Abstract
In the Epilogue to The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare, Kietzman suggests that The Tempest is Shakespeare’s statement about how the Bible should and should not be used by rulers: it should not serve the Machiavellian function of mystifying power, but its key notion of covenant should be lived out in the ruler’s relation with his subjects. Kietzman concludes with a brief discussion of the covenantal politics Milton articulates in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) using the same biblical places from I Samuel that Shakespeare refigures. Finally, she turns to Eikonoklastes and Milton’s accusation that Charles I misused his Shakespeare, imitating tyrants like Richard III instead of listening to the thousand several tongues in the biblical conscience of the plays, whispering their suggestions for reform.
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Notes
- 1.
Franco Moretti, “A Huge Eclipse: Tragic Form and the Deconstruction of Sovereignty,” Genre 15 (Spring and Summer 1982): 12.
- 2.
Moretti, for example, cites Sidney’s Apology, “the high and excellent Tragedy … maketh Kings feare to be Tyrants,” and I think it is important to note that Sidney was a personal friend of Huguenot political thinker Philippe de Mornay, who argued in Vindiciae contra tyrannos (published in England in 1581) that citizens may resist a tyrant through the aristocracy and the end of monarchy was a contractual bond with subjects. Alan Sinfield, “Sidney, de Plessis-Mornay and the Pagans,” Philological Quarterly, 58 (Winter 1979): 26. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 81.
- 3.
John Milton, “Eikonoklastes,” The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 1091.
- 4.
John Milton, “Areopagitica,” John Milton, Selected Prose, ed. C.A. Patrides (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), 238.
- 5.
Under the Stuart kings, the form of the court masque was a principle vehicle for articulating absolutist ideology. I understand ideology to be a prevailing type of thought—ideas, views, and theoretical systems adopted to retrain or acquire power. It reflects the interests of a class or faction and is especially a means employed by a ruler to justify his political position or gloss over contradictions of the system. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: And Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1972), 190.
- 6.
James I, The Political Works of James I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918),1: 307.
- 7.
Despite James’s rhetorical assertions, certain realities of the moment give the lie to his absolutism: he was negotiating with Parliament “the Great Contract—a proposal in which the crown would give up certain traditional sources of income in exchange for a large subsidy and a yearly grant of money,” and negotiations ended in a stalemate, with James dismissing the parliamentary session. Leonard Tennenhouse, “Strategies of State and Political Plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII,” Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, eds. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 117.
- 8.
From a letter of March 1610 from John More to Ralph Winwood, cited in Jane Rickard, Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England: Jonson, Donne, Shakespeare and the Works of King James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 144. Rickard’s reading of Donne’s Essays in Divinity suggests that he was troubled by the hyperbolic language of James’s 1610 speech. Rickard, Writing the Monarch, 142.
- 9.
Constance Jordan, Shakespeare’s Monarchies: Ruler and Subject in the Late Plays (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Elliott Visconsi, “Vinculum Fidei: The Tempest and the Law of Allegiance,” Law and Literature, 20 (Spring 2008): 2–3. Young Cho Lee sees the potential for subversion of absolutist ideology by the utopian discourse in the play as well as by its romance form. Young Cho Lee, “The Theatrical Representation of Politics in The Tempest,” English Language and Literature 49 (2013): 935–954.
- 10.
Steven Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4.
- 11.
William Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference Which It Pleased His Excellent Majestie: to Have with the Lords Bishops and Others of His Clergie (at Which the Most of the Lords of the Councell were Present in his Majesties Privie-Chamber at Hampton Court, January 14, 1603 (London: by John Norton, 1638), 47; Willis Barnstone, The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 214.
- 12.
Patrick Collinson suggests that James’s missteps at the Hampton Court conference contributed to the “inevitability” of the suppressed movement “burst[ing] its bonds with a new and terrible energy” in the Civil War period. Patrick Collinson, “The Jacobean Religious Settlement,” Before the English Civil War: Essays on Early Stuart Politics and Government, ed. Howard Tomlinson (London: Macmillan Press, 1983), 48.
- 13.
Barlow, Summe and Substance of the Conference, 48.
- 14.
Scholars believe that Shakespeare used primarily the Geneva Bible and the Bishop’s Bible. Evidence that he may have preferred and even allusively defended it—marginalia and all—comes in Horatio’s comment to Hamlet, “I knew you must be edified by the margin ere you had done” (5.2.155–156). Felicity Heal believes this is a clear reference to the Geneva Bible’s claim that readers must be edified by the marginal commentaries on the text. See Felicity Heal, “Experiencing Religion in London: Diversity and Choice in Shakespeare’s Metropolis,” in Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion, eds. David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 77.
- 15.
Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible, 33; and Paul Stevens, Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in Paradise Lost (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 29.
- 16.
Young Cho Lee reads the tempest as a symbol of disorder that unsettles the master-servant relationship and is a precursor to the creation of a new order. Lee, “The Theatrical Representation of Politics,” 942.
