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OX F O R D E N G L I S H M O N O G R A P H S
General Editors
hel e n barr dav i d brads h aw
pau li na kewes h erm i o ne lee
l au ra m arcu s dav i d no rbro ok
fi o na s taffo rd
This page intentionally left blank
Shakespeare’s
Unreformed Fictions
G I L L I A N WO O D S
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Gillian Woods 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 978–0–19–967126–7
Printed in Great Britain by the
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For John
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
List of Abbreviations x
Editions Used xi
Introduction 1
1. Incorporating the Past in 1 Henry VI 25
2. Converting Names in Love’s Labour’s Lost 58
3. Seeming Difference in Measure for Measure and
All’s Well that Ends Well 90
4. Affecting Possession in King Lear 133
5. Knowing Fiction in The Winter’s Tale 169
Bibliography 209
Index 233
Acknowledgements
This book began as a DPhil thesis at Oxford University, where I was very
fortunate in being supervised by Laurie Maguire. She remains a constant
source of inspiration and this book owes much to her enthusiasm and
commitment. Many thanks are likewise due to Emma Smith, who has
read and reread drafts with her typical grace, humour, and erudition. I am
also very grateful for the encouragement and constructive comments of
my DPhil examiners, Alison Shell and Tiffany Stern, and I would like to
thank Alison for sharing her pre-publication work on Shakespeare and
religion with me. Henry Woudhuysen and Richard Proudfoot offered in-
structive comments on sections of the book in its earliest incarnations,
and I remain indebted to them for their advice. Kate Rumbold has pro-
vided wisdom and raised morale at key moments.
This book would not have been possible without the doctoral funding
provided by the Oxford English Faculty and the Arts and Humanities
Research Council. I am grateful too for a scholarship from the Drapers
Society and travel grants from Hertford College. Helen Barr, Anne
Hudson, and Janie Steen provided invaluable help in starting the project.
The book began its post-doctoral life at Wadham College, Oxford, where
I worked as a Lecturer and then a Tutor and Junior Research Fellow.
Thanks to my friends and colleagues in English, Ankhi Mukherjee and
Bernard O’Donoghue, and to the Senior Tutors, Jane Garnett, Caroline
Mawson, and Nicola Cooper-Harvey. This book was finished during my
time as a Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, where I benefited enor-
mously from the help of incredibly supportive colleagues. I would par-
ticularly like to thank those in the Renaissance team who talked through
parts of the book at various ‘Brown Bag’ research lunches, including
Nicky Hallett, Emma Rhatigan, and especially Marcus Nevitt and Cathy
Shrank, who both reread material and offered helpful comments. Thanks
also to Madeleine Callaghan, Ranjan Sen, and Carmen Szabo. My future
colleagues at Birkbeck showed interest in the project when it was most
needed, for which I am very grateful.
Various sections of this book have been presented at Oxford University,
Cambridge University, the Shakespeare Institute, and a number of Shake-
speare Association of America meetings. I am grateful to auditors and
seminar participants for their interest and input. The superb librarians at
the British Library, the Bodleian, the Oxford English Faculty Library, and
Senate House made the research possible, and a pleasure.
Acknowledgements ix
Particular thanks also to Jacqueline Baker, Jenny Townshend, and the
anonymous readers at OUP, whose enabling suggestions have vastly im-
proved the book.
While my debts to others are many, the faults are all my own.
A shorter and earlier version of Chapter 2 appears under the title, ‘Ca-
tholicism and Conversion in Love’s Labour’s Lost’, in How to Do Things
with Shakespeare, ed. Laurie Maguire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008). I would
like to thank the editor and the press for their permission to reproduce
this material here.
Most importantly, thanks to my family for all their support and pa-
tience. My parents’ belief and love have made everything possible. And
John has done more than can be put into words.
List of Abbreviations
EEBO Early English Books Online
ELH English Literary History
ELN English Language Notes
ELR English Literary Renaissance
HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly
MLQ Modern Language Quarterly
PQ Philological Quarterly
RES Review of English Studies
SEL Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900
SQ Shakespeare Quarterly
SS Shakespeare Survey
SSt Shakespeare Studies
STC Short Title Catalogue, ed. A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, 2nd edi-
tion, rev. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and Katharine F. Pantzer
(London: Bibliographical Society, 1976)
TLS Times Literary Supplement
Editions Used
In chapters 1 to 5, references in the text to the plays that are the subject
of those chapters are to the following editions:
King Henry VI Part 1, ed. Edward Burns (London: Arden Shakespeare,
2000)
Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. Henry Woudhuysen (London: Arden
Shakespeare, 1998)
Measure for Measure, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998)
All’s Well that Ends Well, ed. Susan Snyder (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993)
King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition, 2nd edn, ed. René Weis (Edinburgh:
Pearson Education Ltd, 2010) (Quarto text unless otherwise stated)
The Winter’s Tale, ed. Stephen Orgel (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996)
Unless otherwise stated, other references to Shakespeare are to The Oxford
Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd edn, ed. John Jowett, William
Montgomery, Gary Taylor, and Stanley Wells (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005). References to the Bible are to the 1560 Geneva Bible.
Introduction
Catholicism had an imaginative hold on early modern drama long

after the Reformation had outlawed its practice. Friars had been
banned from England in the 1530s, but they continued to populate
the nation’s plays; the ‘wandering of pilgrimages’ had been dismissed
as ‘idolatry and superstition’, but palmers trekked across the stage re-
gardless; dramatic dialogue was suffused with idioms and metaphors
from the old faith, no matter how abhorrent their theological mean-
ing was to orthodox thought.1 Shakespeare’s drama especially is per-
vaded with traces of a culture that was theoretically past, but which
remained troublingly present: the ghost of Hamlet’s father complains
of purgatorial pains; Romeo woos Juliet as a saintly statue able to
grant prayers; Olivia grieves for her dead brother in a chantry; Pros-
pero closes his play bargaining with pardons and indulgences. Resid-
ual Catholicism haunts different aspects of the dramaturgy: in the
words the characters utter and the costumes they wear, in the tradi-
tional stories and real-life events that haunt the plays, and in the set-
tings that situate the drama as fiction. This book explores the creative
function of such unreformed content. It argues that, dislocated from
their theological context, these contested signs have significant dra-
matic value, but that reading them requires an understanding of their
multi-faceted nature.
An expression as familiar as ‘by the mass’ helps to pinpoint the con-
flicted connotations of ‘Catholic’ meaning. Referring to an outlawed sac-
rament, the expletive has an obvious Catholic heritage. In his epigram
‘Against Swearing’, John Harington mischievously records the loss of the
idiom’s theological impact as part of a broader spiritual catastrophe. The
‘ancient custome’ of swearing ‘in weighty matters by the Masse’ is lost
‘when the Masse went downe’, and is gradually replaced by less doctri-
nally controversial terms until:
1
‘Announcing Injunctions for Religion’ (1559), in Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul
L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, 3 vols, ii (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964–9),
pp. 117–32.
2 Shakespeare’s Unreformed Fictions
Last, hauing sworne away all faith and troth,
Only God dam’n them is their common oath.
Thus custome kept decorum by gradation,
That losing Masse, Crosse, Faith, they find damnation.2
The irony of the joke communicates nostalgia while refusing to take re-
sponsibility for it.
Other commentators offer clear-cut condemnation in sectarian
terms. The puritan preacher Stephen Jerome itemizes: ‘Superstitious
Oathes, as by the Masse, Rood, Crosse, by our Lady, and by Popish
Saints’.3 For hotter Protestants swearing ‘by the mass’ was a form of
the same dangerous sin that was inherent in the mass itself: idolatry.
In the hugely popular and influential The Plaine Mans Path-Way to
Heauen, Arthur Dent explains: ‘it is an hainous thing to sweare by
idoles: as S. Mary, our Ladie, by the Masse, by the Rood, &c.’4 John
Boys (the dean of Canterbury) spells out the structure of the sin: ‘An
oath is an inuocating of God: he therefore that sweares by the light,
makes light his God: hee that sweares by the Masse, doth make that
Idoll his God.’5 Swearing by anything other than God turns that thing
into an idol; swearing by the idolatrous mass is idolatry doubled.
Likewise, William Vaughan reasons: ‘When they sweare by senseles
blocks & stocks, by the Masse, by Gog or magog, they detract from
Gods honour, in attributing his due to dumbe and deafe Idols.’6 The
staunchly anti-Catholic Calvinist Andrew Willet is similarly emphatic:
swearing by God’s name in a lawful oath is ‘a peculiar parte of Gods
worship’, but those that swear ‘by creatures, by Saints, nay by Idols, as
by the Masse, by the Roode, and such lyke . . . doe giue the honor due
vnto God vnto others, and so commit idolatrie’.7 These condemna-
tions carefully avoid attributing to the mass any sacred significance,
2
John Harington, The Most Elegant and Witty Epigrams (London, 1618), sigs. [K5v–
K6r]. Harington described himself in equivocal terms as a ‘protesting Catholicke Puritan’;
as cited in Jason Scott-Warren, ‘Harington, Sir John (bap. 1560, d. 1612)’, Oxford Diction-
ary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online edn, May 2010
<http://www.oxforddnb.com.eresources.shef.ac.uk/view/article/12326?docPos=4, accessed
24 August 2012>.
3
Stephen Jerome, Seauen Helpes to Heauen (London, 1614), p. 434.
4
Arthur Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heauen (London, 1607), p. 144. [First
published 1601.]
5
John Boys, An Exposition of al the Principal Scriptures Vsed in our English Liturgie
(London, 1610), sig. N2r.
6
William Vaughan, The Arraignment of Slander Periury Blasphemy (London, 1630), sig.
R2v.
7
Andrew Willet, A Fruitfull and Godly Sermon . . . Vpon the 5. Chapter of the Prophesie of
Zacharie, 1, 2, 3, 4 Verses (London, 1592), sig. [D4r–v].
Introduction 3
while also warning against its continuing menace. The very lack of
divine meaning in the mass makes it an inappropriate term to swear
by, and thus this profanity is as dangerous as taking God’s name in
vain, if differently so.
These interpretations of ‘by the mass’ as idolatrous are hardly repre-
sentative views of the early modern public; such sensitivity to the word
‘mass’ is not too distant from the caricatured precision of those who refer
to the ‘nativity’ as a means of avoiding ‘Christmas’. Even so, as a profanity,
‘by the mass’ was strong enough to have fallen under the prohibitions
against staged swearing stipulated by the ‘Acte to restraine Abuses of Play-
ers’. The Act itself does not detail the old expression. It forbids: ‘any Stage
play Intrerlude Shewe Maygame or Pageant [to] jestingly or p[ro]phanely
speake or use the holy Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy
Ghoste or of the Trinitie’.8 Yet in practice ‘by the mass’ was interpreted as
belonging to this proscription against blasphemy. The expurgated folio
text of 2 Henry IV alters the quarto’s ‘by the masse’ to ‘Looke, looke’
(2.2.62) and ‘By the mas’ to ‘Then’ (2.4.17); similarly, the folio Hamlet
removes the quarto’s ‘By the masse’ (2.1.50).9 Such alterations mark out
‘by the mass’ as a stronger profanity than words such as ‘heaven’, attesting
to its enduring meaningfulness.
Nevertheless puritanical railing and the need to restrain such abuse
indicates that many people saw no harm in it, or at least, not enough to
prevent them from using the term. The Church of England clergyman
Nicholas Byfield protested at the irony that ‘many will not forsweare that
will sweare at euery worde, at least by lesse oathes, as by the masse, faith,
troth, truth, &c.’10 By 1628, John Earle (who would later become the
Bishop of Salisbury) describes both ‘by the Masse’ and ‘by our Ladie’ as
‘olde out of date innocent othes’.11 These Catholic expletives characterize
the idiom of a ‘Blunt Man’: as a pre-Reformation profanity in a post-
Reformation context, ‘by the mass’ has the connotation but not the actual
meaning of blasphemy.12
But decades earlier, the notion that the antiquated quality of the oath
made it innocent infuriated the moderate puritan William Perkins. In
1591 he bemoans as an example of the ‘great ignorance’ prevalent in
8
3 Jac. I, c. 21: 27 May 1606; as quoted by Gary Taylor, ‘’Swounds Revisited: Theatri-
cal, Editorial, and Literary Expurgation’, in Shakespeare Reshaped, 1606–1623, ed. Gary
Taylor and John Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 51–106 (p. 51).
9
Taylor, pp. 69–70, p. 74.
10
Nicholas Byfield, An Exposition Vpon the Epistle to the Colossians (London, 1615),
p. 104.
11
John Earle, Micro-cosmographie (London, 1628), sig. G3v.
12
Earle, sig. G3r.
England the belief: ‘That a man may sweare by the Masse, because it is
nothing now: and byr Ladie, because she is gone out of the country.’13
This misapprehension is listed among other ‘common opinions’ that sug-
gest shades of theological indifference and casual nostalgia for pre-Refor-
mation times:
13 That it is the safest, to doo in Religion as most doo . . . .
19 That it was a good world when the old Religion was,
because all things were cheap. . . .
24 That if a man remember to say his praiers in the morning
(thogh he neuer vndersta[n]d them) he hath blessed himselfe
for all the day following. . . .
26 That a man eats his maker in the Sacra[ment].14
Here, swearing ‘by the mass’ is part of a behavioural pattern of religious pas-
sivity (points 13 and 24), cultural reminiscence (point 19), and outright
theological confusion (point 26). Perkins’ Protestant enthusiasm makes him
particularly sensitive to imperfectly reformed attitudes; but his complaint
usefully isolates the way in which an apparently Catholic word could and did
function in an unreformed manner, without denoting straightforwardly
Catholic theology. For some the Catholic status of the idiom made it safe,
precisely because Catholicism had (in their eyes) lost its meaning. The ex-
pression ‘by the mass’ thus exhibits something of the conflicted nature of
Catholic meaning in post-Reformation England: alternatively dangerous and
benign, spiritually Catholic and sinfully papist, idolatrously damnable and
nostalgically ‘nothing’. Part of the imaginative appeal of Catholicism on the
post-Reformation stage derives from this very sense of its being ‘safely’ anti-
quated rather than theologically relevant. Just as the swearer can sound pro-
vocative without really blaspheming, dramatists can play with aesthetics that
lack real meaning. The desire of commentators such as Perkins to cancel out
the linguistic traces of the nation’s Catholic heritage is an implicit acknowl-
edgment that this semantic currency (however downgraded) meant contin-
ued survival. There are different registers of Catholicism that speak to
different (if sometimes overlapping) attitudes to the religion. Understanding
unreformed fiction depends upon recognizing this multiplicity.
In recent years literary critics have become more fluent in the religious
dialects of the post-Reformation period, and have come to realize that the
centrality of religion to early modern experience cannot be ignored.
Groundbreaking work by scholars such as Debora Shuger has caused us
to acknowledge the religiosity of post-Reformation religion and revise
13
William Perkins, The Foundation of Christian Religion ([London?], 1591), sig. A3r.
14
Perkins, sigs. A2v–A3r.
Introduction 5
fashionable 1980s assumptions that reformed religion was simply secular-
ism by a more palatable name.15 Our understanding of the complexity of
denominational difference has also deepened. Interdisciplinary engage-
ment with revisionist historians including Eamon Duffy, Christopher
Haigh, Peter Lake, and Michael Questier has provided us with an invalu-
ably nuanced vocabulary and framework for understanding what one
critic neatly terms ‘hybrid faith’: belief and practice as ‘variegated’.16 Now
that theological context looks different, complexities within literary con-
tent have become newly available, provoking a surge in theologically sen-
sitive scholarship. Religion has reached beyond its traditional critical
limits of passing references to overtly Christian genres (sermons, religious
verse) and allegorizing Christian readings of secular texts.17 Brian Cum-
mings’ superbly erudite The Literary Culture of the Reformation reveals the
close relationship between religious thought and grammar of linguistic
expression in the period.18 Most significant for Catholic studies in par-
ticular has been Alison Shell’s Catholicism, Controversy and the English
Literary Imagination, 1558–1660, which opened a new critical paradigm
by articulating and explaining the importance of attending to both Cath-
olic and anti-Catholic epistemologies.19 Drawing on ideas of otherness
and gender, work by Arthur F. Marotti and Frances Dolan has also in-
sightfully suggested ways in which Catholicism differentially (and prob-
lematically) defined English national identity.20 The perceived place of
15
See, for example, Debora Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Reli-
gion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1990); and The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity (Berkeley, CA: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1994).
16
Jean-Christophe Mayer, Shakespeare’s Hybrid Faith: History, Religion, and the Stage
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Peter Lake, ‘Religious Identities in Shakespeare’s
England’, in A Companion to Shakespeare, ed. David Scott Kastan (Oxford: Blackwell,
1999), pp. 57–84 (p. 79). Important revisionist history includes: Eamon Duffy, The Strip-
ping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1992); Christopher Haigh (ed.), The English Reformation Revised (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Christopher Haigh, English Reformations:
Religion, Politics, and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
17
In Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Peter E. McCullough inaugurated a new genre
of criticism which recognizes the theological, political, and literary importance of the
sermon.
18
Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
19
Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–
1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
20
Arthur F. Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic
Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
2005); Frances Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century
Print Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).
Catholicism in the margins of early modern culture has re-positioned it in
the central ground of modern scholarship (along with Moors, Jews, ho-
mosexuals, and women).
But the question of how fiction translates theology into literary forms
still lingers, even as it has become more urgent. Despite the increasing
popularity of studies into ‘Shakespeare and religion’, the methods used to
investigate connections between theology and drama remain in their rela-
tively early stages. Within Shakespeare studies revisionism has primarily
generated work focused on the question ‘Was Shakespeare a Catholic?’21
Much of this scholarship is deeply sensitive to the confessional complexi-
ties of the age. Stephen Greenblatt and Gary Taylor have, for example,
provocatively theorized about a Shakespeare who negotiated the epistemo-
logical difficulties of dealing with a familial and perhaps personal allegiance
to the outlawed Roman faith.22 These readings remind us of tensions in-
herent in religious experience in the period and make us aware of Shake-
speare’s exposure to Catholic ideas (through his school teachers Simon
Hunt and John Cottom, and Catholic relatives on his mother’s side).23 This
biographical work may help to explain why Shakespeare has a knowledge
of and an interest in Catholic material. But arguments for Shakespeare’s
personal Catholicism are sometimes predicated on reductively circular
21
This is an old question. Famously, Richard Davies, a seventeenth-century archdeacon
of Lichfield, claimed Shakespeare ‘died a papist’. More recently, critics have associated
Shakespeare with the ‘William Shakeshafte’ mentioned in the 1581 will of the Catholic
gentleman Alexander Hoghton. Following E. K. Chambers, Oliver Baker, and Peter Mil-
ward, E. A. J. Honigmann gave this idea its first book-length exploration, suggesting that
Shakespeare may have spent time in Hoghton’s recusant household in the predominantly
Catholic county of Lancashire; Shakespeare: The ‘Lost Years’, 2nd edn (Manchester: Man-
chester University Press, 1998).
