Elizabeth Cole
Dr. Gideon Burton
ENGL 382
12 April 2013
Pretenders
to Birthright, Heirs to Virtue:
The
Legitimacy of the Tudors and Shakespeare's Characters
While William Shakespeare
himself lived and wrote in an era of peace and prosperity, the early
and middle decades of the sixteenth century could not have been more
different, with the government in turmoil as the monarchs of the
Tudor dynasty struggled for a stable rule and succession thereafter.
What made all of the Tudors, including Shakespeare's patron Queen
Elizabeth I, so vulnerable was the need to rule and reproduce within
the standard of legitimacy. Shakespeare as well as his audience
recognized this vulnerability and, oddly enough, the issue of
legitimacy crops up in certain of his plays, notably King
Lear, Richard
III, and King
John. Just as
Elizabeth and her sister Mary I who ruled before her had to come to
terms with their questionable legitimacy in different ways,
Shakespeare presented to his audiences in dramatic form the ways in
which legitimacy or the lack thereof was confronted and dealt with
and why certain efforts succeeded and failed. Shakespeare recreates
the legitimacy battles of the Tudor dynasty in his plays to
demonstrate that it is not bastardy that corrupts a person's
character but overturning the natural order of birthright and family
ties, and that legitimacy does not make a person good but virtue and
loyalty to one's country does.
In
his first soliloquy in King
Lear,
Edmund comments, “fine word;—legitimate!” (I,ii, l. 18).
“Legitimate” is indeed a fine word, expressing an interesting
concept of what a person is and has a right to do, have, and be. The
Oxford English Dictionary lists multiple definitions for the term
“legitimate.” The top definition listed reads, “Of
a child: Having the status of one lawfully begotten; entitled
to full filial rights (OED Online “Legitimacy” A.1.a). A child
is considered legitimate, particularly in Shakespeare's world, if
they are conceived and born to two married parents. Legitimacy in
Shakespeare's time in regard to manner of birth defines an
individual's right to inheritance and, in the case of the monarchy,
succession to a royal title. However, legitimate can also be used to
mean, “conformable to law or rule, sanctioned or authorized by law
or right.” or, “normal, regular; conformable to a recognized
standard type” (A. 1. b.). Although in our time as well as in
Shakespeare's the idea of illegitimacy has the connotation of being
associated with immorality, “in the later Middle Ages... an
allegation of bastardy was primarily a weapon in struggles over
inheritance,” since inheritance laws favored children born within
marriage (Niell 273). The Elizabethan attitude towards legitimacy and
illegitimacy has much to do with what an individual inherits from a
parent, particularly from father to son. “The whole idea of
nobility rests on the assumption that men inherit at least an
inclination toward virtue or vice” from their fathers that
naturally makes them worthy of a physical inheritance. “If noble
birth signifies potential virtue, bastardy as a violation of natural
order implies moral degeneration” (Pierce 7-9). Legitimacy is not
merely a label associated with birth but a stigma assigned by others
in regard to one's legal and moral status, and this is clearly the
case in both the Tudor dynasty and certain of Shakespeare's plays.
The
history of the Tudor dynasty is a narrative of the long struggle of
each member of that ruling family to secure their claim to the
English throne by securing their legitimacy. The second Tudor
monarch, Henry VIII, is remembered for his six wives. His constant
concern for his marital status was, although profoundly affected by
his romantic interests, driven by his desire for a legal heir,
especially a male heir, to inherit the throne after his death and
continue the family line. His first two marriages to Catherine of
Aragon and Anne Boleyn each produced a healthy daughter, Mary and
Elizabeth respectively, but no surviving sons. It was his third wife,
Jane Seymour, who gave him the son he so desired, the future Edward
VI. In order to secure the succession for Elizabeth and any of his
future sons by Anne Boleyn, Henry altered Mary's official legitimacy
when he divorced her mother so she could not legally inherit the
throne (Hunt 118). When Anne Boleyn failed to produce a healthy male
heir, she was arrested and executed for “purportedly for having
committed adultery with five men,” making it appear that “Elizabeth
was not only a bastard but was most likely not even a royal bastard.”
