SOURCE: Clark, Ira. “The Power of Integrity in Massinger's Women.” In The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, edited by Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky, pp. 63-79. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.

[In the following essay, Clark argues that by emphasizing the value of female chastity, Massinger's plays “presented a reformation of gender roles that considerably increased women's power without rupturing tradition.”]

Most critics have admitted the dominating power, or at least the willfulness, of women in the drama of Philip Massinger, premier professional playwright of the late Jacobean and Caroline theater.¹ But despite recognition of these women's superior wills and language, little note has been made of their exceptional personal integrity or of their extraordinary persuasiveness in public arenas. Nor has the significance of these women's powerful integrity and effective public speech been deemed potentially important for understanding a sociopolitical principle that Massinger consistently presented for the applause of his privileged audience of inns of court friends, Blackfriars' supporters, and noble patrons. Understanding the relative enhancement of women's status in Massinger's stage world is important for understanding a social principle he regularly presented—accommodation. Massinger's customary representation of ideologies of family and state as mutually supporting, in conformity with Stuart expression, further extends accommodation to a political principle. Moreover, the repeated success of his presentation of sociopolitical accommodation suggests inclinations toward that principle among the powerful Pembroke circle of political puritans Massinger courted.²

Throughout his dramatic works Massinger seems to have encouraged grateful incorporation of new needs and promise within revered customs and values in order to help ease growing dissatisfaction among leaders searching for a common ground that promoted increasing the power of country and city with the court, balancing the constitutional importance of the Parliament with the monarch, sponsoring lex over rex (law's superiority to royal will), and fostering social elevation for merit with degree—without dislocation or strife. Specifically his consistent presentation of accommodation proffers a moderate reform of traditional virtues based on the old principle of gratitude, with unusual emphasis on obligations of protection, support, and loving concern from the superior (king and father, noble and gentleman, husband and male) as well as duty, honor, and loving loyalty from below. The relative enhancement of women's status seems telling in Massinger plays because of his presentation of the greater likelihood of potential reforms in personal and social mores, particularly of making available greater choice in love, than of potential reforms in the state. Perhaps representation of meliorating reforms in sexual and familial relations made available a paradigm of tradition accommodating change which might radiate from the extended family through the commonwealth, as suggested by his women's extraordinarily great say in public affairs.

Whether advocating Christian heritage or classical precept, promulgating ancient common law, or promoting polite personal conduct, early Stuarts commenting on women's affairs, be it their social rank, economic and legal dependence, or manners, overwhelmingly emphasized their subordination to a father or to a husband prospective, current, or deceased. Stuart woman was exhorted to obey. Second and third of her all-important traits, the private and the public signs of her obedience, were her chastity, including premarital virginity and marital fidelity, and her modest silence.³ As the male's touchy defense of his honor displayed admirable self-assertion, so the woman's carefully guarded chastity, her honor, exhibited self-suppression within the double standard. And as the male's prerogatives of giving orders at home and especially of speaking for the family in public demonstrated his preeminence, so the woman's modest discretion, most obvious in public silence, exhibited her submission. Massinger habitually presents the traditional male-female hierarchy, yet his presentation also suggests the rewards of a significant increase in women's influence, especially in political and legal forums where women had no voice and few rights. Massinger's plays frequently represent women winning sufficient moral, social, and political leverage to improve their voiceless, weak status by exalting Western tradition's sine qua non, chastity, into proof of personal integrity and potent will. Through such an accommodation among traditional absolutes of feminine virtue—increasing the might of women's voices and the independence of their status by increasing the value of their chastity—Massinger's plays presented a reformation of gender roles that considerably increased women's power, without rupturing tradition.

