THE TUDOR PERIOD

Early Modern Ideas of Order​

Dr. Oana-Alis Zaharia

 The Wars of the Roses - a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne
of England, fought between supporters of two rival branches of the
Royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York (the
"red" and the "white" rose, respectively). They were fought in several
sporadic episodes between 1455 and 1485, although there was related
fighting both before and after this period.

The final victory went to a relatively remote Lancastrian claimant,

Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who married Elizabeth of York, the
daughter of the late Yorkist king Edward IV, to reconcile the two factions
and founded the House of Tudor, which subsequently ruled England
and Wales for 117 years.
 The Tudor myth claimed that King Richard II’s overthrow (r.1377-
1399) by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (later King Henry IV) and his
subsequent murder spawned a trail of unrest, culminating with the 30-
year Wars of the Roses. The wars ended when the first Tudor
monarch, the Lancastrian Henry VII, defeated Richard III, ascended
to the throne, and united the warring houses by marrying Elizabeth of
York.

King Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of
England from 21 April 1509-1547.
the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father,
Henry VII.
He was Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) and claimant to the
Kingdom of France.
King Henry VIII- responsible for:

- separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic

Church >>> Dissolution of the Monasteries;

 the English Reformation >> England a Protestant nation.

He became the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

 Henry oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws
in Wales Acts 1535–1542.

 his desire to provide England with a male heir — (see divorce from
Catherine of Aragon; marriage to Anne Boleyn)

 6 wives (two of which - beheaded)

ELIZABETH I , The Sieve Portrait/ The Siena Portrait by Quentin Metsys the
Younger. Elizabeth is portrayed with a sieve in a number of portraits. This one is
referred to as either the 'Sieve Portrait' or 'The Siena Portrait', to distinguish it from the
others. It is one of the few surviving works of Quentin Metsys the Younger and was
discovered in 1895, rolled up in the attic of the Palazza Reale in Siena, hence the
alternate name. Elizabeth obviously admired this artist's work. In 1577, she
unsuccessfully attempted to purchase his 'Burial of Christ' triptych from the Carpenters'
Guild in Antwerp.
The sieve is a symbol of chastity and purity, originally taken from Petrarch's Triumph
of Chastity. In the story, a Roman Vestal Virgin proves her purity by carrying water
in a sieve and not spilling one drop. The sieve thus reinforces Elizabeth's image as
'the virgin queen’.
The rim of the sieve is inscribed: A TERRA ILBEN / AL DIMORA IN SELLA' (The
good falls to the ground while the bad remains in the saddle).
QUEEN ELIZABETH I AND THE REPRESENTATION OF POWER
• Elizabeth’s theatrical self-fashioning :
• the coronation
• her manipulation of the king’s two bodies – the portrait of Henry VIII versus that of
Elizabeth; ( SEE Ernest Kantorowicz- The King’s Two Bodies (1957)
• Imperial Elizabeth I - the Armada portrait
• the importance of virginity (Astraea the virgin goddess of justice, innocence, purity
and precision in Ancient Greek)
• the sealed body-the association with an impregnable fortress; the pearls and
the ribbons- the Armada painting, the sieve painting;
• the displacement of Virgin Mary, (a virgin and a mother) >>The Virgin Queen
>>>> Gloriana – warrior queen (particularly after the defeat of the Spanish
Armada >> international power.
• the composite image of her body – the Tilbury speech (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Bq1h728X0 - Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I) -
the Darnley portrait, the Figure of the Amazon, cross dressing;
The Tilbury Speech

 “The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 has long been held as one of England's
greatest military achievements. This document records the famous speech
delivered by Queen Elizabeth to her troops who were assembled at Tilbury Camp
to defend the country against a Spanish invasion. The successful defense of the
Kingdom against invasion on such an unprecedented scale boosted the prestige of
England's Queen Elizabeth I and encouraged a sense of English pride and
nationalism. In the speech, Elizabeth defends her strength as a female leader,
saying "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have
the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too".
http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item102878.html
“My loving people,