22
Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare (London:
Jonathan Cape, 2004); Gary Taylor, ‘Forms of Opposition: Shakespeare and Middleton’,
ELR 24 (1994), 283–314; and ‘The Cultural Politics of Maybe’, in Theatre and Religion:
Lancastrian Shakespeare, ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson (Man-
chester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 242–58. Other biographies that entertain
the possibility of a Catholic Shakespeare include Anthony Holden’s William Shakespeare
(London: Abacus, 2000); Ian Wilson’s Shakespeare: The Evidence (London: Headline,
1993); and Michael Wood’s In Search of Shakespeare (London: BBC, 2003). Park Honan’s
Shakespeare: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) is persuaded by, but does not
fully endorse, the theory, pp. 60–71. For a summary of the biographical debates about
Shakespeare’s religion, see David Bevington, Shakespeare and Biography (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010), pp. 74–98.
23
A common focus for discussion about the religion of Shakespeare’s family, especially
of his father, is the ‘Spiritual Testament’: a recusant document supposedly signed by John
Shakespeare. This testament was found at the Shakespeare family house in Henley Street
by builders. Edmund Malone published the testament but later denounced it as a forgery.
See William Shakespeare, The Plays and Poems, ed. Edmund Malone, 10 vols (London,
1790), I, Part II, pp. 161–6; and Edmund Malone, An Inquiry into the Authenticity of
Introduction 7
logic: a lack of evidence is translated as evidence (the prudent Catholic
Shakespeare necessarily hides his faith; his silence signals his commit-
ment);24 alternatively (or in addition) read in a particular way, decontextu-
alized aspects of Shakespeare’s texts supposedly yield biographical
information that simultaneously corroborates that Catholic literary analy-
sis. I am more persuaded by James Shapiro’s cogent description of early
modern religious identity in terms of palimpsest. He rejects biographical
attempts to give Shakespeare and his family a confessional label:
To argue that the Shakespeares were secretly Catholic or, alternatively, main-
stream Protestants, misses the point that except for a small minority at one
doctrinal extreme or other, those labels failed to capture the layered nature
of what Elizabethans, from the Queen down, actually believed. The white-
washed chapel walls, on which perhaps an image or two were still faintly
visible, are as good an emblem of Shakespeare’s faith as we are likely to
find.25
Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments (London, 1796), pp. 195–204. This
document retains its disputed status in the twenty-first century: it was disregarded by
Alastair Fowler during the course of a highly critical review of Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in
the World, but subsequently defended as authentic in a letter by Richard Wilson. See
Alastair Fowler, ‘Enter Speed’, TLS, 4 February 2005, pp. 3–5; and Richard Wilson, Letter,
TLS, 18 February 2005, p. 17. Peter Davidson and Thomas McCoog also dismissed the
idea of Shakespeare’s involvement in a ‘Jesuit plot’, pointing out the significant difference
between nostalgia for Catholicism and active militancy, as well as the lack of evidence for
Jesuit distribution of the ‘Testament’. But Peter Milward objected to the broadness of the
dismissal. See Thomas McCoog and Peter Davidson, ‘Unreconciled: What Evidence Links
Shakespeare and the Jesuits?’, TLS, 16 March 2007, p. 12, and Peter Milward, Letter, TLS,
28 March 2007. Robert Bearman shows the evidentiary problems with claims for the iden-
tity of ‘Shakeshafte’, the Testament, and John Shakespeare’s recusancy; ‘“Was William
Shakespeare William Shakeshafte?” Revisited’, SQ 53.1 (2002), 83–94; ‘John Shakespeare’s
“Spiritual Testament”: A Reappraisal’, SSt 56 (2003), 184–202; ‘John Shakespeare: A
Papist or Just Penniless?’, SQ 56.4 (2005), 411–33. Similarly, Thomas M. McCoog and
Peter Davidson scrutinize the historical evidence on which ‘Catholic Shakespeare’ readings
are predicated and criticize the standards of related scholarship; ‘Edmund Campion and
William Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing?’, in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Cam-
pion and the Early English Jesuits, 2nd edn, ed. Thomas McCoog (Rome: Institutum Histo-
ricum Societatis Iesu, 2007), pp. 165–85.
24
This ‘false syllogism’ is pointed out in Michael Davies, ‘On this Side Bardolatry: The
Canonisation of the Catholic Shakespeare’, Cahiers Elisabéthains 58 (2000), 31–47. In
That Man Shakespeare (Hastings: Helm Information, 2005), David Ellis outlines the meth-
odology employed by biographers of Shakespeare, and the academically irresponsible
masking of its limitations that is sometimes practised. He responds to Greenblatt’s book
specifically in ‘Biographical Uncertainty and Shakespeare’, Essays in Criticism 55 (2005),
193–208. However, in the earlier Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2001), Greenblatt’s speculations generate a nuanced reading of the tragedy that shows
the potential of tempered, biographically inflected criticism.
25
James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London: Faber and
Faber, 2005), p. 167. For a related reading of ‘whitewash’, see Juliet Fleming, ‘Whitewash
and the Scene of Writing’, SSt 28 (2000), 133–8.
Of course, that certain critical readings are undermined by syllogism does not
invalidate all biographical lines of inquiry: knowledge of an author’s faith (as
it changes through time) can enhance our understanding of his or her work.
But it seems to me that in the absence of stronger external evidence this is not
the most helpful goal of literary criticism. Shakespeare could be a crypto-
Catholic or an unenthusiastic Catholic, a writer intrigued by the cultural
implications of religious problems or a professional who understands the
value of denominational equivocation, or any or none of these at any given
moment. (Given the way Shakespeare often reminds us of anti-Catholic
meanings as well as Catholic ones, he is certainly very sensitive to the negative
perceptions of the religion.) Even in less turbulent times, religion operates as
a framework, whereas faith is interstitial: religion stipulates a set of principles
about belief and practice to which individuals adhere in individual ways. Even
if a startling document could emerge that proved some form of Catholic
belief on the part of Shakespeare, it would be useful for our understanding of
the man, but it wouldn’t ‘solve’ the drama, and nor should we wish it to. Bio-
graphical criticism problematically implies that Catholic content in the plays
is only significant if Shakespeare was Catholic, when for heterogeneous early
modern audiences Catholic resonance could never be neutral. If the goal of
criticism is to tell us what Shakespeare believed, we risk skipping over the
theatrical impact of the plays themselves. The ambiguity of Shakespeare’s en-
gagement with religion self-evidently cannot tell us anything certain about his
faith, but analysing this ambiguity can help us better understand the drama.
A related but different branch of criticism finds in Shakespearean
drama a definite Catholic meaning and agenda.26 This scholarship has
done invaluable work in exposing the quantity of Catholic images and
idioms in the drama. But reviewers frequently articulate frustration with
the methodological limits of such interpretations. Sectarian messages are
read into words or images that have a Catholic resonance. Commentators
note a narrowness of focus on theological possibility to the near exclusion
of its complicating literary shape and situation, and an unwillingness to
take account of ambiguity. For example, David Daniell protests: ‘Too
often, Shakespeare’s strategies are identified as doctrinaire and Catholic
26
See, for example, Peter Milward, Shakespeare’s Religious Background (London: Sidg-
wick & Jackson, 1973); Richard Wilson, Secret Shakespeare (Manchester: Manchester Uni-
versity Press, 2004); Clare Asquith, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of
William Shakespeare (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005); David N. Beauregard, Catholic The-
ology in Shakespeare’s Plays (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008); John Water-
field, The Heart of his Mystery: Shakespeare and the Catholic Faith in England Under Elizabeth
and James (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009).
Introduction 9
when we can say only that their intention was dramatic’.27 Hannibal
Hamlin thinks that being fixedly ‘intent on establishing Shakespeare’s Ca-
tholicism’ produces ‘reductive, or forced’ readings of the plays.28 Even
work that is less doctrinally categorical in its literary and biographical
claims has been seen to elide the representational equivocality of Shake-
speare’s Catholic signs. Anthony Low qualifies his praise of Maurice
Hunt’s rigorous and informative reading of Shakespeare’s Religious Allu-
siveness: the ‘detailed discussion is sometimes uneven because of the oc-
casional failure to allow that, although Shakespeare does indeed constantly
play with religious terms and concepts, he usually does so analogically,
with further complications of context and speaker.’29 The broader dynam-
ics of the drama is often under-explored when Catholic meaning is at
stake.
In the face of an absence of obvious Catholic plots, other critics have
pushed deeper, finding Catholic meaning encoded in Shakespeare’s secu-
lar action. Anne Barton criticizes a ‘preference [for] misty allegorical read-
ings . . . supposedly communicating to the Catholic faithful among the
theater audience a shadowy other drama (often embarrassingly at odds
with the one more straightforwardly—not to mention interestingly—
being acted on the stage).’30 Dympna Callaghan is uneasy with the way
‘some strains of recent work on religion . . . compartmentalize issues so
that they cannot take, say, sexuality and religion in the same breath’. Thus
‘the new and potentially momentous issues around Shakespeare’s religion
are in danger of being addressed as if the past twenty years of literary
study never happened.’31 Thus while these studies of Catholicism and
Shakespeare have been crucially instrumental in drawing attention to the
post-Reformation contexts of the drama, they threaten to keep Catholic
scholarship disconnected from literary appreciation of the plays, effec-
tively consolidating the very marginalization they seek to remedy.
One problem with identifying Shakespeare’s works as ‘Catholic’ is that
the label overlooks the secular content of the drama and the theological
function of Catholic discourse in the era. Even if Shakespeare did nurture
an inner Catholic faith, his plays do not manifest such a faith in the way
27
David Daniell, Review of Velma B. Richmond, Shakespeare, Catholicism, and Ro-
mance, Modern Language Review 97.2 (2002), 387–8 (388).
28
Hannibal Hamlin, Review of David Beauregard, Catholic Theology in Shakespeare’s
Plays, SQ 59.4 (2008), 506–8.
29
Anthony Low, Review of Maurice Hunt, Shakespeare’s Religious Allusiveness, SQ 57.3
(2006), 359–61 (360–1).
30
Anne Barton, ‘The One and Only’, New York Review of Books, 11 May 2006.
31
Dympna Callaghan, ‘Shakespeare and Religion’, Textual Practice 15.1 (2001),
1–4 (2).
that contemporary Catholics deemed imperative. Any critic seeking to
claim a ‘Catholic Shakespeare’ needs at the very least to register the sig-
nificant differences between the Shakespearean canon and the relatively
large body of extant Catholic writings from the period. A brief survey of
the numerousness and variety of early modern Catholic texts disabuses us
of the notion that Shakespeare’s ambiguous writing was the only available
means of Catholic expression. Allison and Rogers record the publication
of 932 Catholic texts in this period. The inclusion of works in Latin or
European languages takes the total up to 1,619.32 This level of production
made Catholic printed works a significant—though illicit—presence in
the post-Reformation book trade.33 Ceri Sullivan calculates that Catholic
secret press production accounted for a tenth as much as the legal market
in devotional texts. In the midst of Shakespeare’s career, the numbers of
Catholic texts were growing: in the years 1593–1603 production almost
doubled on the previous decade.34 In their aims and forms these writings
are distinct from secular drama. Certainly the prohibited production and
circulation of Catholic materials created a very different experience for
consumers of such texts than for the publicly performed and legally
printed Shakespearean plays. A healthy black market in Catholic books
took a variety of forms: texts might be smuggled in from Europe or
printed in secret presses in England, and then delivered by itinerant priests
as they journeyed between households, or sold by merchants in shops, or
by private individuals in their homes, or even under the counter at the
public bookshops in St Paul’s churchyard in London.35 And of course an
individual item could find multiple ‘readers’: texts might be read aloud to
groups of the faithful, and were also lent, copied, and bequeathed in wills.
Not only printed works but also manuscripts carried Catholic writings
across the country.36 However, the risks of supplying and obtaining such
32
Antony Allison and D. M. Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English
Counter-Reformation Between 1558 and 1640, 2 vols (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989–94).
This statistic is also recorded in Patrick Collinson, Arnold Hunt, and Alexander Walsham,
‘Religious Publishing in England 1557–1640’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in
Britain, vol. IV: 1557–1695, ed. John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2002), pp. 29–66 (p. 46).
33
T. A. Birrell, ‘English Counter-Reformation Book Culture’, Recusant History 22
(1994), 113–22.
34
Ceri Sullivan, Dismembered Rhetoric: English Recusant Writing, 1580–1603 (London:
Associated University Presses, 1995), pp. 36, 29.
35
Lisa McClain, Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience Among
Catholics in Protestant England, 1559–1642 (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 53. For de-
tails about the locations of presses, see Collinson, Hunt, and Walsham, p. 45.
36
Nancy Pollard Brown, ‘Paperchase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Eliza-
bethan England’, in English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, ed. Peter Beal and Jeremy
Griffiths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 120–43; David Shorney, Protestant Nonconformity
Introduction 11
material were real: William Carter was imprisoned and subsequently ex-
ecuted for printing Catholic writing that was deemed treasonous.37
Readings of ‘hidden’ or ‘encoded’ Catholicism in Shakespeare’s works
adapt as a metaphor the concealed condition of certain Catholic writings.
It is a beguiling metaphor, but the differences between the modes of dis-
course need to be identified and analysed. Where the case for Shake-
speare’s encrypted Catholic meaning is unverifiable, other writings
manifest clear signs of concealment. In order to pass by state censors and
speak to those who wouldn’t knowingly pick up a ‘papist’ book, some
Catholic writers adopted rhetorical disguise such as a deceptively anti-
Catholic title or preface.38 More regularly, texts bore the strains of neces-
sary concealment as they were printed with false publishing or authorial
information. These practices required special papal dispensation since the
Tridentine Decretum de editione et usu sacrorum librorum stipulated that
books should identify their authors.39 Necessary shifts were also made in
manuscripts as well as print. In his Autobiography (c.1609–10), the Jesuit
John Gerard carefully details the means by which he disseminated secret
messages to other Catholics while imprisoned. Single letters bore double
messages: a spiritual one written in charcoal that was legible to the au-
thorities as well as to the recipient, and a private instruction written in
orange juice in ‘the white spaces between the lines’, that was only visible
once heat was applied (Gerard preferred orange juice to lemon juice be-
cause it remains visible after it cools, so the receiver could see if the secret
had been violated). Anne M. Myers argues convincingly that because
communication was vital to covert recusant communities, writing tech-
nique and form take on a meaning as important as the literal message of
the texts being disseminated. She contends that ‘Gerard’s interest in the
methods of circulation surpasses his interest in what is actually being cir-
culated’. In introductory letters between the priest and new communi-
cants ‘information itself is less important than the personal connection
forged by its exchange’, and in the Autobiography he recounts more about
and Roman Catholicism: A Guide to Sources in the Public Record Office (London: PRO Pub-
lications, 1996). Gerard Kilroy has done excellent work discovering and transcribing Cath-
olic manuscripts from the period, though his discussion of the ‘interior writing’ is
unhelpfully partial; Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2005), p. 37.
37
Robert S. Miola, Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 35. I discuss this case further in Chapter 2.
38
Alexandra Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”?: Post-Reformation Catholicism and the
Culture of Print’, Past and Present 168 (2000), 72–123 (92).
39
Collinson, Hunt, and Walsham, p. 46; Walsham, 83.
his methods than the content of his communication.40 The secret bond of
communication itself is the Catholic meaning; it is this which both sus-
tains and proves the vitality of the English Catholic community. We
might also note that Gerard’s secret message—the Catholic shibboleth—
is not here the theological part of his missive. Catholicism is more and less
than its spiritual heart. In the circumstances of post-Reformation Eng-
land, Catholicism adapts to its illicit status, and makes meaning through
(and not just in despite of ) straitened conditions.
However, Gerard’s ‘orange-juice writing’ does not adequately explain
the mechanisms of all Catholic writing in the period, and still less the
dynamics of Shakespeare’s secular plays. The strength of Myers’ reading of
Gerard lies in its specificity: she draws on clear evidence of secret mes-
sages, and pushes beyond the novelty (for modern readers) of coded writ-
ing to analyse the significance of such a mode. But Gerard’s literally
interstitial writing is different even from the camouflage of printed works
adopting anti-Catholic disguise: the absence of individualized address
(found in Gerard’s invisible ink) and the more direct duplicity of false
information (as opposed to hidden information) mean these texts gener-
ate different reading experiences. For all such devices may have helped
bond some readers in a sense of righteous persecution (like the Christians
of ancient Rome), one wonders how far the moral pragmatism of the
form undermined the absoluteness of the message for others. Much work
remains to be done into the relation of form and message across the diver-
sity of Catholic literature.
Furthermore, not all Catholic discourse of the period is structured by
secrecy and fostered sectarian difference. Protestant readers turned to de-
votional texts written by Catholics since Reformed writers were slow to
develop the genre. Famously, Robert Persons’ Christian Directorie proved
extremely popular with a non-Catholic readership. The text went through
six editions issued from the Catholic secret press; in 1584 Edmund Bunny
published a ‘Protestant’ version that maintained ninety per cent of the
original, and which would be reprinted more than thirty times.41 Thus
while religious discourse of the period pulled in denominationally differ-
ent directions, there was also a good deal of overlap that sees writers of
different faiths borrowing from as well as reacting against one another.
40
Anne M. Myers, ‘Father John Gerard’s Object Lessons: Relics and Devotional Ob-
jects in Autobiography of a Hunted Priest’, in Catholic Culture in Early Modern England, ed.
Ronald Corthell, Frances E. Dolan, Christopher Highley, and Arthur F. Marotti (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 216–35 (pp. 223–4).
41
Collinson, Hunt, and Walsham, p. 53; Miola, p. 28; Sullivan, p. 27; and Walsham,
105.
Introduction 13
(Had Shakespeare been particularly committed to expressing his religious
beliefs through his writings, there was a space for a pious but confession-
ally ambiguous voice.) Revisionist scholarship has exposed the reductive-
ness of a taxonomy that puts Catholicism in straightforward opposition
to English Protestantism. The critical challenge of reading Catholic writ-
ing lies in needing to understand its distinctive features and its integration
into English discourse.
Catholic texts themselves differ in content as well as form; Robert S.
Miola’s recent anthology Early Modern Catholicism illustrates creative di-
versity and ideological differences. Rather than being cut off from the
literary innovations of the age, Catholic writers adapted secular genres for
devotional ends: Robert Chambers turned to allegory in Palestina (1600);
Richard Verstegan wrote Odes in Imitation of the Seaven Penitential Psalmes
(1601); and poets such as Southwell, Alabaster, and Constable translated
the literary conventions of amour into piety. Far from all of the texts pub-
lished were ‘devotional’ in nature. Works such as catechisms, hagiogra-
phies, and meditations accounted for only a third of the publications
produced by the British Catholic secret press between 1580 and 1603; the
remaining majority of works were political, reflecting the need to keep
pace with controversy.42 In these works Catholics disputed not only with
Protestant adversaries, but also amongst themselves on issues such as the
imperatives of religious resistance, the nature of political allegiance, and
the structure of ecclesiastical hierarchy.43
Nevertheless what connects all such texts (political and pious) as Cath-
olic is a shared attention to matters of the faith and a determined effort to
change the reader’s mind or spirit in some way. The numerous students at
the English College in Rome who cite recusant books as a prompt to
conversion testify to the persuasive power of Catholic discourse to acti-
vate transformation.44 Even from the 1580s, when textual efforts may
have been less directed to proselytizing and more towards sustaining the
42
Sullivan, p. 37.
