Abstract
Focusing on Shakespeare’s depiction of foreign queens, this book considers how their presence, conditions, and experiences in his plays make visible the abusive potential of sovereign will above law. Each of the four main chapters focuses upon one queen—Katherine of Aragon in Henry VIII, Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, Tamora in Titus Andronicus, and Margaret in the first history tetralogy. These queens reveal tensions within early modern English politics, particularly those associated with the ‘sovereign decision’ and the putative antinomy between friend and enemy as the basis of the concept of the political. The project as a whole links early modern and contemporary political theory and concerns through four key concepts—fragmented identity, hospitality, citizenship, and banishment—which point toward Shakespeare’s interest in questions of sovereignty, subjection, and active political engagement. It does not focus on gender per se, but on the vulnerability of foreign queens, as a cypher for all subjects, to the destabilizing, deleterious conjunction of personal and political agendas and judgments enacted through embodied sovereignty.
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- 1.
Tamora , of course, enters Rome as a captive queen, and becomes an empress through marriage. Nevertheless, the overall relationships remain parallel.
- 2.
My project works through both historicist and presentist frameworks, aiming to enrich our understanding of the intersecting interests of the past and the present, of the literary and the political. A flexible conception of the relationship between past and present, historicism and presentism is offered in The Urgency of the Now: Criticism and Theory in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Cary DiPietro and Hugh Grady (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). See their Introduction and Chap. 1. Also useful is Presentist Shakespeares, ed. Terence Hawkes and Hugh Grady (Abbingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007), Introduction. However, see Evelyn Gajowski, “Beyond Historicism: Presentism, Subjectivity, Politics,” Literature Compass 7, no. 8 (2010): 674–691, who argues that historicism and presentism are antithetical approaches.
- 3.
Two studies of foreigners or outsiders have some pertinence for this project. Marianne Novy devotes a chapter to “Women as Outsiders and Insiders,” in Shakespeare and Outsiders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 69–86. Her survey of women’s functions in these two categories throughout the plays is related at times to my project here, especially in her discussion of Queen Margaret in the first tetralogy. In The Stranger in Shakespeare (New York: Stein & Day, 1972), Leslie Fiedler includes women among the ‘strangers’ that he accounts for, placing them beside Jews, Moors, and ‘Indians’ as examples of the “borderline figure, who defines the limits of the human” (15).
- 4.
Keechang Kim, Aliens in Medieval Law: The Origins of Modern Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4–5, 16. However , see also Wendy Wall, Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. 9–11, where she argues that national identity was built, not only on the sense of allegiance or alterity, but also on domestic experience.
- 5.
Kim , Aliens, 5.
- 6.
Jean Bodin, Six Books of the Commonwealth, abridged , trans. M.J. Tooley (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955). Tooley, Book I, Chaps. 6–7, p. 19. Where possible , I refer to On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the Six Books of the Commonwealth, ed. and trans . Julian H. Franklin (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Franklin covers Book I, Chaps. 8 and 10, and Book II, Chaps. 1 and 5. Bodin does not address property rights or inheritance per se, only the lack of bond and protection regarding aliens . Where it is not possible to cite Franklin, I cite Tooley, also by Book, Chap., and pg.
- 7.
Kim , Aliens, 180.
- 8.
Coke’s logic is certainly susceptible to challenge, for it seems evident that an act of treason would be understood as an assault on the civil and natural laws of the kingdom, not merely the body of the king. Thus the execution of Charles I was justified as a defense of the laws and good of the commonwealth. On the relationship between the king’s natural and political bodies, see Ernst Kantorowicz , The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957; 1997), 1–23. For responses to and developments of Kantorowicz, see Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977); and Jennifer R. Rush, The Body in Mystery: The Political Theology of the Corpus Mysticum in the Literature of Reformation England (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014).
- 9.
Kim , Aliens, 150. For Coke’s full decision, see Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003), 3 vols., Vol. 1, Part Seven, “Calvin’s Case,” 162–232.
- 10.
Jane Pettegree , Foreign and Native on the English Stage, 1588–1611: Metaphor and National Identity (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 7.
- 11.
Pettegree , Foreign and Native, 2.
- 12.
Pettegree , Foreign and Native, 3.
- 13.
