George Washington University

Shakespeare and the "Mistress-Missa" Tradition in King Henry VIIIAuthor(s): D. Douglas WatersSource: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 459-462Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2868622 .

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QUERIES AND NOTES 459

an exceptional actor. There are tears in his voice, and tenderness. He is natural and he feels. . . His Arthur is a lovable creation," and earlier in the review: "About the future of Master Sefton . . . we all agree." Ironically they could not know. During the rehearsals of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which he was to play Puck, he came down with scarlet fever. On his recovery from a long sickness, he was sent back to school, after which he spent the rest of his life in the army. I do not know whether he felt satisfaction or sympathy when the young woman who succeeded him as Puck was severely treated by the press. At any rate I hope this article may partially repay Colonel O'Mahony for the trouble he took in writing me.

Finally, two of my earlier suppositions now have to be modified. Because the scene chosen for cinematography was not the Magna Charta tableau, I shall have to divest King John, or Tree, of his royal robe and clothe him in armor. Moreover since Colonel O'Mahony writes that the excerpt was filmed during the run of King John but after rehearsals of A Midsummer Night's Dream had begun, late November or early December seems a more probable date than my generalized "autumn of i899" for the shooting of the first Shakespearean film.7

Queens College, City University of New York 7The Era of November i8 indicates that at that date "preparations" were being made for

A Midsummer Night's Dream. I take it that rehearsals would soon have followed. With the opening of the new production on January io, i900, early January would probably have been too filled to allow outside activity, and Charles Sefton's illness also must be taken into account. The Era indicates that Tree was in Brighton the week before Christmas, while performances of King John were suspended.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE "MISTRESS-MISSA" TRADITION IN KING HENRY VIHI

D. DOUGLAS WATERS

Among the stores of learning that may have found their way into Shake- speare's plays no one has thus far investigated his relationship to the "Mistress- Missa" tradition. This rhetorical tradition, which employed symbolic lust and symbolic witchcraft to personify the Roman Mass as a whore and witch, in- cluded such writers as Luther, Calvin, William Punt, William Turner, Thomas Becon, John Bradford, Hugh Latimer, John Jewel, Edmund Guest, and many others. These polemicists pr'esented human lust as a symbol of spiritual lust, i.e., man's idolatrous tendency to false religion; they used witch- craft as a metaphor for spiritual seduction of the ordinary Protestant laymen by Roman Catholic priests and teachers pictured as magicians, wizards, and conjurers. Symbolic witchcraft and symbolic whoredom became the essential ideas of the Mistress-Missa tradition.'

1 See " 'Mistress Missa,' Duessa, and the Anagogical Allegory of The Faerie Queene, Book I," PLL, IV (I968), 258-75, or Duessa as Theological Satire (Columbia, Missouri, 1970), pp 4-16, where I have discussed this tradition at greater length. My citations from King Henry VIII are to Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. G. B. Harrison (New York, 1952).

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460 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Shakespeare's humane sensitivity, his dramatic objectivity, and his pro- found interest in universal human conflicts might, at first, seem to dis- credit his use of this tradition even in King Henry VIII. There can be no doubt that national politics and objective, if not laconic, characterization are central elements of this play, but Shakespeare's characters possess theo- logical leanings that somewhat clarify his apparent evasiveness. The Roman Catholic Wolsey for example explained that he was foiled by his Protestant enemies-Anne Bullen, "a spleeney Lutheran" (III. ii. 99), and Thomas Cran- mer, a "heretic, an arch one, . . ." and one that "hath crawled into the favor of the King / And is his oracle" (III. ii. I02-I04). At Cranmer's trial before the Privy Council, the Lord Chancellor alleged that he had filled "the whole realm" with his "new opinions, / Divers and dangerous, which are heresies" (V. iii. 14-i8); on the same occasion, Steven Gardiner, of Winchester, told Cranmer: ".. . you are a sectary" (V.ii.70).

Some of Cardinal Wolsey's enemies, on the other hand, opposed him in the manner of sixteenth-century Protestants. The Lord Chamberlain muttered that the Cardinal "hath a witchcraft / Over the King in's tongue" (III. ii. i8-i9). Witchcraft here includes political seduction as in King John: King John warns the French King against the "juggling witchcraft" of "this meddling priest" Pandulph, Cardinal of Milan, by whom "all the kings of Christendom / Are led so grossly . . ." (III. i. i62-71). In the light of the other theological elements in King Henry VIII, witchcraft could also have theological implica- tions not completely unlike those of Thomas Cranmer's remarks in the fol- lowing passage that pleads against Bishop Gardiner and others:

Listen not to the false incantations, sweet whisperings, and crafty juggling of the subtle papists, wherewith they have this many years deluded and bewitched the world; but hearken to Christ, give ear unto his words, which lead you the right way unto everlasting life, . . .

