THE DISGUISED RULER IN THE EARLY MODERN REPERTORY
Dr K. A. QUARMBY
King's College London
2008
ABSTRACT
In the opening decade of the seventeenth century, a number of plays were performed on the London stage which shared a common plot motif, that of a ruler in disguise spying on his subjects. The plays traditionally grouped under the collective generic title 'Jacobean disguised-ruler plays' include Thomas Middleton's The Phoenix, John Marston's The Fawn and Edward Sharpham's The Fleer. The two plays most frequently cited as 'disguised-ruler' plays are, however, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and Marston's The Malcontent: I take them as my focus. These plays, traditionally dated to the immediate period of the accession of James I, are viewed as representing occasionalist commentary responding to the new king's personality and his subjects' expectations. I argue, by contrast, for the unique disposition of each play, questioning the validity of a strictly Jacobean chronology for a responsive critical understanding both of their moment of composition and of their place within the early modern repertory. A restrictive focus on James's accession underplays the productivity of a motif which had been evolving since the late 1580s. To substantiate this claim, I assess the role of the 'disguised-ruler' motif in late Elizabethan writing, noting its origins in medieval folklore and balladry and subsequent development in Shakespeare's Henry V, a play with a disguised ruler which is customarily downplayed by 'disguised-ruler-play' critics because of their Jacobean interests. Furthermore, I suggest, the continued categorization of the 'disguised-ruler' plays within a restrictively periodized grouping centred solely on the synchronic, by sustaining a clear-cut division between the Elizabethan and the Jacobean, elides key continuities within the trajectory of early modern drama. An analysis of the diachronic development of the 'disguised-ruler' motif, and of the unique dispositions of those plays that employ it, permits the complexity of these plays' engagement with the theatrical culture out of which they emerge to be fully appreciated.