See Shakespeare’s Foreign Worlds: National and Transnational Identities in the Elizabethan Age, ed. Carole Levin and John Watkins (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 10–11; and Jean E. Howard , Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598–1642 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
- 14.
Vindiciae , Contra Tyrannos: or, concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over the prince, ed. and trans. George Garnett (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Fourth Question, 174. The text was published in Latin in 1579, with authorship attributed to ‘Junius Brutus’, and circulated in many editions between 1579 and 1600. Question Four was published in English as A Shorte Apologie for Christian Soldiours (London: Printed by Iohn Wolfe for Henry Carre, 1588). No definite authorship has been determined . On disunity, see Carole Levin, “‘Murder then not the fruit of my womb’: Shakespeare’s Joan, Foxe’s Guernsey Martyr, and Women Pleading Pregnancy in English History and Culture,” and John Watkins, “Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI and the Tragedy of Renaissance Diplomacy,” in Shakespeare’s Foreign Worlds: National and Transnational Identities in the Elizabethan Age, ed. Carole Levin and John Watkins (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 25–50; 51–78.
- 15.
Vindiciae , Fourth Question, 174.
- 16.
Kim , Aliens, 8–9.
- 17.
For an in-depth analysis of her situation, see Sandra Logan, “Foreign Marriage in Early Modern Drama: The Exchange of Royal Women and the Problems of Political Friendship ,” Critical Imprints (March 2017): 89–114.
- 18.
That is, Cordelia enters her new realm and role in much the same condition as Margaret , dowerless and alone. Her contact with England suggests how such a relationship might work in favor of her country of origin, but not how her country of origin might come to the support of her in her adopted home. In Richard II, the composite queen Anne of Bohemia/Isabella of Valois offers something of an exception, in that she remains on good terms with Richard throughout, and is only exiled when he loses power. She has no political resources and offers no foreign strength to Richard, however.
- 19.
Despite certain parallels with Margaret , the domestic Queen Elizabeth functions quite effectively in Richard III. The unnamed queen in Cymbeline is not identified as foreign, and she functions with almost complete evil autonomy throughout the play. Gertrude, in Hamlet, is likewise not designated as either foreign or domestic, and is the main enabler of Claudius’ claim to the throne. The main positive representation of a foreign queen in Shakespeare’s canon is the unnamed queen of Richard II—a composite queen representing the ideals of emotional commitment to her husband, and lacking in any political potency or positioning.
- 20.
Bodin outlines these aspects of sovereignty throughout Six Books, Franklin, I.8.
- 21.
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans, George Schwab; foreword Tracy B. Strong (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 6.
- 22.
Schmitt , Political Theology, 6, 5.
- 23.
Schmitt , Political Theology, 7.
- 24.
Bodin , Six Books, Franklin, I.8.1.
- 25.
Bodin , Franklin, I.8.1, fn. for Latin edition (p. 79, line D6). Franklin notes also that the term ‘perpetual’ is added a few lines later.
- 26.
Smith , De Republica Anglorum (London: Henrie Midleton for Gregorie Seton, 1583), Chap. 1, Online: http://www.constitution.org/eng/repang.htm.
- 27.
Smith , De Republica Anglorum, Chap. 1.
- 28.
Bodin rejects the idea of the ‘mixed state’ as mistaking rule by the few or the multitude with shared rule between a monarch and a parliament, for example. In his view, if a body actually holds power to override the monarch’s decisions, including the body of law itself, then the monarch is not sovereign , and sovereignty resides wholly in the body with that decisive capacity.
- 29.
Bodin , Six Books, Franklin, I.8.11.
- 30.
Bodin , Six Books, Franklin, I.8.13.
- 31.
Bodin , Six Books, Franklin, I.8.56. The point here is that, if there is someone greater, this would necessarily imply that that person, and not the ‘sovereign’ under consideration, actually holds sovereign power. Thus, for example, a duke who obeys an emperor is not sovereign, but exercises granted powers subject to the emperor’s decree. One of equal power would be a co-ruler, and sovereignty would be split; one of lesser power would be a subject, with no authority over the body of civil law as it stands.
- 32.
Schmitt , Political Theology, 7, trans. note 3. (Some notes are Schmitt’s own, some are those of the translator.)
- 33.
