Cary, Elizabeth Tanfield, Viscountess Falkland

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Style and Gender in Elizabeth Cary's Edward II

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SOURCE: "Style and Gender in Elizabeth Cary's Edward II," in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, edited by Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990, pp. 137-53.

[In the following essay, Krontiris considers possible autobiographical elements in The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II and compares the work with The Tragedie of Mariam, outlining Cary's maturation as a writer. She also examines "the possible influence of religion in [Cary's] development."]

Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland, has been known primarily as the author of Mariam, a closet drama she wrote at the age of sixteen or seventeen. But it is now apparent that this is not her only surviving dramatic work. Some twenty-three years after her first published play, Mariam, and during a solitary confinement that followed her secret conversion to Catholicism, Cary wrote History of … King Edward II, which appears to be an unfinished play or a biography influenced by drama. The work, which attests to Lady Falkland's development as a woman writer and dramatist, survives in two versions, both printed in 1680 by different printers. The longer of the two, published in a folio volume, seems to be closer to the form of a play. It contains several speeches and is written predominantly in blank verse; it is also clearer, more coherent, and less sentimental in tone. The shorter version, which came out in a small Octavo book, seems to be a condensed account of the longer piece.

Edward II was found among Lord Falkland's papers and for this reason it was attributed to him by the 1680 printers and subsequently by the editors of an eighteenth-century miscellany that reprinted the short version. This attribution went unchallenged until relatively recently when Donald Stauffer [in "A Deep and Sad Passion," 1935] proved it to be Lady Falkland's composition. As there is still some uneasiness among critics about its authorship, I shall initially produce additional evidence, mainly internal, to strengthen Stauffer's argument. Stauffer has already called attention to the parts in the work that do not point to Lord Falkland as its likely author. I will concentrate here on the parts that point to Lady Falkland.

First, the work is sympathetic toward the adulterous Queen Isabel, an attitude unlikely to have been held by the ultraconservative Lord Falkland. But more important, there is an emphasis on certain aspects of the queen's life that are in agreement with Lady Falkland's personal experiences as her biographers have conveyed them to us. There is, for instance, a noticeable emphasis on the queen's suffering and abandonment in times of affliction. This is evident from the amount of space devoted to Isabel's search for loyal friends as well as from the language used to describe her condition. She is referred to as a woman "dejected out of wedlock," a representative of the "unworthily oppressed" in her kingdom. In her affliction she is abandoned by all, even by her own brother, king of France, who places political expediency above his duty to a "forsaken queen" and sister. Alleged friends recognize "the justice of her cause" but are unwilling to risk their position in order to support her. Her first loyal friend "finds her in her melancholy chamber, confused in her restless thoughts, with many sad distractions." "Domestic spies" seek to make her condition worse, while her husband writes to the pope and asks him to summon her back to England.

The queen's condition as described in this part parallels that of Lady Falkland shortly after her conversion to Catholicism in 1626. From this year to about 1629 (Edward II was written in 1627), Lady Falkland was isolated and reduced to poverty, her husband having cut off all financial support. She lived in an empty house without furniture and, except for the loyal Bessie Poulter, without servants—all having been removed by Lord Falkland's order. Meanwhile her angered husband tried to force her to recant. He wrote several letters to the king, the privy council, and the archbishop of Canterbury asking them to put pressure on the "apostate," as he called her. Without money and rejected by her husband, Lady Falkland was in desperate need of material and moral support. Some of her friends remained loyal to her during this time but others deserted her, lest their reputations should suffer. Her own mother turned her out of doors. I suggest that Lady Falkland's preoccupation with loyal friends and Queen Isabel's similar preoccupation in Edward II have a common head.

