I'm going to start with and then work out from parts of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew today. I do so first because, although not all of you will probably recall both, they are considerably more accessible and well-known than the kind of writing which chiefly pre-occupies me. And second, I do want to work out to consider such notables as Robert Crowley, Henry Silver-Tongue Smith, William Baldwin, Samuel Daniel, and Arthur Dent.

In 1590, Edmund Spenser published the first three books of The Faerie Queene, the first tale of which concerns a young knight known as Redcrosse. Briefly, this young fellow, assigned the task of saving a lovely maiden's parents from an horrid dragon, bungles. He abandons the young woman, forgets his orders, takes up with another woman, pursues various other adventures, is imprisoned, rescued by the maiden (and friends), and becomes nearly suicidal from guilt. The lady takes him to a rehab center, the House of Holiness, and during the process of his regeneration, he is taken in hand by a woman named Charissa, on whom I wish to focus. She is a markedly maternal figure, distinguished from her sisters, Fidelia and Speranza, by being married and biologically productive; bare-breasted, she suckles her babies, then "thrust[s] them forth still, as they wexed old.". Similarly, she takes Redcrosse by the hand, turns him over to a "nurse," Mercie, who leads him (still by the hand) up to a visionary mount and a company of men. He has just before, through the ministrations of Faith and Hope (and Penance) become as a child again, and his re-generation pivots on the ministrations of Love, as the Apostle Paul proposed it would. The figure of Charity, then, is domestic and personal. She could have served as a model for Robert Cleaver's, A codly [sic] form of householde gouvernement of 1598 or especially William Perkins' Christian Oeconomie, translated finally by T. Pickering in 1609, since Perkins used the term "economy" in the Greek sense, not to refer to financial transactions but rather as "management of the house or home." These works participated in an effort to prove that the Bible enjoined women, as a "duty," to suckle their own children, as Charissa so spectacularly does.⁽¹⁾ What is striking is that the figure of Charity here has become so fully a part of "Christian economy"--a figure, that is, of individual regeneration and of domestic charity or love rather than relief of the poor.⁽²⁾

A very few years (perhaps 2 or 3) after Spenser first published this tale, Shakespeare investigated domestic "economy" if not "Christian economy" in The Taming of the Shrew. And he opened his play, which ventriloquizes a noisy woman--or perhaps ventriloquizes the creation of a "proper woman"--with a drunken poor man, Christopher Sly, with his "relief" from poverty, and with a "merry jest"--in which a "Lord" and his huntsmen abduct the sleeping Christopher, call him "Lord" and wait on him, criticize his "dream" or dementia for having thought himself poor, and present him both with a loving "wife" and a play (about the taming of the shrew). Sly decides this is a good "dream"--the word is used repeatedly--as any sensible poor man would. In short, the play opens with all sorts of playing and fantasy. The trick being played on Christopher Sly is the trick being played on us as we watch his play. Truth and fiction are directly being interrogated. Perhaps, the suggestion is, only such stunts can successfully relieve the poor--who are otherwise always with us.

Strikingly, and central to my argument, Christopher Sly is made at last to disappear. Unlike A Midsummer Night's Dream, framed by the activities of Theseus and Hyppolita, the taming of Kate is not framed by Christopher, no doubt in part because he is a poor man portrayed by an Elizabethan writer. He is initially set up as a cunning reprobate, and he never returns; he is silenced and made to disappear.

Indeed, the rhythm of The Taming of the Shrew can be read as recreating a larger, cultural, historical rhythm in the ventriloquizing of "others" in the last half of the sixteenth century. First it ventriloquizes the poor man, as many writers active under Edward VI in 1550 did; then it abandons that effort in favor of ventriloquizing an extreme woman (and her extreme man) as many writers of the 1590's did. In what remains, I want to give you brief samples of three kinds of writing central to that rhythm of cultural change. First, I will sample a bit of the way "the poor man" was ventriloquized during the reign of Edward VI, around 1550. Second, I will sample a sermon of the 1590's which treats the poor very differently by silencing and criminalizing them. Third, I will sample a fad of ventriloquizing "abandoned women" which began in 1592 with the highly literary work of Samuel Daniel.

