FWSA Blog post

Recently, I had the pleasure of writing an article for the FWSA blog. Their theme for August's posts was groundbreaking women or feminists, and so I chose to write an article on Jane Sharp - the groundbreaking seventeenth-century midwife who wrote and published The Midwives Book.

If you didn't see the lovely tweets the the FWSA's Twitter account (@FWSAuk) posted about it, or simply would like to have a read of it, please click below and check it out!

http://fwsablog.org.uk/2013/08/23/mrs-jane-sharp-a-pioneering-midwife-discovered/

However, if nineteenth-century literature is more your thing, there is also a brilliant new post by Lynn Shepherd that has just been added entitled 'Was Mary Shelley a feminist?':

http://fwsablog.org.uk/2013/08/26/wasmaryshelleyafeminist/

Holinshed, the body and Marlowe's 'Edward II' - Part 2

The cell in which Edward was reportedly held at Berkeley Castle

Firstly, I apologise for the delay in uploading this second post. I have been stuck on jury service for a couple of weeks! In the first part of these two posts on Marlowe's Edward II, I outlined the account of Edward's murder from Holinshed's Chronicles. In this post, I will now consider how Marlowe uses the corporeal and physical focus of Holinshed's material within the most significant speeches of his murder scene that occurs in Act V Scene v. 

In his celebrated account of Marlow's play, Charles Lamb concluded that 'the death scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted'. This is certainly something that I would agree with. The transformation of Edward from arrogant monarch to degraded and tortured prisoner is just as shocking each time I come back to it.

This is one of my favourite speeches of the murder scene, spoken by Edward:

'And there in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.
They give me bread and water, being a king,
So that for want of sleep and sustenance
My mind's distempered and my body's numbed,
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
O, would my blood dropped out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes' (V.v.58-66).

In this speech, what the audience sees is a focus on the disorder of Edward's body. He is no longer the monarch in total control of his own self, or with the authority to dictate the existences of other beings around him (although this was clearly affected by Gaveston's control over Edward). Instead, Edward appears in symbolically 'tattered robes' and is tortured through his sense of hearing and taste, causing a great disparity between, and separation of, his immaterial and physical self: 'my mind's distempered and my body's numbed'. As though this unbearable feeling were not enough, Marlowe takes it one step further, as Edward states that he does not even know 'whether I have limbs or no', thus becoming totally dissociated from his physical being.

By creating such highly emotive speeches, I would suggest that the corporeal focus of Marlowe's text goes beyond what Holinshed achieves in his account. By having such torturous images and expressions spoken by his protagonist, Marlowe makes it even harder for his audience to ignore the cruelty of Edward's imprisonment and murder. Hence, what I think Marlowe achieves by including these speeches as a pre-amble to the actual murder, is that he succeeds in increasing the audience's sense of Edward's extreme suffering, causing them to re-consider the justice that is apparently achieved by killing him in such a disturbingly retributive and medieval manner.

A depiction of Edward II's death 

 References:
1. Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, ed. by Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey (London: A & C Black, 2006)
2. Cell at Berkeley Castle: http://allkindsofhistory.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/they-dont-like-it-up-em-revisiting-the-sordid-deaths-of-edmund-ironside-edward-ii-and-james-i-of-scotland/
3. Depiction of Edward's death: http://www.glreview.org/article/article-1403/

© Jenna Townend 2013

Holinshed and Marlowe's 'Edward II' - Part 1

This blog post is going to form the first part of two pieces that I want to do on Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. In this first one, though, I would like to briefly highlight one of the primary sources for Marlowe's play; in particular, the scene of Edward's death that occurs in Act V Scene v. 

It is well documented that Marlowe's dominant historical source for his portrayal of Edward's death was Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. The Chronicles are a text that I know from experience is consistently bandied around in lectures on early-modern British drama, but sadly we do not always, or are not able to, take the time to look at how it informed those that used it as a primary source in their work. It was, of course, from this source that Marlowe extracted the gruesome details of Edward's murder, and the following passage is the account of Edward's death taken from Holinshed:

'they came suddenlie one night into the chamber where he laie in bed fast asléepe, and with heauie featherbeds or a table (as some write) being cast vpon him, they kept him down and withall put into his fundament an horne, and through the same they thrust vp into his bodie an hot spit, or (as other haue) through the pipe of a trumpet a plumbers instrument of iron made verie hot, the which passing vp into his intrailes, and being rolled to and fro, burnt the same, but so as no appearance of any wound or hurt outwardlie might be once perceiued. His crie did mooue manie within the castell and towne of Berkley to compassion, plainelie hearing him vtter a wailefull noise, as the tormentors were about to murther him, so that diuerse being awakened therewith (as they themselues confessed) praied heartilie to God to receiue his soule, when they vnderstood by his crie what the matter ment' (p. 342).