In his similar caution against toleration of the "false" religion of Rome, Roger Ascham, in his "Dedication" (1566) to The Schoolmaster, reminded Queen Elizabeth of the Old Testament prophets' denunciation of "Baal and devilish sorcery" and "Spiritual fornication."2

The Mistress-Missa elements of symbolic lust and symbolic witchcraft in- fluenced some of the letters of the Marian exiles printed in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments. The martyrologist's own account of Archbishop Cranmer's last words personifies the Protestant doctrine of the Lord's Supper as a virgin and the Roman Catholic doctrine as a strumpet:

And as for the sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the bishop of Winchester, the which my book teacheth so true a doctrine of the sacrament, that it shall stand at the last day before the judgment of God, where the papistical doctrine contrary thereto shall be ashamed to show her face.

Those Mistress-Missa writings represented in Foxe include, among others, a letter of "John Philpot, Martyr, to the Christian Congregation" (1555) and "A Letter of Dr. Taylor of Hadley, written to his wife" (1555). The latter assumes that the Roman Mass "is but one of Antichrist's youngest daughters

2 See Writings and Disputations of Thomas Cranmer, . . . Relative to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, ed. John Edmund Cox. Parker Society, XV (Cambridge, 1844), 7; Ascham, Works, ed. J. A. Giles, 3 in 4 vols. (London, i865), III, 70-72.

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QUERIES AND NOTES 46i

." and hence a party to "this Babylonical stewish, spiritual whoredom, . .

According to many scholars Foxe's book influenced the content of King Henry VIII, Act V; it is therefore unlikely that Shakespeare was unacquainted with the Mistress-Missa tradition, though he certainly could have known it through other sources. That he was actually capable of making his characters speak disrespectfully of the Roman Catholic system of worship is evident in Titus Andronicus, where Aaron the Moor ridiculed Lucius' Christian "conscience, / With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies / Which I have seen thee careful to observe, . . ." (V. i. 75-77).

In a context that treats Wolsey's pride and hypocrisy, Shakespeare's Earl of Surrey told the Cardinal:

I'll startle you Worse than the sacring bell when the brown wench Lay kissing in your arms, Lord Cardinal.

(III. ii. 294-96) It is commonly agreed that the "sacring bell" alludes to the sounding of the bell at High Mass-at the solemn moment that consecration is accomplished by the priest. The "brown wench" could refer to the Mass as Mistress Missa, and thus spiritual fornication between the priest and the Mass would be involved. This is the very same fashion of sixteenth-century polemicists. William Turner, in A newe dialogue wherein is conteyned the examination of the messe (1548?), said that the Roman priests "abused" and "kept" "this woman," Mistress Missa, in "their chambres"; and John Bradford wrote in Confuta- tions of Four Romish Doctrines that she was "blasphemously and horribly abused, to be a mermaid to amuse and bewitch men, sailing in the seas of this life, to be enamoured on her. . ..4

But, one might object, why would Shakespeare have a member of the Privy Council try the Protestant Cranmer for heresy and at the same time harass Cardinal Wolsey for his activity with the Mass as a "brown wench"? Being on the Council, however, does not necessarily indicate Roman Catholic ortho- doxy on Surrey's part. He could have had leanings toward Protestantism, just as, according to Bishop Gardiner, Cromwell was also "a favorer / Of this new sect . . ." (V. iii. 8o-8i). It is important therefore that Shakespeare's Surrey-barring his attempt to speak when he is stopped by the King-re- main quiet during Cranmer's trial.

Regarding the controversy over King Henry VIII, all contestants realize that neither the sole authorship of Shakespeare nor a double authorship theory can be proved.5 Most scholars however have insisted on assigning III. ii.

3 See Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Josiah Pratt. 4th ed. rev. and corrected (London, n.d.), VIII, 88, for Cranmer's last words, and VI, 701-702, for Dr. Taylor's letter.

4 See William Turner, STC 24362, sig. HV; and The Writings of John Bradford; Containing Letters, Treaties, and Remains, ed. Aubrey Townsend. Parker Society, V (Cambridge, I853), 287-88.

