Holinshed's Chronicles Research Articles

Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama: Biography, Catastrophe, History by Andrew Griffin

Reviewed by: Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama: Biography, Catastrophe, History by Andrew Griffin Scott Venters Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama: Biography, Catastrophe, History. By Andrew Griffin. University of Toronto Press, 2019. Cloth: $65.00, e-book: $65.00. 208 pages. Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama persistently opens the confines of reigning interpretations of early modern historical writing and establishes a place for the drama of the period as a serious mode of historical narrativity. The fundamental claim of Griffin's text is that in England prior to 1623, when occurred the first indelible signs of the institutionalization of history as a discipline, there existed a messy heterogeneity of conflicting historiographical methodologies. In this pluralistic environment, historically minded drama flirted and wrestled with providential, mythographic, humanistic, and antiquarian modes of historical discourse and engagingly articulated their epistemological antagonisms. To illustrate this transgeneric entanglement, Griffin explores sites at which biography, fatality, and history messily converge in what he terms an "untimely death"—a "narrative abruption or disruption," often reified at the locus of a protagonist's demise arriving "before it should have according to available forms of narrative explanation" (3). Griffin's examination of these dramaturgical fault lines exposes the broader historical narrative schematics employed by dramatists in conscious and unconscious ways to make sense of life and death. Griffin applies this conceptual formula to a select set of authors and texts to [End Page 103] produce intensely provocative, intertextual, and nuanced readings. His analyses are attended by comprehensive surveys of critical literature and dissections of each dramatist's peculiar, biographical relation to historiography. In chapter 1 he makes a strong case for Richard II as a problem tragedy because, according to Griffin, William Shakespeare self-consciously replicates the confused state of manifold historical sources available to him by ensconcing Richard's death in a plethora of discrete, contradictory probable causes. Against Annabel Patterson's dominant "proto-liberal" reading of Holinshed's Chronicles, Griffin iterates the text's "methodological overdetermination [within an] underpoliced field of historical inquiry" (41). Drawing upon that methodological porosity, Shakespeare fractures the line of Aristotelian tragic catastrophe bound to a single arc of logical action and characterological coherence. The intentional polyphonic texture of history in Richard II makes the untimeliness of Richard's death both a narratological and a historical problem. It also disturbs the prevailing maturation thesis of Shakespeare's oeuvre, or what Griffin calls the "teleological fantasy," that links the dramaturgical muddiness of the Henry VI plays with the author's vocational immaturity. Following a similar path of biographic reassessment, Griffin devotes sections of Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama to delineating the network spanning the theatrical and social activities of several playwrights. In chapter 2 he maintains that the generic confusion circulating around the false deaths of Moll and Touchwood Junior in Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, which conflates the apparatus of city comedy with pastoral romance, is explicable only by first examining the playwright's involvement with various forms of civic histories. According to Griffin, most recent critics, influenced heavily by John Stow's chorographical commentary in A Survey of London, take a "synchronic" view of Middleton's representation of Cheapside, restricting the comedy to a mode of urban realism. When considered in light of Middleton's work as both a writer of mayoral pageants and London's chronologer, a diachronic pattern of Cheapside's "heterogeneous temporalities" emerges, invoking the district's sacral, cyclical, and commercial histories. It is Middleton the chronologist's understanding of Cheapside's semiotic richness and the variety of visages that London has worn that informs the commingling of Chaste Maid's satirical New Comedy and redemptive romance tonalities. Likewise, chapter 4 reads moments of Cyril Tourneur's involvement in the war against Spain within his Atheist's Tragedy and sets them against the contemporaneous pamphlet literature on the Siege of Ostend. Griffin argues that, unlike preoccupations with military strategy and technical innovation evinced in most writings on Ostend's fall, Tourneur imports an authentic scene of suffering into the domain of tragedy and fuses it with an empathic morality elegized in the play's ethics of vengeance. Using the well-worn structure of revenge tragedy, Tourneur, Griffin...

