It's All Been Submitted

Finally I have submitted my paper to the Scholar's Archive! I have also submitted my paper to the Wooden O Symposium. Keep your fingers crossed!
Wooden O Symposium Call for Papers

Once Upon a Tudorista: The Story of Lizy's Paper

Portrait of Henry VIII and his family. 

 

It all began what feels like a very long time ago. Even I don't remember exactly how it started. I do know that I was beginning to see connections between the tragic events in the lives of the Tudor monarchs and similar events in Shakespeare's plays. I'd spent my life growing up reading about the Tudors, so why not write about them? 

With this topic in mind I began putting my ideas together. I started officially by searching for relevant scholarly articles. The best result I had was the paper "Shakespeare's King Richard III and the Problematics of Tudor Bastardy", which was an in-depth look at the connections between Richard's accusations of his relatives' bastardy and the tainted legitimacy of the Tudors. When I started drafting the paper I decided to narrow down the topic to just legitimacy. I still struggled, however, with my verbose writing and also my lack of sufficient scholarly sources. I was not very successful with social networks, but I tried posting my developing thesis statements on Facebook.

My grandfather passed away on the weekend of March 23rd, and the funeral was to be on the 30th. Deciding to head down to Arizona for the funeral, I finished my first draft by Wednesday the 27th and drove down on the 28th. It was here I was able to talk to my cousin Gloria, who commented on my ideas and gave me some more perspective (and by the way, she recently announced that she is expecting a baby). I returned just after midnight on April 1 and within twenty-four hours had found several more scholarly papers to add muscle to my argument, and I also checked out a couple of books from the library. I re-wrote the paper using substantial chunks from the first draft plus quotes from my new sources. For lack of writing time and paper space, my paper ended up being about why legitimacy was such an important issue in the sixteenth century rather than about how Shakespeare and the Tudors were connected, but I felt like the thematic issue was important to address (for personal reasons I will refrain from discussing).  I finished editing on Friday and called it good. 

Most of what I learned from the experience was that if I am writing an academic paper about something I am passionate about, I am more likely to put effort into it. Writing this paper gave me a chance to become more familiar with the Tudors and the history of their reign. From others' positive feedback and from my own personal feelings about the paper, this is one of the best term papers I have ever written.

How Lizy Came Out Learning

My take on the learning outcomes of the course and how I have fulfilled them:

1. Gain Shakespeare Literacy

I took off running with this particular requirement. This semester in class I read samples of different genres of Shakespeare's plays, comedy (The Taming of the Shrew), romance (The Winter's Tale), history (Henry V), and tragedy (King Lear), and I have gained an understanding of the breadth of Shakespeare's works. On my own I read King John and Henry VIII (and all but completely reread Richard III), and through my research I gained knowledge of the other history plays, and I have also done some in-depth research on King Lear and Winter's Tale as pertaining to my term paper, so I have also gained depth in understanding certain Shakespeare topics and themes. This semester I have seen live performances of Henry V and The Winter's Tale, and I have seen film adaptations of Henry V, Taming, and King Lear, so I know how Shakespeare's plays have been adapted and envisioned across different mediums.

2. Analyze Critically

I have engaged with critical analyses about Shakespeare's plays and written a paper engaging with these and explaining my own ideas about certain texts, applying other scholars' literary theories to my own interpretations. I have learned how to do close textual analysis of the original text, examining word definitions and rhetorical devices for the meaning they add to the text. I have also examined the relationship between the plays and the historical/cultural contexts in which they were written.

3. Engage creatively

I have learned how to write a sonnet with proper iambic pentameter. I have analyzed performances for their creative twists on the original plays through costume, lighting, action, etc.

4. Share meaningfully

In two formal papers as well as numerous blog and digital dialouge posts I have shared my ideas about Shakespeare with my classmates and the internet. I also made a post related to my topic for my term paper on my personal blog, and I have posted my "tweethis" statements on facebook.

5. Gain Digital Literacy

I did learn to use blogs and social media (ie goodreads) as forums for sharing ideas and gaining insights from others.

Better Link

Dr. Burton requested I post a better link. This is actually from the open-edit version so please do not edit it. 

Pretenders to Birthright, Heirs to Virtue: The Legitimacy of the Tudors and Shakespeare's Characters

Elizabeth Cole: "Pretenders to Birthright, Heirs to Virtue: The Legitimacy of the Tudors and Shakespeare's Characters"

So I must needs apologize for being a little behind in the game, since I had no idea we were submitting online (what I get for not coming to class). But here it is in all its glory.

Instructions:
Follow the link. Click on the third item down on the menu. A screen will pop up that says "No Preview". Do not be intimidated. Click the white arrow on the far side of the screen and the paper will appear.

Pretenders to Birthright, Heirs to Virtue: The Legitimacy of the Tudors and Shakespeare's Characters

Abstract:

The struggles of the Tudor dynasty of sixteenth-century England were created by the need of the monarchs to secure individual and legal legitimacy. William Shakespeare examines the issue in several of his plays, including King Lear, Richard III, and King John. Through recreating the legitimacy battles of the Tudors in his plays, Shakespeare demonstrates that it is not bastardy which corrupts a person's character but the betrayal of family ties and falsifying legitimacy, and that legitimacy does not make a person good but virtue and loyalty to one's country does. Legitimacy is not merely a label associated with birth but a stigma assigned by others on an individual. Not only is bastardy a perversion of the natural order but also falsifying the legitimacy or illegitimacy of others, as well as the betrayal of family ties in this manner. Moral legitimacy or virtue is manifested by loyalty to one's country and family. This paper compares the legitimacy issues during the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I to commentary about legitimacy in Shakespeare's works.

I has a better draft...?

So this is the running copy of the final draft. Intro/conclusion still needs work, maybe. Comments and advice are appreciated, and suggestions for a title are welcome? I'm adding the in-text citations tomorrow.

[Insert title Here]

While William Shakespeare himself lived and wrote in an era of peace and prosperity, the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century could not have been more different, with the government in turmoil as the monarchs of the Tudor dynasty struggled for a stable rule and succession thereafter. What made all of the Tudors, including Shakespeare's patron Queen Elizabeth I, so vulnerable was the need to rule and reproduce within the standard of legitimacy. Shakespeare as well as his audience recognized this vulnerability and, oddly enough, the issue of legitimacy crops up in certain of his plays, notably King Lear, Richard III, and King John. Just as Elizabeth and her sister Mary I who ruled before her had to come to terms with their questionable legitimacy in different ways, Shakespeare presented to his audiences in dramatic form the ways in which legitimacy or the lack thereof was confronted and dealt with and why certain efforts succeeded and failed. Shakespeare recreates the legitimacy battles of the Tudor dynasty in his plays to demonstrate that it is not illegitimacy that corrupts a person's character but falsifying legitimacy and the betrayal of family ties, and that legitimacy does not make a person good but virtue and loyalty to one's country does.

Dear Everyone,

Thank you all for your support and feedback. I know perfectly well what I need to do: cut down the paper and even out secondary sources. I have all the sources I need. I intend to start revising as soon as possible.

Bibliography: Updated and Annotated

OK, PEEPS! THE PROCRASTINATION IS OVER!

If looking at the above picture gives you a worse headache than looking at the rough draft of my paper, then I'm off to a good start. If not, I won't be surprised because it has a long way to go. 

In my attempt to expand my sources, this is what I have found:

 

Social Proof: Finally, Someone to talk to!

 

As some of you may have noticed, I have been having difficulty finding people to talk to about my topic. However, I did follow up on Dr. Burton's hint to post our "tweethis statements" on the internet, and I have been doing so on Facebook, and this caught the attention of my cousin Gloria. One of the small miracles that happened around my grandfather's funeral last weekend was being able to discuss this with her. Gloria's family has never been active in the LDS Church. Gloria attended a ministerial college and has studied religious history, and she told me when she was visiting me that she is currently an all-but-confirmed Anglican. That's what set my radar off, so I asked her a few questions about the Tudors and the start of the Church of England. From what I remember of our conversation off the top of my head, she said that when considering the Tudors it is important to separate the religious from the political. The pope had no reason to not grant Henry VIII a divorce other than the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor was leaning on him to say no, and Henry separating the English Church from Rome was a bluff. Henry needed a male heir more than anything else. If he had to have one legitimate heir, the other child had to become illegitimate. His divorce from Katherine of Aragon estranged him from his daughter Mary and estranged her from Elizabeth. Gloria says it is Mary we need to remember to be sorry for: had the divorce and its aftermath not been so traumatic, she might have been a more competent ruler. Henry made a lot of mistakes, and he realized this in later life, but although his wives Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr attempted reconciliation and Henry made room for Mary and Elizabeth in his will, the damage had already been done. Had he attempted to reconcile himself with his daughters--and reconcile them as well--things would have been better. *wants to cry*

Scholarly Articles: I found these two right when I got back from Arizona and read them during breaks at work (because my coworkers take notoriously long breaks).

