Roger Ascham Research Articles

Roger Ascham’s Latin–Greek Code-Switching: A Philosophical Phenomenon

The Englishman Roger Ascham (c.1515–68) was an expert Latinist and Hellenist, and an inveterate code-switcher. This article will assess Ascham’s careful incorporation of Greek into his writing, be it single words, phrases or quotations. It will consider his extensive Latin correspondence and theological treatises that were inflected with Greek; his Latin and Greek poetry; and also one of his most famous tracts composed in the vernacular. I will explore how his use of Greek heightened a sense of sociability at both micro- and macro-levels through the establishment of a network of ‘belonging’. Ascham’s conspicuous cultivation of royalty and nobles also implicated his Greek code-switches in the business of State governance. Yet many of Ascham’s Greek references were religiously freighted through his frequent engagement with the Greek New Testament; this was especially true of his two theological Latin tracts, each of which broached sensitive doctrinal topics and used Greek as a guarantor of religious veracity. In addition to probing the meanings of discrete parcels of Greek, this article will also broach the significant role Greek might play in terms of linguistic enhancement, both for Latin and also the vernacular. Taking this further, I will additionally suggest that Greek could be instrumental in effecting a broader programme of moral formation. Hence a fundamental premise and arrival-point of this paper is that code-switching was more than just a practice; it was a mentality.

Creative Writing and Translation

Creative writing and translation have an intricate relation in writing, scholarship, the classroom and beyond. The philosophical context of mimesis and anti-mimesis affects writers, translators, critics, scholars, teachers and students. Imitation, innovation, originality, copying all become part of the debate over translation and creativity. From Plato through Roger Ascham to Immanuel Kant and beyond, this article explores the relation between writing and translation and discusses contributions to this debate East and West before proceeding to the author’s experience in those two realms, especially in Canada, England, China and the United States. I argue that translation is creative, for both creative writing and translation are – along with reading – forms of interpretation. Translators of poetry are, or should be, poets who create anew or recreate the poems.

Henrician Homer: English Verse Translations from the Iliad and Odyssey, 1531–1545

Verse translations from the Iliad and Odyssey embedded in Thomas Elyot’s Gouernour, Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus, and Nicholas Udall’s Apophthegmes might seem the poor cousins of longer and better-known Homer translations by poets such as George Chapman. But this article, which pays close literary-critical attention to Elyot’s, Ascham’s, and Udall’s Homer translations, argues that they play an important and mostly untold part in a larger story concerning the translation of Homer into English, not to mention the vernacular translation of ancient Greek literature in England in the sixteenth century. These fragmentary translations reveal that early Tudor writers had a wider array of options in their methods of classical translation than has hitherto been appreciated. They also call for more nuanced consideration of the diverse intellectual, political, and literary contexts that spurred poetic innovation in late Henrician England.

The Venus of Apelles from Schoolroom to Romance

This article argues that classical visual art played an important role in mediating the relationship between Elizabethan romance and the humanist schoolroom. I advance this claim by following the wayward itinerary through Elizabethan letters of the Greek painter Apelles and his unfinished painting of Venus rising from the sea. In the work of the educator Roger Ascham, the painting serves as an emblem for the fragmented corpus of classical antiquity; Apelles's lost masterpiece enjoys a second life when appropriated in the next generation by John Lyly as a figure for the estrangement of Elizabethan fiction from earlier humanist claims that poetry's purpose was primarily didactic.

The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature. Tina Skouen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Pp. x+234.

The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature. Tina Skouen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Pp. x+234.

Volume 50 (2020)

Volume 50 (2020)

Christopher Marlowe, Literary History, and the Lyrical Style of Blank Verse

This essay contextualizes the versification of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine among sixteenth-century efforts to reform English vernacular verse on the model of Latin unrhymed quantitative meter. Literary histories of unrhymed verse in the poetic and rhetorical theory of Roger Ascham, Gabriel Harvey, and others align the disappearance of unrhymed meter with the fall of civilizations and propose a return to classical metrics as a means of transferring the cultural and political authority of ancient Rome to Tudor England. Marlowe, however, offers in Tamburlaine an alternative literary history of unrhymed poetry through the formal affordances of blank verse. As an open form, blank verse lends itself to expansive speeches that, in the mouth of Tamburlaine, can paradoxically both produce action and arrest time. The form of blank verse thus resists the imperial teleology of its origins in the classicizing projects of the Tudor humanists. [C.M.]

