SOURCE: Walker, Greg. “Dramatic Justice at the Marian Court: Nicholas Udall'sRespublica.” In The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama, pp. 163-95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

[In the following essay, Walker provides an overview of Udall's life and career as well as an in-depth analysis of Respublica.]

THE AUTHOR

Born in Southampton in 1504, Nicholas Udall attended Winchester College from 1517 and went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1520. After a period as a Fellow of Corpus and university lecturer in Logic, he left Oxford in 1529 and made a living as a writer and freelance scholar before being appointed headmaster of Eton in 1534.¹ While at Eton, Udall seems to have developed a reputation for the zealous administration of corporal punishment. A former pupil was later to protest about his treatment at the headmaster's hands in doggerel verse.

From Paul's I went, to Eton sent,
To learn straightways the Latin phrase;
Where fifty-three stripes given to me at once I had
For fault but small, or none at all.
See, Udall, see, the mercy of thee, to me, poor lad.(2)

But it was his departure from Eton, rather than the disciplinary regime he oversaw there, which has aroused the most anxious scholarly comment.

On 12 March 1541, one John Hoorde, late scholar of Eton, was examined by the Privy Council in connection with a robbery he had committed at the college in company with another former pupil.³ On the following day the second scholar, Thomas Cheyney, was also questioned and, like Hoorde, confessed his involvement in the crime.⁴ William Ember, a London goldsmith who evidently acted as a fence for the boys, was also committed to custody ‘for the buying of certain images of silver and other plate which was stolen from the college of Eton’.⁵ It was on the following day that Udall became involved in the affair. Having evidently been implicated in the crime by the boys' confessions, the headmaster was ‘sent for as suspect to be of councail of a robbery lately committed at Eton by Thomas Cheyney, John Hoorde, scolers of the sayd scole, and … Gregory, servant to the said scolemaster’. Once summoned before the Council, Udall had ‘certain interrogatoryes ministred unto hym, toching the sayd fact and other felonious trespasses, wherof he was suspected’. What emerged from this interrogation resulted in Udall's imprisonment in the Marshalsea and his dismissal from Eton and has blighted his literary reputation ever since. Scholars have been remarkably coy about this aspect of the affair, being unwilling to admit—or even to name—the nature of his offences.⁶ But, what seems abundantly clear is that Udall confessed, not only to a role in the robbery, but to having a homosexual relationship with one of his co-conspirators and former pupils. When questioned, he ‘did confesse that he did commit buggery with the said Cheyney. sundry times heretofore, and of late the vjth day of this present moneth in the present yere at London’. That Udall was an acknowledged homosexual itself troubled previous generations of scholars. That he admitted committing sodomy with a former pupil proves too much for even most modern commentators to accept. Hence, William Edgerton ingeniously attempted to absolve the playwright of the whole business, attributing the reference to ‘buggery’ to a scribal error on the part of William Paget, Clerk of the Council; suggesting that the word intended was ‘burglary’, and speculating, increasingly unconvincingly, that the offence and the allusion to the event having been committed ‘at sundry times’ and once at least in London, might be accounted for by a moment's inebriated weakness on Udall's part.

The robberies at Eton may have consisted in the drunken headmaster's breaking open the chests containing the church ornaments and of giving them to the boys to sell to the goldsmith. If that is so, Udall might have in this case extended their operations to London.⁷

This, Edgerton argued, was a far less serious offence than buggery—indeed, at a time of Reformation iconoclasm it need not be considered an offence at all. ‘Too many people’, he argued, ‘had misappropriated church property at that time to make it seem the heinous crime it appears to us.’

Thus through the assumption of a careless piece of book-keeping, Udall is turned from a paedophile schoolmaster to an endearing mixture of Raffles and Robin Hood, throwing open the college coffers for his pupils' benefit. This enthusiastic attempt to exonerate Udall is engaging in its naiveté, but tells us rather more about the prejudices of its author than the events surrounding Udall's dismissal.⁸ What the sources suggest, however unpalatable it might be to some critics, is that Udall was indeed guilty of sodomy with a pupil who, while adult by modern standards, was still young enough to be considered a minor at the time.⁹

If Udall suffered a period of disgrace as a result of his misdemeanours, however, it was short-lived. In September 1542 Richard Grafton published his Apophthegmes, an annotated translation of part of Erasmus' Apophthegemata, and by 1543 he was once more enjoying patronage at court, editing and translating The Paraphrases of Erasmus at Catherine Parr's instigation.¹⁰ He was also able to continue his teaching career, for in 1549 he was appointed tutor to Edward Courtney, the royal prisoner in the Tower of London, and was to gain the headmastership of Westminster School on 16 December 1555, almost exactly a year before his death on 23 December 1556. He continued to enjoy support in high places during his final years, being appointed a canon of Windsor in 1551 and rector of Cranborne in 1553, and having work performed in or around the court, including his celebrated pseudo-Terencian interlude Ralph Roister Doister (first produced c. 1552, possibly before Edward VI), an earlier interlude, Thersites (c. 1537), and perhaps also Jack Juggler and Jacob and Esau, now frequently ascribed to his authorship.¹¹

UDALL'S RELIGIOUS POSITION

From his early years as a student, Udall was, it seems, a committed religious reformer. As early as 1528, while a Fellow of Corpus, he had been disciplined with others for reading the works of Luther and Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament.¹² In 1533 he was collaborating with another Oxford man, John Leland, the future antiquarian, in the production of pageants for Anne Boleyn's coronation. During the 1530s and early 1540s he was mixing in reformist circles and translating protestant works. In 1538 he produced an unknown play (perhaps his biblical drama Ezechias) in the household of Thomas Cromwell. By 1543, as we have seen, he was working on the translation of Erasmus' Paraphrase of the New Testament, under the patronage of Queen Catherine Parr, and in 1546 he gained from the queen a portion of the living of Hartyng, Sussex, a reward he shared with Richard Moryson, the protestant propagandist. In 1550 he translated the Tractatie de Sacramente of Peter Martyr and dedicated it to the queen, and in 1551 he contributed verses to two volumes of encomia, one dedicated to Martin Bucer, the other in memory of the two sons of the patroness of reformers, the Duchess of Suffolk.

Such credentials would not have disgraced a protestant exile, thus it is unsurprising that Udall was to lose out materially on the accession of Queen Mary. The canonry at Windsor, granted in 1551, was taken from him in 1554 and given to one of the new queen's chaplains, and he was also deprived of the lucrative rectory of Colborne on the Isle of Wight. But, beyond these setbacks, Udall suffered little evident loss of favour at court. He continued to produce dramatic works in the royal household, was singled out for special praise by the queen and offered what amounted to an ongoing commission to provide plays for the court in the second year of the reign.¹³ Evidently he was not considered a dangerous radical by the new regime. Even the arch-conservative Bishop Stephen Gardiner was to leave him forty marks on his death in 1555. But, as we shall see, Udall was to prove himself adept at advancing a radical case in the guise of apparently conformist counsel.

RESPUBLICA: THE PLOT

The play is a political morality in the style of Skelton's Magnyfycence or Lindsay's Thrie Estaitis. The eponymous central figure differs, however, from Magnyfycence or Rex Humanitas both in being representative of the state as a whole rather than of the prince in particular, and in being female. Her condition also differs in small but significant respects from those earlier figures. She begins the play already destitute, for example, a ‘poor wydowe’ in need of the wise, male ministers who will restore her estate. Her subsequent fate is, however, sadly familiar. Instead of wise consellors, she accepts the blandishments of Avarice, disguised as Policy, who convinces her that he should take over the running of the estate. He in turn calls in his fellow vices, Insolence, Oppression, and Adulation (or Flattery), listed in the dramatis personae as “gallants’, who, in traditional morality fashion, adopt alter egos, here Authority, Reformation, and Honesty. Once installed in office, the vices exploit the resources of the realm for their own benefit, prompting People, an honest rustic, to protest at the ruinous lot of the common folk. The vices connive to remove People from court, however, and keep Respublica in ignorance of the true state of the nation until they have gleaned all the pickings to be gained from office. Only with the arrival of the four daughters of God, Misericordia, Veritas, Justicia, and Pax, is the true state of affairs revealed and the vices are confronted. Finally, the goddess Nemesis, specifically (the ‘Prologue’ informs us) a figure for Mary Tudor, enters to judge the vices.¹⁴ Avarice is handed over to People to be pressed like a sponge until all his ill-gotten gains are returned to their rightful owners. Oppression and Insolence are imprisoned awaiting trial. Only Adulation, who offers a frank confession, is released and permitted to use his talents hereafter in the service of the state.

AUSPICES

The only surviving manuscript text of the play, once owned by Sir Henry Spelman (?1564-1641) and subsequently part of the drama collection of the Reverend Cox Macro (1683-1767), describes it as ‘A merye entrelude entitled Respublica made in the yeare of oure Lorde.1553. and the first yeare of the moost prosperous Reigne of our most gracious Soveraigne Quene Marye the first’.¹⁵ That the text as we have it was performed at Christmas—or at least written with such a performance in mind—is made clear by the wish in the ‘Prologue’ that the audience enjoy ‘health and successe with many agoode newe yeare’ (line 1) and his description of the play as ‘some Christmas devise’ (line 6). The ‘Prologue’ also indicates that the text was written for children, asking rhetorically ‘But shall boyes (saith some nowe) of suche highe mattiers plaie[?]’ (line 39) and referring to the production as offered by ‘We children to youe olde folke’ (line 47). Beyond this there is little that is certain about the play. The ascription to Udall has been convincingly made by W. W. Greg and others on stylistic grounds.¹⁶ And there is other circumstantial evidence to link the play to Udall and to a performance at court during the Christmas season of 1553/4.