43
For discussion of these inter- and intra-confessional controversies, see Thomas H.
Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen–Persons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-
Reformation in England, 1572–1615 (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1964); Peter
Holmes, Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of the Elizabethan Catholics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of
the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (London: Scolar Press, 1977); Peter Mil-
ward, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (London: Scolar
Press, 1978). Central texts in these disputes are available in Recusancy and Conformity in
Early Modern England: Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation, ed. Peter Holmes,
Ginerva Crosignani, Thomas M. McCoog, and Michael Questier (Rome: Institutum His-
toricum Societatis Iesu, 2010).
44
Sullivan, pp. 21–2; Walsham, 103.
Catholic faithful, the point was to enable the reader to do battle against
sin and fight the inevitable corrosion of Protestant influences.45 Books
performed an active role in the varied and besieged Catholic community,
doing the work of outlawed priests who could no longer easily reach their
flock. Thus Father Luis de Granada explained that his Memoriall of a
Christian Life ‘may serve thee for a preacher, to exhort thee unto good
life . . . for an confessionall, to instructe thee, how thou oughtest to con-
fesse thy sinnes, and to make due preparation, when thou intendest to
communicate.’46 From 1585 either being or harbouring a priest was an
act of treason, a crime punishable by death.47 Catholics require regular
access to priests (who minister the sacraments) in order to practise their
religion. But, as John Wilson—the director of the Saint Omer Press—
astutely pointed out in 1616, ‘books penetrate where the priests and reli-
gious cannot enter’.48 In substituting for a ‘preacher’, books performed a
crucial didactic and spiritual function. Manuals, primers, psalters, mis-
sals, breviaries, and prayer books provided English Catholics with clerical
instruction and a means of focusing their faithful practice. For example,
readers who could not access the sacrament of penance with any predict-
ability could train themselves to make a regular and rigorous examination
of conscience. While some works unrealistically maintained the imperative
of confession to a priest, meditating on the stages of the sacrament and
following instructions for penitential behaviour provided readers with a
virtual alternative to confession. Other writers were explicit about how
readers might pragmatically access some of the benefits of the sacraments
without actually receiving them. Thus where English Catholics may ‘want
opportunitie’ to receive the Eucharist, William Stanney counselled that ‘by
making due examination of their consciences, with like preparation, and
feruent desire, to receaue spiritually their sweete Sauiour, in the holy Sacra-
ment of the Altar, doe in this Spiritual receauing, sometimes gaine almost
as much merit, by their contrition and charitie, as if they had receaued
corporally.’49 In this way books were both an intellectual apparatus that
kept English Catholics schooled in religious regulations, and also integral
to the activity of lived faith. Books affected a spiritual transformation in
45
Walsham, 97.
46
Luis de Granada, A Memoriall of a Christian Life, trans. R. Hopkins (Rouen, 1586),
p. 19; as quoted in Sullivan, p. 13.
47
For further details, see Patrick McGrath and Joy Rowe, ‘The Elizabethan Priests:
Their Harbourers and Helpers’, Recusant History 19 (1989), 209–33.
48
Calendar of State Papers, Milan, I, 654; as quoted in Walsham, 102.
49
William Stanney, A Treatise of Penance (Douai, 1617; facs. edn, Menston: Scolar
Press, 1972), p. 298.
Introduction 15
the reader who no longer had ready access to sacramental grace.50 Along
with political works, these texts aim to shape the Catholic subject, and
have at their heart the central importance of the Catholic faith.
In producing romantic comedies, martial histories, and political trag-
edies about kingship, Shakespeare wrote drama that neither contempo-
rary Catholics nor official Protestant censors recognized as Catholic.51
Acknowledging this is not the same as declaring Shakespeare Protestant,
lapsed Catholic, or agnostic; it is simply a statement of early modern
genre. Critics who identify a Catholic Shakespeare often argue that the
ambiguity of his writing is a defence against the penalties associated with
confessional revelation. But even so, artistic choice underpins the secular
subject matter (if not the denominational ambiguity) of Shakespeare’s
works. Alison Shell points out that
Metrical biblical translation would have been an acceptable generic choice
for both Catholic and Protestant at any time in Reformation England; and
for most of the latter part of Shakespeare’s career, religious verse of a more
imaginative kind would also have spanned the denominations and been
relatively unproblematic to write.52
Shakespeare did not take the generic opportunities available to him to
fashion an explicitly religious voice.
One of the most important Catholic literary theorists of the age, the
Jesuit poet Robert Southwell, directly criticized writers who did not use
their gifts to praise God: ‘Poetes by abusing their talent, and making the
follies and feyninges of love the customary subject of theire base endeav-
ors, have so discredited this facultye that a Poett a lover and a lyer, are by
many reckened but three wordes of one significacon.’53 Where Philip
Sidney famously celebrated the ‘golden’ world of fiction as dealing in
deeper truths, defending it from accusations of fraud (‘the poet, he noth-
ing affirms, and therefore never lieth’), Southwell sees secular subject
50
For further discussion, see McClain, pp. 47–50; and Sullivan, pp. 14–25.
51
For a rigorous and measured argument on this point, see Alison Shell, ‘Why Didn’t
Shakespeare Write Religious Verse?’, in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: New Directions in
Biography, ed. Takashi Kozuka and J. R. Mulryne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp.
85–112.
52
Shell (2006), p. 102.
53
Robert Southwell, ‘[Epistle]’ from ‘The Sequence of Poems from the “Waldegrave”
Manuscript (Stonyhurst MS A.v.27)’, in Collected Poems, ed. Peter Davidson and Anne
Sweeney (Manchester: Fyfield Books, 2007), p. 1; also quoted in, Shell (1999), p. 67. For
more on Southwell’s proselytizing discourse, see Shell (1999), pp. 63–77; and Nancy Pol-
lard Brown, ‘Robert Southwell: The Mission of the Written Word’, in The Reckoned Ex-
pense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, 2nd edn, ed. Thomas McCoog
(Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2007), pp. 193–213.
matter as precluding truth.54 An irony here is that many anti-Catholic
writers not only condemned Catholics as outright liars, but also associ-
ated them with the production of ‘idle’ fictions. Roger Ascham, con-
demning the illiterate ignorance of the pre-Reformation past, claimed
that no religious books were read, but only outlandish romances ‘made in
Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or wanton Chanons’. Still worse, in the
post-Reformation present, the infection of Catholicism was spread
through fiction rather than doctrinal works:
Mo[re] Papistes be made, by your mery bookes of Italie, than by your ear-
nest bookes of Louain . . . when the busie and open Papistes abroad, could
not, by their contentious bookes, turne men in England fast enough, from
troth and right iudgement in doctrine, than the sutle and secrete Papistes at
home, procured bawdie bookes to be translated out of the Italian tonge,
whereby ouer many yong willes and wittes allured to wantonnes, do now
boldly contemne all seuere bookes that sounde to honestie and godlines.55
This kind of accusation (however fictional itself ) sees Catholicism as in-
vested not only in theological deceit but also in the pretences of fiction,
putting the two on a continuum. False Catholic doctrine is exchanged for
frivolous fiction, as a more effective assault on the Protestant Word. In
fact people like Southwell would have disapproved of ‘bawdie bookes’ just
as much as Ascham, but the association of Catholicism with fiction on the
one hand and the Catholic rejection of fictional subject matter on the
other marks one of the many complexities of textual culture in the period.
Catholic writers certainly did make use of imaginative motifs in texts they
promoted as true. Alison Shell describes a ‘self-conscious interplay of fact
and fiction’ being deployed as a means of negotiating the intellectual dif-
ficulties of telling improbable miracle stories.56 The spiritual truth inher-
ent in the sacred subject matter meant that fictional embellishment
enhanced rather than impeded the message. But fiction lost its unam-
biguously Catholic value when it became an end in itself.
Hence the use of the word ‘unreformed’ rather than ‘Catholic’ in my
title. I consciously use an unconventional word to signal that I am
54
Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy, in Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works, ed. Kather-
ine Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 235. Alison Shell discusses
possible Catholic critiques of Shakespeare’s secular writing in Shakespeare and Religion
(London: Arden Shakespeare, 2010), pp. 79–119.
55
Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster (London, 1570), sigs. I.iiv–I.iiir.
56
Alison Shell, ‘Divine Muses, Catholic Poets and Pilgrims to St Winifred’s Well: Liter-
ary Communities in Francis Chetwinde’s “New Hellicon” (1642)’, in Writing and Religion
in England, 1558–1689, ed. Roger D. Sell and Anthony W. Johnson (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2009), pp. 273–88 (p. 283).
Introduction 17
discussing ideas and themes in Shakespeare that are not straightforwardly
Catholic in doctrinal terms. However, in identifying ambiguously Catho-
lic material as ‘unreformed’, I am not endorsing a prejudicial perspective
that celebrates the Protestant Reformation (in reality not the united
movement that term implies) as a necessary correction of the old faith,
and which ignores the reformations within the sixteenth-century Catho-
lic Church.57 Rather, the term serves a practical purpose. With its negative
prefix, ‘unreformed’ points to the way the ‘Catholic’ material under dis-
cussion refuses the orthodox narratives of the state Church without ac-
tively promoting an alternative theological agenda. The content studied
in this book has a distinctively Catholic resonance, but it does not neces-
sarily convey theologically or politically Catholic meaning. This material
is sometimes broadly cultural or aesthetic rather than exclusively religious.
That is not to say that culture and theology did not overlap, but rather to
acknowledge that while sermons, polemics, and plays may have influ-
enced one another, they had fundamentally different purposes. I deliber-
ately avoid categorizing Shakespeare’s fiction as ‘Catholic’ because
although such material is semantically pervasive (present in idioms, meta-
phors, and even costumes), it is peripheral in terms of plot and subject.
Indeed it is part of the argument of this book that Shakespeare makes
imaginative rather than confessional use of Catholic aesthetics in his
drama. Unlike Catholic texts, which didactically school readers in the
ways of the faith, Shakespeare’s plays heuristically frame dilemmas for
audiences. Shakespeare encourages us to think with and about the prob-
lems attendant on unreformed content, but he does not tell us what to
think.
Nevertheless it is impossible (and undesirable) to avoid the use of the
term ‘Catholic’ in such a discussion. But I use the term recognizing that
‘Catholic’ (like ‘Protestant’) represents a rather nebulous category. The
very words we use to distinguish different denominational affiliation
(often providing both too much and too little specificity) have a peculiar
habit of switching sides. Thus while ‘Catholic’ usually refers to the unre-
formed Christian faith, it was also a label occasionally appropriated for
official descriptions of the Church of England’s presumed universality.58
Qualifying with the term ‘Roman’ provides a helpful but not necessarily
accurate distinction, since the subjects so designated might adhere to the
57
Miola rejects even the term ‘Reformation’ as ‘prejudicial’; pp. 4–9.
58
For further discussion of this and other taxonomic quirks, see Thomas H. Clancy,
‘Papist–Protestant–Puritan: English Religious Taxonomy 1565–1665’, Recusant History 13
(1975–6), 227–53.
old faith in spiritual matters but patriotically reject the absolute authority
of Rome: not every ‘papist’ supported the pope. This literally broad cate-
gory ‘Catholic’ encompasses ‘recusants’ (those who made an outward sign
of their Catholicism by refusing to attend the mandatory Church of Eng-
land services) and ‘church papists’ (who attended services but secretly re-
jected the teachings of the state Church).59 Yet the term ‘recusant’ was also
used to refer to people who openly or privately disputed the practices of
the Church of England for not being reformed enough.60 While I do not
want to overstate the practical ambivalence of such terms it is instructive
to bear in mind the way this linguistic flexibility reflects the permanent
flux of the broader theological and cultural situation. Catholics them-
selves disagreed on what constituted Catholic behaviour: Robert Persons
insisted that Catholics could not attend mandatory Church of England
services, since doing so was ‘a signe now in England distinctiue, betwixt
religion, and religion’;61 Alban Langdale argued to the contrary that ‘this
is made signum distinctivum between a true subject and a rebel, and,
therefore, if the bare going be but in his own nature a thing indifferent,
let every wise man weigh his own case’.62 Throughout this book I make
pragmatic use of convenient terms like ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’, ‘papist’,
and ‘puritan’, but this usage is meant to signal shared characteristics
within given groups rather than homogenous identity.
59
A changing understanding of the nature of early modern Catholicism can be gleaned
from a survey of Catholic histories over the last fifty years: John Bossy, ‘The Character of
Elizabethan Catholicism’, Past and Present 21 (1962), 39–59; John Bossy, The English Cath-
olic Community, 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975); Caroline M.
Hibbard, ‘Early Stuart Catholicism: Revisions and Re-revisions’, Journal of Modern History
52 (1980), 1–34; J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford: Black-
well, 1984); Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches
in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
Thomas McCoog (ed.), The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesu-
its: Essays in Celebration of the First Centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (1896–1996), 2nd
edn (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2007); Robert Bireley, The Refashioning
of Catholicism, 1450–1700 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
1999); John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Harlow:
Longman, 2000); Ethan Shagan (ed.), Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’: Religious Politics
and Identity in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005);
Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristo-
cratic Patronage, and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006).
60
Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic
in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society,
1993), pp. 1–21; Shell (1999), pp. 14–15; Lake (1999), pp. 71–2.
61
[Robert Persons], A Brief Discours Contayning Certayne Reasons Why Catholiques
Refuse to goe to Church (Douai, 1580), 15v.
62
As reprinted in Miola, p. 74.
Introduction 19
Catholic significance is particularly fluid in this period. The state reli-
gion had changed repeatedly between 1534 and 1559, but as Peter Lake
stresses, even during a lengthy period of relative stability the official
Church was somewhat hybridized: ‘the religious scene of Elizabeth’s reign
is best seen as a number of attempts, conducted at very different levels of
theoretical self-consciousness and coherence, at creative bricolage, mixing
and matching, as a variety of cases or pitches were made for popular sup-
port.’63 The Elizabethan Settlement patched a vernacular and scriptural
religion with residual elements of the old faith (such as the use of the sign
of the cross in baptism). Nevertheless, the ‘Catholicism’ that remained
was very different from the medieval Catholicism that had been openly
celebrated as the national religion. And the ‘creative bricolage’ was under-
pinned by a network of legal and polemical distinctions that aimed at
dichotomy, rather than blurred differences. Regardless of the complexity
of both the Settlement and of spiritual conscience, anti-Catholic laws and
polemic re-coded previously sanctified signifiers to express sectarian
divide.64 Rather than reproducing such binaries ourselves by assuming
that good Protestant subjects accepted them unquestioningly, it is helpful
to note the cultural availability of sectarian ideas that were lent the weight
of orthodoxy. The critical challenge this historical situation presents is the
need to be sensitive both to fluid boundaries and binary distinctions.
However, the aims of this book are not primarily historical: it is not a
cultural survey that uses literature to answer questions about history, nor
is Shakespeare here being used as a pretext for the study of Catholic dis-
course (Shakespeare would be an anomalous starting point for such work);
rather this is an irreducibly literary project that seeks to illuminate the
drama of the plays through an awareness of the cultures of post-Reforma-
tion Catholicism. Its questions are not primarily biographical, historical,
or theological, but rather creative: what is the imaginative function of the
Catholicism in Shakespeare’s drama? This perspective marks a deliberate
attempt to refocus some of the debates that have surrounded the ‘turn to
religion’ in recent years. In the magisterial The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, Peter
Lake draws the final chapter on Measure for Measure to a close with a
conclusion entitled ‘The Historian’s Excuse’.65 In it he indicates that his
63
Lake (1999), p. 79.
64
Peter Lake, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Conflict in Early Stuart
England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes
(London: Longman, 1989), pp. 72–106.
65
Peter Lake with Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and
Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002),
pp. 689–700.
analysis aims not to ‘enhance anybody’s aesthetic or literary appreciation
of the play’ and offers a compelling argument for the use of drama as a
historical ‘source’, since fiction represents ‘sites on which contemporaries
could imagine, play with, act out and question the ideological and cul-
tural contradictions and concerns of the day with rather greater freedom,
or at least with less overt constraint, than they tended to show in other
more “serious” or ostensibly “reality”-based genres’.66 This statement sen-
sitively identifies the political possibilities of fiction. And such work has
unquestionably enriched our understanding of the contexts which dram-
atists both drew upon and shaped. But for interdisciplinarity to remain
useful it is helpful to maintain some sense of distinction between disci-
plines. This book is by no means a territorial attempt to re-establish criti-
cal boundaries, but it does make an appeal for literary critics to cultivate
our particular strengths, even as we explore other fields. Readings driven
primarily by historicist motivations are less sensitive to the mechanisms of
literary genres: just three pages after acknowledging that ‘we are dealing
here, after all, with a play, not a piece of polemic’, Lake asserts ‘it seems
clear that whatever else the play is, it is a piece of anti-puritan satire or
polemic’.67 By returning to some of its aesthetic and formal principles,
literary criticism might help rather than hinder interdisciplinary debate.
My methods and my motivations are primarily literary. I concentrate
on what I term Shakespeare’s ‘fiction’. Obviously, this is a word which we
tend to associate with prose narratives. But in its broadest sense ‘fiction’
usefully foregrounds the imaginative status of Shakespeare’s works, which
are primarily stories rather than polemics. The fact that the texts under
consideration are theatrical is nevertheless crucial: this study analyses a
range of dramaturgical features. However, I stress the fictitious quality of
the drama partly because the double-edged meaning of the word ‘fiction’
foregrounds the moral anxieties attendant on literary allusion. In 1604
Robert Cawdrey defined ‘fiction’ as ‘a lie, or tale fained’, and in 1598 John
Florio translates the Italian ‘Fittione’ as ‘a fiction, a dissembling, faining or
inuention’.68 Thus ‘fiction’ could mean something immorally deceitful or
amorally entertaining. As we have already seen in relation to the Catholic
Southwell and the Protestant Ascham, religious arguments sometimes
collapsed these senses. But still more importantly, thinking about ‘fiction’
(as well as drama) is critically enabling, since the term highlights a funda-
66
Lake (2002), pp. 689, 693.
67
Lake (2002), pp. 696, 699.
68
Robert Cawdrey, A Table Alphabeticall (London, 1604), sig. Ev; John Florio, A Worlde
of Wordes (London, 1598), p. 133.
Introduction 21
mental difference (sometimes overlooked in discussions about drama)
between these creative works and theological or political writings. This
book recognizes that transformations in meaning necessarily occur when
religious content is placed in a fictional context. The word ‘saint’ registers
differently in Catholic hagiography, puritan polemic, Church of England
sermon, anti-Catholic propaganda, Petrarchan verse, and staged romantic
comedy. Focusing exclusively on the Catholic theology behind such a
term not only misrepresents the secular action of the drama, but also
misses the point that the Catholic significance of such material is only
properly understood once its ambiguity and fictional application is con-
fronted. I seek to explore the ludic quality of Shakespeare’s unreformed
fiction, attending to the way word-play pitches multiple and even com-
peting connotations rather than fixing doctrinal meanings. By interrogat-
ing the ways in which unreformed material operates in the context of a
particular plot and genre, I aim to reconnect a historical understanding of
post-Reformation culture to the aesthetic and theatrical experience of the
plays.
