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I: an ‘hli. 5.522))! t. , Ruthie? urn: 200(1) This is to certify that the dissertation entitled PLAYWRIGHTS, ACTORS, AND ACTING COMPANIES: DOMAINS OF COLLABORATION IN MIDDLETON- ROWLEY'S A FAIR QUARREL, THE CHANGELING, AND THE SPANISH GYPSY (1615-1623) presented by Nels Anchor Christensen III has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in Enflsh fZ/o Liaise-O Major Professor’s Signature 7 Mr 261513“ Date MSU is an Afiirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution LIBRARY Michigan State University PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE 2/05 p:/ClRC/DateDue.lndd-p.1 PLAYWRIGHTS, ACTORS, AND ACTING COMPANIES: DOMAINS OF COLLABORATION IN MIDDLETON-ROWLEY’S A FAIR QUARREL, THE CHANGELING, AND THE SPANISH GYPSY (1615-1623) By Nels Anchor Christensen III A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 2005 ABSTRACT , PLAYWRIGHTS, ACTORS, AND ACTING COMPANIES: DOMAINS OF COLLABORATION IN MIDDLETON-ROWLEY’S A FAIR QUARREL, THE CHANGELING, AND THE SPANISH GYPSY(1 615-1623) By Nels Anchor Christensen 111 Plays written and performed in the English Renaissance were the product of collaboration. From the professional interactions of playwrights, actors, and theater owners, to the influence of prompters, audiences, and official censors, a wide range of joint work shaped the theater industry. As a critical category, however, collaboration has come to denote too many varied relationships to deliver any longer much explanatory force. Faced with the pervasiveness and complexity of collective relationships, this dissertation seeks to refine the general concept of collaboration by breaking it down into three concrete, specific domains: the collaboration of playwrights, the collaboration of actors, and the collaboration of acting companies. Rather than reduce the study of collaboration to the identification and separation of individual agents within theatrical composition and performance, I propose to view collaboration as a process through which two or more people work collectively to create something that neither of them could have done alone. From this perspective, it is not sufficient merely to acknowledge that Renaissance plays result from collaborative processes; instead, we must treat each act, scene, and line as the product of a larger, more complicated collaborative relationship from which it cannot be divorced. In this dissertation, I argue that taking collaboration on its own terms—as a process whose product is and yet exceeds the collective labor of multiple people—is best accomplished by examining in successive chapters three plays commonly attributed to Thomas Middleton and William Rowley: A Fair Quarrel (1615- 17), The Changeling (1622), and The Spanish Gypsy (1623). Each chapter takes one Middleton-Rowley play as a case study for a specific domain, with the exception of chapter two, which also addresses Hamlet. Chapter one analyzes a distinctive pattern of repetition in A Fair Quarrel—what I call “extended cue-catching”——so remarkable in its frequency and effect as to suggest that Middleton-Rowley employed it as a unifying compositional technique. Chapter two strives to clarify the network of collaborative interactions and pressures that shape an actor’s body during theatrical performance. Focusing on highly self-referential scenes in Hamlet and The Changeling, I argue that, given the ftmdamentally collaborative nature of theatrical experience, the actor’s work— the creation of character—must also be seen as collaborative. Chapter three combines a V re-evaluation of historical documents with a rhetorical analysis of The Spanish Gypsy in order to present a case for joint performances of the play by some members of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s companies. I argue that, in its remarkable thematizing of collaboration, The Spanish Gypsy dramatizes the very fact of its own collaborative origin and performance. Taken collectively, these plays not only provide provocative models for understanding their own composition and performance histories, they also suggest new possibilities for studying and teaching the wealth of collaborative plays of the English Renaissance. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................. v INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 A Fair Quarrel, Repetition, and the Collaboration Of Playwrights ........................... 15 CHAPTER 2 Hamlet, The Changeling and the Collaboration of Character .................................. 49 CHAPTER 3 The Self-Conscious Collaboration of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s Companies in The Spanish Gypsy ..................................... 115 EPILOGUE ......................................................................................... 179 NOTES .............................................................................................. 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................. 201 iv LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1 Instances of “Fair” and “Quarrel” by Act, Scene, and Plot ................................... 31 TABLE 2 Significant Dates, Events, and Associations of Christopher Beeston and William Rowley ..................................................... 142 INTRODUCTION The study of collaboration is a tricky business, particularly for scholars busy recovering the collective relationships of the English Renaissance stage. Our attendant confusions include the small body of extant historical evidence and a scholarly tradition insistent on minimizing both the import and varieties of collaboration. Above all, the difficulty in coming to understand collaboration lies in the way it forces us to reconsider the tidy categories of “single” and “co-authored” plays. Collaboration frustrates our respect for individuality and our corresponding desire to locate discrete personalities within any given literary work. Faced with the intermingled relationships and indeterminate agency embodied in the collaborative process, clean authorial distinctions seem misplaced. Consider, as one such instance, N. W. Bawcutt’s introduction to his edition of Middleton-Rowley’s The Changeling published in 1956. Bawcutt’s approach to The Changeling illustrates not only a trend in the scholarly reception of Middleton-Rowley, but also an important friction underlying the general attitudes of scholars regarding collaboration: namely, the tension between praising the seamless unity of collaboratively written plays while concurrently searching for—and finding—the distinctive evidence of each collaborator’s discreet work. Bawcutt’s section entitled “Collaboration” opens with an affirmation of the power of collaboration to achieve a unified effect: “All the evidence seems to show that The Changeling was the result of an unusually close collaboration. The play has a remarkable consistency and continuity, and there is a complete absence of the discrepancies in detail between one part and the next which are often the sign of a work written by several authors” (xxxix). Yet, the weight of historical practice quickly wins out against Bawcutt’s affirmation of Middleton-Rowley’s consistency and continuity. “But in the case of The Changeling,” he writes, “there is a striking unanimity of opinion among scholars and critics as to the division of scenes between Middleton and Rowley” (xxxix). He then proceeds to recount the now familiar dicing up Of the play into the respective acts, scenes, speeches, and lines believed to be written by Middleton and by Rowley. Rooted in the work of the early editors of Middleton-Rowley’s plays, this tradition of dividing plays into authorial shares found nourishment in Pauline G. Wiggin’s doctoral dissertation published in 1897 and remains today a standard editorial practice.l It is precisely this search for authorial shares that drives Bawcutt’s editorial judgments: “Rowley took the opening and closing scenes of the play, and used them to set the whole plot against a firm and rigorous moral background. He also took the comic sub-plot” (xliv). Only when he has laid out the basic scheme does Bawcutt voice again, in contrast to the very tradition he has just evoked, his implied, but not fully articulated, model of collaboration: “the two dramatists were able to use their gifts to the fullest effect, and to support and reinforce each other” (xliv). Thus, even as he acknowledges the concept of individuality informing the authorial shares tradition (each playwright maximizing his own gifts), Bawcutt also gestures tOward a collaborative model capable of replacing the vocabulary of individuality with one rooted in collectivity (those gifts supporting and reinforcing each other). Indeed, Bawcutt implies that it is precisely in the act of collaboration that the playwrights’ respective talents could fully take shape. Herein lies the direction that, I believe, should guide future studies of collaboration and that, more immediately, serves as a compass for this dissertation. I propose to View collaboration as a process through which two or more people work collectively to create something that neither of them could have done alone. From this perspective, it is not sufficient merely to acknowledge that plays such as The Changeling result from collaborative processes; instead, we must treat each act, scene, and line as the product of a larger, more complicated collaborative relationship from which it cannot be divorced. Bawcutt himself anticipates as much when, faced with his own judgment that “Middleton’s moral awareness is deeper in The Changeling than in any of his other plays,” he responds: “it would be difficult to say whether this is due to Middleton’s natural development or to the influence of Rowley; many scholars have pointed out that neither Middleton nor Rowley achieves anything as profound and penetrating as The Changeling in his own unaided work” (xliv). While concrete assumptions about so- called unaided work and the related idea of authorial shares may simplify matters for scholars, ultimately those assumptions stumble up against the force of collaboration itself—its persistent resistance to being reduced to the sum of its parts. In this dissertation, I argue that taking collaboration on its own terms—as a process whose product is and yet exceeds the collective labor of multiple people—is best accomplished by examining—in successive chapters——three plays commonly attributed to Thomas Middleton and William Rowley: A Fair Quarrel (1615-17), The Changeling (1622), and The Spanish Gypsy (1623).2 Coming to see what Renaissance playtexts such as these have to tell us about the daily workings of dramatic collaboration requires refining the general category Of collaboration by breaking it down into concrete, specific domains. As a critical category, collaboration has come to denote too many varied relationships to deliver any longer much explanatory force.3 The three important domains I investigate are the collaboration of playwrights, the collaboration of actors, and the collaboration of playing companies. To date, no single critical study has subdivided collaboration into these three distinct areas and then shown how they influence and interact with issues of plot, theme, and characterization in Renaissance plays. Importantly, my focus on Middleton-Rowley does not stand on the assumption that their relationship is typical or representative of Renaissance collaboration, though it may be. The anemic body of extant historical records suggests that the very notion of “typical collaboration” may be a chimera. The ability to make generalizations about what is or is not typical would require a much larger and more detailed collection of evidence than we currently possess. Moreover, the records we do have so emphatically establish collaboration as “a common method of composition” (Bentley, Profession of Dramatist 234) as to question the appropriateness of such notions as “typical” or “representative” at this point in our historical understanding. For if, as G. E. Bentley has proposed, “every performance in the commercial theaters from 1590 to 1642 was itself essentially a collaboration”—that it was the “joint accomplishment of dramatists, actors, musicians, costumers, prompters . . .” (Profession of Dramatist 198)—then what constitutes “typical” implies an overlapping maze of collective relationships. Identifying what is typical within this maze becomes problematic precisely when we acknowledge that collaboration was an interlacing network of collective relationships about which we have insufficient detailed knowledge. We know that collaboration in its broadest terms was common, but the specific details of typical daily operations and strategies among collaborators are another matter. One reason for this critical gap is the dearth of substantial historical material needed to look at the actual events of collaboration as they took place. There simply are not full records by playwrights and actors of their specific collaborative practices. Indeed, many of the major critics who have written about collaboration list sequences of questions regarding the concrete historical situation for which they wish they had answers but have little faith in finding.4 What does remain, however, are the playtexts themselves. In what follows I turn to the playtexts of A Fair Quarrel, The Changeling, and The Spanish Gypsy as primary sources for recovering collaborative traces of what David Scott Kastan calls “the specific imaginative and material circumstances in which [Renaissance plays] were written and engaged” (17). Given the small body of available historical documents that might shed light on collaborative practices,5 I agree with Michael Mooney that the first step in recovering the circumstances of collaboration is to begin with detailed and focused analyses of A' individual plays within a given collaborative canon (William Rowley 291). Mooney suggests that, in order to separate out the specific joint practices that shaped collaborative drama, we need to refine the body of plays under consideration. Thus, beginning to distinguish more clearly and then to untangle the strands that form networks of collaboration within any given play demands focused attention on close, sustained collective relationships among a limited number of identifiable agents, within a limited number of collaboratively written plays. The case of Beaumont and Fletcher illustrates both the challenges collaboration raises and the necessity, in developing solutions to these challenges, of limiting the number of plays under consideration. Although literary history considers Beaumont and Fletcher the most famous collaborators of English drama, and despite the fact that the title pages of the 1647 and 1679 folio editions of Comedies and Tragedies assert their joint participation, the pairing of Beaumont’s and Fletcher’s names has historically served to mask an indeterminate number of collaborators involved in the writing of these plays. As Bentley, among others, has shown, “The evidence is overwhelming that Beaumont had nothing to do with most of the plays in these two collections” (197). Rather than exemplify a sustained collaborative relationship between two playwrights, the plays associated with Beaumont and Fletcher exemplify what Jeffrey Masten calls the “dispersal of author/ity” in theatrical productions (Textual Intercourse 19). In fact, they exemplify that dispersal to such an extent that any attempt to disentangle or even identify the collaborative agents in those plays leads to what Douglas Brooks calls “the hermeneutical nightmare of collaboration” (152). Far from offering a clear example of a close working relationship between two playwrights, the Beaumont and Fletcher canon displays a seemingly inextricable web of collaborative relationships. Given the challenges I have outlined, the plays of Middleton-Rowley offer an ideal subject for my investigation. Compared to Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton- Rowley present a more promising collaborative relationship for critical study precisely because, while still offering a rich opportunity for exploring a variety of collaborative domains, the Middleton-Rowley plays I discuss here were the result of a remarkably deliberate collaborative relationship.6 A Fair Quarrel, The Changeling, and The Spanish Gypsy were written and performed over the course of some six or eight years, depending on the exact date of composition of A Fair Quarrel (either 1615 or 1617-1623). They were performed either by Prince Charles’s company, for whom Rowley was a leading member and actor, or Lady Elizabeth’s men, with whom, I will argue, Rowley had close professional ties. Indeed, considering my focus on the collaborative interactions of playwrights, actors, and acting companies, Rowley’s professional career as an actor and leading member with Prince Charles’s affords an important historical and cultural grounding for my investigation. As an actor-playwright, Rowley had “intimate associations” (Bentley, Profession of Dramatist 211) with Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s and, therefore, intimate knowledge of their needs and capabilities. Thus he had, in Bentley’s words, “special contributions to make to joint compositions” (211). If furthering our understanding of collaboration does, indeed, require identifying discrete domains of collaboration, then Rowley’s career reveals important links in the interactions among playwrights, actors, and playing companies. Above all, in what follows I strive to develop a critical approach that acknowledges the complex interdependence of collaborative agents in A Fair Quarrel, The Changeling, and The Spanish Gypsy while also insisting that collaboration cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. By limiting my focus in these three plays to the collaboration among playwrights, actors, and acting companies, I do not mean to suggest that these domains of collaboration constitute the only agents involved in the production and performance of the plays. Other agents abound, from prompters and musicians to official censors and audience members.7 This dissertation clears a space for a more sustained inquiry into further domains by providing a critical model that addresses a vital fact about collaboration—that multiple agents labor jointly in the collaborative event— without reducing it to that fact. Thinking about collaboration in these terms is particularly challenging because it resists many of our firmly established beliefs about individuality and ownership, and not only with respect to works of the imagination. That is, accepting the product of collaborative relationships as something that exceeds the sum of its parts requires considering the impossibility of ever discerning what is “mine” from what is flours.” The history of scholarly reception of the works of Middleton-Rowley attests to the obstacles that lie along this route of inquiry; and yet, more recently, that history also reveals developments in historical and theoretical approaches that have opened up promising directions in the study of collaboration. I want now to address very briefly some nineteenth-century editors of Thomas Middleton’s plays and to give an overview of more recent critical developments as a way of suggesting both the challenges I confront and the novelty of my approach. Between 1840 and 1890, three important editions of Thomas Middleton’s plays appeared, each with critical introduction and apparatus, that shaped future understandings of Middleton-Rowley’s collaborative relationship: A. Dyce’s The Works of Thomas Middleton (1840); A. H. Bullen’s The Works of Thomas Middleton (1885-86); and I-Iavlock Ellis’s Thomas Middleton (1887-90), with an introduction by A. C. Swinburne. Dyce, Bullen, Ellis and Swinburne accepted without question the mere fact of collaboration but could not rest easy without attempting to distribute separate parts of the play to each playwright Although their tone and style may strike twenty-first century readers as quaint or stuffy, the attitudes and judgments of Dyce, Bullen, Ellis and Swinburne should not be underestimated, particularly regarding their influence on later critics. Obviously, but no less importantly, we must first acknowledge and accept that Dyce, Bullen, and Ellis considered themselves editors of Middleton’s plays, rather than Middleton’s and Rowley’s, much less Middleton-Rowley’s. Not surprisingly, therefore, they work hard to position Middleton as the primary artistic force behind not only his collaborations with Rowley but also his joint work with Dekker and others. As a result, they voice what would become a commonplace view of collaboration as merely a “subset or aberrant kind of individual authorship” (Masten, Textual Intercourse 16). At the same time, however, these early editors confronted the nettlesome fact that their favorite “Middleton” plays were, in fact, Middleton-Rowley plays. Dyce, for example, de-emphasizes collaborative playwrighting, stressing instead the putatively less threatening concept of revision. Of The Old Law, a Middleton-Rowley play probably later revised by Massinger, Dyce writes: “The reader ought to remember that dramas which bear on their title-pages the names of more than one author were not necessarily written by those authors in conjunction” (xvi). Dyce notes an accepted facet of diachronic collaborations: that the names of playwrights hired to amend and revise plays for revival sometimes appeared on later printed editions of those plays. Downplaying collaboration in this way, however, leaves Dyce in a bind, since it is often difficult or impossible to identify who revised whose play: “We are not, however, to conclude that the other dramas of which Middleton was only in part the author were wrought into their present form by such a process” (xvi). Apparently, for Dyce, the thought of Middleton revising someone else’s work is just as disagreeable as the thought of him working jointly with a collaborator. Yet, Dyce fails to offer any other process that might explain his own somewhat troublesome judgments—that the plays he finds most imaginatively powerful and poetically rich are not necessarily Middleton’s “unaided” work but rather his collaborations with Rowley. Dyce’s interests clearly lie in positioning Middleton as the primary playwright in his relationships with Rowley, not in considering the specific details of the relationship itself. Bullen, too, finds himself drawn in opposite directions. Like Dyce, Bullen’s investment in Middleton as unaided playwright leads him to refer repeatedly to Middleton-Rowley plays as “his”—meaning Middleton’s—and to Rowley as Middleton’s “assistant” (xliii, lix). At the same time, however, he enthusiastically judges The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy “among the highest achievements of the English drama” (xii); and, more importantly, he announces that in The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy Middleton’s “genius [is] seen in its full maturity” (lix). Thus Dyce and Bullen sense but cannot finally accept a striking truth about Middleton and Rowley’s collaborative relationship: together Middleton and Rowley wrote plays of a quality neither, it appears, could have written on his own. Interestingly, in his introduction to Havlock Ellis’s edition of Middleton’s selected plays, A. C. Swinburne criticizes the earlier work of Dyce and Bullen on the grounds that they are not aesthetically sensitive enough to the stylistic nuances—the tone , and texture—of Middleton and of Rowley. As a poet, Swinburne stands out fi'om most of the academic critics of the next seventy years in giving high praise to Rowley’s abilities as a writer, although he never goes so far as to question Rowley’s place as Middleton’s inferior. He attributes the “stupid” “underplot” to Rowley, but also praises Rowley’s “vigorous and vivid genius, his somewhat hard and curt directness of style and manner, his clear and trenchant power of straightforward presentation or exposition, [which] may be traced in every line as plainly as the hand of Middleton must be recognized in the main part of the tragic action intervening” (xxxv). Despite his invigorating defense of 10 Rowley’s skills, Swinburne nonetheless, like earlier editors, works with the collaborative origin of the play as if it could only be taken as a challenge for editors to apportion specifics lines, scenes, and acts to Middleton or Rowley, even while in the next breath he praises “the concord between the two writers [. . .] singularly complete in unity of spirit and style . . .” (xxxv). Dyce, Bullen, Ellis and Swinburne, like generations of critics to follow,9 cast their critical gazes on the salient instances in which, they believe, each playwright’s respective thumbprint may be discerned most clearly. Not surprisingly, this viewpoint leads inexorably to the standard dicing up of authorial shares. Time and time again, however, the ostensible distinctiveness of the thumbprints fades. Bullen, for example, hesitantly admits in his analysis of A Fair Quarrel that “I cannot trace Middleton’s hand with any clearness” '(xliv), and all the early editors observe that the Middleton-Rowley collaborations display an uncanny unity. We should not be surprised, therefore, to discover a powerful undercurrent against which Dyce, Bullen, Ellis and Swinburne constantly struggle—namely, the profound contradiction in concmrently praising seamless unity while insistently allotting authorial shares. Indeed, every example of stylistic thumbprints or authorial shares they cite belies the presence of collaborative agents within specific domains that foils any attempt to isolate discreet personalities or styles. Collaboration thus forces us, in very real sense, to let go of Middleton and Rowley in order to grasp Middleton-Rowley. Important scholarship of the past forty years has begun the work that will enable a fuller understanding of Middleton-Rowley’s collaborative relationship and, more generally, of the varieties of joint labor involved in collaborative production. Whether 11 developing or reacting against earlier generations of critics, recent attention to collaboration tends to segment into three main approaches. Following the course set by Dyce, Bullen, Ellis, and Swinburne, proponents of attribution studies such as Cyrus Hoy ‘ and MacD. P. Jackson have continued the search for authorial shares, aided in the past few years by advancements in computer technology that allow for extensive searches of playtexts for the ostensible stylistic markers of individual playwrights.10 For these critics, collaboration is something like a puzzle, the challenge being to identify and attribute the various products of individual labor in increasingly precise detail. Theorists like Jeffrey Masten, however, see the search for authorial shares as anachronistic and misguided. For him, the work of attribution studies is grounded in modern notions of individuality that mistakenly value the authority of a single author over the more historically accurate paradigm of collaborative authorship.ll Arguing against what he sees as the futility of searching for authorial shares, Masten focuses his attention on the intersections of various cultural discourses and institutions that shaped Renaissance collaboration. Still other critics invested in historical recovery, such as G. E. Bentley and Robert Weimann, investigate the socio-economic conditions and material practices that contributed to the importance of collaboration on the Renaissance stage. These critics seek to illuminate collaboration by enriching our knowledge of its cultural and historical contexts. My own methodology fully embraces Masten’s critique of attribution studies and the anachronistic assumptions that guide its search for authorial shares. Rather than theorizing the discourses that shaped Renaissance collaboration, however, I replace modern categories of individuality and authorship with more historically accurate conceptions of collectivity and collaboration by analyzing the evidence of actual 12 collaborative relationships in playtexts and other historical documents. I thus use the critical tools of historical and rhetorical analysis as a means of contributing to a small but growing body of knowledge concerning Renaissance collaboration. More than just an act of specialized historical recovery, this endeavor has broad critical implications. It provides a way of talking about composition, character, and performance that takes seriously the impossibility of disentangling the agents of production without irreparably compromising the very thing they create. In doing so——in struggling to find a vocabulary of collectivity—I suggest an alternative for understanding the ways we compose and perform our very selves. The three chapters of this dissertation each concentrate on one domain of collaboration, beginning with the collaboration of playwrights and moving on to the collaboration of actors and of acting companies. The chapters thus follow a certain developmental course, starting with by far the most widely accepted and discussed form of Renaissance collaboration—that between two or more playwrights—and then moving into the comparatively uncharted waters of the collaboration of actors and of acting companies. Each chapter takes one Middleton-Rowley play as a case study, with the exception of chapter two, which also addresses Hamlet. Chapter one analyzes a distinctive pattern of repetition in A Fair Quarrel so remarkable in its frequency and effect as to suggest that Middleton-Rowley employed it as a unifying compositional technique. Chapter two seeks to clarify the network of collaborative interactions and pressures that shape an actor’s body during theatrical performance. Focusing on highly self-referential scenes in Hamlet and The Changeling, I argue that, given the fundamentally collaborative nature of theatrical experience, the actor’s work—the 13 creation of character—must also be seen as collaborative. Chapter three combines a re- evaluation of historical documents with a rhetorical analysis of The Spanish Gypsy in order to present a case for joint performances of the play by some members of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s companies. I argue that, in its remarkable thematizing of collaboration, The Spanish Gypsy dramatizes the very fact of its own collaborative origin and performance. Taken collectively, these plays not only provide provocative models for understanding their own composition and performance histories, they also suggest new possibilities for studying and teaching the wealth of collaborative plays of the Renaissance. 14 CHAPTER 1 A Fair Quarrel, Repetition, and the Collaboration of Playwrights Scholars writing about collaboration in Renaissance drama focus their attention almost exclusively on the joint work between and among playwrights.” In later chapters, I will attempt to broaden that narrow concentration by extending the study of collaboration to actors and acting companies.13 Here, however, I begin with collaboration as it is generally understood and considered: as a compositional relationship whereby two or more playwrights work together or separately in the creation of a jointly written play.” Important critical work in the past forty years, beginning with Gerald Eades Bentley’s The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare ’s Time, has begun the process of illuminating the literary, historical, cultural, and socio-economic contexts that contributed to the pervasivenessls of collaboration between (and among)16 playwrights in the theater industry in Elizabethan and Jacobean London.17 As I discuss in my introduction, three loosely conceived methodologies have occupied the field. Scholars invested in theoretical approaches situate collaboration within certain “conflicting and contested” cultural discourses (Masten, Textual Intercourse 4). Others discuss collaboration as an important aspect of attribution studies; for them, collaboration complicates the endeavor to identify with certainty the discrete work of individual playwrights in Renaissance plays. And still others provide valuable historical context that help explain the role of collaboration in the popular theater in Renaissance England.18 But while these efforts have contributed much to our conceptual understanding of collaboration, the precise compositional strategies employed by playwrights working jointly in the creation of - playtexts have remained, for the most part, hidden. 15 Rather than directly following the undeniably valuable courses set by the approaches outlined above, my aim in this chapter is to identify and scrutinize a specific strategy that Middleton and Rowley likely utilized while jointly writing A Fair Quarrel. I argue that Middleton-Rowley employed repetition both as a loose thematic model and as a linking rhetorical technique to graft together their individual efforts into an organically unified play. To be clear, I am not interested in isolating the work of Middleton from that of Rowley but rather in the way that the repetitions make such isolation impossible. Importantly, in what follows I do not claim a complete knowledge of the exaCt details of the various ways Middleton and Rowley set about the knotty work of writing plays together. Indeed, my inability to discern clearly what ideas and words are “mine” in my “own” writing rather than those born of a collective voice (including mine and my editors’) attests to the difficulty—even impossibility—of systematizing or standardizing Middleton and Rowley’s collaborative relationship. This chapter, therefore, proceeds in full acknowledgment of Richard Nochimson’s faith in “the inevitability, and therefore the rightness, of the scholarly attempt to answer unanswerable questions” (55). In seeking an answer-to one such seemingly unanswerable question— what collaborative model did Middleton and Rowley follow while writing A Fair Quarrel?—I provide an answer that remains, in the end, only a beginning. I focus on the repetition of certain words whose frequency and character suggest a pronounced deliberateness that, I argue, indicates the presence of an overarching design. The possibility that Middleton and Rowley did, in fact, utilize this strategy of repetition becomes all the more attractive when seen in light of Rowley’s clearly established fondness for the actoral technique known as “cue-catching” (Robb 133), in 16 which one actor’s speech is linked to another’s by the repetition of a salient word. In what follows, I argue that Middleton and Rowley adopted cue-catching as a means not only to link one actor’s words to another’s but also to link one playwright’s words to another’s. This model for understanding collaborative composition acknowledges the plain fact that two different men wrote the play, but, rather than falling back on modern conceptions of authorship, it gives us a historically accurate language born of the play itself for describing the work not of Middleton and Rowley but of Middleton-Rowley. The chapter has two main sections. The first grounds the framework of my argument in the theoretical ideas guiding much of the current work on Renaissance collaborative drama and, moreover, in the playful description of authorship in the dedicatory epistle to A Fair Quarrel. The second examines specific examples of repetition in A Fair Quarrel—beginning with instances of cue-catching and moving on to larger pattems— that reveal repetition as both a thematic guidepost and a trace of one of the play’s collaborative origins. I. The field of collaboration studies in English Renaissance drama owes a particular debt to the important contribution of Jeffrey Masten. Masten’s work in the last decade, culminating in the publication of his Textual Intercourse in 1997, has shifted the direction of collaboration studies in important and lasting ways.” Reacting, in part, against Cyrus Hoy and other proponents of attribution studies who view collaboration “as a mere subset or aberrant kind of individual authorship” (Textual Intercourse 16), Masten insists on acknowledging collaboration on its own complicated and untidy terms. “What I seek to 17 demonstrate,” Masten writes, “is that Hoy’s mode of reading collaboration in early modern English drama merely as a more multiple version of authorship . . . does not account for the historical and theoretical challenges collaboration poses to the ideology of the Author. Collaboration is . . . a dispersal of author/ity, rather than a simple doubling of it” (18—19, emphasis in original). For Masten, taking collaboration on its own terms and not as an aberration of individual authorship has both theoretical and practical implications. For instance, much of Masten’s work grows out of a theoretical critique of “the myth of the solitary genius,” to use Jack Stillinger’s phrase (qtd. in Nochimson 52). In this respect, Masten seeks to detach collaboration from the concepts of author and authority as traditionally considered within “post-Enlightenment paradigms of individuality, authorship, and textual property” and resituate it within a more historically accurate paradigm in which “models and rhetorics of sexual relations, intercourse, and reproduction” inform and interact with “notions of textual production and property” (4). That is, Masten insists that the modern conception of the individual author as the sole creator and, in various ways, owner of his words is an anachronistic model for understanding theatrical collaboration in Renaissance England precisely because the plays written and performed in that time and place were born of an economic and literary industry that predates modern concepts of authorship. “I am contending,” Masten states, “that collaborative texts produced before the emergence of authorship are of a kind different (informed by differing mechanisms of textual property and control, different conceptions of irrritation, originality, and the ‘individual’) from collaborations produced within the regime of the author” (21). 18 But while much of Textual Intercourse is taken up with the theoretical project of relocating collaboration within these and many other mechanisms and discourses of production and exchange, Masten’s work also advocates for a very practical and concrete revision in the ways scholars think and write about collaborative Renaissance plays— namely, that we “forego anachronistic attempts to divine the singular author of each scene, phrase, and word” of collaboratively written plays (7). And while I nright not go so far as to say that Masten’s work “demolishes l-on almost completely” (Nochimson 53), in Textual Intercourse Masten does, indeed, thoroughly outline the problems inherent in—and, to my mind, persuasively argues against—Boy’s author-centered approach. My purpose in citing Masten here is not simply to rehearse his arguments against attribution studies. I am interested, instead, in the way Masten’s often ironic theorizing about “the dispersal of author/ity” (19) in collaborative plays encourages us, perhaps paradoxically, to return from the abstractness of theory to the material specificity of playtexts themselves as we seek to recover the compositional practices of collaborating playwrights. Richard Nochimson has made a similar point recently, arguing that “we should value textual authority rather than authorial authority” (54).20 The distinction between textual and authorial authority is, however, by no means clearly discemable—a fact playfully acknowledged in the dedicatory epistle attached to the 1617 quarto of A Fair Quarrel and signed by William Rowley: Worthy Sir, ‘Tis but a play, and a play is but a butt, against which many shoot many arrows of envy; ‘tis the weaker part, and how much more noble shall it be in you to defend it. Yet if it be (as some philosophers have left 19 behind ‘em) that this megacosm, this great world, is no more than a stage, where every one must act his part, you shall of necessity have many part- takers, some long, some short, some indifferent, all some; whilst indeed, the players themselves have the least part of it, for I know few that have lands (which are a part of the world), and therefore are no grounded men; but howsoever they serve as mutes, happily they must wear good clothes for attendance. Yet all have exits, and must all be stripped in the tiring- house (viz. the grave), for none must carry anything out of the stock. You see, sir, I write as I speak, and I speak as I am, and that’s excuse enough for me . . . (3) At first, this appeal to Robert Grey, “one of the grooms of his Highness’ bed-chamber” (3), might seem nothing more than a request for patronage exemplifying what one critic has called Rowley’s proclivity to “say too much” and another his “rough, staccato-like manner” (Wiggin, qtd. in Holdsworth xxi; Holdsworth xxi).21 That is, the arguably heavy—handed wielding of the world-as stage trope and the “obtrusively irrelevant puns” (Holdsworth xxi) might easily be overlooked as merely instances of a certain style that has come to be associated with Rowley. But read in light of the revealing sentence— “You see, sir, I write as I speak, and I speak as I am, and that’s excuse enough for me” (3)—the dedicatory epistle becomes both a significant comment on Rowley’s position as an actor-playwright and an astute observation on the problematic role of ownership—and, therefore, of the authority of playwrights—in Renaissance plays, including A Fair Quarrel. 20 After extending the theatrical metaphor in which he ironically asserts that actors play the “least part” in the world for the simple reason that they cannot afford to invest in real estate (apparently because they are poorly underpaid), Rowley offers something like a logical riddle. “I write as I speak” establishes a clear connection between Rowley’s twofold status as playwright and actor: as a playwright, he writes in the same way he speaks as an actor. We should not be surprised, therefore, to find a correspondence between the stylistic roughness of this epistle and the characteristic dialogue of a Rowleyian clown. The point is that Rowley the playwright who writes this dedicatory epistle to Robert Grey does so in much the same way Chough, Lollio, or Soto might speak it to'him, namely with the ostentatious word-play of a Rowleyian clown.22 Next, Rowley develops and complicates the syllogistic quality of the riddle, asserting a direct parallel between Rowley the actor (and, by extension, the characters he plays on stage) and Rowley himself: “and I speak as I am.” Given the peculiarity of Rowley’s ontological status as actor, character, and playwright, the phrase ‘Rowley himself” poses particular challenges, which I will address more fully in later chapters. Here it will suffice to point out that, in this instance, Rowley holds up his overlapping status as playwright-actor-character as “excuse enough for me.” Rowley’s “excuse” is, therefore, a threefold apology: for the play A Fair Quarrel, which he dedicates to Robert Grey; for the style of the epistle itself (written in the peculiar comic voice of his clowns); and for the very fact that, being himself one of the “players” about whom he writes, Rowley is poor and in need of patronage. Rowley then shifts from the world-as-stage trope to one of paternal lineage: “indeed I meant to tell you your own, that is, that this child of the Muses is yours; 21 whoever begat it, ‘tis laid to your charge, and (for aught I know) you must father and keep it too” (4). By questioning the paternity of the “child,” the play A Fair Quarrel— “whoever begat it”—Rowley metaphorically plays with the idea of what Jeffrey Masten might call authorial lineage. Masten notes, for example, that while today the word “author” signifies “writer,” in the Renaissance it “inhabit[ed] a complex network of meanings, including: ‘person who originates or gives existence to anything; one who begets; a father’” (“Playwrighting” 369-370). In this sense, Rowley’s assertion not to know who “begat” A Fair Quarrel, coupled with his insistence that Grey must now “father and keep it,” exemplifies Masten’s insight that “collaboration is a dispersal of author/ity” (Textual Intercourse 19). In this dedicatory epistle, then, Rowley wittily sports with a fundamental aspect of collaboration—that no direct line exists between playwright(s) and play, author/father and child. Rowley’s dedicatory epistle thus serves as a notable instance of the blurry distinction between “textual” and “authorial authority” (Nochimson 54). Even in the few lines of the epistle, the question of who exactly holds authority—Rowley, Middleton, a Rowleyian character, Robert Grey?—becomes an important point of confusion. No doubt, this authorial ambiguity arises from the collective nature of collaboration itself; at the same time, though, as Masten reminds us, it also may be traced, in part, to the deliberate effort of collaborators. “The collaborative project in the theatre was,” Masten writes, “predicated on erasing the perception of any difference that rrright have existed, for whatever reason, between collabOrated parts” (Textual Intercourse 17, italics in original). Far from “say[ing] too much” (Wiggin, qtd. in Holdsworth xxi), Rowley appears to have said exactly enough. For if, as Rowley states and Masten theorizes, the 22 paternity of A Fair Quarrel is so dispersed as to make questionable the claims of “authority” of its own playwrights, then any attempt to identify and trace a conclusive lineage between the words of the playtext and the playwrights who wrote them must necessarily fail. But even if Rowley’s dedicatory epistle thwarts any attempt to understand collaborative drama through a paradigm of “authorial authority,” it nonetheless urges us to pay particular attention to whatever authority lies within the playtexts that have survived. Bereft of a lineage between playwright(s) and word, what remains are the words themselves. And in the case of A Fair Quarrel, the words have much to tell. In the remainder of this chapter, I listen carefully to what certain repeated words in A Fair Quarrel have to say about Middleton-Rowley’s collaborative relationship. My contention, while fully acknowledging the difficulty of separating out the multiple collaborative agents involved in Renaissance textual production, is that, at least in the case of A Fair Quarrel, Middleton, Rowley, and whatever other agents were involved in creating the playtext we now know as A Fair Quarrel were not completely successful in erasing the “perception of any difference” in the play (Textual Intercourse 17). The patterns of repetition in A Fair Quarrel, that is, constitute significant traces of what appears to be a compositional practice intended, in many ways, to erase the evidence of itself. 