The Unnoble Nobles: Notes on Shakespeare’s Masterful Characterization in Macbeth

When writing Macbeth, Shakespeare faced a moral and aesthetic challenge. On the one hand, he had drawn the story of Macbeth from Holinshed's Chronicles, in which Banquo is depicted as an accomplice in the murder of King Duncan. On the other hand Banquo was believed to be the ancestor of King James, Shakespeare’s patron. Shakespeare had to write a play that at once pleased King James, remained true to the spirit of history, and could be a popular hit in the commercial world of Jacobean theatre, all seemingly contradictory ends because of the problem with the character of Banquo. So Shakespeare characterizes him in a different manner from his sources. The new characterization served a number of purposes. The most important reason for the alternation was to please King James, the alleged descendant of Banquo. Other than that, there is the dramatic purpose of creating a foil character for Macbeth, who can highlight Macbeth's characteristics. The presence of a noble Banquo also shows that human being can resist evil, as does Banquo. These points have been emphasized in many writings on Macbeth, which mean that Shakespeare's Banquo is an innocent man, a seemingly deviation from history. The present paper, however, tries to examine Shakespeare's complex characterization of Banquo which must meet those seemingly contradicting ends, a characterization far more ambivalent and artful than simple political affiliations might suggest. It will be shown that Shakespeare's Banquo not only is not simply an innocent man he seems to be at the first reading, but he could be as murderous as Macbeth himself. The only difference between the two is that one acts sooner than the other.

Collective Minds in Fact and Fiction: Intermental Thought and Group Consciousness in Early Modern Narrative

Taking its inspiration from cognitive narratology and particularly the work of Alan Palmer on the Victorian novel, this essay examines to what extent collective minds can be traced in early modern narratives. One of the typical sites of intermental thought is the representation of crowds. The essay discusses how collectivity and intermentality are textualized in depictions of riots. It first analyzes Sir Philip Sidney's The Old Arcadia (1580) as a case study of rebellion in early modern fiction. The results of the analysis are then compared with selected passages from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles and their representation of crowds and revolts. In contrast to the focus on the festive crowd and the Bakhtinian carnivalesque prevalent in previous studies of early modern riots, the emphasis will be directed here to the emergence of a collective mind, how it is represented, and to what extent it allows an insight into counterhegemonic or subversive thought. The essay accordingly tries to marry the formal analysis of narratology with the New Historicist focus on the dialectics of discourse and power.

“Why Sighs Your Majesty?”: Towards a Political Model of Passion in Dekker and Webster's The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat (1602)

Thomas Dekker and John Webster's The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat intertwines Lady Jane Grey's enforced usurpation and Wyatt's rebellion in challenging ways. The scant criticism on the play has usually interpreted it as a late example of chronicle history. However, although the account of Wyatt's rebellion, taken mainly from Holinshed's Chronicles , follows the Elizabethan model of the history play, Lady Jane Grey's usurpation presents the private as ideological arena, responding to an increasing tendency to tell history through its impact on individuals. The present study attempts to clarify the role of pathos in the reshaping of genre, as the collaborative composition brought about a hybrid of two generic models of staging history. The result attests the role of emotions in the transition from the traditional history play to the pathetic tragedy.

The Origin of 'Malcontent'

WHEN and how did malcontent enter the language? Although Italian malcontento and French malcontent had been current for some two hundred years, there is good evidence that the English word did not come into use before the last quarter of the sixteenth century, at the same time that the malcontent as a literary and pathological type appeared in prose, satiric poetry, and drama. Nor does the word seem to have arrived simply as the result of influence by one or other of these two languages. When, in his 1578 textbook on translating between Italian and English, John Florio wished to render ‘mal contenti’, he offered merely ‘not contented’.1 Conversely, when George Pettie used ‘mal contents’ in his 1581 translation of the French translation of Stefano Guazzo's La Civil Conversazione, the word was his own: the French version speaks of men gripped by ‘l'indignation’ and the Italian by ‘lo sdegno’.2 Pettie's is the OED's first example of malcontent. It notes a succession of derivative forms straight after this: malcontented in 1582, then malcontent as an adjective (1583), malcontent as a verb (1584), malcontentment (1587), malcontent meaning ‘state of discontentment’ (1591), and malcontentedness (1594).3 Such a rapid proliferation is evidence that the term was at this date both novel and appealing, and there is more. The 1587 revision of Holinshed's Chronicles uses malcontent (in various forms) forty-two times, including one occasion when it turns ‘rebels’ into ‘mal-contents’, whereas the original of 1577 does not use it at all; and William Rankins's 1588 satire The English Ape suggests that those who are ‘never content … or their estate holdeth above their deserte’ be branded ‘Malecontents’, which is ‘the newe found name’.4

The Exile of Rose Hickman Throckmorton

This paper examines the autobiographical reminiscences of Rose Hickman Throckmorton, a Marian exile and merchant's wife. Inspired by her father's appearance in Holinshed's Chronicles, Throckmorton wrote Certaine old storyes recorded by an agèd gentlewoman a littel before her death to be perused by her children and posterity (1613), three copies of which are extant in the British Library. I argue that Throckmorton recasts history through the lens of the family rather than the state in order to produce a version of Protestant history that encompasses the exilic experience. Whereas John Foxe's Acts and Monuments focuses on martyrs, Throckmorton uses family history to imagine a Protestant future for those who survived the Reformation.

