“A Temple Made Without Hands”: Professional Authority and Institutional Space in Renaissance Drama by Scott M. O’Neil Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Professor Rosemary Kegl Department of English Arts, Sciences and Engineering School of Arts and Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, NY 2019 ii Dedication Many years ago, as a small child, I was torn between two impossible choices: a collection of O. Henry stories and a book of stories about Greek mythology. Our family did not have an excess of money.
I don’t remember much else about that day beyond those two books and what happened next. I told my mother that I couldn’t decide, and she told me to get both, because “there’s always money for books.” That response transformed books for me—from things that I wanted into items of inherent value. That day was the beginning of a lifetime of reading and a passion for the written word. This dissertation is dedicated to my mother for starting me on that journey.
iii Table of Contents Biographical Sketch iv Acknowledgements v Abstract viii Contributors and Funding Sources x Chapter 1: “A Temple Made Without Hands”: The Professions and their Place in Tudor/Stuart England 1 Chapter 2: Courting the Fool: The Creation of Authoritative Space in King Lear 46 Chapter 3: The Kings of Subjects: Licensed Confinement and the Inversion of Authority in Love’s Labour’s Lost 110 Chapter 4: Habitual Friars: Monastic Equivocation in Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet 164 Coda: Hiring Tudors: Disguised Rulers and the Breaking of Boundaries 216 Bibliography 234 End Notes 258 iv Biographical Sketch The author was born in Rochester, NY and grew up in Tunkhannock, PA. He attended Towson University in Towson, MD and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and Secondary Education. He spent four years as a high school teacher at North Harford High School. He earned a Master of Arts degree in English at St.
Bonaventure University in Olean, NY in 2011. He began doctoral study in English at the University of Rochester in 2011. He was awarded the Rossell Hope Robbins Library Digital Humanities Fellowship in 2014, Dudley Doust Teaching Fellowships in 2015 and 2016, and a Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship in 2017. He received a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Rochester in 2015.
He pursued his research in Renaissance literature under the direction of Rosemary Kegl. The following publications were a result of work conducted during doctoral study: “Lorenzo Valla’s ‘intellectual violence’: Personal Feuds and Appropriated Sarcasm.” Words that Tear the Flesh: Sarcasm in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Cultures, edited by Alan Baragona and Elizabeth L. De Gruyter, 2018, pp. “Medieval Drama: An Annotated Bibliography for Teachers.” The Once and Future Classroom: Resources for Teaching the Middle Ages, vol.” The Camelot Project, edited by Alan Lupack.
v Acknowledgements I have been fortunate to receive guidance from a long line of mentors, colleagues, and friends, all of whom helped to shape me into the scholar I am today. I would like to first thank my committee for their support throughout my graduate career. Jon Baldo, with his warmth and collegiality, has encouraged me at every step to push myself out of my comfort zone, particularly regarding sending articles out for submission and introducing myself to academic-famous people at conferences. Russell Peck has not only provided keen insights on my dissertation, but his ebullient passion for theater has been a constant reminder of everything I love about studying Shakespeare.
Russell even came to see all of the productions in which I played a bit part over the years, including the production of Merry Wives where I was upstaged by creepy, life-sized puppets. My advisor, Rosemary Kegl, is the reason that I came to the University of Rochester. In writing my thesis at Bonaventure, I came across her work on Merry Wives and instantly knew I wanted to learn from her. After successive seminars during coursework, I knew that I had made the correct decision.
Her feedback—particularly on my Lear chapter— has been incisive and generative, even when I seemingly forgot how to write a cogent topic sentence. I also would like to thank those who have mentored me outside of Rochester, including Deb VanderBilt at St. John Fisher College and Theodora Jankowski. Finally, I must also acknowledge mentors from my time before Rochester, particularly John Mulryan and Daniel Ellis for helping me learn how to write like a scholar, and vi Barbara Kraszewski for telling me I was an English major way back when I was under the mistaken notion that I was a political science major.
I also need to acknowledge the constant support and love from friends and colleagues, including my fellow grad students who have become close friends— particularly Lisa Vandenbossche, Erin Berg, Sam Dressel, Daniel Singleton, Cindy Rogers, Marjorie Harrington, Rose Zaloom, and Emily Kohlhase at Rochester, Leslie Nickerson at UB, and those I’ve met via the Folger and conferencing, including Amina Tajbhai, Dainy Bernstein, Sydnee Wagner, and so many others whose names I will surely remember about five minutes after writing this dissertation. I would also like to acknowledge those in my personal life who have made finishing this degree possible, including my undergraduate nerd herd (Marissa Spears and Rebecca Hranj), my friends in the Rochester theater community (especially Jillian Christensen, Abby DeVuyst, Diana Carter, and Virginia Monte), the dog who came into this program with me (Domino) and the dog who can’t wait to infuse my doctoral robes with fur (Windsor). I am further indebted to the tireless work of the English department staff: Lucy Peck, Sherri Gunter, and Carrie Morriss (my future Flea Market Flip partner). I would also be remiss if I did not acknowledge my beloved coffee houses, in which most of this dissertation was written, so kind thanks to Starry Nites, Equal Grounds, Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters, and yes, even Starbucks.