11. In “The Canon of William Rowley's Plays,” Dewar M. Robb identifies and defines a dramaturgical technique that recurs time and again both in Rowley’s 23 collaborative plays and in those considered to be his “solo” work.23 “In the framing of [Rowley’s] dialogue,” Robb writes, “he has a partiality for linking one speech to the previous speech by the repetition of one of its final words” (133). Robb calls this technique “cue-catching” (133). Arguing that it originated as a memory aid to signal the proper time for an actor to deliver his lines, Robb sees cue-catchin g as a testament to the important ways Rowley’s experience as an actor shaped his skill as a playwright. Given the remarkable pace at which acting companies in London’s repertoire theaters prepared plays for performance, with little or no time for rehearsals,24 it is no wonder that actors came to rely on cue-catching; and its high frequency in the plays attributed to Rowley suggests that he found it useful in his work not only as an actor but also a playwright. Robb goes so far as to argue that cue-catching constitutes a diagnostic marker of Rowley’s particular style as a playwright. Like Pauline Wiggin, Charles Stork, Wilber Dunkel, and others who attempt to identify the characteristics of Rowley’s style, Robb’s classification of cue-catching among Rowleyian attributes leads him inevitably to claims of authorship and authorial shares, of establishing those plays in which Rowley had a hand as a playwright and, when those plays are collaborations, of identifying Rowley’s discrete work within them. Instead of taking issue, once again, with the problematic assumptions of these proponents of attribution studies, I want to focus on cue-catching and its relation to A Fair Quarrel not as a means of separating out Rowley’s words from Middleton’s but rather as a characteristic of this play that makes such a separation unfeasible. That is, I want to explore the very real likelihood that Middleton-Rowley transformed cue-catching from an actor’s to a playwright’s technique. Just as two actors use the repetition of words in cue-catching to link individually spoken lines, so too might two playwrights link their individually written words by way of strategic repetitions throughout the acts and scenes of a given play. Considering the remarkable repetition of two key words in A Fair Quarrel—“fair” and “quarrel”—it appears that Middleton- Rowley did exactly that: they capitalized on the unique linking effect of cue-catching by applying its integrative repetitions to the overall structure of the play itself. Accepting that Middleton-Rowley used cue-catching in this way does not tell us anything about which parts either of them wrote; instead, it helps us understand, given that the parts exist, how they could be linked together to create unity. Thinking about cue-catching in this way is important because it gives us a way of talking about collaborative drama without falling back on authorial shares. In other words, it gives us a specific model with which to talk about Middelton-Rowley instead of Middleton and Rowley. A Fair Quarrel consists of three main plots. The martial plot tells the story of the Colonel and Captain Ager, whose close friendship devolves into open hostility (in the form of various duels) after the Colonel insults Captain Ager’s mother, Lady A ger. The romantic plot presents the struggles of two lovers, Jane and Fitzallen, the cousin of the Colonel. Jane’s father, Russell, the brother of Lady Ager, considers Fitzallen a fortune seeker and contrives to keep him and Jane apart. Unbeknownst to him, Jane and Fitzallen have secretly married. Lastly, the clown plot relates the comic antics of Chough, a foolish Cornish gentleman, and his servant Trimtram, who spend much of the play studying the art of roaring, a form of verbal jousting associated with the drunken and riotous behavior of young male aristocrats in London.25 As the play opens, Russell informs the audience of his plan to thwart his daughter's love of Fitzallen. Russell intends to have Fitzallen imprisoned for his 25 supposed debts and to marry Jane to the wealthy and ridiculous Chough, a Rowleyian clown almost certainly played originally by William Rowley himself.26 Russell, interrupted by the arrival of his sister, Lady Ager, informs her of the awaited return of her son, Captain Ager. As Lady Ager leaves to greet her son, two soldiers enter, arguing about the honor, skill, and wisdom of their respective friends, Captain Ager and his own friend and superior-in-rank, the Colonel, a kinsman of Fitzallen. The harsh words of the two soldiers quickly escalate into violence; they draw their swords and fight. Russell, however, succeeds in breaking up the melee. Immediately, the Colonel and Captain Ager appear. At first, the two disapprove of the skirmish. But, after the nature of the quarrel makes itself known, the Colonel and Captain Ager’s friendship turns sour. The Colonel, unable to countenance being compared to the younger and, in his eyes, less worthy captain, reacts violently; and, in turn, they also draw their swords, ready to fight to the death. Again, Russell calms the quarrel. In the remainder of the scene, Russell manages by a ruse to disarm all the soldiers—including, importantly, the Colonel and Captain Ager—and to have Fitzallen, who in the meantime had arrived with Jane, arrested and taken off to jail. The Colonel, furious at the treatment of his kinsmen, Fitzallen, at being compared with Captain Ager, and at not being able to defend himself (since he now lacks his sword), delivers one last shocking insult to Captain Ager and agrees to meet him later for a duel to resolve their dispute. Throughout these developments, Middleton-Rowley contribute to the energetic pace and rising tension of the scene by binding together the give-and-take argumentation of the dialogue with cue-catching. In its basic form, the cue-catching in this scene and throughout the play involves the repetition of one or two words as a means of linking two 26 lines spoken by different actors. The following exchange between the Colonel and Russell, after Fitzallen has been arrested and removed to jail, provides the basic model: COLONEL. Better for lying in prison? RUSSELL. In prison: Believe it, many an honest man lies in prison (1.1.331-330) This instance—one of nine in the first act of A Fair Quarrel and of a remarkable twenty- two in the entire play—illustrates the linking power of a few repeated words. Functioning both as a signal for the actor playing Russell to speak and as a prompt to stimulate the recall of his particular lines, the repetition of "in prison" serves multiple purposes. Like a verbal trigger, the first utterance of "in prison" by the actor playing the Colonel activates the memory of the actor playing Russell; in turn, he repeats those exact words, thereby allowing himself a moment of freedom to concentrate on his next lines. In this way, cue-catching has certain sirrrilarities to the economy of repetitions found in oral epic poetry. Much like the recurring Homeric epithets in the Iliad and the Odyssey that were, in Bernard Knox’s words, created by generations of oral singers “to meet the demands of the meter of Greek heroic poetry” while also providing the singer with time “to elaborate his own phrases mentally as he recites the formulas that he can sing without effort” (15, 16), Russell’s repetition of “in prison” serves both a metrical and mnemonic function. Spoken again, the words complete the basic metrical length of the Colonel’s line while, at the same time, functioning like an actoral version of cruise control, thus giving the actor a moment to concentrate on his subsequent lines as he automatically reiterates the words. Moreover, as in the case above, the responding actor often says the 27 words a second time at the end of the second line of his response, creating a rhythmical triad of repetitions. Much like the aural concord created by a recurring pattern of notes in a musical refrain, the final repetition of “in prison” contributes to the synchronizing effect of cue-catching: the very sound of the word—spoken once, then again and yet again— creates a rhythmical pattern that draws together the Colonel’s and Russell’s spoken lines. In addition to its mnemonic function and unifying rhythmical effect, cue-catching also serves as a method of aural emphasis and accent. In 1.1, for example, as their friendship disintegrates in a rising pitch of invective, the Colonel delivers a slander so potent as to push Captain Ager literally to beg Russell to return their swords: CAPTIAN AGER. Y ’are a foul-mouthed fellow. COLONEL. Foul-mouthed I will be—th’art the son of a whore [. . .] CAPTAIN AGER. Death, I am naked! Uncle, I’ll give you my left hand for my sword To arm my right with (1.1.345-346; 349-351) The Colonel’s repetition of “foul-mouthed” emphasizes the mounting dramatic mood—as his anger rises so, too, does the vulgarity of his discourse. What is more, in this case the rhythmical quality of the repetition works in concert with its italicizing effect; the reiteration of “foul-mouthed” in combination with “I will be” acts as something akin to a verbal drum roll, leading, as it were, inexorably towards the shrill intensity of his unforgivable slur: “son of a whore” (346). Indeed, this insult, which the Colonel states once more as he takes his leave of Captain Ager, sets in motion all subsequent action in the martial plot and, to a certain extent, in the entire play; for this insult is to Captain 28 Ager the fair—that is, justifiable (according to the laws of dueling)—cause of his quarrel with the Colonel.27 Taken together, the unifying rhythmical and italicizing qualities of cue-catching contribute to its effectiveness not simply as a mnemonic actoral strategy but as an important compositional device capable of forming subtle connective relationships within the play.28 Take the following instance, which occurs early in the clash between the Colonel and Captain Ager, before the Colonel's unpardonable curse. Having managed to quell momentarily their rising spite, Russell asks the two once-friends to shake hands by way of reconciliation: COLONEL. I have no anger, sir. CAPTAIN AGER. I have had none, My blood has not yet rose to a quarrel; Nor have you had cause- COLONEL. No cause of quarrel? Death! if my father should tell me so- (1.1.159—164) And so their dispute resumes. Like the extensive use of cue-catching throughout 1.1, the Colonel’s question—“No cause of quarrel?”—-itself an instance of cue-catching, binds word and action. Its echo thrusts backward to Captain Ager’s previous utterance while simultaneously propelling the action of the scene forward, forecasting the approaching duel soon made unavoidable when the Colonel himself offers its final “cause” in the form of his slander—“son of a whore” (346). The Colonel’s stabbing four word question reiterates and distills Captain Ager’s two declarative lines and thus verbally mimics the mounting physical tension between the two men. Moreover, the cue-catching forms a 29 chiastic pattern, creating a nrirror-image effect: cause . . .quarrel . . . quarrel . . . cause. This combination of cue-catching and chiasmus—of an originally spoken theatrical technique and a written poetic device—creates a subtle and sophisticated linking emphasis. Even as it draws the spoken words of the two men together, aurally mirroring their threatening physical propinquity, the rhetorically overt chiastic repetition (“No cause of quarrel”) very effectively draws attention to the content of the cue—catching as well as to its form. After all, as subsequent events in A Fair Quarrel will prove, Captain Ager goes through no small effort to establish not one but two justifiable “causes” for his “quarrel” with the Colonel. Theatrically and poetically sophisticated and adaptable, the cue—catching in this long first act creates both rhythmical links (emphasized aurally by the repetition of words spoken by the actors on stage) and thematic patterns (stressed and developed by the repetition of certain key words, such as “quarrel,” that come to embody the fundamental ideas that animate the plot and action of the act). Given the effectiveness of cue-catching in 1.1 of A Fair Quarrel, an inviting possibility presents itself: that Middleton-Rowley adopted the idea of cue-catching as a play-wide collaborative strategy. Just as repetition braids actors’ lines together, generating meaning that exceeds and cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts, so too might play—wide repetition—in the form of extended cue-catching—intertwine the words and work of two playwrights, yielding a unified whole such that the parts can no longer be parsed out to one or the other. Cue-catching as a compositional strategy recognizes a simple fact of collaboration—that two people labor in conjunction with one another— without reducing it to that fact. 30 That Middleton-Rowley used repetition in this way becomes increasingly plausible in A Fair Quarrel given the remarkable frequency of “fair” and “quarrel” in each of the three plots. “Fair” appears twenty-seven times and “quarrel” twenty-two times in the play, a total of forty-nine instances. Indeed, the ability of the repetition of key words to function as unifying elements throughout an entire play depends on a noticeable number of instances that establishes a discemable pattern if not a purposeful design. One or two repetitions of the same word over the course of a given play would surely go unnoticed and, therefore, would not constitute a “repetition” at all. Considered on the whole, the articulations of “fair” and “quarrel” in A Fair Quarrel are significant, and in the following table (Table l), I chart them according to act and scene. The number of instances per scene appears in parentheses after the word. I also indicate the relation of each instance to the three plots. When the same articulation bridges two plots, I apportion it to one plot only. In other words, no appearance is counted twice. Table 1 Instances of “Fair” and “Quarrel” by Act, Scene, and Plot Act, Scene, and Martial Plot Romantic Plot 1 Clown Plot Total Plots Present in Number of the Scene Instances 1.1 Fair (1) Fair (4) 0 10 Martial Quarrel (4) Quarrel (1) Romantic 2.1 Fair (2) O 0 11 Martial Quarrel (9) 2.2 0 Fair (1) Fair (2) 4 Romantic Quarrel (1) Clown 3.1 Fair (6) O 0 9 Martial Quarrel (3) 3.2 0 Fair (1) 0 1 Romantic 3.3 O 0 O 0 31 Martial 4.1 O 0 Quarrel (1) 1 Clown 4.2 Fair (4) O O 4 Martial 4.3 Fair (1) 2 Martial Quarrel (1) 4.4 O 0 Fair (1) 1 Clown 5.1 Fair (3) Fair (1) Quarrel (1) 6 Martial Quarrel (1) Romantic Clown Acknowledging that we posses no clear or sure method of interpreting this data does not eclipse, for me, the undeniable fact of its significance. Once again, Richard Nochimson’s trust in “the inevitability, and therefore the rightness, of the scholarly attempt to answer unanswerable questions” (55) seems apt. With one exception, “fair” or “quarrel” appears in every act and scene of the play,29 with as many as eleven total occurrences in one scene (2.1). Indeed, when reading the play rather than watching it be performed, the repeated use of “fair” and “quarrel,” again and again, can become obtrusive. Consider the following two examples from 1.1. In the first, Russell has arranged for two sergeants to arrive at his home disguised as saltpetre-men30 as part of his plot to have Fitzallen arrested. Russell’s servant, aware of the deception, announces the arrival of the sergeants, asking, “Shall I enter in, sir?” (1.1.249), to which Russell responds, “By all fair means, sir, / And with all speed, sir” (1.1.250-251). As R. V. Holdsworth notes, “fair” appears in a variety of senses throughout A Fair Quarrel. He offers “‘beautiful’, ‘specious’, ‘morally just’, ‘noble’, ‘genuine’, [and] ‘according to the rules’” as examples (2). In the preceding instance—“By all fair means, sir” (250)—it is not particularly clear which, if any, of these meanings Russell’s use of “fair” implies. “According to the rules” 32 as a paraphrase for it can be made to make sense, but the rationalizing required to do so calls attention to the word itself. Reading and studying the play in the form of written editions, we might ask ourselves what the difference is between saying, "by all means" and "by all fair means." Considered in this way, there appears to be very little semantic difference, and so we might consign this use of “fair” to prolixity. Within the context of a composition intended to be read rather than performed, that is, we might expect repetitions of this sort to be removed in support of precision and conciseness. The second example of this ostensibly obtrusive repetition occurs later in the first act. Once Fitzallen has been arrested and taken away, Russell announces to Jane why she is better off without Fitzallen: So let him go.—Now, wench, I bring thee joys, A fair sunshine after this angry storm. It was my policy to remove this beggar: What? shall rich men wed their only daughters To two fair suits of clothes, and perhaps yet The poor taylor is unpaid? (1.1.393-398, my italics). As in the earlier instance, the appearance of “fair” here seems somewhat superfluous, particularly since, in this case, it appears twice within four lines with two distinct meanings. In line 394, it carries an aesthetic significance: metaphorically speaking, the sunshine that comes after inclement weather is, in contrast to the angry storm, beautiful (fair) and, therefore, welcome. Three lines later, Russell utters the same word, but here it appears to mean something like “clean” or “unsoiled.” Again, our editorial instinct might tell us that such a repetition signals verbosity or a lack of care. Experienced within the 33 live performance of A Fair Quarrel, however, the articulation of fair in these instances reveals itself not as compositional liability but rather as a strength precisely because of the way it contributes to a developing aural pattern of repetitions bodily spoken and enacted. What appears on the page as redundancy sounds in the theater like a kind of harmony. We have seen that cue-catching creates a linking sound between the spoken lines of two actors. Here the same effect, though contained within the dialogue of one speaker, is extended, creating an aural continuity similar to that of a musical refrain in which the very repetition of sound creates an expectation of similar sounds. As the play moves forward and the number of repetitions grows, their capacity to create unifying connective relationships likewise increases. In some cases, the repetitions appear with remarkable frequency within a short span of time, thereby amplifying their refrain-like quality. Take the beginning of 2.1, for example. The scene opens with a long speech in which Captain Ager muses on the Colonel’s slander against him and his mother: The son of a whore? There is not such another murdering-piece in all the stock of calumny; it kills At one report two reputations, A mother’s and a son’s. If it were possible That souls could fight after the bodies fell, This were a quarrel for ‘em . . . (1-7, my emphasis) Here Captain Ager muses on the grounds of his upcoming duel with the Colonel, concluding that no cause could be more just, provided that “it were a truth [he] stood for” 34 (13)—that is, provided that his mother is not, in fact, a whore. Captain Ager’s confidence in the justice of his cause cannot quiet his persistent doubt: “But when my judgment tells me she’s but woman, / Whose frailty let in death to all mankind, / My valour shrinks at that” (28-30). Moments later, Lady Ager arrives and almost immediately praises the Colonel, once again uttering one of the play’s recurring words: “I thought I’d known so much of his fair goodness, / More could not have been looked for” (46-47, my emphasis). Captain Ager, seizing the opportunity to assure himself once and for all, tests his mother by fabricating a version of the events that have taken place earlier between him and the Colonel. He informs her that some “rude fellow” (67) has impugned her reputation and that the Colonel, overbearing it, made “the quarrel his” (73). Lady Ager’s response—“Thou nright’st as well bring the sun’s truth in question / As thy birth or my honour” (92-92)—finally verifies Captain Ager’s faith in her. In turn, he reveals his subterfuge, vowing to go through with his duel the Colonel. After having been spoken five times in the first scene of the play, “quarrel” appears again within the first seven lines of 2.1, the next scene, followed by another repetition of “fair” when Lady Ager enters. Then, in the course of Captain Ager’s exchange with Lady Ager, the span of some seventeen lines, the word “quarrel” appears four more times. The remarkable frequency of repetitions in such a short span further establishes the capacity of repetitions to create aural continuity. Again, when seen on the page, the recurrence of “quarrel” four times in seventeen lines seems redundant. But, spoken within the dramatic give-and-take between Captain Ager and Lady Ager, the repetitions create a concordant rather than discordant effect. The sound of the same word, time and again, acts like a musical drone-note held underneath a progressing 35 melody. That is, with each repetition, the very sound of the word—irrespective of or even despite its semantic relevance—creates an expectation of further repetitions that, when fulfilled, engenders a kind of harmony. As in the linking patterns created by cue- catching, the repetitions here draw together separate verbal elements. Unlike with cue- catching strictly considered, though, which binds together two adjacent lines, the repetition of “quarrel” throughout Captain Ager and Lady Ager’s dialogue subtly creates extended aural links spanning many spoken lines. More than just lengthening the linking capacity of cue~catching, this type of extended repetition also joins together the three plots in A Fair Quarrel, creating broad patterns throughout the entire play. Take, for instance, the following words spoken in 1.1 by Russell after having just quieted the scuffle between Captain Ager and the Colonel: ’Tis peace here, sir; And see, here comes a happy interim: Here enters now a scene of loving arms; This couple will not quarrel so. (1.1.130—133, my emphasis) Spoken as Jane and Fitzallen (the lovers of the romantic plot) approach, Russell’s overtly self-referential comment—“Here enters now a scene of loving arms” (132)—signals the introduction of a new set of characters and a return to the romantic plot that Russell's opening speech had forecasted before being forcibly interrupted by the violent events surrounding Captain Ager and the Colonel. Immediately following his gesture to the approaching “scene” (132), Russell informs his audience that Jane and Fitzallen “will not quarrel so” (133). While not an instance of cue-catching strictly considered—not, that is, a linking of two contiguous lines by way of a strategic repetition—Russell’s articulation 36 of “quarrel” does, indeed, create an effect similar to that of cue-catching, though on a much larger scale. In a general way, his repetition gestures backwards to the thematic idea of dueling established earlier in the scene: unlike Captain Ager, the Colonel, and their two companions, Jane and Fitzallen “will not quarrel so” (133). More specifically, the repetition echoes the actual utterance of the word “quarrel” by the Colonel at line 54: “Come, come, the quarrel” (54). Russell's repetition of “quarrel” here at line 133 is thus, in a sense, delayed. While its original utterance does not appear in the line immediately preceding the repetition (at line 133) but rather many lines before (at line 54), the repetition nonetheless establishes a link to a word spoken and an idea established earlier in the scene. The difference between cue-catching strictly considered and this extended, plot- linking application of cue-catching is one of degree and scope, not of kind. The point is that the repetition of the same word in a different context shifts its meaning while also maintaining a resonance of its previously established meaning. Much in the same way the echoing reiterations of cue-catching thrust backwards to a previous utterance of the repeated word while simultaneously propelling the action of the scene forward, Russell’s repetition of “quarrel” in the example above evokes the violent quarrels he and the audience have witnessed in the first act while also establishing a new context and possibility for quarrels of a different sort. Jane and Fitzallen may not “quarrel so” (133), but, as events will show, the actions of the romantic plot will contain no small amount of quarreling. Indeed, one might argue rightly that, in addition to echoing the Colonel’s earlier articulation of “quarrel” at line 54, Russell’s use of the very same word at line 133 also draws attention—by way of a delayed echo—to the title of the play, A Fair Quarrel, 37 which presumably the audience watching the original performance would have in nrind.31 Again, the linking effect of the repetition is delayed or stretched; its ability to tie one word to another, one idea to another, extends itself throughout the scene. The distance between articulations of the words, given their generally high frequency throughout the play, does not diminish its linking function but rather draws it out. This extended repetition in A Fair Quarrel creates linking patterns that function throughout the acts and scenes of the play much in the same way cue-catching does line by line. In this way the repetitions contribute to what Harry Levin sees as the play’s “formal integration” (66). Again and again, Middleton-Rowley create characters within each plot who describe their situations, feelings, and actions with the words “fair” and “quarrel.” As Michael Mooney reminds us, “the whole play takes meaning from its plot interaction, not separation” (William Rowley 72). For example, although the martial plot with its violent disputes and sword duels introduces and then develops a clear connection to the eponymous fair quarrel, the romantic and clown plots dramatize fair quarrels of their own. In this respect, all three plots echo each other—both with respect to thematic ideas and specific words. These repetitions link the multiple tissues of plot in the body of the play. Perhaps the most striking examples of these plot-linking repetitions involve Chough and Trimtram, the main comic characters of the clown plot. As many critics have noted, the clown plot provides an ironic counterpoint to the dueling motif of the martial plot. 32 While Captain Ager and the Colonel engage in the technical and moral nrinutia of the dueling code, Chough and Trimtram discover the equally specialized art of roaring.33 Likewise, Chough’s rough and buffoonish attempt to woo Jane acts as a comic 38 foil to her romantic relationship with Fitzallen. These general thematic parallels emerge, in large part, because of the unifying articulations of “fair” and “quarrel.” Consider, for example, the moment in 2.2 when Russell, thinking he has found the perfect husband for his daughter, introduces the wealthy Chough, accompanied by Trimtram, to Jane: CHOUGH. My name is Chough, a Cornish gentleman; my man’s mine own countryman too, i’faith. I warrant you took us for some of the small islanders. JANE. I did indeed, between the Scotch and Irish. CHOUGH. Red-shanks? I thought so, by my truth. No, truly, we are right Cornish diamonds. TRIMTRAM. Yes, we cut out quarrels, and break glasses, where we go. (2.2.116—122, my emphasis) This exchange—the first appearance of Chough and Trimtram (and, therefore, of the clown plot) in the play—typifies both Chough’s particularly Rowleyian brand of comedy and the important role of repetition as a plot-linking device. Although the lack of external evidence prevents us from claiming with certainty that Rowley originally acted the part of Chough, the distinctive corrric characteristics of the role make it highly likely.34 The comic thrust of this scene, for instance, consists of jabs at the regional associations of Chough’s name, a particularly Rowleyian form of wit. As R. V. Holdsworth explains, the Cornish Chough was a seabird with long, red legs (5). Jane calls this association to mind when she mistakes Cough and Trimtram for Scotchmen or Irishmen—or, as Chough calls them, “Red-shanks” (120), a derogative slang-term for 39 Scottish Highlanders and native Irish (Holdsworth 48). Furthermore, the name Chough also signifies a rich, gullible fool (Holdsworth 5),” an association that Chough himself draws attention to by exclairrring that he and Trimtram are “right Cornish diamonds” (121), that is, fake or counterfeit diamonds (Holdsworth 48). Fraudulent by definition, Cornish diamonds are actually Cornish rock—crystal sold to those gullible enough to nristake them for genuine diamonds (48). All of this wordplay sets up Trimtram’s punch line: “Yes, we cut out quarrels, and break glasses, where we go” (122). Both a complicated pun turning on Chough and Jane’s repartee and an echo of all the previous articulations of the same word, “quarrels” here illustrates the ability of strategic repetitions to maintain aural and thematic continuity. First, T rimtram’s use of “quarrels” gestures back to Chough and Jane’s exchange by way of an interlacing pun. In the context of Trimtram’s joke, “quarrel” means both a diamond-shaped pane of glass commonly used to make lattice-windows and a glazier’s diamond (OED). Trimtram’s quibble thus resonates doubly with Chough’s designation of them as “Cornish diamonds” (121), and his adrrrission that they “break glasses, where we go” (122) serves as an ironic comment on Chough’srough handling of his introduction to Jane. Next, “quarrels” also functions as a delayed echo, calling to mind the fourteen previous instances of the same word throughout the play up to this point. Of course, these earlier repetitions of the word have also been accompanied by the physical counterpart to the verbal utterance—that is, the audience has actually witnessed the “quarrels” embodied on stage in the violent physicality of the Colonel, Captain Ager, and their friends. Having just witnessed such aggressive disputes, the audience surely would hear in Trimtram’s use of “quarrel” the possibility of further swordplay. As events will demonstrate, however, Chough and Trimtram engage in a different sort of quarrel— narnely, the riotous exchange of imaginative slanders known as roaring. Indeed, at the close of 2.2, after Jane and Russell have departed, Chough and Trimtram explicitly forecast their future verbal combat as they discuss their matriculation in a local roaring school. “You must learn to roar here in London,” Trimtram tells Chough; “you’ll never proceed in the reputation of gallantry else” (203-204). Chough complies, saying, “Well, I will begin to roar too, since it is in fashion” (217). The incipient connection between quarreling and roaring that develops in this scene thus originates in Trimtram’s punning repetition of “quarrels” in line 122. Trimtram’s weighted use of the word promises Chough’s and Trimtram’s own comic version of the conflicts that have set in motion much of the action up to this point in the play. The interplay between the repetition of a specific word and its capacity to link separate plots becomes increasingly apparent throughout 2.2. During the course of their first meeting, Chough learns from Russell that Jane has recently suffered from ill health. This exchange of information provides not only another example of cue-catching in its strict sense but also the impetus for Chough’s outrageous clowning. RUSSELL. I tell you, sir, she has lost some colour By wrestling with a peevish sickness now of late. CHOUGH. Wrestle? Nay, and she love wrestling, I’ll teach her a trick to overthrow any peevish sickness in London, whate’er it be. (138-141) To Jane’s horror and despite all tenets of decorum or good sense, Chough removes his cloak, crouches, and advances on Jane, bent on wrestling with her then and there. Not 41 surprisingly, Jane resists: “Oh, good sir, forbear! I am no wrestler” (161). Chough proceeds nonetheless: CHOUGH. I will not catch beneath the waist, believe it: I know fair play. JANE. ’Tis no woman’s exercise in London, sir. CHOUGH. I’ll ne’er believe that: the hug and the lock between man and Woman, with a fair fall, is as sweet an exercise for the body as You’ll desire in a summer’s evening. (2.2.163-167, my emphasis) This outlandish encounter couples Chough’s bodily humor with a playful extension of A Fair Quarrel’s fabric of repetition. Alluding to his propensity for following proper wrestling rules, Chough claims to “know fair play” (163). Then, as if to illustrate his technical expertise, he alludes to “a fair fall,” a specialized wrestling term (Holdsworth 50). As in the previous examples, Chough’s double echo of “fair” continues Middleton- Rowley’s harmonizing pattern of systematically having characters speak the words “fair” and “quarrel.” Uttering the word twice, Chough simultaneously fulfills and creates the expectation for the repeated sound of the word that has been maintained throughout the play thus far. What is more, Chough’s use of “fair” establishes a satirical link to the martial and romantic plots. Having been spoken multiples times within each plot thus far, the reiteration of “fair” in these lines highlight the clown plots’ comic inversion of Captain Ager and the Colonel’s dispute and Jane and Fitzallen’s romance. The intricate procedures and tete a tete violence of the dueling code become, in Chough’s rough hands, a technically savvy but nonetheless absurd wrestling match. And, likewise, the bawdy 42 insinuations of Chough’s wrestling with Jane mock the passionate and committed love between her and Fitzallen, born witness to by Jane’s recent conception of their child. Perhaps the most remarkable example of this formal pattern is the infamous fart duel in 4.4. In this penultimate scene of the play, Chough and Trimtram come to‘blows with Captain Albo, Meg, and Priss, three bawdy characters, in what can only be seen as a parodic rehearsal of the more traditional duel between Captain Ager and the Colonel in the martial plot. Earlier in 4.1, Chough and Trimtram received a boisterous lesson on the finer points of roaring, including practice with imaginative slanders (“hippocrene,” “fucus”) and the requisite drinking that concludes every bout. 4.4 finds the two novice roarers putting their new knowledge into practice. Importantly, the developments of the martial plot in the previous scene (4.3.) provide an backdrop for Chough and Trimtram’s antics. In that scene, Captain Ager returns to his mother, Lady Ager, after having seriously wounded the Colonel in a duel during which his friends provided a highly technical play-by-play commentary (“An absolute punto; hay!” (3.1. 153)). While talking to Lady Ager, Captain Ager discovers yet another cause for his dispute with the Colonel. Almost giddy with joy—“Oh my glory, / Why, this, this is the quarrel that I looked for!” (4.3.73-73, my emphasis)—Captain Ager makes clear his intention to return and fight with the Colonel yet again. Following this display of enthusiasm for dueling, Chough and Trimtram’s scatological jousting takes on a particularly satirical redolence . The scene opens with Meg and Priss, a bawd and a whore, complaining that Captain Albo, a pimp, has failed to defend them against the insults of men who “knock down a woman’s fame e’en as it walks the streets by ‘em” (1-3). Their remarks thus immediately suggest an ironic parallel to Lady Ager’s plight in the martial plot. Like 43 Lady Ager, Meg and Priss have been accused of being whores. In Meg’s and Priss’s cases, however, the slander strikes closer to the mark. Chough and Trimtram then enter and, seizing a ripe opportunity (“here’s practice for our roaring; here’s a centaur and two hippocrenes” (51-52)), they pick a fight with the three unsuspecting adversaries. At Chough’s command, Trimtram jostles Captain Albo; a quarrel ensues; inspired curses abound; then Chough and Trimtram mount their final assault: TRIMTRAM. ‘Sault you the women, I’ll pepper him till he stinks . . CAPTAIN ALBO. Dar’st thou charge a captain? TRIMTRAM. Yes, and discharge upon him too. CAPTAIN ALBO. Foh, ’tis poison to my country; the slave has eaten pippins! Oh, shoot no more, turn both thy broadsides rather than thy poop! ’Tis foul play: my country breeds no poison. I yield; the great O’Toole shall yield on these conditions. CHOUGH. I have given one of ’em a fair fall, Trim. (4.4. 82-90, my emphasis) Although no stage directions exist to specify Trimtram’s and Chough’s precise actions, Trimtram’s, at least, remain clear enough. Rather than mairrring his dueling opponent with a sword, as Captain Ager does the Colonel, Trimtram wounds with his “poop” (88). Captain Albo’s response—“’Tis foul play” (88)—thematically and antonynrically inverts the idea of fairness with respect to duels and, what is more, the word “fair” itself. The situational parallel between the martial and clown plots, established by the connection between Lady Ager and Meg and Priss, is thus made linguistically specific: Trimtram’s “foul play” is the farcical counterpart to the “fair quarrels” in the martial plot. Chough’s closing repetition—“I have given one of ’em a fair fall, Trim” (90)—emphasizes the point. Whether Chou gh has wrestled Meg or Priss to the ground (as his grappling match with Jane in 2.2 would suggest) or has followed Trimtram’s lead by attacking, as it were, from behind, his repetition of “fair fall” calls to mind his previous exclamation of the same phrase in 2.2 and, likewise, all the other repetitions of the same word, including those spanning the three plots. The verbal play with foul/fair in this scene thus embodies the connective potency of repetitions in A Fair Quarrel. The fact of so many reiterations of “fair” and “quarrel” within individual scenes in A Fair Quarrel engenders a unity founded on a subtle expectation and fulfillment of the repeated words. Moreover, the repetitions themselves often resonate with different meanings in different contexts, particularly in different plots. Thus as the iterations of “fair” and “quarrel” accrue, appearing time and again in all three plots, they begin to interact thematically. Considered independently, when Captain A ger rejoices that his “quarrel” is “fair” in the martial plot, those words carry specific meanings that differ from Russell’s or Chough’s use of the same words in their respective plots. But as the trans-plot repetitions increase and thereby link and integrate the plots, they interact, often shifting or transforming the meaning of “fair” and “quarrel”. Seen in light of the ridiculousness of Chough and Trimtram’s fart duel, for example, Captain Ager’s fascination with the technicalities of the dueling code seems to have less to do with honor than with a masculine fetishization of violence. The action in the three plots implies many such correspondences; the repetition of “fair” and “quarrel” makes them explicit. 45 The unusual publication history of 4.4 provides unparalleled external evidence to support the unifying power of repetition in the play. A Fair Quarrel exists in two quarto editions. The first, published in 1617 by John Trundle, did not contain 4.4. Within the same year, Trundle reissued the play with two changes—a new title page and a completely new scene. The new title page contains an advertisement for the new material: “With new additions of Mr. Chaughs and Trimtrams Roaring, and the Bands Song” (1). These additions were printed on three separate sheets with a note on the bottom of the first: “Place this at the latter end of the fourth Act” (qtd. in Price, 141). Not having seen the quarto myself, I cannot know the exact placement by the printer of the additional sheets. G. E. Bentley states that they were “bound in at the end and not distributed through the play” (Profession of Dramatist 244); but G. R. Price maintains that they were “inserted between H3v and H4r” (“First Edition” 140), that is, at the end of the fourth act and before the fifth. Irrespective of the exact position of the additions, Bentley considers the advertisement for them on the new title page “one of the most explicit statements made by a Jacobean publisher about the revisions he found in his copy” (242). And, indeed, 4.4 offers a striking example of diachronic collaboration, that is, of “a form of sequential [. . .] collaboration” involving, in this case, the addition of new material at a later time by the original playwright(s) (McGuire 551). Given its comic material, critics agree that 4.4 was written by Rowley. No external evidence exists, however, to prove that Middleton had no part in these new additions. What seems particularly important, with regards to my present purposes in this chapter, is the so- called “detachability” (Holdsworth xiv) of the new scene—or, more accurately, its attach- ability. Modern editors unfailingly follow Trundle’s instructions and print the new ".. ' - .v ' , .. "I. a.‘ g’I 4 he ' . . . ! l or. ‘ ‘ i -‘ v - - u .1 ‘.O|O‘Q(3w "zit! ”*2.“ :33tr.’ 0.3“... .-.n I +5. I '“‘Q' .. '.'., . . ' 'V . . - "'oU’ih‘Offl'r "HUME“?! additions as 4.4. Printed thus, there is no discemable abruptness or evidence of any kind of its being “an addition.” The success with which this new material was integrated into the structure of the play attests not only to the efficacy of the pattern of repetition that the scene shares with the rest of the play but to the collaborative effectiveness of Middleton- Rowley. Though Chough and Trimtram’s rambunctious inversion of fair and foul offers a remarkably striking example of the cohesive pattern of repetitions in A Fair Quarrel, what remains even more striking is the consistency and deliberateness with which such repetitions appear throughout the play, even until its final line. As the last act comes to a close, the Colonel, having reconciled with Captain Ager, bestowing on him not only his lands and wealth but also his sister’s hand in marriage, exclaims, “Fair be that quarrel makes such happy friends” (5.1.431), thus offering a fitting closure that reflects the basic unifying structure of A Fair Quarrel. This final line recognizes not only the coming marital unions (Jane and Fitzallen, Captain Ager and the Colonel's sister) and the present reconciliations (between Russell and Jane, Captain Ager and the Colonel, Russell and Chough); it also binds the play’s three plots, making them “such happy friends.” And, as in the play itself, the source of this harmony lies in the repetition of two words. Far from atypical, the specific examples I have offered constitute instances of a comprehensive design of repetitions in A Fair Quarrel so discemable in its frequency and effective in its linking capability as to put its intentionality beyond question. Middleton- Rowley’s extended cue-catching may have begun as a practical strategy for intersecting separately written segments—that is, as the agreement between the two playwrights to 47 use and reuse two words as a way of ensuring that they would write from a common ground. However, that strategy appears to have proved so effective in rendering an organic whole that attempting to divvy it up in search of authorial shares undoes the very work of the play itself. To search for Middleton and Rowley in the play is to lose Middleton-Rowley’s play. One might ask why this pattern exists in A Fair Quarrel and not in other Middleton-Rowley collaborations. Again, neither the external nor internal evidence can establish a final answer to that question. It seems suggestive, however, that A Fair Quarrel was the first play on which we know Middleton and Rowley collaborated together—the first of what is arguably one of the most successful collaborative relationships in Jacobean drama. It may be that Middleton and Rowley moved beyond the technique that proved so successful in A Fair Quarrel as their writing relationship became more sophisticated. Indeed, it may be that in the course of writing A Fair Quarrel, Middleton and Rowley effectively became Middleton-Rowley and, through that process, (to quote its dedicatory epistle) “begat” A Fair Quarrel. 48 CHAPTER 2 Hamlet, The Changeling and the Collaboration of Character Theoretical and historical work of the past thirty years has challenged long- standing ideas about the relationship between actor and character on the Renaissance stage.36 Both “postmodernist”37 critiques of mimesis and historicist investigations of material practices, for example, question an important assumption held by generations of literary scholars and theater critics——that actors on the Renaissance stage sought to present and succeeded in presenting autonomous fictional subj ectivities: what modern audiences think of as characters.38 Traditionally, critics have described the actor’s work in terms of a discrete relationship in which an actor creates a character through a process of masking or disguise: the actor closets himself so that the character can emerge.” Following this trope, a dramatic character becomes something material only through self- abstraction; the actor masks his authentic self behind the identity of the character he performs. But a closer examination of the material practices of acting in Renaissance theatrical performances—particularly the importance of collaboration—reveals the limitations of the traditional representational trope that isolates the actor as the creator of theatrical character through a process of masking and revealing."0 Gerald Eades Bentley, for instance, has emphasized that acting, like all aspects of writing and performance for the Renaissance stage, occurs within a complicated collaboration among “dramatists, actors, muSicians, costumers, prompters . . . and—at least in the later theaters—- managers” (Profession of Dramatist 198). Seen through this collaborative lens, character and its relationship to the actor’s work take on a radically altered meaning. Seen as an 49 important product of a collaborative process, that is, character is neither an embodied subjectivity nor a display of an actor’s skill in reproducing formalized rhetorical emotions.41 Rather, from a collaborative perspective, character always exists as a performance-in-process involving multiple agents. A one-to-one relationship between actor and character fails to acknowledge that actors are always performing collaboratively within the nexus of the stage and its constitutive practices. Thus, characters cannot be seen in performance as possessing only one essence or central axis. Collaboration underscores the degree to which actors always perform multiple characters, not any one of which can be said to be more “his” than any other. My aim in this chapter is to clarify the network of collaborative interactions involving the actor’s body during and, indeed, as performance. In this work, I try to delineate the connections between the actor’s body and modern notions of character. The chapter has four sections. In the first, I skeletonize two contemporary models of understanding an actor’s body in performance—the Foucauldian concept of a “docile body” and the notion of a “performing body” as developed in recent performance- centered criticism—in order to develop a useable synthesis of both models as a tool for analysis. The second, third, and fourth sections act as test cases for my analytical synthesis. In the second and third, I examine specific scenes from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then fi'om the tragic plot of Middleton-Rowley’s The Changeling. These moments shed light on how my model of the actor’s body in relation to theatrical character shapes the action and thematic development of both plays. In the fourth section, I consider how physiological concepts of the Renaissance actor’s body reveal the collaborative nature of theatrical wit in crucial clowning segments of The Changeling. 