The Holinshed Project: Comparing and linking two editions of Holinshed's Chronicle

This article documents the digital humanities aspects of The Holinshed Project at the University of Oxford. It outlines the nature of the project, in particular the need to compare paragraphs of the 1577 and 1587 editions of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In order to accomplish these comparisons, a tool known as the TEI-Comparator was created. This is a bespoke fuzzy text comparison engine with a frontend web interface designed for the project. The TEI-Comparator automatically matches reorganised and fragmented paragraphs in the two editions. It is then used for confirming, removing, creating and annotating the links between the editions. This article describes the steps necessary to use the TEI-Comparator, its comparison algorithm, and the handling of the output it creates with respect to its use for The Holinshed Project. The TEI-Comparator was launched in 2009 as an open source project on Sourceforge and is available for other projects to use.

Tudor antiquaries and the Vita Ædwardi regis

AbstractRecent investigations into the sources of Holinshed's Chronicles, both in the latter's text and in the collections of the late-sixteenth-century antiquaries responsible for its compilation, have brought to light a number of passages derived from the eleventh-century Vita Ædwardi regis, some in Latin and others translated into English. In most cases, corresponding passages occur in the single surviving manuscript of the Vita, but this is not invariably so. It is argued here that the antiquaries had access to a manuscript of the Vita which was at one time in the keeping of John Stow, but has since been lost, and that certain passages missing from the extant manuscript of the Vita can now be reconstructed on the basis of the passages derived from Stow's manuscript. Prominent among them is the complete poem describing the magnificent ship and other gifts given by Earl Godwine to King Edward the Confessor in 1042.

The Peaceable and Prosperous Regiment of Blessed Queene Elisabeth: A Facsimile from Holinshed's Chronicles (1587) (review)

Holinshed's best known as one of Shakespeare's major sources, contains one of the few accounts of Elizabeth's reign written during her lifetime. A contemporary history, it was subjected to censorship by the Privy Council. In this facsimile edition, a compilation based on this portion of the Chronicles in copies in the Huntington's collection as well as the British Library and Cambridge University Library, censored and substituted passages are represented between two covers for the first time. Professor Clegg provides a historical introduction and demonstrates that the censorship took place in three stages. Libraries around the world will be able to identify and describe the copies in their own collections based on the information provided. The Chronicles, a scrupulously produced monument to Elizabeth, is also a rich source for the study of printing practices. The base text is an unusual copy in the Huntington Library containing the largest sample of proofmarkings that survive from the sixteenth century. Professor McLeod analyzes these in his textual commentary, along with the typography, demonstrating how the book was printed and explaining the roles of compositor and corrector in the sixteenth-century printing house.

Geopolitics and the Sight of the Nation: Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September

Geopolitics and the Sight of the Nation: Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September

The Shakespeare Handbooks Macbeth: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life, and: The Shakespeare Handbooks The Merchant of Venice: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life, and: The Shakespeare Handbooks As You Like It: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life (review)

