Hi, everyone. I apologize for posting before tomorrow's presenter(s), but I have some pressing personal matters to attend to for the remainder of this evening. Thanks in advance for understanding.
Ok. To begin with, I can hardly imagine how Heywood had time to pen over 220 plays. After all, his characters in The Fair Maid of the West are so rich and round, and his plot so intricate and inventive, not to mention epistemologically dense and sagacious…. Of course I’m just kidding (and I hope that the sarcasm surfaced sooner than later...).
In all seriousness, this play was fun to read. What a kooky theatrical experience it must’ve been for the Jacobean theatergoer amidst the brooding, spiritually and politically violent majority of other plays about witchcraft, murder, skullduggery, and the instability of the nation-state, sovereign power, and godhead. And then the ever-virtuous Bess Bridges wanders in, donning costumes and doffing customs so as to track her seafaring paramour to his end (and despite the predictably certain episodic pandemonium, which admittedly ensues with an almost slapstick inevitability and superficiality…).
In other words, I won’t be one of the plays acerbic critics who “in an unreasonably ugly mood” might shellac Heywood (quite easily, reflexively, and superficially themselves) for entertaining the masses with reductive kitsch or for writing glibly and conventionally so as to pocket some easy dough. Instead, I’d prefer to take seriously this play’s plenary offerings within our course’s context. Thusly this play gains the potential to generate as engaging and complex of a discussion as any text thus far in the term.
By presupposing The Fair Maid of the West to be a significant iteration of Jacobean pop culture, we can broach a variety of notions spanning our term’s primary and secondary readings. For example, we can investigate notions of gender anxiety (e.g. Bess’s force as feminist/gender-bending protagonist, surpassing the “virtue” of her feminine beauty to exemplify greater human virtues, such as honor, valor, and commitment, which are typically gendered male in similar literature). Likewise we could use the play as a window into its contemporaneous popular imagination, whether, for example, in the audience’s ability to participate willingly in the otherwise unbelievably busy unfurling journey of the plot, or in the play’s narrative details engaging cultural phantoms, such as the fading chivalry of Spenser, and even Goodlack or Forset. I also like to think of the play in relation to questions of the interplay between commerce and art, such as Heywood’s very writing of the play (quite quickly, apparently) to sustain himself economically, or, allegorically, in the play’s (admittedly conventional) sense of privileging the sacrifices of riches for love and honor, over the reverse.
Similarly, we can look to the play’s carnivalesque teasing of social order, such as the play’s elevation of Bess, a barmaid within a rigid social hierarchy, to the parlance of virtue, honor, and duty. (Dare we go so far as to consider discussing her as a classically tragic figure within this play’s intentionally light, comic framework?) We also might discuss manifestations in the play of the inevitable, paradoxically self-destructive power of nationalism at the time (e.g. the pillorying of the Spanish or Italians as crude savages, by which the English expose their crudity). In any case, those are briefly some of my thoughts on potentially productive and pleasurable means of engaging the text.
I'm with Seth on this one. "Fair Maid of the West"felt to me like an early 17th century popcorn-drama. It's an epic tale of love, adventure, and castration with, as Seth pointed out,hyper-nationalism mixed in, in order to stir the viewer's patriotic blood. I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't translated this one to the big screen. Though, with the inevitable success of Beowulf and lack of working writers, perhaps we are but a few years away from seeing "Fair Maid" as the next Hollywood blockbuster.
But I suppose that I too ought address this with a bit of seriousness. I am confident that the play will offer up much in the way of interesting discussion.
I'm interested in looking at what ways the portrayal of Bess adheres to early modern prejudices against the alewife. Bess and Spencer et al would not, after all, have been in the trouble they were in if Bess's beauty and chastity didn't corrupt otherwise "honorable" men-- She is who Spencer and Carroll "bustle" over. She is the reason that Mullisheg acts tyrannical. And she corrupts the Spaniards/Italians. It seems that even though she's left the alehouse, she's still possessed by some of its influence.
I'm also interested in talking about Clem. It's striking to me that the clown is literally "neutered." While his humor is not nearly as subversive as Falstaff's, I'm wondering if it's the clown's role to deliver some truth or social criticism, which is then disbelieved because it is delivered humorously.
Was anyone else surprised by the fact that The Fair Maid of the West doesn't turn up in Judith Bennett's description of positive portrayals of alewives? Though Bryan in right that, in a way, Bess can be blamed for Spencer's killing of Carrol and the subsequent trouble that unfolds in the plot, she is still depicted as a beautiful, virtuous, and scrupulous young businesswoman. I was surprised by the omission in Bennett's text.
I don't have a lot to say about the text, though it was a fun, quick read and I am hoping tomorrow's discussion will be an informative one. To relate The Fair Maid to some of our previous discussions, I was thinking about how just being around Bess seems to change people's characters; it seems to me that Roughman, Goodlack, and Mullisheg all are transformed, at least in part, due to the proximity of her goodness. Of course, with Roughman, Bess's goodness is aided by her cunning, but he does seem genuinely different by the end of the play -- he hasn't just been humbled but, though still "rough", is a more virtuous and loyal man. Also, can we blame Spencer's testiness with Carrol and the subsequent violence on Bess's presence in the alehouse or on the unhealthful atmosphere of the alehouse itself? Or can we just attribute it to his character -- not his surroundings or companions?