50 I. In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault outlines a genealogy of modern subjectivity by analyzing the complex processes through which human beings are made subjects—primarily as the result of what he calls “disciplinary technologies” that act on and through individual bodies. In tracing this genealogy, Foucault develops a model that presents subjectivity as the product of social and political forces—namely, institutional apparatuses and practices. “What the apparatuses and institutions operate is,” he observes, “in a sense, a rrricro-physics of power, whose field of validity is situated in a sense between the great functions and the bodies themselves with their materiality and their forces” (26). This “field of validity” is the domain of disciplinary technologies—of the various ways bodies “can be divided up, reconstituted, and manipulated by society” (112). The bodies themselves, moreover, cannot be separated from the functioning of disciplinary technologies. In fact, Foucault insists, individual bodies become instruments of their own subjection by means of these disciplinary technologies. Thus he argues not only that the concept of subjectivity cannot be separated from the complex network of institutions, apparatuses, and political practices—the disciplinary technologies——that act subtly yet forcefully on individual bodies, but also that subjectivity, though produced by disciplinary technologies, is also produced through the actions of individual bodies. “The power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy,” Foucault says, and “its effects of domination are attributed not to ‘appropriation’, but to dispositions, maneuvers, tactics, techniques, functionings” (26). Subjectivity, then, for Foucault, is not simply the product of social and political forces; rather, it is constituted by the process of disciplinary technologies acting on and through individual bodies so as 51 to involve their participation. For Foucault, that is, subjectivity entails a relational—and interactional—process between disciplinary technologies and individual bodies. The body constitutes the site at which networks of institutional and political forces intersect. Thus it is the process of disciplinary technologies acting on the body that produces the very notion of subjectivity in individuals. In developing his theory of disciplinary technologies, Foucault sketches a figure of the individual subject that captures the paradoxical feature of his model of subjectivity: the docile body. For Foucault, “a body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved” (136)-——which is precisely the aim of disciplinary technologies (Rabinow 17). Thus, institutions such as universities, nrilitaries, and churches all produce docile bodies by various methods of training—which, for Foucault, is just another way of saying control. According to him, discipline produces docile bodies through a “general formula of domination” (137). Discipline, in this Foucauldian sense, is not directed at “the growth of skills . . . but at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism itself makes [the body] more obedient as it becomes more useful” (137). But what or who, exactly, is the agent of these disciplinary technologies? By whose hands is the body made docile— used, transformed, improved? Foucault suggests that there are no such hands, only the shaping relationship between disciplinary technologies and docile bodies. Stated baldly, for Foucault, discipline takes shape as subtle coercions and holds upon individuals at the “level of the mechanism itself’—that is, discipline manifests itself in and through human bodies, through its “movements, gestures, attitudes” (137). This emphasis on gestures and movements suggests the particular relevance of the docile body to theories of acting, since the actor’s main instrument in acting and 52 performance is, of course, his own body. Indeed, Foucault’s ideas have played a particularly significant role in studies of Renaissance drama for the very reason that many of those studies focus, like Foucault’s analysis of subjectivity, on the actions of actor’s bodies under specific social and cultural pressures. In the recent past, for instance, critics of Renaissance drama have analyzed the social construction of actors by relating discursive social practices to the construction of subjectivity and identity."2 Undoubtedly, these critical perspectives are indebted to and remain animated by Foucault’s notion of the docile body precisely because they see the discipline of acting—the training and controlled behavior of voice and movement—as what Foucault would call a normative technology inscribed on and through individual bodies. Thus, the concept of the docile body is particularly applicable to Renaissance actors because it draws attention to the relationship between material practices in the theater and the potential influence of those practices on the bodies and subj ectivities of actors. However, while Foucault’s ideas have generated rich political and cultural analyses of Renaissance drama, the ways in which his ideas inform performance-centered criticism have only begun to be explored in the last decade. In the introduction to Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance, for example, James Bulman notes the way in which Foucauldian and other so-called poststructuralist theories have “liberated us to discover in performance contingencies more radically destabilizing than anything known to literary critics” (5). Among such “contingencies” as “the material conditions of performance, the dynamics of audience response, the possibility of error latent in live performance” (5-6), Bulman spotlights the actor’s physical body on stage. Employing a Foucauldian turn of phrase, he reminds us that the actor’s body itself is an important site 53 of historical, cultural, and theatrical meaning: on the stage, he says, “its signification is made flesh” (6). Bulman suggests rightly that Foucault’s model of subjectivity has particular relevance to investigations of actors’ bodies and their work on stage. He insists that the actor’s body bears the inscription of social signification—that it is not so much a body that acts as a body that is acted on. As Bulman correctly emphasizes, Foucault’s theory of the docile body has enabled an understanding of the actor’s body as a site of discursive signification. Yet, the actor’s own active role in the production of meaning in theatrical performance— particularly his role in the performance of character—remains a matter of critical debate. Indeed, as the range of theoretical approaches presented in Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance attests, some performance-centered critics theorize the actor’s experience in a way that complicates Foucault’s model of subjectivity. Anthony Dawson, for instance, sees the actor’s body primarily as a “rhetorical instrument” (3 9) .43 Thus, for Dawson, the work an actor performs on stage—the product of the actor’s discipline—depends in large part on his ability to control and manipulate his own body. Moreover, he asserts, viewing the actor’s body from this perspective “means investing it first with agency, linking it with will, and thus with subjectivity” (39). Dawson seems to suggest here that actors can somehow transcend, at least briefly, the influence of disciplinary technologies. Theoretically speaking, Dawson replaces Foucault’s docile body with what he calls a “performing body” (35). “The actor,” he says, “by participating his body [sic], creates his part, constructs the person he represents” (39).44 In making this clairrr, Dawson follows Michael Goldman, who has insightfully and lucidly theorized about the dynamics between actor and audience.45 Goldman has argued, for instance, that actors employ their 54 bodies in the creation of new, unique, theatrical subjectivities (Energies 5); for him, “the gap between self and deed seems curiously to vanish” (Acting 10). This perspective emphasizes actors not so much as docile bodies molded and formed by disciplinary technologies, but rather as performing bodies that construct new subjectivities through their movements and actions.46 I have not been sketching the figure of the performing body in order to question the applicability of Foucault’s theory of the docile body to actors. Rather, I want to suggest the need for a way of understanding the actor’s body that takes into account both figures—the docile body and the performing body. That is, I want to mediate between the Foucauldian critique of individuality—which identifies the actor’s body as a corporeal, but ultimately passive, site of discursive signification—and the possibility of a kind of performative transcendence, whereby the actor, through the actions of his own body, participates as an agent in the construction of a new subjectivity. In the context of the Renaissance stage, the actor constitutes only one feature of a complex collaborative process. Foucault’s theory of the docile body animates discussion of Renaissance drama because it calls attention to the external pressures that influence the actor on stage—the host of collaborative practices that shape the writing and performance of plays (the theater’s version of disciplinary technologies); however, as it applies to acting, the theory of the docile body resists granting the actor agency in the theatrical event. Performance theorists reinstate the actor’s agency but, in the process, deemphasize the powerful influence of the theater’s collaborative practices. Dawson, for instance, implies that the actor himself and himself alone “creates his part” (3 9)——a position that fails to acknowledge the multiplicity of collaborative agents that together create character in the 55 theatrical process. I would like to suggest that the actor both acts in and is acted upon by the theater’s collaborative institutions, its disciplinary technologies. And it is this process of collaboration——not the actor alone or the institutions alone—that performs character. The collaborative technologies that defme—or, say, discipline—the Renaissance actor inform us that theatrical character does not simply bear the marks of the collaborative process but is, itself, the manifestation of that process. 11. I want now to test these ideas by using them to examine specific scenes in Hamlet and The Changeling. Focusing on some important intersections of collaborative practices in Hamlet, I will emphasize the concern in this play with the theatrical and thematic distinction‘between being and seeming—a distinction that corresponds to what Paul Morrison describes as Hamlet’s two “specific constructions of subjectivity” (181). As Hamlet watches, the 1st Player reveals the distinction between being and seeming to be useless with regards to theatrical character; and, as a result, Hamlet realizes that being and seeming cannot be considered discrete ideas with regard to his own “self.” Then I will shift to an analysis of the presentation of multiple versions of union in The Changeling in order to emphasize the need for an understanding of character and body that acknowledges the influence of collaboration. When Hamlet makes his first appearance in Hamlet, Gertrude asks him a question that continues to haunt him for the rest of the play. In response to his putative admission that death—particularly his father’s—is “common,” Gertrude asks, “If it be, / Why seems it so particular with thee?” (1 .2.74-75). Her question distinguishes between “being” and 56 vi . ' 'H Y... .c ,. .,. u. ‘v “u“... . “no " -" ‘ a" “gr?“m~mur.‘.g~w~:fl:fl:‘f;h r . .44}, t a, . “A , q I - ‘ , ,. ‘ - m , . . . _ r . - ' '3 .n .. ‘ol - o -r . 0' . 1- ’: “seeming.” She wants to know, in effect, how Hamlet can be one thing and seem to be another. In response, Hamlet implicitly acknowledges her distinction, even as he denies its particular relevance to him. “I know not ‘seems,”’ he says (76). He follows this denial, however, with an index of the “trappings and the suits of woe” that cannot, he says, “denote me truly”—even though they may seem to (86, 83). Thus, like Gertrude, Hamlet accepts, at least at this point, the discreteness of being and seeming. Moreover, Hamlet infuses the distinction between being and seeming with a profound ontological significance that confirms interiority as the true measure of subjectivity: ‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play; But I have that within that passes show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (77-86) Hamlet here equates exteriority to that which merely seems. The “inky cloak,” the “windy suspiration of forc’d breath,” the “fi'uitful river in the eye,” the “dejected havior of the visage” (77-81), all these merely constitute his outward “forms,” his “actions”— not Hamlet himself. That “true” self, he asserts, is found “within” (85). For Hamlet, 57 then, at least here in the beginning of the play, subjectivity appears to be internal and essential. For Hamlet, that is, interiority is the domain of being, of the “me truly” that, very relevantly, he later calls his immortal soul (1 466-67). Exteriority, in contrast, constitutes the domain of corporeal seeming, of forms, of physical actions—of the body. Hamlet’s claim about “that within that passes show” in 1.2 subjugates exteriority to interiority, the body’s seeming to the soul’s being. In an important way, then, Hamlet might be seen as a dramatic example of Foucault’s ideas about disciplinary technologies. In Foucault’s terms, “seems” is the exactly appropriate verb to designate any ontology of the docile body. After all, a subject cannot know his own self, his “being”, since by Foucault’s definition the very idea of a self is produced and mediated by disciplinary technologies. Hence, from a Foucauldian perspective, Hamlet’s invocation of interiority must be read as an expression of his already disciplined body. His subsequent dilemmas in the play, in this sense, simply display the consequences for his already disciplined body (and equally disciplined subjectivity) being acted upon by conflicting sets of unexpected, novel situations—namely, the Claudian plots of the Danish court. While Hamlet sees the soul as the source of his internal and essential self-—-as “that within that passes show” (85)—Foucault suggests that the very idea of the soul is a powerful manifestation of disciplinary technologies on a docile body. According to Foucault, the soul is not the source of the self, as Hamlet would have it, but rather the “correlative of a certain technology of power over the body” (29). The very notion of subjectivity, for Foucault, emerges fiom specific disciplinary technologies that are “produced around, on, [and] within the body” (29). Foucault would, therefore, argue that Hamlet’s belief in the meaningful difference between his authentic interior self and its 58 false outward show is itself the construct of disciplinary technologies. In a profound sense, seeming is being according to Foucault—and that includes all appearances of the “soul” in acts of self-consciousness. The complicated relationship between being and seeming in Hamlet has motivated much critical analysis of the play;47 yet, as one critic has said, in the play being and seeming appear to “dissolve like the forms in an engraving of Escher” (Calderwood 30). In Hamlet, being and seeming intersect, complicate, and call each other into question, as evidenced by Hamlet’s own growing skepticism about who his is and how he acts. The intersections of being and seeming are most evident in the play’s self- conscious presentation of actors and acting; and it is precisely these moments that compel us to consider the relationship between actor and character in performance. I do not intend here to rehearse previous metadrarnatic readings of Hamlet.48 Rather, I want to suggest that understanding the relationship between—indeed, among—actors and character in Hamlet requires that we account for the actor’s body as both “docile” and “performing”——as something, to rephrase Bulman, that both acts and is acted upon. Such an understanding will, in turn, shed light on the notion of character as it applies to collaborative theatrical performance in the Renaissance. For in a creative collaborative process—o'ne in which so many different individuals (actors, writers, musicians, censors) and groups (playing companies, audiences) play a part, all with their own relational set of intentions—the notion of character itself is best seen as the product of that collaborative process. Hamlet provides rich ground for this analysis precisely because it self-consciously dramatizes actors performing roles that emphasize the interconnectedness of bodies in 59 performance. Hamlet’s reaction to the 1” Player enacting Aeneas’s tale to Dido offers a compelling instance: Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann’d, Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? (2.2.545-551) In his earlier speech, Hamlet held up actors as exemplars of seeming. “These indeed seem,” he says, referring to his exterior forms of mourning, “for they are actions that a man might play” (1 .2.83-84). Here, though, in a curious inversion of his earlier model, Hamlet implies that, for the 1" Player, being lies precisely in his ability to seem. Hamlet’s blazon-like description of the 1st Player reiterates his earlier description of his own “outward show”: the “broken voice,” the “tears in his eyes,” the “distraction in his aspect.” But here the separateness Hamlet once insisted on between exterior seeming and inward being collapses. It is the lSt Player himself who “force[s] his soul to his own conceit”; it is he who rouses his soul to action, which, in turn, produces halting breath, tears, and distracted visage. These “forms”—which Hamlet in his earlier speech identified with the actor’s seeming outward “show” (1.2.85)—here become the performed truth of who the 1St Player is—his “being” as an actor. Hamlet’s soliloquy stands on this “monstrous” acknowledgment of the actor’s discipline: that through the deliberate control of his own body, the 1st Player can conjure into existence a “conceit” 6O somehow more real to Hamlet than Hamlet himself, more real than his own emotions and (lack of) actions. The 1St Player presents a striking example of how an actor functions as both a docile and performing body. Put another way, the actor’s body mediates between Foucault’s theory of disciplinary technologies and the performance-centered theories that posit the actor’s body as his own signifying rhetorical instrument. For the lst Player, being and seeming, inner self and outer show, do not so much collapse as collaborate in the bodying forth of the creation of character—which, for an actor, is both the shadow and the form of the self. The discipline of acting entails a self-conscious version of Foucault’s disciplinary technologies. The actor, that is, subjects himself to the procedures and processes of acting (what Foucault would call its “technologies”) so as to produce specific results on his body. The 1St Player’s performance——out of which character arises—lies in his ability to manipulate and articulate his own body. Thus he becomes master, so to speak, of his own docile body. Paul Rabinow has identified this very possibility—of a self-consciously self-irnposed discipline——in Foucault’s interest late in his life of “isolating those techniques through which [a] person initiates an active self-formation” (11). This self-formation takes place, in Foucault’s words, through diverse “operations on [people’s] own bodies, on their own souls, on their own thoughts, on their own conduct” (Rabinow 11). Foucault seems almost to be speaking of an actor here, of the specific ways in which an actor trains and manipulates his body in an active process of “self-formation” (11). The product of this process on stage is nothing less than character. 61 Importantly, however, as Foucault would insist, the actor can never be the sole master of his body because “the Body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs” (25). In this way, the Foucauldian theory of disciplinary technologies ties directly to a theory of collaborative theatrical character; for Foucault’s acknowledgment of the potential for human self- fashioning within a world of shaping social pressures on human bodies finds a remarkable parallel in the influence of collaborative pressures on the actor’s body in performance. As Francis Barker notes, theatrical experience entails a “network of asymmetrical observations patterning the entire space of being” (26). In performance, he continues, “there is no well-founded division between those who perform and those who are spectators” (26). By identifying the actions of bodies in performance as a “networ ,” Barker metaphorically calls attention to remarkable parallels among the docile body, the performing body, and the collaborative practices of Renaissance theater. Docile bodies and performing bodies, that is, are also collaborative bodies. Just as the docile body is constructed by the multiple interactions of disciplinary technologies, so too are performing bodies constructed by collaborative theatrical practices. Foucault himself repeatedly employs terms such as “network” and “field” to describe the functioning of disciplinary technologies on individual bodies; and it is the collaborative force of such terms that Dreyfus and Rabinow seek to capture in their own use of the phrase “mutual production” when describing Foucault’s theory of the relationship between disciplinary technologies and docile bodies (144 my emphasis). Take, for instance, Foucault’s well- known and painfully vivid analysis of Darrrien’s public execution, in which “the 62 vengeance of the people was called upon to become an unobtrusive part of the vengeance of the sovereign” (59). The people, he asserts, must “take part in it” (58). Foucault goes so far as to say that “in the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance” (57 my italics). For Foucault, the spectacle of the execution—like the docile body itself—is collaborative. Performance-centered critics (not to mention an actor-playwright like Shakespeare) certainly understand the collaborative aspect of the performing body as it pertains to audiences. Dawson, for instance, identifies collaboration in the “participation” of theatrical experience, “whereby the spectator participates the present body of the actor [sic]” (43); and, similarly, Michael Goldman asserts that “all kinds of aesthetic distance may be established in the theater, but it will always manifest itself with a special tension because the interplay between live actor and bodily sensitive audience is constantly breaking the distance down” (Energies 6). Much like a dramatic embodiment of Dawson’s and Goldman’s theoretical claims, Hamlet repeatedly enacts this exact collaborative interplay between actor and audience in his interactions with the traveling troupe of players, particularly regarding their performance of the inner play, The Murder of Gonzago: HAM. . . . Doest thou hear me, old friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago? lSt PLAY. Ay, my lord. HAM. We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which 63 1‘ I would set down and insert in’t, could you not? 1St PLAY. Ay, my lord. (2.2.533-39) Hamlet’s questions here are nothing of the sort; rhetorically disguised as interrogatives, they clearly function as royal imperatives. Hamlet’s willingness to assert his authority towards those in positions of servitude certainly would be fresh in mind for the lSt Player; for, seconds earlier, Hamlet had publicly scolded Polonius, himself a relatively high member of the Danish court, 49 for his intended treatment of the players. “My lord,” Polonius says to Hamlet, “1 will use them according to their desert,” to which Hamlet responds with a thinly veiled threat, “God’s bodkin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping?” (2.2.523-25). Hamlet’s questions to the 1St Player, then, are actually princely commands.50 The players will perform The Murder of Gonzago, which will contain new material written by Hamlet himself. In a powerful sense, that is, Hamlet here employs his political power as a means of becoming a collaborator in the future performance of The Murder of Gonzago, a play soon to be written, at least in part, by one member of its audience, Hamlet himself. Hamlet takes this collaborative role a step further during the actual performance of The Murder of Gonzago before the royal court. From his explication of the opening dumb-show to his final preview that precipitates Claudius’s sensational exit, Hamlet not only has the first and last words of the performance, he also provides a running commentary so theatrically invasive that it prompts Ophelia to acknowledge Hamlet’s role as an actor in the play itself. “You are as good as a chorus, my lord,” she says (3.2.240). And, indeed, Hamlet’s dramatic display during and as the performance of The Murder of Gonzago—now transformed into The Mousetrap—powerfully exemplifies Goldman’s breaking down of the distance between audience and actor. For Hamlet, there seems to be no distance at all: A poisons him I’th garden for his estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife. (3.2.255-5 8) With these words—at once an explication of the performance and a part of the performance itself—the play simultaneously reaches its climax and its abrupt end. Claudius, reacting at last to Hamlet’s theatrical trap, rises, calls for light, and leaves with his entourage. During the performance of The Murder of Gonzago- The Mousetrap, Hamlet moves freely between the world of the audience and the world of the stage; he passes searrrlessly between them, shaping and directing the players so much that he becomes one himself. In this final display, Hamlet acts neither as actor nor audience member; his words are neither a part of the play nor an external commentary on it. Thus he captures Michael Goldman’s profound insight into the way actors are always something more and less than themselves and the characters they embody in theatrical performance: “We relate to [figures on stage] as characters in a fiction, as real people moving and talking close to us, and as actors, who are at once both real and fictitious, and neither” (Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama 6 my italics). In its overt theatrical self-consciousness, Hamlet dramatizes and thematizes the purpose of the actor’s discipline: to figure out how to act “both real and fictitious, and neither.” For Hamlet, at the beginning of the play, the body (the instrument of the actor’s discipline) is the “nutshell” of the soul; it is the outward form in which he rules as “king 65 of infinite space” (2.2.244-5). As such, Hamlet consigns the physical movements of the body—what Foucault calls its “dispositions, maneuvers, tactics, techniques, [and] functionings” (26)——to seeming appearance. He refers to his own outward shows of mourning as mere theatrical trappings, as false disguise, as the stuff of actors. Troping on Claudius as a motley representation of “his [own] seeming” (3.2.87), Hamlet calls him a king of shreds and patches. And yet, through his experience witnessing the 1St Player’s performance, Hamlet realizes that acting itself holds the key to understanding himself. Far from mere seeming, acting becomes for Hamlet the route towards revelations of truth. In the process of this discovery, Hamlet comes to embody the collaborative interactions that constantly motivate and pressure the actor’ s body—and the character that the actor, in part, enacts—in theatrical performances. 111. Understanding the actor’s discipline—the technical manipulation and articulation of his body—requires acknowledging that actors are both agents in and subjects of the collaborative theatrical process. Given the utter pervasiveness of collaboration in this process, the intended product of the actor’s discipline—dramatic character—must therefore also be considered collaborative. The emphasis on actors and acting in Hamlet, for instance, highlights the important interaction between actor and audience in this production of collaborative character. In addition to its collaborative interactions with the audience, however, the actor’s body also interacts with the bodies of other actors participating in the theatrical process as well. This interaction also powerfully influences character. The extent to which actors collaborate in the production of character is 66 displayed perhaps nowhere as strongly as in the tragic fate of Beatrice Joanna and De Flores in Middleton-Rowley’s The Changeling. For Beatrice Joanna and De Flores, with respect to the murder of Alonzo, there will be no meaningful separation of discrete deeds or, what is more, of character. Beatrice Joanna and De Flores offer a shocking illustration of the interconnectedness of collaborative bodies on stage. As “twins of mischief’—doubly-guilty and doubly-performed—they dramatize the degree to which motives, deeds, and culpability resist relegation to a single character (5.3.142). Recent attempts to revise traditional opinions of collaboration speak to the issue of collaborative bodies in The Changeling. I want to review those attempts briefly now in order to emphasize that such revisions have particular relevance to the relationship between actor and character. Traditionally, collaboration has been discussed primarily as it relates to playwrights. Generations of scholars and editors, animated by modern concepts of individual authorship,’ l have attempted to identify and trace the discrete contributions of specific dramatists in jointly written plays.52 However, given our growing understanding of the way collaboration shaped the entire production of plays in Renaissance England, from manuscript to performance to printed text,53 the procedures of attribution studies, with its emphasis on single authorship, seem increasingly misplaced.“ As G.E. Bentley points out, plays written by more than one man were more likely the rule rather than the exception in Renaissance drama. “Altogether theevidence suggests,” Bentley writes, “that it would be reasonable to guess that as many as half of the plays by professional dramatists in the period incorporated the writing at some date of more than one man” (Profession of Dramatist 199). Still, despite this evidence to the contrary, the 67 modern concept of single authorship continues to influence editorial and textual practices regarding jointly written plays. Take, for example, the “mystery” surrounding the authorial attribution of The Changeling. In his 1976 introduction to The Changeling, Norman Rabkin points out that “one of the fascinating aspects of the play is the correspondence and careful linking between its two plots, indicating careful and thoughtful collaboration. Yet scholars are generally convinced that the subplot and the first and the last scenes of the play are Rowley’s work and all the rest Middleton’s” (3 99). Rabkin’s acknowledgement that the collaboration, though thoughtful and careful, was not transparent typifies the traditional desire to identify the discrete work of each dramatist.55 In the introduction to his more recent edition of the play, Joost Daalder summarizes and comments on the critical investigations of The Changeling that have sought to identify discrete authorial units. Daalder points out that in the nineteenth century F.G. Fleay identified the division that Rabkin and most other scholars have traditionally accepted. Later, P.G. Wiggins and Cyrus Hoy focused—with different degrees of success, according to Daalder—on “certain linguistic traits” that function as “fingerprints,” allowing some linguistic certainty of each author’s contribution (xvi-xviii). This attempt to discover who wrote what in Renaissance playtexts is, to say the least, problematic. As Jeffrey Masten rightly points out, “the collaborative project in the theater was predicated on erasing the perception of any differences that might have existed . . . between collaborated parts” (Textual Intercourse 373). Scholars and critics, that is, are busy searching for something that playwrights themselves, not to mention actors and other collaborative participants, worked hard to make invisible. 68 Daalder also identifies a “critically unsympathetic attitude to Rowley in the reception of [The Changeling]” that, accordingly, has also played a significant role in assigning authorial shares. Rabkin, for instance, claims that “Middleton’s leadership is evident both in the play’sqbrilliance and in its close connection with others of his plays” (The Changeling 399). As the idea—mistakenly, I believe—goes, Middleton, far superior to Rowley as a playwright, must have written the “brilliant” parts of The Changeling and been the “leader” in the collaborative relationship.56 The justification for this attitude finds its source in another dubious assumption—the “universal condemnation” of sub-plots (Levin 34). Traditionally, the comic plot of The Changeling has been considered the inferior work of Rowley and the tragic plot the more SOphisticated work of Middleton. The reasoning behind such a claim seems to be, as much as anything, a general preference for tragedy over comedy. Even if we grant for the moment the accuracy of the separation of Middleton’s and Rowley’s work according to plot, that division cannot be the basis for an argument for Rowley’s apparent inferiority. Consider, for example, Bentley’s historically informed inversion of the bias against Rowley. According to Bentley, the comic material, not the tragic, gave the play its title,57 and evidence shows that the comedy in the play was by far its most memorable part for contemporary audiences (Profession of Dramatist 217).58 Any discussion of worth based on rigid attributions of authorship, it would seem, stands on a shaky foundation. Again, Masten illuminates: “the writing in this theatrical context implicitly resists the notion of monolithic personal style . . . a playwright im/personates another (many others) in the process of writing a playtext and thus refracts the supposed singularity of the individual in language” (Textual Intercourse 373). Masten here 69 underscores the necessity for broadening our notions of collaboration in Renaissance drama, not only as it applies to the role of dramatists but to the entire theatrical proj ect— othervvise, the study of collaboration remains grounded in a critical tradition that sees collaboration as a sub-set of single authorship and that, therefore, fails to acknowledge the pervasiveness of collaboration in the production of Renaissance plays. Moreover, a broader understanding of collaboration sheds light on the way Renaissance actors present characters who themselves embody the very theatrical practices that collaboration has created them to be. Like Hamlet, The Changeling analyzes the distinction between being and seeming and its relationship to character. Based on John Reynold’s The Triumphs ofGod’s Revenge against the Crying and Execrable Sin of W ilful and Premeditated Murder, the tragic plot of The Changeling revolves around the love relationship between Beatrice Joanna, the daughter of Vermandero, a nobleman of Alicant, and Alsemero, a nobleman visiting Alicant. We learn in the opening movement of the play that Beatrice Joanna and Alsemero have already met and fallen in love. Beatrice Joanna, however, is already betrothed to Alonzo De Piracquo, a noble lord. In order to free herself from her comrrritrnent to Alonzo, Beatrice Joanna conceives of a plot with Vermandero’s servant De Flores, whom Beatrice Joanna loathes, to murder Alonzo. Having completed the murder, De Flores claims Beatrice Joanna herself as payment for his deed, and in the ensuing events, Beatrice Joanna contrives to hide her illicit relationship with De Flores from Alsemero, whom she does actually marry. Sara Eaton has argued that the convoluted sexual relationships in The Changeling link notions of being and seeming with the rhetoric of Courtly Love and edenic longing. 70 Alsemero and De Flores, she writes, “act out variants of Courtly Love’s tragic potential occurring when the source of poetic inspiration may not be as she appears” (281). From this perspective, Beatrice Joanna intemalizes and reflects both Alsemero’s and De Flores’s respective desires: both seek a union with Beatrice Joanna that ultimately prizes seeming pure over being pure. In her focus on the play’s exposure of the contradictions within Courtly Love rhetoric, Eaton rightly draws attention to the play’s interest in multiple versions of sexual coupling and union. In what follows, however, I want to suggest that the most important unions in the play actually involve—and theatrically lay bare—the coupling of character itself. Both in its description of Beatrice Joanna and De Flores’ tragic collusion and in its presentation of interactive clownish wit, The Changeling dramatizes the way character itself issues from the collaborative practices of theatrical performance. In its opening scene, The Changeling introduces two seemingly contrary forms of union—one spiritual and the other physical. Alsemero’s first words express his desire for Beatrice Joanna in the language of Christian marriage: The church hath first begun our interview, And that’s the place must join us into one; So there’s beginning, and perfection too. (1.1.10-13) According to the gospel of Mark, God dictated from the very moment of creation that man “shal leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife. And they twaine shal be one flesh: so that thei are no more twaine, but one fles ” (The Geneva Bible, Matt. 10:6- 9). Alsemero’s speech exemplifies the Christian ideology of a marital union in which his and Beatrice Joanna’s bodies become one. Not surprisingly, Alsemero sees the hand of 71 providence in his first meeting with Beatrice Joanna: it took place in the church, the physical embodiment of the divine power capable of joining Beatrice Joanna to him as “one flesh.” The perfection he speaks of thus refers both to the appropriateness of the location (apparently he hopes to marry her in the same church) and to the perfect union of his body (and soul) to Beatrice Joanna’s—the seemingly paradoxical union of two into one. When Beatrice Joanna arrives moments later, Alsemero continues to speak a language animated by the imagery of union: “yesterday / Was mine eyes’ employment, and hither now / They brought my judgment, where are both agreed. / Both houses then consenting, ‘tis agreed” (1.1.76-79). He reassuringly insists that, like their two loves, his body and mind hold no contradictions: his eyes and judgment are joined in unified agreement. All that remains for the completion of their perfect union, he continues, is Beatrice Joanna’s own participation in it. “Only there wants the confirmation / By thy hand royal—that is your part, lady” (80-81). The union Alsemero seeks apparently requires joint action. As Alsemero speaks in this way to Beatrice Joanna, his fiiend Jasperino pursues a union of a different sort with Diaphanta, Beatrice Joanna’s waiting-woman. While Alsemero and Beatrice Joanna speak of a union based on the ideology of Christian marriage, one that coalesces spirituality and sexuality in the joining of bodies, Jasperino and Diaphanta joke bawdily of a purely mechanical and physical union: JASPERINO. I could show thee such a thing with an ingredient that we two would compound together, and if it did not tame the maddest blood i’ th’ town for two hours after, I’ll ne’er profess physic again. DIAPHANTA. A little poppy, sir, were good to cause you sleep. 72 (1.1.142-45) In Jasperino and Diaphanta"s exchange, bodies become anatorrrized “ingredients” at their disposal for both sexual and comic satisfaction. In this sense, Diaphanta’s allusion to “a little poppy” functions as a lewd pun, referring both to the size of Jasperino’s particular “ingredient” and to the longevity of their physical coupling. Far from the eternal marriage that Alsemero and Beatrice Joanna desire, the union that would result from the “compound[ing] together” of Jasperino’s and Diaphanta’s bodies would be short lived, lasting (only) “for two hours after.” As Christopher Ricks has pointed out, Alsemero’s and Jasperino’s respective attempts to woo Beatrice Joanna and Diaphanta act as foils—idealized spiritual union on the one hand and comic physical coupling on the other. “That the master woos courteously, and the servant coarsely, is perhaps a frequent contrast,” he writes, “but here it has a strong dramatic point—we can be shown both the smooth facade of Beatrice’s virtue, and the crude facts of her lust” (292). Like many critics of The Changeling, Ricks connects Middleton-Rowley’s presentation of competing forms of coupling with an analysis of “seeming”—of different types of changelings——in the play. 59 For Ricks, Jasperino’s wooing of Diaphanta parodies Alsemero’s wooing of Beatrice Joanna and thereby draws attention to a contrast between who Beatrice Joanna appears to be—a virtuous maid—and who future events will prove her to be—a sexual being capable even of murder to satisfy her “lust”.(292). Yet, like the distinction of being and seeming of actors’ bodies in Hamlet, the distinction between the respective unions Alsemero and Jasperino speak of in the first scene grows increasingly unclear as the play proceeds, particularly as it applies to 73 Beatrice Joanna’s seeming virtue. Ricks, for example, locates the twin of Beatrice Joanna’s moral ambiguity in the poetic structure of the play. He traces a number of key words——blood, act, and service, among others——whose punning “double meanings” form a linguistic pattern of being and securing through which words themselves seem to mean one thing—and do—while containing some other, usually contradictory, meaning (293). In this sense, the puns “sum up the moral and poetic theme of the play” (293)—that is, the ambiguity of the language in The Changeling mirrors the breaking down of who Beatrice Joanna appears to be and who she actually is. From the perspective Ricks develops, the play asserts that there really is no difference between being and seeming for Beatrice Joanna. Ricks’s analysis of The Changeling is important for my purposes here precisely because the connection he draws between poetic language and moral character suggests the possibility of a similar connection between actors’ bodies and dramatic character broadly conceived. Through his close linguistic reading, Ricks uncovers something akin to a union of language and self—the double-ness of the puns merges with Beatrice Joanna’s moral double-ness such that the distinctions between word and self dissolve. Importantly, Michael Goldman finds a similar union in the “unique ontological status” of dramatic character: “[Character] is not the personal self of the actor, but the self he creates by acting. And in that creation the gap between self and deed seems curiously to vanis ” (Acting and Action 10). Taken together, Ricks’s and Goldman’s insights shed a distinctive light on the importance of actors’ bodies in the creation of character: what actors say and do compose who they are and become on stage. 74 But while Ricks and Goldman certainly further our understanding of the unification of word, deed, and character in theatrical performance, they argue from perspectives that overlook the way collaboration complicates and enriches the “unique ontological status” of dramatic character (Goldman, Acting and Action 10). Namely, in the collaborative context of multiple actors on stage, the vanishing of word, self, and deed occurs between and among multiple bodies. Therefore, the “characters” created by the actors cannot be traced back to any one actor. The Changeling dramatizes precisely this phenomenon as the distinctiveness of Beatrice Joanna’s and De Flores’s respective characters breaks down by way of a murderous union that itself powerfully exemplifies the collaborative interaction of body and character on stage. Middleton-Rowley set the course for this convergence of character—which ultimately finds its clearest expression in two important scenes (2.2 and 3.4) involving Beatrice Joanna and De Flores—by presenting De Flores as an inverted (and perverted) version of Alsemero.60 This inversion is most apparent in the relationship between each man’s physical appearance and what Beatrice Joanna might call his respective “merit[s]” (2.1.14). Recalling Alsemero’s earlier words about the union of his eyes and his judgment, Beatrice Joanna describes her own newfound love of Alsemero: Methinks I love now with the eyes of judgment, And see the way to merit, clearly see it. A true deserver like a diamond sparkles; In darkness you may see him, that’s in absence, Which is the greatest darkness falls on love: Yet is he best discerned then, 75 With intellectual eyesight. (2.1.13-19) Beatrice Joanna speaks here with—and of-—the same concord of vision and judgment that characterized Alsemero’s wooing in 1.1. Now she, too, sees in such a way that her senses and reason are “both agreed” (1.1.78). Moreover, as she professes this physical and intellectual union in herself, she also praises it in Alsemero, particularly the way his “merit” manifests itself in his outward appearance: “A true deserver like a diamond sparkles” (2.1.15). Beatrice Joanna also notes the same principle in De Flores’ outward looks, though with a definitively different application. Like Alsemero, whose outward appearance corresponds to his inward virtue, De Flores also presents a picture of unified physicality and merit. Unlike Alsemero, however, De Flores is, in Beatrice Joanna’s sight, an “ominous, ill-faced fellow” (2.1.53), whose looks correspond not to “merit” but to an interior “deadly poison” (1.1.111). De Flores himself seems to acknowledge as much when he muses on Beatrice Joanna’s intensely palpable loathing of him, “As if danger or ill luck hung in my looks” (2.1.36). “I must confess,” he says, “my face is bad enough” (2.1.37). . Even so, in 2.2 the correspondence between De Flores’s ill-face and his poisonous character appears to become more of a medicine to Beatrice Joanna than a toxin. The moral underpinnings of this important scene have been described by critics from a number of different perspectives. Christopher Ricks, for example, sees it as the moment when Beatrice Joanna “tempts [De Flores] into murdering Alonzo” (290). Naomi C. Liebler, on the other hand, bluntly describes it as the moment of Beatrice Joanna’s “overtly criminal act of hiring De Flores to kill Alonzo”—the actual crime of which, Liebler suggests, is not so much the murder itself but the fact that Beatrice Joanna “get[s] 76 someone else to kill for her” (372). And Sharon Stockton, positioning Beatrice Joanna as a type of scapegoat, sees her as self-consciously acting as a substitute for Alsemero’s earlier desire to challenge Alonso to a duel; from this perspective, Beatrice Joanna plots Alonzo’s death and thereby “ventur [es] outside the confines of social law in order to carry out the plan/desire which was originally [Alsemero’s]” (464). Yet, setting aside for the moment any strict moral analysis, the most striking aspect of the scene remains Beatrice Joanna’s ostensible shift in attitude regarding De Flores and the way that shift fits into Middleton-Rowley’s destabilizing of the very possibility of a discrete and autonomous character in the play. As De Flores approaches her, Beatrice Joanna informs the audience, by way of an interrogative aside, that she intends to belie her true feelings for De Flores: “Cannot I keep that secret, / And serve my turn upon him?” (2.2.69-70); and, indeed, in what follows Beatrice Joanna bestows on De Flores what sounds like deceptive praise. Marking a distinct change in his face, she notes that he was “not wont to look so amorously” (74). Then, echoing her speech just moments before in which she had praised Alsemero for his unified looks and merit, Beatrice Joanna admires a similar correspondence in De Flores, saying to him: Hardness becomes the visage of a man well: It argues service, resolution, manhood, If cause were of employment. (2.2.92-94) Whether sexual temptation, ruthless transaction, or social transgression, Beatrice Joanna’s plan to “remove [Alonzo] forever fiom [her] sight” (2.2.12-13) involves a coupling of wills—hers and De F lores’s; and, as in her earlier exchange with Alsemero, 77 the possibility of such an agreement between them is linked to a correspondence of physicality and self. The hardness witnessed in De F lores’s physical features exactly matches the quality of his personality, a quality of which Beatrice Joanna finds herself in great need. In this sense, neither Alsemero nor De Flores harbors any contradiction— their respective “visage[s]” do, indeed, perfectly argue for the services both offer Beatrice Joanna. In her eyes, both men are precisely what they seem to be. One important difference between Alsemero and De Flores, of course, lies in Beatrice Joanna’s hopes of a different “employment” for each—that is, in her hopes for two distinct types of relationships with each: one marital and eternal, the other criminal and brief. Beatrice Joanna’s respective hopes and desires regarding Alsemero and De Flores emerge out of a powerful but perhaps easily overlooked assumption: that Alsemero, De Flores, and Beatrice Joanna herself, are, in deed and in word, separate and distinct characters. Up to this point, The Changeling has established that distinctiveness by emphasizing the similarities and differences of putatively distinct types of characters and unions. Both Alsemero and De Flores, for example, share a similar “agreement” (to use Alsemero’s own term (1 .l.78)) in the way both men’s physical appearances mirror their inward natures. The particular quality of those respective appearances and natures, however, could not be more dissimilar. For Beatrice Joanna, it is precisely the correspondence between how each man appears and who he is that forms the basis of her confidence in pursuing both men for different types of “employment” (94); but, it is also precisely the clash between each man’s character that makes one suitable as a husband and the other as an assassin. 