Reviewed by: The Shakespeare Handbooks Macbeth: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life, and: The Shakespeare Handbooks The Merchant of Venice: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life, and: The Shakespeare Handbooks As You Like It: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life Douglas King The Shakespeare Handbooks Macbeth: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life. By John Russell Brown. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Pp. viii + 172. $59.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). The Shakespeare Handbooks The Merchant of Venice: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life. By Christopher McCullough. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Pp. xi + 175. $59.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). The Shakespeare Handbooks As You Like It: A Guide to the Text and its Theatrical Life. By Lesley Wade Soule. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Pp. vii + 175. $59.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). The Shakespeare Handbooks series consists of four published books, with eleven more listed as forthcoming and still others planned. The books are ambitious, attempting to fill a unique niche by combining textual criticism, critical history, performance history, and, most important, scene-by-scene commentary on each play's performative possibilities. Each book contains six main chapters, though the authors title and order the sections as they see fit. Each of the three books contains "Key Productions and Performances," "The Play on Screen," "Critical Assessments," and "Commentary," the last of which makes up close to half of each book's text. The other two chapters pertain to textual history and early performances, and to sources and cultural contexts. The various sections complement each other well, with the Commentary serving as highlight and centerpiece of each volume. Overall, the books constitute excellent new resources for readers interested in performance criticism and in production possibilities. In his volume on Macbeth, John Russell Brown (who is also General Editor for The Shakespeare Handbooks series) first deals with textual and early performance issues, briefly weighing in on probable dates of first performances and then comparing the Folio with two modern editions to point out difficulties with verse lines and punctuation. Brown places his Commentary section second, and continues emphasizing textual issues throughout the Commentary, pointing out variations in versification and discussing how these lines might be spoken onstage. In the Commentary, Brown also occasionally engages in what to my mind amounts to fruitless speculation about Shakespeare's original intent, as when he questions whether Shakespeare did "intend to show Duncan to be a weak king, dependent on others (as in his source, Holinshed's Chronicles)" (14). This is certainly a valid textual issue, but one that might be better raised in, [End Page 125] for example, the section on "The Text and Early Performances" or "The Play's Sources and Cultural Context." Brown's Commentary section succeeds most when he directly explores theatrical possibilities (gestures, movement, blocking) rather than analyzing the more abstract thematic implications of language. At times, Brown falls into prescriptivism. A guide to the "theatrical life" of a play should suggest performance possibilities without closing off any reasonable ones, but Brown occasionally does just that. For example, regarding the second weird sisters scene (1.3), Brown states, "Even if their audience does not believe in supernatural divination and influence over events, the Witches in the play must act here as if they possessed this power" (16, emphasis added). While it is likely that the witches would be played this way, it is not imperative—they could, for instance, be played as a hallucination shared by Macbeth and Banquo, having no real power and thus leading to a less deterministic portrayal of Macbeth and his actions. Similarly, in discussing Lady Macbeth's response to the messenger in 1.5 ("Thou'rt mad to say it"), Brown writes, "Lady Macbeth must instinctively misinterpret the simple message, imagining that her husband is the king who comes that very night . . . there is no other reason why she should call the messenger 'mad'" (24–25, emphasis added). Again, while the performance reading is reasonable and helpful, one could wish it less peremptory. Regarding the same scene, Brown points out the tremendous challenges of Lady Macbeth's soliloquy, but...

W. P.: The Case for William Patten's Contribution to Holinshed's Chronicles (1587)

THE collaborative nature of the 1587 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles is well known, and we can identify with relative certainty the portions of the narrative supplied by Holinshed himself, William Harrison, Richard Stanyhurst, John Hooker, alias Vowell, Abraham Fleming, Francis Boteville, otherwise known as Francis Thynne, and John Stow. However, nothing at all is known about the contributor whose additions were signed ‘W. P.’ in the margins of the 1587 text, and which begin in the narrative of the reign of Henry V. Ascertaining the identity of W. P. would be important not only for the history of English historiography, but perhaps even more so for the critical corpus on Shakespeare's English history plays, because W. P.'s revised portrait of Joan of Arc is in fact the one that Shakespeare adopted for 1 Henry VI rather than Holinshed's original version from the 1577 Chronicles. W. P.'s interpolations into the chronicle text reveal an author who is an able stylist, a historian by vocation, one who is able to read and compile data out of French sources, and perhaps most importantly, a staunch English Protestant nationalist. The list of authors and textual sources supplied by the editor at the start of the first volume of the 1587 Chronicles does not answer the question of W. P.'s identity because the initials do not match any of the known contributors to the text. To be sure, it is entirely possible that W. P. was a contributor who chose to remain anonymous or did not have his name added to the list by the editors. But, if the list is indeed accurate and reliable, and we take it as the starting point in the search for the author's identity, there are only two likely candidates whose names match the initials W. P.: ‘William Patten of the expedition into Scotland 1574’ and ‘William Proctor of Wiats rebellion’ (I, A3v).1 A number of factors and coincidences suggest that W. P. could be William Patten. 1 Raphael Holinshed, The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1587).

