"As You Like It" at the Globe

In the As You Like It program, Will Tosh asserts that the play, “performed at the Globe for the first time in 1599, offered an enticingly polymorphous prospect: a pastoral romance infused with the freewheeling sexuality of the greenwood, staged under the transvestite conventions of early modern English theatre” (7). Despite little in the way of sets or scenery, the Globe production successfully captures pastoral romance by way of dreamy-eyed lovers and lulling guitar playing that accompanies songs original to the play text, while keeping intact the gender-bending, experimental nature of the play. Furthermore, the production plays with the idea of the forest as both a sexually immoral space and a sanctuary from political and familial depravity. The idea of the forest as a refuge contests the belief of the space as “an unpredictable, poorly-governed, alluringly naughty playground,” (6) suggesting that the city is no better and perhaps human nature and sexuality are too impalpable to adhere to the rules of society.

In the play text, the marital ending seems like a deus ex machina. A series of wildly unbelievable events and behavior are quickly and conveniently solved through marriage and the reader is left wondering about Rosalind’s gender identity, and Orlando’s willing naiveté. While the Globe’s production retained some of this open-endedness, the marriages aren’t as normalizing as they appear in the play text; in fact, Rosalind’s/Ganymede’s and Orlando’s relationship is quite progressive. In the marriage scene, Rosalind walks onstage wearing an elaborate wedding gown. At this point in time, it is clear to the audience that Rosalind is Rosalind (as opposed to her alter ego, Ganymede) and the audience feels some relief to be heading in a conclusive direction where Rosalind and Orlando can be together, no questions asked. However, just before they marry, Rosalind tears the skirt of her gown away and stands onstage in a man’s outfit; now, it appears that she is Ganymede. The significance is heightened by the fact that this is the first and only point in the play where Rosalind and Orlando kiss. Orlando came close to kissing Rosalind only once before, while she was Ganymede pretending to be Rosalind.

What the audience is left to wonder about, then, is whether Orlando loves Rosalind or Ganymede, and what gender Rosalind identifies as. The latter is made even more unclear in the epilogue when Ganymede addresses the male audience, “If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleas’d me . . .” Therefore, the audience must question his feelings toward Orlando; since he is not a woman and presumably won’t kiss the men, is he not attracted to the man he just married? This confusion, though frustrating, preserves the notion of the indefinite nature of human sexuality and society; an idea that the Globe’s production stressed throughout the play in Celia’s and Rosalind’s intimacy, Orlando and Ganymede’s intimacy, as well as Rosalind’s and the Hymen’s exaggerated cross-dressing. As the weddings all take place in the Forest of Arden and the play never returns to the French court, the effect of place must be questioned as well. The audience is left to wonder to what extent the Forest itself has destined the events that have transpired, further entangling the pastoral romance with sexual freedom.

           

St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

Although Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral have long been centers of communion for the people of London, and both houses of worship have been focal points during several periods of English history, they have experienced significantly different lives since their completions. The architecture of each building provides the most obvious evidence of their differences. Where St. Paul’s was burned in the Great Fire of !666 to be built anew between 1675 and 1711, Westminster Abbey is somewhat of a conglomerate of different styles and purposes beginning with Edward the Confessor’s monastery of 1065, remnants of which are found in the cloisters, such as the Pyx Chamber. In contrast, St. Paul’s was the first cathedral to be built after the English Reformation, when Henry VIII removed the Church of England from the jurisdiction of the Pope and made himself Supreme Head of the English Church (St. Paul’s Cathedral). The Abbey, therefore, keeps a much longer physical record of the reigns of different monarchs and the sentiments of the English people.