78 Likewise, Beatrice Joanna’s intention to “serve [her] turn upon [De F lores]” (2.2.69)-—to employ and take advantage of him—stands on her faith that she is, in a profound sense, separate and distinct from him. To her, De Flores’s loathsome character (matched by his equally loathsome physical appearance) somehow makes inevitable his agency and guilt in the crime she envisions for him. The guilt for Alonso’s murder, Beatrice Joarma believes, will belong to De Flores and not to her because he is, after all, an evil character in her eyes. It is almost as if Beatrice Joanna’s faith in the discrete iniquity of De Flores’s character frees her from any culpability for their—his and her—— future crime. The unfolding action in 2.2, and later in 3.4, however, powerfully undermines Beatrice Joanna’s faith in the discreteness of character. Her own self-possession, for example, seems to falter in 2.2 as the emotional energy between her and De Flores increases and as her ostensibly deceptive praise for De Flores seems to become increasingly genuine: BEATRICE. Then take him to thy fury. DE FLORES. I thirst for him. BEATRICE. Alonzo de Piracquo. DE FLORES. His end’s upon him, He shall be no more. BEATRICE. How lovely now Dost thou appear to me! (2.2.133-36) Poetically, this exchange indicates a mounting intimacy between Beatrice Joanna and De Flores. Much more than simply echoing her, De Flores completes both Beatrice Joanna’s 79 thought and the metrical line of her utterances. Responding in kind, Beatrice Joanna also completes De Flores’s metrical line, thereby engendering her final exclamation of praise: “How lovely now / Dost thou appear to me!” The poetic concord of their voices challenges not only Beatrice Joanna’s ability to dissemble her own feelings; it defies the very discreteness of Beatrice Joanna’s and De F lores’s respective characters. Beatrice Joanna and De Flores seem almost to speak in concert here—the poetic and dramatic effect of which is to make them speak, as it were, with one voice and one mind61 The unifying of their voices exemplifies the unity of their desires, thoughts, emotions, and wills—that is, of their character. And it is precisely this overlapping of character that makes Beatrice Joanna’s plan to “rid [herself] / of two inveterate loathings at one time” (2.2.144-45)—Alonso and De Flores—impossible. For that would amount to something akin to ridding herself of herself. Whatever remains of Beatrice Joanna’s faith in her sovereign character collapses during the multiple revelations of 3.4. De Flores, having murdered Alonzo, returns to Beatrice Joanna and shows her Alonzo’s ring still stuck on the severed fmger—“As if the flesh and it were both one substance” (3 .4.3 8)—that De Flores had cut from the corpse as ocular proof of his success. Beatrice Joanna responds to the news of Alonzo’s death both with delight at her newfound freedom and with horror at the sight of De F lores’s bloody trophy. Then, as payment for his service and as a sign that she has “not meanly thought upon [his] merit” (61-62), Beatrice Joanna offers De Flores three thousand florins plus Alonzo’s ring as a ghoulish gratuity. De Flores, oflended, responds, “Do you place me in the rank of verminous fellows, / To destroy things for wages?” (64-65). Beatrice Joanna’s unspoken answer to this question is “yes”; for that is precisely how she thinks of 80 him. Above all, at this moment, Beatrice Joanna wants nothing more than to distance herself from De Flores and, by extension, to distance herself from the murder and its guilt. Desperate, she continues to treat De Flores merely as an assassin for hire: For my fears’ sake, I prithee make away with all speed possible. And if thou be’st so modest not to name The sum that will content thee, paper blushes not; Send thy demand in writing, it shall follow thee. But prithee take thy flight. (76-81) And, once again, De Flores completes her metrical line: You must fly too then. (81) As in 2.2, when Beatrice Joanna and De Flores’ poetic cooperation bespoke their unifying of wills, here the same metrical phenomenon acts as part of an even more striking and extensive union. In addition to the fact that his flight would cast suspicion on her—“my absence / Would draw suspect upon you instantly,” he says (8 5-86)—De Flores’s assertion that she must “fly too” signifies his desire for her body as payment for his service (81). Far from being too “modest” (78) to name the sum that would content him, De Flores boldly claims Beatrice Joanna’s virginity as his stated price. At the same time, though, the “must” in De Flores’s assertion—“You must fly too then” (81)—— implies not only compulsion or obligation but also a shocking inevitability. “Why, are not you as guilty, in, I’m sure, / As deep as 1?” De Flores asks. “And we should stick together” (83-4). Employing the same language with which he described Alonzo’s ring “stuck” to his dead finger, De Flores insists that he alone does not own the guilt for 81 Alonzo’s murder. Like the indivisible ring and finger joined as if “one substance” (3.4.38), De Flores and Beatrice Joanna are likewise “engaged so jointly” (88) with respect to Alonzo’s murder to make their lives apart an impossibility. De Flores, that is, implies that they must “fly together” precisely because it could not be otherwise: De Flores and Beatrice Joanna, like ring and finger, have become “one substance” (3 8). De Flores’s intimations of his and Beatrice Joanna’s collaborative union develop throughout the scene into a remarkably powerful logic of collaborative acts and bodies— a logic De Flores articulates in the climactic moment of this scene and, arguably, of the entire play: Look but into your conscience, read me there; ‘Tis a true book, you’ll find me there your equal. Push, fly not to your birth, but settle you In what the act has made you; y’are no more now. You must forget your parentage to me: Y’are the deed’s creature; by that name you lost Your first condition; and I challenge you As peace and innocency has turned you out And made you one with me. (132-9) The first two lines of this speech couple Renaissance and modern associations of character. De Flores tells Beatrice Joanna to “look but into your conscience” so as to see and understand her true character. In this way, he correlates her “conscience” with her interior self, thus invoking a modern conception of character as an internal, essential subjectivity.62 At the same time, though, De Flores describes her conscience as a “true 82 book” (133), thereby recalling the Renaissance association of character with “the formation of letters in writing or printing” (Thomson 321).63 In this sense, Beatrice Joanna’s character is something externally knowable—something on which she can read the imprints of who she is. It is precisely this strange ontological literacy that informs De Flores’s command to Beatrice: look to your conscience, he instructs, to your character, and “read me there” (133). What she will find in her conscience, he says, is De Flores. The developing logic of the speech, however, conflates and complicates these two notions of character, Renaissance and modern. For, as De Flores declares, what Beatrice Joanna reads in the “true book” of her character is not merely the story of who she is but the story of who they—jointly—have become. “You’ll find me there your equal,” he says (133). De Flores maintains that, for both him and Beatrice Joanna, character is neither internal subjectivity nor external symbol precisely because their characters are not discrete or sovereign. Rather, for De Flores and Beatrice Joanna, character itself is the collaborative product of a collaborative act. When De Flores says to Beatrice Joanna, “Y’are the deed’s creature,” he insists that the act of murder engendered her, even as it engendered him: it “made you one with me,” he says. In a striking echo of Alsemero’s terminology of marriage in 1.1, De Flores asserts not simply that Beatrice Joanna played a part in the murder of Alonzo and thus shares in the guilt but rather that he and she are equally culpable because the act itself was neither his, nor hers, but theirs. If the act was collaborative, he seems to say, so, too, must be its issue: the “deed’s creature.” De Flores’s argument constitutes a horrifying dramatization of bodies and acts in a theatrical context. Indeed, the murder of Alonzo, like all acts in theatrical contexts, was both the product and the performance of collaborative character—character in deed, and 83 not only so to speak. Beatrice Joanna finds De Flores written upon the “true book” of her conscience because, in a powerful sense, they share the same collaborative body—the body that acts, that performs deeds. De Flores’s speech illustrates the most striking union in The Changeling, the union of collaborative bodies. The act of murdering Alonzo embodies a paradoxical truth in the collaborative relationship between bodies, acts, and character. It unifies Beatrice Joanna and De Flores; it makes them “one.” The act itself both performs and is performed; it both constitutes character and is the product of character. IV. Like Beatrice Joanna and De Flores’s tragic collaborative union, the comic scenes in The Changeling lay bare the collaborative process through which bodies interact in the production of character. As a stock character of Renaissance drama and a specific character in the world of The Changeling, Lollio the clown, more than any other figure in the play, is shaped by a network of overlapping agents: the actor performing his part, the other actors on stage, and the audience, to name the most prominent. In what follows I read the character of the clown Lollio through the lens of theatrical wit. On the Renaissance stage, wit emerges from the verbal and physical interactions of multiple agents, including (but not limited to) those occurring between and among playwrights, actors, and audiences. Much like the creation of character, wit is born out of a context so informed by collaborative exchange that it frustrates any attempt to locate an individual agent from whom the wit originates. The nexus of these exchanges, however, remains the actor’s body. I focus on the comic development of wit among Alibius, the doctor in 84 charge of a madhouse full of fools and lunatics, Lollio, his manservant and the clown of the play, and Antonio, a young gentleman disguised as a fool. The wit in these scenes depends on Lollio’s self-conscious display of himself as a Rowleyian clown, a fool among fools. As a result of the audience’s association of a particular actor with the character of the clown—here, William Rowley’s association with Lollio—my analysis of the collaborative formation of this particular character grounds itself in both the world of the play and the world in which it was performed. Lollio is particularly important because those actors, like William Rowley, who became famous playing clowns on stage used their bodies to produce wit in a way that offers another striking illustration of collaborative bodies and character on stage.64 C. S. Lewis, in his Studies in Words, provides a useful intellectual starting point for considering theatrical wit. Tracing its semantic development, Lewis breaks wit into four categories, or “senses”—old, lofty, dangerous, and sensory. According to Lewis, wit in its “old sense” comes from the Anglo-Saxon gewit, meaning mind, reason, good sense or intelligence (97, 86). A sane and rational being thus has his wits about him while a lunatic has lost his. Yet, Lewis says, while all rational beings can be said to have wit, not all wits look alike. A person’s wit “is something which can distinguish him, which is characteristic of him; his mental make-up.” (88). Therefore, as Lewis goes on to say, it is not surprising to find wit traditionally accepted as a translation of ingenium, meaning something like “essence,” “nature,” or “character.” This translation of ingenium underscores the connections between wit and individuality, that which helps distinguish one rational being from another. Growing out of this ingenium sense, wit comes to mean “poet” or “genius.” Lewis calls this its “lofty” sense (96). 85 Lewis also identifies a less lofty meaning of wit—its “dangerous sense” (97)—— which writers and critics, including Lewis himself, to some extent, have for centuries disparaged. This sense refers to “that sort of mental agility or gymnastic which uses language as the principal equipment of its gymnasium. ‘Language’ must here be taken in a large sense . . . ” (97). Qualifying language according to its “large sense,” Lewis suggests that “dangerous” wit creates its effects by employing ordinary—which is to say, base, bawdy, or otherwise “low”—language. Lewis somewhat hesitantly admits that “pun, half pun, assonance, epigram (in its modern sense) and distorted proverb or quotation are all witty” (97). The “dangerous” sense of wit thus connects mental ability with verbal agility and celerity. The famous legerity of clowns and fools65 in Renaissance drama offers a notable example of this type of wit. Lastly, Lewis mentions in passing the use of wit in the plural to refer to “the five inward and five outward wits or senses” (88). The five inward wits were originally “memory, estimation, fancy, imagination, and common wit (or common sense)” (139).66 The five outward wits, on the other hand, coincided with basic sensory frmctions: hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste (139). Though not a focus of Lewis’s investigation, the description of inward and outward senses as ‘yvits” has particular relevance to Renaissance actors since it suggests that theatrical wit entails both the mind and body, both intellect and action. Although examples of the different senses of wit Lewis discusses abound in Renaissance drama, my main interest here falls on the interdependence of vvit’s “dangerous sense,” involving verbal jousting and wordplay, and its more specific physiological association with the five sensory frmctions. The “old” and ingenium senses 86 link wit specifically with an individual mind; it is an intellectual capacity produced and represented by a singular intelligence often in isolation.67 The “dangerous” and “sensory” meanings of wit, on the other hand, with their combination of intellect and physicality, require a reconsideration of wit’s relationship to an individual mind. Wit in its “dangerous sense” finds expression through rapid-fire repartee and acrobatic wordplay. In the theater, this “dangerous” wit cannot be separated from the involvement of bodies, which is exactly why we find wordplay of “dangerous” wit so often coupled with physical, bodily comedy on stage. The bodies of actors, that is, (and likewise the bodies of the people in the audience) know and experience the world through their sensory “wits.” For a Renaissance actor, wit cannot be separated from the physical presence and movements of his own body interacting with other bodies within the performance space. Thus wit on stage is always mediated by bodies. In this important way, theatrical wit is fundamentally collaborative for the very reason that the performance of wit always happens before and with an audience. Perceiving the specific interactions among the various agents who together produce theatrical wit begins with considering the relationship between doctrines of physiology and acting in the Renaissance. Joseph Roach has explored this relationship in The Player ’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. In his insightful historical analysis, Roach traces the influence of pneumatism—the ancient association of physical humours and spirits with psychic phenomena—on theories of physiology, rhetoric, and acting. Stated briefly, seventeenth-century theorists believed that the interactions of humours and spirits in the body, in combination with physical gestures and bodily manipulations, actually produced emotions, or “passions.” This interactive process 87 influenced all features of human physiology.68 The discipline of acting was, therefore, based on an attempt to engender emotions physically by way of the controlled manipulation of the humours and spirits coursing through the actor’s body. According to Robert Burton, a humour was “a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it” (128). The body was believed to contain four humours—-blood, phlegrrr, choler, and bile—each corresponding to characteristic emotions—amatory passion, fear, anger, and grief, respectively (Roach 39). Seventeenth-century century medical doctrine, which preceded the general acceptance of the circulation of the blood, understood the body as something akin to “a large bag containing juice-filled sponges of various shapes and sizes [the internal organs].” The humours and spirits percolated within this bag, seeping and sloshing throughout the body in response to the attractions and repulsions of the organs (Roach 39). Equilibrium of the humours defined mental and physical health; likewise, an imbalance of the humours resulted in dramatic and dangerous mental and physical sickness (Roach 39). Like the humours, the spirits were believed to influence emotions profoundly. According to Burton, “a spirit is a most subtle vapour, which is expressed from the blood, and the instrument of the soul, to perform all his actions”(129). Burton separates the spirits into three categories, each with a specific bodily function: natural spirits, arising in the liver, nourished the body; vital spirits, originating in the heart, cleansed and purified the body; and animal spirits, passing through the brain and nerves, controlled motion and movement. Taken together, the spirits directly influenced and even controlled the physical movements of the body: “They reside in the ventricles of the brain and from there communicate down the core of the spinal cord, permeating the porous, twig-like 88 extensions of the nerves, penetrating the body, working its muscles, literally animating it, commanding it to life and motion” (Roach 40). Coursing through the body, moreover, the spirits agitated the humours, which, in turn disturbed the body’s equilibrium and emotional balance. The interaction of spirits and humours within an individual body thus produced both emotional and physiological effects. The manipulation of his spirits and humours was, therefore, the primary technique in the actor’s discipline. Watching an actor perform meant witnessing him create physical and emotional transformations through the manipulation of various parts of his body, which, in turn, conducted the spirits to the appropriate muscles and organs (Roach 43). Recall, for instance, Hamlet’s reaction to the 1” Player’s performance. From the perspective of seventeenth-century physiology, the 1St Player, by striking certain poses and making certain gestures, sets in motion the complex interaction of humours and spirits within his body that actually alters him physically and emotionally. This belief forms the scientific basis for the association of actors with the mythical figure Proteus (Roach 27). The example of Hamlet and the 1St Player also illustrates the related Renaissance belief that an actor, in addition to controlling and shaping his own body and emotions, could even alter the physical space around him, including the bodies of other actors and members of the audience. “It was widely believed,” Roach informs us, “that the spirits, agitated by the passions of the [actor], generate [d] a wave of physical force, rolling through the aether, powerful enough to influence the spirits of others at a distance” (45). Hamlet’s reaction to the 1”t Player exemplifies this phenomenon. The 1St Player articulates his body, producing a “dream of passion” that, crossing the distance between him and his audience, generates in Hamlet a powerful emotional response. In 89 this sense, Hamlet’s “0 what a rogue and peasant slave am I” soliloquy, which begins with his reflection on the lst Player’s performance, was engendered by that very performance. No wonder, then, that the idea for catching Claudius in a theatrical trap comes to Hamlet’s mind at this point: I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have, by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim’d their malefactions. (2.2.584-588) After all, Hamlet himself had, moments before, been “struck so to the soul” by the lst Player’s performance. The “cunning of the scene” is nothing less than the actor’s ability to bridge the gap between his own body and the bodies of those who watch him perform. In sum, the actor’s discipline functions according to three transformative potencies. First, “his expressions could transform his physical identity, inwardly and outwardly” (Roach 27). Second, “his motions could transform the air through which he moved, animating it in waves of force rippling outward fiom a center in his soul” (27). And third, “his passions, irradiating the bodies of spectators through their eyes and cars, could literally transfer the contents of his heart to theirs, altering their moral natures” (27). Physiologically, the actor’s body represents a microcosm of the profoundly interactive relationships of theatrical experience. Within the actor’s body, disciplined physical movements animate the humours and spirits to produce passions; as a result, the actor actually shapes the humours and spirits of his audience, including those of his fellow actors on stage with him, thus calling forth similar emotions in them. All these 90 interactions underscore the complicated pressures working on and through the actor’s body—-his own physical actions, the emotions he seeks to embody, and the presence of other bodies around him. The performance of wit on the Renaissance stage must be seen within the conglomerate interplay of this physiological system of humours and spirits. Much like the spirits that flow, via the nerves, from the brain to all parts of the corporal body, wit ties the brain to the senses, the intellect to the body. In The Anatomy of Melancholy, for example, Burton describes wit as a cord between the body’s senses and its capacity to make judgments. According to Burton, the sensible faculty of the human body, through which it “lives, hath sense, appetite, judgment, breath, and motion” (137), may be divided into two parts: the apprehending faculty and the moving faculty. The apprehending faculty itself may be further divided into inward and outward faculties; and it is precisely the space between these inward and outward faculties that wit bridges. The outward faculty is comprised of the five senses-—or, as Lewis calls them, the five wits—touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing. To these five wits Burton adds titillation and speech (137). The inward faculty, on the other hand, consists of three capacities, one of which is common sense, or common wit. As Burton describes it, the sensory wits gather information that the common wit, in turn, processes: “The common [wit] is the judge or moderator of the rest, by whom we discern all differences of objects; for by mine eye I do not know that I see, or by mine car that I hear, but by my common [wit], who judgeth of sounds and colours: they are but the organs to bring the species to be censured; so that all their objects are his, and all their offices are his” (139). The body, responding to this 91 interaction of the senses and the common wit, moves accordingly—both inwardly in the form of the humours and spirits and outwardly in the form of physical action. These physiological assumptions help us better understand the specific nature of collaboration in Renaissance drama precisely because attempts such as Burton’s to identify and categorize the various parts of the human form that participate in the physical and emotional movement of the body reveal the remarkably complicated relationships—physical and emotional—constantly at work among bodies in theatrical performances. So far in this chapter, I have been exploring these relationships with respect to their notable influence on dramatic character. Hamlet’s acute reaction to the lSt Player’s performance offers a potent demonstration of the collaborative relationship between actor and audience; and the horrifying coupling of Beatrice Joanna and De Flores illustrates the potentially tragic results of a collaborative context that destabilizes the sovereignty of character itself. I now want to extend my analysis of character by turning to some specific comic scenes in Middleton-Rowley’s The Changeling. Like many of the comic moments in the Middleton-Rowley corpus, these scenes prove to be particularly useful with respect to issues of actors and acting because of Rowley’s unique influence as an actor-playwright. More famous in his lifetime as an actor for his roles as a jigging clown than as a playwright, Rowley offers a compelling example of the clown’s remarkable “ability to represent all players” (Skura 57). As the embodiment of wit on stage, the clown epitomizes the collaborative process through which character emerges. In what follows, I will focus on the way the comic scenes featming Lollio, an overtly Rowleyian clown, foreground the necessity of collaborative agents in the production of the clown’s modus operandi, theatrical wit. Take, for example, the second scene in The Changeling. The action takes place in a madhouse run by Alibius with the help of his manservant, Lollio. Alibius’s madhouse holds both fools (“the one has not wit enough to be knaves”) and madmen/lunatics (“and the other not knavery enough to be fools”) (45-46).‘59 Alibius, fearing that his young wife, Isabella, will succumb to the temptations of the gallants who daily visit the madhouse, instructs Lollio to spy on her. Lollio, whose behavior quickly identifies him as a clown (with an eye to cuckold Alibius himself), happily agrees: ALIBIUS. Lollio, I must trust thee with a secret, But thou must keep it. LOLLIO. I was ever close to a secret, sir. (1.2.1-3) This exchange, which C. S. Lewis might call an example of wit in its “dangerous sense,” sets the comic mood for the action that follows. Lollio’s bawdy response to Alibius, a pun turning on his desire to become intimately “close” with Isabella’s “secret” parts (3), sets off a rapid series of punning innuendoes and ribald quips, all of which Alibius obtusely fails to understand: ALIBIUS. But there is knowledge which is nearer, Deeper and sweeter, Lollio. LOLLIO. Well, sir, let us handle that between you and I. (12-14) Lollio twists each of Alibius’s instructions to keep Isabella isolated from temptation into a coarse expression of his own desire to cuckold Alibius—even if, as he intimates here, they must share her “between” them (14). The comic effectiveness of the scene, as exemplified in this repartee, might appear to lie exclusively in the celerity of Lollio’s quips and in the logical and linguistic acrobatics of his puns. We must not, however, 93 underestimate the importance of Alibius’s role in the wit here. Rather than emerging out of a comic vacuum, Lollio’s wordplay depends on the give-and-take relationship that develops between him and Alibius. Far fiom supplementary, Alibius is utterly necessary for Lollio’s wit to work; he feeds Lollio lines that Lollio, in turn, ties into bawdy verbal knots: ALIBIUS. I cannot always be At home. LOLLIO. I dare swear you cannot. ALIBIUS. I must look out. LOLLIO. I know’t, you must look out; ‘tis every man’s case. (33-3 7) The wordplay at the heart of the wit in this scene depends on the disconnect between Alibius’ (mis)understanding of Lollio’s play on what it means to “look out.” For Alibius, “looking out” simply means spending time away from home. Lollio, however, understands “home” to mean Isabella’s vagina; thus he understands Alibius to be saying that he cannot always be having sex with his wife: “I dare swear you cannot” admits Lollio, with a base intimation that he would be willing to attempt it himself, nonetheless. Further, as Joost Daalder notes in his commentary, Lollio takes “I must look out” to mean that Alibius needs to be away from “home”-—that is, he needs to have sexual encounters with more women than just his wife. “Tis every man’s case,” responds Lollio. These four words render the full force of Lollio’s wit: since it is every man’s case to be on the look out for sexual trysts, Lollio himself will happily take advantage of Alibius’s absence 94 by accepting Alibius’s request to “Supply [his] place” (40). Thus Lollio’s wordplay allows him, as it were, to have both his master’s blessing and his wife. In a certain sense, of course, the verbal jousting between Lollio and Alibius remains unmistakably one-sided; in this exchange, as in all of them, Alibius fails to grasp Lollio’s vulgar insinuations. In Alibius’s mind, Lollio’s responses do not sparkle with wit; to him, they are dim. But, as Lollio and his audience know so well, it is Alibius himself whose mind moves slowly. He plods along, always two steps behind Lollio’s jokes. Importantly, though, Lollio’s wit here does not simply accentuate Alibius’ ineptitude: his wit requires it. Alibius, that is, ftmctions as much more than merely a passive target of Lollio’s witty jabs. Indeed, as the rapid-fire exchange above illustrates, their dialogue comes to resemble something akin to a farcical stichomythia, a comic version of Beatrice Joanna and De Flores’ metrical coupling in 2.2. The wit in this scene, the constitutive feature of the clown’s character, results from the collaborative interaction of Lollio and Alibius. Lollio’s wordplay and innuendo appear witty precisely because Alibius does not see them as such. More than simply a dupe, Alibius acts as Lollio’s partner in the production of wit—not simply its target. In addition to relying on collaborative verbal exchanges, the wit in this scene also depends on physical interactions between Lollio and Alibius, that is, on the actors’ ability to manipulate their bodies to effect character. Take, for example, Lollio’s response to Alibius’s musings about the difference in age between him (being an old man) and his young wife, Isabella: ALIBIUS. Yet why may not this concord and sympathize? Old trees and young plants often grow together, 95 Well enough agreeing. LOLLIO. Ay, sir, but the old trees raise themselves higher and broader than the young plants. (21-25) Those who have taught The Changeling to college undergraduates might recognize this moment as a source of confused stares and silences in the classroom; unfamiliar with the associations of being cuckolded and having horns put on one’s head, students often miss Lollio’s joke here. Even with such knowledge, however, simply reading the words separated from the physicality of the actor delivering the lines also misses an important aspect of the wit, for Lollio’s verbal play requires commensurate physical play. In order to make the joke work dramatically, that is, the actor playing Lollio surely either uses his hands or some stage prop to mime the action of putting horns on Alibius——rising high and broad—thereby providing the visual and physical partner to the verbal quip. Later, near the end of the scene, the interplay between the verbal and physical aspects of wit takes center stage bodily when Lollio presents an impromptu comedy lesson. Interrupting Alibius and Lollio’s antics, two of those very gallants whom Alibius fears, Pedro and Antonio, enter the madhouse. Both are disguised as a ploy to gain access to Isabella: Pedro poses as the caretaker of Antonio, the eponymous changeling of the play, who pretends to be the idiot “Tony.”70 Pedro asks to leave Tony with Alibius and Lollio, ostensibly in hopes that they might “raise him but to any height, / Any degree of wit” (1.2.106-7), but actually so that Antonio, having gotten inside the madhouse, might seduce Isabella. Alibius, true to forrrr, fails to see through Pedro and Antonio’s deception and accepts Antonio as his patient. Lollio, however, lets the audience know that he for one has not, so to speak, been fooled. When Pedro tells Alibius that he will be 96 well paid for his services since Tony, though an idiot, is also a wealthy gentleman, Lollio responds, “at first sight I knew him for a gentlemen—he looks no other yet” (115-16). Lollio, himself the self-proclaimed the fool of The Changeling, apparently knows a fool—that is, an actor playing a character who is playing the role of a fool—when he sees one. And Tony, he says, is not one “yet.” As if in response to this joke, Lollio proposes to give Tony a lesson in wit. He says to Pedro, “Either I’ll be as arrant a fool as he, or he shall be as wise as I,” to which Pedro responds, “Nay, I do like thy wit passing well” (136-138). And so Lollio proceeds to “test [Tony’s] wit a little” with a series of corny riddles that Tony answers to Lollio’s delight (150). “A parlous fool!” Lollio exclaims (164). Lollio’s final riddle stumps Tony, however: “Say how many fools are here,” he asks (178), and Tony answers, “Two, cousin: thou and I” (179). Tony answers incorrectly—the answer, as Lollio goes on to show, should be “three”—because he fails to understand two related points in Lollio’s comic tutorial. First, by failing to include Alibius as one of the fools present, Tony misses the fact that Lollio knows of Tony’s plan to seduce Isabella—after all, both Lollio and Tony would like to cuckold Alibius, thereby making him a fool. Second, again by not including Alibius in his count of fools, Tony shows that he does not understand how necessary Alibius is in order for Tony and Lollio to be able to play the fool. He does not apprehend, that is, the collaborative and physical aspects of theatrical wit. Lollio, however, does understand Alibius’s importance, as the next lesson in his comic tutorial makes clear enough. Seeking to clarify the question that stumped Tony, Lollio asks, “How many fools and knaves are here? Afool before a knave, a fool behind a knave, between every two fools a knave: how many fools, how many knaves?” (181- 183). Tony still does not understand, saying, “I never learnt so far, cousin” (184), which prompts Lollio to provide the physical counterpart to his verbal wordplay. “Cousin,” he says to Tony, “stand there,” and then to Alibius, “Master, stand you next the fool” (186, 188). Although no stage direction exists to tell us so, Lollio’s instructions clearly indicate that on stage he physically blocks the scene, moving Tony, himself, and Alibius into proper position—Tony and Lollio standing either side of Alibius. With everyone in place, Lollio explains once more: LOLLIO. Here’s a fool behind a knave, that’s 1; and between us two fools there is a knave, that’s my master. ‘Tis but we three, that’s all. ANTONIO. We three, we three, cousin! (193-196) By providing a physical reference for his words, Lollio effectively draws back the curtain on his wit for Tony and the audience to see——though, once again, this patently visible manifestation does not enlighten Alibius. Indeed, more than simply a localized bit of physical comedy, Lollio’s blocking and explication underscores the self-conscious quality of wit in The Changeling. With tongue firmly in cheek, Lollio declares that he and Tony are partners in at least two ways. First, both Lollio and Tony play their respective parts as fools: Lollio enacts the fool—that is, the stock clown character of the play—and Tony takes on the role of a fool, or idiot, within Alibius’ madhouse for his own licentious purposes. Second, Lollio’s reference to fools and knaves acknowledges his and Antonio’s mutual aim to become master of Alibius by seducing Isabella and cuckolding Alibius: “between every two fools a knave.” Both Lollio and Antonio, that is, h0pe to make Alibius their knave by sleeping with his wife. Just as when Lollio joined 98 verbal wordplay and physical antics when he mirned putting horns on Alibius’s head, here Lollio literally dramatizes the interaction between words and actions in the production of wit. Moreover, the interactions among Lollio, Tony, and Alibius emphasize the gradations of self-consciousness that color the comic moments in the play. Lollio’s jokes take form and shape as he physically clowns around with Alibius and Tony and as he self-consciously calls attention to his role as a clown. Much like a magician revealing the mechanisms of his own magic tricks, Lollio lays bare the devices of his witty foolishness by proclaiming that he is, after all, the fool of The Changeling. He literally bodies forth the character of the clown. In addition to self-consciously uncovering the relationship between verbal and physical wit among the actors on stage, this scene also reveals a similar relationship that exists between Lollio and his audience. Indeed, as Robert Weimann has argued, the relationship between clown and audience constitutes a fundamental—and collaborative— aspect of the production of wit on the Renaissance stage. “The proximity of actor and audience was not only a physical condition,” he writes, “it was at once the foundation and the expression of a specific artistic endeavor” (Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition 213). The clown performed a unique role in this endeavor because he, more than any other, moved fluidly through the boundaries separating and linking actor, playwright, audience, and character. Clowns, for example, “performed not so much for an audience as with a community of spectators” (Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition 213). The character of the clown is born of the collaboration among the actor who plays the part of the clown, other actors with whom he spars, and his audience—all participating in the production of his wit. The comedy that unfolds in 1.2 of The 99 Changeling exemplifies precisely this collaborative phenomenon. The wit in the first series of exchanges between Lollio and Alibius gains comic force because Alibius does not understand the underlying meaning of Lollio’s words while the audience does. The more Alibius misses the joke, the more Lollio intensifies his vulgar puns. Doing so, Lollio both leads and is lead by the audience’s response in the form of laughter and applause. As the gap between Lollio’s jokes and Alibius’s understanding of them grows, the self-conscious collusion between Lollio and the audience intensifies. The audience responds delightedly to Lollio’s wit not simply because he proves Alibius to be a fool but because, together, Lollio and Alibius play the fool so well. Moreover, since Lollio’s wit requires that someone understands the hidden meaning of his jabs (since Alibius surely does not), we might rightly follow Weimann and say that Lollio performs with the audience as much as with Alibius and Tony. Together, the actors and the audience create Lollio’s character. Lollio’s pointed self-consciousness, that is, draws the audience into a complicity of wit that goes far beyond merely inviting them to share in a joke at Alibius’s expense. When Tony arrives on the scene, for instance, Lollio engages in what Weimann describes as a common part of the clown’s comic repertoire: he speaks “directly to the audience . . . to acknowledge basic agreement with its tastes and ideas” (Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition 214). Speaking at once to Tony and the audience, Lollio exclaims, “Well, I hope to get credit by thee; I like thee the best of all the scholars that ever I brought up, and thou shalt prove a wise man, or I’ll prove a fool myself” (222-225). Lollio plays self-consciously here with his own porous theatrical personae, an example of what Weimann would call “disfigurement”:7' as Alibius’s servant in the madhouse, Lollio’s 100 job is to care for the fools; but as the unmistakable stock clown figure in The Changeling, his job is to “prove” himself a fool. He says, in effect, that he will “get credit” by Tony in much. the same way he does by Alibius, for both enable him to prove himself a fool, to carry out his job as an actor playing the fool. Again, by speaking at once to Tony and to the audience, Lollio acknowledges the degree to which his wit depends on a self- conscious collaboration; for the very “credit” he hopes to gain with Tony as his partner is the same “credit” that most likely brought the audience to the theater in the first place. In other words, Lollio speaks of a credit that will belong not only to him as a character in a play but also to the actor who displays his own skill by performing the part of Lollio. After all, it is very likely that William Rowley himself originally played the part of Lollio. Indeed, Rowley became one of the most popular comedians of his day by playing roles characterized by the same verbal and physical antics that make Lollio so compellingly funny. In my third chapter, I will address at greater length the important ways Rowley’s career as an actor shaped his collaborations with Middleton. For now it must suffice to say that if Rowley did, indeed, take the part of Lollio (as is highly likely), then Lollio’s remark about Tony being “the best of all scholars that ever I brought up” takes on an even greater self-conscious significance; for Rowley not only built his own fame by “proving himself a fool”—that is, by playing the part of the clown—he very often did so with the help of comic partners. In the Middleton-Rowley corpus, for example, the Rowleyian clown almost always has a sidekick who proves invaluable to the comedy.72 Such is the case here in The Changeling.73 And given that The Changeling was best known for its comic material in the seventeenth century, 74 it is entirely likely 101 that the original audience came to The Changeling for the exact purpose of seeing Rowley “prove [himself] a fool” (225) with the help of his “scholar” (223). The connections between the collaborative aspects of theatrical wit and the Rowleyian clown, Lollio, become more clear when seen in light of a tradition of popular clowns that clearly influenced Rowley’s comic persona. From Richard Tarlton and Robert Wilson—“the first great names of 15805 . . . whose fame far exceeded that of their contemporary straight actors in the Queen’s Men” (Gurr, Shakespearean Stage 86)——to Will Kemp—“the most celebrated jig-maker of his age” (Wiles 56)—clowns on the Renaissance stage combined physical and verbal wit to the participatory excitement of audiences. In his Palladis Tamia: Wit ’s Treasury (1598), for example, Francis Meres praised Tarlton for his “extemporall verse” (Chambers 349), and in 1615 Edmond Howes applauded Wilson, “whose wit was ‘quick delicate refined extemporall’” (Gurr, Shakespearean Stage 86). Such “extemporall wit” never existed in a vacuum. Indeed, Tarlton, who set the stage for all the popular clowns to follow, made the interaction between clown and audience an essential part of his wit. One anecdote, for example, tells of a performance at the Bull in Bishopsgate Street when a rowdy playgoer pelted Tarlton first with a pippin and then an apple. In each case, Tarlton improvised biting verses: Gentlemen, this fellow, with this face of mapple, Instead of a pipin, hath thrown me an apple, But as for an apple, he hath cast a crab; So, instead of an honest woman, God hath sent him a drab. (Tarlton ’s Jests 205) 102 Just as Lollio induces his audience into a collusion of wit by inviting them to participate in his wordplay with Alibius, Tarlton also draws his audience into a kind of collaborative partnership, inverting the trajectory of the fruit-thrower’s intended joke thereby making him the target of Tarlton’s own swift and biting reply. As a result, “the people laughed heartily” (205). The substance and power of Tarlton’s wit lies in his ability to capitalize on verbal and physical exchanges—as here when he transforms the physical reality of being pelted by an apple into a barbed poetic reply so as to cultivate a collusive exchange with the audience. The laughter and applause fi'om the audience demonstrate and accentuate Tarlton’s wit, simultaneously proving—by approving—his verbal and physical wit while forming a collaborative bridge between actor and audience. The clowning tradition established by Tarlton and Kemp also contributes to the recurrence of festive self-mockery in Rowleyian clowns. For Tarlton, Kemp, and Rowley, this self-mockery often took the form of a jig—the “lusty and rapid dance, marked by leaping and whirling” that served as the afterpiece of most public performances (Baskervill 357). In fact, Robert Weimann has described the jig as an exemplary feature of the clown’s performance on account of the way the jig put on display the clown’s mingling of representational and presentational acting modes.75 Looking to the final moments of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Weimann takes as certain that Will Kemp originally played the role of Bottom and that he, therefore, took part in the dance that brings the play to a close. “Will it please you to see the epilogue,” Bottom-Kemp asks Theseus, “or to hear a Berrgomask dance between two of our company?” (5.1.352-353). For Weimann, this dance is representational “in so far as it seeks in fiction to represent what image, speech, and thought a given text conveys about 103 the world of the play and its meaning” (Performance 67). Kemp, that is, represents the fictional character named Bottom, whose enthusiasm overcomes his decorum to the delight of his (fictional and “real”) audience. At the same time, however, Weimann insists that Kemp’s representational enactment of Bottom cannot be separated fi'om Kemp’s presentation of his own acting skill. In Weimann’s words, “performance also and at the same time is ‘being’——that is, existence—in that performative practice (as distinct from its representational effect) constitutes an irreducible investment, on the part of actual (not fictional) agents, of their mental and visceral energy, their time, skill, competence, and, even, their socio-cultural status and interest” (Performance 67). Weimann’s theorizing about representation and presentation encourages us not to underestimate the overlapping of realities—physical, figurative, technical, ontological— of actor and character. Kemp’s body and being, that is, play a primary role—constantly on display—in the dramatic creation of the character called Bottom. The presentation of these varied features of Kemp’s skill and fame as a comedian, therefore, cannot be separated from his fictionalized representation of Bottom; and it is just this mingling of presentational and representational modes that forms the basis of Kemp’s connection to his audience. For when Kemp-Bottom asks Theseus if he would like to see a Bergomask, his question surely would have signaled for the audience the arrival of Kemp’s specialty: the jig. In the act of dancing—simultaneously the representation of Bottom and the presentation of Kemp—the audience would have seen “the Bergomask dissolve into Kemp’s jig” (Wiles 71). Kemp-Bottom’s jig is an example of his comic wit precisely because it self-consciously displays the interaction of representational and presentational modes that, in turn, bridges the gap between actor and audience as the audience’s 104 expectation and delight become a collaborative part of the comedy. The jig, that is, offered Kemp—who himself was “well prepared to join spectators in laughing at the presentation itself” (Author’s Pen 100)-——a perfect forum for ostentatiously making fun of himself as a strategy to build a collaborative relationship with his audience, all the while concurrently displaying his comic skill. Like Tarlton and Kemp, William Rowley also linked deliberate self- consciousness with the physical and verbal antics of the jig in the creation of his clown persona, as becomes abundantly clear in Lollio’s jigging comedy in the last half of The Changeling. Indeed, as Michael Mooney has argued, a full appreciation of the comic elements in the Middleton-Rowley corpus requires acknowledging Rowley’s place in the jigging clowning tradition. “As a playwright and stage clown,” Mooney writes, “Rowley drew sustenance from Dick Tarlton’s and Will Kemp’s stage specialty. From his first collaborative effort with John Day and George Wilkins, The Travels of Three English Brothers, in which he pays tribute to the master of this ‘extemporal merriment,’ it may be argued that Rowley’s clown originates in the jigging clown Kemp made famous” (“‘The Common Sight’ and Dramatic Form” 306). Above all, Rowley learned from his predecessors of the comic effectiveness of writing parts for clowns who made jigging a part of their comic display; for by performing these roles himself, Rowley satisfied the popular demand for jigs while also foregrounding and cultivating his own comic skill. Lollio in The Changeling is one such role. Given the comic potency of the jig in Rowley’s repertoire, it is worth briefly reviewing its history and place in Rowley’s career. In fact, the jig is much more than simply a comic technique; rather, like the clowns who made it famous on the stage, the jig exemplifies something akin to an 105 embodied nexus within the network of collaborative interactions at work during the production of wit and of the clown’s very character. Understanding something of its form and function thus sheds light on the collaborative structure of comic exchange on the Renaissance stage and, more specifically, on Lollio’s wit in The Changeling. According to Charles Read Baskervill in his The Elizabethan Jig and Related Song Drama, which remains the most thorough study of the jig and its place in the history of Renaissance theater, the term “jig” refers, in its Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical context, to “ a variety of dance or song-and-dance acts” that emerged from medieval pastimes and folk festivals (6). Despite the impressive range and scope of his approach, Baskervill acknowledges that our understanding of the stage jig today remains largely conjectural (77); very little evidence remains, for instance, “by way of actual description of the jig as a dance” (15). What seems beyond doubt, however, is that the jig’s popularity was built on the way it facilitated witty interactions between the clown who usually performed the dance and his audience. For instance, the prologue to John Fletcher’s The Fair Maid of the Inn, performed by the King’s Men after Rowley, late in his career, had become a member of that company, suggests the degree to which audiences enjoyed—and joined in—the jigz7‘5 A worthy story, howsoever writ For language, modest mirth, conceite or witt, Meetes often time with the sweet commendation of hang’t, tis scurvy, when for approbation A Jigg shall be clapt at, and every rime Prais’d and applauded by a clamorous chime. (5-10) 106 Audiences apparently responded within the jig itself—at “every rime”—and thus became active collaborators in its performance. We know that Tarlton capitalized on these exchanges as opportunities for displaying his famous “extemporal wit.” Take, for instance, this anecdote from T arlton ’s Jests: “I remember I was once at a play in the country where, as Tarlton’s use was, the play being done, every one so pleased to throw up his theame” (224). One of these “theames” thrown Tarlton’s way was a bit of verse commenting on his infamously flat nose, to which Tarlton responded with his own extemporaneous verses, claiming that the shape of his nose better enabled him to scent “an honest man from a knave” (225). Tarlton’s response illustrates once again the characteristics of theatrical wit—its quick wordplay combined with physical accents growing out of collaborative exchanges. Here, clown and audience do, indeed, seem (to use Weimann’s words) to perform with each other (Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition 213). The member of the audience who initiated the exchange by tossing out a “thearne” knowingly or unknowingly functioned much like Alibius does to Lollio: he provides the opportunity for wit by creating the contexts for verbal and physical play, thereby eliciting the delighted participation of the audience. Yet, the jig was more than simply a momentary vehicle for the clown’s creation of wit. For Tarlton, Wilson, Kemp, and Rowley, the jig became an essential part of their respective stage personae, of their lasting popularity and fame. It was, to use Weimann’s words, just as much a part of their presentational display as of their theatrical representation of characters. When Rowley jigged, that is, he was self-consciously foregrounding his own skill and identity as an actor. The jig thus provided a self- contained space in which the clown capitalized on the tension between representational 107 and presentational acting; and it was precisely this tension that formed the basis of the clown’s self-consciously witty interaction with his audience. The jig’s unique capacity to display the complementary interaction between representation and presentation, character and actor, animates much of the comedy in the second half of The Changeling, and I would like now to turn in closing to two comic moments in the play in which the jig facilitates comic collaboration. In 3.3, while De Flores and Beatrice Joanna pursue their tragic union, the inhabitants of Alibius’s madhouse follow their own comic course. Near the end of a long scene in which Lollio, Tony, and Franciscus (another gallant pretending to be one of Alibius’s patients) all make seductive advances to Isabella, Alibius arrives and announces to Lollio that they have “employment” for their madmen and fools (3.4.253): Vermandero, commissioning Alibius for the entertainment at Beatrice Joanna’s nuptials,77 has requested that a mixture of his patients dash through the gathered wedding participants—“to make a fiightful pleasure” (262). Alibius, excited by this prospect, also sees a long-term theatrical opportunity afforded by the entertainment: Could we so act it To teach it in a wild, distracted measure, Though out of form and figure, breaking time’s head, It were no matter (‘twould be healed again In one age or other, if not in this): This, this Lollio, there’s a good reward begun, And will beget a bounty, be it known. (263-269) 108 Alibius says that, if only he and Lollio could teach their madmen and fools to perform a wild dance at the ceremony rather than simply to run through it, Verrnandero would surely forgive them for providing something more that what he had requested; moreover, they might procure other profitable commissions for similar performances in the future. Alibius, in other words, suggests turning his madhouse patients into professional theatrical performers. Of course, this bit of self-consciousness (unrecognized as such by Alibius) engages both the audience’s expectation of a future theatrical delight as well as their past experiences in this very play. Like the future attendants of the wedding, the audience of The Changeling can expect to share in the entertainment of the lunatic wedding festivities; unlike the wedding guests, however, the audience of The Changeling has already been prepared for the transformation of inmates to actors by having witnessed Lollio’s tutoring of Tony in the ways of playing the fool. Alibius comically calls those earlier moments to mind when he says that the madhouse patients’ dance would surely prove pleasurable to its audience even if it were “out of form and figure, breaking time’s head” (265). Speaking of its crazy form and tempo, Alibius uses the language of cuckoldry to describe the dance—it will “break [ . . .] time’s head” (with the cuckold’s homs)—thereby figuratively reminding his own audience that they have, in fact, already been witness to a kind of wild cuckoldry dance in Lollio’s, Tony’s, and Fransicus’s attempts to put their own horns on Alibius by seducing Isabella. Here again, then, Alibius effectively demonstrates his important role in Lollio’s theatrical wit by un- wittingly dishing up the context for Lollio’s clowning to the delight of the audience. 