Women's power appears even incidentally in Massinger's plays. Their submissiveness often contributes to disaster. Athenais's espousal of women's subordination threatens rule in The Emperor of the East (1631) and Theocrine's adherence to it augments horror in The Unnatural Combat (1624-25? with Field).⁴ Women frequently wield sovereignty, the regent Pulcheria in The Emperor of the East, the queen in The Queen of Corinth (1616-17), and Cleopatra in The False One (1620?), both with Fletcher. It is significant that women's power usually derives from chastity and fidelity whereas their failures issue from the actual or perceived lack of it. Dorothea's power for Christian conversion in The Virgin Martyr (1620? with Dekker) is inherited by Paulina in The Renegado (1624). Conversely, Beaumelle's flaunted adultery in The Fatal Dowry (1617-19? with Field) and Domitia's in The Roman Actor (1626) bring disaster, as do Sforza's suspicions in The Duke of Milan (1621-22?). Massinger's plays further present chaste integrity and sexual reform by consistently satirizing the male double standard and rewarding male loyalty. Seducing or assaulting placket knights in The Parliament of Love (1624), The Picture (1629), and The Elder Brother (1625? with Fletcher) become butts. Chaste lovers, the elder brother, Caldoro of The Guardian (1633), and Galeazzo of The Bashful Lover (1636) marry women they are true to. The Double Marriage (1621? with Fletcher) confirms the potency of chaste personal integrity; the weak husband and his society collapse because of their failure to match the chaste loyalty of an incredibly self-sacrificing first wife. Finally, Massinger's most obvious signal of reforming presentation of the traditional subordination of women appears in their persuasive public rhetoric. Nowhere except in chastening the vain chatter of Lady Frugal in The City Madam (1632) do Massinger's plays follow the trend of satirizing female volubility. His women seem trained in rhetorical tradition, like the daughter of the tutor Charomonte, who is provided with the identical upbringing (except in arms) given the heir apparent in The Great Duke of Florence (1627). Massinger's women voice his plays' most effective rhetoric, speaking eloquently in two public arenas that specifically barred women: councils of national policy and judicial hearings. Massinger's presentation of accommodating reform in women's traditional triple virtues—elevating their status within subordination by exalting their chastity into personal integrity and the strong will to speak out in public forums to demand private respect and move public policy—proffered women relief and hope within old forms. Given Stuart approval of the paternalistic exercise of power, Massinger's representations suggest considerable inclination and potential for meliorating reform.

Representative of Massinger's presentation are two women who choose their own husbands, affect public policy, and win quasi-legal hearings: Camiola, The Maid of Honour (1621-22?), and Cleora, the heroine of The Bondman (1623). Without any guardian, Camiola is left with unusual independence in choosing a husband among a foolish courtier Sylli, her dead father's gentleman retainer Adorni, the king's favorite Fulgentio, and King Roberto's bastard brother and paragon knight of Malta Bertoldo. Yet Camiola's status leaves her vulnerable to Roberto's disapproval of his brother and promotion of his minion. Her self-conscious integrity and independence, almost egoism, mainly follow from pride in her chastity. She demonstrates her will by refusing to succumb to public pressures and by standing forth to refute one after another of the play's host of selfish, arrogant characters.

Camiola is as repulsed by the presumptuous Fulgentio's native vices as she is attracted by Bertoldo's royal virtues. Therefore, despite the king's virtual command, she rejects the worthless favorite, “As I am a Queene in mine owne house” (2.2.77). When Fulgentio, by displaying the king's ring, tries to lure her ambitions and compel her obedience, she stands on personal integrity:

                                                                                Though the King may
Dispose of my life and goods, my mind's mine owne,
And shall be never yours. The King (Heaven blesse him)
Is good and gracious, and being in himselfe
Abstemious from base and goatish loosenesse,
Will not compell against their wills, chaste Maidens,
To dance in his mignions circles. …
          …
I am still my selfe, and will be.

(2.2.168-77)

Significantly Camiola not only proclaims her personal integrity, she identifies it with her sense of honor, her chastity. So Fulgentio threatens her chaste repute and spreads lies that she is lasciviously promiscuous. In attacking her primary token of value in the society, he takes advantage as well of the physical or cultural prohibition against a woman's avenging her wronged honor as a man might his. But because Camiola's will, fortified by chastity, is decisively superior, Fulgentio's actions redound to his own ruin.

Camiola's attraction to Bertoldo, as well as her revulsion from Fulgentio, requires that she demonstrate integrity of will. She takes action on learning that not only has Bertoldo lost his campaign and been imprisoned but also that Roberto has issued an edict against anyone's ransoming him. Refusing to blame her monarch, Camiola nevertheless disobeys out of some combination of love and pride. This “simple Virgin” resolves to redeem Bertoldo from disgrace and dungeon because “my aime is high, / And for the honor of my sex to fall so, / Can never prove inglorious” (3.3.162-64). When she commissions Adorni to ransom Bertoldo she further orders him to witness their betrothal (3.3.202-7). Moving boldly she defies her king and she puts aside Bertoldo's oath of celibacy as a knight of Malta, which she had heretofore respected.