The ‘unreformed content’ under investigation is purposefully eclectic:
I explore, amongst other things, metaphors, allusions, bodies, character
names, costumes, and icons. This diversity captures something of the va-
riety of the unreformed forms that appear in Shakespeare’s plays. Ac-
knowledging this range gives a clearer sense of the complexity of
Shakespeare’s engagement with ideas of post-Reformation Catholicism.
Furthermore, as we have already seen, attitudes to Catholicism in this
period are fraught with complication: it represented a past domestic herit-
age and a present international threat; nostalgia for a Catholic ‘merry’
world coexisted with fear of papist corruption; Protestant writers adapted
Catholic texts that were also banned and condemned. But this very messi-
ness seems to have been a key part of Catholicism’s imaginative appeal for
Shakespeare, who makes dramatic use of the contradictions, not least as a
means of exploring the boundaries between self and other.
Shakespeare wrote multivalent plays for heterogeneous audiences that
would have included Catholics and Protestants of varying kinds (not to
mention differing ages, rank, and gender). Thus, like the religious words
already discussed, the uniform sounding ‘audience’ is potentially mislead-
ing. However, in using this necessary shorthand I am not claiming that
Shakespeare’s plays produced a unified audience response. People react
differently to plays for a range of reasons. Nevertheless I aim to show how
the drama speaks to a contemporary context that early modern audiences
shared, albeit in different ways. Catholics would be aware of the anti-
Catholic conventions of the period, in the same way that Protestants
would have some knowledge of nostalgia, tolerance, or proselytizing argu-
ments for Catholicism. In pointing out how Shakespeare manipulates
such familiar ideas, I make no assumptions about the convictions of the
individual audience members who watched them. Instead I am interested
in showing how Shakespeare’s scripts play with the orthodox and unor-
thodox theological narratives of his age.
Furthermore, in focusing on ‘unreformed’ material I am not implying
that Shakespeare’s plays do not engage with the various strands of Protes-
tant thought. Recent work by Huston Diehl, Beatrice Groves, Jeffrey
Knapp, and Adrian Streete, to name but a few, indicates how deeply the
drama is influenced by Reformed theology and culture.69 I concentrate on
unreformed content because the fraught status of Catholicism gives it a
particular connection with the pleasures and problems of fiction. Shake-
speare’s plays are particularly sensitive to the alternative ways in which
Catholicism is implicated in different modes of fiction. Broadly speaking,
two main trends can be observed when Catholicism appears on the post-
Reformation stage: a nostalgic Catholic aesthetic announces itself as safely
past when supernumerary friars and the occasional hermit situate plays in
the realm of ‘once upon a time’; while elsewhere politically and theologi-
cally engaged anti-papistry characterizes scheming Machiavels and identi-
fies fiction as fraud. But where other dramatists polarize, Shakespeare is
playful. His use of unreformed content is deeply syncretic: he puns on the
multiple associations of Catholic aesthetics, and in so doing puts fiction
in conversation with the real, and sets fraud against creativity. Shake-
speare enlists the tensions inherent in unreformed content as part of a
broader interrogation of the ethics of fiction. My eclectic approach takes
its cues from the nature of Shakespeare’s dramaturgy.
The on-going Reformation brought with it a representational crisis, as
not just the meaning of signs, but also the way they signified, was put in
question; for Shakespeare unreformed material often provides a means of
examining the representational limits of his theatre. Each of the following
chapters focuses on a particular representational problem, but takes a dif-
ferent generic perspective. Again, this diverse focus is part of a deliberate
attempt to confront the range of unreformed fiction in the canon. At-
tending to the contingencies of different genres enables a detailed and
69
Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater
in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Beatrice Groves,
Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare, 1592–1604 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007);
Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and Adrian Streete, Protestantism and
Drama in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Groves’s
work demonstrates that Shakespeare’s drama is informed by both Catholic and Protestant
traditions; Knapp suggests Shakespearean drama is underpinned by Erasmian inclusivity.
Introduction 23
comparative investigation of the way religious words, images, and ideas
are translated into fiction.
Chapter 1 asks how a history play remembers the pre-Reformation
past. It focuses on 1 Henry VI, a drama that interrogates its own historic-
ity; its characters (like its dramatists) continually confront the problem of
what’s gone before. Remembering the past had become particularly prob-
lematic in the post-Reformation era, when the nation’s stories about itself
had to be retold in order to cope with the major redraft of the Reforma-
tion. 1 Henry VI organizes the past in anachronistically denominational
terms, but it simultaneously complicates this same epistemological order.
Opposing the French ‘papist’ Joan la Pucelle with the English proto-Prot-
estant Talbot, the play explores the phenomenological differences that
emerge through sectarian division, differences that also problematize the
mechanics of theatre. Most likely the product of authorial collaboration,
this major Elizabethan hit thus raises representational problems that
Shakespeare will continue to wrestle with throughout his career.
Moving from history to comedy, Chapter 2 considers how Catholic
content functions in a less politically upfront genre. Focusing on Love’s
Labour’s Lost, it questions why the male romantic leads should be oddly
encumbered with real names, famous from the bloody sectarianism of the
French wars of religion. Here we see the diversity of Shakespeare’s ‘Catho-
lic’ material, which is not only residual and rooted in a pre-Reformation
past, but is also contemporary and political. The pun saturated drama
explores the social implications of linguistic mutability, whereby the
meaning of words seems endlessly adaptable. Converting the name of the
famous apostate Henri of Navarre to a comic role that lacks historical
specificity, Shakespeare puts this problem on a representational level, and
connects it to the real-life problem of mutable meaning. The generic
breakdown at the play’s close, when the happy ending is postponed, im-
plies that these tensions cannot be resolved and that in the final estima-
tion they cannot be comedic.
Chapter 3 tackles ‘problem’ comedy to investigate how unreformed
material does get resolved into the structurally happy (if tonally ambigu-
ous) endings of Measure for Measure and All’s Well that Ends Well. Al-
though these plays lack real-life character names, they notoriously test
comedic ideals against more grimly realistic pragmatism. Here the repre-
sentational problem is one of visual seeming: the Catholic costumes of
the pilgrim’s, friar’s, and nun’s habits are at once highly legible and awk-
wardly polysemous. Measure for Measure plays with the conflicting con-
notations of religious habits, and in interrogating the relation between the
inner self and the fashioned self, it goes on to debate the limits of selfhood
and the nature of otherness. An open rejection of comedy’s social and
sexual values, Isabella’s status as a novice nun helps Shakespeare to spot-
light the ethical demands the genre and Christianity make on the self. By
contrast, Helen readily adapts to the generic strictures of All’s Well: the
multiple associations of her pilgrim’s garb give her a representational flex-
ibility that both enables her to win a happy ending and also puts a ques-
tion mark over it.
Chapter 4 assesses the denominationally charged question of selfhood
and otherness from a tragic perspective. This chapter re-examines Shake-
speare’s use of Samuel Harsnett’s Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures
in King Lear: Harsnett’s polemical satire functions as a piece of genre criti-
cism that redefines Catholic exorcisms as sometimes ironically tragic and
more frequently bawdily comic; Shakespeare’s tragic treatment of demo-
niac material pointedly un-reforms Harsnett’s taxonomies and rehabili-
tates the affect of possession. The chapter looks closely at the language
and behaviour of Edgar in his ‘assumed’ role as the possessed Poor Tom.
This performance sees Edgar speak from multiple grammatical positions
and in various phenomenological forms, thus taking on the representa-
tional disorderliness exhibited by Joan la Pucelle and the flexibility used
by Helen. Still more radically than in Measure for Measure, self and other
are collapsed, as Edgar speaks as beggar, demon, and Catholic contro-
versy. The tragedy’s formal interest in the individual, all the more pro-
nounced due to its hero’s solipsism, again takes on an ethical dimension
that explores relationships with others. With defiantly explicit references
to performance and fairytale, Shakespeare reclaims fiction as an authentic
space to establish such bonds.
But it is in The Winter’s Tale that the boldest experiment with unre-
formed content takes place. Chapter 5 explores the irrationality of a ro-
mance that is bizarre in plot, geography, and chronology. In this play
Shakespeare confronts the ideological awkwardness of fiction, drawing
attention not only to the drama’s fantastical status, but also associating it
with papist ‘superstition’. Where in earlier plays characters such as Joan
and Helen were unable to sustain the representational agility of their un-
reformed roles, Hermione’s statue brings the past into the present and the
‘deceased’ back to life. Directly asking the audience to ‘awake [their] faith’,
and associating reconciliation with a pointedly superstitious plot device,
The Winter’s Tale celebrates the ethical capacity of fiction to help audi-
ences transcend the divisions between self and other.
1
Incorporating the Past in 1 Henry VI
How would it haue ioyed braue Talbot (the terror of the French) to
thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee
should triumphe againe on the Stage, and haue his bones newe
embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least, (at
seuerall times) who in the Tragedian that represents his person,
imagine they behold him fresh bleeding.1
Henry is dead, and never shall revive[.] (1 Henry VI 1.1.18)
Remembrance in 1 Henry VI (1592) takes the form of a desire for

re-membering. Opening with the funeral of Henry V, the play’s first scene
centres on the presence of a body that now signifies absence. Bedford’s
mourning invocation to the ‘ghost’ of the dead king to ‘Prosper this realm’
(1.1.52–3) is interrupted with news ‘Of loss, of slaughter and discomfi-
ture’ in France (1.1.59), immediately belying any notions of the practical
vitality of the mythical ‘scarce-cold conqueror | That ever-living man of
memory’ (4.3.50–1). Bedford fantasizes that the French losses ‘Will make
[Henry] burst his lead and rise from death’ (1.1.64), only for his meta-
phor to be bathetically extended by Gloucester: ‘If Henry were recalled to
life again | These news would cause him once more yield the ghost’
(1.1.66–7). But the discord of the nobles’ uncomprehending hyperbole
and unseemly recriminations emphasizes that Henry’s death severs the
present from previous glory. Bedford calls for ‘Comets, importing change
of times and states’ (1.1.2) but is instead faced with information about
the rapidly changing state of the times; the passing of Henry’s body inau-
gurates a sense of the past. In this emphatically embodied history the
sensations of physicality and of things passing are meaningfully con-
nected. Where tragedies traditionally end with death, this chronicle play
opens with history figured as corpse.
1
Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Diuell (London, 1592), sig.
F3r.
1 Henry VI stages characters who are faced with the challenge of recog-
nizing what has passed as the past.2 The historical figures are thus shown
as engaged in a process similar to that which concerns the writers of the
history play. Of course, remembering the pre-Reformation past presents
an ideological problem in post-Reformation England. How could the
emergent Protestant nation state incorporate its Catholic heritage into its
sense of self? How could the good repute of ancestors be reconciled with
the newly recognized damnability of their faith? How might real histori-
cal and spiritual authority be differentiated from mere ritual and tradi-
tion? John Foxe, and others working to a similar apocalyptic script, made
sense of God’s plot by revealing Catholic history to be a corrupting in-
novation: reformation returned the church to its true heritage. Where
necessary, historical figures were re-characterized according to anachro-
nistic denominational categories. For example, King John, one-time re-
sister of the pope and villain of medieval history, was redefined as a
Proto-Protestant, a type of the later hero Henry VIII and his reformed
resistance. 1 Henry VI makes similar manoeuvres to impose interpretative
organization on the history of the end of the Hundred Years’ War. The
English fight the French, and this fundamental national difference is
extended and explicated through a related set of binaries: Proto-Protes-
tant/Catholic, masculine/feminine, saint/demon, aristocratic/common,
honour/pragmatism, romance/realism. Denominational difference is in-
tegral to the play’s tone and elucidates the past and the present simultane-
ously: history is familiarized in contemporary terms, while current
struggles are endowed with (fictional) historical depth. The assertion of
anachronistic binaries thus ostensibly creates ideological order in the face
of awkward historical difference.
However, the Reformation involved phenomenological as well as ideo-
logical change. With the denial of ‘real’ Eucharistic presence and of post-
scriptural miracles Protestant theology severed physical connections
between the divine and mortal realms. The physics of Catholic and Re-
formed faiths were, at key points, fundamentally different. 1 Henry VI
registers this disjunction dramaturgically in the staging of the opposing
French and English figureheads, Joan la Pucelle and Talbot. In these two
characters we encounter not only a familiar ideological polarity but also
2
John W. Blanpied also recognizes that ‘the past is peculiarly the subject of this play’;
‘ “Art and Baleful Sorcery”: The Counterconsciouness of Henry VI, Part 1’, SEL 15 (1975),
213–27 (213). Phyllis Rackin explores the play’s different conceptions of history in gen-
dered terms, in ‘Anti-Historians: Women’s Roles in Shakespeare’s Histories’, Theatre Journal
37 (1985), 329–44; and Brian Walsh explores the relationship between the play’s self-
conscious historicizing and its metatheatricality in, ‘ “Unkind Division”: The Double Ab-
sence of Performing History in 1 Henry VI ’, SQ 55 (2004), 119–47.
Incorporating the Past in 1 Henry VI 27
alternative representational and presentational modes that key into differ-
ent understandings of presence (divine and mortal, spiritual and somatic,
performed and actual). This early history play takes us to the technical
crux of what is at stake in staging reformed and unreformed content. A
new critical commonplace teaches us that the abolition of purgatory, and
the prayers for the dead it had necessitated, made the act of remembrance
particularly problematic in post-Reformation England.3 However, the
mechanics of staged remembrance also illuminate the interactions be-
tween theatre and theology, and the tensions of reformed memorial
(which is not to say that the drama preaches on these themes). The link
between theatrical re-membering and remembering is not merely linguis-
tic, but is a functional fact of the dramatic medium. The status of the
body on stage is vexed by the iconoclastic pressures of reformation.
Michael O’Connell discerns an affective difference between pre- and
post-Reformation drama. In medieval Catholic theatre, the incarnational
mode of the art-form consolidates a play’s theological significance: dramas
of Christ’s suffering take their force from the palpable proximity between
God and man, actor and audience. But once reformed iconoclasm out-
laws such drama as blasphemous (emphasizing the uniqueness of Christ’s
divinity rather than the affinity of his human physicality), early modern
theatre sheds this numinous functionality and (mostly) avoids biblical
plots.4 O’Connell’s narrative provides a useful general overview of theatri-
cal transition. However, 1 Henry VI stages reformed and unreformed rep-
resentational phenomena within the bounds of the same story, flirting
with the pleasures and threats of recent unorthodoxy.
Thomas Nashe’s frequently quoted celebration of 1 Henry VI (assuming
that this play’s Talbot—only extant here—is the one to whom Nashe
refers), participates in a similar rhetoric of moribund resuscitation to that
of the mourners in the first scene.5 He argues that the subject of plays
borrowed out of our English Chronicles, wherein our forefathers valiant acts
(that haue line long buried in rustie brasse, and worme-eaten bookes) are
reuiued, and they themselues raised from the Graue of Obliuion, and
3
Famous critical examples include Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and
Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). For a different
view, see Lorna Hutson, ‘From Penitent to Suspect: Law, Purgatory, and Renaissance
Drama’, HLQ 65 (2002), 295–319.
4
Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early-Modern Eng-
land (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
5
It has been argued that Nashe himself wrote act 1. See Brian Vickers, ‘Incomplete
Shakespeare: or, Denying Coauthorship in 1 Henry VI’, SQ 58 (2007), 311–52.
brought to pleade their aged Honours in open presence: than which, what
can be a sharper reproofe to these degenerate effeminate dayes of ours.6
Drama resurrects history from the sepulchral text: collapsing the substitu-
tive process of representation, Nashe instead bears witness to a presenta-
tion of real agency (‘they themselues raised . . . brought to pleade their
aged Honours’) in a tantalizingly immediate and embodied ‘open pres-
ence’. Nashe claims that this dramatic revivification has exemplary value
for its ‘degenerate effeminate’ audience; the characters come to recognize
that such a process is only a fantasy, since they grieve the loss of a forefa-
ther who ‘never shall revive’ (1.1.18). But then the ambiguity of Nashe’s
description reflects the representational complexity of the dramaturgy.
Talbot’s reported ‘triumphe’ is predicated on the immediacy of a ‘freshly
bleeding’ body, as if the warrior’s presence is confirmed by the immanence
of his absence. The exhumation is paradoxically in the service of re-inter-
ment: the action provokes tears that ‘newe embalm’ the ‘bones’ of the
dead man. There is no shortage of other decaying, departing male bodies
in this play: the first royal funeral is echoed by the corpses of Salisbury
(2.2), Mortimer (2.5), and Bedford (3.2) being carried offstage (the last
two having been brought on in a state of seated decrepitude), not to men-
tion the extinction of Talbot’s line as he and his son die in the same battle,
doomed by the demands of patrilineal expression (4.4). Mortimer’s wasted
body blazons forth not only the decline of English chivalry but also the
play’s sense of a present tainted by a burgeoning past that is somehow
pervasive and elusive:
These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,
Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;
Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,
And pithless arms, like to a withered vine
That droops his sapless branches to the ground.
Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb,
Unable to support this lump of clay,
Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,
As witting I no other comfort have. (2.5.8–16)
Loss is both recuperated and reaffirmed on the body. Drawing attention
to the actor’s body (as 1 Henry VI does with explicit intensity) exposes the
dramatic process itself, and blurs the boundaries between representation
and presentation. After all, unlike the symbols employed by other art
forms, the staged body is no mere arbitrary sign, and is closer to meton-
ymy than metaphor. As Max Harris argues, ‘the theatre is irredeemably
6
Nashe, sig. F3r.
fleshy, incapable of loosing its link entirely with the world of flesh and
blood in which we live’.7
This chapter investigates the theologically charged significance of the
insistently corporeal remembrance in 1 Henry VI.8 The retrospective
narrative is dramatized through spectacular physical action. In addition
to numerous decaying bodies, we witness a phenomenal amount of
bodily combat (at least five ‘skirmishes’, four ‘fights’, one ‘strikes’, one
‘beat out’, and one ‘beaten back’, not to mention one ‘rush’, one ‘shot’,
three ‘retreats’, two ‘flights’, one ‘leap over’, and no less than fourteen
‘alarums’). Charles Edelman suggests that the violence is technically in-
novative, since this is the first play to involve principal characters in
staged swordplay (compare, for example, the absence of onstage battles
in the rhetorically visceral Tamburlaine plays).9 Both the action of vio-
lence and the inaction of death advertise the presence of human bodies,
offering a variety of instances that, to use Carol Rutter’s term, ‘interrupt
intellect’.10 Our awareness of the actors’ bodiliness temporarily unfixes
their representational status. Joan and Talbot, in significantly different
ways, explicitly draw attention to their physicality and the division be-
tween representation and presentation that it troubles. And they do so
at moments when the binary nature of their opposed characterization is
particularly strong. The actor’s body becomes a site where fantasies of
essential difference are both inscribed and confounded; it is a site which
manifests the ideologically fraught difficulties and possibilities of histri-
onic history.