St. Paul's Cathedral

That is not to say, however, that St. Paul’s doesn’t have it’s own interesting history. The first St. Paul’s was built in 604 and the wooden building burned down in 675. It was rebuilt ten years later and destroyed again, this time by Vikings, in 962 and a new church was built with stone. In 1087, after another fire, the Normans who had conquered Britain built the church again; they finished the church in 1240 and continued adding to it all the way up to 1300. For the years leading up to the Great Fire that destroyed the old St. Paul’s, the cathedral fell into disrepair, “during the Civil War and the subsequent Republic, which followed the execution of King Charles I in 1649, the country became less respectful towards the established church.” (St. Paul’s Cathedral) The church was used for stabling horses at one point and the nave became a marketplace with a road running through the transepts for a time. After the Great Fire, the new church was rebuilt and has maintained a tradition of public service since, “for over 300 years, St. Paul’s has been a place where the individual and nation can express those feelings of joy, gratitude, and sorrow that are so central to our lives.” (St. Paul’s Cathedral) For example, in the 18^th century, a service was held to celebrate George III’s return to good health after a struggle with mental illness and following the terror attacks on New York on September 11, 2001, crowds gathered to express solidarity and grief. St. Paul’s, then, can be seen as the people’s church, as it seeks to be a house of prayer for people of all faiths.

Westminster, too, has been shaped and repurposed to maintain a reverential role in a modern age, and has come to reflect the history of the people of England.  The Abbey is home to over six hundred monuments and wall tablets and is the final resting place of more than three thousand people (Westminster Abbey). Where St. Paul’s and the Abbey differ in their memorials is also reflective of the individual churches’ history and function. As for the Abbey, anyone who has significantly influenced England’s history has the honor of being buried there; so, there are monuments for poets, writers, scientists, war heroes, and royalty. On the other hand, St. Paul’s became a focal point of World War II, and suffered damage due to bombing by the Luftwaffe. This piece of St. Paul’s history is captured in the fact that many of those buried there are war heroes. Poppies, which have become a symbol of the Second World War in Britain, lay on several tombs and wreaths of them adorn many of the war memorials in the Crypt. Regardless of the differences, each of the churches honor the history of England, and by comparing the two, one can get a better sense of the role of the two houses of worship in the lives of the people.  

Tower of London, Post Five

Edmund Campion (1540-1581)

Background: Campion was born in London, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, to a bookseller. He was raised Catholic and attended Christ’s Hospital school; at thirteen, he was invited to make the welcoming speech when Queen Mary visited. Campion went on to attend St. John’s College, Oxford, when he was fifteen and became a fellow at seventeen.

Occupation and Lifestyle: Campion took the Oath of Supremacy, acknowledging that Queen Elizabeth I was the head of the Church of England and he then became an Anglican deacon in 1564. He welcomed Queen Elizabeth I to the university and won her favor (“St. Edmund Campion”). Five years later, having had doubts about Protestantism, Campion left England for Ireland where he converted back to Catholicism.  When Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I, persecution of the Catholics began to increase. Campion went on to be ordained at the college of Prague and shortly after, in 1580, the Jesuit mission to England began. Because of his publications and missionary activities, he became a target of the crown, was captured, and subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Circumstances of Incarceration: Campion was arrested by priest hunters while conducting an underground ministry near Oxford and was convicted of high treason. The priest was kept in the Tower of London for four days in a cell called “little-ease” before he was taken out and questioned as to whether he acknowledged Queen Elizabeth to be the true Queen of England and therefore the Supreme Head of the English Church; to which he replied that he did. He was offered his freedom and a position as archbishop of Canterbury, but because of his conscience he couldn’t accept and was imprisoned for four months more (“St. Edmund Campion”). During this period, he was tortured on the rack (a device that stretched a victim’s body until their cartilage and bones began to separate and crack) multiple times, and had multiple disputes over his Catholic publications. He was finally tried on the grounds of treason on the accusation that he helped to conspire a plot to dethrone the queen. On December 1, 1581, Campion was hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Importance of Narrative:  Edmund Campion’s story illustrates the political climate and discourse of the 16^th century in that it brings to light the problem Queen Elizabeth I faced in attempting to dichotomize religion and politics. Because Queen Elizabeth I was both the queen and the head of the Church of England, any open religious activity that wasn’t Protestant was also treason and a threat to her power. Therefore, the state’s “standoff with Catholicism” forced decisions to be made upon maintaining distinctions between religion and politics and conscience and treason (Lake, 1). The martyrs that were executed at this time period weren’t convicted and executed for being Catholic, but for high treason, and Edmund Campion was one such martyr who was ultimately canonized. In the “The Flower of Oxford,” McCooge asserts that the government sought to persuade citizens that treason was the reason for persecution, not religion (902). Nevertheless, this illustrates the complexity of the relationship between politics and religion in 16^th century England. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, she said, “I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls” meaning that she didn’t intend to persecute anyone on their religious beliefs; essentially, what they practiced in their own homes was their own business. However, Elizabeth couldn’t adhere to this policy for long because of her position as the head of the English Church and she soon had to enforce Protestantism in order to protect herself and her reign.