109 Alibius’s announcement of their future employment functions both as an ironic reminder for the audience of The Changeling of witty pleasures already experienced and, as Lollio’s response makes clear, of even greater delights to come: This is easy, sir, I’ll warrant you. You have about you fools and madmen that can dance very well; and ‘tis no wonder: your best dancers are not the wisest men—the reason is, with often jumping they jolt their brains down into their feet, that their wits lie more in their heels than in their heads. (270-275) Much like Kemp’s forecasting of his jig at the end of A Midsummer Night ’s Dream, Lollio self-consciously refers here to what this play’s audience surely knows: that the best dancers (of jigs) are, like Lollio himself (and like William Rowley), fools. In an overtly self-referential comment, Lollio exposes his unique representational and presentational status—he is both Lollio, a clown character, and an actor playing Lollio known precisely for being one of “the best dancers” on the stage. By insisting that “the best dancers are not the wisest men,” Lollio explains an important aspect of what Michael Goldman would call his “turique ontological status” (Acting and Action 10): Lollio’s own “wits”—meaning at once his senses, rational faculties, and comic skill—“lie more in [his] heels than [head]” because, as a Rowleyian clown, his talents are both intellectual (manifested in his vibrant wordplay) and physical (displayed in the leaps and bounds of his jigging). The jig, Lollio seems to say, not only makes clowns who they are—fme and foolish dancers—it also makes him precisely who he is——both fictional and real, both a character named Lollio and an actor (most likely named William Rowley). As a result of 110 this self-conscious display, Lollio serves up an advertisement and justification for the dancing that his audience soon will witness. If the physical wit of the dancing he promises (“their wits lie more in their heels than in their heads”) matches the verbal wit of his advertisement for it here, then the audience truly has much to look forward to. And, indeed, the audience’s expectations prove well founded. In 4.3, Lollio and his madhouse partners present a feast of dancing, including an exclusive rehearsal performance of Alibius’s promised nuptial dance of fools and lunatics. Responding to Alibius’s desire to see the band of patients “once more rehearse before they go,” Lollio assures his master, “I’ll instruct them, and then they shall rehearse the whole measure” (4.3.64, 67-68). In what follows, Lollio himself rehearses his earlier tutorial of wit by once again offering Tony a lesson on playing the fool. In 1.2, Lollio introduced Tony to the important relationship between verbal and physical wit. Now, though, Tony has advanced to a more sophisticated lesson: the jig. As Tony enters, Lollio signals the arrival of the jig, saying, “Come, Tony, the footrnanship I taught you” (85). Tony responds, “I had rather ride, cousin,” saying, in effect, that he would prefer to “ride” Isabella than perform the jig Lollio has taught him (86). As before, Tony apparently needs a more interactive instruction, which Lollio gladly provides: LOLLIO. Ay, a whip take you! But I’ll keep you out. Vault in—look you, Tony: fa, la, la, la, la. ANTONIO. Fa, la, la, la, la. (87-89) As Michael Mooney has made clear, this musical shorthand—“fa, la, la, la, la”—echoes Will Kemp’s famous jig, “Singing Simpkin,” in which the clown Sirnpkin seeks to seduce an old man’s wife (“The Common Sight” 308).78 In one published version of 111 “Singing Simpkin,” which almost certainly “furnished one of Kemp’s popular roles” (Baskervill 23 8), Kemp clearly signals the attendant jigging: WIFE. Blind Cupid hath made my heart for to bleed, Fa la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. SIMPKIN. But I know a man can help you at need, With a fa la, la, la, la, fa, la, la, la, la, la. (qtd. in Baskervill 444). What is important here is not simply that Middleton-Rowley have adopted their basic cuckolding plot in The Changeling of a clown seducing an old man’s wife from “Singing Simpkin”—which it appears they did—nor that their musical shorthand signals that Lollio and Tony perform a jig at this moment—which it clearly does. More than this, by borrowing Kemp’s exact phrasing to announce the jig, Middleton-Rowley rather ostentatiously call attention to Lollio’s (and, by extension, Rowley’s) indebtedness to Sirnpkin. Doing so functions as something like a badge of honor—it signals Lollio’s place in an esteemed family of jigging clowns. Moreover, by self-consciously announcing his role as a jigging clown, Lollio likewise calls attention to the jig itself and the way the jig illustrates the collaborative quality of Lollio’s theatrical wit. In this scene, for example, Lollio not only tutors his clownish understudy Tony in the fine art of jigging but the two of them actually perform the jig in concert. Physically enacted on stage, this jigging lesson operates both as a comment on the jig’s important place in the clown’s repertoire and as an actual performance of the collaborative quality of the jig itself. Middleton-Rowley’s self-conscious dramatization of the jig achieves its most spectacular expression at the end of 4.3, when Alibius and the audience of The 112 Changeling receive Lollio’s promised rehearsal of the dance by the entire cast of madhouse performers. After Lollio and Tony complete their jigging lesson, Alibius returns and calls for the fools and lunatics to come out and dance: “Away, then, and guide them in, Lollio; / Entreat your mistress to see this sight” (209-210). Apparently, Alibius’s excitement for the show is so great as to overcome his earlier anxiety about keeping Isabella locked away. This dance, he seems to say, demands as big an audience as can be found. And so the fools and lunatics dance. Interestingly, for us reading the play today in our scholarly editions without the benefit of the physical presence of actors and performance, the climactic dance comes as something of an anti-climax. What Middleton-Rowley’s original audience would have witnessed was the “wild, distracted measure” (3.4.264) of many bodies dancing on stage at once; they would have watched Lollio’s and Tony’s jigging, itself an embodiment of Lollio’s collaborative wit, magnified by the antic inclusion of many dancers. What we see today pales in comparison: “The MADMEN and F OOLS dance” (stage direction between 214 & 215). But there is a lesson in this. If the jig is indeed a collaborative dance, one that 57 engages its audience and, in fact, requires its participation, and if the jig does indeed exemplify the collaborative nature of Lollio’s’ wit—then it does all this with a particular audience at a particular time. The Changeling itself emphasizes this somewhat exclusive aspect of the jig by allowing its own audience to watch the fools and lunatics rehearse their dance (clearly an outrageous version of Lollio’s jig) while refusing to allow the audience at Beatrice Joanna’s nuptial celebration to do the same; for, in the event, the dance is never performed again in The Changeling. It is almost as if Middleton-Rowley, once again, combine the performance of Lollio’s wit—here magnified and extended by 113 the inclusion of the madhouse performers in the dance—with a self-conscious commentary on its form and function. Inspired, instructed, and ultimately performed jointly with Lollio, this dance acts as Lollio’s final self-conscious display of wit. He does not appear again in the play. Lollio has trained Tony and his audience in the wordplay and footwork of theatrical wit, all the while actually performing that wit as a self- conscious Rowleyian clown. By blending Foucault’s theory of the docile body and performance-centered ideas of acting, we can develop a model for understanding the work of the actor that both recognizes the socio-cultural institutions that act on him and acknowledges his own agency on stage. The synthesis of these two methodologies enables us to re-conceive as collaborative the process through which character emerges in the theater. As Hamlet and The Changeling reveal, theatrical characters are produced not by a single actor effacing himself behind a dramatic mask but by the complex collaboration of actors, audiences, playtexts, and playwrights. 114 CHAPTER 3 The Self-Conscious Collaboration of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s Companies in The Spanish Gypsy Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies have generally been considered rivals, given the economic and professional pressures they faced.79 In addition to royal favor and support, they competed for popular actors, repertories, audiences, and playhouses. With afew notable exceptions, critics and theater historians have not seriously pursued the possibility of acting companies collaborating in the production and performances of plays“). But compelling evidence suggests that acting companies did, in fact, work together and even perform plays jointly. Title pages advertising multiple- company performances and public records detailing acting companies’ sharing theaters and fmancier/managers, like Philip Henslowe and Christopher Beeston, attest to close professional relationships between companies, including company collaboration. Moreover, plays such as Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Spanish Gypsy“ even appear to dramatize and thematize self-consciously the very act of company collaboration, thereby potentially disclosing significant aspects of their joint procedures. In this chapter, I reevaluate some of the historical evidence concerning the compelling likelihood of a collaboration between Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s companies. To this end, I also introduce for serious historical consideration highly self- referential scenes from The Spanish Gypsy that dramatize practices of theatrical performance, including traveling and collaboration. I argue that, in its structural and thematic design, The Spanish Gypsy displays the very fact of its own collaborative origin and performance. Achieving a clear vision of this collaboration, however, which 115 encompasses the social, economic, and artistic pressures that brought it about, requires piecing together a map of seemingly contradictory documents. As a guiding compass in this challenging terrain, I pay close attention to William Rowley, whose career as an actor-playwright directly links the two companies, especially insofar as it intersects with the parallel career of Christopher Beeston, the owner of the Phoenix theater in which The Spanish Gypsy was originally performed. I am particularly interested in Rowley’s dual role as a playwright and an actor in The Spanish Gypsy because its plot appears to mirror some important facts of Rowley’s career in such a way that allows us to draw speculative conclusions about the actual historical collaboration of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s. My purpose here is twofold: to present a case for joint performances by some members of Prince Charles’s82 and Lady Elizabeth’s and, in turn, to call attention to an important theatrical practice—the collaboration of acting companies—too often overlooked by critics and theater historians. 1. Between 1615 and 1623, William Rowley and Thomas Middleton collaborated on five plays: A Fair Quarrel (1615-1617); The OldLaw (1618-1619); The World TostAt Tennis (1620); The Changeling (1622); and The Spanish Gypsy (1623). Although faced with an incomplete and confused performance history of these plays, critics now generally agree, based on title-pages and other evidence, that A Fair Quarrel, The Old Law, and The World TostAt Tennis were performed by Prince Charles’s company, of which Rowley was a leading member, while The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy were performed by Lady Elizabeth’s company. Still, confusion and disagreement remain. 116 For even as historical evidence clearly shows that Middleton-Rowley wrote plays to be performed by both Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s companies, that relative certainty belies a vexing question: why would Rowley, the main playwright and most famous actor of Prince Charles’scompany, write and (almost certainly) perform in plays for Lady Elizabeth’s company? Another play fi'om this period, Rowley’s All ’s Lost by Lust (1619-1620), further complicates the historical picture. The title-page of the 1633 quarto edition of the play states it was “Divers times Acted by the Lady Elizabeths Servants” (Stork 73), but a reference to the play on scrap paper found in the Revels Office dating around 1619 or 1620 suggests that Rowley originally wrote the play for Prince Charles’s. At that time, Prince Charles’s was in residence at Christopher Beeston’s Phoenix theater; Lady Elizabeth’s had left London to tour the provinces, which makes it unlikely that Rowley wrote the play for them. Adding to the confusion, the dramatis personae of the quarto states definitively that Rowley himself performed the main comic role: “Jaques, a simple clownish Gentleman . . . personated by the Poet” (Stork 75). Again, his performance as Jaques strongly suggests that the play was written to be performed by Prince Charles’s. Still, as Bentley points out, All ’s Lost by Lust remained in Christopher Beeston’s repertoire when Prince Charles’s left the Phoenix and were replaced by Lady Elizabeth’s in 1622. It is very likely, therefore, that Lady Elizabeth’s did, in fact, perform the play at some time. The confusing performance history of All ’s Lost by Lust raises an important question: when Lady Elizabeth’s performed All ’s Lost by Lust, who took the role of Jaques? Rowley was "famous for his roles as a bawdy, jigging clown in the tradition of 117 Richard Tarlton and Will Kempe. As a playwright, he capitalized on this fame, creating parts for himself that foregrounded his comic skill and reputation. They were, in effect, his roles, for they self-referentially drew attention to other specific roles Rowley had played in the past and, more generally, to his well-known comic persona. The comic force of these characters, in fact, depended on his being the actor performing them. Would he knowingly consent to another actor performing these roles? Did he have a choice? This question—did Rowley act in plays that were performed by Lady Elizabeth’s, in which he had obviously written parts he intended to play himself, even while he was a member of Prince Charles’s?—also applies to The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy. For it follows that, given his reputation and the undeniably Rowleyian quality of the comic parts in The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy, Rowley would have performed those roles himself. But if Rowley did, indeed, perform the role of Lollio in The Changeling and of Sancho in The Spanish Gypsy, and if both plays were, as scholars agree, performed by Lady Elizabeth’s at the Phoenix, then Rowley would not only have written plays for a different company but acted in them as well. According to traditional thinking, doing so would be akin to Michael Jordan deciding to play occasionally for the Lakers. Critics have proposed several rationalizations for Rowley’s ostensible breach with his company, each having to do with some sort of merger or amalgamation between Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s. G. E. Bentley, in The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare ’s Time, summarizes the generally accepted View: “It is not entirely clear for which company Rowley originally wrote [All ’s Lost By Lust, The Changeling, and The 118 Spanish Gypsy], but since Lady Elizabeth’s company succeeded Prince Charles’s men at the Phoenix, since Christopher Beeston financed both companies in the early twenties, and since, for a short time at least, there seems to have been some sort of cooperation between them, it may have been that Rowley’s break from his acting company in these three compositions was only apparent and not real” (217 my emphasis). While hinting at a collaborative relationship between Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s, Bentley spotlights two important issues facing all London acting companies: the availability of playhouses; and the need of financial support for procuring plays, costumes, and other requirements of performance. Unlike the rare case of the King’s Men, who effectively became their own landlords at the Globe and the Blackfriars, Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s found themselves repeatedly in search of financial backing and a secured theater in which to perform. At the time of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s original patents (1609 and 1611 respectively, neither of which allocated the company a playhouse), the problem of finding a playhouse was particularly acute: the King’s Men had the Globe and Blackfriars, Prince Henry’s company had the Fortune, the Queen’s Men had the Red Bull, and the Blackfriar Boys occupied the Whitefriars (Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 398). In response to this shortage, Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s sought the aid of a host of theater owners and financiers, including Philip Henslowe, Jacob Meade, Edward Alleyn, Philip Rosseter and, most importantly for my purposes here, Christopher Beeston. Shared economic necessity forced Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s to seek similar solutions to their respective problems. It even forced them into the same theater. 119 As Bentley states, between 1616 and 1625, Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s took up residence in Beeston’s Phoenix and received from him various sorts of financial support. The specific effects of both companies’ dependence on Beeston remain in question, however. Did Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s merge, effectively becoming one company? Or did they work together collaboratively, in a relationship akin to playwrights collaborating on a playtext? Whatever the relationship between the two companies, Christopher Beeston and the Phoenix certainly played a leading role in it, which I explore in greater depth in sections III and IV of this chapter. In The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 83 Bentley describes the relationship between Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s as an “amalgamation” (i 198); he proposes that for some period of time Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s firnctioned as one company for their London operations. Following Bentley, Andrew Gurr has also argued that the two companies amalgamated. The companies, Gurr writes, “worked together for a while between 1614 and 1616, even merging into one group” (Shakespearean Playing Companies 394). Bentley and Gurr base their conclusions about this putative merger on the following set of historical facts. In March of 1615, when the Privy Council called members of each London company to appear before it, Rowley and John Newton were present as representatives of Prince Charles’s. Both men were founding members of the Duke of York’s company, which later became Prince Charles’s when Prince Henry died in 1612. No representatives were called from Lady Elizabeth’s. Bentley and Gurr therefore quite understandably assume that Rowley and Newton represented both companies. A year later, Alexander Foster—an original member of Lady Elizabeth’s who was never known to be a member of Prince Charles’s—acted as 120 payee for plays performed by Prince Charles’s at court. Again, Bentley and Gurr take this as evidence of a merger. Finally, according to Bentley, “the most insistent evidence for this amalgamation is the complete disappearance of the metropolitan Lady Elizabeth’s company and the continuance of the references to Prince Charles’s men” (i 198-199). Lady Elizabeth’s did disappear from London records in 1616, not to reappear until they took up residence at Christopher Beeston’s Phoenix in 1622 to perform, among other plays, The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy. This apparent disappearance, however, does not inevitably support the merger-hypothesis, for records show that Lady Elizabeth’s was touring the provinces during the time in question. Since Lady Elizabeth’s had left London to go on tour, it makes perfect sense that they would disappear from London records. True, evidence does show some mixing of personnel in 1616, when signatures of members of Lady Elizabeth’s appear with those of Rowley and other Prince Charles’s men on a letter to Edward Alleyn. Far fi'om uncommon, though, such shuffling of personnel more likely had to do with the personal debts owed to Beeston by the various members of both companies and his consequent power to control them rather than with any organized merger of the two companies. About one fact we can be sure: Lady Elizabeth’s left London to tour in 1616 and no record exists of their performing in London again until 1622 when they performed The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy at the Phoenix This return to London set the stage for the Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s joint performance of The Spanish Gypsy. To describe the relationship between Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s as an amalgamation, merger, or union ultimately fails to recognize important evidence suggesting that Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s continued the business of 121 performing plays as separate and distinct companies throughout the time in question. Bentley admits that “the matter is confused, as the companies seem to have led both a separate and a united existence” (JCSi 198). For example, in 1615 a royal patent was issued to Philip Rosseter and several other men authorizing the construction of a new playhouse in Blackfriars: “Nowe knowe yee that wee of our especiall grace certaine knowledge and meere mocion have given and graunted . . . lycense and authoritie vnto Phillipp Rosseter . . .to erect build and sett Vppe in and Vppon the said premisses before mencioned one convenient Playhouse for the said children of the Revelles . . .and for the Princes Players and for the ladie Elizabeths Players soe tollerated or lawfully lycensed to play exercise and practise them therein . . .” (JCS vi 79). Far from treating Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabe ’s “as one company” (Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 401), the royal patent clearly indicates that Rosseter’s new playhouse— known variously as Porter’s Hall, Rosseter’s Blackfiiars, or Puddle Wharf—was intended to house three distinct companies: Queen’s Revels, Prince Charles’s, and Lady Elizabeth’s. If, as Bentley and Gurr rightly point out, the lack of available playhouses encouraged Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s to form some sort of relationship, the construction of Porter’s Hall suggests a unique cooperation between them that protected their autonomy as discrete companies rather than compromise that autonomy with a merger that blended them. The hall was built for them to share, not to house an amalgamated company. Whether Rosseter ever succeeded in building Porter’s Hall is not beyond doubt. A large number of records exist detailing the Lord Mayor’s and Alderrnen’s strident opposition to the new playhouse, all of which refer to the projected playhouse under 122 construction (only one goes so far as to say the building is “almost if not fully finished” (JCS vi 84)); none speaks of any performances. But two extant title-pages assert that plays were, in fact, performed there: Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Scornfirl Lady, performed by the Queen’s Revels; and Nathan Field’s Amends for Ladies. The information from the title page of A mends for Ladies is particularly remarkable. More than merely offering further evidence against the merger-hypothesis, it potentially helps clarify the specific nature of the companies’ relationship: “As it was acted at the Blacke- Fryers, both by the Princes Seruants, and the Lady Elizabeths” (JCS vi 85). This information either refers to Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s performing the play independently at Porter’s Hall or to their collaborating to present the play there—two companies on one stage.84 Of these two possibilities the latter seems most likely, in part because of the irnprobability of two separate companies carrying out all the necessary work to put up the same play in the same playhouse. Moreover, a collaborative performance of Amends for Ladies by Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s becomes all the more probable when considered in light of the evidence of other collaborations between the two companies. I want to turn now to one such example, The Spanish Gypsy, whose self-conscious dramatization of collaborative strategies leads, I believe, to an inevitable conclusion: that Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s performed the play together on the same stage at the Phoenix in 1623. 11. Like the title page of Amends for Ladies and other historical documents, The Spanish Gypsy forcefully points towards a collaboration between the two companies. 123 Abounding in ribald music, dances, and lightning word-play—all hallmarks of Rowley’s fame that reach an unmatched extravagance here—The Spanish Gypsy presents a multiple plot that self-consciously dramatizes and, indeed, capitalizes on the joint performance of the play by Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s. 85 That is, underlying the theatrical extravagances of The Spanish Gypsy runs a deliberately self-conscious theme of collaboration between individuals and groups who join together to put on a play86 The complicated relationship among the various generic qualities of The Spanish Gypsy —comic, tragic, musical, farcical—has led to some confusion among critics.87 The first act of the play, for example, seemingly prepares us for what could be a domestic or revenge tragedy. The play opens as Roderigo, son of Fernando, the corregidor of Madrid, plOts to abduct and rape Clara,88 the daughter of a significant aristocrat, Don Pedro. Roderigo’s two fiiends, Louis and Diego, carry out roles as co-conspirators in the abduction (though Louis does so somewhat unwillingly) by diverting Clara’s mother and father as all three walk the road into Madrid. In the ensuing skirmish, Roderigo seizes Clara and carries her off. Too late, Louis discovers the identity of the father and mother, thus realizing that the woman Roderigo has abducted is none other than Clara, Louis’s beloved, whom he has already indicated to her parents his intention to marry. He and Diego then split up to search Madrid for Roderigo, apparently to stop him from going through with the rape, but they are unsuccessful in finding him because a servant at his father’s house maintains that Roderigo had not returned home. In fact, though, Roderigo has already taken Clara inside and raped her. Clara secretly vows to be avenged, though at this point neither she nor Roderigo knows the other’s identity. She exacts a promise from him to keep secret forever his act of rape and, moreover, to “live a new man” 124 (1.3.119). She then steals a crucifix from the room to identify Roderigo before he secrets her out of the house. Leaving her, he meets Louis on the streets of the city. Holding true to his promise to Clara, Roderigo lies about having raped her, claiming rather that her “chaste / and humbly glorious virtue” (1.5.34-35) shamed him so as to cool his desires for her. In turn, Louis informs Roderigo of his love for Clara. Roderigo then says that in order to allow Louis to pursue Clara successfully, and in honor of his and Louis’s friendship, he will voluntarily exile himself to Salamanca—presumably because he now fears that he carmot control himself around Clara. Louis is overcome by this gesture of fiiendship and never suspects that Roderigo has actually raped Clara. The dramatic action so far in the play seems to be preparing the audience for a tragic confrontation between friend and family. What will happen in subsequent acts? Will Clara confess to having been raped and thereby initiate a manhunt throughout Madrid? Her father is very close to Roderigo’s father, and the audience can certainly expect that Fernando would side with his friend against the rapist whom the audience knows to be his son. This in itself would constitute sufficient tension to energize a somber tone throughout the remainder of the play. Moreover, the audience also could anticipate that if the news of the rape emerged and Roderigo were identified as the culprit, then explosive drama could ensue between Louis and Roderigo, rupturing their friendship into violence. All these possibilities, given the action having just taken place, would be flesh in mind for the audience. Diego, however, returns to Louis and Roderigo at the end of the first act and announces that he followed by mistake another man, Don John, who was mumbling to himself about his love of Constanza, a member of a band of gypsies newly 125 arrived in Madrid. Significantly, Diego’s description of Don John, coupled with his ensuing conversation with Louis and Roderigo, draws attention to a remarkable thread of self-consciousness braided into the dramatic pattern of the first act—one that will, with the arrival of the gypsies on the stage in the next act, become the guiding principle for the mood and meaning of the entire play.89 Diego enters laughing uncontrollably and, when questioned about it by Louis and Roderigo, answers: “I’ll tell you: as we parted I perceived A walking thing before me, strangely tickled With rare conceited raptures.” (1.5.106-7) For Diego, the humor of Don John’s “conceited raptures” ostensibly grows out of seeing a once-sane man driven to a state of lunacy by love. In this case, Don John has been so smitten by his love for the gypsy Constanza that he actually imagines pursuing the match, even in the face of its social and racial stigmas:90 She is not noble, true; wise nature meant Affection should enoble her descent, For love and beauty keeps as rich a seat Of sweetness in the mean-bom as the great. I am resolved. (1.4.23-27) But the intensity of Diego’s reaction to these words, which he himself describes as a mad fit of laughter (1.5.95), suggests something far beyond a normal response to a comic scene. What, exactly, is so maddeningly frmny about Don John? After all, his lovesickness is a common trait of characters in romantic comedies of the time.91 The 126 answer lies in the apparent generic fissure opened up by Don John’s sudden entrance and behavior. Don John’s romantic musing, that is, strikes Diego as exceptionally a-musing because of its unexpectedness in light of the somber and serious events having just occurred. Don John’s appearance denotes a jolting generic shift. Diego says as much when he self-consciously describes Don John’s curious behavior: his “raptures” seem better suited for the generic “conceits” of a different play. It is almost as if Don John, acting the part of a lover in a romantic comedy, has stumbled onto the stage of an incipient tragedy. He is the right character in the wrong play. Without the self-conscious quality of Diego’s description of him, Don John’s behavior might indeed seem odd, if not generically anomalous; but with it, particularly as more and more instances of pointed self-consciousness reveal themselves, the latent sense of a split-personality in the play—domestic revenge tragedy or romantic farce—gives way to a growing sense of a formal and thematic design. Viewed with an eye for its self- conscious threads, for instance, the opening abduction scene—with its naked defense of rape based on starkly realistic arguments of class and gendergZ—develops newly perceived textures: Rod. [. . .] I must have her. Diego. How, how? Louis. Thou speakest impossibilities. Rod. Easy, easy, easy! [. . .] I’ll fly off with the young bird, that’s all; many of our Spanish gallants act these merry parts every night. (1.1.23-30) 127 These “merry parts” suggest an intricately woven pattern of self-reference binding together the dramatic world of the play (Madrid) and the actual world of the performance of The Spanish Gypsy (The Phoenix in Drury Lane). Most obviously, Roderigo refers to the riotous “Spanish gallants” who are becoming such a concern to Madrid citizens. Pedro bemoans this scourge immediately after Clara’s abduction, saying, “This had not wont to be / Our Spanish fashion; but now our gallants, / Our gentry, our young dons, heated with wine,—/ [. . .] Commit these outrages” (1 154-5 8). At the same time, however, this allusion to rowdy and drunken young gentry self-referentially links the wild behavior of the fictional Spanish gallants to their actual London counterparts—— namely, the riotous youths known as “roarers” who similarly beset the streets of seventeenth-century London and who, in turn, became popular characters on the stages of its theaters.93 Indeed, the correspondences between gallant and roarer are striking. Like the Spanish gallants, London roarers mixed wine and lawlessness in the pursuit of wild entertainment. Moreover, as Stephen Orgel writes, roarers “were characteristically upper class or gentry”—the equivalent of Pedro’s “ young dons” (1.1.56)——whose riotous behavior was “an assertion of aristocratic privilege” (13). And both gallants and roarers posed serious threats to their respective societies. Writing in 1615, for example, Sir Simonds D’Ewes complains that roarers made it virtually impossible “to walk the streets in safety after midnight” (qtd. in Holdsworth xiv). The assault on Pedro and his family conspicuously dramatizes just such a threat. If Roderigo’s insistence on acting out the part of a Spanish gallant highlights the connections between the fictional gallants of Madrid and the actual roarers of London, it also draws attention to the relationship between his actions as a character in the dramatic 128 world of The Spanish Gypsy and the formal and thematic design of the play itself. Roderigo’s use of the language of the theater—“many / Of our Spanish gallants act these merry parts ever night” (1.1.30 my emphasis)—places him, the gallants to which he refers, and, by extension, the roarers, in the position of stage actors. At once fictional and actual, presentational and representational, the “acts” and “parts” Roderigo speaks of concurrently belong to the Spanish youths inhabiting the dramatized world of The Spanish Gypsy, the actual roarers roaming the London streets, and the actors performing the parts of both gallants and roarers on London stages, including those very actors performing the roles of Roderigo, Louis, and Diego. Such a degree of self-consciousness unsettles. For instance, the repugnant shock of the opening abduction scene becomes potentially less abhorrent, if not more acceptable, as a result of the way the self-consciousness veils Roderigo’s culpability for his crime. The grim reality of the rape threatens to lie obscured beneath the web of multiple references. In this instance, though, the iniquity of the abduction is not firlly eclipsed because of Diego’s and Louis’s conflicting reactions to Roderigo’s proposal. While Louis attempts, albeit feebly, to convince Roderigo that his plan is impossible, Diego appears willingly to comply. The insistent self-consciousness of the first act, that is, neither forgives nor damns Roderigo’s moral turpitude. It does, however, offer a formal and thematic rationale for the contrasting generic elements presented in the first act. The intricate pattern of self-reference creates a purposeful design out of what might seem a motley beginning. Far fi'om erratic, the competing generic characteristics of the opening act—a tragic rape, a farcical romance— constitute the very thematic threads out of which The Spanish Gypsy dramatically braids 129 itself. In fact, it becomes increasingly clear in the subsequent acts that The Spanish Gypsy takes as its very subject matter the union of its own constituent elements: self- consciousness, performance, festivity, song, dance, and collaboration itself. All of these elements find embodiment in the eponymous gypsies about whom we first learn from Diego’s description of Constanza, Don John’s love interest, in the final moments of the first act. As it turns out, Diego has seen her and declares himself absolutely enamored of her. Presumably, given his earlier pledge to Louis, Roderigo would find such an announcement even further inducement to flee Madrid to Salamanca, so as not to allow his apparently uncontrollable erotic drives to destroy his friendship with Diego either. However, though he declines to accompany Diego and Louis at that moment to go see the gypsies, Roderigo promises to come later. Louis responds by acknowledging that he, too, has heard of the gypsies arrival, noting that with them is a woman “of such absolute beauty, / Dexterity of wit, and general qualities, / That Spain reports her not without admiration” (1.5.127-129). As the conversation ensues to close the first act, Diego presents an extended declaration of praise for the theatrical skills, talents, and fame of this particular group of gypsies: “they’ve fine gambols, / Are mightily fiequented; court and city / Flock to ‘em, but the country does ‘em wourship” (140-142). Louis says that Constanza particularly, the star performer of the gypsy troupe, is “Able to set a world at gaze” (139). The self-consciousness woven subtly into the preceding action becomes overt in Diego’s description of the gypsies. The quiet pervasiveness of Diego’s and Roderigo’s theatrical language and the oblique allusion to roarers here give way to a stridently announced self-reference: the gypsies are performers well-worth watching. 