Human Sexuality and Diversity in The Renaissance Drama - Essay Example

Running Head: RENAISSANCE DRAMA Human Sexuality and Diversity in The Renaissance Drama [The [The of the Human Sexuality and Diversity in the Renaissance Drama This paper will answer the question, "In what ways, and to what ends, does Renaissance drama represent and explore the diversity of human sexuality" The answer is simple since the Renaissance was an age of so called enlightenment and it brought ample changes, refined tastes and renovated human mind from various perspectives, so the drama produced in this age was versatile and creative in the sense that it preached liberalism and diversified versions and concepts regarding human sexuality were presented through it. It does not mean that it talks about gender inequality rather it revealed the prevailing ills and evils moral dilemmas pertaining to human sexuality in a bold way. For example if we take "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe, it transpires the voluptuous, lustful, luxuriant and sensuous behaviour quite close to sexual thirst to be quenched even at the cost of creed and knowledge or more so on life bond. There has been a double standard for men and women reflected in English Renaissance Drama and may be said to mirror the social life of the age. Further, the growing importance of women in commercial and social spheres was examined in the drama, and Louis B. Wright concludes that This activity and boldness of women, especially women of the middle class, aroused the ire of conservatives who vented their displeasure in pulpit, and were answered by staunch defenders of the virtues of the criticized sex. Even stage plays took up the cudgels. This divergence of opinion on the subject of women can be seen by cataloguing some of the satirists and defenders of the sex. Among the most famous detractors are the author of Schole house of women (about 1542) and attributed to Edward Gosenhill; John Knox, The Monstrous Regiment of Women ( 1558); Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses ( 1583); Stephen Gosson, Quippes for Upstart Newfangled Gentlewomen ( 1595); and Joseph Swetnam , The Araignment of Lewd, idle, froward and unconstant women ( 1615), as well as the anonymous author of Hic Mulier or the Man-Woman ( 1620). The attacks did not go unanswered. Indeed in the case of Sir Thomas Elyot Defence of Good Women ( 1540), praise preceded attack. Other notable defenders of women were Edward More in The Defence of Women and Especially of Englyshe Women ( 1560); Nicholas Breton The Praise of Virtuous Ladies ( 1599); and Daniel Tuvil Asylum Veneris ( 1616). Finally women writers began to appear. The first is Rachel Speght, who in 1617, wrote A Mouzell for Melastomus, The Cynical Bayter of, and foule mouthed Barker against Evahs Sex, which was an attempt to silence the notorious Swetnam, as well as the weighty biblical anti-feminism which, largely by interpretation, held that woman was inferior to man. In a systematic effort to refute old arguments against women, Rachel Speght writes: Secondly, the materiall cause, or matter whereof woman was made, was of a refined mould, if I may so speake: for man was created of the dust of the earth, but woman was made of a part of man, after that he was a living soule; yet was shee not produced from Adams foote, to be his low inferiour; nor from his head to be his superiour, but from his side, neare his heart, to be his equall; that where he is Lord, she may be Lady: and therefore saith God concerning man and woman jointly, 'Let them rule over the fish of the sea, & over the fowles of the Heaven, & over every beast that moueth upon the earth:' by which words, he makes their authority equall, & all creatures to be in subjection unto them both. This being rightly considered, doth teach men to make such account of their wives, as Adam did of Eve, 'This is bone of my bone, & flesh of my flesh:' As also, that they neither doe or with any more hurt unto them, then unto their owne bodies: for men oughte to love their wives as themselves, because hee that loves his wife, loves himselfe: And never man hated his owne flesh (which the woman is) unlesse a monster in nature. Esther Sowerman follows with another defense of women in the same year, 1617, and place, London, with Ester hath hang'd Haman: Or An Answere To a lewd Pamphlet, entitled, The Arraignment of Women. In this spirited treatise, the author tells in "The Epistle Dedicatory to all Right Honorable, Noble, & worthy Ladies, Gentlewomen, & others, virtuously disposed, of the Faeminine Sexe," of how she first learned of Swetnam's attack upon women. Right Honourable, & all others of our Sexe, upon my repaire to London this last Michaelmas Terme; being at supper amongst friends, where the number of each sexe were equall; as nothing is more usuall for table-talke; there fell out a discourse concerning women, some defending, others objecting against our Sex: Upon whiche occasion, there happened a mention of a Pamphlet entitled The Arraignment of Women, which I was desirous to see. The next day a Gentleman brought me the Booke, which when I had superficially runne over, I found the discourse as far off from performing what the title promised, as I found it scandalous & blasphemous: for where the author pretended to write against lewd, idle, & unconstant women, hee doth most impudently rage & rayle generally against all the whole sexe of women. Whereupon, I in defence of our Sexe, began an answer to that shamefull Pamphlet. Further, in dealing with the conventionally conflicting ideas of love and friendship, Shakespeare appears to be