• • Neill, Michael. “'In Everything Illegitimate:' Imagining the Bastard in Renaissance Drama.” The Yearbook of English Studies. 23: Early Shakespeare Special Number. 1993: 270-292. Web. 1 April 2013. In case you haven't inferred from the title, this paper is all about THE HORROR OF BASTARDS! ...Specifically in Renaissance Drama. Plenty of discussion about Edmund in King Lear.
   
  • Trace, Jacqueline. “Shakespeare's Bastard Faulconbridge: An Early Tudor Hero.” Shakespeare Studies. 13. 1980: 59-70. Web. 1 April 2013. The author of this article is mainly trying to discuss the possible historical figures relating to the Bastard in King John, but it does discuss the Bastard's motivations and loyalties. 
  
  
  Books: 
  
  
  • Pierce, Robert. Shakespeare's Histories: The Family and the State. Ohio State University Press, 1971. Print. Pierce talks about the family dynamics of the women in the history plays. A beneficial source on Richard III and King John as well as on ideas about the family in Elizabethan times.
  •  Loades, David. The Tudor Queens of England. London: Continuum, 2009. Print. A biography and analysis of the women who shaped pre-Tudor and Tudor England. This will be my reference for the specific historical discussion of the Tudors. I was going to use The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir but it only focuses on the six wives and it is also to detailed. This other book is much more succinct. 

Please Exucse the Brain Deluge

This is what I have for my rough draft so far. Please note a few things. It is EXCESSIVELY long and significant chunks will need to be cut out, so you could do me a favor and point out what needs to be saved that would be appreciated. The final version will hopefully include more sources, more quotes from the primary texts, an introduction and conclusion, and less verboseness. I will also change the emphasis on ambition to something like vice or hypocrisy because in reading I've done recently I have discovered that ambition is not strictly a motivator. I will post an updated bibliography later. 

[Title To Be Determined]

Thesis:

Shakespeare recreates the trauma of the Tudor dynasty in his plays to demonstrate that it is not illegitimacy that corrupts a person's character but ambition, and that legitimacy does not make a person good but virtue.

 

Part I: An Echo of the Tudors

Scholars, writers, and ordinary people alike have always been fascinated by the tumultuous events of the Tudor dynasty. “From Shakespeare’s day to today, we have been obsessed with the Tudor period: the colourful lives of the monarchs, the complex rises and falls of both the servants of the crown and the nobility, the fact that ordinary people could make their way into the highest offices of the kingdom” (Morris). We are fascinated, perhaps, by the idea that the people who lived during those times have something to say to us, particularly the renowned playwright William Shakespeare who lived during the closing years of the reign of Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, and during the first years of the reign of her successor James I, and received the patronage of both. Those who observe the historical record closely understand that much of the turmoil during the reign of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, and the strained family relations of his children have to do with Henry's quest for a legitimate heir. Consequently, his daughters Elizabeth and Mary both struggled to obtain legitimacy in one way or another during their lifetimes in order to secure their claims to the throne. The search for personal legitimacy was the driving force behind the lives of the Tudor monarchs. Shakespeare's plays contain echoes of the traumatic events and chaotic personalities of the Tudor dynasty that suggest that he is recreating the world of the Tudors in his plays to address how the issue of legitimacy affected them. For this paper, I will consider the plays Richard III, King Lear, and King John, as they are thematically the most relevant to the issue of legitimacy in Tudor times.

Shakespeare's play Richard III is traditionally considered heavily embedded with Tudor propaganda, as it is depiction of the fall of the House of York as it lead to the rise of the Tudor dynasty. However, it is also a thematic treatise on the legitimacy of the Tudors themselves. In his paper “Shakespeare's King Richard III and the Problematics of Tudor Bastardy” Maurice Hunt claims that it is also an open discussion of the questions of legitimacy surrounding Henry VIII's heirs, revealing“the emergence of a paradigm of illegitimate legitimacy (or legitimate illegitimacy), a composite reproduced in the discourse on royal bastardy in King Richard III.” Richard III meets my criteria for analysis because it depicts the overturn of true legitimacy by an usurper because of how he smears the legitimacy of others, and how this overturn is reversed.

The play King John is considered an anomaly among Shakespeare's history plays, but it has a very frightening similarity to the Tudors in that it depicts the struggle for the English throne between members of a single family. Scholar Robert Lane points out that “Indeed, it is more than plausible that Shakespeare chose King John's reign because its legitimacy--the fundamental focus of the play--turned on strikingly similar issues (Lane). During the Tudor dynasty as in times before as depicted by Shakespeare, the throne of England was a highly coveted prize, but whoever wanted to claim it had to prove they had more legitimate credentials—such as birth and religious creed—than their oppnents. However, most of the contenders in both instances are very closely related. One would think that since these people are so closely related they would treat each other with love, but the desire for power has overpowered all of these affections. Shakespeare's depiction of this medieval royal family applies to the Tudors in that the struggle for monarchy and the legitimacy to secure it is a matter of life and death as well as war and peace.

While both of these plays have been demonstrated by Hunt and Lane to be thematically relevant, King Lear also includes a thematic discourse on issues of division within a royal family as well as on legitimacy itself. It is the subplot of the Earl of Glouchester and the division between his sons which merits critical attention because of how the illegitimate Edmund questions and changes his own legitimacy. There are parallels to the Tudor family in King Lear such that legitimacy is a label applied by others, individuals of questionable seek to change in themselves and others, and that false legitimacy is self-destructive while true legitimacy has nothing to do with birth. The struggle for legitimacy in Shakespeare's plays, therefore, is Shakespeare's commentary on how the monarchs of his day struggled with theirs.

Part II: what is legitimacy?

In his first soliloquy in King Lear, Edmund comments, “fine word,--legitimate!” (I,ii). “Legitimate” is indeed a fine word, expressing an interesting concept of what a person is and has a right to do, have, and be. The Oxford English Dictionary lists multiple definitions for the term “legitimate.” The top definition listed reads, “Of a child: Having the status of one lawfully begotten; entitled to full filial rights.” A child is considered legitimate, particularly in Shakespeare's world, if they are conceived and born to two married parents. However, legitimate can also be used to mean, “conformable to law or rule, sanctioned or authorized by law or right.” or, “normal, regular; conformable to a recognized standard type.” In Shakespeare, we see the term legitimate being used in its most literal sense in referring to birth, but the term can also be implied to mean to the second or third definitions listed here to mean that an individual is illegitimate in the sense that they are abnormal or they do not meet some social standard in either their behavior or their character. Likewise, the legitimacy of individuals in Shakespeare's day, particularly royalty, could be questioned in more than one sense. For instance, Queen Elizabeth I was often considered an illegitimate ruler by her Catholic enemies because she was a practicing Protestant—therefore, she lacked spiritual legitimacy. In both Shakespeare's plays and the Tudor dynasty, legitimacy is not merely a label associated with birth but a stigma assigned by others.

Regardless of the marital status of one's parents, legitimacy in both Shakespeare's plays and in the Tudor dynasty came with its social and cultural constructs that other people imposed on individuals. In the case of monarchs and legal succession, the Tudors either legitimized or bastardized themselves repeatedly during the sixteenth century. In his paper “Shakespeare's King Richard III and the Problematics of Tudor Bastardy,” Maurice Hunt comments that when Henry VIII's marriage to Katherine of Aragon was nullified, their daughter Mary—later Queen Mary I—was declared illegitimate. Elizabeth's mother Anne Boylen was arrested for “purportedly for having committed adultery with five men,” making it appear that “Elizabeth was not only a bastard but was most likely not even a royal bastard.” An “Act of Succession of July 1536 legally bastardized Elizabeth and Mary”. So Mary and Elizabeth's legitimacy was not purely a question of their father's actual marriages to their respective mothers but how he defined his relationships to these women. The works of Shakespeare also suggest that legitimacy should not be taken at purely literal value, either.