More directly, Camiola asserts her personal rights against the king himself when, attended by Fulgentio, he arrives to compel her compliance. On their arrival his highness's “humblest hand-maid” kneels in a physical emblem of her political stance; before, she had evaded confronting the king by the popular ploy of proclaiming his goodness and his minister's misunderstanding. Now when Roberto announces that he has come “to correct / [her] stubborne disobedience” and will forgive her when she amends her fault, she denies that she has knowingly trespassed. When he declares that her rejection of Fulgentio has offended him, she reverses her physical as well as her political posture, effectively arguing her case:

                                        With your leave, I must not kneele Sir,
While I replie to this: but thus rise up
In my defence, and tell you as a man
(Since when you are unjust, the deity
Which you may challenge as a King, parts from you)
'Twas never read in holy writ, or morall,
That subjects on their loyalty were oblig'd
To love their Soveraignes vices.
To such an undeserver is no vertue.

(4.5.52-60)

Seeming to declare allegiance to absolute royal sovereignty, Camiola subordinates royal sovereignty to moral codes and considers continuance in that sovereignty dependent on personal adherence to them. Even as guardian of a subject who is an orphan, the king has no right to compel her choice; he must recognize lex over rex to remain monarch of a people happy because he is “Guided by justice, not his passionate will.” Having earned the king's admiration by pleading her public issue, which challenges absolute monarchy, this “Excellent virgin” pursues her related private issue, the slander of her reputation. She demands that the chief custodian of justice enforce her rights by finding his favorite guilty of slandering her. Two remarkable social reforms are prominent through this scene. First, a woman is speaking out legally. Camiola argues her case in two roles that, as a woman, she has no right to assume. As a plaintiff she deems herself a citizen with considerable civil rights. As a spokesperson she argues as a lawyer, a counsellor. Second, a woman is acting on the grounds of her independent integrity, which Camiola regards as an extension of her traditional prime virtue, chastity. Basing reform for the future in the tradition of chaste integrity Camiola speaks out to win her case. Roberto banishes Fulgentio until he repents and gains her pardon.

Camiola's beloved Bertoldo and the Duchess Aurelia, whose domain Bertoldo besieges, provide contrasts to Camiola's integrity. Bertoldo is faulted for ingratitude to Camiola and vainglorious opportunistic love of Aurelia. On learning that Camiola has rescued him from abjection at considerable risk, he pledges love service to her, damning himself if he falters. But when Aurelia astoundingly offers herself and her duchy to him he feels besieged into submission, even though he fully understands that to do so demonstrates an ingratitude he deems the ultimate sin:

No, no, it cannot be, yet but Camiola,
There is no stop betweene me and a crowne.
Then my ingratitude! a sinne in which
All sinnes are comprehended! Aide me vertue,
Or I am lost.

(4.4.153-57)

Particularly because he is surrendering not to love but to his aspiration for a crown, he deserves Adorni's condemnation for all the audience, “The heavie curse that waites on perjurie, / And foule ingratitude, pursue thee ever” (4.4.190-91). Aurelia provides the central foil to Camiola, as her willfulness falls through infatuation into subservience. In the same peremptory way she won Bertoldo, Aurelia promises submission to her betrothed: “When you are made my consort, / All the prerogatives of my high birth cancell'd / I'll practise the obedience of a wife” (5.2.16-18).

There is no place for Aurelia's submissiveness in a maid true to honor, and therefore to independent personal integrity. Never so despotically capricious as her foil, Camiola is admirably more egoistic, more willful, more nearly absolute, in good and in ill. What she can be absolved of is the charge of social and political climbing.⁵ She does reject the devoted and socially lower Adorni, who challenged and wounded Fulgentio on her behalf and who acted as her emissary for Bertoldo. And she challenges both state interdiction and religious vows in order to be betrothed to the brother of a king. These acts indicate her extraordinary pride. They do not represent climbing, an antithesis to that pride. Although she never encourages Adorni's attentions, she awards him one-third of her estate. She refuses Fulgentio, second only to the king in the island's hierarchy, as unworthy. And when she chooses to ransom and marry Bertoldo she is a superior saving an inferior perjured, dishonored, imprisoned, disowned, “Dead to all hope, and buried in the grave / Of his calamities” (5.2.109-10). These answers a proudly independent Camiola supplies during her climactic arraignment of Bertoldo, Aurelia, and their society. Because of Bertoldo's ungrateful desertion of her for the duchess, she demands her legal rights of prior betrothal:

                                                                                my towring vertue
From the assurance of my merit scornes
To stoope so low. I'll take a nobler course,
And confident in the justice of my cause,
The king his brother, and new mistrisse, judges,
Ravish him from her armes.

