similar, the actio
in factum. This was literally an “action upon the facts” rather than upon
the form.) It was a way of getting around the law’s increasing rigidity.
Perhaps the
facts of Citizen 2’s case didn’t quite fit the older writs; perhaps whatever
happened was done either without the requisite “force and arms,” or lacked the
necessary intent on the part of the defendant. Instead, he opted for this newer,
more flexible remedy.
Quite comically,
when one looks at some of the old court cases one comes across an alternative
strategy used by defendants: they bring an action for something that is not
even trespass at all with a writ of trespass vi et armis. Here a
plaintiff wishing to recover a debt, for instance, would insert a statement
into his writ asserting that the defendant did “with force and arms” withhold
repayment. It was of course a fiction, and one which judges had a growing
tendency not to question.
Which brings me
to Citizen 1, who is indeed bringing an action of debt. My question is, why is
he too not bringing it as a trespass on the case, as Citizen 2 is doing? Let me
explain what I mean.
Debt was an
older form of action, which would have allowed the defendant to elect for what
was called “wager of law”, in which he could acquit himself by bringing into
court a certain number of fellow citizens who were willing to swear his innocence.
Providing he could find or pay enough people to do so, the plaintiff’s action
failed. This archaic procedure was obviously not very satisfactory, and so it
became typical for a plaintiff to massage the facts of his case to make it fall
under some other action that did not allow the defendant to “wage his law”. One
such action was trespass. As mentioned previously, creditors sometimes might
sue for trespass vi et armis and claim that the defendant was violently withholding
“by force and arms” the money owed. Similarly, a plaintiff wishing to get back
some article of property given to someone for safekeeping – the traditional
action of detinue, which also allowed wager of law – might try to sue for
trespass instead, by making a point of having his writ worded to say that the
defendant “violently and with arms” was withholding the plaintiff’s property.
The development
of trespass on the case meant that plaintiffs no longer needed to resort to such
silly and palpable fictions to avoid wager of law. Trespass did not permit
wager of law, and trespass on the case had the desired
flexibility to extend to an ever-growing variety of fact situations.
One notable
example of this in Kyd’s time was the development of the action of trespass on
the case in assumpsit. Here the plaintiff pleaded that the defendant
promised (assumpsit) something which he had failed to perform. At its
core was the concept of deceit. Normally, under the old actions, if someone failed
to return something I had given him for safekeeping, or had lost it or broken
it, I would sue for detinue. If I had lent him money and he had failed to repay
it, I could sue for debt. And so on. There were at least two shortcomings of
these old forms of action. First, each had its peculiar limits and rules of
pleading. If I chose the wrong writ, my action would fail. So private law was
littered with many technical pitfalls. Second, again, they all allowed the
defendant to wage his law. At some point in the mid-1500s, plaintiffs in such
cases began to turn to assumpsit for relief. Finally, a few years after The
Spanish Tragedy was first acted, Slade’s Case came along, in which it
was decided that all of those old actions (debt, detinue, convenant, account, etc.)
implied a promise, and that therefore the plaintiff could choose to bring an
action either under one of the old writs or under trespass on the case in
assumpsit (“upon the promise”). To cut a long story short, assumpsit is what
gave birth to modern contract law, and Slade’s Case was a pivotal moment
in that development.
Given the
potted legal history I outlined above, it is not surprising that Citizen 2
opted to bring an action of trespass on the case rather than battery. It is
more surprising that the first citizen didn’t do likewise, but instead opted to
bring an action of debt. Assumpsit would have been better.
To round things
out, the third citizen was bringing an action of ejectione
firmae, for being ousted from his tenancy before the expiry of his
lease.
Details of Thomas Kyd’s life are scarce, and it is not known
how he made his living aside from writing plays. We know that his father was a
scrivener, and it has often been assumed, on little evidence, that Thomas
followed his father’s profession. If he was a scrivener, it would at least go some
way towards explaining his considerable familiarity with the law of his time,
and it would be consistent with the prominence of the legal documents in the
above passage (“band”, “declaration”, “lease”).
“Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness”
We all know
that on the pre-Restoration English stage, women’s roles were not played by
women, but by men or boys. The absurdity of this has often caused me to ask
myself, “Did the audience members never wish, at least secretly, that there
were women playing these roles?” To me there seems to be evidence in Act IV
that at least Thomas Kyd so wished.
In order to
explain, we need to back up a bit. Balthazar, son to the Viceroy of Portugal,
and Lorenzo, nephew to the King of Spain, have murdered Horatio, the son of
Hieronimo, Marshal of Spain. They did this to free up Horatio’s lover,
Bel-imperia, to marry Balthazar (Bel-imperia happens also to be Lorenzo’s
sister).
Hieronimo and
Bel-imperia plot revenge on Balthazar and Lorenzo. The revenge involves convincing
the murderers to participate in acting in a masque as part of Balthazar and
Bel-imperia’s wedding celebrations. This play-within-the-play (precursor to
Shakespeare’s similar device in Hamlet) will have a grisly outcome, but
more importantly for our purposes, it has a female character, Perseda.
While they are
deciding who will play whom, Hieronimo quite subversively suggests the
following (IV.i.95-97):
HIERONIMO
Now my good lord, could you entreat
Your sister Bel-Imperia to make one?
For what’s a play without a woman in it?
Indeed, an
interesting question to ask, since all plays in Kyd’s time were without
a woman in it. Now consider this: Bel-imperia is assigned Perseda’s role, which
effectively means that a member of Kyd’s original audience would have been presented
with a male actor playing a female role playing a female role. The
absurdity is heightened by the reaction of one audience member within
the play. Scene iv begins with the King of Spain leading the Viceroy of Portugal
to their seats to watch this masque:
KING
Now,
Viceroy, shall we see the tragedy
Of
Soliman the Turkish Emperor,
Performed
of pleasure by your son the prince,
My
nephew Don Lorenzo, and my niece.
VICEROY
Who, Bel-imperia?
The Viceroy
seems surprised to be told that a woman will be acting. He needn’t worry, since
Bel-imperia herself is being played by a man. Further on (line 69), the Viceroy
is forced to admit, “But Bel-imperia plays Perseda well.” The “but” here
suggests that the admission is somewhat grudging.
Nevertheless, to
me, it’s almost as if Kyd is offering his audience a thought experiment, a
notional space in which to imagine something that couldn’t be instantiated on
an actual stage. Think of it: A male actor is playing a woman. He may be boying
her femininity well, but there are limits to the ease with which we can suspend
our disbelief. Then Kyd has us imagine a further remove, where the character we
already half-believe is female is playing a female character. That is perhaps an
easier leap, and now we have come as close as we can to the actual experience
of watching female actors. We are then forced to admit, like the Viceroy, that
Bel-imperia indeed plays Perseda well — or at least could, if she were given
the opportunity.
Bibliography
KYD, Thomas. The
Spanish Tragedy. J. R. Mulryne (ed.). London: A & C Black, 1989.