For his analysis of Richard III, Maurice Hunt suggests that the character of Richard presents a paradoxical idea of legitimate illegitimacy, or the state of being legitimate in one sense while being illegitimate in another. In the play, Richard is physically deformed and considers himself “not shaped for sportive tricks” that other people enjoy, “rudely stamped” by his deformity, “And that so lamely and unfashionable /That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,” as if the dogs sensed something unnatural in him. Since it is his nature to be unnatural, he will go against the order of succession to the throne and become the king: “I am determined to prove a villain” (I,i). Maurice Hunt claims that Richard acts not out of a need for legal legitimacy but a desire for legitimacy of a different kind.

“Physically twisted, resembling the shape of neither his mother nor his father, Richard feels like a bastard, even though he is by all accounts legitimately born. Self-disgustedly, Richard feels himself to be illegitimately legitimate (or legitimately illegitimate). Richard's recognition of legitimate succession could amount to a compensation for his feeling of being a figurative bastard. Richard protects himself from this negative emotion by projecting bastardy onto his imagined rivals, including Edward, his nephews, and the Bretons (including Richmond)”.

To Richard, his physical impairments are a sign that he is different or unnatural compared to others that Hunt suggests is in a similar manner to how people of illegitimate birth feel or are regarded as unnatural, and Richard regards his need for legitimization to justify his behavior towards others.

In King John, the issues of legitimacy are similar. John seems perfectly assured of his right to sit on the English throne, having succeeded through a will written by his late brother Richard I. He calls it, “Our strong possession and our right for us” to defend (I). Robert Lane discusses how this ties into the Tudor succession controversy, particularly as it applied towards the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign:\

Henry VIII by his will (also a death-bed instrument) had contravened primogeniture by designating the heirs of his younger sister Mary Tudor (the Suffolk line), rather than those of his older sister Margaret Tudor (the Stuart line) as the royal bloodline in the event Elizabeth died childless. [….] The will was challenged on technical grounds as well as for Henry's mental incapacity and was "for a time mislaid,"(29) but supporting its validity was the parliamentary authorization for the instrument' as well as precedent. That precedent was Richard I's will, giving the succession dispute in King John a direct relevance to the Elizabethan debate (Lane, emphasis added).

Notice how Lane describes how Henry VIII's will had contravened primogeniture, or in other words disregarded the traditional practice of having the eldest sibling inherit first. In the case of King John, Richard and John had an elder deceased brother named Geoffrey who had a son named Arthur that was disregarded when Richard wrote his will when he technically had the right to succeed. Arthur's mother, Constance, is aware of this fact, and has allied herself with Philip, the king of France, to reclaim her son's title. The fact that primogeniture was disregarded gives cause for the French Ambassador to openly regard John's regime as “borrow'd majesty” (I,l. 4). Constance and her French allies regard John as an unlawful ruler and therefore unnatural or illegitimate.

In Act II of King John, the two parties greet each other on a battlefield in France. Constance and John's mother, Queen Elinor engage in a vicious argument in which they label each other, and Elinor labels Arthur (in Arthur's presence, no less), illegitimate. Elinor threatens to produce a will to bar Arthur's claim to the throne, to which Constance replies, “Ay, who doubts that? a will! a wicked will: /A woman's will; a canker'd grandam's will!” Considering that this entire quarrel was started by a will, it seems that the usage of the word “will” is significant here. A will can mean a legal document as well as the power or desire to do something [OED]. The repeated use of “will” in Constance's statement is an example of several rhetorical devices. Most notably, diacope is a device in which the repetition of a word with one or more other words in between adds meaning, drawing attention back to the word being repeated. Constance is saying that any will that Elinor would draw up to bar her son's title would be wicked and evidence that Elinor's will to support John is wicked, and that she is a wicked old hag. Elinor and Constance's referal to a will being drawn up is a reference to the English practice of using legal measures to bar inheritance and legally define an individual's legitimacy. Maurice Hunt comments that by the time of the Tudors, “this legislative method for 'proving' (or 'disproving') legitimacy had transparently become the tool of political opportunists, often of the crassest stripe” ().

Shakespeare's presentation of King John was a commentary on the legal brutality of sixteenth-century European politics: if someone wanted to steal something, all a person had to do was claim that they person who had what they wanted was illegitimate.

In King Lear, however, legitimacy is not merely a matter of political opinion and legal proceedure but of defining individual worth and character. The play opens with a dialogue between the Earls of Gloucester and Kent as Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son Edmund to Kent. Of Edmund, Gloucester says, “I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it.” Kent replies, “I cannot conceive you,” and .Gloucester jests, “Sir, this young fellow's mother could.” Gloucester turns Kent's use of the term “conceive” into wordplay. While Kent means to say he cannot conceive or understand how Gloucester has grown bold about an illegitimate son he used to be ashamed of, Gloucester says that Edmund's mother, with whom he had illicit intercourse, was bold enough to conceive a child from their union. Gloucester adds, “this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making,”. The term “saucily” means “impudent or flippant” or sexually suggestive. Gloucester says he enjoyed his brief affair with Edmund's mother, but it was her fault for getting pregnant and that Edmund was an unwelcome surprise. Kent remarks, “I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.” As Edmund hovers politely in the background, Kent thinks it is a pity that Edmund is illegitimate, as though if Edmund were legitimate he would be entitled to Kent's complete rather than partial regard. To Kent and Gloucester, Edmund's illegitimacy devalues his worth as a person.

Although he does not say much in the first scene, it becomes clear in scene ii of King Lear that Edmund knows exactly what his father and Kent think of him. He questions why society should devalue him. He says of himself, “my dimensions are as well compact,/ My mind as generous, and my shape as true,/ As honest madam's issue.” However, other people refuse to acknowledge that because of his birth. “Why brand they us /With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” In these last two lines quoted here, Edmund repeats the words “base” over and over, the context being that because he was produced from the “base” or improper union of his father with a woman he was not married to, Edmund himself is “base” or immoral. Edmund's repetition of the word “base” shows how much he is concerned about his self-worth, because other people do not agree that he is as good “As honest madam's issue.” His motive for his behavior towards his father and legitimate half-brother, then, is to make them and the other characters see that he is just as good and reaffirm how he defines himself. To Edgar, legitimacy is only a label.

Edmund's concern about his legitimacy is a reflection of how people in the sixteenth-century were concerned about the legitimacy of their monarchs for this reason. Hunt writes, that although “Henry [VIII] stubbornly insisted that Mary was a bastard and Elizabeth [was legitimate....] considerable grumbling and protest arose; for many of Henry's subjects, 'Catherine was still 'the Queen' and Mary 'the Princess.' Anne was 'the concubine,' and Elizabeth 'the little bastard'' (Ridley 25)” (Hunt). Considering people's views about legitimacy, Henry VIII's subjects were initially reluctant to accept Elizabeth as his heir. Perhaps they thought that if a monarch's child was illegitimate, they were not only legally but morally unfit to rule because of their natural “base” character. However, history proves, and Shakespeare concurs, that birth has nothing to do with the legitimacy needed to rule a country peacefully.

Part III: Challenging Legitimacy

Shakespeare characters who reject their illegitimacy make it their ambition to overcome it, but such ambition becomes corrupted as individuals betray family ties in order to steal their legitimacy, in much the same way members of the Tudor family did the same. Time and again throughout Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare's villains are driven by ambition to destroy people who are good and seize power for themselves. In the cases of Richard in Richard III and Edmund in King Lear, their ambition is fueled by a knowledge that they are regarded by others as unnatural and base in character because of some form or another of illegitimacy and a desire to change that perception. The innocent victims who stand in their way are blood relatives whose legitimacy is more accepted than their own. This villainous behavior is a reflection of the relationships between members of the Tudor family who challenged each other for the right to the throne on the basis of their individual legitimacy.