I hope to come up with some more intriguing ideas than these by tomorrow. See you all then!
Seth points out an important question about the interpretability of “pop lit” or “folk art”—if it’s, er, fair to place Heywood’s *Fair Maid* in those categories. The play seems to be as transparent as Jacobean drama will get: the language is accessible, colloquial. Differences among Plymouth, Foy, and “Oriental” dialects are flattened and homogenized to allow for easy listening and instant understanding by the London audiences. The plot is straight-forward, and as Seth says, utterly predictable. Heywood even tells us in “To the Reader” that the “matter” of the play will be presented “so plainly before thee in acts and scenes, without any deviations or winding indents.” Given the apparent simplicity of the play, how would we know if we were distorting the intention of the author and the essence of the play by studying it through a particular theoretical lens? This is the methodological problem that David Cressy discusses in his article. He, a historian, takes a stab at “radical critics,” i.e., Feminists and Queer theorists, who misread the Early Modern “evidence” on cross-dressing. Although Bennett isn’t explicit about it as Cressy, Bennett’s work highlights a methodological contrast between literary vs. historical hermeneutics. Like Cressy’s argument regarding cross-dressing, Bennett’s argument that alewives are literary and historical victims of misogyny and 16th century rise of the commercial brewing guilds works not so much on theory but accumulation of anecdotes, stories, paintings—the sum total of literary and historical evidence. I don’t want to get too off topic with the meta-criticism, but I’d be interested to see how theory (say Feminist or Queer) might be applied to *Fair Maid.*
My own interest in this particular play is not theoretical, but textual. Contractual documents seem very important to the action of the play. Spencer and Bess both make contracts, but whereas his are verbally announced, hers are written. The first contract occurs when Spenser verbally bequeaths Bess £100 (1.3.30). Next, as he escapes prosecution for murdering Carole, Spencer tells Bess that he will give her the tavern in Foy (1.3.49). Finally, when he thinks himself near-death, Spencer explains his will to Goodlack his provisions (£500 per year) and the “proviso” for Bess (2.2.73). Goodlack’s legal role is quite complicated at this moment: he acts as the notary, executioner, witness, and partial-benefactor. Goodlack promises Spencer that he “shall perform your trust as carefully / As to my father, breath’d he” (2.2.78-9). However, Goodlack’s oath is almost immediately broken in the next scene when he realizes that he has an opportunity to swindle Bess out of her inheritance—which he proceeds to do. Goodlack’s reversal of his oath is not only symbolic of the greediness and selfishness of the men in this play (all the male characters, save Spencer perhaps, are held up to Bess and found wanting in moral integrity), but also the vulnerable nature of spoken contracts. Spencer’s experience demonstrates that one’s will or intent lacks efficacy if it is not documented in a will or contract.
In contrast to Spencer’s verbalized contracts, Bess writes down her intentions on two memorable occasions. Before voyaging to sea, Bess gives the Mayor of Foy her “last will and testament” (4.2.28), in which she stipulates in unambiguous terms who should get what amount of pounds. Towards the end of the play, Bess likewise composes a written contract between herself and Mullisheg, the King of Fez, which negotiates the terms of her and her followers’ “safe conduct” and liberty (5.1.53). Clearly, Bess doesn’t trust anyone to carry out her will/desire, preferring to set down her emotional will in a legally binding will.
What to make of the contrast between Spencer’s trust in verbal contracts and Bess’s apparent suspicion of them? Like the subalterns Bess names in her will, she is a liminal figure who stands just beyond the usual socio-economic boundaries. She’s a tapstress, which Bennette tells us, is synonymous with “whore” in the Early Modern period. Nonetheless, Bess swears to be a virgin. She’s the tanner’s daughter (1.2.15), but her comportment and language suggests she comes from a far-higher educational and social background. It’s also suggested that Bess is an indentured servant like Clem [Goodlack says that Bess’s father in his destitution has “sent her to service” (1.2.18)], but by Act 2, she becomes the mistress of her own establishment. Finally, Bess is not quite a fiancée and not quite a widow. Because she and Spencer did not get the opportunity to wed, she can’t claim the protective status of widowhood. In short, Bess exists in a liminal and precarious space outside of the everyday legal structures of society. For a time, her liminal subjecthood is a source of carnival freedom (she can cross-dress and impersonate an invented “brother,” later the swashbuckling captain), but ultimately, as we see in her use of written contracts, Bess must write herself into the legal system of society in order to gain the protection of the law (male patriarchy), and by doing so, she relinquishes the radical freedom of the liminal person.