Iconic and discursive character of representation of child in “The Schoolmaster” by Roger Ascham

Iconic and discursive character of representation of child in “The Schoolmaster” by Roger Ascham

English Classical: The Reform of Poetry in Elizabethan England

English Classical: The Reform of Poetry in Elizabethan England STEPHEN ORGEL Roger ascham, writing in the 1560s, in the course of a treatise on education, urged the reform of English poetry on classical models: “Our English tongue, in avoiding barbarous rhyming, may as well receive right quantity of syllables, and true order of versifying . . . as either Greek or Latin. . . .”1 He cites as an example of right quantity of syllables and true order of versifying this translation by the scholar and poet William Watson of a verse from the Odyssey: All travelers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses. For that he knew many men’s manners, and saw many cities. This does not sound much like English poetry, but if we count it out we can see that it does, more or less, follow the quantitative rules. The trouble is that the rules have little to do with English pronunciation. Vowels are long by position (followed by two consonants) regardless of how they are pronounced ; moreover, Watson makes vowels long if they are stressed (such as the a in “travelers” and “manners” and the i in “cities”), again regardless of how they are pronounced. For the Elizabethans, this was a problem not with the rules, but with English, both in its dissimilarity from the classical tongues and in the variety of spelling and pronunciation at the time—proponents of quantitative verse in English observe that a necessary first step would be to stabilize the language, as Gabriel Harvey wrote to Edmund Spenser, “there is no one more regular and justifiable direction, either for the assured and infallible certainty of our English artificial prosody particularly , or generally to bring our language into art and to arion 27.2 fall 2019 frame a grammar or rhetoric thereof, than first of all universally to agree upon one and the same orthography.”2 But even with a stable orthography, the application of quantitative rules to English is problematic. To begin with, it is not clear in what sense an English vowel can be said to be long or short—to consider the vowels in stressed syllables invariably long, as Watson does, is entirely arbitrary. There is obviously a difference between the a sound in “rat” and in “rate”; such vowels are now described as short and long, but in pronunciation, they may or may not be of equal extension : thus, the a in “rate” is not, in speaking, longer than the a in “rat,” it is simply pronounced differently; whereas the i in “rise” is certainly longer than the i in “rid.” If quantity means length, English vowels are too erratic to serve—Harvey observed to Spenser that in some quantitative hexameters Spenser had sent him, “the,” “ye” and “he” were treated as short, but “me” was long.3 The issue is especially vexed in the case of vowels that are long by position. The most common examples in English are the -ing endings of participles, which are invariably unaccented and stubbornly short when spoken. In fact, Thomas Campion confronted precisely this problem; and his way of dealing with it gives a clear sense of how willed the whole quantitative system in English necessarily was: For though we accent the second [syllable] of Trumpington short, yet is it naturally long, and so of necessity must be held of every composer .4 What can “naturally” mean here? Are the rules of Latin prosody laws of nature? Harvey had a clear sense of the practical problems, writing to Spenser, “in short, this is the very short and long: position neither maketh short nor long in our tongue,” and concludes that some other rule must be found for English “that should as universally and canonically hold amongst us as position doth with the Latins and Greeks.”5 The larger assumption behind Ascham’s and Harvey’s proposals for a new poetry was that the “barbarous” England 44 english classical of the time could be rectified by the application of classical rules. A return to the classics held out the promise of culture and civility—not only in poetry, of course, but poetry seemed a particularly clear example. Nobody thought the transformation would be easy; a hectoring...

The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters: Gender, Transgression, Adolescence. Jennifer Higginbotham. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Pp. vi+225.

<i>The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters: Gender, Transgression, Adolescence</i>. Jennifer Higginbotham. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Pp. vi+225.

