Cutting and pasting: 'Mikrokosmographia', anatomy, and the tools of dissection

In just a slight contrast to last week's post on the art of courtship, today I am sharing some wonderful information on seventeenth-century anatomy, dissection and the necessary tools for which to perform the task. The extracts are taken from Helkiah Crooke's text, Mikrokosmographia (1615), who was the physician of James I.

Taken from the frontispiece of the 1615 edition

Mikrokosmographia certainly forms part of the increasingly large body of medical texts, with a particular focus on anatomy and dissection, that emerged during the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth- centuries. Anatomy and its study had finally becomes much less of a thorny religious or ethical issue (as it had been during the time that Leonardo Da Vinci was conducting his studies, for example), and had widely become accepted as an important component of medical study and practice. This is certainly evidenced in the following extracts, since Crooke sees it fit to even include meticulous detail about the tools needed to conduct anatomical investigation.

As ever, the text and its later editions can be found on EEBO, and I have preserved the early-modern spelling of the original text.

'Now there is amongest Physitians, a double acceptation of Anatomy; either it signifieth the action which is done with the hande; or the habite of the minde, that is, the most perfect action of the intellect. The first is called practicall Anatomy, the latter Theorical or contemplatiue: the first is gained by experience, the second by reason and discourse: the first wee attaine onely by Section and Inspection, the second by the living voice of a Teacher, or by their learned writings' (D1r).

'We may define anatomy thus: An Artificiall Section of the outward and inward partes. I call it Artificiall to distinguish it from that which is rash and at aduenture which Galen calleth Vulnerary Dissection. For oftentimes in great wounds we obserue the figure, scitua|tion, magnitude, and structure of the outward and inward parts; but that obseruation is but confused, for we cannot distinctly perceiue the branchings of the Nerues, the Serpentine and writhen Meanders of the Veynes, nor the infinite divarications of the Arteries' (D1r).

'This Section cannot artificially bee accomplished, unlesse the Ministers haue convenient Instruments, as are these; Razors of all sortes, great, small, meane, sharpe, blunt, straight, crooked, and edged on both sides; Sheares or Sizers; round and large long Probes of Brasse, Siluer, Lead; a Knife of Box or of Ivory, Pincers of all sorts; hooks, Needels bent rather then straite, Reeds, Quils, Glasse-trunkes or hollow Bugles to blowe up the parts, Threds and strings, Sawes, Bodkins, Augers, Mallets, Wimbles or Trepans, Basons and Sponges; the Figures of all which wee have heereunder delineated, together with a Table whereon to lay the dead, or binde the living Anatomy, with the rings, chains, cords, & perforations fit for that purpose' (D1r).

References:
Helkiah Crooke, Mikrokosmographia: a Description of the Body of Man (London: William Iaggard, 1615), in EEBO.

© Jenna Townend 2013

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

Tracing a transfiguration of death in seventeenth-century religious literature

The central focus of my dissertation's final chapter was on how two of George Herbert's poems ('Death' and 'Heaven') could have succeeded in dispelling mortal fear in his aged Christian reader by presenting death as a transcendent event to be welcomed, rather than something to be feared. Of course, this transfiguration in attitude is aligned with the progression in the presentation of death seen across the Old and New Testaments. Here, death is transformed from a finite event in which the body is simply recommitted to the dust from which it was created (Genesis 3:19, and see also 'The Order for the Burial of the Dead' in John Booty's edition of the 1599 Book of Common Prayer), to its position in the New Testament as a transcendent event for the Christian soul that, according to Scripture, was provided by Christ's self-sacrifice and the resulting doctrine of soteriology.

One of the most interesting things that I observed when looking at Herbert's 'Death' (which I have reproduced below from Helen Wilcox's edition), is how the poem follows this Biblical chronology of transforming death into a positive event. In relation to this, it also constructs a powerful pictorial representation of death's transfiguration by drawing upon its personified form as a skeletal figure that was seen in the meditatio mortis tradition of the Renaissance. In Herbert’s poem, the figure of death is gradually transformed from being the fear-inducing figure of this artistic tradition, where it is 'nothing but bones', to a figure that, 'since our Saviors death', is 'clad' with 'beauty' and can be 'much sought for as a good'.

When researching other primary sources which support or echo this transfiguration that Herbert enacts, I came across a fascinating source entitled Death's Universall Summons (EEBO) published in 1650. Whilst obviously published some time after Herbert's death in 1633, this anonymous work presents a discourse between 'the great Messenger of Mortality' and 'a presumptious Sinner', and it concludes with this man's 'chearful Entertainment of Death' (p. 1). Apart from a similar transfiguration of a Christian individual's attitude to death, what also struck me was this illustration included on the pamphlet's title page:

I would suggest that this skeletal figure (who is certainly an allusion to the meditatio mortis tradition seen in Renaissance art such as Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors) is very similar to the terrifying figure that Herbert alludes to in the first half of his poem. Furthermore, like the conclusion of Herbert's poem where his speaker welcomes death 'as a good', this dialogue also concludes with the Sinner confidently stating that 'my Friend [Death] I do Embrace' (p. 8). Because of Christ's own transfiguration of death, the Sinner has realised that the Christian can, in the spiritual and physical sense respectively, 'go Live for-ever, yet for-ever Die!' (p. 7) by greeting this personified figure of death.

I was so excited when I came across this obscure pamphlet in my research around Herbert's poem, and I'd love to hear if anyone else has found any other similar transfigurations of death in some of the more obscure religious literature of the seventeenth-century (whether poetic or otherwise!).

‘Death’

Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,

                           Nothing but bones,

      The sad effect of sadder groans:

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we considered thee as at some six

                           Or ten years hence,

      After the loss of life and sense,

Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;

                         Where we did find

      The shells of fledge souls left behind,

Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Savior’s death did put some blood

                           Into thy face,

      Thou art grown fair and full of grace,

Much in request, much sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,

                           As at Doomsday;

      When souls shall wear their new array,

And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust

                           Half that we have

      Unto an honest faithful grave;

Making our pillows either down, or dust.

• George Herbert, ‘Death’, in The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. by Wilcox, p. 648. 
• Death's Universall Summons: or, A General Call; to all Mankind, to the Grave: in a Dialogue Betwixt a Presumptious Sinner, and the Great Messenger of Mortality (London: [n. pub.], 1650), in EEBO.
• The Book of Common Prayer: 1559 The Elizabethan Prayer Book, ed. by John E. Booty.

© Jenna Townend 2013