The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations

Part 1 Fifteenth-century chronicle sources: chronicles written in - the Henrici (c. 1417, Latin), Thomas Elmham, Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto (Metrical Life of Henry V), (c. 1418, Latin), Thomas Walsingham, St Albans (c. 1420-22, Latin), Tito Livio Frulovisi, Vita Henrici Quinti (c. 1438, Latin, Pseudo Elmham, Vita et Gesta Henrici (c. 1446-53, Latin), John Capgrave, De Illustribus Henricis (c. 1446-53, Latin), John Hardyng, (1457, 1464, Middle English and Latin), the Chronicle of Peter Basset (1449, French), the Brut (1430, 1436-37, 1460-70, Middle English), the London Chronicles (later 15th century, Middle English chronicles written in - Religieux (Monk) of Saint-Denis, Histoire de Charles (c. 1415-22, Latin), Geste de nobles francois (?late 1420s, French), Pierre Cochon, Chronique normande (?early 1430s, French), Chronique anonyme du reigne de Chales VI (?early 1430s, French), Memoires de Pierre de Fenin (?1430s, French), Chronique de Perceval de Cagny (late 1430s, French), Chronique de Ruisseauville (?1420s-1430s, French), Jean Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France (1430-1440s, French), Enguerran Monstrelet, Jean Waurin and Jean Le Fevre (1444-1460s), Edmond de Dynter, Chronique des ducs de Brabant (?early to mid-1440s, Latin), Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris (?1449, French), Le Heraut Berry (the Berry Herald) (?1450s, French, Chronique d'Arthur de Richemont (1458-mid-1460s, French), Chronique de Normandie (1460s, French), Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII (1471-72, Latin), Chronique d'Antonio Morosini )?1430s, Italian. Part 2 Sixteenth-century historians in England: The First English Life of Henry the Fifth (1513, English) Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of and France (1516, English) Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia (1513, published 1534, Latin) Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Illustre families of Lancaster and York (1542, English) John Stow, The Chronicles of England (1592, 1601, English) Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1586-87, English). Part 3 contemporary reception of the battle and development of the literary tradition: France. Part 4 Interpretations from the 18th to the 20th century. Part 5 Administartive records: English army the French army.(Part contents).

Macbeth, IV.Iii.140-158, Edward the Confessor, and Holinshed's Chronicles

Macbeth, IV.Iii.140-158, Edward the Confessor, and Holinshed's Chronicles

Macbeth , IV.Iii.140–158, Edward the Confessor, and Holinshed's Chronicles

1The University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Objectivity in the Making: Francis Bacon and the Politics of Inquiry by Julie Robin Solomon (review)