Étienne de la Boétie offers a parallel but nonviolent alternative in The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, written and circulated in French, and briefly influential after 1572. I have used The Politics of Disobedience and Étienne de la Boétie, trans. Paul Bonnefon; intro. and ed. Murray N. Rothbard (Montreal and New York: Black Rose Books, 2007).
- 34.
Schmitt , The Concept of the Political, expanded edition, trans., intro., notes, George Schwab; foreword, Tracy B. Strong (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007, Kindle edition). Quotation: Kindle locations 678–679.
- 35.
Schmitt does not address the concept of ‘terrorism’, which is minimally defined as organized, politically motivated, non-state violence. The idea that it is undertaken in defense of shared values and commitments of the group instigating it, and aims at the destruction of an opposing way of life makes terrorism sufficiently parallel to state violence to be understood in much the same terms.
- 36.
Schmitt , Concept, Kindle loc. 818. According to Schmitt, “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” Concept, Kindle loc. 579–580.
- 37.
Schmitt , Concept, Kindle loc. 593–594.
- 38.
Schmitt , Concept, Kindle loc. 807–808.
- 39.
See, for example, Jacques Derrida , The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London and New York: Verso, 2005), Chap. 6. Originally published as Politiques de l’amitié (Paris: Editions Galileé, 1994).
- 40.
Although Schmitt identifies this instability, he does not address its implications. The fact that an enemy may not always remain an enemy hardly touches upon the deeper questions this opposition raises.
- 41.
Schmitt , Concept, Kindle loc. 819.
- 42.
Schmitt , Concept, Kindle loc. 822. Schmitt, to my knowledge, does not discuss the exercise of the sovereign decision in favor of a subject, as when the sovereign overrides a judicial judgment and commutes a sentence of execution to a sentence of life imprisonment.
- 43.
Schmitt , Concept, Kindle loc. 825–826.
- 44.
Bodin , Six Books, Tooley IV.1.112–113.
- 45.
Bodin , Six Books, Tooley IV.1.111–113. Bodin in fact identifies two forms of tyranny : illegitimate sovereignty, in which one who lacks the right claims sovereignty; or the abuse of subjects by a legitimate or illegitimate sovereign . See Franklin II.5.110–114. The former may be overthrown by any means necessary, in order to restore proper and legitimate sovereignty ; the latter may not be challenged by the subjects through legal means or rebellion. The Vindiciae also makes this distinction, and is likewise more circumspect, though not as limiting as Bodin , in dealing with the tyrant by practice. Indeed, although only the people as a whole, or the officers who represent them, may rebel against a tyrant, the Vindiciae affirms that it is their duty to do so. See Third Question, 158–160.
- 46.
Bodin , Six Books, Tooley, I.1.2–6.
- 47.
Bodin , Six Books, Franklin, I.8.13. This is certainly not in alignment with Schmitt’s views, who apparently sees no limit to sovereign power , and who omits this in his discussion of Bodin.
- 48.
Bodin , Six Books, Franklin, I.8.11.
- 49.
We find similar arguments in Martin Luther’s 1523 On Secular Authority, and in Jean Calvin’s 1536 (expanded in 1539) Institution of the Christian Religion. I have used the chapters excerpted from the originals and published as Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority, ed. and trans. Harro Höpfl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Calvin and Bodin both argue that subjects may resist commands that conflict with their moral conscience, and suffer the consequences for that resistance, but it is clear in both that flight beyond the borders of the state or passive resistance are the only forms allowable. For a useful overview of these positions and their context, see Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), Chaps. 7–8.
- 50.
Philip Melanchthon, Prolegomena to Cicero’s Offices, 1530. Cited by Cynthia Grant Shoenberger , “Luther and the Justifiability of Resistance to Legitimate Authority,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40, no. 1 (1979): 3–20.
- 51.
Melanchthon , Prolegomena in Officia Ciceronis, CR, XVI, 573, Shoenberger’s translation.
- 52.
The Familiar Discourse of Dr. Martin Luther, trans. Captain Henry Bell, revised and corrected by Joseph Kerby, V.D.M. (Lewes: Sussex Press, 1818), 253. Italics in original; ‘exlex’ appears to suggest, not only ‘without law’ but ‘outside of law’. An additional reference in the Appendix has “And now we know the Pope to be that bear-wolf and devourer of people, that we know also how to take heed of him, and warn our children and posterity of his tyranny ” (464). This appears to be a direct quote from Luther , where the previous passage is a paraphrase.