There are even more direct parallels. Isabel's joy at receiving her first true friend, Robert of Artois, is very similar to that of Lady Falkland at receiving Mr. Clayton, the first friend to visit her in her isolation. Also, like Isabel, Lady Falkland thought of herself as suffering unjustly. In her letter to Conway she says that by helping her he "shall please God in helping the oppressed." An even more striking parallel is the mention of "domestic spies" both in the history and in Lady Falkland's letters to Charles I and to Secretary Coke. She urges the latter not to believe "those pestilent servants of my lord's, who seek to make advantage of my misery … to work their own ends," while she tells the king that she can find no fault with her husband, "except with regard to his believing too much information of his servants against me, who, for their own interest seek to estrange his affections from me." The history states that "Many of her Domestic Spies were here attending, as she well knew and saw, to work her ruine" (113) and "to make her once more forsaken." Apart from these parallels there is also a sympathetic attitude toward the Catholic figures mentioned briefly in the history. The pope, albeit misled by Edward's information, is "wisely foreseeing" and the black monks at the abbey of St. Hammonds "had the honour to give their long-lost Mistriss the first Welcome." It is very unlikely that Lord Falkland, who hated all "Popelings," as he called them and who at the time of the history's composition was at war with his estranged wife over her conversion to Catholicism, would have included even the slightest favorable reference to Catholics. Additionally, there is external evidence which leaves little doubt that the piece was written by Elizabeth Falkland. "The Author's Preface to the Reader" is signed E.F., but Henry Falkland's initials were H.F. Be it noted that during the period of the history's composition the letters of Lord Falkland to the king and the members of the privy council were signed H. Falkland; those of his wife, E. Falkland. That the history was found among Lord Falkland's papers cannot be taken as evidence for its being written by him, for apparently in the last years of his life, when he was reconciled to his wife, he read her literary works and kept copies of them. The translation of Du Perron's Reply, which is indisputably Lady Falkland's and which was done in the same chronological period, was also found among his personal papers. Last, I would like to suggest that the author's sympathy for the neglected queen in the history could very well be a tribute to Queen Henrietta-Maria, who in the first years of her marriage (married 1625) was ignored and even avoided by her husband, and who was Lady Falkland's friend. We know that the translation of The Reply (1630) was dedicated to the Catholic Henrietta-Maria.

As in the case of Mariam, the author's choice of subject matter for this literary work is suggestive of her concerns. Edward II deals as much with the relationship between the king and the queen as with that between the king and his subjects. Lady Falkland, then, is once more attracted to a story that focuses on the relationship between the two genders and that treats a situation she understood. In her version of Edward II's life she shows familiarity with a long line of writers who treated the same subject before her. Highly eclectic in her use of available material, she seems to have relied primarily on Grafton and to a lesser extent on Marlowe, although her sources cannot be easily identified. From Marlowe she has apparently borrowed the incident of the king being shaved in cold puddle water, Gaveston's Italian identity, and Edward's neglect of and callous behavior toward Queen Isabel. But she has not lifted or borrowed material on a large scale from any particular author. This suggests that Lady Falkland felt the need to write an original story, not merely to retell one already told. Apparently she was not satisfied with the way the subject had been dealt with. Indeed she lets us know as much in her "Preface to the Reader" when she refers to the "dull character of our Historians," who write by inference and try to please "Time" rather than "Truth." Although, as I show later, her own statement about Truth needs to be taken with caution, she evidently felt that the story had not been told quite right. Her dissatisfaction seems to have been greater with the treatment the queen had received, for it is in this respect that her account differs most from the versions of her predecessors. Her portrait of Edward is not very different from Marlowe's. Nor does she have anything particularly new to say about absolute monarchy as a governing system; her criticism seems specifically aimed at Edward for using his power arbitrarily and setting a bad example for his subjects. But the case is very different with respect to Queen Isabel. Unlike Marlowe and others who offer a perfunctory sketch of the queen and maintain an ambivalent attitude toward her, Lady Falkland treats Isabel with a great deal of sympathy, provides justification for her adultery, and labors to develop her into a consistent character. In the remaining portion of this discussion I intend to show how Lady Falkland advances her defense of Edward's wife in contradistinction to previous writers and how she attempts to express herself without openly violating cultural norms or personal convictions regarding proper conduct in general and feminine conduct in particular. I shall also draw a brief comparison between The History of … Edward II and Mariam in order to show Lady Falkland's development as a woman writer. Finally, I shall refer to the possible influence of religion in her development.

