Philip Stubbes Research Articles

Reflections on Early Modern Understanding of Affects in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Humors, Bodies and Passions in the Player’s Hecuba Speech

Considered to be affective mediums exercising powers changing the humoral balances of bodies, theatre plays have been severely attacked on the grounds that they provoke strong emotions by early modern critics such as Stephen Gosson and Philip Stubbes in the Shakespearean period. According to Stephen Gosson, for instance, due to their emotional and physiological impact theatre performances weakened and undermined audiences’ capacities to reason and judge; and thus, needed to be prohibited altogether. This study provides a detailed analysis of the Hecuba speech (II, ii) in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Through the Player’s and Hamlet’s reactions to the Hecuba-speech, it will discuss the characters’ attitudes towards theatre and comment on early modern theatre debates. The study will further discuss William Shakespeare’s stand on the affective potential of theatre in times when theatre plays have been considered contagious and altering the balance between minds, passions and bodies.

Doctor Faustusand the Art of Dying Badly

<i>Doctor Faustus</i>and the Art of Dying Badly

Allegories of Creation: Glassmaking, Forests, and Fertility in Webster’sThe Duchess of Malfi

Allegories of Creation: Glassmaking, Forests, and Fertility in Webster’s<i>The Duchess of Malfi</i>

“The Stamp of Martius”: Commoditized Character and the Technology of Theatrical Impression inCoriolanus

“The Stamp of Martius”: Commoditized Character and the Technology of Theatrical Impression in<i>Coriolanus</i>

A KORA ÚJKORI POPULÁRIS KULTÚRA VÁLTOZATAI ANGLIÁBAN

A tanulmány röviden felvázolja azokat a jelenségeket, melyek a kora újkori Angliában a korabeli populáris és elit kultúra közti komplex interakciók eredményeként jöttek létre, főként William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson és más, kevésbé ismert szerzők (Philip Stubbes, Nicholas Breton) műveire támaszkodva, elemezve azt, hogy a korabeli közszínház és népszerű könyvkiadás miként használta fel és alakította át az eredetileg orális-rituális és nem profitorientált alkotásokat saját szórakoztatóipari, politikai vagy kritikai céljai érdekében. A kutatás különböző státuszú, eredetű és műfajú szövegeket vizsgál meg, hogy az általánosabb tendenciák kirajzolódjanak, azonban szem előtt tartja azokat a finom különbségeket, melyek részben abból adódnak, hogy szóbeli-rituális jelenségeket írott szövegeken keresztül igyekszünk feltérképezni (erről lásd Jan Assmann elméletét a kulturális emlékezetről), részben pedig arra vezethetők vissza, hogy különböző szerzők saját céljaik érdekében más-más módon használták fel a korabeli populáris kultúra elemeit.

Celebrating Idleness: Antony and Cleopatra and Play Theory

Celebrating Idleness:Antony and Cleopatra and Play Theory Abigail Scherer (bio) The "infinite variety" of Cleopatra's pretenses affirms her allegiance to a theater that embraces idleness, and finally becomes idleness.1 When Cleopatra dallies over the lines of the self-sacrificing or magnanimous lover—"Sir, you and I must part, but that's not it; / Sir, you and I have loved, but there's not it"—Antony replies, "But that your royalty / Holds idleness your subject, I should take you / For idleness itself " (1.3.89-90, 94-96). Shakespeare's drama appears all too ready to corroborate the unease of early modern antitheatricalists who impugn theater for the spread of idleness within the culture. When in his Anatomie of Abuses Philip Stubbes observes, "If you will learne ... to practise Idlenesse ... you neede to goe to no other Schoole [i.e., theater], for all these good examples maie you see painted before your eyes in Enterludes and Plaies," the recreational rhythms of Cleopatra's Egypt might well serve as illustration. Here the queen may "laugh[]" her Antony "out of patience, and that night ... laugh[] him into patience, and next morn, / Ere the ninth hour ... dr[ink] him to his bed" (2.5.19-21). Rather than refute the charge that theater is "a nurseris of idelnesse,"2 Cleopatra's variable palate of "Enterludes & Plaies" seems set on further stoking such heated discourse, as Antony and Cleopatra not only prove their culpability as idlers, they do so ardently.3 Of course, while Shakespeare's Egypt is a holiday world, ruled by a queen devoted to the glorification of play, it is all the time being roundly censured by a Rome whose emperor remains soberly attuned to politics and warfare. Though Rome, led by Caesar, closely follows our couple, it does so with a perception primed for practical goals, and which can only disparage the lovers' fanciful moves. Pompey reads Cleopatra's diversions not as ennobling, but as debilitating and ultimately deadening, as he calls [End Page 277] for her to "tie up the libertine [Antony] in a field of feasts; / Keep his brain fuming.... [S]leep and feeding may prorouge his honour / even till a Lethe'd dullness" (2.1.23-24, 26-27). The variant tones of the play's two worlds have often been read as two types of performance: an Egyptian theater that fosters unrestrained yet graceful designs spun from illusions and lies, and a Romanized one, steadfast and moralistic, which insists on staging idleness only in order to humiliate and condemn it. Hence, when defeated in battle, Antony foresees his followers "windowed" in Rome, himself publicly "subdued / To penetrative shame" (4.14.73, 75-76). For centuries audiences have been conflicted over which of these worlds should win their sympathy—where indeed the playwright's own sympathies might lie. My reading of the play's central tension, which builds from Rome's dedication to practicable purpose and Egypt's immersion in play, asserts that it is the latter—a theater in which idleness is foundational—that Shakespeare's play celebrates. Roman resoluteness serves rather to secure one's admiration for Egyptian gambols. Rephrased, this observation is equally if not more curious: the impulsive nature, often exasperatingly so, of Egypt at play succeeds more often than not in souring us toward Roman resolve. I realize of course that I am joining a conversation long in session, and one that is replete with impressive studies of the play's dichotomous worlds.4 My inclination to stand with Egypt is certainly unextraordinary, and seemingly there is little to add in the way of hoisting the charms of our lovers high above the didactic maneuvers of Shakespeare's Caesar. Still, despite a longstanding critical trend to praise Egypt, the importance of idleness in the play, of players playing at loving, at warring, and even at dying, has yet, in my view, to be properly understood and celebrated. Celebrations of idleness adorn Shakespeare's play. Michael J. C. Echeruo reminds us that "a celebration is not an imitation of anything, only a statement of something. In celebrating, we make a statement through a pattern of representations (acts of playing) without a...

