Domestic Tragedies & Renaissance Domestic Violence
The leading[1]playwrights[2] of the English Renaissance – Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson – tended to focus their tragedies on great men: kings, emperors and generalsfollowing the dictates of Aristotle.
- However, Jonson and Dekker’s The Lamentable Tragedy of Page of Plymouth (1590s, lost) was a domestic tragedy about a husband murdered with his wife’s consent.
As a result, most Renaissance plays tell us a lot as regards[3] what the playwright thought about the human condition
- but comparatively little about contemporary English society.
Domestic Tragedies
However, alongside the great tragedies of state there was a subgenre called domestic tragedies.
- Indeed[4], domestic tragedies like Arden had some influence on Othello and Macbeth.[5]
These were domestic both
- in the sense that they dealt with[6] contemporary English societyand
- in the sense that marital relations played an important role.
What’s more, the Renaissance domestic tragedies abandoned the great men and focused instead[7] on the middle classes.
- Lena Orlin asserts that domestic tragedies are “plays which concern ‘property owners’.
However, Domestic Tragedies harboured underlying tensions regarding politics and the State as the household[8] was considered to be
“a little commonwealth, by the good government whereof[9], God’s glory may be advanced.”
The master in his home was “just like a King in his Kingdom” in that he was in charge of keeping order and thus avoiding ‘anarchy’ and chaos.
Disorder in the home therefore represented disorder in the State,
- a breakdown[10] of not only the family unit but of society as a whole.
The society they describe is, in some senses, surprisingly similar to our own.
It is fairly clear that murder-plays – domestic tragedies based on reports of actual[11] murders – were popular in the 1570s and 1580s.
We can only guess the contents of two plays being performed by the Earl of Sussex’s Men in 1578 and 1579:
- The Cruelty of a Stepmother, and
- Murderous Michael.
Sussex’s Men also performed The History of Friar Francis (late 1580s?), which Heywood later described as the story of a woman who, “insatiately doting on a young gentleman” murdered her husband and was haunted by his ghost “in most horrid and fearful shapes”.
So, Arden of Faversham – printed 1592, possibly written in the late 1580s – does not appear in a void.
12 domestic tragedies have survived from the English Renaissance, though we know that at least another dozen more were written: all we have is their titles.
Arden of Faversham (c. 1590)
Like all good Hollywood movies Arden of Faversham is based on a true story.
In 1551 Alice Arden, her lover and several hired assassins[12] murdered Alice’s husband, Thomas Arden.
They were eventually[13] discovered, tried[14] and executed.
What is interesting about the play is that it describes a society of significant social mobility and therefore[15]class insecurity.
Everyone in the play is motivated by money and Thomas Arden is just as bad a person as[16] all the rest.
However, he loves his wife and it is this weakness
- in a world of mercenary individualists – that allows the plotters[17] to kill him in the end.
And they certainly take their time.
Their botched[18]attempts[19] to murder unwitting[20] Arden add[21] an element of farce to the story
- modern comedies such as I Love You To Death (1990), Tatie Danielle (1990), Death to Smoochy (2002) and other ‘murder comedies’ owe something to[22]Arden of Faversham.
However, in the play the farcical aspects only heighten[23] the shock when the murderers are finally successful.
A Warning to Fair Women
Shakespeare’s own company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, performed a domestic tragedy in the late-1590s called A Warning to Fair Women[24].
It has a similar plot[25] to Arden (a middle-class husband is murdered by his erring wife and lover).
This play is interesting as it is transitional from Morality plays
- it has abstract characters such as Lust[26], Chastity and Justice.
Divorce or Death
In this period there was an intense debate about the nature of the family.
The Reformation had introduced the possibility for divorce but it was still very hard[27] to get one (unless you were the king!).
While those who remained[28] loyal to the Catholic Church believed that marriages were indivisible,
the Puritans believed that marriage was a contract based on mutual consent and that divorce should be relatively easy.