- 53.
See Shoenberger , “Luther and Resistance,” 10–17.
- 54.
Vindiciae , Third Question, 92.
- 55.
Vindiciae , Third Question, 92.
- 56.
Vindiciae , Third Question, 157.
- 57.
Vindiciae , Third Question, 158.
- 58.
Vindiciae , Second Question, 41.
- 59.
Vindiciae , Third Question, 158.
- 60.
See Third Question, 74–78. Briefly, it argues that kings “are accustomed to be inaugurated, and, as it were, put into possession of the kingdom, by the estates [ordines] of the realm—the peers, patricians, and magnates, who represent the corporation of the people,” Third Question, 72. Thus, the people or their representatives are authorized to retract that authority when it is mishandled.
- 61.
Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, Gesammelten Schriften I:2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), trans. Dennis Redmond, 8/4/2001: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm.
- 62.
For Benjamin’s elaboration of the basis for and appropriate uses of counter-violence, see “The Critique of Violence,” Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), 277–300. These fragments were not published in Benjamin’s lifetime. See also Sami Khatib, “Towards a Politics of Pure Means: Walter Benjamin and the Question of Violence,” Anthropological Materialism, 6/11/2016: http://anthropologicalmaterialism.hypotheses.org/1040, accessed 1/2/2018.
- 63.
Rather, Agamben argues, homo sacer represents the sacratio which is excluded “both from the ius humanum and from the ius divinum, both from the sphere of the profane and from that of the religious .” See Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 82.
- 64.
However, definitions of the sacred always include some sense of being ‘set apart’, usually for divine purposes, but also in some cases, for evil ones (Milton is cited as the example: “But, to destruction sacred and devote,” something Agamben doesn’t take up in his discussion). Some definitions are even more explicit: ‘Doom or devote to destruction” (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sacro#Latin). The Greek term and its root, *saq, seem to include this definition. The Milton quote comes from Paradise Lost, 3.206–209. I have used David Scott Kastan’s edition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2005).
- 65.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 84.
- 66.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 85. For an insightful critique of Agamben’s use of the terms zoe and bios, see James Gordon Finlayson , “‘Bare Life’ and Politics in Agamben’s Reading of Aristotle,” The Review of Politics 72, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 97–126.
- 67.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 31–32.
- 68.
Jacques Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 17. The beast that Derrida has particularly in mind is the wolf.
- 69.
Rebecca W. Bushnell offers useful insights on this issue in Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), esp. Chaps. 1–2.
- 70.
See Kantorowicz , The King’s Two Bodies, 7–23.
- 71.
Kantorowicz , The King’s Two Bodies, 9–10, quoting Edmund Plowden, Commentaries or Reports (London, 1816), 213a.
- 72.
See also Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Chap. XV.
- 73.
Vindiciae , Third Question, 144. See 140–148 for a detailed description of tyranny . See also 157–160 for a discussion of the responsibilities of the officers of the kingdom.
- 74.
See Bodin , Six Books, Tooley, I.2–5.6–18; Vindiciae puts the homology somewhat differently: “kings command like fathers over sons, and tyrants like owners over slaves.” Third Question, 108.
- 75.
Schmitt , Concept of the Political, Kindle loc. 832–833.
- 76.
Maalouf , In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2012, Kindle edition), 1.
- 77.
Merriam Webster Dictionary, Identity : 2a: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/identity.
- 78.
Merriam Webster Dictionary, Identity : 2b: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/identity.
- 79.
For an insightful discussion of alterity in contemporary theoretical discourse and its relationship to Shakespeare’s plays, see Ken Jackson , Shakespeare and Abraham (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2015), Introduction, esp. Kindle loc. 245–345.
- 80.
Maalouf , In the Name of Identity, 4.
- 81.
See Maalouf, In the Name of Identity, Chap. 1, esp. 31–32.
- 82.
Maalouf , In the Name of Identity, 4.
- 83.
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality: Anne Defourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. Rachael Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 15.
- 84.
As we know, this strategy fails, however.
- 85.
Judith Butler , Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 3.
- 86.
Butler , Gender Trouble, 17.
- 87.