I guess what I found most striking about The Fair Maid of the West was the fantastic role played by the protagonist, Bess. It seems at such odds with the roles typically played by the female characters in the plays we’ve read thus far in which the women are so often maligned or quieted. Bess seems to be at the center of this strange, almost incarnated, parallel carnivalesque universe in which Heywood has allowed her to embody the swashbuckling heroine, virtuous and true, beneath the carnival mask. I think of other women who played prominent roles in the plot development of other plays, in particular Lady Macbeth, and almost without exception their influence has been ultimately deployed through the actions of men and are often malicious or self-serving to boot. Furthermore, the witches – wthout question actualized and independent, if nevertheless marginalized or alienated, figures – are exceptionally inconstant and prone to equivocation. Bess, on the other hand, is forthright and able to navigate successfully through plots to tempt her into avarice or infidelity. The scene that I found most peculiar was the one in which Bess claims to be her brother so as to intimidate and dishonor Roughman, as if, still despite all the liberties I believe were taken with the depiction of a barmaid’s social capacity in that era, in order to somehow justify her subjugation of a man, the play required her being transformed. I regret that some of the finer points of this play must be escaping me, so I look forward to class tomorrow, where there is invariably a great discussion in store.
I’m trying to figure out whether Fair Maid is transgressive or retrograde, Carnivalesque or party-line. Or whether it’s at once conservative and progressive. On the one hand, Bess can be seen as a kind of early feminist heroine, true to her own imperatives, ungoverned by male desire. Her impressive command of the alehouse can be read as a kind of “countermodel,” as Bristol might put it, to notions of women as the weaker sex appropriately subject to rule by men. The alehouse, moreover, might be seen as a space inhabited by the Carnivalesque, a place in which traditional rites of courtship (at least as I imagine them to be) are set aside in place of bawdy repartee and sexual license.
At the same time, Fair Maid seems to glorify female sexual virtue in a way that seems more in keeping with “official” values than the strident alehouse culture described by Bennett. Bess is heroic, it seems to me, only to the degree that she maintains her chastity against the pressure applied by her many suitors. In this sense, Bess is straitjacketed by Heywood’s criteria for female honor and worth. She may be a heroine, but she pays a high price for the honor. One false move, one capitulation to her sexual impulses, and she’ll lose all of her stature. Alluring as she is, Bess doesn’t seem to fit the stereotype of “the devil’s schoolmistress”—the common female “tapster” who preys upon the weakness of male patrons. She seems like the conservative anti-type of the female alehouse worker described by Bennett.
Is there an irony here? If Heywood in Fair Maid is countering misogynistic representations of female “brewsters,” he does so by severely curtailing Bess’ sexual freedom—which is sort of misogynistic, no?
Thought- provoking responses. I particularly liked Penny's and might try to respond to some of it.
Cressy's article suggests "radical critics" have projected "present preoccupations onto the past," thereby bringing our opinions to the evidence, rather than vice-versa. He also notes, "literary scholars often argue that cross-gender clothing signaled subversion, resistance, and transgression and that the sex-gender system of early modern England was in a state of flux." As Penny notes, Cressy relies on an accumulation of legal and literary history to arrive at his opinion that there wasn't anything so overwhelmingly transgressive about the cross-dressing. For some, Cressy notes, cross-dressing served a purpose, and we see that in Bess -- she dresses as her "brother"/"a page with a sword" to intimidate Roughman (played by Pete Postelwaite in a 1986 production by the RSC); then dons the garb of a "sea captain" and swashbuckles with the best of them. This seems to be in line with the idea that "the clothes made the man." (Bess first suggests this when first dressed as a man: "Methinks I have a manly spirit in me in this man's habit.")
What fascinates me is the sheer normalcy of all this. She dresses the part, she acts the part, and no one really cares. In fact, Roughman follows her aboard the ship, Clem's her ever-faithful servant, etcetera. No one seems to care that this is a woman doing this. There seems to be an easy acceptance of her crossing "accepted gender norms," as we may term them from our POV.
Another interesting moment comes when Spencer sees his beloved, now dressed as a sea captain. "Methinks he looks like Bess, for in his eyes lives the first love that my first heart did surprise." Methinks he's not suffering a hint of confusion or anxiety at this fluid sense of gender.
Great posts tonight, I have some ideas that I will try to flesh out here.
First, in response to Penny and Stephan, I too read and will report on the Cressy article. I like Penny’s attitude about it, and I agree that it certainly has its limitations. Specifically, I take item with where he juxtaposes the fervor of the Puritan polemic against anti-transvestism with the supposed overreactions of “radical” literary scholarship—as if the former, hundreds of years removed, had some sort of cause-and-effect relationship with the latter. Maybe, though maybe not. However, Cressy does aptly point out that setting, or space or place often dictated the perceptions of cultural and theatrical cross-dressing. In what we could regards as non-sacred ground like the theatre or the festival, the practice of transvestism served utilitarian purposes, served as a means of protest, complicated the orthodoxy of legal justice, and, as Cressy points, won the favor of the audience. On sacred ground such as the churches, the bedroom, or in birth-spaces, where men were traditional forbidden, the practice was, well, not as kosher.