7
Max Harris, Theatre and Incarnation (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 37.
8
In the background of this discussion is the substantial collection of criticism on the
early modern body, especially, Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the
Human Body in Renaissance Culture (London: Routledge, 1995); Keir Elam, ‘“In What
Chapter of His Bosom?”: Reading Shakespeare’s Bodies’, in Alternative Shakespeares Vol. 2,
ed. Terence Hawkes (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.140–63; The Body in Parts: Fantasies
of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Hillman and Carla Mazzio (New York:
Routledge, 1997); Susanne Scholz, Body Narratives: Writing the Nation and Fashioning the
Subject (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); Margaret E. Owens, Stages of Dismem-
berment: The Fragmented Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Drama (Newark, DE:
University of Delaware Press, 2005); and the articles in Shakespeare Studies: Body Work, ed.
Bruce R. Smith (2001). For alternative readings of ‘embodiment’ in 1 Henry VI that do not
explore the theological shadows of the theme, see Lisa Dickson, ‘No Rainbow Without the
Sun: Visibility and Embodiment in 1 Henry VI’, Modern Language Studies 30 (2000), 137–56;
and Michael Harrawood, ‘High-Stomached Lords: Imagination, Force and the Body in
Shakespeare’s Henry VI Plays’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 7 (2007), 78–95.
9
Charles Edelman, Brawl Ridiculous: Swordfighting in Shakespeare’s Plays (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 52.
10
This phrase is used to describe moments when actors’ bodies generated meanings that
‘exceeded’ the script; Carol Chillington Rutter, Enter the Body: Women and Representation
on Shakespeare’s Stage (London: Routledge, 2001), p. xii.
1 Henry VI ‘incorporates’ the past in various senses. As a history play
rather than a history book, it enacts memory in flesh (and frequently
draws attention to this process). Its narrative focuses on the problem of
how to consolidate a nation that incorporates a factious France and a
factional nobility. Taking Nashe at his word, at least a possible impact of
the story, ‘reuiued’ in this way, is the wider incorporation of the viewing
audience, recreated from present degeneracy into a body politic united
across time. Such incorporation is enforced by the crude, even bigoted,
oppositions that provide the thematic structure of the play, and operate
according to a logic of ‘us/them’. Joan’s and Talbot’s different ontological
conditions as theatrical characters (presentational and representational)
are bound up with their strategies for consolidating national success.11
J OA N ’ S I N F U S E D F L E S H
The most problematic body in 1 Henry VI is not the child king himself
(absent from his own play until act 3), but Joan la Pucelle. Even her name
is problematic. Arden 3 editor Edward Burns opts for Joan ‘Puzel’, a vari-
ant form of the name in the Folio text. The historical character who
named herself ‘Jeanne la Pucelle’ took a title that meant both ‘virginity
and incipient sexuality’.12 In English ‘Pucelle’ (much like ‘nun’) could also
be used against its literal meaning as the insult ‘whore’. Burns uses ‘Puzel’
as the early modern English phonetic translation of the term, arguing that
its ‘puzzling’ connotations emphasize for modern readers the instability of
name and character, also hinting at a pun on ‘pizzle’ (penis): ‘The woman
in man’s clothes wielding a sword is a pucelle with a pizzle, and therefore
a puzzle’.13 Testifying to the disorder engendered by Joan, the general edi-
tors of the Arden series disagree with this decision, because ‘it deprives the
French characters of an intelligible French epithet for their saviour, Joan
11
The play may also be the product of ‘incorporate’ (i.e. collaborative) authorship. See
Vickers, and Gary Taylor, ‘Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry the Sixth,
Part One’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 7 (1995), 145–205. Recent editors
of the play are divided on the issue of authorship. Michael Hattaway insists the play is the
product of Shakespeare alone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), as does
Michael Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Edward Burns cautions against
the unreliability of scholarly methods of ascription (p. 82); however, he agrees ‘It makes
sense to me to see this play as a commissioned piece . . . written by a group of writers,
among whom Shakespeare took a major part’ (p. 83). I suggest that at this early point in
his career, Shakespeare worked on a play that opened out the representational difficulties of
religious content. Shakespeare returns to these difficulties later in the canon, and treats
them idiosyncratically.
12 13
Burns, p. 25. Burns, p. 26.
“the Maid”; and it further imposes on them the necessity of adopting a
derogatory English alternative’, since ‘Puzel’ is an insult.14 While recog-
nizing the puzzle usefully stressed by Burns, I regard its signification to be
better marked through the ambiguity of ‘Pucelle’, and this is how I shall
refer to Joan.
The larger critical puzzles of Joan la Pucelle are usually focused on her
gender. Scholars have seen in Joan an expression of masculine anxiety that
pinpoints ‘threatening’ aspects of femininity. Some time ago, David Bev-
ington recognized that the play ‘invented and greatly elaborated the theme
of sexual domineering’ from the historical sources.15 Nina Levine reads
Joan as the focal point for a topical tension: ‘Serving up a pastiche of
Elizabethan court “romance”’ that ‘lays bare the threat that female rule
posed to relations of rank and gender within the patriarchal nation-
state’.16 Kathryn Schwarz defines a more expansive danger: ‘Joan disrupts
the rhetoric that connects men to men’.17 Gender difference has also been
recognized as explicitly troubling to the play’s formal order. Detecting ‘a
pattern of masculine history-writing and feminine subversion’ across
Shakespeare’s history plays, Phyllis Rackin finds its ‘clearest’ expression in
1 Henry VI , so that Joan disrupts generic as well as social order.18 Never-
theless, Nancy Gutierrez concludes that ‘the moral worth assigned to
“masculine” and “feminine” categories in the play is compromised . . . be-
cause the play depicts a grey, ironic world, in which such black and white
categories are obvious and fragile fictions of a human mind attempting to
find order and meaning.’19 These accounts reasonably look upon gender
difference as the thematic linchpin of the play. But the concerns expressed
by the characters themselves stretch beyond the social essentials so use-
fully analysed in feminist criticism. Joan’s ‘threat’ is spiritual as well as
sexual; it has not just political but also divine implications. This is not to
minimize the discomfort provoked by Joan’s confusion of gender catego-
ries. Political, religious, and gendered orders are interrelated in the early
14
Burns, pp. 294–5.
15
David Bevington, ‘The Domineering Female in 1 Henry VI ’, SSt 2 (1966), 51–8
(51).
16
Nina Levine, Women’s Matters: Politics, Gender, and Nation in Shakespeare’s Early His-
tory Plays (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1998), p. 35.
17
Kathryn Schwarz, ‘Fearful Simile: Stealing the Breech in Shakespeare’s Chronicle
Plays’, SQ 49 (1998), 140–67 (147).
18
Phyllis Rackin, ‘Anti-Historians: Women’s Roles in Shakespeare’s Histories’, Theatre
Journal 37 (1985), 329–44 (330).
19
Nancy A. Gutierrez, ‘Gender and Value in “1 Henry VI”’, Theatre Journal 42 (1990),
183–93 (193). I disagree with Gutierrez’s earlier insistence that Joan ‘has no power to influ-
ence the audience, because she is trapped in the paradigmatic configuration of the female/
passive object of the male/active gaze’ (192). I read Joan’s role and relationship with the
audience in more fluid terms.
modern period, when social and sexual hierarchies were thought to have
been sanctioned by God. In specifically sectarian discourse, gender meta-
phors were used to explicate denominational difference as an unnatural
corruption of God-given order. Thus at its most vitriolic extremes, Prot-
estant polemic typed the Roman Church as the Whore of Babylon (Rev.
17:9), so that Catholic practice (aesthetically dazzling) was akin to a cor-
rosive, sexual deception that feminized all who fell prone to its allure.
Joan’s ‘negative’ attributes—French, female, Papist, cunning, demonic—
are part of a familiar semantic network.20 Exploring the spiritual and
theological aspects of Joan therefore complements and necessarily en-
larges earlier gender-focused readings.
Joan’s main antagonist, Talbot, first learns of her (from an English
source) as ‘A holy prophetess, new risen up’ (1.4.101). This announce-
ment is presaged not just by military ‘alarum’, but also thunder and light-
ning that leaves Talbot asking: ‘What tumult’s in the heavens?’ (1.4.97).
The elemental rupture is felt at an epistemological level. After his first
fight with Joan, Talbot exclaims: ‘Heavens, can you suffer hell so to pre-
vail?’ (1.5.9). While these words clearly damn Joan as demonic, the ques-
tion implies a deeper, contrary fear than the one that the hellish French
might win: the French might not be so hellish after all. The adversarial
dialogue of the French and the English elevates the significance of Joan’s
identification to a providential pitch. As an enemy and untowardly mar-
tial female, Joan’s successes are only comprehensible to the English in
demonic terms: ‘Devil, or devil’s dam . . . thou art a witch’ (1.5.5–6); ‘A
witch’ (1.5.21); ‘that witch, that damned sorceress, | Hath wrought this
hellish mischief unawares’ (3.2.37–8); ‘vile fiend and shameless courtesan’
(3.2.44); ‘Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite’ (3.2.51); ‘that rail-
ing Hecate’ (3.2.63); ‘ugly witch’ (5.2.55); ‘Fell banning hag, enchantress’
(5.2.63); ‘sorceress’ (5.3.1); and Charles is therefore said to ‘join with
witches and the help of hell’ (2.1.18) and ‘converse with spirits’ (2.1.25).
This rhetorical reaction is not all that unusual in an age when socially
‘wayward’ women were often categorized as ‘wyrd’. But Joan’s own claims,
and those of the French for whom she fights, widen the spiritual angle.
Joan declares: ‘Assigned am I to be the English scourge’ (1.2.129) and the
French promise to canonize her (1.5.68; 3.3.15) and meanwhile bless her
20
For discussion of the gendered representation of the Catholic Church in early modern
England, see Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-
Century Print Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). Patrick Ryan applies
the Protestant deployment of this biblical trope to 1 Henry VI in ‘Shakespeare’s Joan and
the Great Whore of Babylon’, Renaissance and Reformation 28 (2004), 55–82. However,
this reading is limited by its maintenance of binaries that the play itself undoes.
as a ‘holy maid’ (1.2.51) who is ‘Ordained’ (1.2.53), the ‘Divinest crea-
ture’ (1.5.43) and a ‘glorious prophetess’ (1.5.47).21
Joan’s difference from the English is given a sectarian colour, since the
playwrights repeatedly cast her ‘holiness’ in Catholic terms. For example,
celebrating the rescue of Orleans, Charles declares that a pointedly Cath-
olic clergy, ‘all the priests and friars in my realm | Shall in procession sing
[Joan’s] endless praise’ (1.5.58–9); and in encouraging Joan to ‘turn’ Bur-
gundy to the French side, Alençon offers the bribe of monumental sanc-
tity rejected by iconoclastic reformers: ‘We’ll set thy statue in some holy
place | And have thee reverenced like a blessed saint’ (the casual ‘some’
and analogizing ‘like’ perhaps implying the diminished spirituality
alleged by Protestants (3.3.14–15)). More importantly, Joan herself re-
gards her mission and success as rooted in a holy visitation from the
Virgin Mary that, as we shall see, rests on decidedly unreformed episte-
mologies of the relationship between the human body and the divine. As
important as the social threats usually addressed by critics is the spiritual
controversy figured in Joan, particularly since the two are interconnected
in a play where enemies claim God’s favour. Joan’s opposition to English
chivalric, sexual, and theological values must necessarily be damnable,
otherwise English understanding of the divine order is perilously askew.
Talbot insists: ‘God is our fortress’ (2.1.26); should God seem contrarily
to prefer Joan, English taxonomies of righteousness would be shaken to
their faithful core.
But these declarations of divine significance are felt to be in excess of
the chaotic, repetitive story. Joan poses an ‘either/or’ interpretative polar-
ity to the audience which validates one side only. But the reversibility of
binaries renders them unstable, an anxiety that seems to underpin Reigni-
er’s response to the Bastard’s contention that ‘this Talbot be a fiend of
hell’: ‘If not of hell, the heavens sure favour him’ (2.1.46–7). The limita-
tions of mortal perception create a disturbing equivalence, and this is
sustained in the structure of the drama through the frequent ‘switchback
reversals’ that blur the distinction between the French and the English,
and between success and defeat.22 If the characterization of Joan exposes
21
For witchcraft in 1 Henry VI, see Frances K. Barasch, ‘Folk Magic in Henry VI, Parts
1 and 2: Two Scenes of Embedding’, in Henry VI: Critical Essays, ed. Thomas A. Pendleton
(London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 113–25; Jean-Christophe Mayer, Shakespeare’s Hybrid
Faith: History, Religion, and the Stage (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 14–
39; and Deborah Willis, ‘Shakespeare and the English Witch-Hunts’, in Enclosure Acts,
ed. John Michael Archer and Richard Burt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994),
pp. 96–120.
22
Roger Warren, ‘ “Contrarieties Agree”: An Aspect of Dramatic Technique in “Henry
VI” ’, SS 37 (1984), 75–83 (83).
the ideological fault-lines of the gender relations that help organize soci-
ety, so too does it reveal post-Reformation tensions running through the
understanding of both the microcosmic human body and God’s macro-
cosmic universe.
Joan describes her prophetic and athletic powers as a gift bestowed on
her during a heavenly visitation, so that her political cause, ‘masculine’
behaviour, and spiritual condition are coalescent. She speaks of a funda-
mentally physical experience:
Heaven and Our Lady gracious hath it pleased
To shine on my contemptible estate.
Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs
And to sun’s parching heat displayed my cheeks,
God’s mother deigned to appear to me
And, in a vision full of majesty,
Willed me to leave my base vocation
And free my country from calamity:
Her aid she promised and assured success.
In complete glory she revealed herself.
And, whereas I was black and swart before,
With those clear rays which she infused on me,
That beauty am I blest with, which you may see. (1.2.74–86)
There is something curiously active in the description of Joan’s exposure
to the sun in the course of her shepherd’s work (‘I . . . displayed my cheeks’),
as if the sacrificial showing of her humble skin is answered by Mary’s
manifestation (‘In complete glory she revealed herself ’). Joan’s self-con-
scious physicality primarily sets up an evidentiary miracle. The environ-
mental is merged with the divine: the ‘shine’ of ‘Heaven and Our Lady
gracious’ and the ‘clear rays’ emitted by the ‘glory’ of ‘God’s mother’ are
on the same rhetorical and experiential continuum as ‘the sun’s parching
heat’, but miraculously rework its effects, so that Joan’s ‘black and swart’
appearance is transformed to ‘beauty’.23 Joan’s body is a manifest
miracle.
In the post-Reformation period, to be miraculous was to be contro-
versial. True miracles were understood by all Christians to be demonstra-
tions of God’s power. The ‘seales and testimonials of Euangelicall Faith’,
miracles were a gift given to the apostles that ‘increased the number of
23
Joan’s transfigured flesh alleges a divine extension of a less controversial humoural
physiology, which understood the body as ‘porous and thus able to be influenced by the
immediate environment’; Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Dis-
ciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993),
p. 9.
the faithfull’.24 But for reformers, that age had ‘fully seast’.25 Polemicists
reviled Catholic claims of ongoing miracles as ‘lothsome stuffe’: the ‘per-
fect’ nature of reformed religion ‘requireth no fabulous miracles to con-
firme it’, but in the Catholic Church ‘where vanitie is worke-mistris,
then all thynges are confirmed with shadowes’.26 Indeed miracles did
continue to function discursively in Catholic literature: miracles were
proselytizing phenomena unfettered by learned textuality, but neverthe-
less repeatable in proselytizing texts. According to the Catholic priest
Robert Chambers, miracles even offered ‘more euident proofes of a true
religion the[n] eare the Scripture[s], especially consider[i]ng how Scrip-
tures are so subiect to falce misconstruing, & deuil[i]sh bad interpreta-
tion’.27 Rather optimistically, Chambers suggested that while ‘the
impugners of the Catholick Church’ might draw all other Catholic argu-
ments ‘into their books, sermons, and disputations, at miracles al parties
must make a stand, and be silent; there, God himself alone must speak,
and shewe himself ’.28 In this view a miracle is a manifestation of God’s
Word, an axiomatic repudiation of wordy controversy: phenomenon as
eloquence. Miracles were wrought by God ‘for the producing and main-
tenance of vnitie in faith’, a unification that divided correct and incorrect
religions.29 As another Catholic writer stipulated, ‘onelie Gods religion
can be confirmed with true miracles’.30 The miraculous reports translated
by Robert Chambers issue from Brabant, at a town on ‘the frontiers of
those that are enemyes & rebelles’.31 Sectarian and political violence (as
in 1 Henry VI ) give urgency to the evidentiary meaning of miracles as
signs ‘that God is wel pleased’ with a particular group.32 And indeed
miracles operated as proof at the discursive ‘frontiers’ of Catholicism and
Protestantism too, but what was proved varied according to the view
from either side: either substantive, supernatural works communicating
God’s favour, or insubstantial tricks betraying Antichristian corruption.
The miraculous work of Joan’s flesh likewise divisively consolidates the
24
Fernando Texeda, Miracles Vnmasked (London, 1625), sig. B2v.
25
R. P., The Iesuits Miracles (London, 1607), sig. Cr.
26
R. P., sig. Cr; Barnabe Rich, The True Report of a Late Practise Enterprised by a Papist
(London, 1582), sig. E.iij.v.
27
Philippe Numan, Miracles Lately Wrought by the Intercession of the Glorious Virgin
Marie, trans. Robert Chambers (Antwerp, 1606; facs. edn, Menston: Scolar Press, 1975),
sig. [B7v].
28
Chambers (Dedication), sig. A4r.
29
Chambers (trans.), sig. [B8v].
30
Richard Smith, The Prudentiall Ballance Of Religion (n.p., 1609; facs. edn, Menston:
Scolar Press, 1975), sig. [ā6r].
31
Chambers (trans.), sig. G3r.
32
Chambers (Dedication), sig. A4r.
French force against the English, drawing an epistemological boundary
between the two sides.