The text certainly reads as if a court performance was intended. The references to Queen Mary, the prayers for her and her council, and the bringing in of a clear surrogate figure for her in the form of Nemesis in the final act, all make most sense if a production at court was intended. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that Udall did write and produce plays for Mary during the first year of her reign. A warrant of 13 December 1554 granting ‘our welbelovid Nicholas Udall’ free use of the costumes and properties held by the Revels Office makes clear that he had already ‘at sondry seasons convenient hertofore shewid and myndeth herafter to shewe his diligence in settinge forthe of dialogues and Entreludes before us for our Regall disport and recreacion’.¹⁷ What these productions may have involved is not clear from the surviving accounts. A play had been prepared for performance at the coronation in September 1553, but seems to have been postponed until Christmas at short notice two days before the event itself.¹⁸ The possibility that this play may have been Respublica has been mooted, but seems to be refuted by a further document, a warrant to the Master of the Great Wardrobe issued on the last day of September, commanding him to provide the bearer with costumes and properties for a play to be performed by the Gentlemen of the Chapel ‘for the feastes of our coronacion’. The warrant lists the dramatis personae of this play as Genus Humanum, five virgins, Verity, Plenty, Self-Love, Care, Deceit, Sickness, Feebleness, Deformity, a Good and a Bad Angel, and the Epilogue.¹⁹ Clearly this list does not tally even remotely with the cast or action of Respublica. Scholars have dealt with this evidence in a number of ways. Feuillerat, persuaded by the absence of any direct references to other plays in the Revels accounts, concluded that only one play was performed before the queen between 26 September 1553 and 6 January 1553/4, the one played at Christmas 1553, which was the same play postponed from the feast of the Coronation, i.e. Genus Humanum or Self-Love.²⁰ Greg, on the other hand, argued that two plays were performed, one Genus Humanum/Self-Love at the Coronation and another, Respublica at Christmas, and that Respublica had indeed been postponed from September/October until Christmas precisely to make way for the performance of Genus Humanum/Self-Love at the earlier date.²¹ Neither explanation seems fully to account for the apparent contradictions in the evidence.

From the Revels accounts it seems clear that a play was prepared for the Coronation but then cancelled at short notice—a fact which seems to have left those involved less than happy, hence the somewhat tetchy remarks about the amount of work begun ‘but then left off again’ which recur in the accounts. No references to a new play to replace this postponed production exist. Only the dating of the warrant to the Great Wardrobe, apparently sealed two days after the work in the Revels Office was left off, suggests that anything further was done to provide a dramatic entertainment for the Coronation feast. A more plausible explanation of these documents might be that no play was performed during the Coronation celebrations. An elaborately costumed and casted production of Genus Humanum/Self-Love was prepared, but was left off at the last moment, and the play was subsequently produced at Christmas. A warrant for the costumes for this production was prepared, and may have been post-dated to 30 September, or sealed in error on that date, but only after the decision to postpone the production had already been made, thus making it already redundant at the moment it was dated. The alternative possibility, that the Revels Office and the Great Wardrobe had been preparing for a production of Respublica, requiring equally elaborate costumes and properties to those listed for Genus Humanum/Self-Love, but had been ordered to stop two or three days before the play was due to be performed, and then began preparing for an entirely different production (a play for which the Great Wardrobe was asked to provide 19 costumes, utilising 21 yards of damask, 3 yards of kersey, and 128 yards of satin, at a maximum of three days notice) seems highly unlikely.²²

But, if this is accepted, where does this leave Respublica? If one accepts Feuillerat's interpretation of the documents, it could not have been played at court over the Christmas period, 1553/4, as we have already accounted for the only play performed there during this period. But this conclusion does not seem necessary. The idea that only one play was offered at Yuletide is based upon the absence of clear reference in the Revels accounts to any productions other than that postponed from the Coronation feast. But what we know of Christmas revels in other years suggests that a number of productions were usually offered. Had there really been only one play performed this year it is highly likely that this would have attracted adverse comment from other sources.²³ Arguing from silence is always a hazardous undertaking, and in this case seems to fly in the face of the other known facts. Mary's warrant to Udall, referring to his dialogues and interludes played in the royal presence at ‘sondry seasons convenient’, suggests a number of performances of which the surviving accounts show no trace. Furthermore, in the following year the Revels accounts themselves mention the cost of preparing materials and properties for

divers and sondry maskes both for men and wemen as plaies set forth by Udall and other pastimes prepared, furnyshed, and set forthe owte of the revelles this yeare to be shewed and done in the Kinge and quene their majesties presence from tyme to tyme as the same was commaunded and called for.²⁴

The ensuing accounts themselves refer only to the masques, however. Udall's plays and the other unspecified pastimes leave no other trace in the records.

That there are no references to named plays in the surviving records need, then, not be as conclusive as Feuillerat claimed. Indeed, the evidence would seem to point in the other direction, for the Revels accounts do contain one generalised reference to other plays. A list of charges for the period 22 September 1553 to 6 January 1554 talks of the expenses required ‘to furnysshe owte certen playes sett foorth by the gentilmen of the chapell’. Feuillerat's suggestion that ‘playes’ here must be an error for ‘playe’ seems unconvincing. Had the text read simply ‘playes’, this might be a possibility, but the phrase ‘certen playes’ suggests that the writer had the plural form in mind as he wrote. And, as he was accounting for entertainments for which his own office was responsible, his testimony commands respect, not least as the separate accounts from which this overall record of charges was derived also allow room for more than one play to have been supported.²⁵

What, then, seems most likely is that Respublica was indeed performed at court over Christmas 1553/4. A number of plays were produced there by the Gentlemen and Children of the Chapel Royal during the first year of Mary's reign. Respublica is a Christmas play, written for children, by an author who is known to have had a number of plays performed at court during that year. The weight of probability that Respublica was one such play seems compelling. Moreover, as we shall see, it does address directly a number of issues which were of immediate concern to the court and the government at this time.

COMPLAINT AND SATIRE: THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF ‘RESPUBLICA’

Critics have generally assumed that Respublica's political agenda is neither pointedly critical nor particularly concrete in its assertions. It is described as a ‘gently satirical play’, a text which ‘eschews the violence of religious controversy’, an exercise in ‘great tact’ which represents not the particular details of the recent past ‘but rather the abstracted meaning of those events’. The activities of its vices are said to be indicative only of ‘a timeless pattern of worldliness’ rather than of specific contemporary evils: ‘their only distinction from earlier practitioners of such villainy is their specious cry of reform’.²⁶ But such readings underestimate the wealth of particular detail which underpins the text's political and moral strategies, and the passion with which it engages with both contemporary events and issues and their ‘abstracted meaning’.

The Christmas season of 1553/4, far from being a period of ‘happy’ tranquillity in which the Sovereign and her court might relax, safe in the knowledge that they had secured a sound and lasting political and religious settlement, was a time of profound political unease.²⁷ The Marian regime was newly set on potentially precarious foundations. Less that six months earlier the queen had been a fugitive, declared a bastard in the Duke of Northumberland's desperate last gamble to secure a protestant succession, and pursued into Norfolk by the duke at the head of an army 3,000 strong. Only the loyalty of the ‘backwoods’ gentry and nobility in East Anglia, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and the Thames Valley had forced the Council in London to reverse its earlier decision to declare in favour of Northumberland's protégé, Lady Jane Grey, thereby bringing about the collapse of the duke's putative coup.²⁸ On 19 July, Mary was formally proclaimed Queen in London, but it was not until 3 August that she entered her capital, formalised the punishment of Northumberland and his closest supporters, and effected a reconciliation with the professional politicians who had initially connived in the duke's manoeuvres.

Mary inherited, not a thriving commonwealth, but a realm in social and economic crisis. The royal finances, virtually bankrupted by the French and Scottish campaigns of Henry VIII's final years, had been further depleted by a deteriorating economy, costly social projects, and ill-judged financial ventures under Edward VI. The grain harvest had failed spectacularly in 1545, 1549, and 1551, prompting prices to rise and causing significant hardship and social dislocation in town and country alike. In 1550 and 1551 outbreaks of plague and the sweating sickness had exacerbated the problems. The widespread sense of ruin and decay was reflected in a burgeoning literature of social complaint and increasingly shrill economic analysis. Pamphlets like Sir Thomas Smith's A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England (1549) and the anonymous Policies to Reduce this Realm of England Unto a Prosperous Wealth and Estate (1551?) sought both to offer remedies for the nation's economic decline and to locate its origins in a general failure of public and private morality.²⁹ To assume that a play like Respublica could not be directly political as it focused only upon moral shortcomings thus misunderstands contemporary perceptions of economic and political questions. Contemporaries saw economics and politics as themselves moral issues—or reflections of them—and spoke about them in those terms. Mid-Tudor analysis of the state of the nation was conducted in great part as a moral debate. Thus John Caius, in a work prompted by the 1551 outbreak of sweating sickness, saw the epidemic as divine punishment for ‘that insatiable serpent of covetousness wherewith most men are so infected that it seemeth each one would devour another without charity or any godly respect to the poor, to their neighbour, or to their commonwealth’.³⁰ Moreover, Respublica itself, far from being a purely moral drama, is not short on detailed economic analysis.