This brings me to “The Fair Maiden of the West”. Cross-dressing seems to be a complicated practice here because when Bess “undoes” her own gender, she, much like Portia in The Merchant of Venice or Rosalind in As You Like it, transcends off the page. Now, I think a simplistic (not to mention foolish) reading would insist that because woman allows herself to pose as man, she is afforded the “fool’s justice” and thereby indulges in a certain degree of bravado when disguised. No. Like the mighty Sir John Falstaff, undoing is not antithetical to doing, but transpires and surpasses doing. Remember, as Dr. Lemon said last week, how many characters don the mask of “I am Not What I am”, not only in the tradition of Shakespeare but throughout this arm of the literary canon? After Bess unsexes and re-sexes herself for Roughman, we see a re-masculine roughneck who, (Zounds!) can actually live up to his self-given “hype” and becomes a blind devotee through the adventures to come. Did anybody take item in the play’s final act when Bess dubs herself under the moniker: Elizabeth in the presence of the King of Fez? I guess my resolute point here is that Bess’s cross-dressing not only serves a utilitarian purpose, but also a transcendental one as well.
But in addition to this, cross-dressing moves the action. The preface to my addition (Bison Books, 1967) called this an adventure drama, and one that relied upon the implausible and “invites us to reject reality as commonplace and deep concerns as troublesome, and temporarily substitute for them a fantastical world of the simple” (xv). I’d say that’s about right. I am reminded of undergraduate fiction workshops where similar styles of narration were executed in more or less unsuccessful ways. Nevertheless, this was a fun play, and as much as the realism-alarm blared behind our eyes, it was good to read a drama with some marginal voyage. So, back to cross-dressing: the first incident is a comic foil, and not only allows Bess to keep her chaste vow, but also gives her some dramatic flare. Moreover, the second time she cross-dresses—as Admiral—not only did I see a transcendental movement of character take shape, but in regards to the plot, I almost could read Heywood’s thoughts while writing this: “Why the Hell not? If we’re taking this play to sea, we might as well just bring her bad self along!” Therefore cross-dressing also serves to heighten the adventurousness of this adventure drama.
Finally, I would like to talk about the role of Bar-Maid. It can be assumed that no drunkard loves a woman, his wife and daughters included, better than he loves his Bar-Maid. She enables him. She brings him company and service without explicit judgment. She gives the bee the nectar. A few times, Bess’s “baseness” is thrown into the dialogue of “The Fair Maiden…” and it is interesting how she averts this title, smashes it to atoms, evades its containment. I guess what I am getting at is: How is the bar-maid a privileged position? How does the space of the tavern afford her power? Without stepping on Penny’s toes too much, I think this segues into good discussion tomorrow.
Here is the fade-out to Franz Wright’s “The Winter Skyline Late”:
Yellow window in the blue dawn lost is lost and gone is gone but be there if I wake again, don’t abandon me defend me
The Fair Maid of the West strikes me as being very much a popular comedy -- one whose success in large measure comes from its blend of action and inversion, both elements in the carnival tradition.
Sword fights abound (there are at least 6 combats in my version of the play) and death and sudden turns of fortune occur frequently. What is the role of all this violence? What purpose might it serve? It seems to me that in addition to its entertainment value, the function of violence in the play is to provide a means through which masculinity (or the illusion of masculinity) can be both constructed and deconstructed. Those characters who are on the receiving end are emasculated, subjected, and disfigured. Thus, in order to act violently, Bess must first don the appropriate gender (through disguise) and adopt another identity. Later at sea, she dresses again as a man and engages in the battles with a ferocity and courage which inspire Roughman to suggest her superiority to Hercules. Violence is not always destructive, but at times leads to rebirth as is in the case of Roughman who reforms himself after being shamed by Bess (in the guise of a man). Violent nature and difficulty to capture are also the measures used by Mullisheg to determine which hunter's captive is most deserving of the hunting prize. In terms of body counts and difficulty, it becomes apparent that while Spenser is responsible for numerous deaths, Bess too is no easy prize, but has been instead shown herself time and again as honorable, as courageous, as noble, and as honest as any "man." In the end with her clear and direct refusal of Mullisheg and her declaration that she would rather cast herself on a sword than betray her love, she puts herself in the classic tradition of tragic hero.
The play also relies heavily on inversion to create its atmosphere of comedy. In comparing Bess with the contemporary stereotypes of alewives (via Bennett and Mother Bunch), it occurs to me that part of the humor in The Fair Maid of the West is the seemingly impossible character of Bess. A chaste and honorable brewster? We might be equally incredulous with modern equivalents like "rich grad student" or "honest used car salesman." Are the other characters equally fantastic or unbelievable? Roughman as the "reformed thief/murderer" might be one.
The play also explores the "alternate self" in many instances. Obviously Bess becomes someone else. Roughman becomes an alternate Roughman. Clem becomes an alternate Clem to test Bess. Spenser is killed (his double dies and the body lost; he is also "killed" by rumor) and reborn (saved by the surgeon; thought as a ghost by Bess on the ship). Both Mullshegi and Tota become alternate selves when they are tricked into sleeping with each other -- neither recognizes the other who they really are.
In any case, I'm interested in seeing how these things come into play with our discussion.
"I am reminded of undergraduate fiction workshops where similar styles of narration were executed in more or less unsuccessful ways."
Which reminds me to put my voice behind the idea that it's interesting that Heywood chose to follow Bess in this play rather than Spencer, which would have been the more traditional take. Bess is the agent of action here, both for better and worse.