‘Lying by authority’: travel dissimulations in Fynes Moryson's Itinerary

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe have long been recognized as an ‘Age of Dissimulation’; in the period, their compatriots often depicted English travellers to the Continent as the ultimate liars and dissemblers. This article suggests that Fynes Moryson's An Itinerary of a Journey (1617) is one important example of how travel writers engaged with the charge of dissimulation made against them by opponents to European travel, beginning in the 1570s with Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster (1571). With particular focus on the role of Catholic Italy in the travel debate, the article shows how An Itinerary negotiates what was perceived as a hostile and infectious Catholic Italian reality to develop its own approach to travel observation at a moment of generic and epistemic fluidity. Via a number of textual tricks, Itinerary turns the threat of the Inquisition into a strategic advantage; ultimately, the travel report represents strategies of ‘honest dissimulation’ as the basis of the traveller's claim to truthful observation.

Emulation on the Shakespearean Stage by Vernon Guy Dickson (review)

Vernon Guy Dickson. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. xx + 189. 60.00 [pounds sterling]. Early in Emulation on Shakespearean Stage, Vernon Guy Dickson quotes Quintilians The Orators Education: I do want Paraphrase to be mere passive reproduction, but to rival and vie with original in expressing same thoughts (quoted 11). Appearing in final paragraph of Dicksons book, another quotation from The Orators Education tempers ancient rhetoricians teaching on contentious imitation: no man can draw level with man in whose footsteps he feels bound to tread (quoted 172). In Dicksons account, in English combined these precepts. At once competition and homage, textual expression and lived behavior, emulation was seen as rote repetition but as an act of or construction, self-construction in daily life--governed by decorum, though also potentially generative of transgressive invention (12). This understanding of moreover, created that bred individuals who read selves closely like texts and attempted to shape themselves based on wide range of models, and persons, historical and contemporary--sometimes as agonists, sometimes as exemplars, sometimes simply as peers (xvii). In mounting case for this culture of emulation, Dickson draws on and deviates from Rene Girard's mimetic rivalry, Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance self-fashioning, and Thomas M. Greenes era of imitation. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage thus ends up enacting very concept it examines. The result is study of English rhetorical and dramatic practice that provides useful review of scholarship and reads early modern drama in often generative ways. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage begins with genealogy of of in which early modern dramatists and their audiences engaged. In chapter 1 Dickson reviews principal early theories of imitation, with particular attention to Aristotle and Quintilian and to Thomas Wilson, Roger Ascham, and Sir Philip Sidney. This chapter proves especially useful in demonstrating differences in priorities between ancient and early modern rhetoricians and among English writers. For instance, although they all emphasize self-fashioning through emulative education, Wilson privileges imitation in context of classroom learning; Ascham, of social codes of behavior; and Sidney, of virtuous action (14-24). This blurring of texts (fiction and nonfiction, art and life), Dickson argues, is only foundational to emulative theory in but also the necessary condition of humanist ideal of an emulative theater on Shakespearean stage (62). The next four chapters closely read plays by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Philip Massinger that take classical Rome, including its texts, culture, and ethos, as object of emulation. Each of plays also portrays a confounding enactment of Roman models (29). This compelling turn of phrase appears in chapter 2, arguably strongest chapter in book. Here, Dickson demonstrates how in Andronicus characters compete to outdo available texts and each others imitations of these texts and precedents, constructing a destructive pattern of conflicted, partial, and uncritical emulations (28). Classroom learning sets Shakespearean stage for Roman patterns of behavior that ought to promote social and political action worthy of but miscalculations in characters' discernments of what and how to emulate lead to escalating retributive violence rather than mercy. Although not as overt as Titus (53), Hamlet enacts failure of emulative reading of classical models to yield anything other than rote repetition. In chapter 3 Dickson focuses on Hamlet and lapse of decorum (match[ing] deeds to . …