Performed at court in the middle of this period of national moral and political self-examination, Udall's play drew its lessons from recent history and its inspiration from current events. Although purporting to lament the ‘Ruin and decaye’ that comes to all realms where Insolence and Avarice are allowed to flourish, the play is actually more particular in its targets, a fact which Respublica herself makes clear in the final act. With telling specificity she laments, ‘O lorde howe have I bee[n] used these five yeres past’ (5.9.1775-76), identifying a period which would cover the most fraught years of the Edwardian minority.³¹ Nor is the Henrician regime spared from the criticism. The action of the play is clearly intended to cover the Edwardian period, but the state is presented as already on the brink of collapse when the interlude begins. As Avarice observes in act 1, Respublica,

          now latelye is left almoost desolate.
Hir welthe ys decayed hir comforte cleane a goe
And she att hir wittes endes what for to saie or doe

(1.1.239-42)

The implication is that the Edwardian regime had itself inherited from its predecessors a realm already in a parlous condition. This ruinous situation is, of course, only worsened as the vices gain access to the management of the state and begin to exploit it for their own ends.

The depiction of the ensuing hardship is remarkably specific in its detail. On accepting Avarice into her service, Respublica hands over to him control of ‘metall, graine, cataill, treasure, goodes, and landes’ (2.2.500), and it is his control of these commodities that provides the Vice with much of his pilfered income. When he is granted an audience, People complains about the prices of precisely those commodities which Avarice exploits. He knows that the realm produces sufficient to go around, but somehow this produce does not find its way to the markets at prices the commons can afford.

          ther falleth of corne and cattall
Wull, shepe, woode, leade, tynne, Iron and other metall,
And of all [th]ynges, enoughe vor goode and badde
and as commediens [i.e. commodious] vor us, as er we hadde.
And yet the price of everye thing is zo dere
As though the grounde dyd bring vorth no suche thing no where.

(3.3.666-71)

It is the management of the economy rather than its essential productivity which is to blame. ‘Ill ordring 'tis’, People tells Respublica, ‘hath made both youe and wee threde bare’ (3.3.675). The nature of that ill ordering is made clear when Avarice confesses to the audience the secrets of his profiteering. Among his scams he lists ‘beguiling the king of his custome’ (3.6.873), and the profits from ‘tallowe, Butter, cheese, / Corne, Rawclothes, [and] lether by stelth sent beyond seas’ (lines 875-6), and ‘grayne, bell meatall, tynne and lead, / Conveighd owte by crekes when Respublica was in bed’ (lines 877-8). In the England of 1553, this litany of materials would have had a striking resonance. The consequences of harvest failure coupled with a period of marked inflation were precisely the price rises and apparent scarcities complained of by People. Unsuccessful attempts to regulate the supply and prices of basic commodities characterised the Edwardian period. On 9 August 1549, a Proclamation recognised ‘that of late time the prices of all manner of victual necessary for man's sustenance be so heightened and raised above the accustomed and reasonable values that thereby (except speedy remedy be provided) very great loss and damage must needs chance to his majesty's loving subjects’. Consequently the crown attempted to fix the prices of animals at market for the coming months.³² Further attempts to limit the cost of victuals were made on 20 October 1550 and 11 September 1551, with equal lack of long-term success.³³

A second strand to government policy involved the attempt to limit the exportation of materials. Avarice's nocturnal attempts to smuggle foodstuffs and bellmetal out of the realm through hidden creeks were specifically prohibited in a number of proclamations. On 27 July 1547, the new minority government addressed in the king's name ‘our customers, comptrollers, and searchers, and other our officers and ministers within our port of London, and in all creeks and places to the said port belonging’, ordering them to prevent the export of ‘any manner of bell metal, butter, cheese, tallow or candles … out of the said port or any creeks or places to the said port’ unless the traders carried Letters Patent under the Great Seal permitting them to do so.³⁴ On 7 December a further proclamation limited grain exportation without license, citing increased domestic prices as justification. On 30 March 1548 this ban was rescinded, but it was replaced later in the same year, along with prohibitions on the export of butter, cheese, bacon, tallow, and bell metal.³⁵ Further embargoes upon exportation without license were imposed in the following months on ‘any manner of grain, butter, cheese, tallow or any kind of victuals’ on 8 October 1548, on wheat, malt, oats, barley, butter, cheese, bacon, beef, cask, or tallow on 18 January 1549, on these commodities and veal calves, lambs, muttons, pork, wood, wood coal, ale, beer, and hides on 7 May 1550, on a comprehensive list of victuals and also bell metal, wood, and coal on 3 July and 24 September 1550, and on similar commodities on 20 October of the same year.³⁶

The export of wool and rawcloth, another of Avarice's scams, was also a contentious issue at this time. In 1551 the Antwerp cloth market crashed, causing a 15 per cent reduction in trade in the following twelve months and a further 20 per cent in the next year. The net result was hardship for cloth merchants, unemployment for cloth workers, and a substantial loss of customs revenues for the crown. In response the Edwardian regime adopted measures to limit the profits passing to overseas traders. In 1552 the government risked diplomatic difficulties by banning merchants of the Hanseatic League from buying cloth in England. The domestic crisis was, however, to continue into the next reign. The loss of customs earnings was also addressed by proposals to issue a new Book of Rates, fixing the charges to be levied on imported and exported goods at a higher rate, taking into account the effects of inflation, but this proposal was not carried out until 1558, when the Marian regime was finally to grasp the nettle.

Another of People's objections concerns the hardship brought about by the devaluation and debasement of the coinage. His rent, he claims, now amounts to almost twice the sum that he is able to make at market for his produce.

Vor one peece iche tooke, chawas vaine to paine him twaie
One woulde thinke twer brasse, and zorowe have I els,
But ichwin mooste parte ont was made of our olde bells
…
Isrecke not an twer zilver as twas avor

(4.4.1082-4, 1088)

It is a complaint for which Insolence upbraids him later when the vices gang up to drive him from court.

Ye muste have silver money must ye jentilman?
Youe cannot be content with suche coigne as wee can.

(5.8.1623-4)

Again, this is not simply a timeless commonplace of economic complaint, but a specific allusion to contemporary events. First Henry VIII in 1544, then Protector Somerset in 1547 and 1549, debased the coinage, mixing brass with the silver, as People suspected. The net result, after a short-term profit for the crown, was to fuel inflation and reduce confidence in the currency, as the majority of the population took the same line as People and calculated prices on a coin's actual silver content rather than on its nominal value. Hostility to the new coinage was widespread and even reached the court when Bishop Latimer preached against its introduction before the king. The government was thus forced to take action to limit the consequences of its own actions. On 24 July 1551 a proclamation was issued ordering punishment for anyone caught spreading rumours of any further debasements. In 1552 the Usury Act attempted to limit the monetary speculation which the debasements had prompted.³⁷ The result of these measures was only to exacerbate a perception of poverty and social decay which had been endemic throughout the Edwardian period.

When Avarice protests at the multitude of beggars thronging the streets ‘nowe of daies’ (5.5.1432) he identifies a problem which exercised the government from the beginning of the reign. In 1547 the Vagrancy Act had attempted to apply drastic solutions to what was perceived as the crisis in vagabondage and the proliferation of masterless men. Public begging was banned, and attempts were made to establish a weekly levy—what would later become the Poor Rate—to alleviate the distress of the truly impotent poor. By contrast the undeserving poor, the, so called, sturdy beggars, were to be forced from the streets through a term of virtual slave labour, whereby employers might take on those found to be able-bodied but without work, without wages for a period of two years.³⁸ The scheme was both too draconian and too unwieldy to solve the vagabondage problem at the first attempt and the act was repealed in 1550, but it marked a new determination to address the problems of unemployment and poverty at governmental level. More conventional methods of social control were also employed. On 7 May 1550 a proclamation ordered all beggars and those without work to leave London. On 28 April 1551 a further proclamation enforced existing legislation against wandering vagabonds and other masterless itinerants (a class among whom professional acting troupes were grouped), while in 1552 an Act of Parliament banned begging once more and established a weekly collection for the relief of the needy in each parish.³⁹

This interest in social justice was, however, not entirely egalitarian. The obverse of the government's concern for the poor and rootless was a predictable anxiety about the threat posed to social order by the aggrieved poor and disaffected vagabonds. As Dale Hoak has observed, ‘perhaps no Tudor government ever stood in greater fear of a rebellious commons than did that of the Duke of Northumberland in the period 1550-53’.⁴⁰ When People stands up before Respublica and complains about the lot of the nation's poor, then, he not only voices a righteous cry for justice, but also presents a dire warning of the consequences of further mismanagement and abuse. The vices treat his protest as precisely the sort of popular rising of which the government lived in fear.

AVARICE:
And howe dyd all frame with our mounsire Authorytee?
OPPRESSION:
Att length he wonne the full superiorytee
ADULATION:
But the rude grosse people at hym repyneth sore,
And against us all fowre with a wyde throte dothe he rore.