Butler , Gender Trouble, 15. To a great extent this theory of intersecting interests aligns with more explicit theorizations of intersectionality. For the foundational article on an intersectional approach to feminism, see Kimberly Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989, Article 8): 139–167.
- 88.
Butler , Gender Trouble, 16, emphasis in original.
- 89.
Pettegree’s idea of ‘aspirational national identity’ resonates nicely here. See Foreign and Native, Chaps. 1, 4–5.
- 90.
Bodin (1530–1596) is one clear source of such a theory; as we see in his Six Books. On Bodin’s 1606 English translation and its applicability to The Winter’s Tale, see Bradin Cormack, “Shakespeare’s Other Sovereignty : On Particularity and Violence in The Winter’s Tale and The Sonnets,” Shakespeare Quarterly 62, no. 4 (2011): 485–513.
- 91.
The idea of the ‘alien’ has a national resonance when the host is the nation or the realm, but must be considered to take shape as a degree of connection and intimacy—a level of friendship or relationship—in the household. Households may welcome strangers, but the relationship of the stranger to the polis and the state always necessarily precedes and to some extent defines the relationship to the household. Charting the tension between ‘guest’ and ‘enemy’ in the term ‘hospitality’. Sarah Gibson comments, “it is in fact impossible for the nation-state to be properly hospitable.” Citing Derrida she adds, “the social relations constructed through the gesture of hospitality are … implicated in power relations, where it is the host who has both the power and the property to give to the stranger, but crucially, while remaining in control and ownership.” See “‘Abusing Our Hospitality’: Inhospitableness and the Politics of Deterrence,” in Mobilizing Hospitality: The Ethics of Social Relations in a Mobile World, ed. Jennie Germann Molz and Sarah Gibson (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 169.
- 92.
Mark Westmoreland explains that the underlying form, “absolute hospitality ,” involves “neither the governance of duty nor the payment of debt. It is … ‘unconditional but without sovereignty’ .” If, on the other hand, “there is an imposition, nothing is left to be called absolute.” He cites Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, 59, here. See Mark W. Westmoreland, “Interruptions: Derrida and Hospitality,” Kritike, 2, no. 1 (June 2008): 1–10, quotation from p. 3.
- 93.
Derrida , Of Hospitality, 77.
- 94.
Emphasis in original. Derrida opposes ‘the’ law of unconditional hospitality to the ‘laws’ of conditional hospitality . Derrida’s larger objective is to demonstrate the ways in which the two forms of hospitality are indissociable; neither can exist without the other, they form and are understood in relational terms, and they are both, finally, impossible because of that relationality. My objectives are not identical to his, as I am interested here in the ways that Shakespeare mobilizes these two forms of hospitality as a critique of absolute sovereignty and patriarchy .
- 95.
As I understand these theories, the concept of reciprocity is not necessarily a part of the dynamic. Additionally, Derrida is most interested in the absolute form through which, he argues, the conditional form takes shape. I am less interested in the deconstruction of the concepts and more interested in the mobilizations of conditional sovereignty , which, finally, demonstrate the instability of the term.
- 96.
Derrida , Of Hosptiality, 55, 149.
- 97.
Derrida turns to Greek conceptions of the foreigner and his/her relationship to the polis. As Westmoreland writes, “In the laws of hospitality , we find a multiplicity involving differentiation according to the right of the state. The state establishes rules through which people can be divided into citizens and non-citizens, citizens and foreigners, hosts and guests. It can identify individuals; and therefore, it can include or exclude whosoever it chooses based on the laws, which it has created.” “Interruptions,” 2.
- 98.
That violence, Derrida explains, may take the form of a mere question, as the host asks the identity of the guest, but the potential for violence, as we see in this play, is far greater than that more subtle form. “Of Hospitality,” 55, 149. See the general Introduction, 39–41 for a fuller discussion of these ideas.
- 99.
In Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), Felicity Heal addresses this idea at length. See esp. 19–22.
- 100.
See William Heale, An Apologie for Women, or an Opposition to Mr. Dr. G.: His assertion. That it was Lawful for Husbands to Beate theire Wives (Oxford, 1609), 24, also referenced in Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England, 5.
- 101.
The parallel with the exile is striking in this description.
- 102.
Heale , An Apologie for Women, 24, also quoted in Heal , Hospitality, 5.