An “Act of Succession of July 1536 legally bastardized Elizabeth
and Mary, chiefly so that the expected children of
Henry and Jane Seymour would have no rival claimants to the monarchy
”
(120-121). Mary
and Elizabeth's legitimacy was not purely a question of their
father's actual marriages
to their respective mothers but Henry's need to protect the rights of
the heir he eventually chose—he could not legitimize one of his
children without bastardizing the other two. By the betrayal of his
ties to Mary and Elizabeth, Henry VIII divided his family, and the
two sisters judged themselves and each other by their superficial
labels of legitimacy.
The
works of Shakespeare suggest that legitimacy should not be taken at
purely face value. In
King Lear,
legitimacy is not merely a matter of political opinion and legal
procedure but of how society defines individual worth and character.
The play opens with a dialogue between the Earls of Gloucester and
Kent as Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son Edmund to Kent. Of
Edmund, Gloucester says, “this knave came something saucily into
the world before he was sent for, / yet was his mother fair; there
was good sport at his making,”(I, i, ll. 21-23). The term “saucily”
describes a child who is “impudent” or “'cheeky'”; however
there is also a connotation for “saucily” applying to someone who
is “wanton” or lascivious.” (OED Online “Saucy” 2.a.,b.).
Gloucester says he enjoyed his brief affair with Edmund's mother, but
it
was her fault for getting pregnant and that Edmund was an unwelcome
surprise. Kent remarks, “I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue
of it being so proper.” Michael Niell comments that Kent's “banter
turns on a cruel pun, since to be a 'proper' person in
seventeenth-century England (as James Calder wood has pointed out) is
'to be propertied [...]to possess', while Edmund's alienation from
what Lear calls 'propinquity and property of blood' (I. i, l. 14)
renders him an 'unpossessing bastard' (283). At their meeting Edmund
appears to Kent
to be as well-mannered as a nobleman.
Kent thinks it is a pity that Edmund is illegitimate, as though if
Edmund were lawfully-begotten and titled he would be entitled to
Kent's complete rather than partial regard. To Kent and Gloucester,
Edmund's illegitimacy devalues his worth as a person.
Although he does not say much
in the first scene, it becomes clear that Edmund disagrees with this
view. He says of himself, “my dimensions are as well compact, / My
mind as generous, and my shape as true, / As honest madam's issue”
(I, ii, ll. 7-9) He can be just as good a person in character as the
other members of the royal court. However, other people refuse to
acknowledge that because of his birth. “Why brand they us /With
base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” (ll. 9-10). To Edgar,
legitimacy is only a label. Edgar sees himself as equal to his noble
peers, but they can only see the “brand” of his illegitimacy that
prevents him from having a formal title and equal legal status.
Edmund's “brand” is not literal but cultural. In Shakespeare's
world and in the world he creates, the “begetting” of bastards
“constitutes
an act of polluting mixture which renders the offspring in some sense
unnatural or unclean” (Niell 277). Bastards are viewed as unclean
because their origins do not conform to the standard of being
conceived within marriage but instead being the offspring of two
people who are not legally joined. Marriages are sanctioned by the
same laws that also govern inheritance and nobility, therefore a
child born outside of marriage cannot benefit from those laws. A
person who does not enjoy the benefits of being born within the law
is seen by those who are as a social unequal because he or she is a
material unequal. Edmund's
goal, then, is to legitimize himself and then gain the noble label
required for his social acceptance. Shakespeare therefore points to
the idea that a bastard has no innate abnormality but the stigma of
others assigns him an abnormal relation to society.
On the other hand, a similar
violation of the natural order is to reduce something legitimate to
being base, and to make a thing that is naturally base legitimate or
acceptable. Since this violates the natural, divinely sanctioned
order, this raises the need for divine retribution. Thematically as
well as historically, an individual cannot legitimize himself or
herself without destroying the reputation of others in their family.
As was the case with some of the Tudors, Shakespeare characters
seeking to overcome their illegitimacy become corrupt as they reject
the natural order, and this corruption is rewarded with destruction
at the hands of divine justice.