(5.1.105-10)

So sure is Camiola of her righteous position and especially of her personal chaste integrity, she chooses to display them in a public arena dominated by the king she has challenged and the arrogant duchess who would have to surrender her prospective husband.

Camiola creates the final quasi-legal hearing at court by sweeping into the pomp celebrating Bertoldo's betrothal to Aurelia. Compounding the odds against her she invites the duke of Urbin, whose war for Aurelia's love created the initial stir, to join her other self-interested judges. Camiola's final plea to them makes one notable general political assumption, claims one important public social right, and establishes one central private privilege. She insists that to remain king, chief minister of justice, Roberto is obliged to decide his brother's case without prejudice, “not sway'd, or by favour, or affection, / By a false glosse, or wrested comment alter / The true intent, and letter of the law” (5.2.65-67). She further demands the right to argue her own case, in the eloquent plain style of truth, rather than be represented by a male lawyer, in ornate figures:

                                                            The goodnesse of my cause
Begets such confidence in mee, that I bring
No hir'd tongue to plead for mee, that with gay
Rhetoricall flourishes may palliate
That, which stripp'd naked, will appeare deform'd.
I stand here, mine owne advocate; and my truth
Deliver'd in the plainest language, will
Make good it selfe.

(5.2.70-77)

Winning assent for her argument against Bertoldo she once more exhibits the integrity derived from her honesty, her chastity. In fact, she displays egoism, describing herself as a superior beauty. But in a show of proud humility she establishes the importance of self-assurance that curbs overweening beyond the pride of integrity:

                                                                                Downe proud heart!
Why doe I rise up in defence of that,
Which, in my cherishing of it hath undone mee?
No Madam, I recant, you are all beauty,
Goodnesse, and vertue, and poore I not worthy
As a foyle to set you off.

(5.2.148-53)

Although she confesses the flaw she displays, Camiola does not surrender her principled stands. She does set an example for contrite confessions by others who need forgiveness and restoration into a reformed society.

On her model, with reformed respect for law, for women's status, and for women's integrity of will, Aurelia surrenders her arrogant claims and Bertoldo confesses his disloyal ingratitude. Surrendering Bertoldo to the Order of Malta, sealing peace between the three dukedoms, and reinstating a penitent Fulgentio, Camiola concludes by reasserting once again the power of her integrity in chastity. Forgiving all, forsaking her rank, and distributing her wealth, she marries Christ in the church. Camiola's egoism seems more than her society will bear; it apparently has to consider her, and require her to consider herself, excessive. So her new role will discipline that excess, forgive that trespass, and restore her, just as the rest in that tragicomic society will also be forgiven and restored as they reform past tradition to meet future promise. Imperfect, as all are, Camiola stands “To all posterity, a faire example / For noble Maides to imitate” by her chastity, not her virginity. Though her actions are to be limited by self-confinement, nevertheless, on her chastity she has erected potent self-determining integrity and assertive speech rather than silent female submission.

In The Bondman Cleora's initial situation, her progress, and her ultimate marital choice diverge from Camiola's. But her major personal and social concerns come to mirror the maid of honor's and she achieves similar elevation of her gender. Daughter of the pretor of Sicily, Cleora at first demonstrates unquestioning obedience to patriarchy in a remarkable way—by intervening during her nation's formal inauguration of their martial savior in order to speak out eloquently and persuasively to the gathered citizens. Unlike Camiola's, Cleora's early public rhetoric exhibits not challenge but a rare form of feminine subordination. In exhorting Sicily's spoiled and frightened citizens to defensive warfare, she does not speak as a person but serves as a conduit for the ancient communal patriotic voice. Further from Camiola, Cleora initially embraces her society's assumptions about women's status. She dedicates her chastity to a man, offering herself as fuel for the patriotic fervor of a suitor, Leosthenes, and as reward for his military victory. But she is put off because Leosthenes continually presses his authority and rights of male conquest by abusive, battle-of-the-sexes language and because he increasingly exhibits possessive jealousy despite her own extreme and potently persuasive proof of chastity in silence. As her sense of individual integrity grows yet is not appreciated by the conqueror, she begins to incline toward a lover, Marullo, who respects her independent worth. Moreover, she begins to honor and favor him despite his apparent status as the slave who led a briefly successful slave rebellion in the absence of Sicilian armies. In a final love and civil court she has helped to install, she chooses Marullo, who turns out to be a disguised Theban gentleman, for her husband. From submission Cleora converts to choose a reformed, mutually considerate if paternalist marriage. She also chooses a reformed while traditional paternalistic social hierarchy fostered by her father rather than the absolute male dominion commanded by her brother.⁶

