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Sai Diwan
Dr. Shefali Balsari-Shah
A. ENG. 6.04
18 February 2013
Melancholy Theatrics
There is only so much happiness that an age can sustain. The Elizabethan theatres
indulgence in the idyllic pastoral, the passionate tragedy, the tragi-comedy and the
chronicles of history plays was a privilege of the rich and poor alike. History stands
witness that when the men of an age are lured towards the attainment of absolute
contentment, they have been tricked into their fall. The death of Queen Elizabeth shook
that precarious balance and heralded the anarchy of the Jacobean era. In order to restore
the scales of Harmonice Mundi, Jacobean drama embodied melancholy as a reaction to
Elizabethan dramas lack thereof.
Governed by coincidences, the romantic comedies of the Elizabethan era would
escape into the pastoral to entail the plot of romantic love. Many a ludicrous obstacles and
disguises later, the couple would celebrate their union with a magnificent feast. The
Elizabethans thus preferred to remove themselves from reality in their preference for
pastoral drama. The first part of John Marstons play, Antonin and Mellida follows the
conventional trajectory of the romantic comedy genre with Piero having forgiven Antonio,
thus facilitating the latters union with Mellida. The second part, Antonios Revenge
however has Piero enter unbraced, his arms bare, smeared in blood, a poniard in one
hand, bloody, and a torch in the other. Revenge and malice spin the plot towards tragedy

as Piero kills Andrugio and is later slain at the hands of Antonio. Marstons piece is a
manifestation of the change in sensibility from the Elizabethan to the Jacobean era.
The play is lined with Senecan elements of sensationalizing the plot with violence,
blood and gore on stage. Although it is the Elizabethans who hold closer chronological
allegiance to Seneca, his mark is carved deeper on the Jacobean stage. As Hardin Craig
puts it in his essay, The Shackling of Accidents: A Study of Elizabethan Tragedy,
For Marston, Chapman, Jonson, Webster and Ford are much more archaic than
Shakespeare. (34)
The sensationalism was an inevitable product of the society of those times. The
terrifying anarchy of the times is captured in Middletons Women Beware Women. Livia
violates Bianca by tricking her into the incestuous act of sleeping with her uncle,
Hippolito, and then by practically orchestrating her rape by the Duke. The violence echoed
louder in Jacobean theatre and bordered its plays on the satanic.
The culmination of such atrocities, Death however was greeted with a different
approach. Defeated by mayhem of the age, the playwrights embraced stoicism, but
Chapman was the only one to present the stoic acceptance of death. In Caesar and
Pompey, Cato chooses suicide over being a part of Caesars tyrannical reign.
Cato: Now wing thee, deare soule, and receive her heaven.
The earth, and ayre, and seas I know, and all
The ioyes, and horrors of their peace and warres
And now will see the gods state, and the starres.

The Elizabethans, on the other hand, considered death the most important part of the
tragedy. Michael Neil in his examination of the treatment if death in his essay, Issues of
Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy says,
Death is shameful because it is an extreme form of defacement, a stripping away
other constituent forms of social identity that amounts to nothing less than an
absolute undoing of the self.
The thought of death as the ultimate end of everything is terrifying, but the thought of
having to revisit and recount that slaying is most distressing. Some of the most disturbing
incidents in Kyds The Spanish Tragedy are the variant descriptions of Don Andreas death. A
finale to the idyllic Elizabethan age would not have been desired, but an escape from the
vulgar Jacobean age was tailored for stoicism. Queen Elizabeth had symbolised balance,
purity and order. Her death wrecked chaos as James I ascended the throne with his infamous
reputation of being a reckless, extravagant bisexual. He dislodged the anchor of English
society and threw them into the trepidation of instability and uncertainty.
This uncertainty gave rise to the tragic thought that expressed lament on the
disillusionment prevalent in political and social life. London courted further misfortune in the
outbreak of the plague that claimed thirty thousand lives. The age of melancholy expressed
itself in the theatres by way of the figure of malcontent. Although it had peeked through the
curtains as Jacques in As You Like It before, it made its entry in the Jacobean age. Jacques is a
deliberate cynic whose poetic contemplations tend to dwell on all that is unsatisfactory in the
world.
Jacques: I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.