130 The self-conscious book ending of the first act—from Roderigo’s “merry parts” to the anticipation of the gypsies’ “fine gambols”—prepares the audience of The Spanish Gypsy for the self-referential crux of the play: the dramatization of the collaboration between Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s companies. Though no final, irrefutable proof exists for this collaboration, The Spanish Gypsy itself, considered together with the relevant historical facts outlined in the first section of this chapter, presents a compelling case for it. One of those historical facts—Christopher Beeston’s role in the production of The Spanish Gypsy—deserves extended consideration here because it clarifies the economic and professional pressures that encouraged the collaboration of the two companies. Along with Philip Henslowe, Christopher Beeston was one of the most influential individuals in the commercial world of London playhouses. Much of our current understanding of the procuring and performance of playtexts rests on the information in Henslowe’s diary, particularly regarding questions of theatrical management. Applying what we learn from Henslowe to an analysis of Beeston, therefore, helps illuminate Beeston’s role and influence in his relationship with Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s. Like Henslowe, Beeston had precisely what Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s needed: he owned a theater;94 he had money to loan actors (of which records show they were often in need) ;95 and he had a growing stock of costumes, stage properties, and, above all, playtexts.96 Again like Henslowe, Beeston used these resources as leverage in his dealings with acting companies. As Neil Carson points out, Henslowe and Beeston were in remarkably powerful positions to shape and control the careers of individual actors and their companies (31-34). For example, they could force 131 actors to move from one company to another; moreover, they could, in effect, compel an actor/playwright like Rowley to write and perform in a play attributed to a company other than his own. Beeston, making full use of this power, focused his energies on the pursuit of real estate and repertories. In fact, all evidence suggests that Beeston was brutally shrewd in his business dealings with acting companies (Bentley JCS ii 363-74). Rather than forming allegiances with any one company, Beeston shuffled companies in and out of the Phoenix, all the while using debts owed him by actors to alter company personnel—effectively breaking up and reforming them, often creating “celebrity” companies—as a strategy both to capitalize on the fame of individual actors and to avoid surrendering the playtexts that had been offered up as secruity for his investments. Beeston, that is, had the power to compel members of different companies to join together, particularly when it furthered his own economic interests. Beeston’s role as money lender also put him in the unique position of being able to induce Rowley to write and perform in a play for Lady Elizabeth’s while still a member of Prince Charles’s. For Beeston, a collaboration between these two companies made good business sense. It is precisely this remarkable situation—a collaboration of two companies born out of the novelty and excitement of linked celebrity and talent—that Middleton-Rowley capitalize on in the final moments of the first act. Diego’s introduction of the newly arrived company of gypsies prepares the audience not only for the presence of a second group of characters (the gypsies) but also for a second, distinct group of actors (Lady Elizabeth’s). Given that no evidence exists of Lady Elizabeth’s having played in London between the time they left to tour the country in 1616 and their performances at the Phoenix in 1622, the historical record suggests that Lady Elizabeth’s, like this particular 132 band of gypsies, had only recently returned after several years of touring the countryside to Beeston’s Phoenix theater, where Prince Charles’s were then in residence. The gypsies’ remarkable theatrical abilities—and, by extension, the abilities of Lady Elizabeth’s—serve, then, as justification for their invited participation in the production of The Spanish Gypsy. All this seems to say that the play is justifying to the audience the situation whereby two companies will be working together for the benefit of the audience; the audience at the Phoenix, by implication, is the “court and city” audience to which Diego refers; and their reward for welcoming the second company is the augmentation of the talent and skill which that second company brings. Thus, the first act concludes with a final surge of self-consciousness, something akin to a 17th century version of a movie preview, that promises a collaboration of talents capable of reconciling the play’s ostensibly competing generic impulses. Immediately, when the second act opens, we meet a whole new group of characters: members of the gypsy company, not one of whom has appeared in the first act. The audience, of course, has been prepared to see this new group with particularly lively talents. As the gypsies first take the stage, Alvarez, their leader, calls on them to take up their “trade”—“Come, my brave boys! The tailor’s shears has cut us into shapes fitting our trades” (2.1 .1)—and from that moment the gypsies stridently signify festivity, theatricality, and disguise. They sing, dance, and compose and perform plays; they travel from town to town, presenting their sports in the halls of noble households and inn yards. From the moment of their first appearance, that is, the gypsies represent a traveling acting company.97 What is more, as the audience will discover, Alvarez and the other gypsies are actually nobles of Madrid who have lived for years in exile disguised as gypsies.98 133 And now they have returned home from their travels—j ust as the touring Lady Elizabeth’s returned home to London in 1622. Moreover, shortly following their return, the gypsies perform a play, a collaboratively written play no less, remarkably similar to The Spanish Gypsy. In other words, the traveling, return, and subsequent performance of the gypsies strikingly parallels the historical reality of Lady Elizabeth’s return to the Phoenix and the performance of The Spanish Gypsy that followed within a year. The gypsies dramatize a wide range of self-consciousness—fi'om general references to the business of playing, such as costumes, playtexts, and theatrical spaces, to specific (and pointed) intertextual and self-referential allusions. After summoning his fellows to prepare for their sport, for example, Alvarez discourses on the virtues of his own band of “noble gipsies” (2.1.13). Unlike “English gipsies,” who “lie in ambuscado for a rope of onions (21.10),” or “Spanish pickaroes,” who traffic in “filching, foisting, nimming, [and] jilting” (2.1.16), Alvarez’s Spanish gypsies are an “honest company” (2.1.19). Alvarez charges his description of the dishonest pursuits his band defies with a self-reflexive irony. He snubs his nose at pickpockets and thieves (filching and foisting) and protean deceivers (jilting), thereby rehearsing the well-known sentiments of such anti-theatrical writers as Stephen Gosson and William Prynne.99 Thus his criticisms apply doubly to his own troupe: to the gypsies playing the part of an acting company100 and to the actual acting company performing the parts of gypsies. If the theatrical self-references in The Spanish Gypsy suggest an association between the band of gypsies and an actual acting company, the specificity of those self- references further suggests a direct correspondence. Like virtually all acting companies, the gypsies take their show on the road.101 Indeed, the socio-economic similarities 134 between a touring acting company and the nomadic travelers are conspicuous: “Travelling must have generated a specific mentality, perhaps not unlike the mindset indicated by the current use of the word as a euphemism for communities living in caravans” (Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 44). Alvarez’s description of his own community’s travels presents a remarkable parallel: “If one city cannot maintain us, away to another! our horses must have wings. Does Madrill yield no money? Seville shall” (II.i.54). Spanish gypsies, like touring acting companies, “did not stay long in one place” (Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 44), which necessitated certain concessions to life on the road: Alvarez: [. . .] sell all our horses but one. Antonio: Why one? Alvarez: ‘Tis enough to carry our apparel and trinkets, and the less our ambler eats, our cheer is the better . . .all bees, no drones, and our hives shall yield us honey (2.1.67-70) Faced with the challenge of constantly moving from town to town, touring acting companies had obvious reasons to travel light. So, too, do their counterparts in this play, the Spanish gypsies. Economically and socially, the gypsies’ trade mirrors that of an acting company. Alvarez’s self-referential comments draw attention to the connections between gypsy company and acting company by way of an ironic and inclusive self-mockery. Though his references to traveling and anti-theatrical rhetoric apply generally to all acting companies, Alvarez’s comments have a more specific referential target: William Rowley. When Alvarez speaks of “foisting,” he refers primarily to the act of picking 135 pockets; yet, the term also has another meaning—to fart—that points a finger unmistakably at Rowley. Though Rowley’s acting career began as early as 1607,102 his popularity traces back to his role as Chough in A Fair Quarrel, his first collaboration with Middleton. In that play, Rowley-Chough fights (and wins) an infamous farting duel. The double meaning of “foist” surely begs the audience to recall that famous scene, particularly given the broad self-referentiality of Alvarez’s speech. “We must have nothing stale, trivial, or base,” he exclaims (II.i.23). In context, of course, the irony of the statement bodily reveals itself minutes later when Sancho appears—an unquestionably Rowleyian comic character, almost certainly performed by Rowley himself—ushering in the very type of “base” comedy Alvarez ostensibly defies. Such self-referentiality certainly performs a sensationalized, self-mocking function; more importantly, though, it calls attention to Rowley himself by way of his past performances. After all, it was probably Rowley’s fame that drew the audience to the play in the first place. It is almost as if Alvarez is preparing the audience with a nod and wink for the imminent arrival of the star performer they have come to see. By highlighting the festive skills and theatricality of the gypsies, particularly their association with the return of a traveling acting company, Middleton-Rowley pull to the surface the undercurrents of self-consciousness that run beneath the action of the first act. But even as the gypsies’ theatrical self-consciousness enacts what the first act subtly promised and thereby establishes a thematic and formal unity, the gypsies’ wild and raucous entrance also emphasizes once again, but this time in a particularly visual and aural way, the putative generic disconnect between the first and second acts. If the shocking rape and subsequent threat of a ruptured fiiendship in the first act foretells 136 violence and tragedy, the opening of the second act delivers overtly self-conscious comedy. Far more than a characteristic of the mixed style of tragicomedy, the remarkable visual and tonal shift between the first and second acts serves an important structural purpose: to demarcate the characters and actors in the first act from those in the second. The apparent disconnect draws attention to the distinctiveness of the two groups so as to make their firture collaboration possible. As if to establish the suitability of their future role as collaborators with the group of Madrid characters from the first act, Alvarez initially underscores that, though his fellow performers are dressed as gypsies, they are in reality “no tanned ones; no red- ochre rascals umbered with soot and bacon as the English gipsies are . . . .” Quite clearly, Alavarez here wishes to clarify that even though his band of gypsies, and thus by extension the Lady Elizabeth’s company, have spent the past few years playing in the country to a different kind of audience, they nonetheless have now returned to their rightful home. Alvarez makes insistently clear at the outset that the gypsies’ countryside forays have not deprived them of their capacities to delight sophisticated city audiences. Indeed, he establishes explicitly that purpose and thereby declares implicitly the equal ability of the Lady Elizabeth’s company to perform before an audience such as that gathered at the Phoenix at that very moment. “Plough deep furrows, to catch deep root in th’ opinion of the best grandoes, dukes, marqueses, condos, and other tituladoes,” Alvarez says, “show your sports to none but them: what can you do with three or four fools in a dish and a blockhead cut into sippets” (30-34). Moreover, shortly afterwards Alvarez amplifies these instructions, which to the audience also serves as a show of credentials and as explicit flattery: “No chamber-comedies: hostess, ply you your tide; 137 flow let ‘em to a full sea, but we’ll show no pastime till after dinner, and that in a full ring of good people, the best, the noblest; no closet-sweetrneats . . . ” (81-84). This company of gypsies, who will soon join the characters-players from the first act, promises to deliver rich entertainments to the Phoenix, extending the metaphor of dining and food initiated earlier when Antonio referred to base audiences as “scurvy meat” (3 5). The Phoenix audience, Alvarez insists, will not only see a play at the proper time, after the midday meal,103 they will be presented with material of such high quality that the play will function as pure desert. This Phoenix audience will receive only the most sophisticated pleasures provided by the most sophisticated actors. Alvarez’s flattery of the Phoenix audience also offers what might be taken as another justification for the collaboration of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s taking place before the audience at that very moment. He recalls to mind that there is a shortage of theatres in London for fine audiences and that, since his company is first rate in its talents, it requires just such a venue, even if it has to be shared.104 Throughout the Opening moments of the second act, Alvarez, as spokesman for his company of players, completes an implied (though no less heavy handed) advertisement for Rowley (and his particular brand of comedy) and a justification of the collaboration between Lady Elizabeth’s and Prince Charles’s in the performance of this very play. Alvarez’s words register meaning within two developing realms-——one fictional, thematic, and formal (the dramatized world of Madrid inside the play itself) and the other actual, historical, and constantly present (the very real world of Christopher Beeston’s Phoenix in Drury Lane). These two realms of meaning, though interwoven and complementary, take on more or less significance depending on the degree and 138 intensity of self-reference within each act and scene. The importance of the interaction between these two realms cannot be overemphasized—for, as the relationship between the fictional and actual worlds presented in The Spanish Gypsy comes clearly into focus, so too does the importance of collaboration, both as a governing thematic principle and as a mechanism of production. The process of collaboration is both the means and the matter of The Spanish Gypsy. III. As an actor and playwright, William Rowley has an important role in this complicated overlapping of fictional and actual realms of meaning. In the fictional realm of Madrid, Rowley takes the part of Sancho, a character who moves freely between the group of nobles introduced in the first act and the company of gypsies introduced in the second act. Sancho, along with his partner Soto, joins the gypsies as a performer, actually auditioning his theatrical skills and talents—including his willingness to collaborate artistically—before Alvarez and Constanza. The outcome of his joint efforts with the gypsies will be the production of a collaboratively written and performed play within The Spanish Gypsy. Sancho thus functions as a self-conscious and collaborative linkage between the two groups: he overtly uses his theatrical talents—singing, dancing, and extemporal wit—as a means not only of moving from one group of characters to the other, but of actually leading both groups in a collaborative performance of a collaboratively written play. In the world of London in 1623, this was very likely exactly what happened. Throughout his career as an actor and playwright, Rowley proved his skill as a 139 collaborator. In addition to his joint plays with Middleton,105 Rowley wrote collaboratively with John Day and George Wilkins, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker and. John Ford, John Fletcher, John Webster, and perhaps even William Shakespeare.106 He surely performed in most, if not all, of these plays. As Bentley points out, Rowley and other actor-playwrights had “intimate associations” with the needs and procedures of acting companies that made them particularly suited and prone to collaboration: “Such men who were both players and playwrights had special contributions to make in joint compositions, and there is a notably high proportion of collaboration in the known work of Samuel Rowley, William Rowley, Heywood, and Field” (Dramatist 211). Much like the development of professional networks today, Rowley’s “intimate associations” grew over time out of professional alliances and partnerships. Rowley most likely began his career sometime before 1607 with Queen Anne’s company (Stork 8; Bentley JCS v 1015), which performed The Travels of the Three English Brothers, a play Rowley wrote with John Day and George Wilkins. By 1609 Rowley was a leading member of the newly formed Duke of York’s company, which became known as Prince Charles’s company in 1612 with the death of Prince Henry. He continued as a leading member of Prince Charles’s, writing, performing, and appearing at court on their behalf, until 1623 when he joined the King’s Men for the last few years of his life (Bentley, JCS v 1014—1018). As an actor, playwright, and professional leader, then, Rowley has a history of strong connections to particular companies. In many ways, he perfectly fits the model of an “attached professional” writing exclusively within a relationship with one acting company (Bentley, Dramatist 37).107 As such, it only makes sense that Rowley would write plays for the exclusive use of his companies. 140 But how, then, do we make sense of the historical evidence suggesting that Rowley did, in fact, write for and perform with Lady Elizabeth’s? Rather than undermining his position as an attached professional or necessitating complicated theories about amalgamations, these ostensible breaches of Rowley’s loyalty to Prince Charles’s actually encourage us to re-evaluate some aspects of his professional relationships within the theatrical world. Mainly, we need to understand more fully the economic and professional pressures brought to bear on playwrights by theatrical managers, theater owners, and irnpresarios that contributed to various forms of collaboration. In the case of Rowley’s career, which affords an ideal vantage point, one name appears and reappears with notable regularity in positions of marked influence: Christopher Beeston. According to G. E. Bentley, Christopher Beeston, alias Christopher Hutchinson, was “probably the most important theatrical figure in London” from 1617 to his death in 1638 (JCS 363). Beeston’s long career in the professional theater began at an early age. His was apprenticed to Augustine Phillips, a member along with Shakespeare in the Chamberlain’s Men, in 1594 at the age of 14. His name appears in the cast of Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor performed by the Chamberlain’s Men in 1598. By 1602 he was a member of the Earl of Worcester’s Men who later became Queen Anne’s Men when King James took the throne. In 1612 he succeeded Thomas Green as that company’s leader. In 1616 he built the Cockpit theater and began the next phase of his career as a theater owner, financier, and impresario. He remained a member of Queen Anne’s until her death in 1619. At that point, as Beeston would later explain, he “entered the service of Prince Charles” (Bentley, JCS ii 363-370); he remained attached to them until 1622, 141 when he became a member of Lady Elizabeth’s. In the following two years, Lady Elizabeth’s performed Middleton-Rowley’s The Changeling and The Spanish Gypsy. From their early years in the theatrical world, Rowley’s and Beeston’s careers overlapped: both were members of the same company at least once (and probably twice), and plays written by Rowley (and Middleton-Rowley) were performed at Beeston’s Phoenix even when Rowley’s company was not in residence there. In the following table (Table 2), I have outlined relevant dates, events, and associations in order to stress the parallel courses of Rowley’s and Beeston’s respective careers and to highlight the connections between the two men. Table 2 Significant Dates, Events, and Associations of ChristOpher Beeston and William Rowley Christopher Beeston Dates William Rowley Chamberlain’s Men 1598 Worchester’s (becomes Queen Anne’s after 1603) Worchester’s/Queen Anne’s 1602-1608 Worchester’s/Queen Anne’s --Travels of Three English Brothers, with John Day and George Wilkins «Fortune by Land and Sea, with Thomas Heywood --A Shoemaker, A Gentleman Queen Anne’s 1609-1614 Duke of York’s (becomes Prince Charles’s after 1612) Queen Anne’s 1615 Prince Charles’s --A Fair Quarrel, with Thomas Middleton Queen Anne’s 1616 Prince Charles’s --builds and opens the --Prince Charles’s take up Cockpit , residence at Red Bull --moves Queen Anne’s from Red Bull to Cockpit Queen Anne’s 1617—1618 Prince Charles’s --Apprentice Revolt; Cockpit wrecked 142 --Queen Anne’s probably return to Red Bull or Curtain --Beeston rebuilds theater and reopens it as the --The Old Law, with Thomas Middleton Phoenix Queen Anne’s/Prince 1619 Prince Charles’s Charles’s --Queen Anne dies --A ll ’s Lost by Lust --Former Queen Anne’s become Revels; Beeston sends them to Red Bull -—Beeston “enter[s] into the service of the most noble Prince Charles’s --Beeston brings Prince Charles’s to Phoenix Prince Charles’s 1620-1621 Prince Charles’s «The Witch of Edminton, with Thomas Dekker and John Ford Lady Elizabeth’s 1622-1623 Prince Charles’s «brings Lady Elizabeth’s to Phoenix , --sends Prince Charles’s to Curtain «Changeling, with Thomas Middleton --The Spanish Gypsy, with Thomas Middleton We have clear evidence that Beeston was a member of the Chamberlain’s Men in 1598108 and also that by 1602 he was a member of Worchester’s company, which became Queen Anne’s a year later (Stevens 9; Bentley JCS ii 363). No similarly definitive evidence of Rowley’s early career exists; thus Rowley’s association with Worchester’s (later Queen Anne’s) before 1609 is conj ectural. Still, that Rowley’s first two known plays—The 143 Travels of the Three English Brothers, with John Day and George Wilkins, and Fortune by Land and Sea, with Thomas Heywood—were both performed by Queen Anne’s strongly suggests that Rowley was a member of that company. If so, Rowley and Beeston would have acted together with Queen Anne’s between 1602 and 1608. Between 1609 and 1614, Rowley’s and Beeston’s careers diverged. In 1609, Rowley was definitely a member of the newly formed Duke of York’s company, which later became Prince Charles’s (Bentley JCS ii 555). In 1612, with the death of Thomas Greene, Beeston became the leading member of Queen Anne’s (Bentley JCS ii 364). In the years to follow, Beeston’s managerial role in his company fueled his interest in theaters, and during this time he established some degree of control over the Curtain and the Red Bull.109 In 1616, he acquired property in Drury Lane and, within a year, had built and opened the Cockpit. Not long after, a gang of over a thousand apprentices attacked Beeston’s new theater. Apparently, they were enraged by Beeston’s having taking Prince Charles’s and their repertory from the Curtain to the more exclusive Cockpit in Drury Lane. So they took revenge on the Cockpit. A fight ensued between the players and apprentices; at least one attacker died from a gun shot fired by a player, and the company’s costumes, stage properties, and playtexts were burned or otherwise destroyed. The theater itself was also damaged in the assault.110 Within four months of the attack, though, Beeston had repaired the Cockpit, and from then on it became known as the Phoenix.l 11 Between 1616 and 1627, Beeston transferred at least four different companies from other theaters to the Phoenix (Gurr, Shakespearian Playing Companies 131). This resourceful use of the Phoenix, in conjunction with his lasting control over the Curtain, 144 the Red Bull, and the companies who performed in them, has led Gurr to call Beeston “London’s cleverest innovator in theatre affairs between 1609 and his death in 163 8” (Playgoing 175). By capitalizing on both open, auditorium style theaters like the Curtain and Red Bull and an enclosed theater like the Phoenix (Orrell 98), Beeston attempted to imitate the success of the King’s Men, whose use of the Globe and Blackfriars allowed them to perform plays throughout the year to economically and socially diverse audiences. This shifting of companies in and out of the Phoenix, while clearly intended to capitalize on the benefits offered by two kinds of theaters, also had much to do with Beeston’s influence on—and indeed manipulation of—actors and playwrights in order to further his own economic interests. Beeston was clever, perhaps to the point of malfeasance. The extant historical record of his business dealings presents a tumultuous story of litigiousness between Beeston and his associates regarding the payment of debts and Beeston’s alleged pilfering of money, stage properties, and plays.112 Prying open these “shady operation[s]” at the Phoenix (Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 177) exposes Beeston’s innovative and cutthroat dealings with the actors and acting companies who played not only at the Phoenix but also at the Red Bull and Curtain with Beeston’s financial and managerial support. Beeston’s sphere of influence depended on two important needs of acting companies: money and theaters. Finding himself in the position of financial manager of Queen Anne’s, Beeston used the company’s assets to increase his own capital; then, at least in part with these funds, he built the Phoenix, fulfilling the need for an indoor theater to rival the Blackfriars; he also established himself as a moneylender to actors and playwrights. Fulfilling these needs gave Beeston no small measure of power to shape the 145 lives of his theatrical associates. For example, having placed actors in his debt, Beeston could then manipulate the makeup of acting companies, withdrawing actors from one company in order to “turn them over to others” (Carson 32), thus effectively shaping the membership of individual companies. ”3 Beeston could also use the Phoenix as leverage to procure stage properties and playtexts. Neil Carson, writing about the complaint of some members of Lady Elizabeth’s against Philip Henslowe, provides the accepted practical model: “The basic financial arrangement is familiar: the actors agreed to pay Henslowe one-half of the gallery income as rent, and the other half as payment for a debt of 126 [British pounds] and towards ongoing expenditures on properties and costumes. While the players remained in Henslowe’s debt, he would retain their costumes and playbooks as security for his money. Once the debt was retired . . . the stock was to be turned over to the Company. The players charged that Henslowe deliberately broke the Company in order to avoid surrendering the stock” (32). Beeston appears to have used a similar strategy with Queen Anne’s, Prince Charles’s, and Lady Elizabeth’s. In 1619, Ellis Worth, John Cumber, and Richard Perkins, all leading members of Queen Anne’s, along with John Smith, a businessman who supplied Queen Anne’s with various goods, sued Beeston for his allegedly fraudulent management of the company. These former associates of Beeston’s accused him of breaking up the company and “carriing awaie . . . all the furniture & apparell . . .” (Bentley, JCS 367). Although no similar legal documents have survived as testimony of Beeston’s similar behavior towards Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s, the fact remains that both companies left the Phoenix in “reduced circumstances” (JCS 364). Moreover, we know of many plays that stayed with Beeston and the Phoenix rather than 146 accompanying the players who had originally performed and, in some cases, written them.114 Rowley’s All ’s Lost by Lust provides one example. The title page of the 1633 quarto edition of All ’s Lost by Lust states that it was “Divers times Acted by the Laay Elizabeth’s SERVANTS. And now lately by her Maiefties Servants, with great - applaufe, at the Phoenix in Drury Lane” (Stork 73). Although it fails to provide specific information about what company originally performed All ’s Lost by Lust, the title page does bear the fingerprints of Beeston’s hand in its writing and performance. Taken as moving backwards in time from its publication date of 1633, the quarto mentions “Her Maiefties Servants,” referring to Queen Henrietta’s, the company that replaced Lady Elizabeth’s at the Phoenix in 1626. This all-star company—consisting of actors handpicked by Beeston from the King’s Men, Lady Elizabeth’s, and the Red Bull Revels (Gurr Shakespearean Playing Companies 419)—played at the Phoenix from 1625 to 1636 and, therefore, must be the “Maiefties Servants” of the 1633 title page. “Divers times Acted by the Lady Elizabeth’s SERVAN TS” refers to performances during the Lady Elizabeth’s stay at the Phoenix from 1622-1625. Before that, around 1619, the title of the play was written on a list discovered later on Revels Office waste paper. Therefore Rowley must have written the play while he and Prince Charles’s (including Beeston as one of its members) were at the Phoenix in 1619, where it surely was performed by them before Lady Elizabeth’s performed it later at the Phoenix in the early 16205. The performance history of All ’s Lost by Lust is important because it illustrates Beeston’s hold on plays written and performed by those companies in residence at the Phoenix. In Bentley’s words, “the fact that [All ’s Lost by Lust] remained in the repertory of the Phoenix to be acted by later companies there and was not taken away with the 147 Prince’s men when they left suggests that the manuscript was not the property of the company but of Christopher Beeston . . .” (JCS v 1020). Beeston had no lasting loyalty to the companies of which he was a member. Rather, in a strange twist of the accepted relationship between Sharer and company, his allegiance lay with the Phoenix itself. Beeston was not building a repertory for any one acting company; he was building a repertory for the Phoenix.115 Indeed, a survey of the plays performed at the Phoenix between 1626 and 1642 by Queen Henrietta’s Men, the King’s Revel company, and Beeston’s Boys—all companies under Beeston’s management—reveals a considerable collection of plays written and performed in previous years by other companies in residence at the Phoenix under Beeston’s influence (Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 432-436). Along with All ’s Lost by Lust, The Spanish Gypsy is one such play. The story of All ’3 Lost by Lust tells of how Beeston exploited the companies under his financial thumb. By shifting companies in and out of the Phoenix, he took as his own many plays written and performed by those companies at the Phoenix. The case of The Spanish Gypsy also helps clarify the strategies by which Beeston enriched his Phoenix repertory. Given his desire to secure plays, both old and new,1 16 for his own use at the Phoenix and his aggressive, if not illicit, business practices, it makes sense that Beeston would take advantage of those people in his debt who could aid him in this endeavor—people like William Rowley. As a celebrity actor, an established playwright, and a leader of Prince Charles’s, Rowley was precisely the man Beeston needed to build the Phoenix repertory, particularly if Rowley allowed himself to become indebted to Beeston and thereby placed 148 himself under Beeston’s control. Again, no specific documentation of such a debt has survived, but the circumstantial evidence presents a convincing case. For example, documents associated with Henslowe’s diary do exist that confirm Rowley’s continued debt to the owners of the theaters in which Prince Charles’s performed. In a letter almost certainly written to Philip Henslowe, Rowley describes a purchase agreement for a stock of apparel, stating that “bonds shall be sealede for the paiement of it” (Greg 126). Later, after Henslowe’s death, Rowley’s and Prince Charles’s debt to him transferred to Henslowe’s business partner Jacob Meade and inheritor Edward Alleyn. In a letter of agreement, Rowley and other Prince Charles’s members—“standing indebted to ‘Phillipp Henchlowe esq deceassed’ and the said Jacob Meade, for loans and ‘laying apparel,’ to the extent of L400 and upwards”—entered into a covenant with Meade and Alleyn “to accept in full discharge of the said debt” (Greg 91). Within a year or two of this agreement, Rowley and Prince Charles’s ran afoul of Meade, who, leveraging their debt against them (“that power hee exacted on vs” (Greg 93)), forced the company out of the Hope theater in which they were then performing. Rowley describes this situation in a letter to Alleyn and seeks his help in procuring a new theater (needed to repay their debt to him) and other “necessityes.” “Wee haue neede of some monie (indeed vrdgent necessitie),” Rowley writes (Greg 93). This history of financial indebtedness to Henslowe and Alleyn, both owners of theaters in which Prince Charles’s performed, makes the assumption of Rowley’s similar debt to Beeston a near certainty. For Rowley, becoming indebted to the owner of the theater in which he played was a matter of course. Rowley’s repayment of his debt to Beeston, however, may have taken a novel form. True, the extant documents tell us that 149 Rowley and Prince Charles’s repaid Henslowe, Alleyn, and Meade with money earned by performances (Greg 91); and we might safely assume, therefore, that Rowley would repay Beeston in a similar manner. But, considering his effort to build the Phoenix repertory, Beeston had other, perhaps more attractive, ways of seeking repayment. Having placed Rowley in his debt, Beeston could have required Rowley to write and perform in plays that would nonetheless belong to Beeston. That is, he could commission plays from Rowley as a means of repaying debt. Such plays, after being written for and performed in the Phoenix, would remain in the Phoenix repertory even after Beeston had forced Rowley and Prince Charles’s out. In turn, Beeston also could have compelled Rowley into something akin to guest appearances in subsequent performances of his plays by another company that had taken up residence at the Phoenix. In sum, having obliged Rowley to write a play for performance at the Phoenix while Rowley and Prince Charles’ s were in residence there, and having subsequently removed Prince Charles’s from the Phoenix, replacing them with another company but keeping said play in the Phoenix repertory, Beeston could then require Rowley to return to the Phoenix to perform his role in the play with the new company. This strategy makes perfect business sense for Beeston, for it allowed him to capitalize doubly on Rowley’s strengths as an actor and playwright. Beeston would profit in the short term by his share of the income from the original performances at the Phoenix, and he would profit in the long term as the play entered his repertory to be performed again and again by whatever company happened to be in residence at the Phoenix. The added novelty of having Rowley return to perform in the Phoenix would only serve to build the reputation 150 and success of the Phoenix. This scenario compellingly accounts for the supposed irregularities in the performance history of All ’s Lost by Lust and The Spanish Gypsy. Scrutinizing Beeston’s and Rowley’s economic relationship sheds light on the multiple and interconnected ways collaboration functions in The Spanish Gypsy. Given his powerful financial influence, Beeston could encourage, if not force, actors and playwrights in his debt into various kinds of collaborative relationships. That appears to be precisely the case with The Spanish Gypsy: after having replaced Rowley and Prince Charles’s with Lady Elizabeth’s at the Phoenix, Beeston called on Rowley (with his long- time partner Middleton) to write The Spanish Gypsy and then to return with some number of Prince Charles’s to the Phoenix to perform the play collaboratively with Lady Elizabeth’s. The circumstantial evidence I outlined above indicates Beeston’s economic motivations for such a collaboration. But it is the unabashed self-referentiality of the play itself that provides the most compelling evidence for it. IV. When The Spanish Gypsy tells its story of collaboration—as a theme and as a method of production—it almost always speaks through the voice of the gypsies’ interactions with Rowley’s character Sancho. Throughout the wild ride of the second act, Alvarez speaks both as the leader of the gypsies and as something akin to a theatrical barker for the play in which he is performing at that very moment: he unabashedly flatters the audience; he observes that he and the other traveling performers are, in fact, gypsies only in costume; he instructs his compatriots to adjust their performance to the highest quality audience; and he ironically gestures towards the jokes and dancing typical 151 of Rowley’s clowns. All of this constitutes not only a heavy-handed advertisement for Rowley’s particular brand of comedy but also a justification for the collaboration between Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s taking place on stage before the eyes of the audience at that moment. Immediately after the arrival of the gypsies and Alvarez’s subsequent theatrical preview, two characters from the world of Madrid, whom we have not yet seen, enter: Sancho and Soto. Throughout the rest of the play, Sancho and Soto appear with astonishing frequency, carrying out a variety of ploys, songs and extemporaneous wit that suggest their protean capacity to add significant value to as many possible companies of players as welcome their talents. My hypothesis maintains that Sancho functions both as a virtuoso clown and also as an extremely proud performer showing off his singularity such that no single company could contain any genuine competition for him; and, therefore, he is willing to work together with any company able to accept his singular comic talent. The desire to woo the young Constanza has apparently brought Sancho and Soto to the gypsies, and the meeting does not fail to provide Sancho—and Constanza for that matter—with an opportunity to highlight their respective talents. Constanza, responding to Sancho’s vulgar offer of a handful of comfits, sustains her reputation as a dazzling beauty, aggrandized by her playful composure and verbal wit: “Am I pigeon, think you, to be caught with cumin-seeds? a fly to glue my wings to sweetrneats and do be ta’en?” (132-34). Rather than answer her question, Sancho tacitly acknowledges her strengths with a question of his own: “When do your gambols begin?” (135). Alvarez here cuts in, asserting once again that this company follows the decorum of the city in its 152 presentations: “Not till we ha’ dined” (136). At this point Sancho withdraws, allowing his servant (and comic sidekick) Soto to present Constanza with his master’s poetic declarations of love. She replies, “Verses? I love good ones; let me see’m,” and Sancho immediately steps forward saying, “[G]ood ones? if they were not good ones they should not come from me; at the name of verses I can stand on no ground” (157-160). Again, Sancho-Rowley indulges in the kind of boasting that calls attention to his own unique abilities—his leaps of wit coupled with the physical leaps of his dancing—that function both as an advertisement and a justification for his presence. Indeed, after Constanza’s partially mocking question—“Here’s gold too! whose is this?”———-Sancho goes on to point out his special strength: “If there be any fault in the verses, I can mend it extempore . . . ” (162-3). Of course, Rowley himself was famous for his ability to extemporize lines and interactive comedy whenever the situation called for it or his imagination signaled its possibility. Constanza validates his talent at once, “Verses and gold! these then are golden verses.” (166). Thus, her praise resonates doubly—with approbation of Sancho’s skill and in acknowledgment of Rowley’s earned reputation. This long opening scene of the second act presents a remarkable dramatic exploitation of two quite distinct aims: first, to establish Sancho as a character who links the Madrid aristocrats and the traveling gypsies (and, by extension, the Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s companies); and second, to simulate for the audience—as well as allow them to participant in——an audition of an outside performer by an established company. The accomplishment of these aims justifies the very collaboration that The Spanish Gypsy dramatizes. Who, after the audition, would willingly forgo the offered services of a Sancho? Alvarez says to Sancho, in a manner that cannot be read in any 153 way other than the call of a player for an audition: “pray, sir, read your verses.” Sancho responds, again with unmistakable boastfulness, “Shall I sing’em or say’em.” By offering this choice, Rowley simultaneously embodies Sancho’s persona and supplies the audience with an autobiographical reminder of Rowley’s own talents as both a writer and performer. Alvarez responds, “Which you can best.” As if to temper Sancho’s excessive self-esteem—a characteristic of all of Rowley’s clowns—Soto quips: “Both scurvily.” Unfazed, Sancho says he will sing his verses so as to show himself both as writer and performer. At this point Sancho unfolds a witty sOng with characteristically corny rhymes tossed off at rapid speed, giving the sense that he could do this endlessly. All the while, Middleton-Rowley add to the sense of an audition by allowing Soto to enter into the performance in such a way as to generate a feeling of horseplay: SANCHO. O that I were a goose, to feed At your barn door! such corn I need, Nor would I bite, but goslings breed. SOTO. And ganders. SANCHO. O that I were your needle’s eye! How through your linen would I fly, And never leave one stitch awry! soro. He’ll touse ye. (2.1.133-140)117 Performing here as a comic team, Sancho and Soto reprise similar moments of repartee from the Middleton-Rowley canon that would very likely be familiar to the Phoenix audience—Chough’s and Trimtram’s verbal and physical wrestling in 4.4 of A Fair 154 Quarrel, for example, and Alibius’s and Lollio’s witty exchanges in 1.2 of The Changeling. In addition to providing a glance backwards, this audition also provides a theatrical preview for the audience; these musical antics of Sancho and Soto (Rowley and his partner) serve up a foretaste of the songs and dances to come in The Spanish Gypsy. The scene also reminds us that Rowley’s particular brand of comedy grows out of a tradition of bawdy, extemporizing, jigging clowns stretching back to Will Kemp and Richard Tarlton—a genealogy constantly on display in Rowley’s verbal and physical leaps as Sancho. In this audition before Alvarez and Constanza, for example, Soto’s backdrop jibes draw attention to Rowley’s mix of physical and verbal wit. With “He’ll touse ye,” Soto punningly emphasizes Rowley’s characteristic mix of bawdy innuendo bodily enacted. In a general sense, “Touse” suggests being treated roughly; more particularly, it also means “to pull (a woman) about rudely, indelicately, or in horse-play” and to abuse figuratively or, in this case, verbally (OED). All these meanings combine with an obvious Sexual inference in this scene to form a musical gag. The dancing that surely accompanied the rhyrrring song no doubt embodied the coupling of verbal and physical horseplay characteristic of Rowley’s fame. It would be hard to imagine an audience witnessing this scene in performance not being delighted by the interplay, particularly given the likelihood that this very type of comic horseplay drew the audience to The Spanish Gypsy in the first place. . At this point, Alvarez follows up Constanza’s remark that Sancho’s versifying is excellent by asking, “But are these all your own?” Here again Sancho-Rowley becomes a richer self-reflexive character, for the lines he utters curiously suggest the possibility of a collaboration with Constanza even as they proclaim Sancho-Rowley’s authorial rights: 155 “Mine own? would I might never see ink drop out of the nose of any goose-quill more, if velvet cloaks have not clapped me for’em! Do you like ‘em?” Constanza, if taken as being without irony, would seem at once to provide further proof that she and Sancho can work well together, saying, “They shall be writ out: when you’ve as good or better, / . . . book me down your debtor” (152-3). Sancho is thereby welcomed fully into the company and at the same time the audience has been allowed to see why such collaboration can do nothing but increase their pleasure. Understanding the development of Sancho’ 3 character in The Spanish Gypsy requires a full acknowledgment of the ways in which Sancho self-consciously draws attention to Rowley. Sancho’s words and actions——his jokes, songs, and dances—both create and depend on a tacit relationship between himself and the audience—a relationship in which Sancho flamboyantly exposes the apparatus of his self-conscious jokes. Often, his behavior would make no sense otherwise. Why, for example, does Sancho give away his cloak, scarf, and ruff as he takes leave of Alvarez and Constanza? Alvarez himself wonders just that when Sancho hands him the cloak. “Your meaning, sir?” he asks, to which Sancho responds, “My meaning is, not to be an ass, to carry a burden when I need not. If you show your gambols forty leagues hence, I’ll gallop to ‘em (2.1.174-5). Sancho, like Rowley, apparently possesses a mobility assured in part by the evidence of his talents. He travels and dances lightly, bound neither by the weight of his clothing or gravity. Likewise, by implication his promise to travel any distance to perform with the gypsies alludes to the putative irregularity of Rowley’s professional associations, whereby he appears with one company of actors for a period of time and yet turns up with another company elsewhere. Indeed, even in shaping Sancho’s role for this 156 play, Middleton-Rowley have cleverly connected him only tangentially with the Madrid group of the first act. He is the “ward” of Pedro, the father of the fallen Clara, and as such possesses a certain freedom of choice and movement. Unlike Roderigo and Louis, Sancho is not bound by the loyalties of father-son relationships that have been foreshadowed in the first act, though he must consider Pedro’s economic influence over him. In this sense, Pedro’s relationship with Sancho suggests Beeston’s relationship with Rowley. The full meaning of Sancho’s strange sartorial charity becomes apparent in the next scene, when Pedro learns that Sancho has given away his clothing for “the ninth time” (2.2.168). Most likely a topical reference to Rowley’s career, the exact meaning of “ninth time” remains obscure to us. The pointed self-consciousness of the exchange that follows, however, is clear enough. True to form, Sancho and Soto maintain their comic banter when Pedro asks where they are coming from: SANCHO. From flaying myself, sir. SOTO. From playing with fencers, sir. (147-8) Like a bent reflection in a circus mirror, Soto twists parallel realities into a revelation of truth. Sancho has, in fact, been “flaying himself”—striping off his clothing—but he has done so while “playing with fencers.” A metonymous allusion to a skill associated with actors, “fencers” here functions as the first of many increasingly pointed self-referential jokes; for Sancho was, in fact, playing with actors. “It was mine own goose, and I laid the giblets upon another coxcomb’s trencher,” Sancho then says to Pedro, ‘you are my guardian, best beg me for a fool now” (2.2.154-55). As Havlock Ellis notes, “to beg a fool” means applying to be the guardian of a fool and thus gaining control over his 157 property (150). In the hands of Middleton-Rowley, though, begging the fool becomes an inside joke precisely because a fool in a different sense (Rowley as foolish clown) speaks the lines that associate him with “another coxcomb.”l 18 Sancho stretches the joke to its breaking point moments later in an overtly self-conscious quip: PEDRO. Wilt thou ever play the coxcomb? SAN CHO. If no other parts be given me, what would you have me do? (1 62-3) In just two lines, Middleton-Rowley neatly weave multiple strands of self-reference. Playing the coxcomb refers chiefly to Sancho’s acting like an idiot by giving away his clothing and to Rowley’s actually performing the role of a clown at that very moment. But the act of giving away his clothing also obliquely links Sancho to Rowley in an economic sense: as we have seen, Rowley, like Sancho, is also in the habit of giving away his property—namely, the rights to his plays. As part of the piling-up of self- consciousness in the scene, Sancho’s giving away his clothing alludes symbolically to a divesture or exchange of a patron’s livery. By “flaying” himself of his clothing, Sancho mimics Rowley’s exchange of one company’s livery colors for another’s. In sum, Sancho, like Rowley, becomes a comic genius precisely because he is both a member and not a member of any group he chooses. In this play, he plays the part of a fool who, through the force of his own talents as playwright and actor, brings two groups of people together: the gypsies and the nobles of Madrid, and, by extension, Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s. Quite possibly, Sancho’s dedication to carry through his work with the company of gypsies indicates a feature of the theatrical scene in London not often enough noticed: 158 that certain players who had achieved great fame became something like the properties that Hollywood stars are today. Both for an entrepreneur like Christopher Beeston and a celebrity like Rowley, such independence clearly meant the potential for an increase in income. When Sancho shows his abilities and wins a place with the gypsy company, for example, he also offers the tacit promise that they will likewise receive a great benefit. An acting company who adds to its ensemble a famous star for a series of performances will thereby share in the increase in profits; likewise, as Alvarez keeps underscoring, the audience fortunate enough to witness such a collaboration also profits by it. Surely Beeston recognized the benefit to all concerned of encouraging the collaboration of two separate companies. Indeed, the festivity of the gypsies coupled with Sancho’s and Soto’s singing and dancing demonstrates the increase in pleasure that two companies interacting can bring to an audience. One might claim that there is further ingenuity in the play owing to the fact that the gypsy company is not as disconnected from the characters in act one as they first appeared; rather, they are playing roles as actors so as to insinuate their way back into their proper alignment with those characters from the first act. Alvarez, for example, has been exiled for having killed Louis’s father; his lands have been confiscated and given to Louis; and Louis, who openly longs for Alvarez to return to Madrid, has persuaded Fernando and the other nobles that he seeks not the obvious course of revenge but instead reconciliation. Though a less specifically pointed self-referential character than Sancho-Rowley, Louis provides something like a general gloss on the sensibilities of actors. Louis is supposedly a serious suitor of Clara. But when the play Opens, he is shockingly willing 159 to help Roderigo engineer a sexual kidnapping which, considering both its moral and economic ramifications, suggests a contradictory attitude towards marriage. He pretends that he will forgive and not kill a returned Alvarez; yet the play has him portray both avenger and forgiver convincingly. When Clara finally chooses Roderigo over and against him, Louis again smoothly adopts the part of someone who accepts that as well. In this fashion, Louis acts out a series of seemingly contradictory roles that demonstrate the protean nature of any stage character. It is as if Middleton-Rowley are allowing us to see that an actor is not that different fiom the human beings whom he might portray: he takes on as many masks as the occasion requires, should he be sufficiently