Roger Ascham's Defence of the Lord's Supper

This article explores a little-known Latin tract on the Eucharist entitled “A defence of the Lord's Supper” (Apologia pro Caena Dominica). The Apologia is a treatise of 1547 which vigorously denounced the Mass, its sacrifice, and priests. It was written by Roger Ascham as a direct response to a series of religious debates held at Cambridge University at the start of Edward VI's reign. The work's evident aim to direct government discussion on the best way to restore the Lord's Supper in England raises interesting questions about the relationship between University and State during this reign. It also offers fresh insights into the evolution of Edwardine Protestantism, not least because the orientation of the Apologia's theology was distinctly Lutheran. It may be possible to make the case that Luther's writings and theological emphases had a greater impact on Edwardine religious debates about the Eucharist than scholars had assumed. Lastly, the work provides a welcome opportunity for a reappraisal of Ascham himself, both his confessional identity, and the precise nature of his role in the religious conflicts of the Reformation.

Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance by Catherine Nicholson (review)

Reviewed by: Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance by Catherine Nicholson Samuel Baudinette Nicholson, Catherine, Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013; cloth; pp. 224; 3 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$55.00, £36.00; ISBN 9780812245585. In Uncommon Tongues, Catherine Nicholson situates ‘strangeness’ at the centre of the development of English vernacular eloquence during the Renaissance. Through an in-depth analysis and reading of notable English literary works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Nicholson places eccentricity in its pedagogical, rhetorical, and literary context. The study is highly engaging, written with conscious eloquence, and provides a unique approach to well-studied and little known texts that builds upon existing research in the field of English rhetoric, such as Carla Mazzio’s The Inarticulate Renaissance (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Nicholson’s concern is the hyper-embellished prose of John Lyly’s Euphues, Edmund Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calendar, and Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. She argues that the wilful eccentricity displayed by their writing elevated the rhetorical eloquence of the English language during a time when rhetoricians and pedagogues were realising the unique difficulty of applying Latin and Greek theories of eloquence to a supposedly barbarous tongue. Nicholson does so through a series of elegant metaphors, such as the rhetorical exile of the English language from Latin eloquence, with its attendant colonial concerns about an England perceived to be on the periphery of Europe and the old Roman Empire. The first two chapters of the book ground these concerns in a thorough analysis of the development of English rhetoric. This section flows exceedingly well and Nicholson’s reading of texts such as Thomas Elyot’s The Boke named the Governor and Roger Ascham’s The Scholemaster is engaging. The second half of the study, which provides three interesting chapter-length case studies of strangeness in Lyly, Spenser, and Marlowe, feels less cohesive; the analysis in these chapters is, nevertheless, still coherent and impressive. The final coda to the book, which briefly reads Shakespeare against the other studies, is less convincing than other sections of the book, perhaps because of its brevity. The strength of the study ultimately lies in Nicholson’s in-depth engagement and reading of her literary sources. In her own eloquent prose, Nicholson emerges as deeply aware of the connection between these texts and their immediate contexts, although the disconnected structure of the second half of the book sometimes makes this difficult to appreciate. Uncommon Tongues will appeal to historians of the English vernacular culture of the Renaissance, and English literary historians more generally. Those attracted to the development of theories of rhetoric will also find much of interest in this book. [End Page 303] Samuel Baudinette Monash University Copyright © 2015 Samuel Baudinette

Johnson’s Editorial Lexicography

In his editions of Sir Thomas Browne’s Christian Morals (1756) and of Roger Ascham’s English Works (1761) Samuel Johnson provided many definitions of words (or particular senses of words) that are absent in his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). These editorial glosses constitute hidden acts of lexicography: they are assembled herewith as addenda to Johnson’s Dictionary . The similarity between Johnson’s editorial glosses and his dictionary definitions suggests that as a lexicographer he was often interpreting contextual usage rather than seeking, like some lexicographers, the general meanings of words.