- 103.
See Roberto Esposito , Communitas: Origin and Destiny of Community (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 3.
- 104.
From the Latin proprio, proprius, one’s own. This concept is the basis of proprietorship , proprietary right, etc. See Esposito , Communitas, 3.
- 105.
Esposito , Communitas, 3–4.
- 106.
Esposito , Communitas, 1–3; Jean-Luc Nancy , “The Inoperative Community,” in Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 76, ed. Peter Connor, trans. Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1991.
- 107.
Nancy , “Inoperative Community,” 15.
- 108.
Nancy , “Inoperative Community ,” 4.
- 109.
Jean-Luc Nancy , Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 3–4.
- 110.
From the Latin munus, munare, this root word of ‘community’ links ‘giving’ to ‘with’, central to Esposito’s conception of communitas. The key for Esposito is that community is built on relationships of giving without expectation of reciprocity. For Nancy, see “Inoperative Community,” 4 (emphasis in original). For Esposito, see Communitas, 3. Nancy is less clear in his definition of the relationship between the individual and the group, but his idea here nevertheless resonates strongly with Esposito’s. Neither explicitly aims to engage with the idea of hospitality, but what they suggest about ourselves and our relationships (“being with” others, as Nancy puts it) implicitly opens up different possibilities for hospitality as well.
- 111.
See Esposito , Communitas, 10. Also closely applicable is Louis Montrose , “‘Eliza, Queene of the Shepheardes’, and the Pastoral of Power,” English Literary Renaissance 10, no. 2 (1980): 153–182.
- 112.
On the idea of rural community (but not hospitality ), see Andrew MacRae, God Speed the Plow: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Chaps. 4 and 9. Also applicable to the context of the play is Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, in which labor is universal, but property is communal, and social stratification is generally absent (MacRae , God Speed the Plow, 114). Shakespeare’s explicit awareness of the possibility of a communal society emerges in The Tempest, apparently with deliberate irony, where Gonzalo imagines a commonwealth with no private property , no hierarchy, but also no labor and no trade, and over which he is king (2.1.147–164). MacRae points out that Shakespeare sometimes expressed negative views of popular uprisings, as in the Jack Cade scenes in 2 Henry VI. However , there are important distinctions to be made between the idea of a commitment to the common good and of communal obligation, on the one hand, and the abolishment of private property tout court and the rising of the commons against the aristocracy, on the other. Shakespeare’s most positive version of community comes here, in this limited context, but it is also fragile and not imagined as extendable to society at large in its full form.
- 113.
Julia Reinhard Lupton , Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 1. Lupton does not address Titus Andronicus in her study.
- 114.
See Bodin, Franklin I.8.11, and Tooley I.1.3.
- 115.
Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, trans., intro., marginal analysis, essays, notes, and indices by B. Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), 2 vols., Vol. I, Kindle ed. Accessed 1/6/18, through Liberty Fund Online Library of Liberty: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/aristotle-the-politics-vol-1--5. References designate Bk. Chap.; followed by the numbering of the Greek text, ed. Bekker. For this note’s reference, see 1.2, 1253a.
- 116.
Aristotle, Politics, 1.2, 1253a.
- 117.
See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans., intro., notes, and glossary Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, Kindle edition). See esp. 9.6, 1167a–b, for an articulation of the reliance of the polis upon like-minded, morally similar men. See also Aristotle, The Politics, esp. Book 3, for an elaboration of the qualities and aims of citizens and rulers.
- 118.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 8.9.5, 1160a. On the heterogeneity of the political community , see also Bernard Yack, “Community and Conflict in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy,” The Review of Politics 47, no. 1 (1985): 92–112. Additionally, as Aristotle indicates in The History of Animals, among the various political animals only humans use the political community to achieve “both common and individual ends.” Bernard Yack, The Problem of a Political Animal: Community, Justice, and Conflict in Aristotle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 51. He references History, 1.1.488a, trans. d’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Complete Works (Aristotle), various translators, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). Yack’s translation differs significantly from Thompson’s.
- 119.
Aristotle, Politics, 1.2, 1253a. See also Jacques Rancière , On the Shores of Politics, trans. Liz Heron (London and New York: Verso, 1995), 26–28.
- 120.