skillful. Once again, then, the play establishes self-consciously a groundwork among members of separate acting companies. Membership in any acting company need not be limited to the performers involved precisely because, if their skills be sufficient, they can take on any number of roles with other performers, even those with whom they may not have worked before. A modern commentator might claim that Louis’s contradictions reveal a weakness in psychological characterization or that they simply correspond to the capricious generic qualities inherent in tragicomedy. Yet if we accept The Spanish Gypsy as a play that thematizes and dramatizes collaboration, then such repeated contradictions of character become nothing less than advertisements for the capacities of actors to play whatever roles the occasion calls for. In this sense, the play cares little for establishing an in-depth psychological portrayal of the conflicts foreshadowed in the first act; nor does it offer some overall philosophical perspective that suggests that moral stemness or principle should be replaced by an approach to life as playfulness. Instead, The Spanish Gypsy 160 celebrates the capacity of actors from two different companies to personate characters who constantly switch between different and often opposed identities. It thereby demonstrates the good business sense of collaboration between theatrical companies. Let us consider another character who joins the gypsy company—Roderigo. Like Louis, Roderigo exhibits what might be considered glaring character inconsistencies. Here again, however, interpreting such moments within a self-referential framework both accounts for any irregularities in character and offers a unique commentary on professional collaborative practices. In his last lines of the first act, Roderigo—just having reaffirmed his willingness to accept exile in Salamanca so as not to succumb to his own lust—has already decided that Diego’s descriptions of the newly arrived gypsy maid are reason enough to annul his promise to Louis and go have a look at her. In order to find consistency in his character, a modern critic might diagnose Roderigo as sexually deranged. Yet, when he does enter the world of the gypsy company at the start of the third act, it is not in pursuit of Constanza but, in fact, in a disguise as an Italian virtuoso of rhyme. True, Roderigo does conventionally lament in an openingsoliloquy, “0, what vile prisons / Make we our bodies to our immortal souls!” (3.1.1-2), which might seem to signal a return of Roderigo’s stern conviction to leave Madrid as a means of avoiding further sexual failures.119 Nonetheless, upon encountering Sancho and Soto, themselves already disguised in gypsy garb, Roderigo immediately finds himself in a contest of wit with Sancho, also a self-proclaimed expert in rhyme. This turn of events reveals an unexpected twist in Roderigo’s purpose in the play. Sancho, to his delight, believes he has met in Roderigo a fellow performer, “a brother of the tiring house” (3.1.65). Once again, Middleton-Rowley capitalize on the porous ontological identity of Sancho- 161 Rowley. “A bird of the same feather,” Sancho says (66). Apparently, Sancho believes that, like himself—and like Rowley—Roderigo is both a performer and a writer, a bird of the same feather. Roderigo, however, quickly clarifies: “I can nor dance nor sing; but if my pen / From my invention can strike music-tunes / My head and brains are yours” (68- 70). Sancho quickly responds to this generous offer with a welcoming praise that italicizes the very matter of collaboration: “A magpie of Parnasus! welcome again! I am a firebrand of Phoebous myself; we’ll invoke together . . .” (76-77). This exchange between Sancho and Roderigo presents so delighted a description of collaboration as to suggest another correspondence: if we take Sancho not only as a fictional character but also as a self-conscious representation of Rowley, then it follows that Roderigo here might similarly represent Middleton as Sancho-Rowley’s fellow writer—but insistently, like Middleton, not a performer himself. It is clear from their interchange at the beginning of the third act that Roderi go and Sancho depart fi'om what one might expect as psychological character consistency. Up to this point, nothing has prepared us for their willingness to join together collaboratively. In fact, the threat of a romantic rivalry between Roderigo and Louis in the first act might suggest a parallel artistic rivalry between Roderigo and Sancho. Instead, and surprisingly, Roderigo and Sancho assert a mutual delight and respect at the prospect of having each other to work with. They seem more than happy to accept these conditions, and nothing in the remainder of the play unsettles this concord. Recognizing the amiable collaborative pact between Sancho and Roderigo as a not-so-subtle allusion to Middleton-Rowley helps clarify the details of Sancho’s and Roderigo’s subsequent dialogue. Sancho says that one reason they need to work together 162 is “so you will not steal my plot” (78), to which Roderigo replies, “‘tis not my fashion” (79). Taken only as part of Roderigo’s disguise as an Italian virtuoso, this comment seems gratuitous. If, however, we see it as a statement coming from a collaborative history shared by Middleton and Rowley, then surely it functions not only as an advertisement for the lack of contention and jealousy in Middleton-Rowley’s professional association but also as an indicator of the great lengths to which they would go to maintain that relationship. As Heather Hirschfeld has cogently argued, Middleton- Rowley’s collaborative plays attest to a remarkable professional friendship—a friendship that both men pursued in exceptional ways. Unlike other collaborative pairs of playwrights like Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, she writes, “Middleton and Rowley were variously associated with different civic enterprises and seem to have collaborated across company bounds and loyalties” (Joint Enterprises 102). As if in support of this point, Sancho says next, “But nowadays ‘tis all the fashion.” Again, the comment would hardly seem to pertain specifically to these two characters in this situation; instead, it resonates as a reference to competitors of Middleton-Rowley’s work. In this scene, and throughout The Spanish Gypsy, Roderi go insists that he joins the gypsy company as a writer, not as an actor. This distinction sets up a clear contrast between Roderi go (the writer) and Sancho (the writer and performer). Far from insignificant, that Roderigo identifies himself as a writer and not as an actor further emphasizes his associations with Middleton, which, in turn, enhances the self-referential associations between Roderigo-Sancho and Middleton-Rowley. Unlike Rowley, whose career as a playwright cannot be separated from his talents and celebrity as an actor, Middleton was never “a brother of the tiring house” (3.1.65). Throughout his life, 163 Middleton wrote prolifically for the public stage, and his many plays attest to a wide range of associations with various playwrights, actors, acting companies, and other aspects of the theatrical world.120 Yet, Middleton never acted. His life-long employment in the theatrical scene in London stood solely on the productivity of his “pen” (3.1.68). Rowley’s fame, on the other hand, grew out of a combination of his pen, voice, and body. As Nora Johnson has recently argued, actor-playwrights like Rowley “carr[ied] over their onstage popularity into the medium of print” (56). Seen in light of the particulars of Middleton’s and Rowley’s careers—their individual talents and their history of working together—the incipient collaborative relationship between Roderigo and Sancho suggests a powerful parallel to Middleton and Rowley’s own collaboration. The pointed specificity of self-reference in this meeting between Sancho and Roderigo becomes even sharper as the scene develops. Soto asks, “What was the last thing you writ? a comedy?” to which Roderigo at once responds, “No! ‘twas a sad, too sad, tragedy.” And, in actual fact, the play that Middleton-Rowley wrote and presented just prior to The Spanish Gypsy was their tragedy The Changeling. Seen in light of Middleton-Rowley’s career, Roderigo’s comment takes on a comic significance that capitalizes on a shared knowledge with the audience. Earlier in the play, for example, Middleton-Rowley indulged in a similar inside joke. Offering both fatherly and thespian advice, Alvarez says to Constanza: “be to thyself / Thyself, and not a changeling” (2.1.106-107). Constanza responds: How? Not a changeling? Yes, father, I will play the changeling; I’ll change into a thousand shapes, 164 To court our brave spectators; I’ll change my postures Into a thousand different variations, To draw even ladies’ eyes to follow mine; I’ll change my voice into a thousand tones, To chain attention: not a changeling, father? None but myself shall play the changeling. (108-116) At once a comment on the protean nature of actors and the complicated sexual identity of boy actors playing female roles,121 Constanza’s speech ends with an unmistakable reference to Middleton-Rowley’s The Changeling, which had been performed at the Phoenix less than a year before. As G. E. Bentley has noted, “the elaboration of the reference to changeling [sic]here is scarcely relevant for the action, but as a device to give a boy actor a chance to mimic the comedian of the play of the same name, it is effective advertising both for the comedian and for the boy actor before the audience . . . “(JCS iv 894). One aspect of the joke remains unclear to us today. Bentley assumes that Antonio, the eponymous changeling, and Constanza were played by different actors (though of the same company) while elsewhere A. H. Bullen suggests that the same actor took both roles.122 Even so, Bentley’s observation that such self-referential advertising establishes an intimate relationship with actor and audience rings true. It is precisely this shared knowledge that sharpens the wit and humor of Sancho’s and Roderigo’s comic jabs. Only after Sancho and Roderigo’s joint relationship has been established does the remainder of the gypsy company come onto the stage to meet Roderigo, who, unbeknownst to them, has already become a part of their work—at least insofar as if they 165 accept Sancho, they also get Roderigo. When Sancho repeats his agreement with Roderigo, Constanza immediately welcomes Roderigo (and by extension Middleton), saying outright what subsequent events will demonstrate: “Sir, you’re most welcome; I love a poet, / So he writes chastely; if your pen can sell me / Any smooth quaint romances, which I may sing, / You shall have bays and silver” (3.1.98-101). As is her wont, Constanza playfully teases the newcomer, but she nonetheless makes clear that whatever romances Roderigo produces must be those she can sing. Her assertion invokes and contrasts with Clara’s earlier demand that Roderigo never “sing” their “romance,” that is, he must never speak of her rape. Later, Roderigo honors that pledge when, upon reuniting with Louis, he denies having raped Clara, even though it would have been easy for Roderigo, being unaware that Clara is Louis’s beloved, to lay claim to a “triumph.” With Clara, Roderigo never renders his sexual deeds into words. With Constanza, however, Roderigo gives voice to romances that, it appears, will remain fictions unfettered by any untoward intentions. “What comes from me is free,” says Roderigo (103). Apparently, Roderigo can now write of such sexual matters, but he intends no other advances towards Constanza or the company. Nowhere does the lust that seems to obsess him in act one reappear. Roderigo has become a playwright willingly collaborating with another playwright (who is also a performer) and a company of players wholly outside of his ordinary world of Madrid society. Like Constanza, Alvarez also expresses his delight and welcomes Roderigo, a clear outsider, into his company: We shall be glad to use you, sir: our sports Must be an orchard, bearing several trees, 166 And fruits of several tastes; one pleasure dulls. A time may come when we, besides these pastimes, May from the grandoes and the dons of Spain Have leave to try our skill even on the stage, And then your wits may help us. (3.2.105-111) The speech outlines what might be taken not only as a credo for an acting company in search of a theater but also as a justification to another company already resident there of the value it can bring—new faces, varied talents, fresh skills, novelty—for “one pleasure dulls” (107). Likewise, such a speech equally could serve as an advertisement from an impresario like Christopher Beeston as to why bringing two companies together in collaboration serves not only his own economic advantage but also the aesthetic pleasure gained by the audience. Note how Alvarez refers constantly to an implied audience when he speaks of the gypsies’ “orchard” of theatrical sports, the multitudinous tastes and variety of pleasures they have to offer. Why declare such a promotion on stage in a performance if not as a way of calling an audience’s attention to what it stands to gain from the collaboration of companies? Alvarez even talks explicitly about presenting their future performance “on the stage”—a reference both to the forthcoming inner performances123 in The Spanish Gypsy and to the very stage on which Alvarez delivers these lines. Immediately after Alvarez’s speech of welcome seals the gypsies’ compact with Sancho, Soto, and Roderigo, Sancho launches into his longest song in the play: 0 that all the world were mad! Then should we have fine dancing; 167 Hobby-horses would be had, And brave girls keep a-prancing; Beggars would on cock-horse ride, And boobies fall a-roaring, And cuckolds, though no horns be spied, Be one another goaring. (3.2.132-39) This performance both demonstrates Rowley’s virtuoso talents and also validates for the audience the promise of what collaboration could bring: a variety of entertainment capable of shunting the tragic course of the first act into a new realm of musical comedy. It is significant that this celebratory song comes exactly at the middle of the play, just before the reintroduction of the characters of the first act and their attendant moral dilemmas—dilemmas which have now been realigned by the mounting self-conscious comedy of the second and third acts. In Michael Mooney’s words, the song “connects the separate halves of the play” (William Rowley 165). Like Sancho’s and Soto’s clowning in general, the “introduction of a song and dance at this point undercuts any attempt at seriousness” (165). Here, as always in The Spanish Gypsy, the unruly comedy grows out of a field of self-reference: the song itself, as Mooney has persuasively argued, reprises the embedded jigs Rowley performed in A Fair Quarrel (160);124 the mad world and goring cuckolds echo moments from The Changeling; and the boobies who “fall a—roaring” recalls Rowley’s famous roaring scenes in A Fair Quarrel. Sancho’s song does, indeed, usher in a “ma ” world, the symptoms of which are dancing, song, verbal buffoonery, and theatrical self-consciousness. The sexual lunacy intimated by Diego’s question to Roderigo in the opening moments of the play—“Art 168 Mad?”—and later enacted in Roderigo’s rape of Clara here becomes a comic insanity born out of Roderigo’s and Sancho’s new identities as gypsies. Roderigo enters act three as a writer of great skill, not as a wealthy and sexually deranged playboy of Madrid society; and since no earlier groundwork has ever suggested that Roderigo possesses these particular abilities, his character apparently alters to serve new matters in the play— most particularly, to establish a connection between Roderigo-Sancho and Middleton- Rowley for the delight of both actors and audience. The correspondences between Roderigo-Middleton and Sancho-Rowley, emphasized in their overt collaborative agreement, offsets the threat of multiple rivalries in The Spanish Gypsy: the risk of romantic antagonism and of professional competition in London’s theatrical scene dissipates as Sancho and Roderigo join together. But the unfolding events in The Spanish Gypsy verify that Middleton-Rowley’s interests lie not so much with maintaining any one-to-one allegory but rather with capitalizing on the comic possibilities of self-consciousness broadly conceived, particularly with respect to collaboration. Indeed, through their collaborative pact, Roderigo and Sancho allow for the union of the two main groups in The Spanish Gypsy—the Madrid nobles and gypsies (and, by extension, Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s). And it is precisely this joining together that enables the festivity, which up to this point has waited in the wings, to come to center stage. As Roderigo and Sancho establish their collaborative working relationship with each other and with the gypsies, Sancho celebrates with a rousing jig; and fiom that moment until its final unifying dance, The Spanish Gypsy rings with song. In the very next scene, for example, the gypsies make their way into Francesco’s house and sing for 169 him and many other nobles sitting in the garden there. “Their entry,” in Michael Mooney’s words, “marks the first movement toward a gradual assimilation of what we have recognized as the distinct worlds of the courtly and gypsy characters” (166). The performance, at last, brings the two groups together in a wild theatrical display, thematized in the gypsy chorus’s song: Then let our armies join and sing, And pit-a-pat make our knackers ring. Arm! arm! What bands are those? They cannot be sure our foes; We’ll not draw up our force, Nor muster any horse; For since they pleased to view our sight, Let’s this way, this way give delight. (3.2.106-113) The opening couplet of this passage sounds the call for the two groups to join together theatrically. No longer rival “armies,” the gypsies and nobles—and the two acting companies performing their roles——“join and sing.” Exactly what form this musical union takes is lost to us. Do the gypsies draw the nobles up off their feet and into the dance? Or do the nobles, moved to action by the festivity, join the dance of their own accord? No stage directions exist to tell us. But the words of the song itself—“Then let our armies join and sing”—coupled with the theatrical set-piece that follows makes clear that such a collaborative performance does take place. The “delight” that awaits “this way” comes in the form of an extended display in which, one by one, the gypsies team up with the nobles in a revolving series of fortune- 170 telling vignettes. Not surprisingly, this theatrical union maintains the high degree of self- consciousness that has repeatedly predicted it. One example will suffice. Here Sancho in gypsy disguise examines the hand of his guardian Maria and tells her fortune: You are sad, or mad, or glad, For a couple of cocks that cannot be had; Yet when abroad they have picked store of grain, Doodle-doo they will cry on your dunghills again. (3.2.136-39) The fortune Sancho offers, like those told by the other gypsies that follow, creates a thinly veiled, self-referential gag. The joke—as with so much of the humor in The Spanish Gypsy—stands on the audience’s awareness of a complex overlapping of allusion and association. As always, Sancho maintains his multiple roles as ward to Pedro and Maria and as Rowleyian clown, mixing absurd word games and bawdy innuendo. The “cocks,” of course, refer to Sancho and Soto themselves and the fact of their sudden disappearance. But the manner in which Sancho delivers this fortune—the vulgar puns on cocks and dunghills and the nonsensical “doodle-doo”—is pure Rowley. Sancho’s fortune-telling exemplifies “the delight” of collaboration that Alvarez and others had promised earlier and that here, at last, both gypsy and noble offer up to the audience. In the event, the fortune-telling vignettes turn out to be only a foretaste of the collaborative and self-referential entertainments to come. So impressed by the show just witnessed, Fernando, Roderigo’s father, exclaims, “’Tis great pity, / Besides your songs, dances, and other pastimes, / You do not, as our Spanish actors do, / Make trial of a stage” (3.2.242-45). On the contrary, Alvarez responds, “We are, sir, about it” (246); and 171 so the gypsies agree to return to perform a play. This time, however, Fernando will take an even more active part in the production. When the gypsies return early in the next act to perform for Fernando and his guests in his “great chamber,” they receive from him detailed instructions about their upcoming performance. In a scene reminiscent of act II, scene ii in Hamlet where Hamlet offers the players “a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines” to insert into their upcoming performance of The Murder of Gonzago, Fernando here provides the gypsies with a “comic passage” to perform that he himself has written. Just like Hamlet, who desires to catch Claudius in a theatrical trap, Fernando, having earlier recognized Roderigo beneath his gypsy disguise, hopes to draw Roderigo out of hiding by way of a pointed dramatic display. Unlike Hamlet, however, Fernando goes so far as to dictate the roles each gypsy will play. “Now the son,” Fernando says to his own son, Roderigo, “play him yourself” (4.2.62). Roderigo, staying true to his self-referential role as Middleton, defers: “My lord, I am no player” (4.2.63). Once again, by highlighting Roderigo’s status as a poet rather than a player, Middleton-Rowley would seem to be having firn drawing parallels between the fictional world of the play and their own personal circumstances. Unlike in the earlier scene with Sancho, though, Middleton-Rowley here push the self-consciousness into new comic territory. Fernando, it appears, cares little for Roderigo’s professional limitations. Pray, at this time The plot being full, to please my noble friends, Because your brains must into theirs put language, Act thou the son’s part; I’ll reward your pains. (4.2.64-67) 172 Here, again, matters of dramatic exigency lay the groundwork for complicated self- referential comedy. Roderigo must take on an unfamiliar role—that of an actor rather than poet—in order to “please my noble friends.” Of course, “my noble friends” refers both to the audience of fictional characters of the inner play about to be performed as well as the actual audience of the Phoenix theater watching, at that very moment, a fictional stand-in for Middleton forced into a new and awkward position for their pleasure. As if to emphasize the strange overlapping of theatrical worlds embodied in Roderigo-Middleton, Sancho immediately thrusts himself into the scene, bringing with him a self-consciousness as subtle as a hammer stroke: Sancho: My lord, what part play 1? Fernando: What parts dost use to play? Sancho: If your lordship has ever a coxcomb, I think I could fit you. (4.4.83-85) Femando’s multi-directed question begs the response of at least three distinct but theatrically connected figures. The question refers to the fictional character Sancho, to his past experiences as a gypsy performer. At the same time, it also speaks to Rowley performing the role of Sancho. In this sense, the question draws attention to Rowley’s reputation as a comic actor—“a coxcomb”——effectively setting up Rowley’s self- conscious joke. Finally, the question also elicits a response from the audience, whose enjoyment in watching the joke unfold depends precisely on their awareness of its self- referentiality. 173 F emando’s role as collaborative writer and “director”125 sets the stage for the gypsies’ promised inner play, which they perform, or at least begin to perform, at the Opening Of the very next scene. Not surprisingly, the inner play dramatizes an overlapping fabric of theatrical and professional allusions. Most obviously, the “slight plot” (4.2.46) Fernando has written for the gypsies directly parallels the circumstances, as he sees them, of Roderigo’s fall into moral depravity. This brief plot highlights the prodigal son motif in The Spanish Gypsy (Burelbac 38): Alvarez plays Avero, the father figure, who confronts Lorenzo his dissolute son, played by Roderigo, while Soto and Sancho, playing Lollio and Hialdo, respectively, provide comic counterpoints as servants to father and son. But, like The Spanish Gypsy itself, the developing action of the inner play becomes subsumed by theatrical self-consciousness. Reminiscent Of Constanza’s earlier allusion to The Changeling, for example, Soto’s character in the inner play, Lollio, shares a name with a similar clownish servant in The Changeling. Rowley’s penchant for working with a comic partner—evidenced here in The Spanish Gypsy with Sancho and Soto as well as in The Changeling with Allibius and Lollio—makes it entirely possible that the actor playing Soto in The Spanish Gypsy also played Lollio a year earlier in the performance of The Changeling at the Phoenix. Likewise, Sancho-I-Iialdo makes an Oblique reference to another of Rowley’s Sidekicks when, glibly responding to a question from Alvarez-Avero, he exclaims, “Trim, tram, hang master, hang man!” (4.3.77). Trimtram, of course, is the name of one half of another Rowleyian comic team, Cough and Trimtram, in Middleton-Rowley’s A Fair Quarrel. As in The Spanish Gypsy itself, the comedy in this inner play stems from Sancho’s and Soto’s brazen allusions to specific instances of Rowley’s career. Thus, both in content and in method, the inner play 174 parallels important aspects of The Spanish Gypsy. The basic matters Of its plot—a fallen, wandering son made accountable by his father—~exactly mirror the developing facts Of Femando’s dramatic lesson for his own son, Roderigo; moreover, this plot itself seems to become something of an excuse for Rowleyian self-conscious comedy. Unlike The Spanish Gypsy, however, the inner play never fully achieves a unified collaboration between nobles and gypsies. Instead, it is interrupted as, once again, the threat Of tragedy rubs up against The Spanish Gypsy’s drive towards singing, dancing, and comic resolution. As the gypsies perform the inner play, another drama develops behind the scenes. John, who has secretly joined the gypsies and become betrothed to Constanza, falls prey to a trap hatched by Cardochia, a young hostess to the gypsies who has become enamored of John. Earlier in the play, John had gently refused Cardochia’s romantic advances; now, motivated by jealousy and rage at being rejected, Cardochia accuses John Of stealing a jewel from her. As a result Of this indictment, and as the inner play progresses, Diego (himself in love with Cardochia) scuffles with John and is wounded by him. The inner play comes to an abrupt stop as the quarrel spills onto the stage; Fernando arrests John; and all the gypsies, it appears, will soon meet a similar fate. From this moment on, the play rushes forward at a lightning pace as multiple plot strands, to this point knotted, disentangle themselves through shocking confessions, revelations, and acts Of forgiveness. Roderigo reconciles with Fernando and marries Clara. Constanza sues for the life Of her betrothed, John, and Guimaria reveals that she and Constanza are the sister and daughter Of Fernando, long thought to be dead. Fernando welcomes the return of his sister and daughter and pardons John. Louis, having accepted the loss of Clara, continues to seek Alvarez, the man who killed his father so 175 many years ago. Alvarez reveals himself to Louis, and the two meet to settle matters in a duel to the death; but Louis, struck by Alvarez’s honesty and nobility, forgives him and takes him up as a new father. All of this occurs in the space of the short fifth act. One might consider such last- second revelations as simply the stuff of tragicomedy, which, in Madeleine Doran’s words, presents “the clever management of plot so that a surprise recognition or change Of heart brings about a dramatic reversal from extreme peril to good fortune” (186-7). But even an audience used to such reversals would find the contracting Of events in The Spanish Gypsy unsettling. Fernando appears to acknowledge as much when he attempts a summary exposition for the nobles: My honourable lords, partake my blessings; The count Alvarez lives here in my house; Your son, my Lord Francisco, Don John, is The condemned man falsely accused of theft; This, my Lord Pedro, is my sister Guiamara; Madam, this is Constanza, mine own child, And I am a wondrous merry man. (5.3.97-103) Femando’s “wondrous” synopsis exemplifies the way in which the play appears finally to have forgone any semblance of realistic plot or character development; instead, it shifts to a starkly overt exposition of who, what, and why that, even as it attempts to make sense of the various plot strands, seems to disregard sense altogether. But this telescoping of events does, indeed, have a very sensible purpose, for it sweeps aside less important matters in order to clear the stage for the very thing that has 176 motivated The Spanish Gypsy since the collaborative pact between Sancho, Roderigo, and the gypsies: music, dance, and self-conscious comedy. Having explained the dramatic turns Of events, Fernando turns his attention to Sancho, thus setting up the closing action of the play: FERNANDO. Well, well, you be yourself now. SAN CHO. Myself?—am I out of my wits, Soto? (5.3.146-7) Femando’s imperative draws attention to the undeniable fact that Sancho has, indeed, been himself throughout the entire play. For Sancho, being himself means nothing less than being out of his wits—playing the fool. This exchange thus reprises the earlier gag in which Fernando inquires about Sancho’s favorite theatrical role. The answer then— the coxcomb—remains the same here; and so, too, does the underlying self- consciousness of the scene: for Sancho, being himself precisely means being Rowley. The festive comedy Offered in The Spanish Gypsy—characterized by Rowley’s jigs and wordplay coupled with self-conscious references to the facts of Rowley’s collaborative relationship with Middleton and to collaboration more generally—verifies that there really is no meaningful difference between Sancho and Rowley. The audience of The Spanish Gypsy surely understands this, a fact Middleton-Rowley capitalize on time and time again. As if to dramatize this overlapping of worlds one last time, Fernando asks the gypsies to solemnize their abandonment Of the wandering, theatrical life. “Give it a merry shaking by the hand,” he says, “And cry adieu to folly?” (5.3.153). Sancho’s response ushers on to the stage this play’s final display Of collaborative festivity: “We’ll shake our hands, and our heels, if you’ll give us leave” (5.3.154). The dance that follows 177 declares one last time that the play (and inner plays) the audience has been witnessing has dramatically replaced one kind of “folly” for another. The Spanish Gypsy begins with a sexualized madness that becomes the delightful folly of Rowleyian song and dance brought about by various degrees of self-conscious collaboration. Unfortunately, this final dance, like so many Of the dances and songs and other visual and aural action in The Spanish Gypsy, has come down to us only as a shadow Of its original form. What remains utterly clear, however, is that the two discrete groups are physically and figuratively unified in the play’s closing moments by way Of a dance with Sancho- Rowley taking the lead. A reevaluation of the seemingly contradictory historical documents that constitute the performance history of The Spanish Gypsy in combination with an attentive analysis of the play itself sheds light on the probability and practicality of company collaboration in English Renaissance drama. Both the circumstances surrounding the performance of The Spanish Gypsy in 1623 and the structural and thematic design of the play itself introduce compelling evidence that some members of Prince Charles’s and Lady Elizabeth’s met on the stage of the Phoenix and “let [their] armies join and sing” (3.2.106). Rowley’s stardom and presumable indebtedness to Beeston coupled with Beeston’s canny business sense suggest not just the likelihood but, perhaps more important, the desirability of such a collaboration. In The Spanish Gypsy, Middleton- Rowley’s highly self-conscious and self-reflexive language publicizes and capitalizes on its own collaborative origins, building that collaboration into the very humor that drives both the play forward and the audience to the playhouse. 178 EPILOGUE I have striven in this dissertation to make collaboration a more useful critical category for scholars of English Renaissance drama. By refining the concept of collaboration into three specific domains—playwrights, actors, and acting companies— and by limiting the plays under discussion to three Middleton-Rowley plays, I have attempted to illuminate collaboration between 1615 and 1623 and, likewise, to provide an analytical tool for better comprehending the literary quality of the plays I discuss. But even while I have concerned myself primarily with the practical aspects Of collaboration—its quotidian practices and relationships—I have also tried to suggest the theoretical implications of adopting a collaborative model for understanding human acts of creativity and imagination rather than one based on discrete individuality. Indeed, the consequences Of such a shift in our understanding are far from insignificant: as collaboration complicates our beliefs about intellectual and creative ownership—about what is “mine” and “yours” with respect to intellectual property—it also unsettles some of our foundational assumptions about human experience, about what distinguishes 6‘ 9, 66 you, me,” and “us.” By way of bringing these practical and theoretical thoughts to some kind of closure, I want now to gesture very briefly towards further routes Of inquiry and application that I see extending beyond the limits of this dissertation for scholars Of Renaissance drama and, more generally, for all teachers of literature and composition. Perhaps the most evident and immediately productive next step in the inquiry I have begun here would be to expand both the collaborative domains and the body of plays under consideration. For instance, even within the parameters of the five plays 179 generally considered to compose the Middleton-Rowley corpus, possibilities exist for further study that would expand and enrich our understanding of collaboration. Namely, Middleton-Rowley’s The World Tost at Tennis and The Old Law Offer two more important case studies precisely because of the productive ways they complicate and challenge my three collaborative domains. The World Tost at Tennis was originally written as a masque to be performed at court by Prince Charles’s and only later adapted for performance on the public stage; this adaptation of the play thus provides Renaissance scholars with a rich Opportunity to further investigate the collaborative relationship between actor and audience precisely because bridging the gap between performer and spectator was a convention of royal masques. As I discussed in my treatment of Hamlet’s actions during the performance Of The Mouse Trap, the division between actor and audience associated with drama (the audience witnessing the actors perform) is Often disproved by the actual live experience Of the theatrical event. In masques, however, this potential for an interactive participation between actor and audience becomes a deliberate conventional principle; for, in masques, the members of the royal audience typically joined the performance by way Of dancing or speaking parts, thereby becoming occasional actors—actors for the occasion. As Stephen Orgel has noted, casting the importance of audience interaction in broad terms, “the end towards which the masque moved was to destroy any sense Of theater and to include the whole court in the mimesis—in a sense, what the spectator watched he ultimately became” (6-7). The Prologue of The World Tost at Tennis seems to acknowledge and forecast precisely this sort of inclusive mimesis in the opening moments of the play: 180 You shall perceive by what comes first in sight, It was intended for a royal night: There’s one hour’s words, the rest in songs and dances; Lauds no man’s own, no man himself advances, No man is lifted but by other bands; Say he could leap, he lights but where he stands . . . (1 1-16) The Prologue here thematizes the effectively and experientially collaborative nature of theater, even as he gestures to the history Of the play’s intended “royal night”- perforrnance. In the most immediate sense, the Prologue’s claim that “NO man is lifted but by other hands” constitutes a conventional request for the audience to applaud the Opening of the performance—to use their hands by clapping in support of the show about to begin. At the same time, however, it also appears to recognize a fundamental truth about collaborative performance—that “no man himself advances” and thus no individual owns the “lauds” of any performance. True of theatrical performance generally, this sentiment is thrown into particularly stark relief by The World Tost at Tennis, a play that, in its earliest incarnation, surely was written with the explicit and deliberate participation Of its audience as an important compositional principle. Given its peculiar origin as a royal masque, that is, The World Tost at Tennis likely contained parts initially intended to be performed by specific members Of its original royal audience. This peculiar history thus casts a new and potentially illuminating light on the collaborative relationship between actor, audience and playwright. Should we assume, for example, that Middleton- Rowley maintained the masque’s generic prescription of eradicating the distinctions between court and theater—audience and performance—as The World Tost at Tennis 181 made its transition to, in the words of the Prologue, the “device” (I) eventually performed before public audiences? And, if so, what form would such a deliberate inclusion of the audience take? How might the audience have been recruited as occasional actors? How might the explicit recognition of audience members as creative agents transform the process of composition? Pursing such questions would begin the necessary work of forming clear and useful connections among the discrete collaborative domains I discuss in this dissertation. Like Middleton-Rowley’s The World Tost at Tennis, The Old Law both affirrns the utility Of my practical approach to the study of collaboration and the need to expand and complicate the domains of collaboration I have delineated. In addition to Middleton’s and Rowley’s, Philip Massinger’s name appears on the title page Of the 1656 quarto edition of the play, and scholars have long argued that Massinger likely had a hand in the composition of the play. If so, then the collective authorial designation “Middleton- Rowley” fails to represent sufficiently the play’s joint authorship. In addressing this deficiency, one could simply add Massinger to Middleton-Rowley, thus creating a triadic rather than dual designation: Middleton-Rowely-Massinger. At some point, though, such an approach threatens to become so unwieldy as to question its efficacy, particularly since we know Of cases in which as many as four or five playwrights collaborated on a given play. Far from a critique of collectivity, however, the potential awkwardness of continuing to add name after name to joint authorial designations dramatically emphasizes the inability of an author-centered understanding of dramatic works to acknowledge the complex diversity of creative agents involved in the creative act. That is, accepting the limitations of my attempt to set aside Middleton and Rowley in order to 182 see more clearly Middleton-Rowley does not undermine the movement towards a collaborative model of authorship. Indeed, those very limitations shed light on the practical imperatives of collaborative studies. The extent to which single-author oriented ways Of thinking so thoroughly shape our critical vocabularies should not be underestimated; nor should it go unchallenged. Until we develop a language that can represent the messy, vital process of collective composition on its own terms rather than rely on a vocabulary utterly shaped by and indebted to ideologies of individuality and individual ownership, the study of collaboration will only produce shadows of itself. And finally, the development of a language that captures the complexity of collective authorship has the potential not only to ground the study and instruction of Renaissance drama in more historically accurately terms but also, more generally, to enable teachers Of English to speak more accurately and honestly to their students about the complexities of learning and creating as they reveal themselves in the process of thinking and writing. Taking apart the myth Of the solitary genius and clarifying the manifold creative agents involved in the process of our own educations, particularly with respect to our writing and that of the authors we study, will not only demystify the act Of writing and learning that so many Of them find alien; it will also help our students see the presence of others in their ideas and their writing, and, moreover, it will enable them to see themselves in the work that others, including both teachers and students, create. Equipped with a nuanced and sophisticated vocabulary for describing and reflecting on collective authorship, for instance, we might be able to clarify plagiarism for our students in ways that are consistent with our own writing practices and that refocus those discussions on learning as Opposed to punishment. That is, we might imagine what is 183 “stolen” in an act of student plagiarism as not the words of another—collective authorship foils the easy ownership of language and ideas—but rather the Opportunity for a certain kind of learning. Acknowledging a collaborative model of education requires conceiving of our classes as collective projects, as intellectual and imaginative collaborations guided by shared educational goals rather than a simple exchange of information between one individual (the teacher) and another (the student). Envisioned in this way, the collaborative classroom resists the rigidity Of individualized educational roles whereby a student sees herself strictly as a spectator witnessing a teacher impart information in favor of imaging that “teacher” and “student” signify overlapping modes of being and interacting in educational environments. When the goal Of a classroom becomes joint education rather than a linear exchange Of information, students and teachers alike begin to understand the extent to which the act of learning constitutes a collective enterprise that, like the collaborative process that generated the plays I have discussed in this dissertation, exceeds the sum of its parts. 184 NOTES 1 For example, in his edition Of The Changeling for New Mermaids, reprinted in 1997, Joost Daalder identifies via footnote the “author” Of each scene, as, for example, “Scene ii author: Rowley; place: Alibius’ madhouse” (18). Thus, he silently establishes authorial shares with the same certainty as, say, the setting Of the scene. Recently, this editorial practice has come under sharp scrutiny; see, for example, Nochimson and Masten, “More or Less.” 2 The exact make-up of the Middleton-Rowley canon remains a point of debate with scholars who draw on both internal and external evidence to support their claims. Based on external evidence, I consider the Middleton-Rowley canon as consisting Of five plays: A Fair Quarrel, The Old Law, The World Tost At Tennis, The Changeling, and The Spanish Gypsy. This list represents the only extant plays on whose title pages Middleton’s and Rowley’s name appear. I refrain from addressing The Old Law and The World Tost At Tennis in this dissertation because of my investment in limiting the number of collaborative agents under consideration: Philip Massinger’s name appears with Middleton’s and Rowley’s on the title page of The Old Law, and The World Tost At Tennis was originally written as a masque to be performed at Denmark House before the royal court. While these plays Offer compelling Opportunities for investigating revision as diachronic collaboration (Masten, “Playwrighting” 378) and the collaboration between members of court and professional actors in the performance Of masques (Parry), they fall beyond the scope of my investigation. For early discussions of the Middleton-Rowley canon based mainly on internal evidence, see Wiggin, Stork, Dunkel, and Robb; for more recent intemal-evidence arguments, see Lake and Jackson. For an overview of the external evidence, see Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage iv 855-911. For a general discussion Of the methodology of internal evidence, see Schoenbaum. 3 For a useful survey Of recent scholarly definitions of collaboration, see Hirschfeld, “Early Modern Collaboration.” 4 For example, in his essay “Problems in the Study of Collaboration,” Norman Rabkin asks, “Did someone farm out parts of a play to various authors? Was one writer in charge?” (10). 5 The theatrical account book Of Philip Henslowe, commonly known as Henslowe’s Diary, is the primary source of these documents, most Of which consist of Henslowe’s records of payments to playwrights. In some matters, notes Heather Hirschfeld, “the record of the diary is clear: almost all dramatists, including names such as Ben Jonson and George Champman, which now seem ‘singular,’ participated in joint work” (Joint Enterprises 17). As Neil Carson points out, however, Henslowe’s records are Often incomplete, ambiguous, or misleading (57). Faced with this challenge, Carson concludes that “perhaps all we can do is to look at the patterns of collaboration and the sequence Of payments to see if we can discern any clues as to the playwrights’ methods Of work” (58). In his influential chapter on collaboration in The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare ’s Time, G. E. Bentley provides just such an analysis not only of Henslowe’s payment records but also his surviving correspondence with playwrights and other relevant materials. At first, Bentley seems to remain skeptical of making any final claims: “considering how incomplete, scattered, and contradictory is our evidence of the ways in which Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline dramatists worked together, no one 185 can be dogmaticabout their methods” (227). In the same chapter, however, Bentley himself flirts with dogma: “such evidence we have, then, indicates that composition and collaboration on plays written for Henslowe companies was [sic] by acts” (232). One of Bentley’s sources for this assertion is the legal testimony of Thomas Dekker regarding a suit brought by Benjamin Garfield accusing Dekker, John Webster, William Rowley, and John Ford Of slandering his mother-in-law in the lost play Keep the Widow Waking, on which the four playwrights had apparently collaborated. In his deposition, Dekker testifies: “. . . this defendant saith that true it is he wrote two sheets of paper containing the first act Of a play called The Late Murder in the Whitechapel, 0r Keep the Widow Waking and a speech in the last scene of the last act of the boy who had killed his mother” (qtd. in Bentley 233). Yet, as Richard Nochimson has recently pointed out, Dekker’s testimony says nothing about how the rest of the play might have been separated among the other collaborators. Indeed, Nochimson argues very persuasively that the “persistent, Often unstated, assumption that collaboration always (or at least almost always) consisted of individual work on separable portions of a play” is, in fact, baseless. Nochimson ties this misplaced assumption to Bentley’s major influence, most noticeably his “distortion of the evidence available in Henslowe’s Diary” (42). Contrary to'Bentley’s claim about the evidence indicating collaboration according to acts, Nochimson clearly establishes that “Henslowe never refers explicitly to paying someone for an act” (45). Perhaps the most important point to acknowledge with respect to what the historical evidence tells us about methods of collaboration is, regardless of Bentley’s interpretation of them, the historical documents are frustratingly few in number, taking up only seven pages in his chapter. . 6 “The particular deliberateness in [Middleton-Rowley’s] relationship” is the focus of Heather Hirschfeld’s chapter “The Changeling and the Perversion of Fellowship” in her recent study Of Renaissance collaboration, Joint Enterprises (101). 