Moralizing Apparel in Early Modern London: Popular Literature, Sermons, and Sartorial Display

This study investigates the cultural and textual relationship between two types of texts that inveigh against the preoccupation with fashionable attire: imaginative secular writing and sermons. While scholars have noted the influence sermons had on secular texts in the period, this article shows how popular literature of the profane, in denouncing excessive pride in apparel, had a profound and lasting influence on homiletic discourse. Sermons are hybrid texts that incorporate both the themes and literary flourish of texts written by secular, polemical authors, such as Philip Stubbes and Thomas Nashe. Special attention is given to the sermons preached at Paul's Cross to show how the complex social space surrounding the pulpit was crucial in enabling preachers to express the critique against excesses in apparel.

Uses and Abuses: John Bunyan, Philip Stubbes, and the Ambiguity of Literary Influence

The following essay will postulate that John Bunyan, the tinker, Reformed preacher and author of The Pilgrim's Progress, drew upon The Anatomie of Abuses by the Elizabethan author Philip Stubbes. If this is the case, it is a debt not only unacknowledged by Bunyan himself, but unrecognised by subsequent generations of readers and scholars.Building upon the intuition of formal and rhetorical correspondences between two sets of texts, my most immediate objective is to enquire whether Bunyan, despite his claims to the most limited and selective reading, was, or might have been, directly familiar with Stubbes's Anatomie, a popular, quasi-Reformed critique of theatres and other perceived excesses which was first published in 1583.1 This question bears closely on our understanding of Bunyan as a reader and as an author, for Bunyan was forceful and precise in his claims, after his conversion, to the most limited, godly reading. Furthermore, a work to which he was extensively and avowedly indebted - The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heaven, by Arthur Dent - itself owed much to Stubbes, amongst other sixteenth-century authors of moral dialogue; we might thus assume that Dent is the conduit of any literary contact between Stubbes and Bunyan.2 If, however, Bunyan encountered The Anatomie independently of Dent, our assumptions about his reading habits; our credence of what Bunyan tells us about them; and our understanding of his place within popular, literary, and rhetorical traditions will require reassessment.How might one verify an intuition of literary influence - let alone establish something approaching proof? Where a Reformed author (Bunyan), and an ostensibly Reformed author (Stubbes) are concerned, the mere postulation of a demonstrable source is fraught with methodological and critical difficulties. Is it possible to trace influence objectively when both authors are situated within a vast field of interconnected literary and spiritual traditions? Is it possible, moreover, to establish the sheer fact of proof through a critical discipline which deals in linguistic nuance and operates, almost by definition, between the lines? Or does a different kind of evidence lie precisely - and paradoxically - within areas of ambiguity?IAs his own writings and numerous secondary studies have demonstrated, Bunyan drew on a range of literary traditions which became closely associated with puritanism in the later-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reformed writing throughout this period was characterised by popular and didactic genres: the pastoral dialogue, the trial narrative, the judgement story, the spiritual biography or autobiography, to name but a few. While such traditions - both literary and oral - defined the spiritual and congregational context within which he believed and wrote, Bunyan only occasionally makes explicit acknowledgement of his debt to works of puritan piety.3 With the exception of Arthur Dent, Samuel Clarke, the Bible, and a handful of other godly texts - Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs', Luther's commentary on the Book of Galatians, and Lewis Bayly's Practice of Pietie - he is otherwise at pains to emphasise his lack of formal education and reading.4 Despite being 'put to School' by his humble but conscientious parents, he tells us in his spiritual autobiography,to learn both to Read and Write; the which I also attained, according to the rate of other poor mens children, to my shame I confess, I did soon loose that little I learned, even almost utterly, and that long before the Lord did work his gracious work of conversion upon my Soul.5Bunyan's acknowledgement of the popular romances and chapbooks that he devoured in his youth forges an emphatic distinction between his unconverted and converted selves. His recollection - or conceptualisation - of his unregenerate reading preferences is absolutely at odds with the very notion of godliness or, for that matter, moral improvement:the Scriptures thought I, what are they? …