For a woman to be praised as a political leader by virtue of serving as the public spokesperson rather than as a hereditary monarch during this time is remarkable. Yet Cleora is so hailed by all when she serves as the inspired “genius” of Sicilian civic heritage. Such commanding sway over her nation might indicate reformation of a patriarchy. But in the final analysis Cleora's exemplary public pledge of her personal effects for her country's defense and her stirring exhortation of her people's national valor—earning Timoleon's exclamation, “Brave masculine spirit” (1.3.305)—are directed by as well as at men. After the new military regent Timoleon has struck the Sicilians sick, drained them pale, and palsied them by his telling indictment and forewarning of humiliation, Cleora delivers two moving speeches: the first calls on the general citizenry to yield their personal fortunes to the commonwealth's necessities; the second exhorts the nobility to earn their honors and glory by military achievement. Significantly Cleora begins in self-deprecating submission to paternalism and patriarchy, viewing her public rhetoric as an extraordinary dispensation that only momentarily supersedes the sign of her obedient silence:

                                                                                If a Virgin,
Whose speech was ever yet usher'd with feare,
One knowing modestie, and humble silence
To be the choysest ornaments of our sexe,
In the presence of so many Reverend men,
Strucke dumbe with terrour and astonishment,
Presume to cloath her thought in vocal soundes,
Let her finde pardon.

(1.3.268-75)

Only after this “bashfull Mayd” and “ignorant Girle” has acknowledged her dutiful obedience to the new military governor, then begged permission from her father, the lords of the island, her brother, and the men at arms, and finally humbly thanked them, does she dare violate the customary signs of female submission by speaking in this public forum. And then her eloquent arousal of Sicilian dedication and valor is not attributed to her but is attested as oraculous. “Shee's inspired,” Timoleon admires, “Or in her speakes the Genius of your Countrey” (1.3.362-63). When he dedicates the campaign to her and begs her favor as a knight, he actually witnesses that she is a divine instrument who will revert to her appropriate role of obediently silent woman, perhaps trophy. So it is that Cleora serves as a paragon maid for the reigning hierarchy of values and personages.

For a time Cleora continues to serve in a traditional feminine role, an image for military dedication and a trophy for the victor. In the play's first lines her brother Timagoras virtually pledges her to Leosthenes' anticipated heroism: “what before you purchased / By Court-ship, and faire language, in these Wars / (For from her soule you know she loves a Souldier) / You may deserve by action.” So Leosthenes dedicates himself to claiming her by right of martial heroics: “If faire Cleora were confirmd his prize, / That has the strongest Arme, and sharpest Sword, / I would court Bellona in her horrid trim, / As if she were a Mistrisse.” Early during Leosthenes' leave-taking Cleora embraces the traditional role of chaste lady offering the “sparke of honour” which “mount[s] up in glorious flame,” her warrior's deeds (2.1.70, 72). The ensuing courtship is, then, appropriately couched in traditional terms of battle and conquest.

But Cleora is disturbed when Leosthenes captures the metaphor to worry about her virgin loyalty. He fears some besieger's artillery might “batter downe / The fortresse of [her] honour” (2.1.127-28), conquer her by storm with arrows of love, undermine her, or worst of all win her traitorous senses. Cleora is distressed by his implicit possessiveness:

                                                            Will you then confirme,
That love, and jealousie, though of different natures,
Must of necessity be twins? the younger,
Created onely to defeate the elder,
And spoyle him of his Birth-right? 'tis not well.

(2.1.161-65)

Moreover she feels “wounded with the arrowes” of her suitor's “distrust” of her chastity, the highest value her society has inculcated in her. In order to shame Leosthenes she vows to out-vestal the vestals: she forbears to kiss or speak to anyone and blindfolds herself so she cannot see anyone until he returns or she dies. Chastity, silence, and obedience have rarely achieved such hyperbolic rhetorical proof. Although Cleora hopes that her incredible, eloquent devotion to virginity and love fidelity will persuade everyone to laud her independent glory and Leosthenes to confess that “whither I live or die, / My Chastity triumphs over your jealousie” (2.1.198-99), she gets only acclaim. Her initial reactions change from commitment to the values and lover she has been reared to into discovery of her independent integrity.