Henry VIII's eldest child, Queen Mary I, was the daughter of the ill-fated Katherine of Aragon who was divorced in favor of Anne Boylen and then sent into exile where she died. Mary was separated from her mother during her mother's final years, and her relationship with her father was distant. “Mary Tudor remained an official bastard throughout much of Henry VIII's and all of Edward VI's reigns[....]Mary was usually kept during her father's lifetime far from court, forced to follow with less pomp Elizabeth and Edward in royal processions” (Hunt). Undoubtedly, memories of Anne Boylen's cruelty towards her and her mother as well as jealousy poisoned her relationship with her half-sister Elizabeth. During her reign, she imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London and later banished her to remote country estates. Mary also reversed her own legitimacy status. “[T]he new queen proclaimed in October 1553 that she was the legitimate daughter of Henry's lawful marriage to Katharine of Aragon” and had Parliament authorize it (Hunt). Being a practicing Catholic, the move was not only to make herself a legal monarch but to ensure that she was spiritually and morally able to rule in her eyes and in the eyes of her subjects. By making Parliament acknowledge her legitimacy and banishing Elizabeth, Mary disassociated herself from the trauma of her past—erasing it as much as possible—taking control of her life and securing her claim to the throne.

In Shakespeare's plays we see similar behavior towards relatives being practiced by people who are driven by ambition to fulfill a similar need to Mary's—to legalize and publicize their legitimacy. In Richard III, Richard and his accomplice Buckingham go out in public to inform their subjects that Richard's deceased brother Edward and Edward's sons are unfit to rule, and they do this by attacking their legitimacy. Richard tells Buckingham to hint at Edward's “hateful luxury /And bestial appetite in change of lust” that led him to have carnal relations with a multitude of women, therefore disqualifying the legitimacy of his two sons (). At a later assembly, Buckingham dramatically tells Richard, “it is your fault that you resign /The supreme seat, the throne majestical, [….] To the corruption of a blemished stock” and he must become king to preserve the legal as well as moral integrity of the throne. Maurice Hunt comments that Richard's reference to Edward IV's sexual behavior are a clear reference to Henry VIII's “notoriously roving eye.” Hunt remarks that “It was Henry VIII's "bastardizing" lust that partly made both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate as subsequent "marriages" blighted the girls' mothers and their origins (Hunt). Hunt clarifies what Richard is doing by his accusation of his brother: if a man is having too many sexual relationships at once, then it is hard to tell which children are lawfully his and which are not, and it is too easy to find evidence that puts their legitimacy to question. Furthermore, it explains that Shakespeare is clearly recreating the traumatic family life of the Tudors in a different context to show how vulnerable people with such a trouble background, such as Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, are to accusations of illegitimacy and the ambition of others to remove them.

Richard III also demonstrates what happens when people become too focused on the legitimacy status they assign to the people they mean to destroy. Once he has the approval of the people, Richard orders the assassination of Edward IV's sons who are at that time imprisoned in the Tower of London. He summons an assassin, Tyrrel, and informs him that “two deep enemies, /Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers/Are they that I would have thee deal upon:/ Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower” ( ). Richard may likely be referring to his two nephews as “bastards” to keep in line with his own story. However, in the rest of the line he refers to them indirectly as “two deep enemies” and “Foes to my rest” because he is more concerned about how they threaten his claim to the throne. Richard is so focused on emphasizing the illegitimacy of his kin that he has distanced himself from them as a relative, disavowing all familial ties and obligations, seeking to kill them rather than to protect them.

Edmund in King Lear is another example of how ambition corrupts familial ties. Although he succeeds in betraying his father and half-brother, takes advantage of Regan and Goneril's betrayal of Lear, and literally seduces Goneril into betraying the Duke of Albany, he knows that he is acting against the moral code of the society he lives in. Edmund convinces his father Gloucester that his half-brother Edgar is plotting to kill him, and then he convinces Edgar to run away. Edmund then claims that he warned the purportedly plotting Edgar that “the revenging gods /'Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend; /Spoke, with how manifold and strong a bond /The child was bound to the father” (II,i). Edmund is taking advantage of the fact that his society has these expectations for children to respect their parents by claiming that Edgar has failed in this obligation. In reality, however, it is Edmund who has betrayed this expectation. As Edgar runs away, Edmund wounds himself with his sword and states, “Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion”. Edmund makes it appear that Edgar has wounded him. In reality, what he is doing is smearing the legitimacy of Edgar with his own criminal mischief. Edmund's deception produces the desired effect: Gloucester informs him after Edgar's departure that “of my land, /Loyal and natural boy, I'll work the means /To make thee capable”. Notice how Gloucester refers to Edmund's behavior as “Loyal and natural” even though Edmund clearly knows what he is doing is unnatural. He proves his legitimacy not by good deeds but by hypocrisy and betrayal of the natural order.

Elinor and Constance in King John present an example of how family ties are betrayed in the quest for legitimacy by how they turn on each other. Considering that Elinor is Constance's mother-in-law, it is somewhat reasonable to expect that they would not see eye-to-eye on the issue of what titles Arthur should be granted, but their treatment towards each other is reprehensible. In Act I, Elinor tells John that “that ambitious Constance would not cease /Till she had kindled France and all the world,/ Upon the right and party of her son”. Elinor knows and states for a fact that Constance is consumed by her desire for power and to provide the best for her son rather than to appease the rest of the family. Elinor gives the opinion that their family argument “might have been prevented and made whole /With very easy arguments of love,” but instead the ambition-consumed relatives must resolve their quarrels through war (). The competition for the throne has completely destroyed their familial ties and driven them to neglect their filial obligations.

Constance and Elinor with their respective allies represent two sides of an argument that are competing for the throne by tearing down each other's legitimacy to the point that they no longer claim to be lawfully related. In Act II, Constance calls John a usurper, and Elinor calls Arthur a bastard. Constance defends herself by saying that Arthur was legitimately begotten and that in reality John is a bastard. Elinor tells Arthur, “There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.” Constance replies:“There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee” ( ) These parallel statements are an example of a rhetorical device called isocolon, a type of parallelism made up of statements of similar length (). In each sentence, one woman attacks the other, referring to her familial title, and says that she is attacking the legitimacy of both Arthur and his deceased father, through whom he has his claim to the English throne. The two women attack each other's marital fidelity, each to insult the legitimacy of the contestant for the throne they support as well as to insult each other for supporting the wrong person. Their slander is representative of the ways in which the legitimacy of the Tudors was attacked by other leaders in Europe during the sixteenth-century, and they behave in the same way, as though attacking each other's legitimacy would allow them to claim legitimacy for themselves. The reality is, however, that in both Shakespeare and in his world, such tactics are in reality ineffective.

 

Part IV: The Price of Legitimacy

The ambition shown by Shakespeare characters who seek to secure their legitimacy are only rewarded with self-destruction, as was often the case in real life, because their false legitimacy was proven to be corrupt. Returning to Hunt's concept of “legitimate illegitimacy/illegitimate legitimacy”, legitimacy is a label for one type of outward legitimacy that may have nothing to do with actual legitimacy in another sense. In Richard III and King Lear, both Richard and Edmund have created a false legitimacy for themselves in order to gain power, thus becoming legitimate in spite of their outward illegitimacy. In the end, however, they are destroyed by people whose legitimacy they had slandered in order to create or maintain this false pretext of legitimacy.

After becoming king, Richard becomes aware of a quickly growing threat of invasion from Henry, the earl of Richmond, who is challenging Richard for his right to the throne. Richmond, who would later become Henry VII and the founder of the Tudor dynasty, came from a long line of questionable marriages and connections to the throne. Maurice Hunt notes that the real Richard was quick to capitalize on Henry's dubious legitimacy (Hunt). In his speech to his troops before the battle of Bosworth Field, Richard describes Richmond's army as “A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,/ A scum of Bretons, and base lackey peasants/[....]You having lands, and blest with beauteous wives, They would restrain the one, distain the other” ( ). Richard also refers to them as “these bastard Bretons” ( ). Richard's slandering of the enemy army is an attack on their legitimacy, alluding to the perception that “vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,” “scum” and “lackey peasants” are cowardly, lazy and poor-quality people. Richard's use of the word “base” and “bastard” to describe them also lists them as literally and morally illegitimate, and purporting the idea that they will ravish their wives characterizes them as immoral. Hunt notes that as well as this being typical of Richard projecting illegitimacy on his enemies to hide the inadequacy of his physical illegitimacy, he is also attacking Richmond's legitimacy: “The bastard Bretons, if triumphant, will spread their bastardy by lathering illegitimate children on the losers' wives. In this conception, politically illegitimate Henry Tudor becomes the wellspring of bastardy in its most basic sense” ( ). Richard's attack on the literal and moral legitimacy of Richmond's army is an attack on Richmond's legitimacy as well.