The emphasis on the Virgin Mary’s role in empowering Joan confirms
the confessional alignment of the depiction. Responding to the intensity
of Marian devotion, scandalized reformers said Catholics took ‘the blessed
Virgine, as they say, our Ladie’ for ‘the Sauiour of mankinde . . . as wee do
Christ’.33 Intercession to Mary was an idolatrous redundancy: God alone
deserved and answered prayer. Protestant reverence for the Virgin had its
proper place: ‘We for our parts only, will euer call blessed and happie, that
blessed Virgin who reigneth and euer shall reigne with her Sonne in euer-
lasting glory, not their Loretto or Sichem Ladies’.34 The kind of visitation
Joan describes was impossible to reformed theology and physics. In con-
trast, Catholicism celebrated an enduringly ‘puissant’ Mary, who was,
after all, the very site and means of incarnation. Her repetition of God’s
first creating ‘Fiat’ made ‘farre greater & more important matters’ than
even the original, ‘seeing that by means of this Fiat, the same God made
him-self man, and man was made God’.35 The Virgin’s indubitable mi-
raculous power was of a piece with a violent aggression against Satan that
is surprising to modern sensibilities:
Great is the force vndoubtedly of the mother of God; who not onely was,
and is able to combate with the deuil, but to crush him, & domineere ouer
him, as ouer a poor worme whose head is brused and squised to durt. Ther-
fore it is no meruail if miracles are atchiued by her meanes, who was able to
bring vnder her foot that feendish Leuiathan.36
In 1 Henry VI, Joan’s body bears contentious witness to Mary’s forceful
intervention into providential history (Joan is charged to ‘free my coun-
try’) and physical creation. Joan’s description of having heavenly rays ‘in-
fused on’ her fuses the physical and the metaphysical. As the grammar of
the sentence suggests, infusing could be an act of pouring into or, as here,
onto something. But the ‘innerness’ of the prefix is emphasized in the
verb’s figurative applications in early modern writing, where infusing fre-
quently signals a spiritual rather than a physical change. The word often
referred to God’s imparting of grace. Thus Henoch Clapham pleaded:
‘Heauenly Father, infuse thy sanctifying grace into the hartes of all thy
33
Thomas Rogers, An Historical Dialogue Touching Antichrist and Poperie (London,
1589), sig. Cv.
34
Richard Sheldon, A Survey of the Miracles of the Church of Rome (London, 1616), sig.
D2v.
35
Gaspare Loarte, Instructions and Advertisements How to Meditate vpon the Misteries of
the Rosarie of the most Holy Virgin Mary (Rouen, 1613; facs. edn, Menston: Scolar Press,
1970), sig. B6v.
36
Chambers (trans.), sig. C4r.
Children’; and Nicholas Breton prayed: ‘Thou deepest Searcher of each
secret thought, | Infuse in me thy all-affecting grace’.37 In discussion of
the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the word also occasionally differenti-
ated between substantive and spiritual change. The Protestant convert
Thomas Bell argued that, instead of Catholic transubstantiation: ‘the al-
teration is vnspeakeable, when the diuine power of Christ doth infuse it
selfe into the hearts of the faithful by the visible sacrament, as by his ordi-
narie organ and instrument, and then and there worketh the diuine ef-
fectes signified by the sacrament’; and the Warden of Winchester College,
Thomas Bilson quoted Cyprian saying: ‘and as in the person of Christ, his
humanitie was seene, his diuinitie was hidde and secret: so in the visible sac-
rament the diuine essence doth infuse it selfe, after an vnspeakeable manner’.38
While such religious infusions are transformative, the change is spiritual
and hidden rather than somatic and visible.
However, the infusion ‘on’ Joan’s body is both an outward drenching
that remakes her appearance (a fair complexion, golden hair?), and an
inward spiritual possession that ‘worketh the diuine effects’. David Bev-
ington glosses this scene as a ‘blasphemous type of incarnation’, usefully
hinting at the jointly physical and spiritual significance of what is said to
have happened.39 The nature of the ‘blasphemy’ is key to the threat (and
possibility) represented in Joan. Essentially, Joan’s very body re-members
a Catholic conception of an ongoing physical connectedness between the
heavenly and the mortal realm. As previously noted, Michael O’Connell
has demonstrated the somatic preoccupations of medieval theatre, where
an actor’s dramatization of the suffering Christ before the sentient audi-
ence relates the mystery of the incarnation to the incarnational mode of
theatre: ‘God and man share a body’. Such drama flourished at a time
when the evidence of stigmatics such as St Francis attested to the ‘sense of
the transformative character of the body and the phenomenal world’.40
Catholics preserved this connection between the spiritual and the physi-
cal into the post-Reformation period. The numerous miracles that took
place at the behest of the Virgin or of particular saints, at shrines or before
holy images, usually took the form of the curing of disease or deformity.
Such events were celebrated as awesome, but their multiplication empha-
sized the everyday possibility of divine intervention (in properly Catholic
conditions): for example, a pamphlet outlining St Ignatius’s intercessory
37
Henoch Clapham, A Tract of Prayer (London, 1602), sig. Bv; Nicholas Breton, The
Passion of a Discontented Minde (London, 1601), sig. [A2v].
38
Thomas Bell, The Suruey of Popery (London, 1596), sig. Ii4r; Thomas Bilson, The True
Difference Betweene Christian Subiection and Vnchristian Rebellion (Oxford, 1585), p. 811.
39 40
Bevington, 52. O’Connell, pp. 88, 73.
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Capitolo LIII.
Stefanaccio.
Mentre la meschina donna — ravviluppata con la sua creaturina

entro un grossolano mantello, che il suo fido servo erasi fatto cedere
in cammino da un antico vassallo de’ Camia — cercava un po’ di
riposo alle fatiche ed alle emozioni di quella memoranda giornata;
egli — Terremoto — teneasi, come abbiam detto, in sentinella su la
porta del povero tugurio, affin di vedere se mai — per mala sorte —
la sua fuga e quella della sua signora fosse stata troppo presto
scoperta e le cavallerie del Farnese sguinzagliate a dar loro la caccia.
Nel caso di quella scoperta non c’era altro d’aspettarsi.
Stava da mezz’ora circa in quella postura, allorchè gli parve vedere
inoltrarsi alla sua volta una piccola forma umana che disegnavasi in
nero sul bianco della neve nel modo più strano e grottesco.
Le gambe — perchè due sole — comunque torte e bistorte,
apparivano pur sempre quelle di un uomo, ma il restante — le
braccia lunghe così che quasi toccavano il suolo; la testa avvallata in
guisa tra le spalle da non lasciare nessunissimo posto pel collo; i
capelli irsuti, scarmigliati, lunghissimi tanto da parere piuttosto un
fastello di vetrici o di sarmenti — aveva più che altro dello
animalesco e bestiale.
Terremoto che — lunghesso la via fornita — erasi andato
agguerrendo ed armando di tutto punto, onde essere parato ad ogni
possibile evento; s’impostò all’omero un grosso moschettone, sul
quale s’era finallora appoggiato e stette in attesa.
Quando l’ibrido personaggio, gli fu a portata dell’arma:
— Chi sei? cosa vuoi? — gli gridò con voce tonante.
— Ah, vi riconosco — gli rispose una voce rauca e belante — siete
voi, finalmente, Arcangiolo!
— Ma io non riconoscovi — fece Terremoto, senza levarsi il
moschetto di spalla — e se non vi decidete a ragguagliarmi, e
presto, sul vero esser vostro, giuro al cielo che....
— Non vi mettete in collera, per mia cagione... oh, sarebbe il peggio
de’ spropositi, in cui poteste incapare!... io non vi sono nimico; al
contrario, vengo a voi per faccenda, che v’ha a destare sommo
interesse; vengo a voi per incarico espresso di messere il conte
Giovanni Camia, il Grosso, buon’anima sua!
— Messere il conte?... ma egli è morto da omai nove anni buoni!
— Ed egli è appunto dal momento della sua morte, che io tengo
questo incarico per voi.
— Ma il vostro nome; dunque?
— Domine! e che non l’avete per anco indovinato? ma sono
Stefanaccio, il solo superstite de’ batellieri al navalestro della Nure,
tra Camia e Borgo San Bernardino.
— Oh, che Iddio vi danni — borbottò Terremoto — e perchè non
dirmelo a tutto prima?
E si rimise l’arma al piede, lasciando così che il mal sagomato
navichiere potesse accostarglisi liberamente.
Come gli fu così presso da poterne ben scorgere e riconoscere le
laide sembianze:
— Ah, siete proprio voi — riprese — non c’è rischio di prendere
equivoco.
Forse al lettore sarà caduto di mente; ma noi traemmo Stefanaccio
in iscena sin dal principio di questa nostra narrazione. Lo abbiamo
visto assistere alla tortura ed alla morte di Giovanni Camia, del quale
era, a un tempo e vassallo e figlioccio, e fargli un solenne
giuramento, cui la sua natura sovrammodo superstiziosa non gli
avrebbe consentito di mancare.
— E voi dite — continuò il gigante — che venite a me con un
incarico di messere il conte, già mio ottimo e riverito signore?
— Sì, Arcangiolo mio — rispose il batelliere — ed un incarico che, da
nove anni, mi pesa su la coscienza peggio del più grosso tra i sette
peccati capitali.
— E qual è, dunque? sentiamo!
Lì Stefanaccio gli narrò, in prima, tutte le sevizie e i maltrattamenti,
onde i Nicelli aveano reso vittime il loro antico signore e, quando fu
a dire del momento, in cui quella nidiata di malandrini, chiamati dai
due dei loro, abbandonarono, d’improviso l’accampamento, non
lasciandovi, a vegliarlo, chè un paio di scolte:
— Il conte — seguitò — gemeva e sbuffava corcato supino e col
sollione, che gli bruciava dritto dritto la cappa del cervello.... il
pover’omo avea una sete da Gesù Nazareno e strillava: «aqua!
aqua!» ch’era uno stringimento di core a sentirlo.... Io gliene recai
un pochino nella mia fiasca ed, appanciolatomi di costa a lui, glie ne
dètti bevere.... Allora e’ mi guatò di sottecche e, riconoscendomi, mi
pregò d’un servizio e mi fece giurare su la salvezza dell’anima mia di
adempierlo scrupolosamente e di non farne mai verbo se non con la
persona, cui m’avrebbe mandato... questa persona, Arcangiolo, siete
appunto voi.
— E cosa vi commise di dirmi?
— Siamo qui al punto.... Io vi ripeto le sue parole, una ad una, tali
quali gli uscirono allora di bocca.... Bada, Stefanaccio; mi disse, a
pena tu mi veda, e mi sappia finito, e corri subito a casa di
Arcangelo Rinolfo, il figliuolo dello antico mio castaldo, e a
quattr’occhi, senza che manco l’aria possa portarti via una parola,
digli che, nel core della notte, si rechi guardingo alla torre Farnese...
sapete bene dov’è la Torre Farnese?
— Sì, sì — rispose Terremoto.
— Adesso la è compiuta e ci risieggono anco dentro que’ cari
commessari di Sua Magnificenza il serenissimo nostro novo duca,
che, per spellare i poveri valligiani, sono il flagello vero di questi
nostri paesi; ma allora e’ non n’erano gittate che le fondamenta.
— Tirate inanzi, Stefanaccio.
— Che si rechi dunque di notte alla Torre e scenda nella casamatta
di destra, verso mezzodì... al piè della scaluccia, che vi conduce, si
situi dritto col tallone proprio rasente l’ultimo gradino e muti cinque
passi in avanti.... a capo di questi, si pieghi e presso lo zoccolo
troverà una pietra del pavimento con in mezzo un piccolo foro....
v’insinui un uncino, un ferro qualunque e tragga a sè la pietra, che
cederà facilmente.... sotto, c’è un còfano di legno di sandalo a
chiodetti di argento.... lo prenda, lo porti seco cautamente, e vada
subito a consegnarlo a donna Costanza Sforza di Santafiora, signora
di Castell’Arquato, dicendole: «questo è il cofanetto, di cui voi tenete
la chiave?»
— Eh sì, donna Costanza.... ma già da due anni, anche donna
Costanza non è più di questo mondo!
— C’è bene sempre il su’ figliolo, messer il conte Sforza Sforza, che,
avendone redato tutte le signorie e sostanze, terrà certo in sue mani
anche quella tal chiave!
— Per la croce.... che mistero c’è sotto in cotesto?
— Grave di molto, Arcangelo, pe’ giuramenti sacrosanti che il povero
messer conte esigette prima di confidarmi il suo segreto.
— E come non pensaste subito?...
— A pena lui morto, corsi diviato qui istesso; ma voi non ci eravate:
rimise allora la cosa all’indomani mattina; ma all’indomani il vostro
babbo in persona mi disse che avevate preso la via de’ monti, nè
sapea quando sareste per ritornare.... vi aspettai, vi aspettai, e son
nove anni che aspetto; ma, prima d’ora, non vi ho più riveduto.
— Avete ragione, Stefanaccio: e vi ringrazio anche per conto
dell’anima riconoscente del nostro defunto signore, che vi terrà
conto di lassù del vostro zelo e della vostra prudenza.
— Lo credete, sì, Arcangelo?
— Ne vo’ certo!
— Egli è che, quando il tiro secco mi colga, de’ conti da regolare con
Nostro Signore Iddio benedetto ce n’avrò parecchi e, se non è
appunto qualche anima buona che s’interponga a blandirne la
collera, temo forte, e dassenno, di non poter scampare a qualche
briciolo di arrostitura!
— Sperate! sperate!
— E non vi parrebb’egli che questa notte medesima fosse momento
opportuno?
— A far che?
— A compiere la missione che v’ha lasciato messere il conte
Giovanni?
— Ma non m’avete detto che la Torre Farnese è già occupata da’
Commessari del Duca?
— Vero; ma io ci tengo le mie entrature.... Mastro Pietrone, il
custode, è mio zio dal lato di madre ed è uomo eretico a segno che
di vin battezzato non vuole udirne a parlare.... si potrebbe andargli a
fare una visita; io vi presenterei e, mentre si stesse trincando e
facendogli perdere, com’è facile, il lume della ragione, voi avreste il
campo....
— No, no: questa notte non posso....
— Non siete solo qua dentro?
— Non sono solo.
— E, s’è lecito?...
— Non è lecito, Stefanaccio.
— Bene, bene, come vi aggrada.... ma se in alcuna cosa vi posso
tornare giovevole.... gretto, salvatico, briacone anche se volete, ma
sempre pronto a rendere servigio a un vecchio amico: non avete che
ad aprir bocca.
— Vi ringrazio di nuovo, Stefanaccio; ma.... pel momento....
In quella s’udì un lontano rumore.
— Tsitt — fece Terremoto, protendendo inanzi il collo ed
accartocciandosi la mano intorno all’orecchio, affine di meglio
ascoltare — che è questo mai?
Stettero un momento in silenzio.
— E’ mi pare — fece Stefanaccio — che siano persone, e anche non
poche, dirette verso questa banda.
— Vi pare, sì?
— Lo giurerei.... giurerei eziandio che sono gente a cavallo.
— Santi del Paradiso!
— Cos’avete, Terremoto?
— Ho.... ho.... infine vel posso dire: ho che dentro questa misera
capanna ci stà nientemeno chè la misera nipote del nostro vecchio
signore...
— Donna Bianca della Staffa?
— Appunto.... donna Bianca della Staffa che io sono riuscito a
strappare dalle ladre ugne di monsignor il Duca.
— Gesummio.... cosa sento?
— E cotesti, che vengono, sono senza dubio suoi scherani
sguinzagliati su le nostre traccie.
— Cosa intendete fare?
— Non lo so, Stefanaccio, non lo so; ma difendere sino all’ultimo
respiro la mia giovine signora.
— Ed io con voi, Terremoto.... se nostro Signore Iddio non vuole
tenermi conto del poco bene, che ho fatto sinora, ce ne aggiungerò
un altro tanto, affinchè non mi possa niegare il suo perdono!
— Non c’è più dubio, Stefanaccio: sono uomini a cavallo....
chiudiamo, chiudiamo la porta, asserragliamola, prepariamoci alla
difesa.... oh, perchè siamo d’inverno!
Il superstizioso Terremoto pensava sempre alla predizione di
Gerolamo Cardano: temeva si dovesse avverare e, non tanto per sè,
come sempre, quanto per l’amata persona, che trovavasi sotto il suo
patrocinio.
Capitolo LIV.
Preliminari.
Erano, nel frattempo, ritornati di Milano i nostri due amici Anguissola

e Neruccio ed inutilmente avevano ricercato di Terremoto, acciocchè
gl’informasse della situazione delle cose: Terremoto non c’era. —
Voci vaghe e strane correvano, per altro, tra il popolo minuto ed in
particolare tra i birri ed i lanzichenecchi di palazzo. — L’arresto del
gigante e la sua fuga di cittadella, con una donna misteriosa, ch’ivi il
Farnese tenea serrata e prigioniera, non erano omai più un segreto
per nessuno. Solamente nulla se ne sapeva di certo: chi diceva
bianco, chi nero; chi ingrossava la faccenda sino a darle proporzioni
e caratteri fantastici, leggendari, diabolici; chi l’ammenciva al grado
di una ridevole farsa.
Posti in sospetto da un sì incerto ondeggiare di dicerie, i nostri due
amici pensarono venirne in chiaro col ridursi alla presenza del
medesimo duca. — Lo trovarono circondato da’ maggiorenti di corte;
il Filareto ed il Caro gli stavano a’ fianchi e — dietro tutti come
nascoso nella penombra, tenevasi un giovine paggio, che — al loro
ingredere — dètte un trabalzo e subito si allontanò. Non così presto,
tuttavia, che il conte Anguissola non avesse prima agio di fissargli gli
occhi negli occhi e di ravvisarlo.
Era Olimpia de’ Marazzani.
Partecipò, lì per lì, tale sua scoperta all’amico, il quale —
almanaccando in quel punto quale potess’essere la donna, che
diceasi fuggita insieme a Terremoto — ne fu tratto a conchiudere che
— se non era Olimpia — doveva essere necessariamente Bianca.
E un simile persuadimento gli cacciò una spina nel core.
Il duca li ricevette, con apparenza di cordialità e di sodisfazione; ma
non senza un cotal ghignolino sarcastico e malauguroso, che lasciava
indovinare com’e’ sapesse, o sospettasse almanco, la parte tutt’altro
che propizia a’ suoi fini ch’eglino aveano sostenuto nelle cose di
Genova.
E così Neruccio, come l’Anguissola lessero chiaro in quel ghigno la
loro sentenza: la mano, che loro stendeva il principe, era coperta di
un morbido guanto di velluto; ma quel guanto celava a stento artigli
di ferro acuti e retrattili.
Bisognava pensare a uno scampo.
Mentre stavano interrogando questo e quello su i casi, di cui aveano
inteso ciaramellare popolino e sbirraglia; un novo personaggio fece
irruzione nella grande sala ducale. Era il Trentacoste.
Pierluigi — malgrado gli acciacchi, che lo chiovavano su l’ampio suo
seggiolone — si drizzò in piedi sollecito e mutò un passo per
muovergli incontro.
— Ebbene? — domandò ansioso al suo capitano.
Costui gli si abassò quasi all’orecchio, susurrandogli alcune parole,
che a lui dovettero tornare oltremodo gradevoli, poichè:
— Potenzinterra! — sclamò, giugnendo le mani in atto di gioiosa
meraviglia — tu se’ così fortunato e felice nelle intraprese tue,
Trentacoste, ch’io vuo’ perderci il nome se non ti fo’ patrizio e
cavalier speron d’oro.... comecchè vi si opponga il tuo nascere e
poco legittimo e niente affatto illustre!
— Vostra Magnificenza mi ricolma — fece inchinandosi, lo scherano.
— Sei tu, invece — gli rispose il duca, stendendogli amichevolmente
la mano e riassidendosi barcollante — sei tu, che ricolmi il tuo
sovrano di gioia, e il tuo sovrano, rammentalo bene! non iscorda mai
nè i buoni servigi nè i tradimenti e sa, del paro, compensare gli uni e
gastigare gli altri!