Richard III’s Baby Teeth

Richard III’s Baby Teeth

Shakespeare Among the Courtesans: Prostitution, Literature, and Drama, 1500-1650 by Duncan Salkeld (review)

Duncan Salkeld. Shakespeare Among the Courtesans: Prostitution, Literature, and Drama, 1500-1650. Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. Pp. xiv + 206. $99.95. As part of Ashgate's Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies series, Duncan Salkeld's Shakespeare Among the Courtesans: Prostitution, Literature, and Drama, 15001650 looks at how early modern dramatists drew upon Italian literary and cultural representations of prostitutes and courtesans, adapting them to appeal to attitudes about sex workers. Following a brief overview of concubines in classical antiquity, Salkeld documents the appearance of in early modern Italian and literary and dramatic texts, contrasting them with their real-life counterparts as seen through court records and Anglo-Italian accounts of tourist encounters with prostitutes in Rome and London. classical literature, Salkeld argues, courtesans are exclusively characters that belong to comedy. The Elizabethans turned them into figures of tragedy, and the Jacobeans re-absorbed them by marriage into city comedy (20). The first chapter lays the contextual foundation regarding prostitutes in classical culture and drama, focusing on the as a stock character in Roman comedy. In the sixteenth century, the comedies of Plautus and Terrence came to be a staple in the university curriculum at Oxford and Cambridge, where students studied and acted out the plays in their original language. Some writers, however, were ambivalent, if not outright hostile, to dramatic performances of any kind, while others were more generally skeptical of the supposed value in presenting as negative exempla what Roger Ascham termed sotle bawds and wilie harlots (14). Courtesans also figure in texts of this period as evidence of Italian depravity and inferiority. William Thomas's The Historye of Italye (1549), for instance, claims that the city of Rome maintained 40,000 primarily for the clergy's use. Chapter 2, English Prototypes and the 'foul disease' shows how early modern writers transform the meretrix of the classical comedies into a symbol of civic malaise, one spectacularly afflicted with the social and spiritual effects of venereal (21). Using sexually transmitted infection as a metaphor for social, moral, and religious corruption, mid-sixteenth-century playwrights present the courtesan as endangering not only herself and the singular foolish young man but the entire society. The early stage courtesan, Salkeld argues, represents the threat of contamination and engages in topical anxieties concerning England's youth, heresy and the split between Catholicism and Protestantism, and England's public health and economy. Salkeld also links the early modern theatrical and brothel industries through his inclusion of archival materials from Bridewell Hospital regarding charges of illicit sexual activities against inhabitants and the owners of the Bell and the Cross Keys inns, both early theatrical performing spaces. Travellers and the Sex Trade in Early Modern London is the focus of chapter 3. Counterbalancing xenophobia about the sexual dangers faced by travelers in Italy, accounts by Italian visitors to England as well as the writings of Thomas Nashe provide evidence of an equally thriving sex industry in and around London. Not only could sex work be purchased through the city's broad network of brothels and prostitutes, but Salkeld documents what seems to be a somewhat common--and therefore extremely unsettling, if not surprising--trade in children. Victim-blaming appears to have been de rigueur, as court archives record the punishments meted out to children for being whores since the age of ten or eleven. Chapter 4, Between Renaissance Sheets: Making Contact, seeks to recover a sense of sexual practice among early modern Italians and people. …

Shooting for England: Configuring the Book and the Bow in Roger Ascham's "Toxophilus"

Shooting for England: Configuring the Book and the Bow in Roger Ascham's "Toxophilus"

Archery Practice in Early Tudor England

In 1545 Roger Ascham, humanist scholar and educationalist, published Toxophilus, a dialogue in which an enthusiast for the longbow expounds to a sceptic the many benefits of archery for personal development and national defence. Ascham was worried that archery practice was in catastrophic decline. He claimed that in the great town where he set his dialogue, ‘there be a thousande good mens bodies, yet scarse x [tha]t vseth any great shoting’.1 Ascham’s concern was neither idiosyncratic nor novel, but how justified was it? And if archery was in decline, how accurate was Ascham’s diagnosis of the causes? Concern to maintain archery went right to the top of English society and dated back to at least 1363, when the first of a succession of ordinances and parliamentary statutes had commanded that Englishmen should spend their Sundays and holidays not in pointless amusements such as football, bowls, tennis and dice, but in shooting at the butts.2 By the mid fifteenth century it was accepted by political writers such as Sir John Fortescue and George Ashby that national security depended upon the populace being ‘much exercised in shooting’, something to which ‘By law every man should be compeled’.3 Henry VII and Henry VIII defended the longbow with statutes banning the possession of crossbows and handguns by the lower orders; they promoted it with further statutes ordering every householder to keep bows, not only for himself, but for his servants and children, and commanding every adult and adolescent male to use them.4

Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (review)

Reviewed by: Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity Jennifer C. Vaught Keith M. Botelho . Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Pp. xiv + 199. $80.00. In this excellent study of rumor and early modern masculinity, Keith M. Botelho begins by contextualizing Renaissance earwitnessing, or judicious listening, in terms of the importance of discerning truth in our noisy, modern world. In the preface, "Listening in an Age of Truthnapping," he contends that our auditory and visual senses are continually subjected to cell phones, the Internet, radio programs, and the nightly news that spins stories as if they were entertainment. These multiple, rapidly changing sources of news contain unverified information that can generate devastating rumors, a distortion and garbling of the truth distinct from gossip because of their large-scale social and political implications. In the Renaissance, "Rumor or Fama" is "an ambiguously gendered figure" that relentlessly undermines masculine and feminine authority, onstage and off (3). In the introduction, "Buzz, Buzz: Rumor in Early Modern England," Botelho outlines the literary, historical, and theoretical implications of his innovative [End Page 361] argument about earwitnessing in plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Cary. Throughout this well-executed, carefully constructed, and witty book, he examines a wide range of texts about rumor and related subjects like cautionary aural discernment. His accessible, detailed analyses of dramatic works are impressive in a project that contributes to existing criticism on sound studies by Bruce Smith, Kenneth Gross, Wes Folkerth, and Gina Bloom (22). He makes an important contribution to early modern scholarship by complicating the restrictive alliance of hearing and its accompanying ideas of "obedience and receptivity" with femininity. Instead, he focuses on dramatists who feature men whose informational authority is based on their earwitnessing when subjected to male rumormongers (3). Despite the vilifying and scapegoating of the tongues of women allied with gossip in Renaissance dramatic works, conduct books, and marriage manuals, Botelho presents the ear as an alternative site of female resistance to their disempowerment in a number of Shakespeare's plays (75). Botelho makes effective use of recent, compelling works on masculinity such as Mark Breitenberg's Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, Bruce Smith's Shakespeare and Masculinity, and Jennifer A. Low's Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture, among others. The study as a whole could benefit from the inclusion of even more theoretical, secondary sources about gender, masculinity, and femininity to further illuminate the large number of plays he discusses. Nevertheless, his historicizing of early modern concepts of masculinity in relation to earwitnessing and rumor is strong. He deals insightfully with Elizabeth I, whom he calls the "paradigmatic earwitness of the period" (23), Francis Bacon, and humanist education theorists such as Juan Luis Vives and Roger Ascham. Though he sometimes blurs the distinctions between literary and historical men and women with respect to earwitnessing, he points out the common link between historia and storia in an early modern age when opposing and alternative interpretations of current events were printed rapidly and distributed widely like pulp fiction (54). In fact, the rise of print culture and relatively high literacy rates in Renaissance England markedly increased one's vulnerability to rumor and gossip (21). He concludes that "perhaps this pastiche of voices—an historical and theatrical babel—becomes a more accurate representation of truth than any one particular account" (54). In chapter 1, "Table Talk: Marlowe's Mouthy Men," Botelho sets the stage by examining the playwright's rumor-filled life and humanist education treatises that emphasize careful discernment. He then analyzes Dido, Queen of Carthage, The Massacre at Paris, and Edward II in terms of male rumormongers and failures of earwitnessing. Botelho concludes that in these plays, "the uncontrolled speech of men" threatens "to undermine and destroy male authority" despite the fact that multiple early modern discourses tend instead to stigmatize women as gossipers [End Page 362] (36). Yet in Dido, Marlowe relies on "gendered binaries" of male "controlled speech" and "silence" and female "raving" (39). Dido reinforces the stereotype of "the woman who attempts to destroy a man's fame with her loose tongue" (39). In Edward II, Queen Isabella...