Richard
III
demonstrates a case of figurative illegitimacy through the character
of Richard, who becomes a usurping tyrant that slanders the
legitimacy of others to get what he wants. In the play, Richard is
physically deformed and considers himself “not shaped for sportive
tricks” that other people enjoy, “rudely stamped” by his
deformity, “And that so lamely and unfashionable / That dogs bark
at me as I halt by them,” as if the dogs sensed something unnatural
in him (I,i, ll. 13,15, 22-23). Maurice Hunt claims,“Physically
twisted, resembling the shape of neither his mother nor his father,
Richard feels like a bastard, even though he is by all accounts
legitimately born. Self-disgustedly, Richard feels himself to be
illegitimately legitimate (or legitimately illegitimate)” (133). To
Richard, his physical impairments are a label distinguishing him as a
freak of nature that Hunt suggests is similar to the cultural
abnormality of the bastard. Like Edmund, Richard's goal is a piece of
property and a noble title to ensure his legitimacy in the eyes of
others: specifically, a crown, since “coronation, as the sign of
free acclamation by the secular and religious authorities of the
realm” supposedly “cuts off any competing claims” and proves a
monarch's right to rule (Lane 474). Behind all of his other relatives
in the succession, his ascendancy is unnatural, and so Richard
commits the unnatural deed of the betrayal of kin in order to become
king, and he betrays his kin by attacking their legitimacy: the
morally illegitimate Richard turns his legitimate relatives into
bastards.
In attacking his relatives'
legal eligibility for the throne, Richard not only suggests the legal
implications of allowing bastard kin to rule but also implies that
his relatives' bastardy makes them inhuman and unworthy. Richard
becomes king of England after the death of his brother Edward IV by
proclaiming to the people that Edward and his two sons, the eldest of
which being Edward's successor, are all illegitimate. Richard tells
Buckingham to inform the people of Edward's “hateful luxury / And
bestial appetite in change of lust” in spite of his betrothals to
other women, therefore disqualifying his two sons as legal heirs
(III, v, 80-81; vii, l. 5). At a later assembly, Buckingham
dramatically tells Richard, “it is your fault that you resign / The
supreme seat, the throne majestical, [….] To the corruption of a
blemished stock” and he must become king to preserve the legal as
well as moral integrity of the throne from the inhuman designs of
Edward's bastard heirs (vii, ll.117-118, 122). Once he has the
approval of the people, Richard orders the assassination of his
nephews who are at that time imprisoned in the Tower of London. He
summons an assassin, Tyrrel, and informs him that
two deep enemies,
Foes to my rest and my sweet
sleep's disturbers
Are they that I would have thee
deal upon:
Tyrrel, I mean those bastards
in the Tower (IV, ii,l. 72-75).
Richard
may likely be referring to his two nephews as “bastards” to keep
in line with his own story. However, in the rest of the line he
refers to them indirectly as “two deep enemies” and “Foes to my
rest” because he is more concerned about how they threaten his
claim to the throne. Richard is so absorbed by the idea of his
nephews being bastards that he has dehumanized them and distanced
himself from them as a relative: having disavowed all familial ties
and obligations, he seeks to kill them as he would kill thieves
threatening to steal his property. What makes Richard a unique
villain is that he “thrives by an ironic detachment from all the
standards of traditional morality, including the claims of the
family” by undermining “the bonds of natural love by his plots.
Richard shares with the Vice his consummate hypocrisy and his demonic
sense of humor, both of which exploit the morality of the family”
(Price 90) Shakespeare's presentation of Richard
III
is a commentary on the legal brutality of sixteenth-century European
politics: if someone wanted to steal something, all a person had to
do was prove a rival's illegitimacy. Maurice Hunt comments that by
the time of the Tudors, “this legislative method for 'proving' (or
'disproving') legitimacy had transparently become the tool of
political opportunists, often of the crassest stripe” (119). As the
conclusion of Richard
III
unfolds, Shakespeare makes it clear that Richard's falsifying of
legitimacy and illegitimacy is a perversion of the natural order, an
order which must be restored.