The defense of Queen Isabel is attempted chiefly through a process of victimization. Almost throughout the work Isabel is shown to be a woman and a wife trapped in a situation to whose making she has not contributed and out of which she tries to escape. Her marriage to Edward has been a stop-gap solution to the king's homosexual passion: "the interest of a wife was thought the most hopeful inducement to reclaim these loose affections" that had gone to Gaveston. As a wife—"in name a Wife, in truth a Hand-maid"—she is forced to play the standby role accorded her by her husband and his minions. Even her trip to France is originally engineered by Spencer, who wishes "to pare her nails before she scratch'd him," with the consent of her husband who "could be contented well to spare her whose eyes did look too far into his pleasures." This kind of presentation has the effect of legitimating many of Isabel's actions. Her flight to France becomes not a traitorous act but an attempt to escape oppression at home.

The process of victimization is also deployed in what perhaps constitutes the most daring aspect of the author's task—her justification of Isabel's adultery. This is apparent from the queen's first full appearance, one-third into the work:

Love and Jealousie, that equally possest the Queen, being intermixed with a stronger desire of Revenge, spurs her on to hasten on this Journey [to France]. She saw the King a stranger to her bed, and revelling in the wanton embraces of his stoln pleasures, without a glance on her deserving Beauty. This contempt had begot a like change in her, though in a more modest nature, her youthful Affections wanting a fit subject to work on, and being debarr'd of that warmth that should have still preserv'd their temper, she cast her wandering eye upon the gallant Mortimer, a piece of masculine Bravery without exception.

With psychological insight, the author here renders Edward responsible for his wife's infidelity. Unlike previous writers, she recognizes the affective and sexual needs of Isabel as a young woman ("her youthful Affections wanting a fit subject to work on") and treats Edward's homosexuality as a form of adultery. Through his behavior, Edward is shown to be the first to invalidate the marriage agreement. Hence the author justifies Isabel's lack of marital chastity and implicitly also opposes the role of the patient Griselda prescribed by her culture in similar situations.

But adultery was a serious offense when committed by a woman and Lady Falkland was no doubt aware of her culture's judgment on this matter. If she wanted to engage the reader's sympathy for the queen, she had to be very careful. Besides casting her heroine as a victim, Lady Falkland uses a number of other tactics that seem to work in favor of the queen's character. Elements of time and space seem deployed to control the reader's response to Isabel's adulterous actions. Accordingly, the queen's appearance in the history is strategically delayed until Edward's abuse has been sufficiently—and emphatically—exposed. Her affair with Mortimer is described only briefly, while he is made to appear more like a companion to her griefs than a sexual partner. Conveniently, he is set aside and only occasionally referred to until the last few scenes, despite the fact that he accompanies the queen to France. Traditional notions of feminine sexual conduct are likewise appropriated to render the queen more acceptable and sympathetic. Thus Isabel's sexual behavior is of "a more modest nature" than her husband's and her speech to her brother is characterized by "a sweetly-becoming modestie." The "showre of Chrystal tears" she sheds are pitiable and proper for a woman's supposed soft nature.

Furthermore, the author strengthens the queen's position in the history by endowing her with a caring nature and a motherly instinct. Her character, unlike her husband's, is fortified with a care for the oppressed: "'tis not I alone unjustly suffer," she pleads, "my tears speak those of a distressed Kingdom, which, long time glorious, now is almost ruin'd." Although the presence of the eldest son is structurally necessary so that he can claim the throne when his mother's party returns from France, the specific reference to her son, especially in the short version, suggests more than is necessary for the structure of the plot: "Her eldest Son, her dearest comfort, and the chief spring that must set all these wheels a going, she leaves not behind, but makes him the Companion of her Travels." Additionally, the queen is credited with the good opinion and support of respectable people. Robert of Artois, a "steady States-man, not led by Complement, or feign'd professions," speaks of the queen's "deeds of Goodness"; and the earl of Heinault, a man of "an honest Heart and grave Experience," decides to join his brother, Sir John, in defending "a Queen that justly merits Love and Pity." Even Edward's own feelings regarding his wife's infidelity appear to be deployed somewhat in her favor: "he thinks the breach of Wedlock a foul trespass; but to contemn her he so much had wronged, deserv'd as much as they could lay upon him." Through these strategies, then, the author manages to preempt criticism of the queen as adulteress and disloyal subject.