(3.5.821-4)

Far from shying away from the specifics of social satire, then, Respublica addresses social concerns with remarkable particularity. It is a play constructed out of the poverty and social distress of the mid-Tudor period. What it is important to note, however, is the way in which that distress is shaped into a satirical strategy. The text does not simply reflect social conditions, it interprets them in a moral and political framework. The failures of government and administration which it claims have led to the present crisis are presented as the result, not simply of incompetence, but of moral culpability. Where the ministers of the Edwardian period are pilloried, it is for seeking, literally to cash in on the realm's misfortune, profiteering under the guise of attempts to restore the economy to order. The crisis in which Respublica finds herself at the start of the play, symbolic of the Henrician legacy, simply provides the long-awaited opportunity for Avarice and his fellows to ‘feather [their] … neste[s]’ (1.1.88).⁴¹ Avarice's exploitation of the commonweal will be piecemeal but comprehensive, involving the gathering up of all

The glenynges, the casualties, the blynde excheates,
The forginge of forfayctes, the scope of extraictes,
The xcesse, the waste, the spoile, the superfluites,
The windefalles, the shriddinges, the flycynges / The petie fees.
With a thowsaunde thinges mo which she maye right well lacke
[I] woulde fyll all these same purses that hange att my bakke

(1.1.99-104)

Each of the ‘gallants’ aims likewise ‘to gett store of money’ (1.1.287); and become a lord of high estate at Respublica's expense during the brief ‘tyme of hey making’ (line 901) before Time makes known their abuses through his daughter Veritas.⁴² The methods by which this is achieved are the subject of lengthy (and, as we have already partially seen, pointedly specific) elaboration. Avarice lists thirteen sources of his illgotten gains, each filling one of the bags he carries concealed under his coat. He identifies ‘leasses encroched and foorthwith solde againe’ (3.6.856); ‘intresse of thys yeares userie’ (line 857); ‘mattiers bolstred upp with perjurie’ (line 858); ‘bribes above my stipende in offecis’ (line 859); ‘the selling of benefices’ (line 860); ‘my rentes that my clerkes yearelye render me / To bee and contynue in offyce under me’ (lines 861-2); ‘my sectourshipp [i.e. executorship] of my Mother’ (863) and ‘other sectourshipps whole / Whiche the madde knaves woulde have scattered by penie dole’ (lines 865-6); ‘churche goodes scraped upp withoute alawe’ (line 867); ‘beguil[ing] the king of his custome’ (line 873); ‘selling counterfaicte wares’ (line 874); the profits from ‘tallowe, Butter, cheese, / Corne, Raweclothes, lether by stelth sent beyond seas’ (lines 875-6); ‘grayne, bell meatall, tynne and leade, / Conveighd owte by crekes when Respublica was in bed’ (lines 877-8); and finally ‘facing owte of dawes [i.e. fools], / Bothe from landes and goodes by pretence of the lawes’ (lines 879-80). Taken together, this list provides a comprehensive portfolio of malpractice and corruption. In many cases the crimes mentioned are timeless abuses, but they also have, as we have seen, a precise contemporary relevance.

A major theme of the satire is the means by which the vices gain lands and incomes at the expense of the commonweal. In the first act, Insolence declares his intention to become a lord of high estate (1.3.291). Oppression insists that he have a share too,

When ye come to the encrochinge of landes
…
I will looke to have parte of goodes landes and plate.

(1.3.293 and 295)

Each aims to obtain ‘goode mannour places twoo or three’ (line 301), and Insolence goes still further, declaring

I muste have castels and Townes in everye shier
…
pastures and townships and woods
…
chaunge of Farmes and pastures for shepe,
With dailie revenues my lustye porte for to kepe.

(1.3.301-10)

Where these estates will come from is made clear by Avarice and Oppression. Bullying of leaseholders out of their rights is one of the abuses practised by Avarice and condemned by the play (3.6.856 and 879-80), but the main trust of the satirical attack is against the acquisition of episcopal lands and estates by enforced exchange. The theme is introduced in act 3 scene 5 when Oppression boasts,

Faith if I luste I maie were myters fowre or fyve
I have so manye haulfe bisshoprikes at the leaste.

(lines 780-1)

Adulation indeed complains that he has managed to obtain only £300 per annum and one manor place (line 784) because Oppression has ‘flytched the bisshoprikes alreadie’ (line 792). The latter elaborates his methods when he advises Adulation to grasp what estates remain, suggesting that even the most audaciously unjust exchanges can be achieved (‘geve a fether for a gooce’ (line 796)) if he moves quickly enough. ‘Didst thowe with anie one of them [i.e. the bishops] make suche exchaunge[?]’, asks Adulation,

OPPRESSION:
Yea, I almooste leaft them never a ferm nor graunge.
I told them Respublica at their wealth dyd grutche
And the fyfte pennie thaye had was for them to[o] muche
So Authoritie and I did with theim soo choppe
That we lefte the best of them a thred bare bisshop.
To some we lefte one howse, to some we left none,
The beste had but his see place, that he might kepe home.
We enfourmed them, and we defourmed theym,
We confourmed them, and we refourmed theym.
ADULATION:
And what gave ye theim in your permutacions?
OPPRESSION:
Bare parsonages of appropriacions,
Bowght from Respublica and firste emprowed
Than at the higheste extente to bisshops allowed,
Leate owte to theire handes for fowrescore and ny[netee]n yeare

(3.5.797-810)

There are, however, still some pickings remaining for Adulation.

OPPRESSION:
there is yet enoughe left, for a better plucke
For some of them were aged and yet would not dye,
And some woulde in no wyse to owre desyres applye.
But we have Roddes in pysse for tham everye chone.
That they shalbe flyced yf we reign, one by one.

(3.5.816-20)

Again, these lines have specific contemporary relevance. In the later years of the reign of Henry VIII and during the Edwardian minority the episcopal estates were subject to a series of aggressive, asset-stripping exchanges with the crown. In return the bishops were offered rectory estates acquired from monastic houses during the dissolutions of the late 1530s. The overall beneficiaries were generally favoured courtiers and administrators who were subsequently granted the lands and rents outright as rewards for service, or were able to buy them up at often very favourable prices when the crown had to realise its assets to finance its wars and pay off its short term debts.

The bishopric of Exeter was the subject of a series of enforced exchanges in the years following the Dissolution. Bishop Veysey saw over two-thirds of the estates of his see lost to the crown in the period from 1539 to 1550. In 1548 he had to give up his London residence and the valuable manor of Crediton in Devon. In 1550 Bishop's Tawton and Bishop's Clyst were transferred to John Russell, Earl of Bedford. By 1551 the see was so ‘much diminished’ in income that the crown allowed the new bishop, Miles Coverdale to revalue his estate for tax purposes at only £500 per annum.⁴³ Other episcopal estates suffered similar losses. In 1535 the crown took twenty-two manors from the bishopric of Norwich, gaining an estimated £920 worth of annual income in return for approximately £752 worth of ex-monastic rectories. Among the beneficiaries of royal success were Thomas Cromwell and the king's physician, William Butts.⁴⁴ The archbishopric of Canterbury was also a victim, losing through exchanges approximately £277 of annual income between 1536 and 1546.⁴⁵ From 1539 onwards the bishopric of Bath and Wells also suffered. Dr William Petre gained an annuity of £40 from the Dean and Chapter in that year and subsequently confiscated jewels and plate for the king's use. In the same year the bishop's London house was granted to William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, and by 1547 the manor of Dogmersfield in Hampshire had passed to Thomas Wriothesley, the earl's successor. The Duke of Somerset also profited substantially from the wealth of the see, claiming manors, including Wells itself, during his period as Lord Protector. In all some 55 per cent of the gross income of the see was probably lost in the years 1539-60. The bishopric of Lincoln suffered if anything a still more dramatic depredation, being reduced from a net income of £1,963 per annum to one of £828 per annum in the seven years of Edward VI's reign.⁴⁶

A list of the chief beneficiaries of this despoliation of episcopal lands reads like a Who's Who of the Edwardian establishment: the Russell family, the Dudleys, the Herberts, and the Darcys, Lord Paget, and William Paulet all gained substantially. One estate, Southwell in Nottinghamshire, a property of the archbishopric of York, passed from the crown in gift in 1550 to the Earl of Warwick, the future Duke of Northumberland, who in turn sold it a year later to the Master of the Rolls, John Beaumont. When Beaumont was convicted of corruption, the manor, along with all his lands and goods, passed back to the crown, from whose hands it was finally restored to the archbishopric by Queen Mary in 1557.⁴⁷ It is no wonder that one of the chief tasks that Sir William Petre identified when he drew up a list of the most pressing problems facing the new government in August 1553 was the condition of the episcopal estates and the financial state of the church as a whole.⁴⁸

The assumption that Respublica was performed before a court audience readily receptive of its satirical message is thus an oversimplification. The Yuletide entertainments of 1553/4 did not witness a new regime complacently congratulating itself upon its triumph over the previous corrupt administration. The majority of the courtiers and civil servants who gathered to celebrate the first Christmas of the Marian reign had themselves been members of the Edwardian government at whose demise the play rejoiced, and had profited substantially as a result.

The limited number of experienced and able individuals available to serve in the central administration, coupled with an obvious desire on the queen's part not to alienate members of the political community upon whom she had to rely, meant that there was no major purge of government officers on her accession. Although the royal household saw a significant alteration in its personnel, the vast majority of Edward's counsellors and ministers were retained to serve his successor, often in the same roles. Almost the entire Privy Council remained in post. The chief architects of the Edwardian financial policies so vilified by Respublica, the Lord Treasurer, William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, and Sir Thomas Gresham continued in the same roles in the Marian government. Winchester also retained his office as Master of the Court of Wards until 1 May 1554. John Russell, Earl of Bedford remained as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, a post he had held since 1542, and both Sir William Petre, and William, Lord Paget, central figures in the minority administration, retained their positions of influence.⁴⁹ The play's sustained focus upon the failures of policy and abuses of power allegedly perpetrated by Edward's courtiers and ministers would thus have made acutely uncomfortable viewing for many among its initial audience.

It has been suggested that the play carefully avoids reference to specific individuals in its condemnation of abuses.⁵⁰ This observation catches the spirit of the play, but may not be absolutely true. When Avarice tells Respublica of the wonders he would have performed if she had not fallen ‘to checking and blamyng’ (5.6.1542) and prevented him, he launches into a series of curious topographic allusions.