However, it is Richard, and not Henry Tudor, who is politically as well as morally illegitimate in Shakespeare's depiction. Richmond's speech to his troops alludes to this, as he not only calls Richard “A base foul stone, made precious by the foil /Of England's chair, where he is falsely set. ” Hunt states that “In this pejorative context, the word 'base' catches the overtones of figurative bastardy inherent in Richard's own dehumanized conduct and his tacit self-appraisals and condenses them in the mouth of his adversary” ( ). According to Hunt, then, Henry knows that Richard has not legitimized himself by his immoral or illegitimate behavior but he has proven his own illegitimacy. Hunt, however, neglects the additional evidence of Richard's moral illegitimacy in the following lines, as Henry also calls him “One that hath ever been God's enemy.” He tells his soldiers, “Then, if you fight against God's enemy,/ God will in justice ward you as his soldiers” ( ). Richard, because of his murderous behavior, has bereft himself of divine favor, and so there is a divine sanction for Richmond, a man of more questionable literal legitimacy than Richard's, to overthrow someone of moral illegitimacy. Richard's attempts to slander Richmond are hence to no avail.

The ending of King Lear also proves to be the destruction of the facade of false legitimacy that Edmund created for himself at the hands of his legitimate half-brother Edgar. Through Edgar, the Duke of Albany learns that his wife Goneril has betrayed him and plans to marry Edmund. Albany agrees to allow Edgar to defend his claim, and he tells Edmund “If none appear to prove upon thy head /Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons, There is my pledge; I'll prove it on thy heart” ( ). Like Richmond, Albany resolves to allow divine justice to prove whether or not Edmund's false legitimacy will hold up against a trial by combat. Edmund is insulted that Albany is questioning his self-made image, saying “what in the world he is/ That names me traitor, villain-like he lies. He dares Albany, saying, “Call by thy trumpet: he that dares approach,/ On him, on you, who not? I will maintain/ My truth and honour firmly” ( ). Edmund here declares that he is a man of “truth and honor” even though, as I have already demonstrated, his actions have been anything but based in these principles. The challenger is none other than Edgar, Edmund's half-brother whose legitimacy he stole and good reputation he framed. He states, “Know, my name is lost;/ By treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit:/ Yet am I noble as the adversary/ I come to cope” ( ). By having his legitimacy stolen, Edgar also had his identity taken from him, but he knows the truth of Edmund's treachery as well as the truth of his own legitimacy. Just like Edmund and Albany, Edgar puts his trust in the practice of a trial-by-arms to publish these truths. “This sword, this arm, and my best spirits, are bent /To prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak, /Thou liest” ( ). The two brothers fight, and Edmund falls. Edgar reveals his identity by saying, “I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund; /If more, the more thou hast wrong'd me” ( ). They are equals in the sense that they have the same father, but Edgar is “more” because of his legitimacy, therefore Edmund is more wicked because he “wrong'd” Edgar by stealing Edgar's legitimacy, his good reputation, and their father's love. In reference to their father's affair that led to Edmund's birth in the first place, Edgar says, “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices /Make instruments to plague us,” but this could also be a reference to the price of Edmund's “vices” as well: Edmund, in wronging Edmund, Gloucester, and Albany, has now lost his life. Edgar is also referring to the fact that through his immoral behavior Edmund has paid the penalty of divine justice for his crimes. Edmund stealing his half-brother's legitimacy did not make any change to his own but made himself morally illegitimate on top of being literally illegitimate.

In the history of the Tudor family, divine justice against legitimately illegitimate rulers manifested itself not in armed combat but in the ability to perpetuate one's legitimacy. During her reign, Queen Mary I married and attempted to produce an heir in order to prevent Elizabeth, the half-sister she viewed as illegitimate, from inheriting the throne, but instead she lost her own vitality. After her marriage to her cousin Philip (later King Philip II of Spain), she had two false “pregnancies” in which her womb appeared to swell. However, they were not really pregnancies at all. The reality was that Philip disliked Mary and was hardly ever in England, and in fact he had affairs with other women while he was gone. The second time it happened, modern experts inform us, it was ovarian cancer, a literal smiting of her “organs of increase” ( ). Mary's reign, furthermore, was blighted not only by persecution of Protestants but crop failure and famine. Her subjects may very well have come to believe that the literal and figurative lack of increase to Mary's rule was a sign of divine disfavor and a mark of her illegitimacy as a ruler. After her death, Mary would be regarded as a legitimately illegitmate ruler because she was trying to force Catholicism back on an England that had rejected it during the rule of her father and brother before her. The “bastard” Elizabeth, who was also a Protestant, was vindicated by her ascension on Mary's death.

Part V: A different Context for Legitimacy

Since a person's ambition to prove their legitimacy is a manifestation of corruption, therefore it is not literal legitimacy that is the foundation of a person's character but moral legitimacy or virtue. Literal legitimacy or illegitimacy has no regard for an individual's character. Hunt remarks that although Mary I did much to legitimize herself, her sister Elizabeth I, on the other hand, did not. “Elizabeth's counselors advised her not to repeal the Act of 1536 which bastardized her, or to proclaim her biological legitimacy” and claim the right to rule instead on the basis of her father's will. “In effect, this decision made at the beginning of Elizabeth's long rule kept her bastardization official throughout her lifetime” (Hunt). Sow did a technically “illegitimate” monarch become one of England's greatest rulers? After her sister's chaotic reign, Elizabeth restored the Protestant faith, and she defended Protestantism and the security of her homeland from invasion by the defeat of the Spanish Armada. These and other measures did much to secure the approval of her subjects regardless of her illegitimacy, making her, in their eyes, legitimate. Shakespeare and other writers of the period depicted Elizabeth as a virtuous ruler. It was not Elizabeth's background that gave her the right to rule but the wisdom and strength with which she governed.

Elizabeth I's “illegitimate legitimacy” was not without historical precedent, and in Richard III Shakespeare depicted this dichotomy in the ascension of her grandfather, Henry VII, as perfectly valid because of his “virtuous” overthrow of the morally “illegitimate” Richard. Writes Hunt,“Shakespeare's creation of a scapegoat figurative bastard in King Richard III must have made Richmond's claims nostalgically believable [.... ]the moral bastardy of "legitimate" Richard and the hypocrites of the Yorkist court defines the moral integrity of the 'bastard' Henry Tudor.”

Henry's defeat of Richard effectively ended the Wars of the Roses, and the Lancastrian Henry secured this peace by marrying Elizabeth of York, and in Richard III Shakespeare also turns this into an addition to Henry's moral as well as political legitimacy because he had “rescued” her from the conniving Richard who had both slandered her and sought after her hand in marriage. Richard himself had recognized the potential dichotomy of his suit to Elizabeth, having ordered the assassination of her younger brothers, but he rationalizes it, saying, “But I am in/ So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin” ( ). Richard III's suit of Elizabeth of York, Queen Elizabeth I's grandmother and mother of the Tudor dynasty, is depicted as another example of Richard's crimes and his metaphorical illegitimacy. Henry coming to “rescue” Elizabeth makes him appear all the more heroic and morally legitimate. Hunt comments:

Legitimate Richard's figurative bastardy (or baseness) by contrast makes other Yorkists and especially Henry Tudor who have been either labeled or associated with bastardy appear less culpable, even--in the Earl of Richmond's case--non-blamable. This dramatic strategy provides the basis for the play's concluding emphasis upon Tudor fertility and legitimacy.