By faithfully maintaining her excessive pledge through the threats and tribulations of the slave rebellion Cleora becomes increasingly aware of her independent worth. Speaking again after Leosthenes' return, she habitually swears “by Diana.” Dreading more and more that Leosthenes might jealously deny her freedom, she tries to persuade and warn him one last time, “Well, take heed / Of doubts, and feares; For know, Leosthenes, / A greater injury cannot be offer'd / To innocent chastity, then unjust suspition” (4.3.197-200). She accurately gauges his scorn of valuing Pisander/Marullo's devoted protection during the slave rebellion to be arrogant possessiveness beyond jealousy:

Why, good Leosthenes, though I endur'd
A penance for your sake, above example,
I have not so farre sold my selfe, I take it,
To be at your devotion, but I may
Cherish desert in others, where I finde it.
How would you tyranize, if you stood possess'd of
That, which is only yours in expectation?

(4.3.175-81)

Precisely because she fears loss of her individual will, her integrity, she tries Leosthenes: “Are you sicke / Of your old disease? I'le fit you” (4.3.172-73). Although a temporarily chastened Leosthenes begs a kiss which she grants, he immediately reverts by refusing to listen to her describe the humble devotion of Marullo, who refused even to request a kiss when he could have compelled one. Leosthenes thereby guarantees that an apprehensive Cleora will test both wooers.

When Leosthenes is unable to acknowledge Cleora's integrity, her eloquently silent maintenance of her virginity under extreme duress and her consequent right to personal choice, he fails his test. His jealous sense of her as a possession, a trophy his efforts won, cannot proceed to the trust that will permit her to love him. For he cannot even recognize, much less understand, least of all adhere to a loving marriage as mutual choice and reciprocal consideration instead of the old male conquest and female surrender. Earlier Leosthenes had tried to subdue his jealousy when, overcrediting Cleora for his prowess, he told her brother he felt chastened by the “grievous pennance, / Shee did impose upon her tender sweetnesse, / To plucke away the Vulture jealousie” (3.4.23-25). But Timagoras had persuaded him that victory in battle redeems any fault: “A free confession of a fault winnes pardon; / But being seconded by desert, commands it” (3.4.73-74). Cleora can have no choice. So Leosthenes has reverted to arrogant possessive jealousy by the time the slave uprising is quelled. He refuses, despite the maid's testimony that Cleora has kept her vow, to believe that she has not been raped. And at the conclusion of that stormy reunion scene already noted, he himself admits that “those helpes, / Which confidence lends to others, are from me / Ravish'd by doubts, and wilfull jealousie” (4.3). It comes as no surprise, then, when Leosthenes feels, not hurt love, but proprietary jealousy and loss of personal honor after Marullo is captured in Cleora's chambers: “the Rape / Shee has done upon her honour, with my wrong, / [become] The heavy burthen of my sorrowes song” (4.4.75-77). He reverts to rage when he learns that she has kept her promise to speak out for Marullo and to visit him even though he is imprisoned for rebellion. Eavesdropping on their conference, he declares her “my valours prize” no matter what she wants (5.2.84). Finally, in his closing plea in the court of love Cleora has been instrumental in establishing so as to offer Pisander/Marullo the opportunity to present his case, Leosthenes commits two unpardonable errors. First he argues that she belongs to his merits: “Ingratefull faire one; and since you are such, / 'Tis lawfull for me to proclaime my selfe, / And what I have deserv'd” (5.3.69-71). Then he fears aloud that Cleora's hesitation in offering herself to him signals her lust for a strong-backed slave. Such statements Leosthenes cannot salvage by his late claim to be a distraught lover. He has proved himself an arrogantly possessive male.

Just as Cleora's brother Timagoras encourages male possessiveness within old standards of martial love and marital dominion, so her father Archidamus supports the reformation that recognizes her personal integrity and free choice of a partner and leads to a more considerate and accommodating, if still paternalist, marriage. When Cleora is sharing with her father her mixed reaction of respect for Leosthenes and yet fear of his possessive jealousy over Marullo/Pisander, Archidamus responds by encouraging her independent choice of a husband: “Thou are thine owne disposer. … I will not / How ever I may counsaile, force affection” (5.1.1-4). Moreover, unlike many a patriarch who expresses such a sentiment while he enforces his choice, Archidamus promotes his daughter's free choice of a partner. A protective father, he blocks his son's attempt to coerce. And, at Cleora's urging, he argues for a public love and civil hearing where both suitors are allowed to present their cases. In the prison brawl Leosthenes causes by trying to break up Cleora's conference with Marullo, he claims her as his “valours prize.” But the understanding father corrects him about her choice of guardian husband, “With her consent, not otherwise. You may urge / Your title in the Court; if it prove good, / Possesse her freely” (5.2.85-87).