As an example of Edwardian writing, consider how Robert Crowley began An informacion and Peticion agaynst the oppressours of the pore Commons of this Realme, compiled and Imprinted for. . .the Parliamente of 1548 by urging that "Amonge the manyfold & moste weyghty mattiers (moste worthy counsaylours) to be debated and communed of in this present parliament, and. . .spedily to be redressed: I thynke there is no one thynge more nedfull to be spoken of, then the great oppression of the pore communes, by the possessioners as wel of Clergie as of Laitie." Crowley immediately admitted that "No doubt it is nedfull, and ther ought to bee a spedy redresse of many mattiers of religion," but his subsequent pamphlet makes clear that "the great oppression of the pore communes" was his top priority.⁽³⁾

Two years later, in one of his many efforts to address "the great oppression of the pore commones," Crowley published The way to wealth, wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for Sedicion. In it he addresses, almost in dialogue, three groups, the poor man, the powerful clergy, and rich landowners. He begins the first movement by remarking that "If I shuld demaunde of the pore man of the countrey what thinge he thinketh to be the cause of Sedition: I know his aunswere" (sig. [A3]r).

He woulde tel me that the great fermares, the grasiers, the riche but[c]hares, the men of lawe, the marchauntes, the gentlemen, the knightes, the lordes, and I can not tel who [only the court and king remain to complete this ascending order of degrees], Men that have no name because they are doares in al thinges that ani gaine hangeth upon. Men without conscience. Men utterly voide of goddes feare. Yea, men that live as thoughe there were no God at all! Men that would have all in their owne handes, men that would leave nothyng for others, men that would be alone on the earth, men that bee never satisfied, Cormerauntes, gredye gulles, yea, men that would eate up menne women chyldren: are the causes of Sedition. [A3v]

The voice of Crowley's tract "thou's" the poor man and chastises him severely for rising in "seditious" peasant revolts. But not only does he "know" how the voice of the poor man sounds, he apparently listens to him, for when he addresses rich landowners, he employs some of the poor man's very language against them. "Nowe if I should demaund of the gredie cormerauntes what thei thinke shuld be the cause of Sedition: they would saie" that the "paisant knaves" are greedy, communists, anarchists, and lazy. Moreover,

We wyll tech them to know theyre betters. And because they wold have al commone, we wil leave them nothing. And if they once stirre againe or do but once cluster togither, we wil hang them at their own dores. Shal we suffer the vilaines to disprove our doynges? No, we wil be lordes of our own & use it as we shal thinke good! (B3r).

Here the rich convict themselves of the poor man's charges that they "would have all in their owne handes" and "would leave nothyng for others." And listen to how the voice of the tract begins to lambast these rich "possessioners" when they finish speaking:

Oh good maisters, what shuld I cal you? you that have no name, you that have so many occupacions & trads that ther is no on name mete for you. You ungentle gentlemen. You churles chikens I say. Geve me leve to make answere for the pore Ideotes over whom ye triumphe in this sorte. (B3r-v)

42 years later, in 1592, Henry Silver-Tongue Smith published a sermon entitled The poore mans tears, showing the new way of treating and mistreating the poor, and died, causing a host of publishers to print and pirate and re-pirate collections of his sermons. Smith was a fabulous means for publishers to turn words into silver. Here, he also too over and turned a sermon by Thomas Drant, preached before the Lord Mayor twenty years before, into his publication. Basically, his sermon urged readers to relieve the poor, positing national, apocalyptic consequences were that not done.

If this bee not amended, I let you to understand that the poore must crie, and their voyce shall bee heard, their distresse considered, & our vengance shalbe wrought I tell you troth, even in Jesus Christ that the poor hath cried unto the Lorde, and hee hath heard them. With speed therefore open your eares: if not to man, yet to Christ, who continually commaundeth us to give and bestow upon the poore and needie. Give and it shall be given you saith he by S. Luke, and setteth before our eies the example of the poore widowes mites. . . .(sig. C1v) .

Smith derided wealthy people who "goe by a poore person, whome they see in great distresse and never releeve them with one penny, but say God help you, I have not for you." Yet the communication scheme he posits runs exactly parallel to that remark, for notice that he says "the poor hath cried unto the Lorde, and hee hath heard them." What is fascinating is the way human communication between the poor and rich is not part of Smith's scheme; indeed, Smith basically does not let the poor speak at all in his sermon. They shed tears, God hears and helps them, He tells us to relieve them, ministers preach that word of God because the poor need a spokesman, cannot apparently speak for themselves. In much the same vein, William Whately entitled his tract of 1637 The poore mans advocate.