10 comments:
Hi, everyone. I apologize for posting before tomorrow's presenter(s), but I have some pressing personal matters to attend to for the remainder of this evening. Thanks in advance for understanding.
Ok. To begin with, I can hardly imagine how Heywood had time to pen over 220 plays. After all, his characters in The Fair Maid of the West are so rich and round, and his plot so intricate and inventive, not to mention epistemologically dense and sagacious…. Of course I’m just kidding (and I hope that the sarcasm surfaced sooner than later...).
In all seriousness, this play was fun to read. What a kooky theatrical experience it must’ve been for the Jacobean theatergoer amidst the brooding, spiritually and politically violent majority of other plays about witchcraft, murder, skullduggery, and the instability of the nation-state, sovereign power, and godhead. And then the ever-virtuous Bess Bridges wanders in, donning costumes and doffing customs so as to track her seafaring paramour to his end (and despite the predictably certain episodic pandemonium, which admittedly ensues with an almost slapstick inevitability and superficiality…).
In other words, I won’t be one of the plays acerbic critics who “in an unreasonably ugly mood” might shellac Heywood (quite easily, reflexively, and superficially themselves) for entertaining the masses with reductive kitsch or for writing glibly and conventionally so as to pocket some easy dough. Instead, I’d prefer to take seriously this play’s plenary offerings within our course’s context. Thusly this play gains the potential to generate as engaging and complex of a discussion as any text thus far in the term.
By presupposing The Fair Maid of the West to be a significant iteration of Jacobean pop culture, we can broach a variety of notions spanning our term’s primary and secondary readings. For example, we can investigate notions of gender anxiety (e.g. Bess’s force as feminist/gender-bending protagonist, surpassing the “virtue” of her feminine beauty to exemplify greater human virtues, such as honor, valor, and commitment, which are typically gendered male in similar literature). Likewise we could use the play as a window into its contemporaneous popular imagination, whether, for example, in the audience’s ability to participate willingly in the otherwise unbelievably busy unfurling journey of the plot, or in the play’s narrative details engaging cultural phantoms, such as the fading chivalry of Spenser, and even Goodlack or Forset. I also like to think of the play in relation to questions of the interplay between commerce and art, such as Heywood’s very writing of the play (quite quickly, apparently) to sustain himself economically, or, allegorically, in the play’s (admittedly conventional) sense of privileging the sacrifices of riches for love and honor, over the reverse.
Similarly, we can look to the play’s carnivalesque teasing of social order, such as the play’s elevation of Bess, a barmaid within a rigid social hierarchy, to the parlance of virtue, honor, and duty. (Dare we go so far as to consider discussing her as a classically tragic figure within this play’s intentionally light, comic framework?) We also might discuss manifestations in the play of the inevitable, paradoxically self-destructive power of nationalism at the time (e.g. the pillorying of the Spanish or Italians as crude savages, by which the English expose their crudity). In any case, those are briefly some of my thoughts on potentially productive and pleasurable means of engaging the text.
I'm with Seth on this one. "Fair Maid of the West"felt to me like an early 17th century popcorn-drama. It's an epic tale of love, adventure, and castration with, as Seth pointed out,hyper-nationalism mixed in, in order to stir the viewer's patriotic blood. I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't translated this one to the big screen. Though, with the inevitable success of Beowulf and lack of working writers, perhaps we are but a few years away from seeing "Fair Maid" as the next Hollywood blockbuster.
But I suppose that I too ought address this with a bit of seriousness. I am confident that the play will offer up much in the way of interesting discussion.
I'm interested in looking at what ways the portrayal of Bess adheres to early modern prejudices against the alewife. Bess and Spencer et al would not, after all, have been in the trouble they were in if Bess's beauty and chastity didn't corrupt otherwise "honorable" men-- She is who Spencer and Carroll "bustle" over. She is the reason that Mullisheg acts tyrannical. And she corrupts the Spaniards/Italians. It seems that even though she's left the alehouse, she's still possessed by some of its influence.
I'm also interested in talking about Clem. It's striking to me that the clown is literally "neutered." While his humor is not nearly as subversive as Falstaff's, I'm wondering if it's the clown's role to deliver some truth or social criticism, which is then disbelieved because it is delivered humorously.
Was anyone else surprised by the fact that The Fair Maid of the West doesn't turn up in Judith Bennett's description of positive portrayals of alewives? Though Bryan in right that, in a way, Bess can be blamed for Spencer's killing of Carrol and the subsequent trouble that unfolds in the plot, she is still depicted as a beautiful, virtuous, and scrupulous young businesswoman. I was surprised by the omission in Bennett's text.
I don't have a lot to say about the text, though it was a fun, quick read and I am hoping tomorrow's discussion will be an informative one. To relate The Fair Maid to some of our previous discussions, I was thinking about how just being around Bess seems to change people's characters; it seems to me that Roughman, Goodlack, and Mullisheg all are transformed, at least in part, due to the proximity of her goodness. Of course, with Roughman, Bess's goodness is aided by her cunning, but he does seem genuinely different by the end of the play -- he hasn't just been humbled but, though still "rough", is a more virtuous and loyal man. Also, can we blame Spencer's testiness with Carrol and the subsequent violence on Bess's presence in the alehouse or on the unhealthful atmosphere of the alehouse itself? Or can we just attribute it to his character -- not his surroundings or companions?
