A Reconciled Maid: A Lover’s Complaint and Confessional Practices in Early Modern England

Abstract

In A Lover's Complaint, Shakespeare registers concerns about a penitent's inability to overcome the effects of sin and emphasizes the importance of private or auricular confession. By representing what amounts to be the confession ofa 'fickle maid' (5) to a 'reverend man' (57), Shakespeare underscores the paradox of the Protestant confessional model: if a penitent can be forgiven of sins without priestly intervention, what happens when he or she does not experience consolation?' By modeling the poem on the conventional rite of penance, Shakespeare creates a poetic space in which to explore the intense effects of seduction and desire (as James Schiffer, Stephen Whitworth, and Jon Harned indicate in their respective essays in this volume), but also to demonstrate the limitations of individual subjectivity in overcoming the Christian economy of shame and guilt. Critics have long recognized that the poem resembles a 'would-be confession' but often diminish the significance of this representation by arguing that the fickle maid overreacts to her situation, or that she comes to terms with the young man's sexual betrayal (Rollins 595).2 Even John Kerrigan, who provides an exceptional study of the poem's religious and confessional context, minimizes its theological dimension: 'As the title insists A Lauer's Complaint is amorous. Whatever the importance of confessioun and repentance elsewhere, this poem is about love' (Kerrigan, Motives ofWoe 41). Nevertheless, by using charged theological language throughout the poem, Shakespeare makes no distinction between sexual or romantic desire and the religious context in which the fickle maid operates. On the contrary, he connects desire to ritual to emphasize their intertwined and problematic relationship. From the numerous 'maimed rites' in Hamlet (5.2.219) to the anxiety over 'the priest in surplice white' completing the requiem in 'The Phoenix and Turtle' (13), Shakespeare grounds the assurance of consolation in the fulfillment of ecclesiastical rituals. Shakespeare's engagement with what David Cressy describes as the 'profoundly traumatic' repercussions stemming from the Church of England's disruption of various ritual practices has become the subject of much attention (477). Most notably, critics such as Robert Watson, Michael Neill, Stephen Greenblatt, and John Klause have examined the fallout from the English Church's rejection of the prayers for the dead and the doctrine of Purgatory. Nevertheless, the connection between Shakespeare's representations of private confession and the Established Church's attack on sacramental penance and its reorientation of