suggesting an extraordinary resolution: that after disguised entrance into the male world, the disguise once lifted, she may emerge as the man's equal or friend. Thus the disguise not only obscures the woman's identity; it frees her to a new dimension: she appears to be a man only to reappear as a woman, turning into both friend and lover. Once a "man," the status of equality is recalled when she is a "woman." Such multiplicity of sex roles achieves the purpose of reducing them, thus allowing for an equality of roles in the tailspin of reversals. In Tis Pity Shea's a whore a ,John Forfgives the progression from the female bondage found in the classical plays to a freedom found in the disguise in English Renaissance Drama. It discusses and portrays the background and training of the first professional English actresses, their roles, their influence on the plays written at the time, and how their sexuality and availability became the central feature of their professional identity. " 'Tis Pity She's a Whore" offers audiences at the Public Theater a fresh, contemporary encounter with a startling play written by John Ford in the 1630's. This is one of those evenings when you leave the theater convinced that the director must have rewritten the text, for how could a work with language so frank and nasty and sexual politics so sophisticated have been written almost four centuries ago Yet Ms. Akalaitis has preserved Ford's words with an integrity one rarely finds at the New York Shakespeare Festival even as she weds those words to her own deeply personal vision of its author's themes. Early modern professional theater involved women only marginally, she takes the historical female audience as her starting point, identifying in women's writing the "imagined female audience . . . whose situations, opinions and tastes male dramatists probably responded to" . (Ford 132) As stunningly visualized by Mr. Conklin and the lighting designer, Mimi Jordan Sherin, this Parma merges the eerily deserted piazzas of a Giorgio de Chirico canvas with the lunar dreamscapes of Yves Tanguy. As if to prefigure Annabella's eventual disembowelment, images of female body parts from Salvador Dali and Man Ray proliferate after intermission. The point is not to offer a discourse on art history, but to do what the Surrealists themselves did and bring a civilization's subconscious, forbidden emotions, including its sadistic sexual impulses, to the surface. The scheme even extends to the high-style Italian furnishings, among them twine-covered chairs that seem to be in bondage, and to Gabriel Berry's spectacular costumes, which put the men in oppressive evening clothes and turn the women into Schiaparelli-era fashion victims. The chief change is in the position of the heroine. In Greek and Roman comedy, the scene being always in a public place, respectable, unmarried girls could take no part. The heroine, therefore, either does not appear, or, as a more frequent alternative, is lowered to the rank of psaltria tibicina, or other girl in charge of a leno or lena, although she is often discovered in the end to be of free birth, and assumes her proper rank. The changed cinquecento conditions are reflected in the fact that young men are no longer attracted solely by these declasses, but usually fall in love with respectable girls, though the plot may require that they shall be poor or dependent, and not a match which a calculating parent would approve. But Italian custom, equally, with classical, forbade the appearance of citizens' daughters in the streets; so that the drama would have lost, not gained, by the change in young men's taste, but for the device, introduced from the novelle, of presenting girls in male disguise. To English notions such disguise involves a much greater shock to modesty, as is felt by the Julia and Jessica of Shakespeare, who borrowed the idea perhaps from Montemayor, perhaps from Italian novelists, perhaps even directly from Italian plays. To the Italian dramatist the male dress excused the heroine's appearance in male company, and conferred upon her the right to talk. (Bond, 68) Strangely enough, however, Nerissa's reply, "Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death have good inspirations" proves to be correct, for the casket test serves to shield Portia from false suitors. Apart from this initial conventional image, however, Shakespeare has allowed Portia to exercise an astonishing freedom through the use of her intelligence. Although initially she is presented as the archetypal feminine character, bewailing her bondage to her father's will, we soon see that she is by no means a passive victim: she is, after all, able to indirectly choose her own husband as much as he chooses her, by furnishing clues in a prefatory song which she sings before Bassanio, the man of her choice, decides on one of the three caskets. In addition, by mocking the presumptions of her undesired suitors, she reverses, for once, the anti-feminist tradition in which men railed against women. For once, she punctures the overweening pride of men with satirical aplomb. In so doing, she achieves a kind of independence of spirit which remains unpunished and stands as an example of feminine outspokenness. As the Middleton and William Rowley has already provided us with the opinion that desire is unnatural because it is unruly and contrary to the orderly flow of fluids, a pathological female sexuality is exactly what fits the bill that he draws up to solve the problem that Isabella encounters in the form of Angelo's desire. Though he is dressed as a clergyman, the ministering to female sexual needs