The figure of malcontent in the Jacobean age is a disguise worn by a character such that it is
defined by the excess of black bile of the four humours resulting in its discontent with all
events. Vendice transforms into the figure of malcontent, Piato for Tourneurs The Revengers
Tragedy.
I'll put on that knave for once,
And be a right man then,
A man a' th' time,
For to be honest is not to be i' th' world.
Vindice uses the term put on as one would refer to donning on a mask. In theatrical
terms, it signifies a part or a role. Moreover, he uses the verb be indicating a definitive state
of being the knave instead of pretending to be the knave. Although there is a clear distinction
between the two roles, Vindice is affected by what Piato does, and often their roles are
complementary.
Thus the attempt at melancholy in the Elizabethan age had to be compensated for by a
humorous touch. Thus it required that change in sensibility that the dawn of a new political
era brought about for tragedy to find its niche in British drama. F. P. Wilson validates this
statement in his essay, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
Without an audience interested in serious matters tragedy is not possible (6)
The awareness of serious matters was the concern about the neglect of morals in society.
James Is unscrupulous nature gave impetus to the corruption in court. He was reckless,
unethical and was known to have put knighthoods up for sale. Various plays staged in
Jacobean theatres would have satirical remarks against these malpractices. Webster deflected

his discontent with the political order to the setting in Italy for his play, The White Devil.
Flamineo represents the numerous courtiers who engaged in immoral acts for better
remuneration. Moral teaching is an obfuscated norm that evades Flamineo
While we look up to heaven, we confound
Knowledge with knowledge.
Webster depicts moral ambiguities in the play by exploring the various connotations of
evaluative words such as justice, charity, honour, virtuous etc. Cornelia, having
caught Vittoria and Brachiano in their adulterous act reminds them of the importance of
their honour. The weightage of the word is belittled by Flamineo as he uses it in terms of
duty to chide Cornelia when she reports the adultery to him.
Now, you that stand so much upon your honour,
Is this a fitting time a night, think you,
To send a duke home without eer a man?
The very title of the play suggests that evil has impinged upon all good. Vittoria is said to
be the White Devil. She commits adultery by having an illicit affair with Brachiano, and is
castigated as a prostitute during the trial against her. However the reader is made of her
conscience when she Cornelia confronts her, thus proving that she shows the glimmer for
hope for goodness. The plot follows the convention of the revenge tragedy with the
Machiavellian villain in form of Fransisco de Medici who describes his devious plots in
long soliloquys, feigned madness partaken by Flamineo, the brutal murder of Camillo, and
elements of shock such as Brachainos revival from the dead.
Thus the theatre portrayed the change in sensibility from the Elizabethan to the
Jacobean age. As fascinating as the blissful pastoral was, England needs to be awoken

from the reverie. For an age that was marked by deception, death and decay needed, not
the Elizabethan romantic, but the Jacobean theatrics.

Bibliography
1. Ellis-Fermor, Una. The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation. London: University
Paperbacks, 1965.
2. Ed. Kaufman, R.J. Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism. USA: Oxford
University Press, 1961.
3. Hyland, Peter. Disguise on the Early Modern English Stage. Surrey: Ashgate
Publishing Limted, 2011.
4. Lopez, Jeremy. Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern
Drama. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
5. Neill, Michael. Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance
Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
6. Pearson, Jacquelins. Tragedies and Tragi-Comedies in the Plays of John Webster.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980
7. Trussler, Simon. Cambridge Illustrated History: British Theatre. Cambridge:
Cambridge Unversity Press, 1994.
8. <http://homepage.ntlworld.com/chris.thorns/drama/Jacobean_tragedy.htm>
17/02/2013 (10:25)
9. <http://www.worldandi.com/subscribers/feature_detail.asp?num=23873> 17/02/2013
(13:15)
10. <http://www.crossref-it.info/textguide/The-White-Devil/32/2252> 17/02/2013 (21:50)