Such severing of the poor from the rich creates jobs, for those who must intercede. Martin Bucer, in De regno Christi, showed that one way by condemning, at length, person-to-person almsdeeds or acts of charity. Some people give alms out of pride, some give to unscrupulous, undeserving, or "unworthy" people, etc.; "Besydes thalmose due to the litle ones of Christ, and so to Christ him self, is gyven oftener to the unworthie, then to the worthie" poor. Moreover, "every man can not knowe and trie suche poore people as he meeteth sodenlie" as professional deacons in the church can. Relief of the poor "may best be doone, if everie man put into the Comen Chest, or Boxe of the churche, to the use of the poore, as muche as he may spare of that God geveth him," Bucer argued. At the same time, Parliament after Parliament was passing laws establishing the dole, perhaps the most effective intrusion of central government into the life of the parishes and a second way of rendering relief of the poor impersonal.

Smith also talked about the poor as criminals, and there he came close to giving them voice to speak in his sermon. Urging that mere "Bread will serve beggers, and they must be no choosers: yet bread will not serve some beggers that boldly on Gads hill, Shooters hill, and suche places take mens horses by the heads, and bids them deliver their purses, for these fellowes are of the opinion of the Anabaptists, that everie mans goods must be common to them, or else they will force them to part it." That is a passage most interesting to students of Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, Part 1, and it can lead us to reflect how pervasive was the tendency in the theater to represent the poor as sly, criminal, and comic.

Smith is commonly referred to as a Puritan preacher, but his ties to and appeal for the middleclass culture of Elizabethan England meant that at times he denied the literal words of the bible. We can see a spectacular example in a place where he departed from Drant's sermon. Drant had raised the question "how much a man must geve of his substaunce"; in answer, he quotes a Church father, Tobit and Luke-- Geve all or most, or halfe, or litle lesse, and if thou hast much geve much, if litle, geve as much as thou canst. And out of Luke the 3. chap. He that hath two coates let hym geve one to him that hath not, & of meate likewise." Then he continues, "ere if you desire that I should quallifie this streight commaundement: surely I will not, our own hard hartes are ready inough to find excuses. But I will let the commaundement lye hard as it doth, stand to your owne perils, and quallifie it as you can. (Sig. [A8]r-v) .

Smith took the pressure off his readers, because he was willing to qualify. After rehearsing "give and it shall be given unto you" and the widow's mite, Smith raised "the example of a covetous rich man, who demanding how hee might obtaine eternall life, was answered thus by him, go sell all thou hast, and give to the poore"--a notion so uncomfortable that Smith scurries off, without pause, into a flurry of interpretations:

not that it is necessarie for everie man so to do, or that a man cannot be saved without hee doe so: but thereby teaching him perticulerly to lothe the worlde, and generallie seeke meanes for the daily cherishing and the refreshing of the poore. (sig. C1v)

As a way of summing up the changes which Smith's sermon marks, let me propose that the immense appeal of the sort of argument Smith advanced, the total loss of the sort of analysis Crowley 40 years before had made shows the operation of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism--no new song, of course, but rather an old one sung by Max Webber and Tawney after him. It severed human relationships while stressing only one's relation to God, re-presented individuals in extreme isolation, and glorified financial well-being in part by criminalizing the poor. The figure of Charissa in Spenser's Faerie Queene shows how these impulses fed the Puritan interest in domestic, sexual relations and Perkins' Christian oeconomie.

While all of this new vision of the poor was flourishing forth in the 1590's, a different kind of sexual fad blossomed and faded during the decade. In 1591, Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella was published posthumously and set off a craze for cycles of male, amatory sonnets in the Petrarchan vein--or so I was taught. What I was not taught by my male professors is that, with a telling exception, these sonnet sequences were published in volumes which also presented a long, verse lament by an "abandoned woman." The first of these, appearing in 1592 together with Smith's sermon, was Samuel Daniel's Delia. Contayning certayne Sonnets: with the complaint of Rosamond (London: I. C. for Simon Waterson, 1592). Rosamond was abandoned by a male protector--Henry II, who died--as all of these dead women were, but more important, she was sexually abandoned, as many of the others were as well. Two, Matilda and Lucrece, perished rather than submit to male amatory pursuit, but most of the rest succumbed, presumably to the very kind of sexual persuasion one finds in the sonnet sequences which precede their laments in volume after volume. In an odd sort of way, then, these volumes undo themselves.

The first point I'll make about these female-voiced laments is that these women are intensely isolated. Consider Rosamond's narrative of the night of her seduction, which she begins on a negative, then suddenly positive note: "And now I come to tell the worst of ilnes," she opens, then continues

Com'd was the night, mother of sleepe and feare,
Who with her sable mantle friendly covers,
The sweet-stolne sports, of joyfull meeting Lovers.