I woulde have browght haulfe Kent into Northumberlande
And Somersett shiere should have raught to Cumberlande,
Than woulde I have stretche[d] the countie of Warwicke
Uppon tainter hookes, and made ytt reache to Barwicke.
A pece of the Bishopric shoulde have come southwarde—
Tut, tut, I tell yowe, I had wonderous feates towarde.

(5.6.1547-52)

On one level this is just the sort of nonsensical litany in which vices traditionally indulge in the moral interludes. But, as with many another example, it does contain some pointed observations. The reference to the expansion of the counties of Northumberland and Somerset that would have occurred if Avarice had been given free reign would not have passed unnoticed in December 1553. It is hard to avoid the inference that the play is here aiming a specific swipe at the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, suggesting that they above all others were motivated by avarice in their dealings during their periods of office.⁵¹ That the noble title of one of the leaders of the minority regime might be mentioned without specific intention is just possible, that both should be cited in the space of two lines invites a satirical interpretation, not least as the following line describes how Warwick, Northumberland's previous title, would be similarly enlarged. That Insolence might at some points be a figure for Northumberland himself is also possible. In the final scene he is accused of having committed ‘Lucifer's owne faulte t'aspire to the highest seate’ (5.10.1913): an ambition which he does not display in the play itself, but which might reflect the duke's attempts to interfere with the succession in favour of Lady Jane Grey.

Such personalised allusions are, however, only peripheral to the satirical thrust of the play. It is the condemnation of avarice and self-interest among the Edwardian administrators generally, and the call for moral and social reformation which carry forward the main burden of the play's agenda.

THE RELIGIOUS POLITICS OF ‘RESPUBLICA’

Critics largely concur over the nature and tone of Respublica's religious message. For Peter Happé, it is a play which remains essentially silent on the pressing confessional issues of the period. ‘The play eschews the violence of religious controversy, there being no hint of the theological or ecclesiastical changes which Mary may have been contemplating in 1553.’ For David Bevington the play consciously avoided such questions, concentrating upon court politics rather than theology or ritual, and avoiding any outright attack on protestant beliefs per se.⁵²

In fact the play is shot through with detailed references to ecclesiastical issues and policies. The concentration is primarily upon material rather than spiritual questions, but at a time when the future government, endowment, and status of the church was at issue such things could hardly be divided.

The nature of clerical office and the role of the priesthood are addressed directly in a brief debate between Respublica, Oppression, and People.

OPPRESSION:
Firste youre priestes and bisshops have not as thei have had.
RESPUBLICA:
[When they] had theire lyvinges men were bothe fedde and cladde
OPPRESSION:
Yea, but they ought not by scripture to be calde lordes.
RESPUBLICA:
That thei rewle the churche with scripture well accordes.
OPPRESSION:
Thei were prowde and covetous / and tooke muche uppon theim
PEOPLE:
But they were not covetous that toke all from theym[?]

(4.4.1069-74)

As we have seen, the exploitation of episcopal estates is a central theme of the attack upon the vices. The criticism of corruption in church affairs goes rather further than this, however. The wholesale sequestration of church ornaments and goods at the time of the Reformation is singled out for detailed condemnation. Avarice identifies the contents of his eighth bag of coins as the profits from

          church goodes scraped upp withoute alawe,
For which was as quicke scambling as ever I sawe,
Of their plate, their jewels, and copes, we made them lowtes,
Stopping peoples barking with lynnen rags and clowtes.
Thei had thalter clothes, thalbes, and amices
With the sindons in which wer wrapte the chalices

(3.6.867-72)

When the exploitation of church wealth has implications for the condition of the church itself and the quality of the spiritual support which it can provide, material questions and spiritual ones coincide. Consequently the play stresses the intellectual and spiritual poverty of the vices at the same time as it draws attention to their rapacious acquisition of wealth. Oppression's inability to follow a simple Latin phrase prompts Avarice to mock his pretensions to determine the livings and conditions of the higher clergy.

Loe here a fyne felowe to have a bisshoprike
A verse of latynne he cannot understande,
Yet dareth he presume boldelye to take in hande,
Into a deanerie or archdeaconrye to choppe,
And to have the liveloode awaie from a bisshopp.

(3.6.920-4)

Similarly, lower down the ecclesiastical structure, when Avarice decides to put ill-educated men into the parish livings at his disposal in order to maximise his financial returns, he does so at the expense of the parishioners who must suffer the ministrations of an inept incumbent.

I have a good benefyce of an hunderd markes
Yt is smale policie to give suche to greate clerkes
They will take no benefice but their muste have all,
A bare clerke canne bee content with a lyving smale.
Therefore sir John Lack Latten my frende shall have myne
And of hym maie I ferme yt for eyght powndes or nyne
The reste maie I reserve to myselfe for myne owne share

(3.6.955-61)

The suggestion that Respublica does not touch upon ecclesiastical or theological issues is thus mistaken. The play does address the central ecclesiastical questions of the moment, and addresses them directly. Nor does it stop short of offering solutions to them. On the crucial question of the restoration or otherwise of former episcopal estates and rectories, the play makes a clear statement in favour of a full restoration.⁵³ Avarice, as we have seen, is handed over by Nemesis to People in the final scene,

That he maie bee pressed, as men doo presse a spounge
That he maie droppe ought teverye man hys lotte
To the utmooste ferthing that he hath falslie gotte.

(5.10.1903-5)

People confirms that he will ‘squease hym as drie as a kyxe [a dry stalk]’ (line 1906). As the bulk of the profits mentioned by Avarice and the other vices has come from ecclesiastical sources, this conclusion can only allude to a substantial restoration of church wealth.

It was surely this interest in the spoliation of church lands and their possible restoration which commended the play manuscript to its first recorded owner, Sir Henry Spelman. For Spelman had a lifelong interest, amounting almost to a professional obsession, in the material wealth of the Church of England and its depredation at the time of the Reformation. His antiquarianism was no idle curiosity in relics of the past, but an earnest scholarly project aimed at providing the materials for a comprehensive account of the history and condition of the church in England, its liberties and property.⁵⁴ A series of polemical tracts published both during his lifetime and after his death by his son Clement and others, sought to identify the consequences of ecclesiastical spoliation and denounce the motives and characters of those responsible. In De Non Temerandis Ecclesiis (1613) Spelman argued that church property was created for and dedicated to the service of God, and could not therefore be appropriated for secular profit. Any attempt to do so amounted to an act of sacrilege. In his preface to the posthumous 1646 edition of the same text, Clement Spelman developed this contention historically, asserting that the ‘sacrilegious’ Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s and the attendant royal sequestration of church wealth had drawn down God's wrath upon Henry VIII, blighting the Tudor succession. On Henry, the younger Spelman issued a terse and damning judgement: ‘His family is extinct, and like Herostratus, his name not mentioned, but with his crimes.’⁵⁵ In The History and Fate of Sacrilege (published in 1698, but thought too vitriolic and controversial for inclusion in the folio edition of Spelman's Works published by Edmund Gibson in the same year), the condemnation of the guilty was extended into an account of the misfortunes befalling all those families who had profited from the sale of church property after the Dissolution, fitting them into a heavily moralised narrative of transgression and punishment.

That it was Spelman, rather than another antiquarian, who took the trouble to have Respublica copied into his manuscript collection provides further evidence to support the view that it was considered by contemporaries to be a highly political play, and one which addressed contentious ecclesiastical issues directly. For a reader such as Spelman, Respublica would have provided a congenial satirical attack upon the very people who had done well out of the Reformation. Its presentation of the Dissolution and spoliation of the episcopal estates as the products of unfettered avarice, insolence, and oppression, was merely a succinct dramatic summary of the theme which Spelman was exhaustively to chronicle in his prose tracts.

DRAMATIC DAMAGE LIMITATION: NEMESIS, QUEEN MARY, AND THE CURE OF RESPUBLICA'S ILLS

The solution which Nemesis imposes on the play in act 5, scene 10, would have accorded well with both Spelman's sense of justice and a Tudor monarch's conception of the royal prerogative. When faced with a choice between severity and generosity, the goddess opts for a judicious mixture of the two, but, like Jupiter in Heywood's Play of The Weather, she keeps her subjects in doubt as to the precise details of her judgements. Misericordia had counselled the queen to proceed with softness.

          nowe have yee occasion
and matier to shewe youre commiseracion
[It] is m[uche m]ore glorie and standith with more skyll,
Lo[st]e shepe to recover, than the scabye to spill.

(5.10.1856-9)

Justicia, predictably, had erred on the side of rigour, arguing that ‘straight justice’ was needed to redress great enormities, and ‘severitee muste putt men in feare to transgresse’ (line 1863). Nemesis' response is a model of equanimity, as befits a goddess lauded by Veritas as ‘cleare of conscience and voyde of affeccion’ (line 1783).

Ladies we have harde all your descrete advises
And eche one shall have some part of youre devises.
Neither all nor none, shall taste of severitee
But as theye are nowe knowen through ladie Veritee
So shall theye receyve our mercie or our Ire,
As the wealthe of Respublica shall best require.