The extraordinary, medieval nature of Edward's murder in Holinshed's account is impossible to overlook. He is guilty of buggery, and so at the moment of his death he too is buggered by a 'hot spit'. However, what is equally remarkable about Holinshed's account is its sustained corporeal focus. Not only are we given this information about what would be referred to today as the murder weapon, but Holinshed also treats us to more gruesome physical details about the murder. The 'hot spit' passes 'vp into [Edward's] intrailes', and is 'rolled to and fro', presumably to cause the most excruciating amount of pain. For Holinshed, it would seem, this is the supposedly accurate account of a murder in which his readers are to be left in no doubt as to the level of its brutality.

So, having outlined this source material that Marlowe undoubtedly used when formulating the action of the scene in which his Edward II is murdered, in my next post I will explore how Marlowe uses Holinshed's material, with all of its corporeal and physical focus, within the most significant speeches of his murder scene. 

References:

1. Raphael Holinshed, The Third volume of Chronicles (London: Henry Denham, 1586), in EEBO.

2. Frontispiece of Holinshed's Chronicles, as above.

3. Image of Edward II: http://kinemage.biochem.duke.edu/panther/scarborough/html/index.edward.p.html

© Jenna Townend 2013

Giovanni Bracelli: early modern Cubist?

Giovanni Battista Bracelli was, by all accounts, an Italian engraver and artist based in Florence in the early part of the seventeenth century. It was during this time that he compiled his little-known work Bizzarie di Varie Figure, which was published in 1624. It contains what are certainly some of the most highly inventive drawings of human-like figures of the period, which were sadly lost to the world until the re-discovery of the text in, or around, 1950.

As Sue Welsh Reed indicates, the Bizzarie shows characteristics of the artistic style called Mannerism,
which originated in Italy in the sixteenth century: 'the term derives from the Italian word maniera, meaning style. It is applied to a way of working that was developed to oppose the idealized naturalism of the Renaissance as practiced by Raphael and others'.

Below I have shared three of my favourite engravings from Bracelli's work. As several other scholars working on Bracelli have indicated, the figures in the Bizzarie certainly seem to be a kind of prescient for the modern artistic trend of Cubism.

Stumbling across these wonderful drawings were a welcome break from the rather gory reading that I've been doing this week, and certainly gives me a different slant on considering the early modern body!

References:
1. I owe the origin of these images from the Bizzarie (which are sadly not available on EEBO), to this article on Bracelli that was written in 2005: http://www.spamula.net/blog/2005/08/bracelli.html
2. For a more detailed commentary on Bracelli and his work, as well as a more comprehensive biography, see this pdf file: http://mail.nysoclib.org/Braccelli_Bizzarie_di_varie_figure/BCLBZR.PDF

© Jenna Townend 2013

Vlog: dream dinner party guests from history

So over the last few days I decided that I would get a little creative with my posts, and this is the result! I've chosen to do a video blog on the five historical figures that I would invite to my fantasy dinner party, and have given a little explanation as to why I have picked each one. I realise that this isn't the most academic of blog posts, but I thought that it might make a nice change from the ordinary.

I definitely still have a lot to learn about editing videos and splicing them together, so please excuse me if this video is not the smoothest in terms of its editing, or indeed my presentation! I promise that if I decide to do another vlog I will brush up on my technical skills.

I hope you enjoy watching the video, and I would love to hear some of the historical figures that you might all choose too!

Birth, babies and midwives

In light of the birth of the Royal baby on Monday and the newly breaking news that he will go by the name of George Alexander Louis, I thought that now is a particularly apt time to reflect on how our ideas, and indeed experiences, of birth have changed (or not, as the case may be!) over the centuries from the early-modern period.

Much medical and gynecological knowledge available in the seventeenth-century stemmed from translations of classical sources, including Galen and Hippocrates. In a culture dominated by male translations and reflections on these works, such as those of Nicholas Culpeper, Jane Sharp's achievement in The Midwives Book (1671) is perhaps one of the most remarkable in terms of helping our understanding of labour and birth in the seventeenth century. Though her treatise is an amalgamation of voices since she essentially cuts and pastes sections from other midwifery manuals and classical sources, her own voice and tone is often unmistakable.