Reviews 794 disturbing', deserves respeet (p. II8). The argument, however, is oceasionally flawed byexeessive neatness. The assertion thatearlymodern historiography 'consistently condemned' Boadieea (p. I20)disregards the praise lavished onherin John Speed'sHistoy of Great Britaine (I6I I). Furthermore, while Boadicea certainly became aneighteenth-eentury 'national heroine' (p. I48),there ismueh evidenee, ineluding the 'Sophia'eontroversy (I739-40)andRiehard Glover's tragedy Boadicia [sic](I753),toindieate thatneither representations ofBoadieeanorattitudes of eighteenth-century women eonformed asswiftly orunproblematieally tothe'ideal offeminine respeetability' asMikalaehki implies (p. IOO). Customary levels ofexeellenee arerestored inan 'Epilogue' showing howUrn Burzal, 7hePilgrim's Progress, andParadise Lost 'embeda nationalist vision intheir universalist meditations onthehuman spirit' (p. I55).Theauthor's arguments are supported byaptillustrations, including a museular Cordeilla from Holinshed's Chronicles, whose erect right nipple somehow emphasizes thebelligerent impression created bytheruler ofBritain's first gynarchy. The notes, too,arefull ofgood things, from a careful calculation ofthenumber offemale personifications in William Hole'smaps(p. I60,n. I2) totheastute observation that Shakespeare set theretreat ofGuiderius andArviragus inWalestodramatize anxiety about'being exeluded from history' (p. I72,n.29).Thefigure ofPrudenee inRipa'sIconologia raises uncharacteristic problems: sheholds 'a hand mirror, inwhich shebeholds the reflection ofherface',suggesting 'Amphitrite', according toMikalaehki (p. I63, n.34).Aphrodite isoften depieted holding mirrors; butinanycase,Prudenee isless concerned with her ownbeauty than with what liesbehind her. Although Mikalachki discusses a mass ofearly modern material onBoadicea and other ancient Britons, herbookis,ultimately, moreabouta legacy thanabout Boadicea. Herimaginative response tothepolitical andpsychologieal factors that madethefigure ofthenative warrior queenso terrifying, yetso dangerously attractive, hasenabled hertoweldsuchdisparate elements as maps,stagesets, breastSeeding, and LadyGodivaintoan original and exciting contribution to Renaissance studies. UNIVERSITY OFREADING CAROLYN D. WILLIAMS Objectivity inthe Making. Francis Bacon andthe Politics ofInquity. ByJULIE ROBIN SOLOMON. Baltimore) MD, andLondon: Johns Hopkins University Press. I998.XiX + 32I PP. £4I.5O. Atthe heart of Julie Robin Solomon's Obyectivity inthe Making liesa timely, important, andoriginal eontribution toBaeonstudies. Overrecent years, there hasbeena gradual awakening tothefaet that theFraneis Baeonweknow andrevere is,inthe main, the product ofhisappropriation during the Restoration bythe newly-founded RoyalSoeiety asthearisto-experimenter parexcellence, animage that hasbeenonly intermittently tempered byhisreclamation as theforerunner ofthethought ofthe Puritan revolution. Thesecontradictory models havecircumscribed critical interpretation ofhisworks, theknown facts ofBacon'sbusyliferarely allowedto interfere-a life that included embassy work inFrance, forty years inparliament, a lengthy legalcareerculminating in hisappointment as LordChancellor, and intimate relations with twomonarchs andtheir favourites. Recently, through the work ofDanielCoquillette andJulian Martin, Baconthe Lawyer hasbeenrevived; thanks toJoelEpstein, wehaveBacontheParliamentarian. Here,Solomon tries her luck with a long-suppressed man:Baconthe Merchant. MLR,96.3,200I 795 Bacon's mercantile links arewell-known. Although born inthe splendour ofYork Houseas theyoungest sonoftheLordKeeper, oneneedclimb theBaconfamily treeonlya coupleofgenerations tofind merchants. The Baconswerealliedby marriage tothegreatest ofElizabethan merchants SirThomasGresham; byhis ownmarriage, attheageofforty-five, toAlice Barnham, thethirteen-year oldjoint heiress ofa London alderman, Baconcemented those links; thanks tohisconstant poverty, hewasa familiar face toLondon's moneylenders. Doubtless the forthcomingnewedition ofBacon's Letters will turn upmore trade connections ofthe type his nineteenth-century editorJames Spedding (agentleman scholar whohadabsolutely notruck with mercantilism) wasperhaps notminded tolook for. No wonder, then, that Bacon'swritings aresaturated inmercantile metaphor, whichSolomon, an adepttextcritic, energetically brings to light. Commerce, commodities, interest, purchase: terminology derived from governmental fiscal policyand mercantile activity is to be found, sheargues, throughout Bacon's writings tohislatework, theutopian JVew Atlantis, where a (scientific) governing body controls theworks of'merchants oflight'. EvendataisSgured asmerchants' goods, since 'onemust employ factors andmerchants togoeverywhere insearch of them andbring them in'(p.63). Bacon'sabsorption in mercantile culture should not,however, be readas an enthusiastic endorsement ofthe newsocial possibilities itengendered. InSolomon's account, Jacobean government (andBaconliesattheheart ofJacobean government ) developed mercantilist policies as strategies tocontrol andcontain thenew challenges ofcommercial culture. As suchthey wereradically conservative, an element easily traced inBacon'swork. Solomon points tothemercantile arrangementofBacon 'snewscience, permitting 'commercial subordinates to pursue private interest, whileenabling themonarch totransmute private interests into public purpose'. In this way,theargument thatBaconwasessentially a royalist holdstrue: theadvancement ofknowledge wouldbring aboutobedience toregal authority (p.64).Bacon,sheargues, 'pursued this displacement from theroyal to therealwith thehopeofshoring upthemonarchy anditsprerogative against the claims ofParliament' andofthe custom ofcommon lawaspromulgated byhisarchrivalSirEdwardCoke (p.xviii).WhenJameshad pursued hisill-fated 'great contract' with Parliament ontheadvice ofhislordtreasurer, theEarlofSalisbury, itwasBaconwhoinsisted that James must abandon this new, mercantile, bartering persona. Theking should not, hepleaded, speak toparliament 'inthelanguage of anAccountant bysetting forth...