6 For reviews of the whole controversy, see Evidence for Authorship: Essays on Problems of Attribution, ed. David V. Erdman and Ephim G. Fogel (Ithaca, 1966), pp. 457-78; Thomas Clay- ton, "Internal Evidence and Elizabethan Dramatic Authorship: An Essay in Literary History and Method: Review Article," Shakespeare Studies, IV (i968), 350-76, esp. 357-59 and 365-74; Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Life and Art (New York, i96i), p. 22i; Frank Kermode, "What Is Shakespeare's Henry Viii About?" Durham University Journal, n.s. IX (1948), 48-55, reprinted in Shakespeare: The Histories; A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Eugene M. Waith (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., i965), pp. i68-79, esp. i68-72; and H. M. Richmond, "Shakespeare's Henry Viii: Romance Redeemed by History," Shakespeare Studies, IV (i968), 334-49, esp. 334-35.

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462 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

204-459 to John Fletcher, and within this section comes Surrey's allusion to the Mistress-Missa tradition. It is imperative therefore that I explain my ac- ceptance of it as Shakespearean. Though Fletcher's participation in the play has never been definitively demonstrated, the findings of certain specialists have shown that his possible share was less-much less-than the followers of Spedding have surmised. Spedding's attribution of III. ii. 204-459 exclusively to Fletcher has, for example, been recently challenged by Cyrus Hoy, the most competent and restrained contender for Fletcher's share in King Henry VIII. He has reasonably argued that in these particular lines we are dealing with "Fletcherian interpolations in a scene that is essentially Shakespeare's.'" So whether or not one has doubts about other parts of the play, it is alto- gether probable that Surrey's lines on Mistress Missa are Shakespeare's.

If the above suggestion that Shakespeare alluded to the Mistress-Missa tradition is correct, it supports the judgment of recent scholars that the poet's alleged sympathy for Roman Catholicism was not so immediately profound as some critics have affirmed.7

University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire 6 Hoy in "The Shares of Fletcher and his Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon

(VII)," SB, XV (i962), 8o, wrote at length on III. ii. 204-459: "In it ye, which has not ap- peared in the Shakespearean portion [III. ii. I-203], occurs 6 times. The occurrence is suspiciously low in proportion to the 37 you's found in this presumably Fletcherian half of the scene. Since we are here dealing with the work of Compositor B, there is of course the strong possibility that a number of Fletcher's ye's have been changed to you's. Still, I find the distribution of such occurrences of ye as are present suspicious; it is too reminiscent of the distribution of ye in II, 1-2. The 6 instances of the form appear at lines 239, 240, 241, 242, 278, and 365, and that being so, I am not at all sure that one is justified in attributing to Fletcher the superb speeches made by Wolsey after his fall. I think that what we are dealing with is, once again, Fletcherian inter- polations in a scene that is essentially Shakespeare's."

7 See Roland Mushat Frye, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine (Princeton, 1963), pp. 275-76 and 288-go, on the doctrinally "unsafe" praise of Cranmer and Elizabeth in King Henry Viii and the official Roman Catholic censorship by Father William Sankey, S.J., in the mid-seven- teenth century; Peter Alexander, pp. 219-20, on Shakespeare's "strong sympathy with the national and religious feeling of his country"; and John Henry de Groot, The Shakespeares and "The Old Faith" (New York, i968; ist pub. 1946), who contends not, as many have done, that the dramatist was Roman Catholic but that he was more sympathetic to "Catholicism" than many scholars allow, pp. III, 126, 136, et passim, esp. I69 and 222-24.

"THE BEGGAR AND THE KING": AN ALLUSION POINTING TO THE DATE OF RICHARD II

WALTER C. FOREMAN

The resolution of the Aumerle plot in V. iii of Richard II (from the Duchess of York's entrance to the end of the scene) has been called "oneor the few unintentionally ridiculous scenes in Shakespeare."' It has also been considered an intentional lightening of touch-a sort of upper-class comic relief-between the scenes of abdication and parting (IV. i and V. i) and the final scenes de-

1 George Saintsbury, quoted from the New Variorum Richard 11, ed. Matthew W. Black (Phila- delphia and London, 1955), p. 316. I quote Richard 11 from this edition. For other plays I use the line-numbering of The Oxford Shakespeare, ed. W. J. Craig (London, 1905).

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