After becoming king, Richard
continues this practice of slandering the legitimacy of rivals, this
time to counter the threat of Henry, the earl of Richmond, who would
later become Henry VII and founder of the Tudor dynasty. While
Richmond's claim to the throne comes from a line of marriages and
births of questionable validity,
according to Shakespeare it is Richard who is illegitimate as in
being outside of a moral standard, being an enemy of morality and an
usurper who murders his own family. Richmond's speech to his troops
alludes to this, as he refers to Richard as “A base foul stone,
made precious by the foil / Of England's chair, where he is falsely
set ” (V, iii, ll. 250-251). Hunt states that “In this pejorative
context, the word 'base' catches the overtones of figurative bastardy
inherent in Richard's own dehumanized conduct and his tacit
self-appraisals and condenses them in the mouth of his adversary”
(136). According to Hunt, then, Henry knows that Richard has not
validated himself by his immoral or illegitimate behavior but he has
proven his own bestiality. However, there is additional evidence of
Richard's moral illegitimacy in the following lines, as Henry also
calls Richard “One that hath ever been God's enemy.” He tells his
soldiers, “Then, if you fight against God's enemy, / God will in
justice ward you as his soldiers” (ll. 2520-254). Richard, because
of his murderous behavior, has bereft himself of divine favor, and so
there is a divine sanction for Richmond, a man of more questionable
literal legitimacy than Richard's, to overthrow someone of moral
illegitimacy.
In this examples from
Shakespeare's works, it is clearly demonstrated that artificial
legitimacy is clearly corrupt and easily exposed. The historical
basis for these ideas can be traced back not only to cultural
perspectives on legitimacy but to the life of Mary I, who was the
next successor to Henry VIII after her brother Edward. Mary was the
daughter of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who had been
divorced in favor of Anne Boylen. When Mary ascended the throne as
England's first female monarch, she made herself legally legitimate
(Hunt 121), but then she smeared the legitimacy of her half-sister
Elizabeth to prevent her from threatening her own right to rule. Mary
was suspicious of Elizabeth since she represented a security threat,
considering at least one rebellion during her rule was intended to
depose her for Elizabeth (Loades 201). Undoubtedly, memories of the
cruelty shown towards her and her mother, Catherine of Aragon, as
well as jealousy poisoned her relationship with Elizabeth. Being the
only “legitimate” daughter of Henry VIII, Mary saw Elizabeth as a
reminder of her father's and Anne Boylen's sins, and she would not
have such “blemished stock” take the throne away from her:
Mary had said some time before
– even before her own marriage – that she did not want to
contemplate Elizabeth as her heir 'for certain respects in which she
resembled her mother (Anne Boylen).' By 1557 it seems that she had
convinced herself that Elizabeth was not really her father's daughter
at all but the child of one of Anne's alleged lovers. [A potential
noble husband] was far too good for such a bastard' (204).
Mary
was so estranged from her sister that she convinced herself that
Elizabeth was not related to her at all and, not being Henry VIII's
child, as she believed, she did not have the right to rule because
she did not have the sanction of royal blood. Elizabeth was held
captive in the Tower of London during part of Mary's reign and later
banished to remote country estates. Although
she was well past childbearing age, Mary married Philip of Spain in
the hopes that she would produce an heir to prevent Elizabeth from
becoming queen after her. By banishing Elizabeth and trying to
exclude her from the throne, Mary disassociated herself from the
trauma of her past but unknowingly sought to pervert the decreed
order of her succession.
While
Mary succeeded in taking the throne, her efforts to prevent Elizabeth
from becoming queen failed, and over time her own subjects began to
doubt Mary's legitimacy. Mary's marriage to Philip complicated the
politics of her reign and increased rather than relieved the stress
of her personal life. In 1555 and 1557, her womb appeared to swell
with what appeared to be a pregnancy, but no child ever appeared
(200, 204). When she died in November 1558, “the most likely
explanation is that she died of cancer of the womb, a disease of
which her false pregnancies had been advance warnings (206-207).”
In addition, “the harvest failures of 1555 and 1556
had been followed by food shortages, and then by epidemic disease.”