Alice Arden is caught in a situation in which she no longer loves her husband and thereforeis not willing to[29] continue to submit to his authority.
Nevertheless, the option of divorce is not open to a woman in her situation.[30]
While the solution may seem a tad[31] extreme, this is her justification for wanting to kill him.
A Woman Killed With Kindness[32] (1603)
WKWK is generally considered the finest English-language domestic tragedy.
Like Arden of Faversham, Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed With Kindness is a story of adultery.
However, in this case the central husband, John Frankford, is a decent, generous and likeable man.
Frankford takes a young gentleman, Wendoll, into his home as an honoured guest[33].
Unfortunately, Wendoll soon falls in love with Anne Frankford, John’s wife.
The central scene of the play has Wendoll fighting against his passions in soliloquy.
He knows that it is wrong to betray[34] his generous host[35] by seducing Frankford’s wife – echoes of Sir Gawain? – yet[36] he can’t control himself.
The more he tries to forget about Anne the more he obsesses about her.
Anyway, the adultery takes place[37] and Frankford eventually[38] discovers he has been cuckolded[39].
Despite his initial impulse to kill his wife, John Frankfurt manages to control himself and decides to banish[40] his wife to a house a few miles away where she will live in comfort but there will be absolutely no contact between them.
This, for the times, was an act of kindness32, yet it denies[41] the remorseful Anne the one thing she wants: a fitting[42]punishment[43] for her adultery.
So, she slowly starves herself to death[44] becoming a ‘woman killed with kindness’.
- In Renaissance society fasting was equated with a wife’s obedience, chastity and honour, gluttony with lust.
Again, for want of[45] a real option to divorce, death is the only alternative.
A Woman Killed With Kindness: The Subplot
Susan Mountford’s brother Charles tries to prostitute her to Sir Francis Acton (Anne Frankford’s brother) as an act of repaying debt.
Susan manages to defend her virtue and ends up
- marrying Acton instead of being his prostitute and
- engineering a reconciliation between him and her brother.
Both plot lines, then, revolve around triangles:
- wife, husband, and friend/seducer in the main plot; brother, sister, and
- enemy/husband in the subplot.
In one, a woman divides the men; in the other, she brings them together.
In Renaissance England domestic relations were based on authority rather than[46] affection.
Affection was not considered a prerequisite for marriage, and relationships between husbands and wives and parents and children were characterized by psychological distance and coolness.
Francis’s passions, unlike Anne’s, are what solve this conflict and restore order to their home.
He is overcome by Susan’s beauty, and their marriage resolves and restores order between himself and Sir Charles.
It is the moderation and correct channeling of emotions that restores order in both plots of AWoman Killed with Kindness.
The reconciliation of the men, Sir Charles and Sir Francis, has resulted in another marriage, that of Susan and Anne’s brother, an alliance that advanced the family’s standing through Susan’s rank and honor” (Bromley 268).
Passion is the true threat[47] to domestic order in this play, and the cause of Anne’s tragic end.
For all its English references the two stories in A Woman Killed by Kindness are in fact from abroad:
- the main plot is at least in part created using elements fromThe President of Grenoble and The Lady of Turin.
- the subplot is taken from a 1474 novella[48]set in Sienaby Bernardo Illicini
All three continental stories appear in William Painter’s The Palace of Pleasures, 1566).
Heywood, the greatest exponent of English domestic tragedy, took the genre one stage further in The English Traveller (1625).
- In this play the virtuous lover manages to control his passions for his friend’s wife, only to discover in the end that she has been cheating on them both!
Blaming Wives
Many English Renaissance domestic tragedies – like the two above blame[49] the wife for adultery.
This is of course because the playwrights were men but it is also because female adultery was much more socially divisive[50].
If a husband did not believe absolutely in the innocence of his wife, he could not know if their children were really his.
The problem, of course, was that women were considered the custodians of domestic property but also a type of domestic property.