The Legacy of Boadicea: Gender and Nation in Early Modern England by Jodi Mikalachki (review)

MLR,96.3,200 I 793 theGenre: Literary History andtheCanon',thevolume's editor takes Lanyer asa casestudy todemonstrate the temporality ofthe canon. Grossmann suggests notthe expansion or discarding ofthecanon,whichis in anyeventresilient, butits 'dialectical negation, a practice whichreinscribes canonicity as a temporal performance bya historically situated work'. Onemight argue that thecanonhas always beenprovisional, nevertheless Grossman's concept isanappropriate model for theinclusion offemale voices andaccommodates most ofthecontributions to the volumes under review. MichaelMorganHolmes's essayin theLanyer volume, 'The LoveofOther Women: RichChainsand SweetKisses', withitsattention tothereligio-erotic desires ofSalve, brings usinto the territory ofGoldberg's Desiring Women Writing. The latter bookisarranged inthree sections, with separate introductions: 'TheLegend ofGoodWomen', 'Translating Women', and'Writing as a Woman'. Thetenuous link between thecasestudies isthescripting ofdesire, arguably incestuous inthe caseofMary Sidney andThomas More'sdaughter Margaret Roper, andsame-sex in Lanyer andAphraBehn.Thisis in somerespects a frustrating bookin the disjunctions between itssections and itsoccasional self-indulgences. Marginal deconstruction suchas thelengthy analysis oftheroleofGraphina inElizabeth Cary's Martam isjuxtaposed with theself-evidently commonplace. Do weneedtobe warned, inthecontext ofBehn's writing) that problems ofunderstanding arise from assuming that 'thefemale gender that sheinhabited istranshistorically identical to a modern gender location'? It is difficult toknow whomGoldberg assumes his reader tobe. Allthree booksattempt toserve their subjects byexposing newcontexts and relationships forthestudy ofthewriting andcultural identity ofearly modern women. Yet, with the exception ofthe Lanyer collection, they give worrying signs of a current impasse indeveloping a critique ofwomen's writing which canclaim to begenuinely inter-disciplinary inits literary-historical methodologies andconcerns. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN JANET CLARE The Legacy of Boadicea: Gender and SNation inEar17 Modern England. ByJODI MIKALACHKI. London andNewYork: Routledge. I 998.xi+ 202 pp £I 4.99. Jodi Mikalachki's fascinating discussion ofdeveloping concepts ofEnglish nationalism ,andtheir complex affiliations with gender andhistory, takes as itspoint of origin Boadicea's 're-entry into British historiography inthe early sixteenth century' (p. I 2). Thefirst chapter 'begins with a reassessment ofElizabeth's "authorship" of the first English county atlas, develops into a critical reading ofauthority andgender inHobbes's political science, andconcludes with theimaginary world ofMargaret Cavendish, thefirst science fiction author' (p. I9). The nextchapters provide brilliant 'complementary readings' of King Lear,'a tragedy of nativeorigins, relentless initsterrible revelation ofancient British isolation andbarbarity' (p. I 8), andC;ymbeline, which, 'inthesimplest terms [. . .] isa "romance" precisely because itincorporates "Romans" ' (p.69).Sheargues that 'anoriginary engagement with Romewasnecessary for theformation ofanautonomous national identity inearly modern England':it provided 'themale bonding thatcharacterizes modern nationalism, as wellas exorcising thefeminine savagery thatchallenged bothits autonomy andits respectability' (p. I o7). Thefinal chapter's thesis, that 'asmaternity lost itsconnotations ofindependent female authority, so thesavagequeensofnational historiography becameless Reviews 794 disturbing', deserves respeet (p. II8). The argument, however, is oceasionally flawed byexeessive neatness. The assertion thatearlymodern historiography 'consistently condemned' Boadieea (p. I20)disregards the praise lavished onherin John Speed'sHistoy of Great Britaine (I6I I). Furthermore, while Boadicea certainly became aneighteenth-eentury 'national heroine' (p. I48),there ismueh evidenee, ineluding the 'Sophia'eontroversy (I739-40)andRiehard Glover's tragedy Boadicia [sic](I753),toindieate thatneither representations ofBoadieeanorattitudes of eighteenth-century women eonformed asswiftly orunproblematieally tothe'ideal offeminine respeetability' asMikalaehki implies (p. IOO). Customary levels ofexeellenee arerestored inan 'Epilogue' showing howUrn Burzal, 7hePilgrim's Progress, andParadise Lost 'embeda nationalist vision intheir universalist meditations onthehuman spirit' (p. I55).Theauthor's arguments are supported byaptillustrations, including a museular Cordeilla from Holinshed's Chronicles, whose erect right nipple somehow emphasizes thebelligerent impression created bytheruler ofBritain's first gynarchy. The notes, too,arefull ofgood things, from a careful calculation ofthenumber offemale personifications in William Hole'smaps(p. I60,n. I2) totheastute observation that Shakespeare set theretreat ofGuiderius andArviragus inWalestodramatize anxiety about'being exeluded from history' (p. I72,n.29).Thefigure ofPrudenee inRipa'sIconologia raises uncharacteristic problems: sheholds 'a hand mirror, inwhich shebeholds the reflection ofherface',suggesting 'Amphitrite', according toMikalaehki (p. I63, n.34).Aphrodite isoften depieted holding mirrors; butinanycase,Prudenee isless concerned with her ownbeauty than with what liesbehind her. Although Mikalachki discusses a mass ofearly modern material onBoadicea and other ancient Britons, herbookis,ultimately, moreabouta legacy thanabout Boadicea. Herimaginative response tothepolitical andpsychologieal factors that madethefigure ofthenative warrior queenso terrifying, yetso dangerously attractive, hasenabled hertoweldsuchdisparate elements as maps,stagesets, breastSeeding, and LadyGodivaintoan original and exciting contribution to Renaissance studies. UNIVERSITY OFREADING CAROLYN D. WILLIAMS Objectivity...