. . . loe, I joy'd my Lover, not my Love,
And felt the hand of lust most undesired:
Enforc'd the unprooved bitter sweet to prove,
Which yeelds no mutuall pleasure when tis hired.

But soone his age receiv'd his short contenting,
And sleepe seald up his languishing desires. . .

When he turnes to his rest, I to repenting,
Into my selfe my waking thoughts retires:
My nakedness had prov'd my sences liers.
Now opened were mine eies to looke therein,
For first we taste the fruit, then see our sin.

Again, out of jealousy of possible rivals, Henry physically immures Rosamond in a labyrinth, where, she laments, her beauty cannot be gazed upon. Further, Henry's queen gets revenge, poisoning Rosamond, who sings a sustained swan-song lamenting that no women are present to learn repentance from sexual ways from the now-reformed woman.


And poore distressed Rosamond (said I,)
Is this thy glory got, to die forlorne
In Dezarts, where no eare can heare thee morne?
. . .
Thy sin reveal'd, but thy repentance hid,
Thy shame alive, but dead what thy death did. ([Ee4]r-v)

One function of this sort of isolation is the creation of "character," which has the effect of involving the (male) reader psychologically. The dynamics of that involvement were self-consciously stated by Michael Drayton's Matilda as she also shows that these women functioned within a "literary system." These women know one another's tales; Matilda, who did not capitulate to male lust, complains "Shores wife is in her wanton humor sooth'd," and "Our famous Elstreds wrinckled browes are smooth'd";

Thus looser wantons, still are praisd of many,
Vice oft findes friends, but vertue seldome any. (Hebel, I, 215)

In pursuing this line, Matilda proposes a double audience for such tales and a double standard. This emerges in her comments on Rosamond, "of all so highly graced" and

. . .in our Sainted Legendarie placed,
By him who strives to stellifie her name,
Yet will some Matrons say she was to blame.
Though all the world bewitched with his ryme,
Yet all his skill cannot excuse her cryme.

The creation of character, which we commonly associate with the Elizabethan theater, is, I believe, also a function of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, which must valorize inwardness to generate competition. That is, the generation of a Kate in Taming of the Shrew is paralleled by the re-generation of Redcrosse Knight in the House of Holiness. At issue, in both works, is what is going on inside the fictional figures--or so we have been taught to think about Shakespeare's plays.

And that point will lead to two final points. First, the creation of character seems also to be a function of the invention of a sense of authorship. Writers came to see themselves as part of what Richard Helgerson has termed a "literary system," and began to make claims for the force of "literary" writing. In his discussion of "self-crowned laureates," Helgerson buys into those claims, for the "literary system" he represents is highly literary. However, the regeneration of Redcrosse Knight can remind us that the "literary system" included Puritan divines (and others) who were interested in "character" in a second, though parallel way, and who did not create fads lasting a few years but rather an enduring and vigorous, best-selling market for studies of what a man shall do to be saved (in the words of Bunyan's Christian). Thus my work on such figures is aimed to recall that the distinction which Sidney, Daniel, Spenser, Jonson, or Milton tried to create between literary and non-literary writing, between poetry and what Milton called the work of his left hand, is unreal, and that we need to extend our sense of the "literary system" so as to account for the most popular writing of the period. That is, we need to work out from canonical works to see them participate in language used by men we have little recollection of--Crowley, Smith, and Samuel Daniel.

1. William Perkins, Christian Oeconomie, trans. T. Pickering (London: F. Kyngston, sold by E. Weaver, 1609, RSTC 19677. The view that women ought to suckle their own children was not new, as a dialogue by Erasmus testifies. That the Bible positively enjoins women to perform this "duty" is another matter. To try to argue, as Perkins does (and later Elizabeth Clinton, the Countess of Lincoln did), that the Bible enjoins this "duty" on mothers is sufficiently difficult that one has to ask what motives underlie it. It clearly serves to shrink the household where wetnurses had lived in (large households, to be sure), and seems clearly a function of the new wave of writing about marriage which emerged fully in the 1590's and is noted in Chapter 5.

2. Indeed, the most common application of the text to "love thy neighbor as thyself" had become marriage manuals, in support of the "duty" of husbands to love their wives, rather than in support of alms deeds.

3. Robert Crowley, An informacion and Peticion agaynst the oppressours of the pore commons of this Realme. . .(London: [John Day, 1548], STC 6086), sig. A2r.