Roger Baynes , The praise of solitarinesse set down in the forme of a dialogue, wherein is conteyned, a discourse philosophical, of the lyfe actiue, and contemplatiue (London: Francis Coldocke and Henry Bynneman, 1577), 5. Reproduction of the original in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, digital version accessed through EEBO MSU, 07-30-2017. I have modernized the spelling of the quotes. See also Markku Peltonen, “Citizenship and Republicanism in Elizabethan England,” in Republicanism Volume 1: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 85–106.
- 121.
Baynes , The praise of solitarinesse, 5.
- 122.
Baynes , The praise of solitarinesse, 5.
- 123.
Baynes , The praise of solitarinesse, 5.
- 124.
Baynes , The praise of solitarinesse, 5.
- 125.
Peltonen , “Citizenship,” 93–95. This does not necessarily conflict with Bodin’s views, but the sense of autonomy and responsibility are perhaps different.
- 126.
Peltonen , “Citizenship,” 93. Case’s treatise, Sphaera ciuitatis, was published in 1588.
- 127.
Bodin , Six Books, Tooley, I.1.3.
- 128.
Aristotle, Politics, 1.3, 1276b.
- 129.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 104–105. He is quoting from an undesignated source of the laws of Edward the Confessor. This term comes from medieval law, and was pronounced as a sentence on offenders whose crimes led to their banishment : (often used as an adj.) “Caput gerat lupinum (‘Let him bear the head of a wolf’), meaning that the convicted felon lacked any form of legal protection; anyone who encountered the felon might legally kill him or her as if he or she were a predatory wolf.” See Guide to Latin in International Law , ed. Aaron X. Fellmeth and Maurice Horwitz (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); online edition 2011: https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/lib/michstate-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3053797#, accessed 12/29/17.
- 130.
The notion of the sacrifice is central to Agamben’s argument, in that he troubles the concept and conditions of sovereign power and the exception by pointing out their reliance on the designation of bare life (as opposed to political life).
- 131.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 28.
- 132.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 113.
- 133.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 8–9.
- 134.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 18.
- 135.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, 106.
- 136.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 214. Also quoted in Agamben , Homo Sacer, 106.
- 137.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, p. 107. Derrida makes a similar point in The Beast and the Sovereign, 14–18.
- 138.
Agamben , Homo Sacer, p. 38. See also the discussion of Benjamin , above.
- 139.
See Jane Kingsley-Smith , Shakespeare’s Drama of Exile (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 8–13.
- 140.
While Kingsley-Smith mentions John Foxe in her discussion of religious exile , she does not mention the influence of the chronicles in shaping early modern interest in exile and banishment , including Shakespeare’s.
- 141.
In twenty-one plays, the term ‘banish’ , in its various forms, refers specifically to characters who have been expelled from the realm, and arises metaphorically in about three others. The term ‘exile’ and its variations are much less common, occurring in approximately eight plays, excluding metaphorical references. For an insightful analysis of the condition, see Kingsley-Smith , Shakespeare’s Drama.
- 142.
Kingsley-Smith , Shakespeare’s Drama, 25. Her attention to the idea of what might be called unofficial exile , as when Richard II leaves England for Ireland and returns a changed man, parallels some of the more abstract notions of banishment and exile I wish to address in this chapter.
- 143.
Kingsley -Smith, Shakespeare’s Drama, 124–128.
- 144.
Robin Hood is a popular outlaw figure of this sort. Titus Andronicus eventually functions in this way as well.
- 145.
York chastises Joan la Pucelle as a “fell banning hag [and] enchantress” (1 Henry VI, 5.3.42); the Duchess of Gloucester uses the term in this sense in 2 Henry VI, 2.4.25, as does Suffolk at 3.2.319 and 3.2.333.
- 146.
Online Etymology Dictionary, modern version: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=banish (accessed 6/15/2017); OED online, Ban, n.1, I.3; III.5.a.; III.3; III.7: http://www.oed.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/view/Entry/15092?rskey=wcjLnV&result=1#eid. Bane, n.1.4: http://www.oed.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/view/Entry/15183?rskey=ZB6P3h&result=1#eid.
- 147.
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Logan, S. (2018). Introduction: Foreign Queens, Abusive Sovereignty, and Political Theory in the Past and the Present. In: Shakespeare’s Foreign Queens. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53484-2_1
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