(lines 1872-7)

This stress on the material wealth and well-being of the realm as the final arbiter of action reflects the focus of the play's satire and the author's own political strategy. In presenting the excesses of the Edwardian regime as financially motivated rather than the product of religious zeal (significantly it is Avarice who governs the vices and presents himself as Policy, not a character associated with a more obviously confessional agenda) Udall is able to present their redress in similar terms. He steers the last acts of the play toward reform of the economy and the financial structure of the church, rather than toward any alteration to its doctrinal base. Hence it is episcopal lands and parish livings that are explicitly referred to when Avarice is apprehended and squeezed of his ill-gotten gains, not the former monastic lands or the wealth of the newly suppressed chantries (he tries to shift the blame to Oppression for dispossessing ‘Bishops, deanes [and] provestes' and ‘lands with churche and chapple’ (lines 1848-9)). The doctrinal questions concerning the existence of Purgatory and the value of prayers and masses for the dead associated with the monastic and chantry dissolutions can, therefore, be left untouched. Udall is quite prepared to argue for a church restored to much of its former wealth, but it is the reformed church of the Edwardian settlement which he wants to strengthen, not the full-blown catholic institution with its monks, friars, and chantry priests.

The play treads carefully but determinedly through the thickets of religious policy in a way characteristic of the other household dramas studied in previous chapters. Udall adopts the rhetoric of restoration and renewal associated with the new Marian regime, and addresses the real social hardships created by Edwardian and later Henrician policies squarely and resolutely. But he does so for his own purposes. Like Heywood in The Spider and The Flie, a work of genuine catholic celebration at Mary's accession, Udall lauds the queen as the new broom who will sweep away the abuses and divisions of the recent past in favour of a virtuous and harmonious new order.⁵⁶ Like Heywood, Udall also calls for moderation in the punishment of those responsible for the previous regime. Avarice and Oppression are disciplined severely at the close of the play, but the third member of the corrupt triumvirate, Adulation, symbolic of proper respect for royal authority and service to the crown as well as flattery, is allowed to continue in office once suitably chastised.

Both Heywood's narrative poem and Udall's drama acknowledge the Marian regime's need to reconcile to it the leaders of the political nation.⁵⁷ Both texts present this necessary compromise as a triumph of queenly moderation and good government. This is not to say that either is soft on those responsible for what has gone before. Udall, as we have seen, does not flinch from specifying the problems. Like Adulation, the bulk of the old Edwardian administration and the majority of the court had to sit through a play which characterised the alleged abuses of their governance with at times excoriating severity, but which ultimately allowed them to emerge from it chastened and purified.

Unlike Heywood, however, Udall employed the appeal for magnanimity in victory to call for a settlement which protects what reformers would have seen as the doctrinal gains of the Edwardian years. Concessionary in areas which did not touch upon the fundamentals of faith, he channelled his play's reforming emphases away from the restoration of catholicism per se and into a renewal of the commonwealth and bolstering of the position of the bishops and the parish clergy. He offered his royal audience a model of reformation to which she could respond sympathetically, and presented himself as the kind of moderate and loyal counsellor who might be retained and listened to for sound advice in troubled times.⁵⁸ But, in so doing he defined the kinds of reformation most obviously required in ways which suited him.

Such a stance has exposed Udall to charges of time-serving. How, it has been asked, could someone who had advocated further reformation under Edward now celebrate the accession of a catholic monarch and condemn the policies of the previous regime?⁵⁹ As we have seen, there need be no contradiction if Respublica is read carefully and in context. Faced with the fait accomplis of a conservative sovereign, Udall used the opportunities available to him as a household dramatist to defend reform in the most effective way he could. He may have jumped aboard the bandwagon of catholic reaction, but he did so in the hope of slowing its progress and directing it along less dangerous paths.

Respublica provides a valuable example, then, of the dynamics of household drama and the opportunities it provided for the expression of dissenting opinions at court. It shows just how severe a dramatist could be in criticising the perceived failings of his audience, not simply in moral terms, but in matters of high policy. Udall could castigate the courtiers and ministers among his spectators for economic mismanagement, oppressive policies, and outright theft and corruption, safe in the knowledge that the culture of the royal household and the license of good counsel which it fostered allowed him to do so. He could do this partly, of course, because his sovereign favoured it. Criticism of Edwardian policy, if voiced in a controlled environment, was valuable ammunition to Queen Mary during the first six months of her reign. Like James V of Scotland addressing the moral of the 1540 interlude of The Thrie Estaitis to the Bishop of Glasgow, she could turn to her ministers and ask with psychological and political advantage how they intended to right the wrongs they had seen dramatised before them. But the play also shows how far such a ‘loyalist’ gesture could be used to advance less acceptable causes and direct the sovereign's attention away from areas of particular sensitivity to the author. As with Heywood's interludes and Lindsay's satire, one must be alive in reading Respublica, not only to what the dramatist says, but also to how he says it, and—often more importantly—to what he leaves unsaid.

The play thus has much to tell us about the conventions and procedures that characterise drama throughout the Tudor period. But, if on one level it is commonplace, one example among many of household drama, Respublica is also unique in being the first extant dramatic product of the court of a queen regnant. How it responds to the new imperatives of female rule is also revealing. David Bevington in a perceptive account of the play, has argued that it offers an extreme example of royal absolutism, rejecting the whole notion of conciliar government in favour of a direct relationship between divinely sanctioned ruler and obedient subject. ‘The queen figure in Act V’, he argues, ‘is no umpire, who listens to all estates impartially … Nemesis … listens only to the voice of divine guidance’.⁶⁰ This, I think, underestimates the importance ascribed to counsel, both in the play and in the concluding prayers which refocus attention from the play world to the real problems and anxieties of the audience. Here it is significant that Mary's Council gains equal billing with the queen in the petition for long life and health, and her councillors are instructed not only to serve their mistress, but also themselves to maintain the commonwealth (5.10.1936-8).⁶¹ Far from being marginalised, the role of the Council as a governing body is thus placed in the most rhetorically powerful position in the play. Bevington's reading also in my view underplays the genuine difficulties created for the playwright by the novel fact that the sovereign in whom he sought to invest absolute reforming power was a woman.

If one focuses exclusively on the figure of Nemesis, the notion that the play experiences no difficulty with the idea of female sovereignty might be sustainable. But Nemesis is only one of Udall's female characters, and a relatively minor one, who occupies the playing space only during the final scenes. For the bulk of the drama attention is focused on a far less authoritative woman, Respublica herself. And she, as we shall see, presents a wholly different conception of female involvement in politics.

THE STATE'S TWO BODIES: GENDER AND RESPUBLICA'S POLITICAL ANATOMY

The idea that the realm might be imagined as a human body is a commonplace of Tudor political thinking. In one image it combines the idealised notion of a commonweal of many members all interdependent and contributing harmoniously to a single goal, with the hierarchical dictum that obedience to a single authority—the Head of State—was necessary for a realm to function effectively. What the reconceptualisation of this anthropomorphic model as a specifically female body involves is a marked increase in the physicality of that imaginary conception of the state. What had been merely an ideal when it was conceived as a largely asexual male anatomy, became increasingly corporeal when conceived of as female. The implications of the prevailing conception of the female body: frail, sensual, and manifestly carnal, are carried over into the sphere of political discourse. The language of statecraft becomes eroticised by the language of courtship, seduction, and sexual and domestic mastery. The political imperatives of the domestic sphere thus become entangled with those of public debate. In this way Respublica's status as a female embodiment of the realm is a crucial determinant of the language and political discourse of the play. Just as the male establishment was awkwardly coming to terms with the new cultural and political demands of operating under a queen regnant, so the play itself manifests those awkwardnesses by figuring the state as a woman.⁶²

Respublica is introduced in the dramatis personae as ‘a wydowe’, and the play considers her in those terms. On one level she is an abstraction: the realm of England, lacking her proper spouse, a sovereign king. But on another, more obvious level she is a woman of authority, who moves, speaks, and expresses emotions in the acting place. The stage has no time for abstractions, as soon as an actor takes on a role it becomes a person with human shape and attributes. In this way Respublica quickly blurs the distinction between state and sovereign, becoming a figure inextricably associated with the new queen herself, as she negotiates with her counsellors, consults her subjects, and seeks to address the problems facing her realm. It is thus with a figure very like a queen that Avarice and the gallants practise their deceptive trade.

Unlike the counsellors and ministers of Magnyfycence or The Thrie Estaitis, Respublica's vices are specifically ‘gallants’, their on-stage personae stressing their courtly, seductive appearance rather than their ministerial capabilities. Their presence—like the threat they pose—is immediate and carnal rather than theoretical and spiritual. Unlike Magnyfycence, Respublica is inherently handicapped. She needs male advisors to help her to govern herself. She laments the absence of ‘a perfecte staigh’ to secure her (2.1.457). When Avarice poses as Policy, she tells him ‘Well I fele the lacke of your helping hande by the Roode’ (2.2.493). When she prays for rescue it is tellingly for male assistance that she calls: ‘Is there no good manne that on me wyll have mercy?’ (line 477). When faced with a crisis she is ‘att hir wittes endes for what for to saie or do’ (1.3.240).

As a vulnerable, unmarried woman, Respublica is the subject of physical handling of a sort not represented in any of the political moralities created during a male reign. She is a female body to be guided, directed, pulled, and pushed by the hands of men. The vices will ‘clawe hir elbowe’ to remind her of their service (line 269). Her complete submission to Avarice is as much physical as it is metaphorical, as the imagery makes clear.

RESPUBLICA:
I will putt miselfe whollye into your handes
…
AVARICE:
I thanke youe ladye
And I trust ere long to ease all [y]oure maladie.
Will ye putte yourselfe nowe wholye into my handes?
RESPUBLICA:
Ordre me as youe wyll.