I hope to come up with some more intriguing ideas than these by tomorrow. See you all then!
--Trisha
Seth points out an important question about the interpretability of “pop lit” or “folk art”—if it’s, er, fair to place Heywood’s *Fair Maid* in those categories. The play seems to be as transparent as Jacobean drama will get: the language is accessible, colloquial. Differences among Plymouth, Foy, and “Oriental” dialects are flattened and homogenized to allow for easy listening and instant understanding by the London audiences. The plot is straight-forward, and as Seth says, utterly predictable. Heywood even tells us in “To the Reader” that the “matter” of the play will be presented “so plainly before thee in acts and scenes, without any deviations or winding indents.” Given the apparent simplicity of the play, how would we know if we were distorting the intention of the author and the essence of the play by studying it through a particular theoretical lens? This is the methodological problem that David Cressy discusses in his article. He, a historian, takes a stab at “radical critics,” i.e., Feminists and Queer theorists, who misread the Early Modern “evidence” on cross-dressing. Although Bennett isn’t explicit about it as Cressy, Bennett’s work highlights a methodological contrast between literary vs. historical hermeneutics. Like Cressy’s argument regarding cross-dressing, Bennett’s argument that alewives are literary and historical victims of misogyny and 16th century rise of the commercial brewing guilds works not so much on theory but accumulation of anecdotes, stories, paintings—the sum total of literary and historical evidence. I don’t want to get too off topic with the meta-criticism, but I’d be interested to see how theory (say Feminist or Queer) might be applied to *Fair Maid.*
My own interest in this particular play is not theoretical, but textual. Contractual documents seem very important to the action of the play. Spencer and Bess both make contracts, but whereas his are verbally announced, hers are written. The first contract occurs when Spenser verbally bequeaths Bess £100 (1.3.30). Next, as he escapes prosecution for murdering Carole, Spencer tells Bess that he will give her the tavern in Foy (1.3.49). Finally, when he thinks himself near-death, Spencer explains his will to Goodlack his provisions (£500 per year) and the “proviso” for Bess (2.2.73). Goodlack’s legal role is quite complicated at this moment: he acts as the notary, executioner, witness, and partial-benefactor. Goodlack promises Spencer that he “shall perform your trust as carefully / As to my father, breath’d he” (2.2.78-9). However, Goodlack’s oath is almost immediately broken in the next scene when he realizes that he has an opportunity to swindle Bess out of her inheritance—which he proceeds to do. Goodlack’s reversal of his oath is not only symbolic of the greediness and selfishness of the men in this play (all the male characters, save Spencer perhaps, are held up to Bess and found wanting in moral integrity), but also the vulnerable nature of spoken contracts. Spencer’s experience demonstrates that one’s will or intent lacks efficacy if it is not documented in a will or contract.
In contrast to Spencer’s verbalized contracts, Bess writes down her intentions on two memorable occasions. Before voyaging to sea, Bess gives the Mayor of Foy her “last will and testament” (4.2.28), in which she stipulates in unambiguous terms who should get what amount of pounds. Towards the end of the play, Bess likewise composes a written contract between herself and Mullisheg, the King of Fez, which negotiates the terms of her and her followers’ “safe conduct” and liberty (5.1.53). Clearly, Bess doesn’t trust anyone to carry out her will/desire, preferring to set down her emotional will in a legally binding will.
What to make of the contrast between Spencer’s trust in verbal contracts and Bess’s apparent suspicion of them? Like the subalterns Bess names in her will, she is a liminal figure who stands just beyond the usual socio-economic boundaries. She’s a tapstress, which Bennette tells us, is synonymous with “whore” in the Early Modern period. Nonetheless, Bess swears to be a virgin. She’s the tanner’s daughter (1.2.15), but her comportment and language suggests she comes from a far-higher educational and social background. It’s also suggested that Bess is an indentured servant like Clem [Goodlack says that Bess’s father in his destitution has “sent her to service” (1.2.18)], but by Act 2, she becomes the mistress of her own establishment. Finally, Bess is not quite a fiancée and not quite a widow. Because she and Spencer did not get the opportunity to wed, she can’t claim the protective status of widowhood. In short, Bess exists in a liminal and precarious space outside of the everyday legal structures of society. For a time, her liminal subjecthood is a source of carnival freedom (she can cross-dress and impersonate an invented “brother,” later the swashbuckling captain), but ultimately, as we see in her use of written contracts, Bess must write herself into the legal system of society in order to gain the protection of the law (male patriarchy), and by doing so, she relinquishes the radical freedom of the liminal person.