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety,

to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for
fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to
distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have
always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my
chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-
will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as
you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but
being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and
die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my
Transcript of kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the
dust.

the speech in I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but
I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of

present day England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any
prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my
realm: to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I
English: myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general,
judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the
field.
I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards
and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince,
they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant
general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince
commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but
by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp,
and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous
victory over those enemies of my God,of my kingdom, and of
my people.”
http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item102878.html
THE KING’S TWO BODIES

- Ernest Kantorowicz - The King’s Two Bodies (1957) - medieval political theology
and the distinctions separating the "body natural" (a monarch's corporeal being) and
the "body politic“.

- “The King has in him two Bodies, viz., a Body natural, and a Body politic. His
Body natural (if it be considered in itself) is a Body mortal, subject to all
infirmities that come by Nature or Accident, to the Imbecility of Infancy or old
Age, and to the like Defects that happen to the natural Bodies of other People.
- But his Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or handled, consisting of
Policy and Government, and constituted for the Direction of the People, and
the Management of the public weal, and this Body is utterly void of Infancy, and
old Age, and other natural Defects and Imbecilities, which the Body natural is
subject to, and for this Cause, what the King does in his Body politic cannot be
invalidated or frustrated by any Disability in his natural Body.”

- The King is dead, long live the King.

- “The King has two Capacities, for he has two Bodies, the one whereof is a
Body natural, consisting of natural Members as every other Man has, and
in this he is subject to Passions and Death as other Men are; the other is a
Body politic, and the Members thereof are his Subjects, and he and his
Subjects together compose the Corporation. this Body is not subject to
Passions as the other is, nor to Death, for as to this Body the King never
dies, and his natural Death is not called in our Law the Death of the king,
but the Demise of the King, not signifying by the Word Demise that the Body
politic of the King is dead, but that there is a Separation of the two Bodies, and
that the Body politic is transferred and conveyed over from the Body natural
now dead to another Body natural.”
 Next >>> focus on some early modern ideas about:

 the design of the cosmos  divine order

 the nature of mankind human fallibility vs titan

 the type of political government monarchic rule

The organization of society hierarchical

relationships
 the role of women  patriarchal doctrine.
 monarchy considered the best form of government

 people who accepted a monarchic government could nonetheless

challenge the existing ruler - rebellion, plotting assassination.

 although individuals may have held a wide variety of personal

beliefs, they nonetheless knew what the authorized beliefs were.

 many points of connection between political thought and religion.

I. THE RELIGIOUS CAST OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

 Several reasons why politics and religion - difficult to disentangle in

Shakespeare’s time.
1. Early modern England was a Christian country.

 All political arguments referred to the Christian God  the divine right theory
>>> proclaimed that the King is God’s deputy/representative on Earth.

 therefore, resisting to or judging the king was a sin that would be severely
punished by God.

 The fall of Lucifer from heaven and the fall of man in the Garden of Eden -
politicized as allegories of disobedience.
2. Much political conceptualization in the sixteenth century was
occasioned by religious upheavals.

 - people - asked to adapt to the abrupt break with the Roman Catholic Church
effected by Henry VIII (1534), then to a more radical Protestantism inaugurated
under Edward VI (1547-53), next to the enforced restoration of Roman
Catholicism by Mary I (1553-8), and finally to a moderate (Protestant)
Anglicanism under Elizabeth I (1558-1603).

 every reorganization of religion was caused by a change of political leadership

>>> it was often defended or attacked in terms of political loyalty or political
resistance (treason).
3. The church >>>> the monarchy's most effective instrument for
spreading political propaganda.

 Literacy was far from universal in early modern England, and so royal messages
were most reliably disseminated orally, through church sermons.

 approved ideology was represented not only in the Book of Common Prayer
(1549, product of the English Reformation- the first prayer book to include
forms of service for daily and Sunday worship in English) but also in a collection
of Homilies (authorized sermons issued by the state), which priests were required
to read to their congregants every Sunday.
 An Homilie against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion, (1571)
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Homilies_2-21_M/index.html

 obedience is the most important virtue that a subject should possess.