In previous treatments of Edward's life, the queen's character had been denigrated by attributing to her both cruelty, which I shall discuss shortly, and hypocrisy. But in Lady Falkland's portrayal of Isabel hypocrisy is relatively absent. There are two obvious allusions to the queen's hypocritical behavior. One is shortly before her flight to France when "She courts her Adversary [Spencer] with all the shews of perfect reconcilement," pretending to be "well pleased, and glad to stay at home." The other occurs when she is about to escape from France: having been deceived by the French Council, she quits the French court "in shew contented" and "praiseth Spencer, as if 'twere he alone had wrought her Welfare." As may be discerned, however, this type of hypocrisy is presented as a valuable skill, one that Isabel learns of necessity and that finally saves her life. It is not a blemish but an admirable quality allied to cunning and envied even by the cleverest politician. Rather than hold it against the queen, Lady Falkland uses it to poke fun at Spencer who, for all his ingenuity, is outwitted by a woman more than once: "[his] Craft and Care … here fell apparent short of all Discretion, to be thus over-reach'd by one weak Woman"; "Thus Womens Wit sometimes can cozen Statesmen." In this way, Lady Falkland cleverly turns a characteristic other writers had presented as a vice into a skill.

The defense of the queen lapses at one point and discloses Lady Falkland's difficulty in handling her heroine. As we have seen, Isabel is not criticized for assuming political power. Although in the end she is shown to be susceptible to the corruptive influence of power, for the most part she is portrayed as an intelligent and skillful politician whose maneuvers in the battle with the Spencers win her a victory. (With one summons she manages to bring Arundel, Spencer, and the city of Bristol into her possession.) But she is severely criticized for the cruel treatment of her fallen adversaries, particularly and especially of Spencer:

While She thus passeth on with a kinde of insulting Tyranny, far short of the belief of her former Vertue and Goodness, she makes this poor unhappy man attend her Progress, not as the antient Romans did their vanquish'd Prisoners, for ostentation, to increase their Triumph; but merely for Revenge, Despite, and private Rancour…. Certainly this man was infinitely vicious, and deserv'd as much as could be laid upon him, for those many great and insolent Oppressions, acted with Injustice, Cruel[t]y, and Blood; yet it had been much more to the Queens Honour, if she had given him a quicker Death, and a more honourable Tryal, free from these opprobrious and barbarous Disgraces, which savour'd more of a savage, tyrannical disposition, than a judgment fit to command, or sway the Sword of Justice.

This is a severe condemnation and not the only of its kind. But it does not mark a change in the author's overall attitude toward her heroine. As the phrasing in the passage just quoted might suggest ("far short of the belief of her former Vertue and Goodness"), Lady Falkland strives to make Isabel as consistent a character as possible. This pause in the queen's defense seems rather a manifestation of the author's difficulty in reconciling the material she inherited from her sources, on the one hand, with her personal convictions and cultural values on the other. In order to better understand Lady Falkland's attitude toward cruelty, it would be useful to pay attention to other instances of it in the work. Early in the history, the beheading of Lancaster and twenty-two other nobles in "a bloody Massacre" is the act of the "cruel Tyrant" Edward. Bishop Stapleton's death is "inhumane and barbarous" at the hands of the "enraged multitude; who neither respecting the Gravity of his Years, or the Dignity of his Profession, strike off his Head, without either Arraignment, Tryal, or Condemnation." Old Spencer is likewise treated "not with pity, which befits a Prisoner, but with insulting joy, and base derision."

