Abstract
Philip Massinger’s tragicomedy The Emperor of the East (1631) registers contemporaneous anxiety about Henrietta Maria’s perceived influence over Charles I and the implications of the king’s mode of government during the Personal Rule. Massinger deploys the language of gender to elaborate on issues of power, associating Charles’s inability to live up to his monarchical role with his reluctance to fulfil his patriarchal role. The essay suggests that Massinger anticipates concerns about Henrietta Maria spanning the period from the early 1630s to the Civil War. The emperor’s sexual dependence on his wife is associated with tyrannical practices and the dependent relations that operate in his corruption-ridden court. Significantly, corruption at the emperor’s court is identified with sources of revenue that enabled Charles to govern without Parliament.
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Notes
Edwards and Gibson (1976), Vol. 3. All references to the play are from this edition. Spelling has been partially modernized to make the text more accessible to modern readers.
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Hila, M. “A Womans Government”: Caroline Politics in Massinger’s The Emperor of the East . Neophilologus 100, 161–174 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9452-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9452-6