E, in ciò dire, lanciò una bieca occhiata su l’Anguissola.
Il conte strinse di sottomano il gomito all’amico e gli mormorò:
— È d’uopo romper gl’indugi!
Ed uscirono, senza nulla aver potuto appurare delle dicerie che li
interessavano.
Una volta fuori del palazzo, l’Anguissola si portò alla propria casa,
d’onde spiccò immediatamente un corriere suo fidato a don Ferrante
Gonzaga a Milano.
Con questo principe egli aveva già scambiato molti propositi per
liberare Piacenza dalla odiosa signorìa farnesiana e darla in
sudditanza dello impero.
Vari — come già ci accadde indicarlo — erano gli argomenti di livore
che il governatore di Milano covava in animo contro Pierluigi Farnese.
Oltre a’ dissensi avuti secolui pel Priorato di Barletta e i possessi
Dalvermeschi del Romagnese, altri motivi di dissidio faceva sorgere
egli medesimo adesso, con le sue pretese sul castello di Poviglio e le
terre di Soragna scadute dai Lupi nei Meli. Ed, a maggiormente
aizzare il suo imperiale signore contro il novo duca di Piacenza, non
ristava dal mettergli continuamente sott’occhio i costui amori per la
casa e la signoria di Francia, e la sua immistione nella congiura de’
Fieschi, e il malgoverno che faceva delle cose e de’ sudditi, ond’era
stato infeudato.
Carlo V chiudeva un orecchio ed apriva l’altro a siffatte denunzie e —
se esitava nel dare un assenso alla macchinazione tramata dal suo
luogotenente contro colui, ch’egli s’ostinava a chiamar sempre: il
duca di Castro — era unicamente in riguardo della propria figlia
Margherita, che — volere o volare — trovavasi stretta a costui con
vincoli di sangue.
Ma — dinanzi alla ragione di Stato — i vincoli di sangue si allentano
sempre e — dàlli e dàlli — anche il sommo monarca di Lamagna finì
a lasciarsi cascare il capo sul petto in modo così equivoco, che il
Gonzaga s’ebbe tutta agevolezza di prenderselo per un segno
adesivo.
S’affrettò, quindi, a intendersi con l’Anguissola e col nostro Neruccio,
che il suo fedel Gozzelini gli avea designato come i due uomini
meglio acconci a condurre l’ardua faccenda a buon porto.
Ma l’Anguissola — nelle sue trattative col Gonzaga — voleva, a giusto
titolo, mandare inanzi il debito di buon cittadino e di patriota alla
sodisfazione del proprio risentimento: esigette, quindi, che alla città
sua, a lui ed a quanti contava aversi compagni nel periglioso
cimento, venissero fatte ampie, profittevoli e secure condizioni.
Le prime di tali condizioni, accettate da don Ferrante, erano
contenute in una nota d’istruzioni, che egli stesso dètte al capitano
Federigo Gazino e che suonavano così:
«La prima, che mandano ad offerire della città (Piacenza)
all’Imperatore, et a me, come suo luogotenente, con che dentro il
termine di un giorno mi debbia risolvere di accettarla insieme con le
altri conditioni, che si dicono appresso, altramente, che, passato il
termine di un giorno s’intendono esser liberi di tale offerta; perchè
havendo a far con nemici tanto potenti, non si assecureno di star
senza patrone, per non haver forze bastanti a poter difendersi per se
stessi, et che quando non possano havere Sua Maestà per patrone,
come desiderano essi, non ne mancherà loro degli altri.
«La seconda, che vogliono, ch’io prometta loro di far che tutti i
feudatarj così di Piacenza, come di Parma, venghino alla devotione di
Sua Maestà, et a quelli che recusassero si confiscassero i beni.
«La terza di far, che Sua Maestà non facci relassar Pierluisi per
assecurarsi di non haver andar a dar conto a Parma.
«La quarta, ch’io abbia a procurar, che la città di Parma si reduca alla
medesima devotione, et obedientia di Sua Maestà, acciocchè
rimanendo quella città sotto altro patrone non havesse a causar
guerra nel paese con rovina, et destruttione d’ambedue dette città.
«La quinta, ch’io non habbi a disponer de la persona di Pierluisi
finchè detta città di Parma non sia in potere di Sua Maestà.
«La sesta ed ultima, che di quello fussi seguito il dì del caso, o di
morti homini, o di guadagni facti non si abbia a parlar, nè cercar
conto, ma reputarsi, et tenersi come cose fatte, et acquistate di
buona guerra.»
Ed è grazioso l’osservare come ad un omicidio ed un sollevamento di
popolo premeditati e, con ogni finezza di avvedimenti e cautele,
complottati e condotti, si dèsse lo ingenuo e semplice nome di caso;
non altrimenti che, de’ giorni nostri, ad un caso di vaiuolo o di
colèra.
Ma di quelle sei condizioni, i congiurati non si chiamarono per
sodisfatti. E’ sapeano bene — per lunga sperienza — che — nel
volersi sottrarre alle prepotenze di un Pierluigi Farnese, per affidarsi
alla protezione di un Ferrante Gonzaga — il misero burchiello delle
loro aspirazioni e speranze rischiava molto d’andar sbattuto fra Scilla
e Cariddi, imperocchè si potesse dire di quei due che, se quello un
galeotto, e questi un marinaro. Laonde — mentre si ribellavano
contro le bricconate dell’uno — studiavano premunirsi contro le
presumibili insidie dell’altro.
Non tornava, per altro, agevole troppo il condurre don Ferrante a
fare in tutto e per tutto il piacer loro e — prima che fossero giunti a
mettersi secolui di accordo — ce ne volle del bello e del buono.
Intanto sopravenne novella cagione d’indugio.
Il Duca Ottavio — come n’ha lasciato scritto il buon padre Affò —
partitosi dalla Corte Imperiale senza aver nulla rilevato delle trame
già ordite giunse in questi giorni a Piacenza vicino al padre. Questo
inaspettato arrivo parve di grande ostacolo all’impresa, della quale
impazientissimo dimostravasi l’Auguissola, e davasi a conoscere
deliberato di ultimarla a tutto costo. Conobbe don Ferrante
macchinare i congiurati fra loro di voler ammazzare Pierluigi; della
qual cosa mostrò dolersi, e chiesta la mente loro, e raccomandata la
persona d’Ottavio genero dell’Imperatore a’ medesimi, ebbe in
risposta che non si assicuravano di poterlo salvare.
L’odio dell’Anguissola, semprepiù aizzato dalla recente vista d’Olimpia
Marazzani, e quello di qualcun altro fra’ compagni suoi, era giunto a
tale, che — ne’ loro sanguinarî proponimenti — e’ chiarivansi pronti
ad ogni estremo, pur di finirla. Ma il Gonzaga fece tanto «che
promisero di star a segno sino alla partenza di Ottavio.»
Il duca di Camerino arrivò a Piacenza su i primi di agosto, poco
dopo, cioè, che sua sorella Vittoria fu andata sposa a Guidobaldo
Dalla Rovere, duca d’Urbino, e che il suo fratello naturale Orazio
s’ebbe impalmato in Francia la figlia adulterina di re Enrico II e della
contessa d’Estampes; e vi si trattenne sino al penultimo giorno del
mese istesso, nel quale trasse per alla volta di Roma.
Nel frattempo, e col proposito forse di conciliare un po’ al padre
l’animo de’ cittadini, che ben gli riconobbe alieno ed avverso,
massime in causa del pazzo dispendio occasionato dalla costruzione
del castello; e’ si mostrò oltre ogni dire manieroso ed affabile e cercò
mansuefarli con ogni maniera divertimenti e sollazzi, tra cui una
grande giostra tenuta il giorno di San Bartolomeo. Ma non approdò:
pochissime dame v’intervennero e le sue blandizie caddero tutte a
terra come freccie spuntate.
Capitolo LV.
P. L. A. C.
Oltre il Po, tra Piacenza e Casalpusterlengo, sorgeva allora un

vecchio castello feudale, di cui si veggono anche oggidì le ruine, che
apparteneva a don Luigi Gonzaga, signore di Castiglione delle
Stiviere e cognato del conte Giovanni Anguissola.
Ivi — nella notte del 9 settembre 1547 — trovavasi un grosso di
signori, per il più piacentini, radunati intorno a due emissarî di don
Ferrante, ossia il suo segretario Gaspare Gozzelini, di nostr’antica
conoscenza, ed il suo capitano Federigo Gazino.
I signori, che a questi facevan corona, toccavano circa la quarantina
ed — oltre il conte Anguissola ed il nostro Neruccio, sempre celato
sotto il pseudonimo di Giovanni Osca da Valenza — erano: altri due
Anguissola, il conte Francesco Maria ed il cavaliere Annibale; due
Cavalcabò, Vincenzo e Carlantonio; due Pallavicino, i marchesi
Alessandro e Camillo da Scipione; il conte Olderigo Scotti, il conte
Agostino Landi, Giuseppe del Pozzo, Franceschino Malvicini, Gianluigi
Confalonieri, Diogene Doria, Vincenzo da Narni, Giuliano Mancini,
Gaspare Paveri, Filippo Arcelli, Giulio Ziani, Pierantonio Gramigna,
Giorgio di Verona, Gianluigi Lusardi, Francesco Mandola, Battista
Rosignoli, Giovanni Buratto, Antonio Mannini, Pietro da Monza,
Francesco Dell’Angiolino, Giacopino Musso, il capitano Antonio Ugoni,
Ercole Malerba, Girolamo Solero, Aurelio Buzzoni, Domenico Barili,
Francesco Maria Marconi, Andrea Bracco ed Opilio Pallini.
Fatto silenzio, dopo un primo scambio di saluti e di strette di mano, il
Gozzelini si trasse un largo foglio di tasca e lesse:
«Oltra gli altri capitoli concessi et sottoscritti di mia mano sotto li 30
di luglio proximo passato al conte Giovanni Angusciolo, e agli altri,
che intervengono nel trattato di dar a S. M. Cesarea la città di
Piacenza, si concedono li due infrascritti: e prometto che S. M. li
osserverà, et farà osservare.
«Il primo, che Sua Maestà ridurrà l’entrate di detta città pertinenti
alla Camera a quel segno, che erano in tempo che detta città era ad
obbedienza della Sede apostolica, et che si exigeranno in quel modo,
et forma, et per quella sorta di officiali, et ministri, che si exigevano
in detto tempo senza alterar in ciò cosa alcuna.
«Il secondo, che S. M. farà, che tutte le cause da mille scudi abasso
s’habino a decidere in Piacenza per li officiali deputati da S. M. in
essa città, senza poter essere tirate a Milano, nè in la prima, nè in la
seconda, nè in la terza instanza, così come si osservava al tempo
della Sede Apostolica.
«Dato a Milano il 3 di agosto 1547.»
Come si vede, l’Anguissola preoccupavasi principalmente degli
interessi della sua città natale. Ma tutto ciò non era ancora bastevole
per tranquillare le sospettose paure degli uni e per appagare la
cupida avarizia degli altri. Di tutti i tempi, le congiure non sono mai
altro che la cospirazione ad un medesimo fine di tanti e disparati
rancori, interessi e propositi. Chi mira solo a trar vendetta di un
nimico aborrito, chi a liberare la patria da una esosa tirannide, chi a
salvare sè stesso da minacciata rovina, chi a sgravar di balzelli e la
città e gli averi propri, chi un po’ all’uno, un po’ all’altro, un po’
all’altro ancora. Bisognava dunque contentarli tutti, e gli otto capitoli
sino allora concertati non riuscivano sufficienti all’uopo. Però
l’Anguissola avea, di bel novo ed a lungo, dovuto tirarsi pe’ capegli
col governatore di Milano e co’ suoi delegati e non era approdato a
qualche buon risultamento, se non giuocando a rimpiattino con la
testa del giovane Ottavio Farnese. Aveva detto: «O concedermi
quanto desideriamo od ammazziamo anche lui!» E Don Ferrante —
onde salvar la testa al genero del suo augusto signore — aveva
dovuto concedere.
Finita che il Gozzelini ebbe la sua lettura:
— Non basta!... non basta! — sorsero a protestare diversi ed, in
particolare, i fratelli Pallavicino ed il conte Scotti.
— Lo so, che non basta — fece alteramente l’Anguissola — ed eccovi
perciò appunto messer Federigo Gazino, che sta dando mano ad un
secondo foglio per leggervi ciò che vi manca.
Il Gazino, infatti, s’era avanzato nel mezzo il circolo de’ cospiratori, e
si teneva una carta sotto il naso, in atto di leggere.
— Silenzio!... badiamo!... — mormorarono taluni.
Ed egli lesse:
«Capitoli concessi al conte Gio. Angosciolo in Milano a li VII
settembre.
«Oltre gli altri capitoli concessi per me in nome di S. Maestà al conte
Giovanni Angosciolo seguendo l’effetto del trattato di Piacenza, si
concedono anchora li due infrascritti, cioè:
«Che de li omecidii, che seguissero in la città il giorno del caso (!)
non sarà adomandato conto nè ragione, nè similmente di robbe, et
denari, che fussero stati acquistati in qualsivoglia modo, ma che tale
robbe, et denaro saranno tenuti per acquistati a buona guerra.
«Perchè la città di Piacenza dice, che in tempo dei Duchi di Milano
era assai aggravata in le cose dell’estimo, si promette fare, che sia
disgravata, et reducta a quello, che si troverà convenirsi di ragione,
et oltra questo, che in le impositioni, et graveze extraordinarie, che
s’imponeno a lo stato di Milano, sarà sempre della terza parte de la
portione, che toccasse ad essa.»
I congiurati si dichiarano pienamente sodisfatti.
— Ora — soggiunse il Gozzelino trattosi in mezzo a loro — l’alto ed
illustre mio signore ha già reso d’ogni cosa partecipe l’augusta
persona dello imperatore Carlo V e tiene già in pronto quattrocento
cavalli bene agguerriti, onde, a pena spiccia la faccenda di Pierluigi,
volare all’occupazione di Parma... guai se a questo non si
provedesse!... restando Parma in potere del papa non è a dubitarsi
che subito guerra ne scoppierebbe e bisogna evitarla a ogni costo.
— E Sua Maestà — interpellò il conte Landi — ha dato l’adesione sua
agl’intendimenti del magnifico vostro signore?
— No, messere il conte — fece scaltramente il segretario — ma il
mio signore ha saputo trovare il modo di farne senza... ed eccovene
la prova in questo brano di lettera, che io medesimo ho scritto per lui
alla Maestà Sua.
E lesse ghignando ciò che segue:
«..... come la M. V. vederà, v’è un capitolo, per il quale mi si dà un
giorno di tempo, et non più ad accettar o no l’offerta, in virtù del
qual capitolo vengo posto in necessità di accettarla senza consulta di
V. M. per non lasciarla andare in mano de’ francesi. Et per questa via
pare a me, che non solamente io vengo scusato del fatto; ma V. M.
molto più justificata, che non seria in caso, ch’el negocio si diferisse
fin a poterlo consultare con essa: perchè aspettando a quel tempo a
far l’effetto, pareria fatto di ordine et con sentimento di lei; dove
facendosi di presente non si può conjetturare che essa vi habbia
avuto parte.»
Un mormorio d’ammirazione scorse per l’assemblea. Tutti
s’inchinarono dinanzi alla politica scalabrina del duca di Guastalla, il
quale preludeva, trecento anni sono, all’arti oggidì tanto decantate
dei Talleyrand, dei Metternich e dei Bismark.
— Egregiamente! — sclamò il Confalonieri.
— E come divisate menare a fine l’impresa? — ripigliò il Gozzelino.
— Oh, semplicemente — fece l’Anguissola — domani istesso la
faremo finita.
— Domani? — susurrarono alcuni meravigliando.
— Sì, sì — continuò il capo del complotto — ogni remora ormai può
tornarci fatale e disastrosa.... domani!... Cinque di noi, designati
dalla sorte, capitaneranno i restanti.... procediamo immediatamente
al sorteggio.
Francesco Maria Marconi che — come uomo di lettere — aveva
recato seco il necessario; trasse la carta, le penne d’oca ed un
piccolo calamaio di peltro e — situato il tutto s’un largo tavolo, che
occupava un canto dello stanzone — invitò i compagni a scrivere
ciascuno il proprio nome su di altrettanti quadrucci, che, arrotolati,
vennero quindi raccolti, come in un bossolo, entro il morione del
capitano Antonio Ugoni.
Opilio Pallini — perchè il più giovine de’ radunati — s’ebbe allora
l’incarico di rappresentare la cieca figlia del caso ed estrasse cinque
rotoletti dall’elmo.
Lo stesso Gozzelino — come il più imparziale, perchè non
attivamente implicato nella congiura — sciolse le cartoline e ne
proclamò ad alta voce il contenuto.
Il primo rotoletto diceva:
— Pallavicino conte Alessandro.
Il secondo:
— Pallavicino conte Camillo.
Il terzo:
— Landi conte Agostino.
Il quarto:
— Anguissola conte Giovanni.
Il quinto:
— Confalonieri Gianluigi.
— Fatalità e destino! — gridò il conte Scotti, a pena ebbe udito que’
cinque nomi.
Il conte Olderigo Scotti si dilettava un poco d’alchimia e di scienze
occulte ed era però tenuto nell’alto concetto di una sorta di mago.
— Perchè? — gli chiesero alcuni.
— Badate alle iniziali di que’ cinque nomi — rispose lo Scotti —
Pallavicino, Landi, Anguissola, Confalonieri; PLAC.... Placentia:
nessuno meglio di loro avrebbe potuto rappresentare e fare le
vendette della nostra città: è Dio che lo vuole!
— Plac.... Plac!... — ripeterono molti — ebbene: sia questa la nostra
parola d’ordine, il nostro segno d’intelligenza.
— Domani mattina all’alba — fece solennemente l’Anguissola —
troviamoci tutti su l’altra sponda del fiume.
— A domani!... a domani!... — risposero i congiurati.
— Ed ora.... separiamoci!...
Ed uscirono dal castello alla spicciolata.
Capitolo LVI.
Dio non paga il sabato.
Arrivato il primo al castello di Luigi Gonzaga, il nostro Neruccio fu

l’ultimo ad uscirne. E fu l’ultimo per molte e diverse ragioni. Anzitutto
il suo amico Anguissola lo avea incaricato di regolare e dirigere tutto
ciò che concerneva quel loro notturno e misterioso convegno. Gli era
occorso però di precedervi gli altri, affine di disporre alquanto la
sala, che li doveva accogliere, e le scuderie, in cui riporre le loro
cavalcature. Così gli facea d’uopo rimanervi dopo tutti, onde
chiudere le porte dietro di loro ed invigilare a che nulla mancasse al
momento della loro partenza.
Il castello, di cui Luigi Gonzaga avea rimesso le chiavi al proprio
congiunto era affatto inabitato e diserto.
Poi, a trattenere Neruccio, concorreva una serie di tristi pensieri, di
penosissime conghietture.