- 17.
Constance Jordan makes the interesting observation that because Prospero does not allow dispute, his interlocutors’ wills remain untouched. She suggests that Prospero dismisses his magic because he understands that in a settled and secure state, it is suspect or illegitimate. Jordan, Shakespeare’s Monarchies, 154, 204.
- 18.
Jordan suggests that a willingness to live under law rather than as an absolute ruler is the note struck at the end of the play, but I think bonds—covenant bonds—are clearly the emphasis. Jordan, Shakespeare’s Monarchies, 33.
- 19.
Nevada Levi DeLapp, The Reformed David(s) and the Question of Resistance to Tyranny: Reading the Bible in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 136, 143.
- 20.
The pamphlet (published in 1642 and again in 1647) is titled King James, His Judgement of a King and of a Tyrant, Extracted out of His Owne Speech at White-Hall, to Parliament, 1609 [i.e. 1610]. With Certain Notations anent the Same. Rickard, Writing the Monarch, 255.
- 21.
John Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in The Works of John Milton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–1938), 5: 39, cited in Harold Fisch, Jerusalem and Albion: The Hebraic Factor in Seventeenth-Century Literature (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), 124.
- 22.
For a discussion of the significance of the covenant idea to Milton’s prose and poetry, see John T. Shawcross, “Milton and Covenant: The Christian View of Old Testament Theology,” Milton and Scriptural Tradition: The Bible into Poetry, eds. James H. Sims and Leland Ryken (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), 160–191.
- 23.
Fisch notes that Milton, unlike Shakespeare, always acknowledged his debt to source texts, and Fisch refers to this as Milton’s “covenantal hermeneutics.” Harold Fisch, “Power and Constraint: Covenantal Hermeneutics in Milton,” Summoning: Ideas of the Covenant and Interpretive Theory, ed. Ellen Spolsky (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 2.
References
Articles
Lee, Young Cho. “The Theatrical Representation of Politics in The Tempest.” English Language and Literature 49 (2013): 935–954.
Moretti, Franco. “‘A Huge Eclipse’: Tragic Form and the Deconsecration of Sovereignty.” Genre 15 (Spring and Summer 1982): 7–40.
Sinfield, Alan. “Sidney, de Plessis-Mornay and the Pagans.” Philological Quarterly 58 (Winter 1979): 26–39.
Visconsi, Elliott. “Vinculum Fidei: The Tempest and the Law of Allegiance.” Law and Literature 20 (Spring 2008): 1–20.
Books
Barlow, William. The Summe and Substance of the Conference which it Pleased His Excellent Majestie: to Have with the Lords Bishops and Others of his Clergie. at which the Most of the Lords of the Councell were Present in his Majesties Privie-Chamber at Hampton Court, January 14, 1603. London: By John Norton, 1638.
Barnstone, Williis. The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
Collinson, Patrick. “The Jacobean Religious Settlement.” In Before the English Civil War: Essays on Early Stuart Politics and Government. Edited By Howard Tomlinson. London: Macmillan Press, 1983.
DeLapp, Nevada Levi. The Reformed David(s) and the Question of Resistance to Tyranny: Reading the Bible in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 601; Scriptural Traces: Critical Perspectives on the Reception and Influence of the Bible 3. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Fisch, Harold. Jerusalem and Albion: The Hebraic Factor in Seventeenth-Century Literature. New York: Schocken Books, 1964.
———. “Power and Constraint: Covenantal Hermeneutics in Milton.” In Summoning: Ideas of the Covenant and Interpretive Theory. Edited by Ellen Spolsky. 1–24. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Heal, Felicity. “Experiencing Religion in London: Diversity and Choice in Shakespeare’s Metropolis.” In Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion. Edited by David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore. 57–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
James I, King of England. The Political Works of James I. Edited by Charles McIlwain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.
Jordan, Constance. Shakespeare’s Monarchies: Ruler and Subject in the Romances. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Routledge, 1972.
Marx, Steven. Shakespeare and the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Milton, John. Areopagitica. In Selected Prose. Edited by C. A. Patrides. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985.
———. Eikonoklastes. In The Riverside Milton. Edited by Roy Flannagan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Rickard, Jane. Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England: Jonson, Donne, Shakespeare and the Works of King James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Shawcross, John T. “Milton and Covenant: The Christian View of Old Testament Theology.” In Milton and Scriptural Tradition: The Bible into Poetry. Edited by James H. Sims and Leland Ryken. 160–191. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984.
Stevens, Paul. Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in Paradise Lost. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
Tennenhouse, Leonard. “Strategies of State and Political Plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII.” In Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism. Edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. 109–129. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.
Walzer, Michael. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics. New York: Atheneum, 1969.
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Kietzman, M.J. (2018). Epilogue: Shakespeare and Milton Grapple with Kingship. In: The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71843-9_7
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