Hunt concludes his paper saying that Richard is a model for a metaphorical human illegitimacy. In Richard III, the demonized predecessor to Henry Tudor, Richard is depicted as, by nature, a man of illegitimate virtues, and one of his greatest crimes is to secure his political and personal legitimacy by bastardizing everyone standing in his way to the throne. In contrast, the heroic Henry, much like Shakespeare's patron, Elizabeth I, gains legitimacy not only by being more virtuous than a figurative bastard but by acting upon it.

In King John, the royal family's struggle for legitimacy is only resolved as they destroy each other in warfare, but the illegitimate son of the deceased King Richard I—known as the Bastard—survives and embraces his illegitimacy in much the same way as Elizabeth I claimed the right to rule through her father, whose union with her mother was very questionable. The Bastard chooses to embrace his illegitimacy because he has more to gain by it publicly and monetarily. He and his half-brother Robert enter King John's court to resolve a succession dispute because, although Robert is younger, he has inherited his late father Sir Robert Faulconbridge's estate because he is the legitimate son. Elinor and John recognize Richard's features in the Bastard's face and claim him as family. The Bastard is pleased with this change in fortune because although he has separated himself from the family that raised him and possibly lost his inheritance, being an illegitimate royal still apparently makes him royalty. Says he to Elinor's recognition of Richard's features, the Bastard says, “I would give it every foot to have this face; I would not be sir Nob [Sir Robert Faulconbridge] in any case” ( ). He tells his mother, whose affair with Richard I led to his conception, “Ay, my mother, With all my heart I thank thee for my father! Who lives and dares but say thou didst not well When I was got, I'll send his soul to hell” ( ). He is in essence telling her that her lack of virtue has done him a favor by improving his fortunes. While in real life Elizabeth I downplayed her illegitimate conception and status, here the Bastard is playing up how this status has, like Elizabeth, rewarded him because of his royal parentage.

For the Bastard, it is not his birth that matters but his attitude that makes him who he is. Queen Elinor calls him “The very spirit of Plantaganet” because of how he imbibes the noble spirit of his birth father. To this, the Bastard replies, “have is have, however men do catch:/Near or far off, well won is still well shot, /And I am I, howe'er I was begot” ( ). The Bastard understands that no matter what his biological origins are, he is who he chooses to be. Even though he is the biological son of Richard I this is an identity he chooses to embrace. The Bastard knows that it is using one's intelligence and being opportunistic that secures a person's fortune better than birth: “For he is but a bastard to the time That doth not smack of observation” ( ). Like Edmund in King Lear, the Bastard recognizes that the person he chooses to be has nothing to do with his legitimacy or birth, but unlike Edmund (or Richard III, for that matter) he does not seek to legitimize himself, instead he accepts himself for what he is and makes the most of his illegitimate status.

Shakespeare plays up the Bastard's embracing of his illegitimacy to heroic (and not to mention comic) effect. On the battlefield in France, the Bastard meets the Duke of Austria who killed his father Richard I. When Austria sees him and asks, “What the devil art thou?” , the Bastard retorts, “One that will play the devil, sir, with you” ( ). The Bastard's constant reference to his father's lion-like qualities (Richard I was known as “Couer-de-lion” or “the Lionheart”) makes it obvious that he wants to follow in the footsteps of his heroic parent. As he is taunting Austria, he says, “O tremble, for you hear the lion roar.” Ultimately, the Bastard avenges his father's death, and in a later battle with the French he is also a heroic leader and described as “valiant” ( ). The Bastard finds his personal as well as moral legitimacy in serving his country and destroying the morally illegitimate villains that fight against England.

[conclusion]

Works Cited

Burton, Gideon. Silva Rhetoricae. Brigham Young University. 9 March 2013. Web.

Hunt, Maurice. "Shakespeare's King Richard III And The Problematics Of Tudor Bastardy." Papers On Language & Literature 33.2 (1997): 115. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 Mar. 2013.

Lane, Robert. ""the Sequence of Posterity": Shakespeare's King John and the Succession Controversy." Studies in Philology 92.4 (1995): 460-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 7 Mar. 2013.

Morris, Sylvia. “Hillary Mantel and Shakespeare: two tales of Henry VIII.” The Shakespeare Blog. 15 January 2013. Web.

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Latus ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 16 March 2013.

New Oxford American Dictionary.

Back to the Source--King Lear

  So here is an excerpt from the second part of my paper. In paragraph 1 I am evaluating the  primary text from Act I Scene i in King Lear. In Paragraph 2 I am looking at Scene ii. Please note that I have yet to go back and add citations.

In King Lear, legitimacy is not merely a matter of political opinion and legal proceedure but of defining individual worth and character. The play opens with a dialogue between the Earls of Gloucester and Kent as Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son Edmund to Kent. Of Edmund, Gloucester says, “I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it.” Kent replies, “I cannot conceive you,” and .Gloucester jests, “Sir, this young fellow's mother could.” Gloucester turns Kent's use of the term “conceive” into wordplay. While Kent means to say he cannot conceive or understand how Gloucester has grown bold about an illegitimate son he used to be ashamed of, Gloucester says that Edmund's mother, with whom he had illicit intercourse, was bold enough to conceive a child from their union. Gloucester adds, “this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making,”. The term “saucily” means “impudent or flippant” or sexually suggestive. Gloucester says he enjoyed his brief affair with Edmund's mother, but it was her fault for getting pregnant and that Edmund was an unwelcome surprise. Kent remarks, “I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.” As Edmund hovers politely in the background, Kent thinks it is a pity that Edmund is illegitimate, as though if Edmund were legitimate he would be entitled to Kent's complete rather than partial regard. To Kent and Gloucester, Edmund's illegitimacy devalues his worth as a person.

Although he does not say much in the first scene, it becomes clear in scene ii of King Lear that Edmund knows exactly what his father and Kent think of him. He questions why society should devalue him. He says of himself, “my dimensions are as well compact,/ My mind as generous, and my shape as true,/ As honest madam's issue.” However, other people refuse to acknowledge that because of his birth. “Why brand they us /With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” In these last two lines quoted here, Edmund repeats the words “base” over and over, the context being that because he was produced from the “base” or improper union of his father with a woman he was not married to, Edmund himself is “base” or immoral. Edmund's repetition of the word “base” shows how much he is concerned about his self-worth, because other people do not agree that he is as good “As honest madam's issue.” His motive for his behavior towards his father and legitimate half-brother, then, is to make them and the other characters see that he is just as good and reaffirm how he defines himself. To Edgar, legitimacy is only a label.

Thinking about Audiences and Paper Venues

I was up late last night talking to one of my roommates, and she says she and our other roommate know a bit about the Tudors, mostly from the recent HBO show (which I've heard is very lewd). However, she did comment, "Whenever (the other roommate) says, 'You'll never guess what happened on the show!', I'm like, 'How did I not learn this in History class?'" So I'm starting to think maybe I could talk to my roommates about my paper--although they're not home much, and when we are at home we don't talk much. So we'll see.

However, it does demonstrate that a lot of people are familiar with the Tudors. Numerous books, movies, and TV programs have been written about them, and people consume these eagerly. So I think it would be a good idea to direct my paper to an audience familiar with the Tudors and the events that I am discussing in my paper.
It goes without saying that I would also like to direct my paper to Shakespeare enthusiasts. From a scholarly standpoint, my paper is relevant because the Tudor regime had such a huge impact on Shakespeare's writing and that is what I am trying to evaluate. However, a lot of people don't automatically connect Shakespeare with the Tudors, so for people with fewer scholarly inclinations this might offer a new perspective.

From the suggestions of my classmates, I already have a few ideas about venues for my paper. I already promised myself that I would submit to the BYU English symposium before I graduate, and I will especially want to submit this paper if it does turn out to be the best scholarly paper I've ever written, which I hope for. I am also thrilled by the idea that the Utah Shakespeare Festival accepts scholarly articles. That might actually be a very relevant venue because a lot of Shakespeare enthusiasts flock there annually, and they might be interested in what I have to say about certain Shakespeare plays. Some of them, for instance, might remember the most recent production of Richard III back in 2011 that I also went and saw for my 291 class. That production doesn't have any particular bearing on my actual paper, but I do think about it a lot because it was SO AMAZING!

Anyway, just a few thots.