Reading Holinshed's Chronicles. Annabel Patterson

<i>Reading Holinshed's Chronicles</i>. Annabel Patterson

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government 1450–1789. The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s. By Norman Jones Reading Holinshed's Chronicles. By Annabel Patterson The Manuscript Library of sir Robert Cotton (The Panizzi Lectures. 1993). By Colin G. C. Tite Scots and Britons. Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603. The Bishops' Wars: Charles I's Campaigns Against Scotland, 1638–1640. By Mark Charles Fissel John Locke. Resistance, Religion and Responsibility. By John Marshall The Language of Liberty, 1660–1832. Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo‐American World. By J.C.D. Clark The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688–1788. By Daniel Szechi Neither Kingdom nor Nation: The Irish Quest for Constitutional Rights, 1698–1800. By Neil Longley York The Birth of Britain: A New Nation 1700–1710. By W.A. Speck ‘Bought and Sold for English Gold’? Explaining the Union of 1707. By Christopher A. Whatley The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland, 1782–1992. By Alan J Ward The Dundas Despotism. By Michael Fry The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain. By Jonathan Parry Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics. By Peter T. Marsh The Last of the Whigs. A Political Biography of Lord Hartington, later Eighth Duke of Devonshire (1833–1908). By Patrick Jackson The Lost Prime Minister: A Life of Sir Charles Dilke. By David Nicholls Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain. By David Cannadine Labour Women. Women in British Working‐Class Politics, 1918–1939. By Pamela M. Graves Reforming the Civil Service. The Fulton Committee on the British Home Civil Service, 1966–1968. By Geoffrey K. Fry

:Reading Holinshed's Chronicles

This volume provides a study of the 16th-century Elizabethan text, Holinshed's Chronicles - a history of England, Scotland and Ireland which has traditionally been read as the source material for many of Shakespeare's plays or as an archaic form of history-writing. In this book, Annabel Patterson insists that the chronicles be read in their own right as an important and inventive cultural history. Although they are known by the name of Raphael Holinshed, editor and major compiler of the 1577 edition, the chronicles were the work of a group - a collaboration between antiquarians, clergymen, members of parliament, poets, publishers and booksellers. Through a detailed reading, Patterson argues that the chronicles convey insights into the way the Elizabethan middle-class understood their society. Responding to the crisis of disunity which resulted from the Reformation, the authors of the chronicles embodied and encouraged an ideal of justice, what we would now call liberalism, that extended beyond the writing of history into the realms of politics, law, economics, citizenship, class and gender. Also, since the second edition of 1587 was called in by the Privy Council and revised under supervision, the work constitutes an important test case for the history of early modern censorship.