I guess what I found most striking about The Fair Maid of the West was the fantastic role played by the protagonist, Bess. It seems at such odds with the roles typically played by the female characters in the plays we’ve read thus far in which the women are so often maligned or quieted. Bess seems to be at the center of this strange, almost incarnated, parallel carnivalesque universe in which Heywood has allowed her to embody the swashbuckling heroine, virtuous and true, beneath the carnival mask. I think of other women who played prominent roles in the plot development of other plays, in particular Lady Macbeth, and almost without exception their influence has been ultimately deployed through the actions of men and are often malicious or self-serving to boot. Furthermore, the witches – wthout question actualized and independent, if nevertheless marginalized or alienated, figures – are exceptionally inconstant and prone to equivocation. Bess, on the other hand, is forthright and able to navigate successfully through plots to tempt her into avarice or infidelity. The scene that I found most peculiar was the one in which Bess claims to be her brother so as to intimidate and dishonor Roughman, as if, still despite all the liberties I believe were taken with the depiction of a barmaid’s social capacity in that era, in order to somehow justify her subjugation of a man, the play required her being transformed.
I regret that some of the finer points of this play must be escaping me, so I look forward to class tomorrow, where there is invariably a great discussion in store.
I’m trying to figure out whether Fair Maid is transgressive or retrograde, Carnivalesque or party-line. Or whether it’s at once conservative and progressive. On the one hand, Bess can be seen as a kind of early feminist heroine, true to her own imperatives, ungoverned by male desire. Her impressive command of the alehouse can be read as a kind of “countermodel,” as Bristol might put it, to notions of women as the weaker sex appropriately subject to rule by men. The alehouse, moreover, might be seen as a space inhabited by the Carnivalesque, a place in which traditional rites of courtship (at least as I imagine them to be) are set aside in place of bawdy repartee and sexual license.
At the same time, Fair Maid seems to glorify female sexual virtue in a way that seems more in keeping with “official” values than the strident alehouse culture described by Bennett. Bess is heroic, it seems to me, only to the degree that she maintains her chastity against the pressure applied by her many suitors. In this sense, Bess is straitjacketed by Heywood’s criteria for female honor and worth. She may be a heroine, but she pays a high price for the honor. One false move, one capitulation to her sexual impulses, and she’ll lose all of her stature. Alluring as she is, Bess doesn’t seem to fit the stereotype of “the devil’s schoolmistress”—the common female “tapster” who preys upon the weakness of male patrons. She seems like the conservative anti-type of the female alehouse worker described by Bennett.
Is there an irony here? If Heywood in Fair Maid is countering misogynistic representations of female “brewsters,” he does so by severely curtailing Bess’ sexual freedom—which is sort of misogynistic, no?
Thought- provoking responses. I particularly liked Penny's and might try to respond to some of it.
Cressy's article suggests "radical critics" have projected "present preoccupations onto the past," thereby bringing our opinions to the evidence, rather than vice-versa. He also notes, "literary scholars often argue that cross-gender clothing signaled subversion, resistance, and transgression and that the sex-gender system of early modern England was in a state of flux." As Penny notes, Cressy relies on an accumulation of legal and literary history to arrive at his opinion that there wasn't anything so overwhelmingly transgressive about the cross-dressing. For some, Cressy notes, cross-dressing served a purpose, and we see that in Bess -- she dresses as her "brother"/"a page with a sword" to intimidate Roughman (played by Pete Postelwaite in a 1986 production by the RSC); then dons the garb of a "sea captain" and swashbuckles with the best of them. This seems to be in line with the idea that "the clothes made the man." (Bess first suggests this when first dressed as a man: "Methinks I have a manly spirit in me in this man's habit.")
What fascinates me is the sheer normalcy of all this. She dresses the part, she acts the part, and no one really cares. In fact, Roughman follows her aboard the ship, Clem's her ever-faithful servant, etcetera. No one seems to care that this is a woman doing this. There seems to be an easy acceptance of her crossing "accepted gender norms," as we may term them from our POV.
Another interesting moment comes when Spencer sees his beloved, now dressed as a sea captain. "Methinks he looks like Bess, for in his eyes lives the first love that my first heart did surprise."
Methinks he's not suffering a hint of confusion or anxiety at this fluid sense of gender.
Great posts tonight, I have some ideas that I will try to flesh out here.
First, in response to Penny and Stephan, I too read and will report on the Cressy article. I like Penny’s attitude about it, and I agree that it certainly has its limitations. Specifically, I take item with where he juxtaposes the fervor of the Puritan polemic against anti-transvestism with the supposed overreactions of “radical” literary scholarship—as if the former, hundreds of years removed, had some sort of cause-and-effect relationship with the latter. Maybe, though maybe not.
However, Cressy does aptly point out that setting, or space or place often dictated the perceptions of cultural and theatrical cross-dressing. In what we could regards as non-sacred ground like the theatre or the festival, the practice of transvestism served utilitarian purposes, served as a means of protest, complicated the orthodoxy of legal justice, and, as Cressy points, won the favor of the audience. On sacred ground such as the churches, the bedroom, or in birth-spaces, where men were traditional forbidden, the practice was, well, not as kosher.