Further Information: Edmund Campion was beatified by Pope Leo XIII five years after his execution and was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970. His feast day is December 1, the anniversary of his death. It is said by some that parts of his body were displayed at the city gates as a warning to other Catholics, but this isn't confirmed. The ropes used to hang Campion, however, remain intact; they are on display at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

Links of Interest:

Campion’s Bragge

List of the Jesuit Martyrs of England and Wales

Talk on Campion, Fr. Bernard Basset

Works Cited:

             Lake, Peter, and Michael Questier. "Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern    England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context." The Journal of Modern History J MOD HIST 72.3 (2000): 587-627. Web. 8 July 2015.  
       McCoog, Thomas M. ""The Flower of Oxford": The Role of Edmund Campion in Early Recusant        Polemics." Sixteenth Century Journal 24.4 (1993): 899-913. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 8 July 2015.

       "Edmund Campion." Catholic Online; Saints and Angels. Web. 8 July 2015.

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Queen Elizabeth I and Political Self-Fashioning

Queen Elizabeth I: The Pelican Portrait

During Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, portraiture functioned in social and political discourse as propaganda; it was a way of influencing public opinion and securing power and authority, rather than an art form. The surviving portraits of Queen Elizabeth I illustrate this idea and in fact, the portraits exude many of the same elements as Elizabeth’s own speeches. The portraits, as well as her speeches, had much to do with Queen Elizabeth’s political self-fashioning and therefore reveal much about the monarch’s qualities, or at least those qualities she wished to portray to her subjects.

For the purpose of this post, I’ll be looking at The Pelican Portrait, pictured above, and Queen Elizabeth’s speech to parliament on religion. In the Pelican Portrait, Elizabeth is very elaborately dressed; additionally, on either side of her are the French and English crowns. Therefore, from a first glance, the portrait is a clear display of Elizabeth’s right to power and her role as queen, rather than her role as head of the Church of England, which is the role she assumes in her speech to parliament. That is not to say, however, that the Portrait ignores that duty completely. In the portrait, Elizabeth’s dress is covered in pearls, a symbol of purity and spirituality, as well as a symbol of wisdom acquired by experience (Portraits of Queen ElizabethI). The cherries behind her ear are representative of her sexual purity and therefore qualify her as the spiritual leader of the country. These spiritual symbols make it clear that Queen Elizabeth wanted to secure her subjects’ faith in her as a religious leader.

Moreover, the Pelican Portrait shows the queen’s maternal love for her subjects, as does her speech. The pendant around Elizabeth’s neck in the portrait is a pelican, for which the portrait is obviously named. The pendant represents the queen’s selfless love for her subjects, because according to legend, the pelican cut its own breast to feed its children. Elizabeth’s speech to parliament exemplifies this idea in that she declares that she will depose her own clergy if they do not take their duties seriously enough, “I see many overbold with God Almighty, making too many subtile scannings of His blessed will.” (Queen Elizabeth I On Religion, 1585)  Elizabeth took her responsibility seriously, a fact of which she wanted her subjects to be aware, and is thus displayed in her wearing of the pelican pendant in several of her portraits.

Where the speech and portrait differ also has to do with the queen’s maternal qualities. In her portrait, which her subjects would’ve seen, her palm is facing upward and her fingers are soft, exuding a maternal, but confident softness. In her speech to parliament, though, the queen is strict and threatening.  Both aspects of the queen’s personality are maternal in that a mother is generally a tender and confident leader around her children, but toward those who might upset her children, she displays a fierce protectiveness. In this respect, both the portrait and the speech support the virgin queen’s fashioning herself a maternal figure for her subjects.