(2.2.499, 505-8)

And the manner in which the vices attempt to win her support is constructed in their minds as a thinly veiled seduction. Avarice suggests that she

Fayne wolde … have succoure and easemente of hir griefe
And highly advaunce them that wolde promise reliefe …

(1.3.241-2)

The ‘service’ which they offer is both ministerial and sexual. Avarice promises to ‘bring hir in suche a paradise / That hir selfe shall sue me to have my service’ (lines 253-4). The metaphor of the ship of state in need of a captain becomes conflated with the physical presence of a woman to be groped and manhandled. Avarice tells Insolence to ‘Bee not … skeymishe to take in hand the stern’ (line 278), and he promises ‘I will bourde hir, and I trowe so wynne hir favoure / That she sh[a]ll hire me / and paie well for my laboure’ (lines 331-2). The vices attempt to outdo each other in bawdy bravado over how well each will ‘serve’ the state.

ADULATION:
I will doe hir double servis to another.
AVARICE:
Ye double knave youe, will ye never be other?
ADULATION:
She shall have triple service of me honestye.
AVARICE:
Ye quadrible knave, will ye ner use modestie?
Thowe drunken whoresone, doest thoue not see nor perceive
Where Respublica standes readie us to receyve?

(2.3.534-9)

When Respublica tries to dismiss Avarice, rejoicing that she shall be rid of him at last, she lays herself open to his bawdy misunderstanding of ‘ridding’ for ‘riding’.

AVARICE:
Naie by this crosse ye shall never be rydde for me.
RESPUBLICA:
And of thy compares
AVARICE:
Well leate them doo as thei luste.
I will ryde upon Jyll myne owne mare that is juste
Other waies I shall doe yowe service of the beste.
RESPUBLICA:
Thowe wicked wretche dareste thowe with me to jeste?

(5.6.1503-8)

Once conceived as a woman the state thus becomes liable to be treated as one, its problems being dismissed as the product of fickle or weak-willed female inadequacy. Avarice rejects Respublica's fears of misrule as the product of her ‘false heart’ (4.4.1102). When she finally throws him out, he interprets her regeneration as an act of shrewishness: ‘My ladie is waxte froward’ (5.8.1639). Even the female virtues treat her with a tetchiness which is rarely seen in the treatment of male protagonists.

MISERICORDIA:
What saie ye to me? What, wooman, can ye not speake?
I am come downe, all youre sorowes at ons to breake
Speake, wooman …

(4.4.1227-9)

Respublica is, then, doubly subject to the actions of others. As a personification of the state, she is abused by the ministers upon whom she has to rely for her government. As a woman, she is manhandled by both the vices who falsely claim to protect her and the virtuous female characters who treat her as a malleable figure of womanly frailty.

Elsewhere in the play, in Nemesis and the four Daughters of God, Udall is able to offer uncompromising images of power in female form, largely because the frame of reference he draws upon is explicitly inhuman. As abstractions, they play out the limited and conventional roles inherent in their names: Misericordia speaks always for forgiveness, Justicia for stern judgement. No such shorthand was possible with Respublica, as her role in the text is too complex and her sphere of operation too earthly. Thus Udall had to look elsewhere for inspiration and, as no familiar and readily acceptable model of worldly female sovereignty was available to him, he necessarily fell back upon assumptions based upon experience, in which women were necessarily inferior to men, regardless of their status. Hence the state becomes ‘a wydowe’, an incomplete equation identified only by her lack of a husband. In such a frame of reference, the only readily acceptable path was for her to find a reliable male guardian and governor. Like her dramatic counterpart, Queen Mary was, of course, to take this course at the first opportunity, albeit arousing anxieties of a still more direct kind by choosing the catholic Philip II of Spain as her husband. But the problems of unmarried female sovereignty were to recur with even greater urgency in the reign of Mary's longer-lived and resolutely virgin successor, Elizabeth I, as the following chapter will explore.

Notes

1. W. L. Edgerton, Nicholas Udall (New York, 1965), pp. 9-10. Udall's Floures for Latine Speakynge (1534) dates from this period of semi-independent scholarly activity.

2. Thomas Tusser, Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, United to as many of Good Huswifery, Nowe Lately Augmented (1573), RSTC 24375, II, sig., 27v.

3. This was John Hoorde, eldest son of Richard Hoorde of Bridgnorth in Shropshire and Elizabeth née Matthew. Sir Wasey Sterry, Eton College Register, 1441-1698 (Eton, 1943), p. 179.

4. Thomas Cheyney was the second son of Sir Robert Cheyney of Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire, and Mary Cheyney, née Sylsham. Ibid., p. 76.

5. H. Nicholas, Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England (London, 1834-7), VII, 152-3, 155, 157. Edgerton, Udall, p. 37.

6. Marie Axton talks simply of ‘misconduct’ (Marie Axton, Three Tudor Classical Interludes (Woodbridge, 1982), p. 3), Scheurweghs, printing the relevant documents, passes over the confession of buggery without comment, noting simply that the sources do not confirm Udall's involvement in the robbery (G. Scheurweghs, Nicholas Udall's ‘Roister Doister’, in H. De Vocht, ed., Materials for the Study of Old English, XVI (1939), pp. xxiv-xxv). The latter does, however, chastise the author for his failure to pay his debts, concluding that ‘truth obliges us to record, not only his successes as a scholar, but also his failings as a man’ (p. 108).

7. Edgerton, Udall, pp. 39-40.

8. Mercifully, such speculative scholarship has not caught on, although it is tempting to apply similar palaeographic generosity to redress other potential injustices: revisionist articles beckon on Herod and the moussaka of the Innocents.

9. The fathers of both Cheyney and Hoorde had to attend the Council with them and stand surety for further hearings. Hoorde, having been born c. 1522, was about nineteen years of age at the time of Udall's confession (Sterry, Register, p. 179). Perhaps as the result of lobbying on his behalf by influential allies, Udall seems to have escaped prosecution for an offence which, since the Buggery Act of 1534, carried the death penalty. A. Luders, et al., eds., Statutes of The Realm (11 vols., London, 1810-28), II, pp. 441, 455, 725, and 749.

10. Edgerton, Udall, pp. 10-11.

11. Axton, Classical Interludes, pp. 1-2. William Hunnis has also been suggested as the author of Jacob and Esau (P. W. White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1993), p. 118).

12. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, eds., S. R. Cattley and G. Townsend (8 vols., London, 1837-41), v, pp. 421-9 and appendix. For the following, see W. R. Streitberger, Court Revels, 1485-1559 (Toronto, 1994), p. 148, Edgerton, Udall, passim, and Scheurweghs, ‘Roister Doister’, pp. xi-l.

13. See below, pp. 168-72.

14. The ‘Prologue’ informs the audience that, like the ‘young babes with tholde folke’ who cried out upon Christ's entry into Jerusalem, ‘Soo for goode Englande sake this presente howre and daie / In hope of hir restoring from hir late decaye, / We children to youe olde folke, both with harte and voyce / Maie joyne all together to thanke god and Rejoyce / That he hath sent Marye our soveraigne and Quene / To reforme thabuses which hithertoo hath been, / And that yls whiche long tyme have reigned uncorrecte / Shall nowe forever bee redressed with effecte. / She is oure most wise and most worthie Nemesis / Of whome our plaie meneth tamende that is amysse’ (lines 45-54). W. W. Greg, ed., ‘Respublica’: An Interlude for Christmas 1553, EETS o.s. 226 (London, 1952 for 1946); all references to the text are to this edition.

15. Ibid., p. 1.

16. Ibid., pp. x-xviii; L. Bradner, ‘A Test for Udall's Authorship’, Modern Language Notes, 42 (1927), pp. 378-80. William Edgerton, however, takes a more sceptical line on Udall's authorship, Nicholas Udall, p. 65.

17. A. Feuillerat, Documents Relating to the Revels at Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary (Louvain, 1914), p. 159; Greg, ed., ‘Respublica’, p. viii.

18. There is an entry in the Revels Accounts for ‘Newe makinge, translatinge, allteringe, garnysshinge, and fynisshinge of dyvers and sondry garmentes, aparrell, vestures, and properties for one playe or enterlude by the gentillmen of the chappell to be shewen and played before the quenes majestie at her highnes coronacion, the preparacion therefore begoon and wrowght upon aswell ageanste that tyme by vertue of a warraunte sygned with her Majesties oune handes and upon newe determynacion surseased and lefte of[f] as ageane wrowghte upon fynysshed and served att the Christemas next ensuinge’ (Feuillerat, Documents, p. 149). The relevant accounts cover work done between 22 September and 28 September, ‘wen as the same (by reason of a newe determynacion of appoyntement the play to serve att christmas nexte foloing) surseased and were left of[f] unfynysshed’ (ibid., p. 150).

19. Ibid., p. 289. The appearance of ‘Self-Love’ among the dramatis personae raises the possibility that this was a production of the otherwise unknown ‘Play of Self-love’, which was also performed by the King's Players for Sir Thomas Chaloner at Hoxton, Middlesex, at some point between 1551 and 1556. I. Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558 (Cambridge, 1984), p. 156.

20. Feuillerat, Documents, p. 290.

21. Greg, Respublica, p. x.

22. Feuillerat, Documents, p. 289. The production of Genus Humanum/Self-Love called for a purple gown requiring 5 yards of satin, five white satin cassocks at 7 yards each, three purple cassocks at 7 yards each, a cassock of red and one of green satin (7 yards each), three long gowns of tawny, ash-coloured, and black satin respectively (8 yards each), a cassock of black damask and a long gown of purple damask (16 yards the pair), a short gown of red damask (6 yards), three short gowns of purple satin (six yards each), three yards of kersey each for the Good and Bad Angel's costumes, plus wings, three ‘thrombde’ hats and ten-dozen counters. If one accepts the dating of the warrant as precisely accurate, the Great Wardrobe would have had at best twenty four hours to provide the lot.