Kaylee! I Have Internet Again (and btw here's my rough draft, part 1)

Dear Kaylee,
Your advice to me in class this morning was SO helpful. I think it needed to be cut. Here is an edited version of the first part of my paper.
 <3 <3 <3 Lizy

Part I: An Echo of the Tudors

Scholars, writers, and ordinary people alike have always been fascinated by the tumultuous events of the Tudor dynasty. “From Shakespeare’s day to today, we have been obsessed with the Tudor period: the colourful lives of the monarchs, the complex rises and falls of both the servants of the crown and the nobility, the fact that ordinary people could make their way into the highest offices of the kingdom” (Morris). We are fascinated, perhaps, by the idea that the people who lived during those times have something to say to us, particularly the renowned playwright William Shakespeare who lived during the closing years of the reign of Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, and during the first years of the reign of her successor James I, and received the patronage of both. Those who observe the historical record closely understand that much of the turmoil during the reign of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, and the strained family relations of his children have to do with Henry's quest for a legitimate heir. Consequently, his daughters Elizabeth and Mary both struggled to obtain legitimacy in one way or another during their lifetimes in order to secure their claims to the throne. The search for personal legitimacy was the driving force behind the lives of the Tudor monarchs. Shakespeare's plays contain echoes of the traumatic events and chaotic personalities of the Tudor dynasty that suggest that he is recreating the tragic world of the Tudors in his plays to address how the issue of legitimacy affected them. For this paper, I will consider the plays Richard III, King Lear, and King John, as they are thematically the most relevant to the issue of legitimacy in Tudor times.

Shakespeare's play Richard III is traditionally considered heavily embedded with Tudor propaganda, as it is depiction of the fall of the House of York as it lead to the rise of the Tudor dynasty. However, it is also a thematic treatise on the legitimacy of the Tudors themselves. In his paper “Shakespeare's King Richard III and the Problematics of Tudor Bastardy” Maurice Hunt claims that it is also an open discussion of the questions of legitimacy surrounding Henry VIII's heirs, revealing“the emergence of a paradigm of illegitimate legitimacy (or legitimate illegitimacy), a composite reproduced in the discourse on royal bastardy in King Richard III.” Richard III meets my criteria for analysis because it depicts the overturn of true legitimacy by an usurper because of how he smears the legitimacy of others, and how this overturn is reversed.

The play King John is considered an anomaly among Shakespeare's history plays, but it has a very frightening similarity to the Tudors in that it depicts the struggle for the English throne between members of a single family. Scholar Robert Lane points out that “Indeed, it is more than plausible that Shakespeare chose King John's reign because its legitimacy--the fundamental focus of the play--turned on strikingly similar issues (Lane). During the Tudor dynasty as in times before as depicted by Shakespeare, the throne of England was a highly coveted prize, but whoever wanted to claim it had to prove they had more legitimate credentials—such as birth and religious creed—than their oppnents. However, most of the contenders in both instances are very closely related. One would think that since these people are so closely related they would treat each other with love, but the desire for power has overpowered all of these affections. Shakespeare's depiction of this medieval royal family applies to the Tudors in that the struggle for monarchy and the legitimacy to secure it is a matter of life and death as well as war and peace.

While both of these plays have been demonstrated by Hunt and Lane to be thematically relevant, King Lear also includes a thematic discourse on issues of division within a royal family as well as on legitimacy itself. It is the subplot of the Earl of Glouchester and the division between his sons which merits critical attention because of how the illegitimate Edmund questions and changes his own legitimacy. There are parallels to the Tudor family in King Lear such that legitimacy is a label applied by others, individuals of questionable seek to change in themselves and others, and that false legitimacy is self-destructive while true legitimacy has nothing to do with birth. The struggle for legitimacy in Shakespeare's plays, therefore, is Shakespeare's commentary on how the monarchs of his day struggled with theirs.

Announcements and Changes

So I got a hold of my friend who is in the production of The Winter's Tale that's going to be tomorrow. It will be in the Nelke theater in the HFAC (where we saw Henry V). The showtimes are 1pm, 2pm, and 4pm and admission is free.

Also, this Saturday the Quill and Sword Medieval (and Renaissance?we're actually debating that part) Reenactment club will be hosting its annual Corpus Christi festival. It will be at 6:30 PM in the step-down lounge of the Clyde Building. There will be games, food, and entertainment, including a medieval play that I am directing, The Creation and Fall of Man. We are celebrating culture in the times before and during Shakespeare's life, and so you might find it a good way to discover the setting of the plays we're reading or simply a weekend getaway.

Anyway, that's all the announcements I wanted to share. In the meantime, after much deliberation, I have boiled down my ideas about the Tudors into...

MY NEW THESIS AND PAPER OUTLINE!!!!!!!!!

Shakespeare recreates the trauma of the Tudor dynasty in his plays to demonstrate that it is not illegitimacy that corrupts a person's character but ambition, and that legitimacy does not make a person good but virtue.

• Shakespeare's plays contain echoes of the traumatic events and chaotic personalities of the Tudor dynasty that suggest that Shakespeare is recreating the tragic events of the dynasty in his plays to address how the issue of legitimacy has affected his patrons. 

• In both Shakespeare's plays and the Tudor dynasty, legitimacy is not merely a label associated with birth but a stigma assigned by others. 

• Shakespeare characters who reject their illegitimacy and seek to overcome it are driven by their ambition to betray family ties in order to steal their legitimacy in much the same way members of the Tudor family did the same.

• The ambition shown by Shakespeare's characters is self-destructive because it was often the case in real life.

• It is not literal legitimacy that is the foundation of a person's character but moral legitimacy or virtue.

• Conclusion: not only a message to the monarchs and their power-hungry courtiers but also a message to the audience that illegitimacy is just a label and that virtue is more rewarding than revenge
  • So what: The monarchy's battle for legitimacy was also the battle for the soul and the stability of a nation, the battle for individual legitimacy is a microcosm, but it can be seen the other way around
    
    
    The plays I will be using are The Winter's Tale, Henry VIII, Richard III, King Lear, and King John. 

Thesis! Thesis!

I think I've found a better thesis. Or a better way to express my thesis and supporting ideas. 

Thesis

The concern with ambition, legitimacy, and family relationships gone wrong in Shakespeare's plays are stemmed in how these issues affected the Tudor dynasty and shaped the world of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century England. 

Supporting arguments:

• Ambition in Shakespeare's characters is a corrupting and self-destructive characteristic because it was often the same case for the ambitious power-seekers who lived in the Tudor court.
• The legitimacy of characters in Shakespeare is fixed by birth but is subject to legal changes by those with authority as was often the case in the Tudor period.
• Family relationships in both the Tudor dynasty and in Shakespeare's plays arise from personal betrayal or merely the fear of betrayal, but in both cases this leads to a betrayal of familial responsibilities. 
  
  
  I feel better now that I've sort of crystalized what I want to talk about. The finer details of the points may change depending on further research. 

Something to Chew On

The funny thing about my topic is not only do you have a right to say the word "bastard" regularly but you also have to think about "bastards" a lot. Particularly Shakespeare's "bastards" and so-called "bastards." I've been thinking about Edmund in particular. Whereas the Bastard in King John is depicted as sort of a hero and the illegitimized children in Richard III and The Winter's tale are innocent, Edmund lives up to his connotation. Why?

At first I was thinking that Shakespeare changed/evolved his views with the times. With the supposedly illegitimate Elizabeth dying and later being replaced by James, Shakespeare became more liberal with how he depicted people of questionable birth, since King Lear was written after Elizabeth's death and King John written just before. But after double-checking the chronology of these plays, I realized maybe that didn't make sense.

Then I followed a link on Shakespeare Online from a survey of top villains to an in-depth article about Edmund, and something struck me: it wasn't Edmund's birth that made him a villain (I already agreed with that, but I was wondering if Shakespeare did) but it was his pride and ambition. This fits much better with my topic. The Tudor dynasty was marked by contention because a lot of people with big plans for personal advancement (similar to Edmund) got involved in the Tudor drama and tried to take advantage of what was happening. For instance, Anne Boylen and Katherine Howard both came from ambitious families. And Shakespeare had an apparent distaste for social climbers and showed it in his plays through characters like Edmund and Oswald. Anyway, food for thought I am currently munching on--nom nom nom!

What was that all about?