The above passages indicate, among other things, that the author holds strong views on the subject of cruelty and by extension suggest the difficulties she may have encountered in dealing with this aspect of her heroine's character. The historical sources had more or less established the major events of the story. Even Marlowe, who probably gives Isabel the most favorable treatment accorded by any male writer, shows her at the end to be a hypocritical and cruel woman. Lady Falkland could appropriate hypocrisy and turn it into an advantage, as we have seen. But cruelty was too strong a blemish. Silence on the matter was therefore neither possible nor desirable, since it would have left the queen exposed at a most critical point. A justification of cruelty, on the other hand, would have contradicted the author's own principles about proper Christian behavior. Indeed, implied in the author's criticism of cruelty is a notion of justice that combines Christian ethics with a sense of fairness in the exercise of power. According to this notion, revenge in the form of cruelty toward a powerless subject (in this case a fallen adversary) is both unfair and unchristian: "It is assuredly … an argument of a Villanous Disposition, and a Devilish Nature, to tyrannize and abuse those wretched ruines which are under the Mercy of the Law, whose Severity is bitter enough without aggravation…. In Christian Piety, which is the Day-star that should direct and guide all humane Actions, the heart should be as free from all that's cruel, as being too remiss in point of Justice."

In her own life too Lady Falkland abided by these principles. Her biographers tell us that an obligation to treat the offender with kindness was one of her life-long convictions. The spectacle of cruelty itself was a violation of her ideas about comeliness and fitness. Furthermore, in the author's culture cruelty was a characteristically unfeminine vice. The connection between cruelty and femininity is apparent even in the language that the author uses: "The queen's act is far unworthy of the Nobility of her Sex and Virtue." Noticeably, there is no apology for Mortimer's cruelty. The author thus chose what seems like a twist: she maintained the defense of the queen but condemned her cruelty.

Departing once more from her predecessors, Lady Falkland confines Isabel's cruelty mainly to the case of Spencer. With the exception just discussed, she continues to defend the relative innocence of her heroine until the crucial last part—Edward's death. Significantly, the queen is shown to disapprove of the plans to murder the king: "The Queen, whose heart was yet believed innocent of such foul Murther, is, or at least seems, highly discontented." This is made especially poignant and dramatic in the final speeches she exchanges with Mortimer in which she is made to declare: "ne're can my heart consent to kill my Husband." The killing of Edward is presented as being almost entirely Mortimer's doing. When Mortimer suggests the idea, she tries to dissuade him. She finally succumbs to his pressure but on condition that she will be spared the spectacle and "be not made partaker, or privy to the time, the means, the manner."

It is difficult to say how the dramatic situation would have ended had it been put in the final form of a play, but as it is the history lingers on after Edward's death, which is followed by long moralizing on how much he deserved his punishment. Both Edward and Richard II are mentioned as examples of oppressive kings who abused their right to kingship and who died providentially: "But his [Edward's] Doom was registred by that inscrutable Providence of Heaven who, with the self-same Sentence, punish'd both him, and Richard the Second, his great Grandchild, who were guilty of the same Offences." In the folio volume there is a more severe criticism of the subjects who betray the king and of their decision to depose and murder him. But even here the final responsibility for Edward's misfortune is made to fall on him: "had he not indeed been a Traytor to himself, they could not all have wronged him." Clearly, then, the author makes Edward's end a providential piece of work, and while she implicates Mortimer she exonerates the queen. The deaths of Mortimer and Isabel do not fall within the same chronological range, but significantly, only Mortimer is reported to have paid for his actions by death. The queen, "who was guilty but in circumstance," experienced only the pangs of conscience.

When we compare The History of Edward II (1627) with Mariam (written c. 1604, published 1613), we notice that the later work evinces an assertiveness that seems to be lacking in the earlier one. "The Author's Preface to the Reader," dated and prefixed to the folio volume of Edward II, provides the most direct evidence of Lady Falkland's ability to assert herself as a writer. The latter part of this preface is worth quoting:

I have not herein followed the dull Character of our Historians, nor amplified more than they infer, by Circumstance. I strive to please the Truth, not Time; nor fear I Censure, since at the worst, 'twas one Month mis-spended; which cannot promise ought in right Perfection.

If so you hap to view it, tax not my Errours; I my self confess them.