Though midwives (thankfully?!) do not now 'annoint [their] hands with Oyl of Lillies, and the Womans Secrets' (p. 153) and instead favour latex gloves for internal examinations, much of what I have transcribed below certainly still has echoes with the modern practice of midwifery.

In Book IV of her text, Sharp sets out 'Rules for Women that are come to their Labour':

- 'When the Patient feels her Throws coming she should walk easily in her Chamber, and then again lye down, keep her self warm, rest her self and then stir again, till she feels the waters coming down and the womb to open; let her not lye long a bed, yet she may lye sometimes and sleep to strengthen her, and to abate pain' (p. 145).

- 'Take notice that all women do not keep the same posture in their delivery; some lye in their beds, being very weak, some sit in a stool or chair, or rest upon the side of the bed, held by other women that come to the Labor' (p. 153).

- 'The danger were much to force delivery, because when the woman hath laboured sore, if she rest not a while, she will not be able presently to endure it, her strength being spent before' (p. 156).

As we can see from these excerpts, though our medical knowledge surrounding labour and its complexities has of course changed dramatically, some of this most basic, yet credible, advice for a woman giving birth is really not so different to what mothers are told today.

Whilst here I have spoken about the intrapartum element of childbirth, if you are interested in what Sharp recommends for the postpartum care of new mothers, I would definitely recommend that you head over and have a read of Jennifer Evans's blog on this very subject! Take a look at it here: http://earlymodernmedicine.com/beyond-birth/

1. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book, ed. by Elaine Hobby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. Frontispiece image taken from the electronic edition of The Midwives Book on EEBO.
3. An engraving of a pregnant woman on a birthing stool, surrounded by her midwife and gossips. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449803/

© Jenna Townend 2013

Review: 'This I Warn You in Love': Witness of Some Early Quaker Women

The world of female Quakers who lived, operated, and preached in the seventeenth century is still a relatively untilled field of early-modern research. A couple of weeks ago, I did a post on Dorothea Gotherson, and her firm belief in the necessity of female modesty and decorum. I was pointed to Gotherson's work from reading 'This I Warn You in Love': Witness of Some Quaker Women, a booklet that was written by two of my lecturers at Loughborough, Elaine Hobby and Catie Gill, and published this year by The Kindlers. The booklet was so insightful and thought provoking, that I thought I would give an overview of it here!

The booklet is set out with an introduction to the fundamental principles of Quaker women, and an account of the movement's progression during the seventeenth century. One of the most significant things that the introduction notes is that Quaker writers, and thus Quaker women, believed their relationship with God to be intensely personal, and that God was working with them. This is something that is explicitly present in several of the extracts transcribed in the booklet. Furthermore, the introduction explains the fact that Quakers had a great dislike of the strict formalities that had come to dominate religious worship. Quakers firmly believed that these practices had distanced Christians from the dedication seen in early Christianity, and were keen to encourage worshippers to re-engage with it. This, too, is shown to be a recurring theme throughout the excerpts in the booklet.

There are six excerpts in the booklet, focusing on the work of the following Quaker women: Sarah Blackborow, Margaret Abbott, Priscilla Cotton, Mary Cole, Katherine Evans, Sarah Cheevers, Dorothea Gotherson, Margaret Killin, Barbara Patison, Hester Biddle and Dorothy Waugh. As well as these prose extracts in the booklet, an audio recording of them is also included on a CD. Hearing these accounts being read aloud really brings them to life, and the words of these Quaker women take on a new resonance. 

Below I have picked out a couple of my favourite sections from the work of Sarah Blackborow and Margaret Abbott that highlight the potential for a highly personal relationship with God, and the dislike of highly-organised and formal worship or religion.

1) Sarah Blackborow, A Visit to the Spirit in Prison (1658):
'A love there is which doth not cease to the seed of God in you all; and therefore doth invite you everyone, priest and people, to return in to it, that into Wisdom's house you may come, where there is a feast provided of all things well refined'.

2) Margaret Abbott, A Testimony against the False Teachers of this Generation (1658):
'You shall be made anew by the power of the pure spirit of the Son of God. It will teach you to deny all ungodliness. You shall need go to no man to be taught. It will bring you out of all the ways of the world, fashions, customs and traditions...'

The tenacity, self-belief, and sheer determination of these radical women is remarkable, and I would urge anyone with an interest in religious writing to get hold of a copy of this booklet; it will certainly open your eyes to this fascinating world.

'Male and Female Quakers at their Assembly', French School, 17th century

Source: http://firstyear.barnard.edu/americas/puritans/images

© Jenna Townend 2013