7 G. E. Bentley’s comment that “every performance in the commercial theatres from 1590 to 1642 was itself essentially a collaboration . . . Of dramatists, actors, musicians, costumers, prompters (who made alterations in the original manuscript) and—at least in the later theatres—Of managers” suggests the range of collaborative involvement (Profession of Dramatist 198). For discussions of musicians and prompters, see Bentley, Profession of Player 71-77 and 80-86 respectively. For an analysis of audience interaction, see Ann Jennalie Cook, “Audiences: Investigation, Interpretation, Invention.” For an extended investigatiOn of censorship, see Dutton. 8 In “Playwrighting: Authorship and Collaboration,” Jeffrey Masten defines diachronic collaboration as “the writing Of several playwrights on a playtext at different times (revision) and the manifold absorption and reconstitution of plays and bits Of play by playwrights writing later” (378). See also McGuire 551. 9 In addition to the work of critics such as Cyrus Hoy, MacD. P. Jackson, D. J. Lake and Gary Taylor, the widespread modern editorial practice Of attributing acts and scenes to separate playwrights in collaborative plays attests to the powerful influence of this tradition. 1° On the role of technology in attribution studies, see Jackson, “Editing, Attribution Studies, and ‘Literature Online.”’ Perhaps the most recent example of this increasingly precise focus on individual shares is Gary Taylor’s essay “Thomas Middleton, The Spanish Gypsy, and Collaborative Authorship,” in which he argues that “the anomalies in 186 . the internal [and external] evidence can be explained by postulating a F ord/Dekker/ Middleton/Rowley collaboration” for The Spanish Gypsy (257 emphasis in original). ” The term “author” when applied to Renaissance playwrights is itself not without problems regarding its historical accuracy. I address this issue in the first chapter of this dissertation. ‘2 For two important exceptions, see Hirschfeld, Joint Enterprises and McMillan. ‘3 In the remainder of this chapter, I use “collaboration” as shorthand for the specific collaboration Of playwrights. With the important exception Of my discussion Of 4.4, my focus in this chapter on Middleton-Rowley’s joint compositional strategies does not address revision. In this respect, I follow Philip McGuire, who sees revision as “a form of sequential or diachronic collaboration because it involves a dramatist changing, usually by means of additions, deletions, and substitutions, a play-text previously completed by another dramatist (or dramatists) that the company owning it wants to perform again, in altered form, after some lapse of time” (551). For a full discussion Of revision, see Bentley, Profession of Dramatist 235-263. ’4 As Richard Nochimson has recently pointed out, a general assumption persists that “collaboration always (or at least almost always) consisted Of individual work on separable portions of a play” (42). Nochimson attempts to discredit this belief, tracing it back to G. E. Bentley’s claim—mistaken, according to Nochimson—that “separate composition Of individual acts is a division of labor which was quite common from 1590 to 1642” (Profession of Playwright 228, my italics). Citing liberally from Henslowe’s Diary, Nochimson shows that no real evidence exists to substantiate the claim that individual playwrights commonly worked in the way Bentley describes—that, say, one playwright, would separately write acts I and V and another playwright would write acts II, III, and IV Of the same play. In questioning the evidence behind Bentley’s claim, Nochimson does not intend to prove that playwrights never worked separately in the way Bentley suggests; rather, he seeks to make room for the possibility—little discussed in scholarship—that “Renaissance playwrights who were collaborating, at least some of the time, and probably Often, actually worked together” (51). This chapter seeks to add to our understanding of the specific ways playwrights “worked together” (51). See also Hirschfeld, Joint Enterprises 89-117. ’5 Although all Renaissance acting companies made use of collaboratively written plays, they did so in diverse and changing ways. For a detailed analysis of the historical patterns Of collaboration between roughly 1590 and 1642, see McGuire. 1‘ Collaborations involving more than two playwrights were not uncommon, perhaps the most noteworthy example being The Witch of Edmonton, the title page of which states: “A known true STORY. Composed into A TRAGI-COMEDY By divers well-esteemed Poets; William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John Ford, &c” (ix qtd. in Kinney). ’7 For a thorough review of relevant scholarship on Renaissance collaboration, see Hirschfeld, “Early Modern Collaboration.” For important contributions to the field Of collaboration studies not mentioned in Hirschfeld’s article, published in 2001, see McGuire, Slights, Cathcart, and Nochimson. ‘8 For representative examples, see Masten and Koestenbam; Taylor and MacD. P. Jackson; and McGuire and McLuskie, respectively. ’9 Recently, Masten has extended his analysis to the challenges posed by collaboration to modern editorial theories. See his essay “More or Less: Editing the Collaborative.” 187 2° In developing this point, Nochimson acknowledges his dept to Stephen Orgel’s “What is a Text?,” an important essay that has also shaped much of my own thinking about the collaborative nature of all Renaissance plays. 2‘ Such judgments on Rowley’s style are far from uncommon. See, for example, Stork 17-68; Dunkel; and Robb. 22 Rowley takes this interplay between playwright and character even further in his epistle to The World Tost At Tennis, printed alongside Middleton’s own epistle in the 1620 quarto, in which Rowley speaks in the voice of Simplicity, a character he apparently played in the original performances of the masque. Rather than attaching his own name to it, Rowley closes the epistle, “Your kind and loving kinsman, SIMPLICITY” (144). B In my way of thinking about collaboration, the term “solo” raises real concerns because it implies that the plays considered as such were written without the aid, assistance, or influence of creative agents other than the so-called solo writer. Assuming the possibility Of such “unaided work” (Bawcutt xliv) conflicts with my understanding of the way the collaborative interactions among playwrights, actors, and acting companies shaped all plays—both “solo” and “collaborative”—written for and performed in London theaters during the Renaissance. 2" For an extended discussion of the role Of rehearsals in English Renaissance drama, see Stern. 25 The plot terminology here—martial, romantic, clown—is my own. Traditionally, the three plots of A Fair Quarrel have been distinguished according to a loose generic hierarchy based on what I see as problematic assumptions. R. V. Holdsworth, for example, separates them into “main plot, subplot, and independent clown scenes” (xxii) while Dorothy Farr calls them “the main and secondary plots with ancillary roaring scenes” (46). In their respective use of “independent” and “ancillary,” both Holdsworth and Farr imply a hierarchy of merit in, and a certain lack Of unity among, the multiple plots of A Fair Quarrel; it is precisely this perceived lack of plot unity that has contributed to what Richard Levin has called the “universal condemnation” of the subplot in Renaissance drama (34). In his important monograph, The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama, Levin confronts a long tradition of scholars and critics who “approached the subplot as alien matter illegitimately attached to the main action, which was tacitly assumed to be the real play, and which could only be appreciated after it had been abstracted by the charitable reader from these distracting and disfiguring excrescences” (2). Thanks, in part, to Levin’s work, acknowledging the intricate unity Of the multiple plots in A Fair Quarrel and in those of many English Renaissance plays with multiple plots has become the norm. Still, however, the language with which critics describe the multiple plots bears traces of those troublesome hierarchical assumptions. Levin himself, for instance, echoes Farr when he refers to the story of Captain Ager and the Colonel in A Fair Quarrel as “the main plot” (66). In his study of Thomas Middleton’s life and work, Norman Brittin moves towards greater accuracy by describing the plots in A Fair Quarrel as “heroic, romantic, and [. . .] farcical” (91). Given the way the clowning scenes in A Fair Quarrel ironically subvert any semblance of heroism in Captain Ager’s and the Colonel’s verbal and physical dueling, however, it strikes me as inaccurate to define the plot that relates their story as “heroic.” My terminology— martial, romantic, comic—therefore seeks to maintain the usefulness of the loose generic 188 plot distinctions without the troublesome hierarchical associations that accompany terms such as “subplot” and “main plot.” 2" Unlike with roles such as Jacques in All ’s Lost by Lust and Simplicity in The World Tost At Tennis, no external evidence exists to prove beyond doubt that Rowley performed the role of Chough in A Fair Quarrel. However, the distinctiveness of Chough’s particular brand of comedy perfectly fits the characteristics of the clown roles for which Rowley became famous. I discuss these characteristics in detail in the second and third chapters Of this dissertation. 27 The Jacobean dueling code was intricate and complex, a fact emphasized in A Fair Quarrel by Middleton-Rowley’s send-up of dueling terminology in 3.1 and their parodic treatment Of Chough and Trimtram’s fart due] in 4.4. Indeed, attempts to situate A Fair Quarrel within the culture of Jacobean dueling have guided many of its critics; see, most notably, Bowers and Parker. Curiously, Markku Peltonen’s recent study, The Duel in Early Modern England, makes no mention of A Fair Quarrel, though Peltonen does briefly discuss the anti-dueling tract, The Peace-Maker, widely attributed to Middleton (142). For Middleton’s role in The Peace-Maker, see Dunlap. 2" The unity Of the multiple plots in A Fair Quarrel has not gone unnoticed by critics. For example, Michael Mooney has explored the “architectural sharpness” of the play (William Rowley 77), and Richard Levin, most notably, has thoughtfully argued for the “formal integration” of its multiple plots (66). My own ideas about the integrative relationship among the three plots of A Fair Quarrel are indebted to Levin and Mooney. However, in their discussions of A Fair Quarrel’s multiple plots, both Mooney and Levin offer broad brushstrokes, focusing on general thematic patterns. My analysis of cue- catching in A Fair Quarrel extends and sharpens their work, focusing on the role Of repetitions so deliberately patterned as to constitute evidence Of a compositional technique. ' 29 The exception is 3.3, at forty-four lines by far the shortest scene of the play. 3° “At this time saltpetre was Obtained from earth impregnated with dung and, as the chief constituent of gunpowder, was claimed by the Crown. Saltpetre-men were empowered to enter any premises to search for suitable material” (Holdsworth 20). 3‘ One could also argue that, given a play titled A Fair Quarrel, we might expect the repeated use of the words “fair” and “quarrel.” A close look at other Middleton-Rowley plays, however, suggests otherwise; for we do not find a noticeable repetition of “old” or “law” in The Old Law, nor of “changeling” in The Changeling, nor of “Spanish” or “gypsy” in The Spanish Gypsy. I maintain that a similar scrutiny of Renaissance plays by other dramatists would reveal the same results. The repetitions in A Fair Quarrel are uncommon. Why this should be so in A Fair Quarrel and not in Middleton-Rowley’s other collaborations is a point about which I conjecture at the close of this chapter. 32 See, for example, Levin 66-75 and Mooney, William Rowley 71-82. 33 Considering the comic success of the roaring scenes in A Fair Quarrel (Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage iv 870), it is not difficult to see why roarers became popular figures on the stages of Renaissance theaters. Perhaps the most striking example of this phenomenon focuses on a woman, the real-life roarer Mary Frith in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl. On the connection between roaring and aristocratic privilege, see Orgel 13. 3‘ See note 15. 189 35 Holdsworth also notes that the name Chough “carried an implication of Obesity” (5), an important association given that “there is ample evidence that Rowley’s typical acting role was that of a fat clown” (Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage ii 556). 36 This theorizing and historicizing of the actor has grown, in large part, out of the cluster Of ideas surrounding the so-called “death Of the author,” a concept indebted to the work of Michel Foucault (although the phrase itself can be traced to Roland Barthes). The attempt to destabilize the relationship between actor and character finds its theoretical parallel in Foucault’s critique of author and text. From a Foucauldian perspective, the meaning of a dramatic character (like the meaning of a written text) lies not with the actor (the author) but in its relation to certain cultural codes and discursive practices (Harmon , and Holman 46). Importantly, Foucault’s ideas have also helped fuel a recovery Of the particular and practical aspects of history. As David Scott Kastan has argued, “The notorious phrase [“the death of the author”] becomes intelligible rather than merely provocative in the recovery Of the actual discourses that circulate around and through the text as well as the historically specific conditions Of its writing and circulation” (Shakespeare After Theory 32). Kastan insists that, rather than remain content to theorize about authorial intention—and, by extension, about the actor’s role in creating character—- we need to engage instead in a historical recovery of those specific conditions of production that blur the boundaries between the creative agent and his or her work. That is precisely the activity I seek tO pursue in this chapter. 37 I use the term “postmodernist” here neither to imply any neat demarcation between modern and postmodern ideas nor even to suggest an identifiable and agreed upon definition of the term itself; rather, I wish to acknowledge those proponents of, in Stephen Greenblatt’s words, the “theoretical ferment that has affected (some would say afflicted) literary studies” in the last quarter of the twentieth century (“Shakespeare and the Exorcists” 163). It is worth noting here that many self-proclaimed postrnodemists have recently found the term problematic. Jonathan Goldberg, for instance, referring to his own theoretical affiliations, which he “was once more comfortable than [he is] now to call ‘postmodem,”’ states that “‘postrnodernism now seems to me to be a . . . dated term that no longer registers sites Of possibility, Openings to alternatives” (ix). 3" For insightful and representative examples, see Dollimore; Sinfield; Bulman; Dawson; Worthen, Idea of the Actor 10-69, Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance 95-150; and, especially, Weimann, “Mimesis in Hamlet” and Author ’s Pen 79-108. 39 In his esSay, “Rogues and Rhetoricians: Acting Styles in Early English Drama,” Peter Thomson connects this mode of understanding acting to Konstantin Stanislavsky and AC. Bradley. In twentieth-century performances, he writes, “the conduct of the dramatic action is the allowed domain of the director; the actor’s playground is the fictional character’s psyche. Broadly speaking, the theme is still A. C. Bradley’s and the orchestration Stanislavsky’s” (321). 4° Throughout this chapter, I use the term “acting” to refer to the work an actor performs on stage. Historically, however, the term used to describe the actor’s work has changed according to contested assumptions and judgments of actors and acting. As Andrew Gurr points out, for instance, the sixteenth century saw a certain development in terminology with regards to acting, playing, and the then-emerging term personation. According to Gurr, “the term ‘acting’ was originally used to describe the ‘action’ of the orator, his art and gesture. What the common stages Offered was ‘playing’” (Shakespearean Stage 99). 190 Robert Weimann, paraphrasing G. E. Bentley, amplifies this distinction between acting and playing by reminding us that “there was a distinct preference for the term ‘actor’ in the context Of printed language, whereas manuscripts, including the entries in Henslowe’s so-called Diary or in London parish registers almost exclusively used the word ‘player’ (Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice 131). The subtle but important distinction between acting and playing apparently lead Ben Jonson to complain on the title-page of his The New Inn that the play was “never acted, but most negligently play’d, by some, the King’s Servants” (qtd. in Gurr 99). Furthermore, both Gurr and Weimann note the development of the new term personation around the turn of the century, citing its use by John Marston and Thomas Heywood, to denote what actors were doing on stage. For Gurr, the term personation “suggests that a relatively new art Of individual characterization had developed, an art distinct form the orator’s display Of passion or the acaderrric actor’s portrayal of the character-types described by Jonson in Cynthia’s Revels . . .” (99). Weimann, however, sees the term personation as growing out of the conflict between actors and playwrights; in this sense, personation captures the actor’s attempt to “reassert the authority Of playing over and against the play text” (132). My use of “acting” follows Weimann, for whom “acting” and “personation” remain ultimately interchangeable because on the Renaissance stage “actors were expected . . . to impersonate characters ‘to the Life’ and to persist in presenting characters, stories, and histrionic skills rather than creating any life-like illusion for the play at large” (132). In addition to Gurr and Weimann, see William Worthen’s The Idea of the Actor, 10-69. 4‘ These two possibilities constitute two sides Of a debate about Renaissance acting styles that has continued, in various forms and degrees of orthodoxy, from the 19308 to the present. Daniel Seltzer summarizes the debate: “A number Of critics hold that Elizabethan acting was highly ‘formal,’ that is, that its range of movement, gesture, and vocal expression was more or less categorical, corresponding to a range Of rhetorical attitudes capable of being described objectively, and prohibiting (therefore) factors we might wish to call ‘inspiration’ or ‘individual interpretation.’ The Opposing opinion maintains that much in the style was specifically ‘realistic,’ even ‘naturalistic,’ that certain details of action would have been executed as they might be today, and that there ‘ was every reason for a performance by a great actor to exhibit personal inspiration, in every modern sense of the word” (36-37). Still others, he points out, argue for a “rrrixed style” (37). For early examples of the formal argument, see Harbage, Bradbrook, and Joseph; more recently, see Burns. Marvin Rosenberg, on the other hand, offers an early naturalistic reaction against the formalist position; more recently, Meredith Anne Skura has provocatively argued for “important continuities” between Elizabethan and modern actors. For proponents of the mixed style, see Seltzer and Thomson, Shakespeare’s Theater 114-141. ‘2 The critical interest in cross-dressing is perhaps the most striking example of this type of analysis. See, for example, Jardine, “Boy Actors, Female Roles”; Garber; Orgel. Also, for a representative application of these ideas to a specific play, see Garber. ‘3 In a sense, Dawson combines a Foucauldian discursive analysis with the traditional formalist view of Renaissance acting as a development Of classical rhetoric. 4" Dawson’s phrasing deserves comment. In his use of “participating” here, I take Dawson to be employing a rare transitive use of the verb “to participate,” meaning “to share” (OED). In this sense, then, a paraphrase of Dawson’s sentence might read: the 191 actor creates his part and constructs character by sharing his body with the audience. Dawson thus intimates—but never explicitly or clearly acknowledges—a collaborative relationship between actor and audience. In my understanding Of this particular sentence, Dawson posits the actor as the creator of character, and that the act of “participating” his body with the audience is—as the only accepted grammatical meaning of the verb “to participate” would seem to require—an act of sharing as witnessing rather than an act Of sharing as participation in the creation of character. ’5 In The Actor’s Freedom and, more recently, On Drama: Boundaries of Genre, Borders of Self, Goldman lays out a thoughtful and sophisticated theory of the roles acting and drama play not only in the development of English and American literature but also in the quotidian aspects Of human experience. He applies these ideas to Shakespearean plays in two insightful books, Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama and Acting and Action in Shakespearean Tragedy. 4" Importantly, Goldman is not suggesting a return to the traditional trope of masking and revealing; for, in his view, the new “self” the actor creates with his body is a unique composite of a distinct dramatic character and an embodied representation of the actor’s theatrical skill. ‘7 For a methodological range of these instances, see Knight 17-46; Mack 115-127; Righter 154-164; Barker; and Morrison. ‘8 In Hamlet, “the relationship Of world and stage is reciprocal,” says Ann Righter. “The actor holds a nrirror up to nature, but the latter in its turn reflects the feature of the play” (158-59). For an extend account Of this type Of dramatic self-consciousness in Hamlet, see Calderwood. ’9 Since Polonius’s exact Office is never clearly stated in Hamlet, the subject has been a matter of some debate among scholars. For a summary, see Harold Jenkins’s “Longer Note” in his edition of the play (421). 5° Viewed from a perspective Of royal censorship and influence, this scene actually rrrirrors the experiences of all professional actors performing in and around London by permission Of the crown. For a useful study Of this type of influence, see Dutton, Mastering the Revels. 5’ For a useful gloss on the way modern notions of authorship have shaped studies of Renaissance drama, see Orgel, “What is a Text?” 52 For important contributions Of this kind to the Middleton-Rowley canon, see Wiggins, Stork, Dunkel, and Robb. ’3 See, for example, Masten, Hirschfeld, and Brooks. 5‘ This ongoing attempt to identify authorial shares has been enhanced, at least in the eyes Of its proponents, by computer technology. See, for example, MacD. P. Jackson’s essay, “Editing, Attribution Studies, and ‘Literature Online” A New Resource for Research in Renaissance Drama.” 55 Interestingly, in an article published in the same year, Rabkin Offers a critique of this type of attribution procedure. Citing the failure Of critics to locate Ben Jonson’s additions to The Spanish Tragedy, Rabkin writes, “his invisibility in those additions points to the fact that makes our study of Elizabethan collaboration almost insuperably difficult: the decorum according to which the collaborator serves not himself but a joint project. As it contributes to the genius Of the theater it adorns, that decorum frustrates our search; hot on the trail Of a quirky writer’s share in a play, we find ourselves 192 repeatedly foiled by the great Elizabethan disappearing act” (“Problems in the Study Of Collaboration” 12). 5" In her recent study of collaboration, Heather Hirschfeld Offers a competing version of Middleton-Rowley’s collaborative relationship. Rather than an aesthetic hierarchy, Hirschfeld “identifies in these two playwrights’ patterns of collaborative activity a species of friendship” (Joint Enterprises 89). 57 One could argue, of course, that “changelings” appear in both the comic and tragic plots, but the dramatis personae of the play clearly identifies Antonio as the eponymous changeling. 5" Bentley notes that “the actors mentioned especially in seventeenth-century performances, William Robbins, Timothy Reade, and Thomas Sheppy, were all comedians” (Profession of Dramatist 217). 59 See, for example, Burks 771-783; Barker and Nicol; Liebler 373-76; and Hirschfeld 104—1 17. 6° In focusing on these two scenes, I follow Ricks, who asserts that “to think of The Changeling is to think at once of the two great scenes between Beatrice and De Flores (II.ii, and Hl.iv)” (290). However, I cannot agree with Ricks’s judgment about the role of collaboration in the play. “But what difference does it make that The Changeling was a collaboration? Not very much” (291). I hope to present an alternate view in this chapter not by focusing on the collaboration between Middleton and Rowley themselves as playwrights but between the bodies of theactors whose characters Middleton-Rowley helped to create. . 6’ Critics Of The Changeling often argue that events in the play uncover Beatrice Joanna’s thinly veiled sexual desire for De Flores. Such a reading, for example, clearly informs the editorial apparatus of Joost Daalder’s edition of the play. Likewise, as Roberta Barker and David Nicol make clear, modern productions Of The Changeling have made much Of a mutual attraction between Beatrice Joanna and De Flores. ‘2 It is worth noting here that not all critics accept that inward subjectivity is necessarily a modern concept. In her lucid and provocative book, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, Katherine Eisaman Maus argues that “the idea of ‘inward truth’ in early modern England is intimately linked to transcendental religious claims” and that, in fact, the distinction between “interior and exterior,” particularly with respect to self and character, “is a very familiar rhetorical tactic in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries” (27, 3). 63 To illustrate this point, Thomson quotes Viola’s comments to the Sea Captain who has brought her to the shores of Illyria in the second scene Of Twelfth Night: “I will believe thou has a mind that suits / With this thy fair and outward character (1.2.46—47)” (321). For Renaissance audiences, he reminds us, “[character] is something already formed. It may, of course, be subsequently deleted, but it is not plastic” (321). 6“ As Meredith Anne Skura rightly notes, “More than any other single group [clowns] seem to have shaped the period’s drama” (57). One reason for this profound influence lies in the way clowns functioned concurrently within many domains of the collaborative process. Often both actors and playwrights (like William Rowley), clowns also bridged the distance between stage and audience. For a discussion of the clown’s linrinal quality, see Robert Weimann’s Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice 98-102. 193 ‘5 Although in the Renaissance the terms clown and fool were used interchangeably, some modern critics have seen a useful distinction between them. Charles S. Felver, for instance, argues that, at least concerning Shakespearean plays, clowns are rustic bumblers, characterized by their dancing and malapropisms, whereas fools are best characterized by their intellectual superiority and wit (iii). For an extended study of Renaissance stage clowns, see Wiles, particularly 12 and 61-61 for definitions of fools and clowns. 6" Lewis notes that, by the time of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), the five inward wits had been reduced to three: “common sense, phantasy, and memory” (139). ‘7 Not surprisingly, this ingenium sense of wit—the sense of wit as individual genius— has informed the work of literary critics, mostly with respect to studies of poets. J. B. Leishman’s important monograph, The Monarch of Wit, about John Donne’s poetry provides a good example. ‘8 For an interesting exploration of humoral psychology and its relationship to Renaissance notions Of affect and inwardness, see Schoenfeldt 1-39. ‘9 As Joost Daalder notes, the distinction Middleton-Rowley make between fools and madmen (lunatics) “was one officially recognized by their society . . . natural fools were those ‘mentally subnorrnal from birth’ and lunatics were those ‘whose intellect and memory [failed] sometime after birth’” (xx). This quotation comes from Daalder’s introduction to his edition of The Changeling; in it, he quotes his own earlier essay, “Folly and Madness in The Changeling.” 7° The stage direction states that Antonio enters “like an idiot.” Joost Daalder suggests in a long explication of the stage direction that Antonio “may have worn a long-skirted coat and a high pointed cap, with a child’s primer dangling from his wrist” (21). For a useful gloss on the range of meanings of “like” used in stage directions, see Dessen and Thomson 133. 7‘ In his use of this term, Weimann “adapt[s] Shakespeare’s well-known phrase from A Midsummer Night ’s Dream, ‘to disfigure, or to present’ (3.1.60-61), where the ‘disfigurement’ goes hand in hand with a presentational type of delivery” (Author’s Pen and Actor ’s Voice 10). As I understand his use of the term, Weimann means that, in theatrical performance, both actor and character are “disfigured” in the sense that the actor’s work of performing is always on display, such that both his body and the character he performs bear the marks of that work. 72 In The Fair Quarrel, for example, Chough and Trimtram combine outrageous wordplay and physical humor, climaxing in that play’s famous fart duel. In The Spanish Gypsy, Sancho and Soto dance and sing as gypsies. Such pairing was not uncommon on the Renaissance stage, of course; Dogberry and Verges in Much Ado About Nothing come to mind. But the sophistication and recurrence of the comic paring in Middleton- Rowley’s plays suggests a remarkable understanding of the way collaborative exchange functions in the production of wit. 73 It is a mistake, I believe, as Robert Weimann states, to think of the Renaissance stage clown as a “solo entertainer” (Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice 99), for the very reason that the clown always performs with the audience. 7" As G. E. Bentley notes, the comedy in The Changeling (often attributed to Rowley) “seems to have had a greater seventeenth-century appeal than Middleton’s powerful 194 scenes: the title derives from Rowley’s scenes; the two actors associated with the play before 1642, William Robbins and Timothy Reade . . . were comedians; when Moseley licensed the play in 1652 he thought of it as a comedy . . .” (JCS iv 863-864). 75 Weimann uses “presentation” to signify the fictional and imaginative aspects of the actor’s performance, in the sense that an actor presents something like a fictionalized person on stage. He uses “representation” to identify those qualities Of the actor himself that are always on display in his performance, his skill, technique, physicality, etc. 7" Although no evidence exists to prove it conclusively, it is very likely that Rowley performed the role Of the clown in The Fair Maid of the Inn since he was a member of the King’s Men when the play was originally performed. If so, the prologue becomes less of a criticism and more Of an advertisement for the jig. 77 At this point, Vermandero believes he is planning a wedding between Beatrice Joanna and Alonzo. The actual ceremony that takes place, of course, is the wedding of Beatrice Joanna and Alsemero. 7" Although the first extant English text of “Singing Simpkin” was published in Robert Cox’s Actaeon and Diana in 1656, Charles Read Baskervill points out that Cox’s version corresponds to an earlier version in Engelische Comedien und Tragedien, a“‘Continental text” published in 1620. Baskervill goes on to say that “the text [Of “Singing Simpkin”] as given in Actaeon and Diana probably goes back to the sixteenth century when “Singing Simpkin” was apparently licensed for publication” (235). 79 For a summary of this tradition, see Knutson 5-7; for an overview of these competitive pressures, see Gurr, Stage 27-79. 8° For the exceptions, see Hirschfield, Joint Enterprises 146-153; McMillin and MacLean; and Knutson 39-41. 8‘ As Gary Taylor, in his recent essay “Thomas Middleton, The Spanish Gypsy, and Collaborative Authorship,” attests, the exceptionally strong external evidence for Middleton-Rowley’s authorship of The Spanish Gypsy (241-244) accounts for the lack of debate concerning its authorship up until the twentieth century. For some modern scholars, however, the authorship of The Spanish Gypsy has become a vexing question, in large part on account of the kind of attribution studies for which Taylor himself advocates and which guide his editorial decisions in The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton (which Taylor insists on citing in his published scholarship but that, nonetheless, remains “forthcoming”). See, for example, Oliphant and especially Lake and Jackson. In his most recent essay, however, Taylor questions the conclusions of Lake and Jackson and, in the process, raises serious questions for critics and editors of Middleton (and Rowley): “the dilemma [The Spanish Gypsy] creates for Middletonians cannot be separated from the issues it raises for attribution studies more generally” (241). After laying out an exhaustive list of contradictory internal evidence for and against both the hypothesis for Middleton-Rowley’s collaborative authorship and the hypothesis for Dekker-Ford’s collaborative authorship, Taylor states that “since the internal evidence is contradictory, we might be justified in rejecting it entirely, and falling back upon the strong external evidence for Middleton/Rowley, which is completely consistent and uncontradicted historically. But this solution would in fact imply the general unreliability of internal evidence” (257). Rather than acknowledge this unreliability, Taylor posits a four-person collaboration (Middleton-Rowley-Dekker-Ford) for The Spanish Gypsy. Collaborations Of four (or more) playwrights are not unprecedented; the lost Keep the Widow Waking by 195 Dekker, Rowley, Ford, and Webster comes immediately to mind. Still, the reliability of internal evidence as guide for authorship does strike me as shaky for the very reasons I outline in my introduction. 82 My hypothesis does not maintain that all of Prince Charles’s were involved in the collaboration. Unlike other plays performed by collaborating acting companies, such as Thomas Heywood’s Iron Age (Hirschfeld, Joint Enterprises 145-153), The Spanish Gypsy does not have an unusually large cast. My argument does not, therefore, rest on the need to fill a stage but on other economic and aesthetic pressures. 8" From this point forward, I refer to Bentley’s The Jacobean and Caroline Stage in my parenthetical documentation as JCS. 8" There is a clear historical precedent for such a performance. Of his play Iron Age, Thomas Heywood writes that it was “Publickely Acted by two Companies, vppon one Stage at once and haue at sundry times thronged three seuerall Theaters” (qtd. in Hirschfeld, Joint Enterprises 146). 85 Many critics of The Spanish Gypsy have addressed the integration of its multiple plots. See, for example, Burelbac and Kistner. Richard Levin, in his important work The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama, dedicates much of his time to Middleton- Rowley plays, including The Changeling and The Fair Quarrel. Although he does not address The Spanish Gypsy at length, Levin’s thoughtful analysis of what he calls “clown subplots” in The Fair Quarrel may be applied to all of Middleton-Rowley’s works. 8" Middleton-Rowley’s blending of sources for The Spanish Gypsy adds to the play’s sense of extravagance. The Roderigo-Clara and John-Constanza plots are drawn from Cervantez’ La F uerze de la Sangre and La Gitanilla, respectively; the Louis-Alvarez and Sancho-Soto plots, which serve as links, are the invention of Middleton-Rowley. Furthermore, Middleton-Rowley capitalized on the uncommon popularity in England in the early 16203 of Spain and Spanish gypsies. Ben Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphosed (“the longest and most popular Of his numerous masques” (Cole 25)) was performed in the summer of 1621 before King James, who was “highly pleased” (3); the masque was performed for him on at least two other occasions. Interestingly, the masque itself states that the parts of the gypsies were taken by lords (8), which suggests a topical reference for Middleton-Rowley’s presentation of nobles disguised as gypsies. Another topical reference clearly originates in Prince Charles’s sensational trip to Spain in 1623, the year The Spanish Gypsy was written and performed. Around the time of the performance of The Gypsies Metamorphosed, a marriage between Prince Charles and Maria, the Infanta of Spain, was being considered in the English court, not least of which by Prince Charles himself. On 18 February 1623, Prince Charles and the duke of Buckingham, George Villiers (a favorite of King James’ who may have taken one Of the parts in Jonson’s masque), dramatically began a journey to Spain, disguised as gypsies, in hopes of returning with the Infanta as Charles’ bride. Historian Derek Hirst describes the event: “Prince Charles was left fretting in his frustration, and fancying himself in love with reports of Philip IV ’5 sister, the Infanta. But, naive and awkward as he was, Charles was also deeply convinced of the efficacy of monarchy, and assumed that his presence in Madrid would cut through all knots. He was encouraged in this by Buckingham, who was eager to second Charles’ wishes in order to ensure his own position in the future king’s goodwill . . . In February 1623 the two young men rode Off for Madrid, disguised with false beards and with merely a single servant. . . The Spanish journey quickly 196 turned into a comedy of errors . . . For a few exhilarating months the prince and the duke were popular heroes” (108-109). Spanish gypsies remained popular in English literature even into the nineteenth century; see, for instance, George Eliot’s long poem The Spanish Gypsy- 87 The Spanish Gypsy has variously been called a “romantic comedy” (Drabble 924), a “romantic comedy with several gloomy episodes” (Stork 41), and a tragicomedy (Kistner 211). Madeleine Doran, moving into greater generic specificity, categorizes it as a “Spanish tale,” a subset of tragicomedy popular in the early seventeenth century (Doran 211). Michael Mooney, in an attempt to reconcile its generic complexities and experimental novelty, calls The Spanish Gypsy a “folk Opera.” “The Spanish Gypsy,” he writes, “blends the features of tragicomedy with song, dance and farce into a curious new form, in which song and dance so complement the seriousness of the action that we are justified in calling the play a romantic folk ‘Opera’” (William Rowley: Jacobean Playwright 144). 88 For relevant discussion of representations of rape in English Renaissance drama, see Burkes, Fleming, and Loomba, “From Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama.” See also Karen Bamford’s recent essay “Rape and Redemption in The Spanish Gypsy,” which provides a thoughtful overview of recent historical and theoretical work on rape in English Renaissance drama. Bamford’s essay is noteworthy in part because so little recent scholarly work has been dedicated to The Spanish Gypsy compared to other plays in the Middleton-Rowley canon. I cannot, however, endorse her conclusion that “the comedy [The Spanish Gypsy] precipitates is neither bawdy nor festive” (44), since the Rowleyian comedy in the play is both bawdy and festive. Importantly, Barrrford spends little if any time in her otherwise sound essay on the comic or musical elements in the play. 8” Self-consciousness is, of course, a standard theatrical trope on the Renaissance stage; see, for instance, Righter and Calderwood. In The Spanish Gypsy, however, the self- consciousness is so pervasive, so topically pointed and patterned, that it becomes not only an important element of the play but the very subject of the play itself. 9° When it first came into common usage in England in the 16‘h Century, the term “gypsy” had a specific (but mistaken) racial and geographical meaning. “Although historical research now traces their roots to north India, in early modern England gypsies were supposed to have originated in Egypt” (Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism 115; 127-131). Also, see Fraser. 9’ Perhaps the best example is the young lovers in A Midsummer Night ’s Dream, whom Theseus describes in his famous speech about lovers, madmen, and poets: “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, / Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend / More than cool reason ever comprehends” (5.1.4—6). 9“ Roderigo’s defense Of his intended actions reminds us that English laws forbidding rape “are designed to redress a wrong committed against a woman’s male relatives. These men, rather than the woman herself, are considered to be the victims of rape” (Burks 765). ’3 Oddly, the most striking example of this phenomenon focuses on a woman, the real-life roarer Mary Frith in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl. 9" In addition to at least one performance at court before Prince Charles, The Spanish Gypsy was performed at Beeston’s Phoenix in 1623. Importantly, according to Bentley, 197 Beeston may have owned more than one theater: “One wonders if at the Curtain the Prince’s men were still in part under the control of Beeston. This query is prompted by Mr. Hotson’s note that he has found a late Cancery suit which indicates that the Shoreditch Property mentioned in Beeston’s will included the Curtain estate. It is possible that he owned that theatre in 1622 and simply transferred the Prince’s men from one of his playhouses to the other” (i, 205). 95 See, for instance, Greg 91-93. 96 See Gurr, “Elizabethan Acting Companies” 5-8 and Shakespearean Playing Companies 407. 97 Historically, English vagabond laws have linked gypsies with actors. In 1549, for example, “King Edward noted in his journal that ‘there was a privy search made through Sussex for all vagabonds, gypsies, conspirators, prophesiers, all players, and such like’” (Fraser 116). 98 The Kistrrers see disguise functioning in The Spanish Gypsy as a loss of identity. The gypsy disguises, they argue, “figuratively represent the individual’s hiding of themselves and their intentions, and symbolize the losing of their identities as well” (211). In contrast, I suggest that the self-consciousness in the play emphasizes what Robert Weimann calls open disguises. “The actor in performing a character in disguise, presents a playful version of his own métier, a gamesome performance of his own competence in counterfeiting images Of both identity and transformation” (Author’s Pen 98). 99 For important discussions of these and other anti-theatrical writers, see Barish, Worthen, and Roach. 1°° Although the historical accuracy of the term “company” has recently fallen under some scrutiny (Gurr “Elizabethan Acting Companies”), its repeated use in The Spanish Gypsy, ‘coupled with the overt references to theatrical props and practices, clearly associate the gypsies with an organized group Of players. "’1 See Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 36-54 and McMillin and MacLean xiv- xv. m Rowley probably performed in Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607), which he wrote with John Day and George Wilkins. “’3 “The performance of a Phoenix play probably commenced at about three O’clock in the afternoon . . . A performance starting at three and lasting until five or after might well be termed an ‘evening recreation’ ”(Stevens 280). Stevens cites a relevant note from the title page of The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru: “’Represented daily at the Cockpit in DRURY-LANE, At three after noone punctually’” (280). "’4 On the relationship between the shortage of playhouses and audience tastes and preferences, see Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 121-136. "’5 In addition to the five plays generally accepted as the Middleton-Rowley corpus, A Game at Chess also stands as an example Of a different degree Of collaborative work. A Game at Chess is considered one Of Middleton’s “solo” plays. But, since it was performed by the King’s Men after Rowley had become one of its leading members, and since the play contains a role (the Fat Bishop) written either for or by Rowley, the play should be considered in light of its collaborative elements. T.H. Howard-Hill considers the Fat Bishop role the product of “revision” and not part Of Middleton’s “original version” (32). 198 ‘°" The titles of these plays are, respectively, The Travels of the Three English Brothers, Fortune by Land and Sea, The Witch of Edmonton, The Maid in the Mill, A Cure for a Cuckold, and The Birth of Merlin. 1°" Bentley distinguishes between those playwrights who, like Middleton, wrote plays for profit but with no lasting attachment to any acting company and those who, like Rowley, wrote within long-terrn exclusive relationships with companies (Dramatist 30-37). m" “The first extant mention of Beeston’s name in connection with London theatrical history occurs in the cast list of Euery Man in his Humour, acted by the Lord Chamerlain’s Men in 1598” (Stevens 9). ’09 See Bentley JCS vi 135, 217-219. ”0 For detailed accounts of the attack, see Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 124- 127 and Bentley, JCS vi 54—57. 1“ For a history of the Phoenix, see Stevens. In historical documents, Beeston’s theater is called the Cockpit and the Phoenix interchangeably. For the remainder of this chapter, I refer to it exclusively as the Phoenix. ”2 For a discussion of these documents, see Wallace. ”3 My claims about Beeston’s influence are built on the known dealings of Philip Henslowe. The parallels between Henslowe and Beeston are remarkable--both impresarios owned theaters, lent money to actors and playwrights, manipulated their associates for personal gain, and fought court battles with members Of acting companies—so much so that I take it as beyond doubt that specific evidence of Henslowe’s influence can be applied to Beeston’s own influence. See Carson, 31-53. “4 As Gurr points out, “since play-texts were a major part of a playing company’s assets, and since the Red Bull company [Queen Anne’s] did make the transfer [to the Phoenix in ' 1619], it seems likely that the first year there saw the performance Of plays originally written for the Red Bull” (Playgoing 177). ”5 For a useful discussion of the repertory system in English Renaissance drama, see Knutson. ”6 See Gurr, Shakespearean Playing Companies 407, 419. “7 Perhaps it is worth pointing out here the striking similarities between this song and what appears to be its twentieth-century counterpart, “Sex Farm” in the mock- documentary This Is Spinal Tap. “3 A similar joke appears at the end of the fourth act of The Changeling in a similar comic exchange between Alibius and Lollio. “9 In an insightful reading Of this scene, Michael Mooney argues that Sancho and Soto’s “stand-up comedy routine . . . counterpoints both the mood and style of Roderi go’s complaint” (William Rowley 162). ”0 In addition to writing for the London theaters, Middleton prepared Lord Mayor’s pageants and other performances and was appointed City Chronologer in 1620 (JCS iv 857-8). ' 121 For a discussion of the actor’s protean quality, see Roach; for a thoughtful exploration Of boy actors and erotic desire, see Jardine. 122 In a note to his edition of The Spanish Gypsy, Bullen writes: “Perhaps the actor who took the part Of Constanza had previously played Antonio in The Changeling (vi 139). .. .A—I ‘- 199 123 Here I adopt and adapt Meredith Skura’s use of the term “inner play” to refer to the dramatization of plays and other theatrical events on stage. See her Shakespeare the Actor. ‘2‘ For an extended discussion of Rowley’s place in the jigging-clown tradition, see Mooney’s “The Common Sight” ‘25 “Director” here is anachronistic. As Meredith Skura notes, “the official position of ‘director’ was not established until [the twentieth century].” But, she continues, “there are indications that someone did ‘instruct’ or ‘guide’ the players in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century productions” (47). 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