What is interesting in this preface is that there is no apology for the author's sex or, more important, for the subject taken up. On the contrary, there is a boldness, not unlike that we find in her address to the reader in the translation of The Reply of the … Cardinall of Perron, published three years later. For the purpose of comparison I shall quote parts of this address:

Reader Thou shalt heere receive a Translation wel intended…. I desire to have noe more guest at of me, but that I am a Catholique, and a Woman: the first serves for mine honor, and the second, for my excuse, since if the worke be but meanely done, it is noe wonder, for my Sexe can raise noe great expectation of anie thing that shall come from me: yet were it a great follie in me, if I would expose to the view of the world, a worke of this kinde, except I judged it, to want nothing fitt, for a Translation. Therefore I will confesse, I thinke it well done, and so had I confest sufficientlie in printing it.

A boldness and a self-confidence characterize both addresses to the reader. In the address of The Reply there is of course the conventional apology for the author's sex. But such an apology is shown to be worn out, for in the next sentence the author turns around and repudiates the excuse. She confidently asserts that she finds the work very well done and that, woman or not, she would not have published it unless she thought it met her standards of publishable quality. In both addresses the reader's attention is diverted from the controversial subject itself—Catholicism in the one and criticism of absolute rule coupled with justification of adultery in the other—to the quality of the work. The focus is shifted to perfectability, the execution of the ideas. Most important, in both addresses the author presents her task as telling the "Truth" or "informing [the reader] aright." This is an appropriation of the notion of absolute truth, the one Truth that everyone has the right, indeed the obligation, to tell. This notion, which is found in much religious writing of the period and which Cary probably acquired from her long experience with religious materials, becomes in fact a very effective strategy, which allows the author to tell the story from her perspective. In Mariam she had expressed several traditional notions of womanhood. Her heroine, idealized according to the standards of sixteenth-century culture, had to suffer patiently under a tyrannical husband end remain free from moral blemish: Mariam was not allowed to find recourse in adultery. In Edward II Lady Falkland still voices traditional notions of female conduct, but here these notions are deployed as writing strategies. As I have argued, this becomes especially apparent when it is viewed in conjunction with the author's appropriation of structural elements, such as space and time. If indeed the author had an audience in mind, she could not have afforded to alienate her readers. Expressing the ideas was as important as gaining acceptance of them.

The tone of voice in Edward II also marks a change from that in Mariam. This is particularly apparent in the narrative portions of the history, where Lady Falkland sounds what we today would call argumentative and moralizing. Here is an example:

But what could be expected, when to satisfie his own unjust Passions, he had consented to the Oppressions of his Subjects, tyranniz'd over the Nobility, abus'd his Wedlock, and lost all fatherly care of the Kingdom, and that Issue that was to succeed him. Certainly it is no less honourable than proper, for the Majesty and Greatness of a King, to have that same free and full use of his Affection and Favour, that each particular Man hath in his oeconomic government; yet as his Calling is the greatest, such should be his care, to square them always out by those Sacred Rules of Equity and Justice.

Passages of this sort are not rare. In Mariam Lady Falkland had used didactic lines for the chorus, which served to express conventional wisdom on wifely conduct. But in Edward II this didacticism develops into a sophisticated argumentative technique. In the later work the appropriation of ideas and events seems to be a rhetorical strategy to gain her audience's acceptance rather than an attempt to refrain from offending the male reader. Furthermore, the moralizing is frequently expressed in religous terms. This I have already partly shown in my discussion of Lady Falkland's attitude toward cruelty. I shall here provide one more instance, which concerns the author's interpretation of Spencer's failure to prevent the escape of the queen and her party: "But when the glorious power of Heaven is pleased to punish Man for his transgression, he takes away the sense and proper power by which he should foresee and stop his danger."

Given the events that intervened between the composition of her two dramas, it would be fair to say that this change in tone is at least partly the result of Lady Falkland's long and active experience as a recusant. This experience, which included the writing of saints' lives and the translating of Du Perron's Reply, apparently helped her to become more assertive. The translation of The Reply in particular was an exercise not only in theological argument but also in the style of polemics, as that work is a long and vigorous defense of Catholicism against Protestant charges. Thus religious dissidence seems to have been a liberating catalyst for Viscountess Falkland as it was for many other Renaissance women. Anne Askew, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Ward, and the women who joined the sects differed in their religious allegiances but shared at least one characteristic: an independent, critical spirit. Criticism of the officially sanctioned dogma, whatever that might be, could and often did encourage independent thinking and insubordination.

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