Oaths, Love's Labor's Lost, Arcangela Tarabotti, and Mirrors of Difference
Because Shakespeare's Love’s Labor’s Lost is about taking and breaking oaths, some might claim that it points to Elizabethan loyalty oaths. But Early Modern oaths had larger contexts. Consider the title of a 2011 book:
By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe, by Anne Jacobson Schutte (1940-2018). Schutte’s book, in part, points to the work of Arcangela Tarabotti (1604 – 1652), a Venetian nun, who wrote of coerced monachization and is considered an Early Modern protofeminist.
While plays might (in Hamlet’s words) hold the “mirror up to nature,” the mirrors often show difference instead of similarity to achieve their effects.
This is clear in Love's Labor's Lost, in its contrasts with political realities of its time, with Elizabeth and her court, and with the histories, not only of forced marriages, but also coerced monachization (forcing girls and boys to enter convents and monasteries).
A first example involves King Ferdinand and his lords: Ferdinand swears an oath with his lords, instead of simply requiring an oath of them - a contrast to lived Elizabethan experience. When they break their oaths, they all, including the king (more or less quickly) admit their mistakes and adapt, whereas in life, monarchs often acted hypocritically while holding lords and subjects to higher standards.
A second example involves the Princess of France and her attending ladies. If they fall in love, it is up to each of the women, not the princess. Yet Elizabeth exerted strict control over the ladies-in-waiting, and for one of her attending ladies to become pregnant or to arrange for a secret marriage without her consent brought harsh consequences nowhere portrayed in the play.
In a broader context, one might consider the oaths of arranged marriages and coerced monastic life. Arranged Elizabethan marriages were commonplace, but in the play, the attempts at matches are all of mutual choice. Another trend on the continent (and in England before the forced dissolution of the monasteries) was that of coerced monachization (forcing girls and boys to enter convents and monasteries). For various reasons (to protect inheritance for first-born sons, or to avoid military service for sons or paying expensive dowries upon the marriage of daughters) girls and boys were coerced into entering convents or monasteries.
With the dissolution of English monasteries, even those who willingly entered were forced by Henry VIII (father of two princesses) to abandon their vows.
This contrasts with the play's oath, broken by the king and his lords when impractical because of infatuation or love. At the play's end, the princess and her ladies succeed at avoiding coercion into hasty decisions about marriage.
The play contains echoes of Catholic monasticism: The princess bids the king commit himself to a hermitage; Rosalind bids Berowne, for a year, to be a kind of jester of mercy to the sick and dying.
The writings of Arcangela Tarabotti, and Anne Jacobson Schutte’s book, in conjunction with the play, might offer rich, broader perspectives on the play's oaths, taken, broken, and in the end, taken.
These might be added to some of my suggestions from last week regarding Elizabeth and the nine popes during her reign, as well as details about Ferdinando I de' Medici, a cardinal for more than twenty years who gave up his cardinal position to be married and have children, and my post the week prior, regarding the princess and Rosaline as seeming to hear confession and assign penance.
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MY RECENT POSTS ON LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST:
5. Love's Labor's Lost, Arcangela Tarabotti, and Mirrors of Difference - November 16, 2021
4. Elizabeth I, Popes, & Ferdinando I de' Medici in Love's Labor's Lost - November 9, 2021
3. Women Priests Assigning Penance in Love's Labor's Lost? - November 2, 2021
2. Good & Grace from Evil & Sin in Love's Labor's Lost & Henry V - October 24, 2021
1. Begging & Poor (& Chastity & Pregnancy) in Love's Labour's Lost (1594-1597) - October 12, 2021 (this #1 post was also part of another series)
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NOTES:
1. Anne Jacobson Schutte's book, By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe, was published in 2011 by Cornell University Press. Details here: https://cornell.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7591/cornell/9780801449772.001.0001/upso-9780801449772
Generous excerpts can be found on Google Books:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/By_Force_and_Fear/kVw_WjMkCVYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=By+Force+and+Fear:+Taking+and+Breaking+Monastic+Vows+in+Early+Modern+Europe+By+Anne+Jacobson+Schutte&printsec=frontcover
2. The Renaissance Society of America has an "In Memorium" page for Anne Jacobson Schutte here: https://www.rsa.org/blogpost/856879/296454/Anne-Jacobson-Schutte
3. More helpful than the Wikipedia article is the following encyclopedia article on Arcangela Tarabotti here:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tarabotti-arcangela-1604-1652
4. Meredith K. Ray has a bibliography on Arcangela Tarabotti here at Oxford Bibliographies: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0328.xml
5. Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater translated and edited Convent Paradise: Arcangela Tarabotti, published by Iter Press and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in 2020. Details here:
https://www.itergateway.org/resources/convent-paradise
Another of their works/translations is Letters Familiar and Formal, by Arcangela Tarabotti.
This won a 2013 award for best translation from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, as noted by the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies in Toronto.
Merideth Ray has a blog page on it here:
http://meredith-ray.squarespace.com/arcangela
CRRS has a long excerpt from the introduction of this translation of letters here:
https://crrs.ca/new/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/OV20-Intro-excerpt-for-web.pdf
For instructors interested in making use of open source materials, this introduction excerpt might be helpful.
6. Elissa B. Weaver edited a book called Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice. Reviewing the book in Renaissance Quarterly, Margaret Rosenthal called it "supurb collection of essay," praising Weaver's introductory matter and also noting that Anne Schutte has a good essay in this collection. The book was published by Longo Editore in 2006.
7. One can find a more popular treatment of Arcangelica Tarabotti in a book by Marsha Fazio called Venice: A Discarded Daughter: Arcangela Tarabotti: The Rebel Nun of Baroque Venice, here: http://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=venice-a-discarded-daughter
8. Zoe Connell has an undergraduate honors thesis that is also open source, "A Voice from the Convent: Arcangela Tarabotti in Tridentine Venice," written at William and Mary, which can be found here:
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2608&context=honorstheses
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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