Leading to the final court of love Marullo/Pisander has been passing Cleora's test just as consistently as Leosthenes has been failing it. He recognizes Cleora's integrity and free choice, particularly as they are earned by her chastity. And he expresses grateful consideration and obligation to her. If by rumor he threatens Cleora, in person he never so much as requests to touch her or disturb the least sign of her pledge. Even as the head of the slave rebellion controlling Syracuse, he “dare[s] not / Presume” to tell her his “dispairing Lover” 's story “till by some gratious signe / You shew, you are pleas'd to heare me” (3.2.51-52, 56-58). Astoundingly he honors Leosthenes and guards Cleora for him—for her sake. Reassuringly he explains why he must refuse to take advantage of his physical superiority despite the likelihood that doing so means he is unlikely to gain physical love:

                                                            (nay, feare not Madam,
True love's a servant, brutish lust a Tyrant)
I dare not touch those viands, that ne're taste well,
But when they are freely offred: only thus much,
Be pleas'd I may speake in my owne deare cause,
And thinke it worthy your consideration,
I have lov'd truly, (cannot say deserv'd,
Since duty must not take the name of merit).

(3.2.82-89)

Typical of Massinger's style, central principles are embedded in the two explanatory parentheses. Love is segregated from compelling lust because it is based on free choice. And the corollary, love is not therefore earned by any meritorious duty or deed. Marullo is no possessive Leosthenes. He honors the woman's chaste integrity and free choice as the necessary condition of love. Consequently he pledges that his service is free, not obligatory.⁷

Pisander/Marullo always exhibits considerate love. Imprisoned and awaiting likely execution, for example, he begs Cleora's pardon, confesses his guilt, and vows penance for even thinking of the aggression of a slave rebellion to win her. His finest moment comes when, in the open court, he makes a considerate, liberal love plea for Cleora. His order of presentation reverses the principles of love he has already avowed. Recalling his previous service, he declares that it is wholeheartedly voluntary and that he can expect no return. And, noting his own weak humanity and lack of merit, he places all emphasis on Cleora's free choice:

How I have lov'd, and how much I have suffer'd,
And with what pleasure undergone the burthen
Of my ambitious hopes (in ayming at
The glad possession of a happinesse,
The abstract of all goodnesse in mankinde
Can at no part deserve) with my confession
Of mine owne wants, is all that can plead for me.

(5.3.124-30)

Throughout he contrasts his respect for Cleora's chastity, honor, and integrity to Leosthenes' disregard and he turns Leosthenes' martial figures against him as appropriate for jealousy but inappropriate for love:

                                                                                                    I never
Durst doubt her constancie, that like a rocke
Beats off temptations, as that mocks the fury
Of the proud waves; nor from my jealous feares
Question that goodnesse, to which as an Altar
Of all perfection, he that truly lov'd,
Should rather bring a sacrifice of service,
Then raze it with the engines of suspition.

(5.3.136-43)

Not even after Pisander surprisingly reveals his noble heritage and Leosthenes' betrayal of betrothal to his sister, receives Leosthenes' confessions, and enjoys the victorious, and patent, reconciliations does he more than request that Cleora, a woman of proven chaste integrity, may “please / To thinke upon my service” in her free choice of a husband (5.3.206-7).

In The Bondman as in The Maid of Honour and throughout his works, Massinger presents a reformed social tradition of paternalism that accommodates within hallowed values compassionate, admiring recognition of women's integrity and independent marital choice and of their contributing public voice in political and legal affairs. His plays nowhere suggest gender revolution. He represents tradition—in recognizing ultimate female subordination, in accepting the overriding importance of marriage for all women, and in basing the power of their integrity on the Western sine qua non, chastity in premarital virginity and marital fidelity. Still, his plays promote accommodations within that paternalist tradition by recognizing women as individuals with free choice of husbands and as potential contributors to public as well as family matters. Most of all, his plays present these reforms with sympathy and admiration that seem to represent as great a transformation as early Stuart society was capable of conceiving without rebellion. Within his era's powerful sociopolitical constraints, which we are unlikely to accept, Massinger placed a faith, which we are less likely to affirm, in the potential miracles of personal and social charity necessary for his tragicomedies of accommodation. Yet by presenting a reformed status for women offering significant promise albeit final cooptation, his plays offered his audience a paradigm for moderate changes that suggest, with less hope, application to other social and political matters.