The European war that Philip had started went “from bad to worse
and, in January 1558, the ancient English enclave of Calais fell to a
surprise French attack” (204-205). In her increased affliction,
Mary acquired “a fierce determination to exterminate [religious]
heresy” which would remedy “all the ills that had afflicted
England” (205). However, her religious extremism only compounded
her increasingly unpopular rule. Mary's false pregnancies and the
harvest failures may have been a sign to her subjects of divine
retribution against her strongly Catholic rule, making it both
literally and spiritually fruitless. It may also have been a sign
that Elizabeth had the divine sanction to be England's next ruler,
since Mary had committed the crimes of betraying her own kin and also
forcing England to return to the rejected Catholic faith. Although
Mary gave everything to prevent her hated half-sister from becoming
queen, “...towards
the end she had recognized the inevitable – her people would have
no one but Elizabeth. So her life ended in bitter failure...”
(207). Like Richard III, she was a “legitimately illegitimate”
ruler who failed to supplant the next rightful monarch.
Since
an individual's betrayal of the natural order to prove legitimacy is
a manifestation of corruption, therefore loyalty to one's country and
family is the manifestation of moral legitimacy or virtue.
A
legal birthright is not necessary to being a good person, just as
Elizabeth I realized that her own legitimacy had nothing to do with
her capability as a monarch. During her childhood, Elizabeth was
dismissed as a bastard because of the nature of her parents'
relationship, Henry having courted Anne Boylen while still married to
Catherine of Aragon. Her legal bastardization was only a confirmation
of public opinion (Hunt 120). Towards the end of his life, Henry VIII
wrote a will declaring that if his son Edward died without heirs,
then he would be succeeded by Mary, who in turn would be followed by
Elizabeth. It was the right of this will that gave Elizabeth the
right to succeed her sister in the eyes of the people. On her
ascension after Mary's death, “Elizabeth's counselors advised her
not to repeal the Act of 1536 which bastardized her, or to proclaim
her biological legitimacy” and claim the right to rule instead on
the basis of her father's will. “In effect, this decision made at
the beginning of Elizabeth's long rule kept her bastardization
official throughout her lifetime” (121). So how did a technically
“illegitimate” monarch become one of England's greatest rulers?
After her sister's chaotic reign, Elizabeth restored the Protestant
faith, and she defended Protestantism and the security of her
homeland from invasion by the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
Furthermore, Elizabeth cultivated an image of virtue that overrode
her literal illegitimacy.
Part of the image of virtue
that Elizabeth projected to her subjects was her refusal to marry to
protect the integrity of the nation. Whereas Mary's marriage to
Philip of Spain made the domestic and foreign policy during her rule
much more complicated, Elizabeth's refusal to marry, particularly to
enter into a foreign marital alliance, was far more beneficial
(Loades 209). There was also spiritual message that she wanted to
send to her subjects:
When the House of Commons
petitioned her to marry in the spring of 1559, at which time she had
been on the throne barely six months, she replied ...'I am already
bound unto a husband, which is the kingdom of England, and that may
suffice you'.... She then showed her coronation ring, as the pledge
of that marriage, and concluded 'reproach me so no more that I have
no children, for every one of you, and as many as are English, are my
children and kinsfolks' (210).
Elizabeth used the image of her
being married to the kingdom throughout her reign, and these and
other measures did much to secure the approval of her subjects,
making her, in their eyes, legitimate. Loyalty to this metaphorical
“husband” and “family” – her kingdom and subjects – made
up for the literal family that had preceded her in death. It was not
Elizabeth's background that gave her the right to rule but the wisdom
and strength with which she governed. Elizabeth created for herself
the identity of a “Virgin Queen” who found figurative virtue in
devoting herself to her country, and hence she legitimized herself in
the eyes of her subjects.