Un segreto impenetrabile erasi sempre addensato intorno a
Terremoto e alla donna, che, secondo il dire della gente, il colosso
avea strappato dalle carceri della cittadella.
Chi poteva essere questa donna?... cos’era accaduto di lui?
Tali le domande, che, da lunga pezza, gli mulinavano in cervello, ed
alle quali non avea mai potuto fare nessuna risposta.
Nel convegno di quella notte, per altro, qualche sprazzo di luce s’era
insinuato fra le tenebre de’ suoi dubî e delle sue paure. — Taluni de’
congiurati credeano saper qualche cosa di quanto sì vivamente lo
interessava. — Chi diceva la donna una delle molte concubine di
Pierluigi, che — stanca di vivere al di lui fianco — avea fatto
scappare di cittadella un prigioniero, mettendogli a patto di
pigliarsela seco nella fuga: gli uomini del duca li avrebbero inseguiti,
raggiunti e massacrati tutti due. — Altri pretendevano, invece — ed
era tra questi il capitano Ugoni — che quella fosse una povera
creatura, rapita e tenuta captiva dal duca, e da un antico servo di
sua famiglia, un gigante, a ciò che si narrava, tratta prodigiosamente
a libertà ed a salvamento. E questa versione rispondeva a puntino
alle supposizioni di Neruccio, o — direm meglio — all’intima voce del
suo cuore.
Il misero giovine sbattuto da un continuo alternìo di timori e
speranze per mezzo il pelago delle incertezze; era rimaso a meditare
su i proprî casi, dimentico omai che i suoi compagni lo avessero da
lungo abbandonato.
Si scosse, finalmente, ed uscì dal castello; ma — nel mentre girava
intorno alla sua muraglia esterna, per raggiungere il proprio cavallo,
che aveva attaccato ad un albero, onde non ingombrare di troppo le
anguste scuderie — un romore improviso lo colpi e lo trattenne.
Era il calpestio di due persone, che s’avvicinavano, camminando
caute e sarebbesi detto in punta di piedi. Egli si schivò rapido dietro
il pilastro di una stecconaia e stette ad osservare.
Quando gli furono presso, scôrse ch’erano due uomini di bassa
statura, i quali si accostavano in silenzio a un punto della campagna,
in cui spiccavano due forme nere: i loro cavalli.
Nel passargli accanto, l’uno richiese all’altro sommessamente:
— Afete botute ascoldare?
— Parola per parola — gli rispose l’interrogato — a momenti vi
narrerò tutto: oh, è una cosa tremenda!
La voce di costui produsse uno strano effetto su l’animo di Neruccio:
credette riconoscerla e — senz’attender altro — sgattaiolò pian piano
sino a raggiungere il proprio cavallo e gli balzò in sella.
Nel tempo medesimo i due sconosciuti avean fatto altrettanto e già
si slontanavano di trotto.
— Sono spie! — pensò Neruccio.
E — cacciati gli sproni ne’ fianchi del suo cavallo — si slanciò a
briglia sciolta dietro di loro, gridando a squarciagola:
— Traditori! traditori! fermatevi!
A tale intimazione, anche coloro, cui veniva indiretta, si dèttero a
scappare con tutta velocità e si sarebbero indubiamente sottratti
amendue al pericolo, che li minacciava, se il cavallo di uno di loro —
incespicando contro un grosso macigno — non fosse d’improviso
traboccato a terra.
L’altro tirò via ed, in breve, disparve.
Neruccio raggiunse il cavaliero caduto, scese di sella e lo sollevò.
Affisandolo in faccia, comunque al debole chiarore della notte, subito
lo riconobbe: era la stessa persona, con la quale s’era scontrato e
battuto ne’ pressi di Perugia, era la terribile Olimpia Marazzani.
Come?... perchè in quel luogo?
Facile a spiegarsi.
Da parecchio tempo, profittando della circostanza che l’Anguissola,
suo spauracchio, trovavasi a Genova per la faccenda de’ Fieschi;
ell’aveva lasciato Castro e gli abiti muliebri, per rimettersi in ispoglie
virili e recarsi a Piacenza. Pellegrino di Leuthen le era — come di
solito — compagno.
Ritornato il conte, la prudenza avrebbe dovuto consigliarla ad
allontanarsi di nuovo; ma il contegno di lui e di alcuni altri
gentiluomini di corte la pose in allarme. Ella sola per prima e forse
unica concepì il sospetto che qualche oscura cosa stessero insieme
macchinando a pregiudizio del suo amante e signore e si propose
spiarne, scuoprirne, sventarne le trame.
L’astuto tedesco serviva egregiamente a’ suoi fini: e’ sapeva — come
suol dirsi — dove il diavolo tenesse la coda e le forniva i più esatti e
minuti particolari su le abitudini e le pratiche di coloro ch’ella si
prefiggeva di tener d’occhio.
Per tale via seppe del convegno loro al castello di Luigi Gonzaga. Vi
si recò di buon’ora; fece nascondere il proprio ed il cavallo di
Pellegrino dietro un fitto d’alberi e — mentre questi stava in vedetta,
acciocchè nessuno potesse sovraccorli e sorprenderli alla sprovista —
ella s’insinuò strisciando carpone fino al vano di una finestra, d’onde
si ripromise, e le riuscì, infatti, di udire e vedere tutto ciò che si
dicesse e facesse dai congiurati.
Terminati i loro armeggiamenti, ella si trattenne ancora a lungo al
proprio posto, non volendo scostarsene, sino a che tutti, insino
all’ultimo, se ne fossero iti. Ma non fece attenzione o — per meglio
dire — non potè pensare a Neruccio, che accidentalmente soltanto
erasi tanto più degli altri indugiato.
Come l’ebbe riconosciuta:
— Ah! ah! — sclamò egli in tono di trionfo — la Marazzani?... colei,
che io ho scannato alle porte di Perugia?... colei, che è morta e
seppellita nel convento de’ padri Agostiniani?... ah! ah! ora tu più
non mi sfuggi!
Ed — abbrancatala a’ fianchi — la sollevò di peso e la trasse con sè
sul proprio cavallo.
Olimpia fremeva di rabbia: era pallida come un cadavere.
— Per Iddio! — fece il giovine capitano, come si fu messo all’ambio
— è un onorevole mestiere quel che tu fai; ma la tua mala stella ti
vieta di cavarne alcun frutto!... Tu se’ la druda di quello scellerato del
Farnese; tu hai voluto interessarti più che a donna non si competa
delle faccende sue; hai sperato scongiurare la tempesta, che si
aduna sovra il suo capo maledetto, hai sperato prevenirlo in tempo;
sottrarlo al pericolo, che lo minaccia; salvarlo; ma tutto indarno:
eccoti ridotta all’impotenza!
— Lo so; oh, lo so! — disse la donna, co’ denti stretti — traggiti pure
lo stile di cintola ed assestamene un colpo nel cuore, ch’io nè
implorerò misericordia, nè metterò il più debole lagno: sono parata a
tutto!... La vita è guerra continua che gli uomini si menano a
vicenda: quando l’un prevale e l’altro soggiace, questo, se ha senno,
non debbe dare a quello anco il godimento della propria umiliazione.
Ed io non tel darò, stanne certo. Uccidimi, è il tuo dritto; ma non
allegrartene tanto, che, prima che io muoia, t’ho già fatto tanto male
in prevenzione, da lasciartene grossa parte in retaggio.
— Che male m’hai tu fatto?
— Non se’ tu l’amante di Bianca della Staffa?
— Sì... lo sono, lo fui!
— Ebbene, mio bel capitano, conosci tu quale sia attualmente la
sorte di quella dilettissima tua?...
— Oh, darei una parte del mio sangue a saperlo.
— Non darai nulla e lo saprai parimente.... Ti ricorda della sua
disparsa da Castel Leone di Cremona?... fui io, io con Pellegrino di
Leuthen, che la indussi in abbaglio, la eccitai a seguirci e la tradussi
in balìa di Pierluigi Farnese.
— Oh, ma perchè... scellerata?
— Perchè la sua ritrosia, la sua castimonia mi ferivano nell’amor
proprio; m’erano come un rimbrotto; perchè volevo avvilirla.
— Iniqua.
— E ci sono riuscita, e più ancora di quanto non isperassi.... Ella
volle bensì scampare, per tutte le vie, al destino, che le sovrastava;
strillò, si svelse i capegli, battè del capo nel muro per darsi la morte;
ma a nulla le valse; c’ero io, io, che prestavo mano ed aiuto al mio
vendicatore e, fra tutti due, riuscimmo ad averne ragione.
— Infame!
— Da quel giorno, o.... piuttosto.... da quella notte, ella languì in un
ritiro della cittadella di Piacenza; ma, da quella notte.... fu madre.
— Che dici tu?
— Il vero, mio bel capitano, null’altro che il vero.
— Anima d’inferno!
— Ultimamente, uno de’ suoi antichi vassalli, il suo fedel Terremoto,
giunse a strapparla da quel ritiro e la trasse, con la sua creatura,
nella propria casuccia del Valnurese....
— Ah, non mi hanno, dunque, ingannato!
— No, no; ma a nulla le valse.... gli sgherri del duca s’ebbero ragione
del formidabile villano e gli ritolsero la sua signora.... Ti ricordi il
giorno, in cui tu e l’Anguissola, reduci da Milano, veniste alla
presenza del duca?... ti ricordi che, in quel momento, arrivò il
Trentacoste e gli mormorò all’orecchio una notizia, che parve
ricolmarlo di gioia?...
— Ebbene?
— Ebbene: Trentacoste gli annunziava appunto che Bianca della
Staffa era stata ritolta al gigante e riconfinata nella sua muda.
— Maledizione!
— Nevvero ch’io t’ho preparato un sorridente avvenire?
— Ma vero è altresì che io ti scannerò in questo punto medesimo.
E sguainò ferocemente il pugnale.
— Fallo — disse Olimpia imperterrita e quasi con un soghigno di
sfida — ci sono pronta.
Neruccio era demente d’odio. Stette un momento col ferro sospeso
sul petto di quella femina scellerata; poi — rinvaginandolo:
— No — soggiunse, crollando il capo — la morte è troppo poco pe’
tuoi misfatti: ci vuole di peggio.
Olimpia allibì.
— Cosa intendi fare? — gli chiese.
— Lo saprai fra breve!
E spronò il cavallo al galoppo, e non disse più verbo.
Traversato il Po s’un burchiello menato da quattro uomini della sua
compagnia d’arme; e’ giunse pochi istanti dopò a Piacenza.
Nella sua qualità di capitano a’ soldi di monsignore il duca, e’
comandava un corpo di ottanta lanzi, che tenevano caserma presso
l’entratura della città. Il suo pensiero di vendetta era infernale.
Arrivato dinanzi alla caserma; smontato d’arcione, trascinandosi
dietro Olimpia; penetrò, con essa, dentro i quartieri e — a mezzo del
trombetta — fece svegliare e raccorre i propri uomini d’arme.
Come se li ebbe tutti d’attorno, affollati nella più grande sala del
luogo, e’ spinse loro trammezzo la Marazzani, sciamando:
— Figliuoli! costei, che vedete sotto abiti d’uomo, non è, invece, che
una donna, una giovine donna, che vi abbandono.... fatene ciò che
volete.
Olimpia mise un urlo.
E noi tireremo una pietosa cortina su ciò che ne fecero ottanta
lanzichenecchi, la maggior parte spagnuoli, svizzeri e tedeschi.
Ed egli — Neruccio — tenendosi, con le bracci conserte, su la soglia
del vasto stanzone, assisteva al mostruoso saturnale.
La misera — cui, nella lotta, erano cadute di dosso sino all’ultime
vesti — anelante, sfinita, più morta che viva, si dibatteva, si
trascinava carpone, cercava inutilmente svincolarsi da’ sordidi
amplessi di quei brutali: e’ se la palleggiavano come monelli un cervo
volante.
Alla fine Neruccio credette prudenza lo intervenire e:
— Figliuoli — soggiunse — badate che la presenza di costei in questo
luogo è un periglio per tutti... se l’accaduto si conoscesse, io n’avrei
il patibolo e voi le vergate.
Non avea conchiuso il suo dire, che ottanta ferri balenavano
sinistramente su l’ignudo corpo della misera vituperata; ed uno le
penetrava dritto nel core; e l’altro le spiccava, d’un manrovescio, il
capo dal busto; ed altri la colpivano, la frastagliavano, la recidevano
in cento pezzi.
Di lì a un istante, di quella giovine donna feroce e superba non
rimaneva più chè un ammasso di informe carname, che quei bestiali,
altrettanto vili e paurosi quanto malnati, seppellivano in un canto del
cortile entro una buca scavata lì per lì e coperta di poca terra.
Non solo Olimpia Marazzani non era più, ma nessuno poteva
nemmanco sapere od imaginare cosa ne fosse seguito.
La vendetta di Neruccio s’era compiuta.
Dio non paga il sabato.
Capitolo LVII.
Ultime gesta di Terremoto.
Abbiamo lasciato il protagonista di questa nostra narrazione al

momento, in cui rinchiudevasi affrettatamente, col navichiere
Stefanaccio, entro la propria casuccia e ne sbarrava ed asserragliava
accuratamente la porta. — Egli non avea preso abbaglio circa il
rumore, che lo spingeva a quelle sollecite cautele: erano veramente
gli uomini di Pierluigi, che s’inoltravano nella notte in busca di lui. —
Li capitanava il Trentacoste ed il Bombaglino ed erano in numero di
sedici, tutti a cavallo. — Chi li avea posti su la via era stato un villano
presso cui Terremoto avea sostato un breve momento, per farsi
prestare un cencio di mantello, col quale la sua signora potesse
riparare dal freddo intenso sè e la propria creaturina. — Il villano
stupido — assediato dalle interrogazioni de’ sgherri — non avea
saputo schermirsi e s’era lasciato andare a narrar loro tutto quanto
avea visto e sapeva sul conto de’ fuggitivi. — Il gigante — così avea
detto — era persona del luogo, abitante al di là di borgo San
Bernardino, al di là dello antico castello de’ Camia, in una piccola
catapecchia del villaggio della Chiappa, che incontravasi alle falde di
monte Osèro. — Trentacoste e Bombaglino non desideravano di più.
Erano scorse forse meno di dieci minuti, dacchè il gigante ed il
navalestro s’erano ritirati, quando quelli giunsero sul luogo.
Raccomandarono le loro cavalcature a un gruppo d’alte ed annose
querce, che sorgevano alla loro destra, nel luogo istesso dov’era
l’umile tomba della vecchia Rinolfo; quindi si sparsero in giro
dintorno al tugurio e lo circuirono come d’assedio.
Trentacoste picchiò alla porta sbarrata.
Nessuno rispose.
Tornò a picchiare.
Uguale silenzio.
— Ah, ah! — disse allora — vônno fare i sordi? ebbene, ragazzi miei,
introniamo loro le orecchie con un linguaggio più persuasivo....
gittiamo a terra la porta.
E — col calcio del moschetto — cominciò ad arietarla
tremendamente, mentre quattro o cinque de’ suoi, che gli si erano
aggroppati intorno, facevano altrettanto.
A quell’attacco, risposero tre o quattro colpi di fuoco e due di loro,
mortalmente feriti, dovettero ritirarsi dalla impresa. I colpi partivano
dall’alto del tetto, dove Terremoto erasi inerpicato col suo grosso
archibugio.
Ma non era provisto di munizioni. Fece altri cinque o sei colpi, bucò
la pelle ad altri due o tre de’ suoi persecutori; poi dovette gittare
l’arma come uno inutile peso.
Gli armigeri farnesiani — sgomentiti al principio di quella improvisa
aggressione — ritornarono ad assalire la porta ed anche con maggior
furia di prima.
Terremoto era salito sul tetto, perchè il casolare non avea finestre,
da cui poterli offendere e tener lontani. Da stare lassù ordinò a
Stefanaccio che gli passasse per l’abbaino i pochi mobili e le poche
suppellettili e masserizie, che si trovavano nella casa, e si dètte a
scaraventar loro su la testa tutti quanti i diversi oggetti che questi,
man mano, gli rimetteva. Erano frammenti di panche e di sedie,
arpioni e cunei di ferro, accette e penniti, orci ed orciuoli, ch’egli
lanciava a dovere, mirando e colpendo giusto, poichè il piano
nevoso, su cui coloro spiccavano stipati dinanzi alla porta gli
permettesse benissimo di distinguergli ad uno ad uno, il che essi non
poteano fare di lui, che si perdeva, per così dire, tra l’ombre pesanti
del cielo grigiastro.
La lotta durò per qualche tempo, durò — vale dire — sino a tanto
che Stefanaccio ebbe un oggetto da consegnare a Terremoto. —
Ogni novo proiettile, che rovinava su gli assedianti, spaccando a
questo la testa, a quello schiacciando un occhio od il naso e molti
mettendone però fuori di combattimento; causava loro momenti di
confusione, di scompiglio, d’incertezza e li sforzava a tante
successive remissioni de’ loro tentativi, dimanieracchè il complesso di
questi mai poteva approdare a nissun resultato.
Ma quando Stefanaccio — pur rifrugando e rovistando ogni più
riposto e recondito canto della casa — si fu avveduto che essa nulla
più racchiudeva, allo infuori del modesto scanno, su cui teneasi
accoccolata Bianca, con in braccia la sua bambina; — quando
Terremoto dovette, di conseguenza, smettere dal mitragliare e
tenere a stecco i proprî nimici; — questi, che non duravano fatica
molta a indovinare il motivo di tale desistenza dalle ostilità,
rimbaldanzirono di rimpatto e — con sempre maggiore accanimento
— si gittarono tutti — meno due rimasi a guardia del posteriore della
casa — a tempestarne la porta. — La porta — solidamente
affortificata e puntellata nello interno — opponeva loro una seria
resistenza. Ma l’impeto loro faceasi così forte e continuo, ch’essa
molto a lungo non avrebbe potuto durarla. — Già, infatti, barellava
su i cardini e — cigolando con malauguroso lamentìo — pareva
essere giunta allo stremo delle proprie forze. Il chiavistello schiodato,
la toppa smurata, sbalzavano sul pavimento; una parte della imposta
si frangeva piuttosto che cedere e volava in ischegge; un urto ancora
e il varco sarebbe stato dischiuso.
Stando inoperoso, acciapinato e pencolante dalla grondaia,
Terremoto — se non vedeva od udiva — intuiva tutto ciò. — Il
pensiero che — tra poco volgere di minuti — quella bulima di
manigoldi avrebbe irrotto entro la sua povera casa, per impadronirsi
e trarre nuovamente prigione la sua giovane ed amata signora; gli
mise per tutto il corpo un fremito di sublime disperazione, quello
istesso, che dee provare il suicida, quando — dal sommo della
eminenza o della sponda del fiume — misura la sterminata altezza, o
la profondità delle aque, per cui od entro cui sta per gittarsi a volo,
onde spegnere anzitempo il corso dei travagliati suoi giorni. Gli parve
che lo spettro del vecchio Giovanni il Grosso gli sorgesse inanzi

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