This brings me to “The Fair Maiden of the West”. Cross-dressing seems to be a complicated practice here because when Bess “undoes” her own gender, she, much like Portia in The Merchant of Venice or Rosalind in As You Like it, transcends off the page. Now, I think a simplistic (not to mention foolish) reading would insist that because woman allows herself to pose as man, she is afforded the “fool’s justice” and thereby indulges in a certain degree of bravado when disguised. No. Like the mighty Sir John Falstaff, undoing is not antithetical to doing, but transpires and surpasses doing. Remember, as Dr. Lemon said last week, how many characters don the mask of “I am Not What I am”, not only in the tradition of Shakespeare but throughout this arm of the literary canon? After Bess unsexes and re-sexes herself for Roughman, we see a re-masculine roughneck who, (Zounds!) can actually live up to his self-given “hype” and becomes a blind devotee through the adventures to come. Did anybody take item in the play’s final act when Bess dubs herself under the moniker: Elizabeth in the presence of the King of Fez? I guess my resolute point here is that Bess’s cross-dressing not only serves a utilitarian purpose, but also a transcendental one as well.
But in addition to this, cross-dressing moves the action. The preface to my addition (Bison Books, 1967) called this an adventure drama, and one that relied upon the implausible and “invites us to reject reality as commonplace and deep concerns as troublesome, and temporarily substitute for them a fantastical world of the simple” (xv). I’d say that’s about right. I am reminded of undergraduate fiction workshops where similar styles of narration were executed in more or less unsuccessful ways. Nevertheless, this was a fun play, and as much as the realism-alarm blared behind our eyes, it was good to read a drama with some marginal voyage. So, back to cross-dressing: the first incident is a comic foil, and not only allows Bess to keep her chaste vow, but also gives her some dramatic flare. Moreover, the second time she cross-dresses—as Admiral—not only did I see a transcendental movement of character take shape, but in regards to the plot, I almost could read Heywood’s thoughts while writing this: “Why the Hell not? If we’re taking this play to sea, we might as well just bring her bad self along!” Therefore cross-dressing also serves to heighten the adventurousness of this adventure drama.
Finally, I would like to talk about the role of Bar-Maid. It can be assumed that no drunkard loves a woman, his wife and daughters included, better than he loves his Bar-Maid. She enables him. She brings him company and service without explicit judgment. She gives the bee the nectar. A few times, Bess’s “baseness” is thrown into the dialogue of “The Fair Maiden…” and it is interesting how she averts this title, smashes it to atoms, evades its containment. I guess what I am getting at is: How is the bar-maid a privileged position? How does the space of the tavern afford her power? Without stepping on Penny’s toes too much, I think this segues into good discussion tomorrow.
Here is the fade-out to Franz Wright’s “The Winter Skyline Late”:
Yellow window
in the blue dawn
lost is lost
and gone is gone but
be there
if I wake again, don’t abandon me
defend me
-Cody
The Fair Maid of the West strikes me as being very much a popular comedy -- one whose success in large measure comes from its blend of action and inversion, both elements in the carnival tradition.
Sword fights abound (there are at least 6 combats in my version of the play) and death and sudden turns of fortune occur frequently. What is the role of all this violence? What purpose might it serve? It seems to me that in addition to its entertainment value, the function of violence in the play is to provide a means through which masculinity (or the illusion of masculinity) can be both constructed and deconstructed. Those characters who are on the receiving end are emasculated, subjected, and disfigured. Thus, in order to act violently, Bess must first don the appropriate gender (through disguise) and adopt another identity. Later at sea, she dresses again as a man and engages in the battles with a ferocity and courage which inspire Roughman to suggest her superiority to Hercules. Violence is not always destructive, but at times leads to rebirth as is in the case of Roughman who reforms himself after being shamed by Bess (in the guise of a man). Violent nature and difficulty to capture are also the measures used by Mullisheg to determine which hunter's captive is most deserving of the hunting prize. In terms of body counts and difficulty, it becomes apparent that while Spenser is responsible for numerous deaths, Bess too is no easy prize, but has been instead shown herself time and again as honorable, as courageous, as noble, and as honest as any "man." In the end with her clear and direct refusal of Mullisheg and her declaration that she would rather cast herself on a sword than betray her love, she puts herself in the classic tradition of tragic hero.
The play also relies heavily on inversion to create its atmosphere of comedy. In comparing Bess with the contemporary stereotypes of alewives (via Bennett and Mother Bunch), it occurs to me that part of the humor in The Fair Maid of the West is the seemingly impossible character of Bess. A chaste and honorable brewster? We might be equally incredulous with modern equivalents like "rich grad student" or "honest used car salesman." Are the other characters equally fantastic or unbelievable? Roughman as the "reformed thief/murderer" might be one.
The play also explores the "alternate self" in many instances. Obviously Bess becomes someone else. Roughman becomes an alternate Roughman. Clem becomes an alternate Clem to test Bess. Spenser is killed (his double dies and the body lost; he is also "killed" by rumor) and reborn (saved by the surgeon; thought as a ghost by Bess on the ship). Both Mullshegi and Tota become alternate selves when they are tricked into sleeping with each other -- neither recognizes the other who they really are.
In any case, I'm interested in seeing how these things come into play with our discussion.
My favorite line of the night comes from Cody:
"I am reminded of undergraduate fiction workshops where similar styles of narration were executed in more or less unsuccessful ways."
Which reminds me to put my voice behind the idea that it's interesting that Heywood chose to follow Bess in this play rather than Spencer, which would have been the more traditional take. Bess is the agent of action here, both for better and worse.
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