Shakespeare's
play King
John
was written towards the end of Elizabeth's rule, the thematic focus
of it being the struggle for legitimacy as the right to secure the
succession as Elizabeth's death was drawing near and the question of
who would rule in her place was gaining interest (Lane 462-3). While
King John and his relatives destroy each other in the fight for
legitimacy, the illegitimate Faulconbridge comes out alive and on top
in a manner comparable to Elizabeth outliving her overly-burdened
sister Mary. Just as Elizabeth had more to gain for her kingdom by
not marrying, Faulconbridge embraces his illegitimacy because he has
more to gain from a bastard identity. What Elizabeth and
Faulconbridge have in common, giving them the moral legitimacy to
survive, is acceptance of family ties and virtuous devotion to
England.
While Elizabeth may have
downplayed the questionable legitimacy of her conception, Philip
Faulconbridge chooses to embrace his bastard identity. He and his
half-brother Robert enter King John's court to resolve an inheritance
dispute because, although Robert is younger, he has inherited his
late father Sir Robert Faulconbridge's estate because he is the
legitimate son. King John and his mother Eleanor see “a trick of
Couer-de-Lion's [Richard I's] face” in Philip and, to save him from
the consequences of being dispossessed by the family that raised him,
offer to elevate him to the noble status of being “the reputed son
of Coeur-de-lion, / Lord of thy presence and no land beside,” which
he accepts (I,i, ll. 85,135-6). The Bastard is pleased with this
change in fortune because being an illegitimate royal still
apparently makes him royalty. Says he to Elinor's recognition of
Richard's features, the Bastard says, “I would give it every foot
to have this face; I would not be sir Nob [Sir Robert Faulconbridge]
in any case” (ll.146-7). Robert Pierce notes that “His decision
in the first scene can be viewed in quite a different light. After
all, Richard I was in fact his father, and so in taking his name, he
is really accepting his parentage, not denying it.” Furthermore,
“Eleanor tests his moral inheritance before accepting him as her
grandson and ally, and he passes the test when he displays the
cavalier boldness of his father. He completes the proof that he is
heir to Richard's courage” and goes on “to become the mainstay of
the English army and John's rule” (142). By accepting his
illegitimate ties, he shows his devotion to his birth father's
family, and that devotion earns him a type of moral legitimacy.
Shakespeare plays up
Faulconbridge's embracing of his illegitimacy to heroic (and not to
mention comic) effect. On the battlefield in France, Philip meets the
Duke of Austria, who killed his father Richard I. When the duke sees
him and asks, “What the devil art thou?” , Philip retorts, “One
that will play the devil, sir, with you,” or in other words send
him to the devil (II, i, 134-135). Faulconbridge's constant reference
to his father's lion-like qualities (Richard I was known as
“Couer-de-lion” or “the Lionheart”) makes it obvious that he
wants to follow in the footsteps of his heroic parent. As he is
taunting the Duke, he says, “I would set an ox-head to your lion's
hide, / And make a monster of you.”
(l. 292-293). Instead of the fault being with Richard I for
begetting an illegitimate son, Austria is a monster for killing the
noble king, and it is the illegitimate son who delivers justice.
Ultimately, Faulconbridge avenges his father's death, and in a later
battle with the French he is also a heroic leader and described as
“valiant” (V,iii, l. 5). The Bastard finds personal as well as
moral legitimacy in serving his country and destroying the immoral
villains that fight against England. Price writes that Philip's
“acceptance of a tainted descent from Richard I may imply that
virtu
is more important than a formally correct title” (131). Like
Elizabeth I, who ruled as the daughter of Henry VIII, Faulconbridge
may carry the stigma of illegitimacy but he wants to be remembered
for emulating his royal father and upholding English realm. Deeds,
not birth, determine legitimacy.
William Shakespeare used his
plays as a venue for demonstrating how the Tudor monarchy's struggle
for legitimacy succeeded in proclaiming legitimacy through virtue and
patriotism, and failed in the family's internal betrayal and the
falsified legitimacy of its members. What ultimately mattered to
Shakespeare's audience was that Queen Elizabeth I, although
technically and legally a bastard, was a virtuous leader and that
England was safe in her hands. When she died and was replaced by
James Stuart her legacy of moral legitimacy would continue. In
Shakespeare's works as it was in his day, being of legitimate birth
is hardly a stable definition of character. Rather, legitimacy is a
complex element of the complex identities of his heroes and villains
alike, just as it was for his royal patron.
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