Short Shrift: Religion and Materialist Criticism

AbstractThis review essay examines the upsurge of materialist criticism in Renaissance literary studies over the last 20 years as well as the limitations of such criticism vis‐à‐vis religion. Sensitive to these limitations, two recent authors employ solid historical scholarship to uncover the mundane realities as well as the no less real, though harder to quantify, spiritual aspects of Renaissance religious practice. Ramie Targoff's Common Prayer (2001) examines the Reformation production and distribution of the Book of Common Prayer, paying special attention to how the reformers balanced both economic and devotional considerations. Second, Jeffrey Knapp's Shakespeare's Tribe (2002) challenges the prevailing view in contemporary scholarship that Shakespeare's stage was largely secularist, even secularizing. Knapp argues that a considerable amount of early modern drama, including Shakespeare's, was written with the sacramental purposes of uniting religious believers of various stripes and of illustrating by example on the stage many of the precepts of the religious life. Knapp specifically counters materialist accounts in which religion is either a mask for power politics or is simply eviscerated of its spiritual content by representing it on an allegedly profane stage. Implicit in Knapp's argument is the odd coupling of Puritan antitheatricalists such as Philip Stubbes and Anthony Munday with some current scholars who rely heavily on Puritan polemics as an accurate characterization of the Renaissance stage. Finally, I cite Stephen Greenblatt's biography, Will in the World (2004), for its reiteration of the claim that Shakespeare was a secular playwright who invoked the language and trappings of religion merely for comic, commercial entertainment; I suggest that the plays can be read in a more devotional light.

'He hath changed his coppy': Anti-Theatrical Writing and the Turncoat Player

In 1580, Anthony Munday wrote a pamphlet (from which the above quotation is taken) entitled ‘A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Playes and Theatres’, a banal polemical text of a kind very common to early modern London. This work was a very self-conscious contribution to the literary attack on the London stage; indeed, it was the first of such works to single out the stage for exclusive criticism, rather than include it as one among many decadences, as is the case in Philip Stubbes’ notorious Anatomie of Abuses (1583).

THE DREADFUL OUTCOME OF EXPOSING CHILDREN TO DANCING AND MUSIC, AS VIEWED IN 1583

Philip Stubbes (fl. 1583-1591), and English Puritan pamphleteer, in his The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), denounced the evil consequences of teaching dancing and music to children as follows: If you would have your son soft, womanish, unclean, smooth-mouth, affected to bawdry, scurrility, filthy rimes, and unseemly talking; briefly if you would have him, as it were, transnatured into a woman or worse, and inclined to all kinds of whoredom and abomination, set him to dancing school and to learn music, and then you shall not fail of your purpose. And if you would have your daughter riggish, bawdry and unclean, and a filthy speaker, and suchlike, bring her up in music and dancing and my life for yours, you have won the goal.1

Philip Stubbes in 'The Anatomie of Abuses (1 May, 1583) denounces May games and such like amusements

Philip Stubbes in 'The Anatomie of Abuses (1 May, 1583) denounces May games and such like amusements Get access A. R. Bayley A. R. Bayley Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s11-III, Issue 72, 13 May 1911, Pages 371–372, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s11-III.72.371e Published: 13 May 1911

The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says:

Journal Article The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says: Get access Hellier R. H. Gosselin Hellier R. H. Gosselin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-V, Issue 111, 10 February 1894, Page 115, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-V.111.115-d Published: 10 February 1894

The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says:

The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says: Get access Thos. H. Baker Thos. H. Baker Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-V, Issue 111, 10 February 1894, Page 115, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-V.111.115-c Published: 10 February 1894

The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says:

The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says: Get access Edward Peacock Edward Peacock Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-V, Issue 111, 10 February 1894, Page 115, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-V.111.115-b Published: 10 February 1894

The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says:

The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in his 'anatomy of Abuses,' says: Get access E. S. A. E. S. A. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-V, Issue 111, 10 February 1894, Pages 115–116, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-V.111.115-e Published: 10 February 1894