has a decidedly physician-like aspect. Similar to the Doctor in The Two Noble Kinsmen's cure for frustrated virgins, the Middleton and William Rowley's "prescribes" the bed-trick as a convenient cure. (Thomas, 110) Moreover, the bedtrick device repeatedly requires the employment of a hysterical woman in Jacobean drama, namely in plays such as (but not limited to) Much Ado about Nothing, All's Well That Ends Well, and Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling. The Changeling is a vortex of lust, corruption, murder, sex and death - based on the original story by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. Beatrice Joanna is the daughter of the most powerful man in Alicante. Already engaged to be married, she now falls in love with another young nobleman, and in desperation conspires with her father's servant, the hideously disfigured De Flores, to murder her fiancee. But having committed the crime, De Flores demands the reward of her virginity - and so begins the tragic spiral of lies, deception and murder. The Changeling is Middleton and Rowley's tragic drama which has been performed and appreciated for over 300 years - yet never before brought to film. Marcus Thompson's radical adaptation shot in Alicante and Pinewood Studios, brings to life the play's sardonic realism with a flamboyance of contemporary style. Startling visual imagery combined with sumptuous sets, and costumes by Elizabeth Emanuel, are underlined by a haunting soundtrack by Brian Gray and Gary Moore, which transforms the work into a powerful and electrifying cinema experience. The final outcome is a compelling and obsessive film - the story of two damned souls, Beatrice and De Flores - that culminates in an orgy of madness, sex and death. In act 3 of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling, in a scene that recalls and revises Beatrice Joanna's earlier "seduction" of the loathsome De Flores, De Flores makes evident his intention to commit rape. Beatrice kneels and sues for deliverance, but he refuses, raises her, and, as she shivers in mute fear, declares: 'Las how the turtle pants! Thou'lt love anon What thou so fear'st and faint'st to venture on. (3.4.169-70) These lines are clearly meant to recall the epithalamium from Ben Jonson's masque Hymenaei, composed to celebrate the scandalous marriage of Frances Howard and the Earl of Essex. By repeating Jonson's invocation to marital consummation at the end of a rape scene, Middleton does something similar to what the passage itself does-insists, that is, on the coincidence of fear and desire, of virgin and whore, of marriage and rape. And while the playwright makes the connection between these apparent opposites explicit, he seems to be merely spelling out paradoxes and problems that are already present in Jonson's poem and in the epithalamic tradition in general. Moreover, taking The Troublesome Reign Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, into consideration, it offers a concise overview of author, sexuality, politics, cruelty and productions which helps to illuminate many of the issues that are to be found in the play. A play written by Christopher Marlowe about the life and death of King Edward II of England. It monkeys around with the history a bit with, at one point (just after the death of Piers Gaveston) several years being condensed into one scene. However, there are a lot of scenes which correspond to actual human sexual events, the description of Edward's humiliating defeat by the Scots (at the Battle of Bannockburn), and the basic plot is historically accurate. Although Edward II is not a play about homosexuality. Yes, Edward is gay, or at least bisexual. No, Gaveston is not popular. However, Edward's downfall comes about, first and foremost, because he is a bad king (see above). The nobility justify their coup on the grounds that it is for the good of the country, although it is obvious by the end of the play that the motives of Mortimer Jnr. and Isabella are not completely selfless. While the nobility do make nasty comments about Gaveston, it is more on the basis that he does not have a hereditary peerage References Bond, Warwick. Early Plays from the Italian ( 1911; rpt. New York: Benjamin Bloom), xxxix-xl). 68 Brewer D. S. "The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature, Especially 'Harley Lyrics,' Chaucer, and Some Elizabethans." Modern Language Review, L ( 1955), 257269. Camden Charles Carroll. "Iago on Women." JEGP, XLVIII ( 1949), 57-71. Everett Barbara. "Much Ado About Nothing." The Critical Quarterly, III, No. 4 (Winter 1961), 319-335. Foakes R. A. "The Art of Cruelty: Hamlet and Vindice." Shakespeare Survey, XXVI ( 1973), 21-31. Ford, John N. W. Bawcutt; 'tis Pity She's a Whore'. University of Nebraska Press, 1966. Gosenhill Edward (attributed to). The Schole House of Women. London: J. Allde, 1572. In Edward Vernon Utterson, ed. Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetty, II. London: T. Davison for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817, 55-104. Holzknecht Karl L. "The Dramatic Structure of The Changeling," in Shakespeare's Contemporaries. Eds. Max Bluestone and Norman Rabkin. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970, 367-77. Marlowe, Christopher. Edward II. Nick Hern Books (December 15, 1999). ISBN: 1854594109. Middleton, Thomas, and William Rowley. The Changeling. Ed. Joost Daalder. London: A and C Black, 1991.) Speght Rachel. A Mouzell for Melastomus, The Cynical Bayter of, and foule mouthed Barker against Evahs Sex. London: Printed by Nicholas Okes for Thomas Archer, 1617. Bodleian MS. 4 LGg Art. Read More