23. When, for example, the Christmas revels of 1525/6 were particularly barren of entertainment, owing to an outbreak of plague, the chronicler Edward Hall felt it necessary to note the fact. Hall, p. 707.

24. Feuillerat, Documents, p. 159.

25. In addition to ‘The charges of fynysshinge thafforseide’ (i.e. Genus Humanum/Self-Love), they specify the cost of ‘putting in redine[ss] soche thinges as in thoffice of the Revells were most behovable and lykely to be called upon at Christmas with thattendaunce of the officers and other ministers gyving theyre awayet therfore at the Courte’, a description which might include the preparation of any number of properties and materials for other productions. Feuillerat, Documents, pp. 152 and 290.

26. See R. Potter, The English Morality Play (London, 1975), pp. 94 and 189; P. Happé, ed., Tudor Interludes (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 27; David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge, MA, 1968), pp. 115 and 118.

27. For the contrary suggestion, see Potter, English Morality Play, p. 94: ‘Thus, with prayers for Queen Mary and the commonwealth, this gently satirical play about the recent past concludes in the happy present, in the first Christmas of Mary's reign, with the Reformation seemingly banished forever from the Catholic commonwealth of England’.

28. Jennifer Loach, Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1988), pp. 1-10; Dale Hoak, ‘Two Revolutions in Tudor Government: The Formation and Organisation of Mary I's Privy Chamber’, in C. Coleman and D. Starkey, eds., Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration (Oxford, 1986), pp. 87-115, pp. 96-107.

29. Sir Thomas Smith, A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, ed. E. Lamond (Cambridge, 1954). For the growth of analytical and hortatory literature of this sort, see Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 12-43.

30. John Caius, A Boke or Counseill Against the Disease Commonly Called the Sweate or Sweatyng Sickness, RSTC 4343. See E. S. Roberts, ed., The Works of John Caius (Cambridge, 1912), pp. 18-19, and P. Slack, ‘Social Policy and the Constraints of Government, 1547-58’, in J. Loach and R. Tittler, eds., The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 1540-1560 (London, 1980), pp. 94-115.

31. The play's contemporary relevance is confirmed by the prologue's insistence that the play is intended ‘for goode Englande sake this present howre and daie / In hope of hir restoring from hir late decaye’ (lines 45-6).

32. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations, I (New Haven, 1964), pp. 464-9. See also W. K. Jordan, Edward VI: The Threshold of Power (London, 1970), pp. 471-82.

33. Hughes and Larkin, eds., Proclamations, I, pp. 504-9 and 530-3. A further contributory factor in the inflationary economy was seen to be the enclosure of common lands without licence. This, too, is reflected in the play. People complains of the destruction of trees throughout the realm and the consequent dearth of windfall pickings of firewood from common woodlands (4.4.1093-6). Oppression, the spokesman for the enclosers, is typically unsympathetic, telling him to burn turf or his bed-straw in lieu of firewood (5.8.1625-6). People's further complaint that the price of beef has been forced intolerably high by the aristocratic monopoly on grazing land (4.4.1097-8) gets similarly short shrift (5.8.1627-8). Such hardship as these exchanges reflect had prompted the Edwardian regime into action. An Enclosure Commission was established in 1549 and a Tillage Act was passed in 1552, following up proclamations in 1548 and 1549 aimed at reducing the ‘marvellous desolation’ caused to the countryside. Slack, ‘Social Policy’, p. 102, Hughes and Larkin, eds., Proclamations, pp. 427-9, 451-3, 461-4, 471-3.

34. Hughes and Larkin, eds., Proclamations, p. 391.

35. Ibid., pp. 409-24.

36. Ibid., pp. 435-6, 439, 490-1, 495-6, 499-503, 504-9.

37. Ibid., pp. 440-1, 449-51, 528-9; Slack, ‘Social Policy’, p. 97; C. E. Challis, ‘Presidential Address’, British Numismatic Journal, 68 (1993), pp. 172-7; C. E. Challis, The Tudor Coinage (Manchester, 1978), pp. 96-112, 175-86.

38. It may well be to this legislation specifically that People refers when he complains of the vices that ‘sometime they face us, and call us peason knaves / And zwareth goddes bones thei will make is all slaves’ (3.3.701-2).

39. Slack, ‘Social Policy’, p. 102; P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (Harlow, 1988), pp. 122-3; Hughes and Larkin, eds., Proclamations, 1, pp. 489-90, 514-18. For other attempts to address economic problems at this time, see Thirsk, Economic Policy, pp. 43ff.

40. Dale Hoak, ‘Rehabilitating the Duke of Northumberland: Politics and Political Control, 1549-53’, in Loach and Tittler, eds., Mid-Tudor Polity, pp. 29-51, p. 30.

41. As Avarice admits, Respublica's plight creates ‘A tyme that I have wayted for a greate longe space’ (1.1.89).

42. As Oppression observes to Respublica with sly irony, the ‘reforms’ enacted by the vices have been entirely for their own profit. ‘For my parte I will sware the gospell booke uppon / That if the Lawes I have made shoulde everye one / Redowne to myne owne singuler comodytee / They coulde not be frendelier framed then thei be’ (4.4.1131-4).

43. W. G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII, 1500-1547 (Harlow, 1976), pp. 125-6, 141-2; W. J. Sheils, ‘Profit, Patronage, or Pastoral Care?: The Rectory Estates of the Archbishopric of York, 1540-1640’, in R. O'Day and F. Heal, eds., Princes and Paupers in the English Church, 1500-1800 (Leicester, 1981).

44. Hoskins, Age of Plunder, pp. 138-9.

45. Ibid., pp. 140-1.

46. Ibid., pp. 141-3.

47. Ibid., pp. 144-5; W. K. Jordan, Edward VI, pp. 456-7.

48. Loach, Parliament and the Crown, p. 74.

49. E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy, eds., Handbook of British Chronology (3rd edn, London, 1986), pp. 107, 112; Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), pp. 87-9; Hoak ‘Two Revolutions’, pp. 104-7; J. A. Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 228-9.

50. Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, p. 116.

51. H. B. Norland, Drama in Early Tudor Britain, 1485-1558 (Lincoln, NE, 1995), pp. 203-4. That the reference to a piece of the bishopric coming southward may also have a topical relevance is equally possible. The bishopric of Durham had been dismembered by Northumberland and its London residence, Durham Place, had been taken from it (thereby appropriating a ‘piece of the Bishopric’ in the south). In December 1553, Mary's first Parliament debated the restoration of the see to its former state and the return of Durham Place to the bishop's use. A bill was passed by the Lords to this effect, but was rejected by the Commons on 5 December. Loach, Parliament and the Crown, pp. 80-1.

52. Happé, ed., Tudor Interludes, p. 27; Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, p. 115. See also Norland, Drama in Early Tudor Britain, p. 207: ‘No mention is made of the organisation or doctrine of the church. The author deals only with principles largely of an economic nature: he presents no programme of social or religious change.’

53. Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, p. 120. For the contrary suggestion that ‘Nothing is said … in the play about restoring church lands’, see Norland, Drama in Early Tudor Britain, p. 205.

54. G. Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1995), pp. 157-64.

55. Ibid., p. 162.

56. In John Heywood's text, Mary is presented, literally, as the housemaid whose broom sweeps the cobwebs from the window-pane, thus ending the dispute between the combative insects. See J. S. Farmer, ed., The Spider and The Fly … by John Heywood (London, 1907).

57. Mindful of the need to win over the political nation, Mary pointedly asked for no subsidies from either of her first two Parliaments (those of 1553 and 1554), even remitting any outstanding payments from that granted by the last Parliament of Edward VI. P. Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979).

58. Udall wisely eschewed the hysterical reaction to Mary's accession of those zealous reformers who sought to intimidate and provoke the new queen into concessions. In the same month as the play was performed, December 1553, opponents of ecclesiastical reaction had thrown a dog, shaven above the ears to represent a tonsured priest, into Mary's Presence Chamber, a symbol of their hostility to popish priestly power. CSPsp, XI, p. 418; Loach, Parliament and The Crown, p. 83.

59. For a discussion of this issue, see W. Perry, ‘Udall as Time-server’, Notes and Queries, 194 (1950), p. 120; White, Theatre and Reformation, p. 129, and Norland, Drama in Early Tudor Britain, p. 207.

60. Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, pp. 118-19.

61. Such prayers for the Council had not been used in the plays addressed to Henry VIII, but in those written for Mary and her female successor, Elizabeth I, they were to become commonplace.

62. It might be objected that the play deliberately forestalls identification of Respublica and Mary by making the former representative of the state rather than a prince, and by overtly identifying the queen with Nemesis. But, as the following paragraphs will suggest, these distinctions quickly break down under the dramatic imperatives of performance.

Abbreviations

BL: British Library

CSPSp: G. A. Bergenroth, et al., eds., Calendar of State Papers Spanish (13 vols., London, 1862-1954)

CSPF: J. Stevenson, ed., Calendar of State Papers Foreign, 1561–62 (London, 1866)

EETS: Early English Text Society

Hall: Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Houses of Lancaster and York, ed. H. Ellis (London, 1809)

LP: J. S. Brewer, et al., eds, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of The Reign of Henry VIII (21 vols. in 36; London, 1862-1932)

METh: Medieval English Theatre

PRO: Public Record Office

REED: Records of Early English Drama

RSTC: A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, eds., The Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1475-1640, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged by W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and K. F. Pantzer (London, 1976)