 Subjects must obey their King in all circumstances as the King’s will represents
the will of God.

 Even in the case of an evil king, people must be content with whatever kind of
king God chooses to give them.

 A rebel is worse than the worst prince and rebellion is worse than the worst
government of the worst prince;
 if all the subjects who dislike their prince should rebel, no realm would ever be
without rebellion.

 But what if the prince is evil indeed and evidently so to all men’s eyes? To this
question the homilist answers by placing the whole matter beyond human
judgement. God forbid, he says, “that subjects should judge which prince is wise
and godly and his government good and which prince is otherwise”; that would be
“as though the foot must judge of the head”.

 This demand for patient endurance and passive toleration of tyranny was to
be accorded only to the evil king who was Lord’s anointed and who had
lawfully succeeded to the throne.

 Sharp dichotomy between tyrants who had usurped their throne and tyrants
who had been crowned and anointed as rightful kings respecting the hereditary
principles of succession.
4. As head of the established church the king had many weapons
to ensure that churchmen supported his theories.

 weapons: punishing, even executing priests who made heretical

statements or who enacted unauthorized forms of worship >>>> the
large number of martyrs executed by Henry VIII and Mary I -
'Bloody' Mary/
II. ORDER AND DEGREE IN THE UNIVERSE

 Ideas of order in the Renaissance were patterned on notions of how the cosmos
was organized.

These notions were religiously informed but also had political implications.
 God had created the universe as a system of multiple, corresponding hierarchies.
 The Great Chain of Being organised the world into a fixed order, with God at
the top, descending successively through angels, men, women(!),animals, birds,
fishes, insects, trees and plants to stones.
There were seven orders of angels, with archangels at the top. Men were organised
in a fixed order from king down to serf.
PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA ORATION ON THE DIGNITY OF MAN

(composed in 1486, published in 1496)

- the importance of the human quest for knowledge - after God had created all creatures, He
conceived of the desire for another sentient being who would appreciate all His works, but
there was no longer any room in the chain of being; all the possible slots from angels to
worms had been filled. So, God created man such that he had no specific slot in the chain.
- Instead, men were capable of learning from and imitating any existing creature. When
man philosophizes, he ascends the chain of being towards the angels, and communion
with God. When he fails to exercise his intellect, he vegetates.
- men could ascend the chain of being through the exercise of their intellectual capacities
>>>> profound endorsement of the dignity of human existence in this earthly life.
- The root of this dignity >>> only human beings could change themselves through their
own free will.
- Coupled with his belief that all of creation constitutes a symbolic reflection of the divinity of
God, Pico's philosophies had a profound influence on the arts, helping to elevate writers
and painters from their medieval role as mere artisans to the Renaissance ideal of the
artist as genius.
- https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/11/14/pico-della-mirandola-oration-on-the-dignity-of-man-15th-c
-ce/
 the structure of each class of being reflected the structure of creation as a
whole.

 Even parts of the human body corresponded to other elements in society: the head
was the king, the arms warriors, the hands workers, and so on. As you went up
the chain, each ‘link’ had power over the link below. To disobey those in
authority was to defy the divine plan: superiors had to be obeyed even when they
seemed to do wrong.

 “The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Observe degree, priority, and place,
Infixture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order.”
(Troilus and Cressida1.3.85-8)
The various hierarchies were believed to be so closely interrelated in their
analogous structures that a violation of degree in any one sphere
resonated in all.
The founding Christian myth of the origin of evil involved a violation of degree
as well as an act of disobedience.
 Lucifer dared to challenge his place in the hierarchy of God's angels. In
 The various hierarchies were believed to be so closely
interrelated in their analogous structures that a violation of
degree in any one sphere resonated in all.