In a world in which middle-class men believed their role was to safeguard and hopefully expand their father’s property for their sons, such insecurity was terrifying.
Only in this context can we understand Anne Arden’s bitter complaint[51]:
“My saving[52] husband hoards up[53] bags of gold / To make our children rich.”
Anne the modern individualist wants the money to spend herself.
A Yorkshire Tragedy (c. 1606)
Not all domestic tragedies paint the wife as the villain, however.
A Yorkshire Tragedy, which may have been written by Thomas Middleton, is about a brutal gambling[54] husband who is so ashamed of[55] the debts he has accumulated that, with the weird[56] logic of many modern parricidal men, he decides to kill his entire family.
He manages to kill two of his three children, stab[57] his wife and injure[58] two servants who try to intervene.
The husband is eventually[59] caught and is contrite[60].
At the end of the play his saintly wife prepares to beg for[61] his pardon(!)
Unfortunately, this play was also based on the true story of Walter Calverley, who attacked his family in this way in August 1605.
The distinction between middle-class domestic tragedy and tragedy of the highborn begins to blur in Middleton’s The Changeling (1622).
This play, set in Alicante, was made into a deliciously bloody movie in 1998.
Of course, if we accept this strict definition of ‘domestic tragedy’ then The Changelingis not one because it is set abroad.
[1] leading – most important
[2]playwright – dramatist
[3] as regards – in terms of, about
[4] indeed – (emphatic) in fact
[5] according to Hugh Mackay in Shakespeare & Renaissance Drama (2010)
[6] to deal with (deal-dealt-dealt) – tackle, focus on
[7] instead – by contrast
[8]household – family, family unit
[9] whereof – of which
[10]breakdown – collapse, disintegration
[11]actual – (false friend) real, real-life
[12]hired assassin – contract killer
[13] eventually – (false friend) in the end
[14] to try sb. – judicially process sb.
[15]therefore – as a result
[16] is just as bad a person as – is as malevolent as
[17]plotter – conspirator
[18] botched – bungled, failed, badly done
[19] attempt – effort
[20] unwitting – notconscious that they are trying to kill him
[21] to add – (in this context) create, contribute
[22] to owesomething to – have adopted elements from
[23] to heighten – intensify, increase
[24] probably by Thomas Heywood
[25]plot – (in this case) storyline, story
[26] lust – lasciviousness
[27] hard – (in this case) difficult
[28] to remain – stay, continue to be
[29] to be willing to – be ready to, be prepared to
[30] divorce was costly and usually required humiliating evidence of non-consummation
[31] a tad – (sarcastic) slightly, a little
[32]kindness – magnanimity, opposite of ‘cruelty’
[33] guest – sb. who is invited into one’s home
[34] to betray – be disloyal/unfaithful to
[35] host – sb. who invites a guestinto his home
[36] yet – but, even so
[37] to take place (take-took-taken) – happen, occur
[38] eventually – (false friend) in the end
[39] to cuckold sb. – be unfaithful to one’s spouse
[40] to banish sb. – expelsb.
[41] to denysb. sth. – notgive sth. to sb.
[42]fitting – appropriate, suitable
[43]punishment – penalty
[44] to starve oneself to death – kill oneself by noteating
[45] for want of – in the absence of
[46]rather than – as opposed to, instead of
[47] threat – menace
[48] novella – shortstory
[49] to blame – hold responsible, accuse
[50] divisive – alienating, conflictive
[51]bitter complaint – resentful criticism
[52]saving – frugal, careful with one’s money
[53] to hoard up – accumulate
[54]gambling – obsessed aboutgames of chance
[55] to be ashamed of – be embarrassed about
[56] weird – bizarre, strange
[57] to stab – hurt/wound with a dagger
[58] to injure – hurt, harm
[59]eventually – (false friend) in the end
[60] contrite – repentant, penitent
[61] to beg for – askdesperately for