So today I actually read the play Henry VIII. To paraphrase, the Prolouge states, "This is a sad play, prepare to cry." OK. It begins with the Duke of Buckingham's arrest for treason on charges of wanting to overthrow the king (oddly enough, he tells us later, he's the son of the same Buckingham in Richard III and wants us to notice the parallel). Then it goes into the crisis over Henry wanting to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boylen (in it's native English spelling Bullen in my text). There is a big trial, but before it even starts Katherine makes a big scene and leaves. Some of the events, like in The Winter's Tale, are described but not actually shown, and there are a lot of official processions. Katherine is depicted as a weak but virtuous and obedient woman, and Anne is only shown three times and is depicted as completely innocent of any ambition. The focus is on Cardinal Wolsey's fall because he supported Henry's divorce but did NOT want him to marry Anne, and after being forced to surrender his seal of office he gives a long "Oh Woe is Me" soliloquy and acts repentant. His death is described to the dying Katherine. Act V jumps ahead to Cramner, the archbishop of Canterbury, being tried by a council for teaching heresy, but then the King coming in to pardon him. The last scene is Henry greeting Baby Elizabeth after her christening.

I have no idea at the moment what Shakespeare is trying to say by this. All I know is it's very glossy over the actual history, a lot of the events are mashed together, and it was written about the time Elizabeth I died. I am not sure what this will have to do with my thesis. We'll see!

King John: Crazy Women Will You Please Shut Up?

One scholarly article I found was about how King John was Shakespeare's way of addressing the succession crisis towards the end of Elizabeth I's reign and how it would possibly be resolved. In King John, King John has succeeded his deceased brother Richard I by the right of Richard's will (the same way Elizabeth succeeded according to a will HenryVIII had written), but the more "legitimate" candidate to rule is his nephew Arthur, who is the son of his deceased elder brother Geoffrey. They meet on a battlefield in France along with their supporters: John with his mother Queen Elinor and Arthur with his mother Constance and King Phillip of France. During their initial exchange, Elinor and Constance interrupt the men and exchange insulting barbs to the point that both the kings ask for them to stop arguing, and frankly I couldn't agree better. More than once Arthur is called a bastard and John a usurper.  The women invoke their blood ties in order to take control of Arthur, but on Elinor's part it goes south:

QUEEN ELINOR Come to thy grandam, child.
CONSTANCE Do, child, go to it grandam, child: Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig: There's a good grandam.

Shakespeare, William (2011-09-07). The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Kindle Locations 63220-63224). Latus ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Constance is essentially echoing Elinor's command in baby-talk to tell Arthur that his other relations are going to treat him like a baby.
Think about your own family ties. It is as natural for our own grandparents to give us love and respect as it is for sixteenth-century grandmas to give their young grandsons "a plum, a cherry, and a fig." And yet Constance is urging her son to turn away from these natural ties and expectations in order to win a throne. Mary I hardly treated her sister Elizabeth like family, imprisioning and exiling her in order to keep the Protestants from being able to support her "bastard" half-sister. Elizabeth I and her rival, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, were cousins, and yet they were expected by their supporters to be enemies and prevent the other from taking or keeping what was rightfully theirs and to invoke their own blood ties to claim a throne.

What's wrong with this picture? I can't begin to say, except that while these people are from different backgrounds and life histories the lack of familial affection is frightening to consider. What is Shakespeare observing? The monarchs of Europe are playing a game in order to win the largest dominions through blood legitimacy and ties of inheritance, and the only rule is, "I will insult the other person as much as possible so I can get what I want and they don't." And that approach does not work.

I'VE FOUND THEM!

So I followed Dr. Burton's advice to look for social forums on the internet related to my topics. On Goodreads, I found a forum devoted specifically to the Tudors and readers of both history books about them and historical fiction inspired by them. I have joined the group and posted my theory about the Winter's Tale being a parallel to Anne Boylen's fall. I'm so excited! Will keep you posted!

Finding Connections: The Winter's Tale

I have been looking at The Winter's Tale for the last two days for close reading. While I am not finding much, I am finding a few interesting parallels between Acts I-III and Anne Boylen's fall. From my studies of the Tudors, as Henry VIII gets closer to removing a wife that is giving him a lot of trouble there seems to be an increase in tension in the royal court. I sense that Shakespeare is trying to construct a similar rising tension as Leontes' obsession with Hermione's supposed infidelity increases. In Act I Scene II, Leontes asks Camillo a series of rhetorical questions about the queen's supposed behavior:

Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career Of laughing with a sigh?—a note infallible Of breaking honesty—horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only, That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?

Shakespeare, William (2011-09-07). The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Kindle Locations 40812-40819). Latus ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

I looked up some terms on the Silvia Rhetoricae website. This type of rhetorical behavior is called excusiato, or stirring others to anger by one's own vehement feeling. This also demonstrates amplification, or the arrangement of words or clauses in order of increasing force. Notice how Leontes goes from "whispering" to touching to kissing to secret meetings, increasing the severity of his accusations by increasing the severity of Hermione's supposed behavior. We've heard about the steps leading to from smaller sins to bigger ones. This small passage by itself is a symbol of Leontes' increasing obsession.  

The chief cause of Anne Boylen's fall from failure was her inability to produce a son after the birth of Elizabeth. Over Christmas Break I read The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir, which went into detail on this issue. Henry was already apparently in a relationship with Jane Seymour during one of Anne's later pregnancies. At eight months, Anne miscarried, and the fetus was developed enough that they could tell it would have been a boy. Henry increasingly lost interest in Anne and decided to remove her. Weir's description--as well as other descriptions I've read of Henry VIII when he was in one of these moods--describe Henry as a brooding and obsessive, willing to believe anything he convinced himself, and once he was set on doing something nothing could stop him.

Having taken years to depose of Katherine of Aragon. According to Weir, Henry wanted Anne out of the way quickly. He trumped-up charges that she was having affairs with other men (Leontes deposed Hermione for the same reason) and that Elizabeth and her miscarried children were not his. Anne was sent to the Tower of London, put on trial (much like Hermione, although neither trial could hardly be called "just"), and she was executed.

There are one or two small connections to the Tudors I have found in this play that I also believe support my case, but it would take up a lot of writing. I am thinking about narrowing down my topic to The Winter's Tale and Anne Boylen. Thoughts?

Royal Pains, Family Pains

I've been doing some reading up on King Lear and its critical interpretations about family and monarchy. The ONE good article I have so far is a transcript of a panel discussion between several fathers who have just watched a stage production of King Lear and are discussing its implications about fatherhood from their own personal experience. They commented a lot about what kind of relationship Lear had with his daughters and what he expected from them, and they noted the absence of the princesses' mother.

This made me think about my idea about the Tudors. What kind of a father was Henry VIII to his children? From the numerous books I have read about the Tudors I have come to several conclusions. The facts are that they were raised away from him for the most part, and the mothers of both of his daughters were estranged from Henry before their untimely deaths, so they probably were not very close. Edward is usually depicted as a somewhat spoiled favorite, partly because he was the male heir Henry had always wanted, and I can imagine that Jane Seymour's good sense to die before Henry could find anything wrong with her helped a lot. I can see Henry being the same kind of father-figure that the men in the panel discussion saw King Lear was to his daughters: imperious and demanding respect. And for much of their lives they lacked the presence of a mother figure.

It is not hard to imagine how this kind of childhood would have affected the rest of their lives. Elizabeth, of course, never married. Mary was married to Phillip II of Spain and was determined to produce an heir, but she was years older than him and he was never very close to her and cheated on her. Mary also hated Elizabeth because their father had dumped her mother Katherine  of Aragon for Elizabeth's mother Anne Boylen. Mary exiled Elizabeth to run-down estates in distant parts of England, perhaps as revenge because Henry had done the same thing to Mary's mother and this ill-treatment resulted in her death.

It kind of makes you think about how difficult it is to be a monarch or a member of a monarch's family. Natural family ties are corrupted as parents and children are divided into different court factions competing for power, and siblings and parents end up hurting and betraying each other, sometimes killing one another. Although Elizabeth and Philip II were rivals and Phillip wanted to invade England, the mind-blowing fact that he was technically her brother-in-law makes you wonder what would drive him to do it. Is there more to family than blood or marriage ties?