I am fortunate to have had the support of two families during my time in graduate school. I would like to thank my mother, my brother Kevin and sister-in-law Kristina (and the three most adorable nieces who have ever nieced—Kaley, Kaity, and Kacey), my uncle Rusty, and my cousin Katie O’Toole. Most of my relatives are not humanities vii folks at all, yet they were still supportive and stuck it out when I would start talking about my dissertation. I also need to thank my Rossell Hope Robbins family.
Words can’t express how much that community has meant to me over the years, and I know that grad school will truly feel “over” the moment I hand in my key. Without that community, I never would have been able to get to where I am right now, and I offer my heartfelt thanks to Alan and Barbara Lupack, Rose Paprocki, Anna Siebach-Larsen, Katie Papas, Marie Turner, and the Robbins crowd past and present: Kara, Kristi, Val, Kate, Pam, Steffi, Ashley, Kyle, Masani, Emily, Oishani, Katherine, Santiago, and so many more. Finally, I need to acknowledge and thank Kara McShane and her wife, Karen. They know what they did.
viii Abstract A Temple Made Without Hands argues that a new understanding of the role of professional space on professional authority in the 16th and 17th centuries will open up new interpretations of the role of theatrical—specifically Shakespearean—representations of such professional figures. While scholarly interest in Shakespeare’s professional figures has remained relatively high, scholarly consensus on the role played by those figures has been fleeting at best. Indeed, these figures seem to be at the heart of several of the most enduring Shakespearean debates in literary scholarship. In my dissertation, I suggest that a post-Reformation shift occurs in the way that the licenses of several professions were situated, as they changed from an embodied claim to authority, derived from skill and acquired intellect, to a spatial claim to authority, derived from having license from a ruler to occupy the space of the profession.
I track this development from late-medieval representations of these figures through to the Renaissance, with an emphasis on the spatially oriented licenses of three particular professions and the defining/confining spaces of their licenses: the fool in court, the schoolmaster in his schoolhouse, and the friar in (or more aptly out of) his friary/cell. My dissertation applies this new understanding of spatially situated professional authority to offer readings of dramatic texts featuring such professional figures. My dissertation makes three contributions to Shakespearean scholarship. First, it applies more recent understandings of the chronological place of the professions to ix readings of Shakespearean texts.
For most of the history of the study of the professions, there was an ahistorical, borderline obsession with connecting the notion of professional figures to the rise of Modernity. More recent studies of the professions have shown that the concept of a socially elevated occupation goes significantly further back historically than previously thought, and accordingly, my dissertation analyzes these characters as true professionals. Second, I argue in favor of a spatial reading of professional authority, and particularly track the shift away from a skill-based meritocracy and towards a more hierarchical, space-based claim to authority in certain professions—particularly those professions with a history of subversive behavior. Third, and most importantly, I bring these new understandings of professional identity and authority to readings of Shakespeare’s professional figures, particularly those who seem to be at the center of an interpretive paradox or have a history of interpretive dispute.
x Contributors and Funding Sources This work was supervised by a dissertation committee consisting of Professors Rosemary Kegl (advisor) and Russell Peck of the Department of English and Professor Jon Baldo of the Eastman School of Music. All work for the dissertation was completed independently by the student. 1 Chapter One “A Temple Made Without Hands”: The Professions and their Place in Tudor/Stuart England Professions and Place In discussing the role of proper occupational placement and behavior in an ordered society, William Perkins, in his Treatise on the Vocations and Callings of Men (c. 1600),1 states that “The church of God is a temple made without hands, the foundation is Christ and every member of Christ, with all that appertain to God's election are living stones.
The builders of this temple principally are pastors and teachers, and not only they but all Christian persons generally” (Perkins 452). Perkins’ treatise is remarkable both for its clear establishment of the concept of professional identity in the 16th century—the notion of “professional” identity was, until the latter part of the 20 th century, presumed to have its origins in the Industrial Revolution—and for its overwhelming emphasis on the function of professional space as both a source and boundary of professional authority. He uses this imagined space of a “temple built without hands” as a metaphor for an ordered society, with each professional figure situating himself in one profession along an authoritarian hierarchy, ultimately defining professional space as a form of hierarchical space. 2 Perkins does this, in part, through an insistent repetition of a paraphrased biblical passage from Paul.
Using an Aristotelian breakdown of vocations and callings, the treatise lists several rules “to be learned of all, which belong to every calling” (449). The first such rule listed is that: whatsoever any man enterpriseth or doth, either in word or deed, he must do it by virtue of his calling, and he must keep himself within the compass, limits or precincts thereof. This rule is laid down in the words of the apostle, Let every man abide in that calling wherein he was called, the drift whereof is to bind men to their calling and to teach them to perform all their actions by warrant of it.