Notes

1. The fullest argument is Florence T. Winston, “The Significance of Women in the Plays of Philip Massinger” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1972); the most recent confirmation, Philip Edwards's “Massinger's Men and Women,” in Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, ed. Douglas Howard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 39-49.

2. For his life, see T. A. Dunn, Philip Massinger: The Man and the Playwright (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons for the University College of Ghana, 1957), and especially Donald S. Lawless, Philip Massinger and His Associates, Ball State Monograph, no. 10, Publications in English, no. 6 (Muncie, Ind. 1967). These accounts have been corroborated and condensed by Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson for their indispensable edition of the Works, 5 vols. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1976); I cite and quote this edition and follow its dates. My emphasis on a reforming Massinger issues ultimately from S. R. Gardiner, “The Political Element in Massinger,” Contemporary Review 28 (1876): 495-507, reprinted in the New Shakespeare Society's Transactions series 1, no. 4 (1875-76): 314-31; probably the most important of many revisions are incorporated by Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), especially around 102, 116, and 203.

3. I note only that most of the accumulating studies of Renaissance women confirm that the title of Suzanne W. Hull's annotated bibliography accurately highlights the era's trinity of female virtues: Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475-1640 (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library Press, 1982).

4. One flaw in most considerations of Massinger is that scholars omit discussion of the majority of his output, which were collaborations, primarily with Fletcher in the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher canon. Terence P. Logan's bibliographical essay provides entry to attribution studies by Cyrus Hoy, Bertha Hensman, and others; see his “Philip Massinger,” in The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists, ed. Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 90-119.

5. See Philip Edwards's influential “Massinger the Censor,” in Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, ed. Richard Hosley (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1962), 344-46.

6. In “The plays and the playwrights: 1613-42,” The Revels History of Drama in English, vol. 4, 1613-1660, Lois Potter et al. (London: Methuen, 1981), 199-200, Kathleen McLuskie regards sexual politics in The Bondman as merely titillating. She misses the play's correctives. For instance, in an unnecessary extension of the source's account of ladies substituting slaves for absent husbands, Pisander/Marullo's friend Poliphron explains a new agreement after the overturn. He is no lord of his former mistress; he is her husband:

   When I was her slave,
   She kept me as a sinner to lie at her backe
   In frostie nights, and fed me high with dainties,
   Which still she had in her belly againe e're morning,
   And in requitall of those curtesies
   Having made one another free, we are marryed.

   (3.3.40-45)

   What could have been presented as titillation is a statement about marriage partners granting each other free choice and mutual love instead of a superior commanding sexual service from an inferior. Likewise, Pisander/Marullo counters Leosthenes; he is not an amplification of male dominion, as McLuskie asserts.

7. A possible exception is Marullo's flash of anger when he is baited by Leosthenes and Timagoras (4.4.65-66). His rejoinder is qualified by the situation, the challenge not to her but to them, and the conditional modal verb.

Works Consulted

Jardine, Lisa. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983. The most balanced historical account of dramatic heroines against their economic, educational, and social backgrounds.

Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956. The fullest account of the era's enunciated ideals about feminine conduct.

Leech, Clifford. Shakespeare's Tragedies and Other Studies in Seventeenth-Century Drama. London: Chatto and Windus, 1950. This contains an early impressionistic but influential essay on the increasing importance of women among characters and audience during the Caroline era.

Leggatt, Alexander. Citizen Comedy in the Age of Shakespeare. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. This contains an extensive account in terms of genre of typical portrayals of merchants' maids, wives, widows, and whores in this popular form which probably presented a higher percentage of important women characters than any other.

Leinwand, Theodore B. The City Staged: Jacobean Comedy, 1603-1613. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986. An account of mercantile women similar to Leggatt's and more limited in time but against a helpful background of contemporary accounts.

Sedge, Douglas. Social and Ethical Concerns in Caroline Drama. Diss., University of Birmingham, 1966. Available through interlibrary loan, this dissertation offers one of the earliest nonimpressionistic and documented if still male chauvinist discussions of the increasing number and importance of female dramatic characters.

Shepherd, Simon. Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth-Century Drama. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981. An account of swashbuckling and other aggressive dramatic heroines.

Woodbridge, Linda. Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540-1620. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. An analysis of the pamphlet controversy over the nature and status of women in terms of its patterns of discourse.