Introduction: The Spanish Connection: Literary and Historical Perspectives on Anglo-Iberian Relations

Abstract

As the field of early modern studies becomes less bound by the category of the national literature, the manifold connections between early modern Spain and England become ever more apparent. Inevitably, we explore these connections from within our own disciplinary and political parameters. Yet as these become broader and more adventurous, the resultant readings acquire texture and nuance. From the perspective of a reconfigured discipline that is transnational, transatlantic, or Mediterranean in emphasis, there is nothing surprising about the close connections between these nations. And yet these relations have been noted before, in a long history of English scholarship that has generally acknowledged Spain only to marginalize it or demonize it. The most important contribution of the new body of work that we present here is that, as a group, these essays make the case for the centrality of Spain to the field of early modern English studies. Spain is not a curiosity or a marginal preoccupation, the province of comparatists (that eternally suspect bunch). Instead, both as a powerful cultural model and as an imperial rival, Spain is of crucial importance for understanding England's cultural and political self-definition.Perhaps the most important discovery of this new generation of scholarship is how sustained and widespread the connections are even at the moments of greatest conflict between the nations. In this sense, cultural studies provides a rich opportunity to challenge the historical verities of Anglo-Spanish enmity. In fact, as these essays show, England must negotiate Spain's cultural and intellectual influence even when it seems most reluctant or unlikely to do so. The tension between martial opposition and cultural fascination is tellingly displayed in a fascinating document brought to my attention by Miguel Martinez during our research seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which shows how even during the war with Spain, an Englishman could revel in the pleasure of Spanish. A published English translation of a military treatise by the former ambassador to England, Bernardino de Mendoza, the Theoricke and Practise of Warre (1597) includes a fascinating dedication to the soldier and colonial administrator George Carew, in Spanish. In this improbable document, the translator, Edward Hoby, manifests his pleasure in the Spanish language, which Carew has encouraged him to learn. Hoby carries out this charge by enlisting Spanish captives from the raid on Cadiz to teach him the foreign, captured tongue (de los rehenes del cativerio espanol). Language itself thus forms part of the English booty, as Hoby turns to Spanish books, [sic for ora] de guerras, hora de plazeres, (now of war, now of pleasure).Although Spanish in turn becomes a weapon, allowing Hoby to reveal Spanish military tactics, it is actually a double-edged sword, poking holes in Protestant nationalism by championing the longer history of amity between Spain and England. Thus by the end of Hoby's dedication he imagines a shared history and purpose for the two nations that far transcends the war in his own time. He prays to God, he tells Carew, to dispose the hearts of rulers so that they wage war on the enemies of Christendom, instead of on each other:. . . que vuelvan el filo de su espada contra los infieles, dejando las puntualidades que unos contra otros tienen y que vea yo una paz entre Inglaterra y Castilla, como en el buen tiempo que mi tio Don Felipe Hoby fue embajador de la parte de Don Henrico Octavo, de pia y sancta, y felicisima memoria, padre de su SCCRM, en la Corte de Don Carlos quinto Emperador, los dos azote de la ambicion y tirania papal, como lo muestran las hazanas de Don Henrico en libertar su imperio del yugo y servidumbre pontifical, y coronicas de Don Carlos, cuando debajo de los Duques de Borbon mando sitiar y saquear Roma . . .. . . that they should turn their sword against the infidel, abandoning their petty disputes against each other so that I may see a peace between England and Castile, as in the good days when my uncle Philip Hoby was an ambassador for Henry VIII, of pious, sacred, and most happy memory, father of her Holy Caesarean Catholic Royal Highness, at the court of Emperor Charles V, the two of them scourge of ambition and papal tyranny, as demonstrated by Henry's feats to liberate his empire from the pontifical yoke and servitude, and by the chronicles of Charles, when he had Rome besieged and sacked under the command of the Dukes of Bourbon . …