The founding Christian myth of the origin of evil involved a

violation of degree as well as an act of disobedience.

 Lucifer dared to challenge his place in the hierarchy of God's

angels. InIn consequence, he and his supporters were cast out
from heaven. From then on, Lucifer was known by his fallen
name, Satan.
IV. A SOVEREIGN MONARCHY

 All authorized political theory had two aspects:

1. Political order >>> founded in an unequal distribution of power >>>>
mainstream political theory sought to explain why it was right and necessary—that is,
'natural'—for power to be concentrated in inequitable, hierarchical ways.

2. Political thought exhorted obedience to all those higher in the hierarchy

>>> government – necessary in order to prevent the chaos, savagery, and
cannibalism that would otherwise prevail >>> to prevent mankind from descending
on that Great Chain of Being to the level of beasts.

- Each Tudor monarch survived at least one major rebellion during his or her
reign.
V. THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY

 One of the conceptual challenges for the orthodox political theory was that the
biblical Ten Commandments were largely apolitical.

 They required honour to God:

'Thou shalt have no other gods before me'
 ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image';
 ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain'.

They also included prohibitions important for social order: 'Thou shalt not
kill';
 'Thou shalt not commit adultery';
 'Thou shalt not steal'; 'Thou shalt not bear false witness’
The fifth Commandment could be reinterpreted to take on political meanings :
'Honour thy father and thy mother'.

 If God had ordained that parents were to be honoured in their families, then it
followed that monarchs were also to be honoured in their kingdoms.

The early modern family - described as a political institution.

 commonwealth = family  self-justification: the monarchy borrowed credibility
from a social institution, the family, that seemed more 'natural' than any other.
 As indicated, the commandment to `Honour thy father and thy mother' was taken to
refer to heads of state as well as heads of household.
 But in early modern England the monarch had only one domestic analogue, the
father.
THE PLACE OF WOMEN

Elizabethan society- patriarchal

 Other biblical passages were cited to justify an elevation of the father over the
mother >> the inferiority of women could be 'proved' with passages from the
Bible.

 St Paul: 'Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord, for the husband is
the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the Church’.
 St. Paul: all women deserved punishment because Eve had been the first to eat the
forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden >>> marriage described as a penalty for
women.
 In a kingdom committed to the monarchic  the family had to be conceived as
patriarchal.
 John Dod and Robert Cleaver , Godly Form of Household Government for the
Ordering of Private Families According to the Direction of God's Word (1598)
 the wife had essential responsibilities, as John Dod and Robert Cleaver recognized:

“The duty of the husband is to get goods, and of the wife to gather them together and
save them. The duty of the husband is to travel abroad [outdoors] to seek living,
and the wife's duty is to keep the house. The duty of the husband is to get money and
provision, and of the wives, not vainly to spend it.... The duty of the husband is to be
Lord of all, and of the wife to give account of all. The duty of the husband is to
dispatch all things without door, and of the wife to oversee and give order for all
things within the house.”
-
DISCONTINUIY between ideology and social reality
women - expected to be chaste, silent, and obedient. Nonetheless,
many of them >> brought to trial for having committed adultery,
slander, and blasphemy.
many early modern social critics lamented the number of domineering
wives and contentious marriages.
witches ; shrews – needed to be controlled- VIOLENCE

 disobedience a political sin- treason – yet there was widespread

rebellion, crime, and disorder.
Beliefs in folk practices, inherited superstitions, astrological
prognostication, and occult experimentation coexisted with orthodox
Christian faith.
- FURTHER READING

- This lecture is based on the chapter “Ideas of Order” by Lena Orlin Cowen in Wells, Stanley
& Orlin Lena (eds.), An Oxford Guide to Shakespeare, Oxford: OUP, 2003, pp.139-151.

- FILMS TO WATCH:

1. Elizabeth (1998) Trailer – YouTube

2. Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Extended UK Trailer) – YouTube

3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZD2yJMGKXw

4. Shakespeare in Love (1998, dir. John Madden)