The Shoemaker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker

PRIMARY SOURCE: THE SHOMAKERS Holiday. OR The Gentle Craft. With the humorous life of Simon Eyre, shoomaker, and Lord Maior of London.
Context

• Publication: Performed in 1599 by the Admiral's Men. Printed by Valentine Simmes in quarto for sale at the White Swan: publisher presumably Simmes. Reprinted in six more editions—five before the war. Printed with two prefatory "three-man songs" [A4r]. Held by the Wrights for 45 years. Transferred to William Gilbertson on my birthday!
• Scholarship: Scholars are interested in Dekker's representation of the Dutch as an ethnic Dutchman. Citizen protagonists reveal something of class struggle in England, though they're easily resolved by the arrival of the King. The City.
• Why I'm reading it: The canon, city comedy, butterboxes.

Content

• Form: Play in five acts.
• Genre: Comedy, city comedy.
• Conceit: Shoemaker Simon Eyre takes as apprentice the aristocrat Rowland Lacy, disguised as a Dutchman. Lacy is escaping military service required to redeem his value as part of his marriage to the citizen's daughter Rose. The shoemaker Ralph fights in France, while the gentleman Hammon woos his wife, Jane. She consents to an eventual marriage when she sees false proof of Ralph's death. Ralph returns, searches for Jane, and refuses to sell her to Hammon on reunion.  Throughout, Eyre ascends to Sheriff, then Lord Mayor. Rose and Rowland marry. The King upholds both decisions and knights Rowland. At the end, Eyre creates a pancake-based celebration on Shrove Tuesday for the apprentices of London.
• Other notes: Pancake holiday!

"Bishop's Bible Illustrations" by Margaret Aston

CITATION: Aston, Margaret. The Church and the Arts: Papers Read at the 1990 Summer Meeting and the 1991 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Ed. Diana Wood. Oxford, UK: Published for the Ecclesiastical History Society by Blackwell Publishers, 1992. Print.
Understanding

• Question: How did the Elizabethan Church and Continental artists develop the illustrations in the Bishops' Bible?
• Answer: Archbishop Parker suffered frequent delay in the production of the '68 and '72 editions due to the Continental circulation of borrowed woodcuts; only after significant delay in '72 did Parker commission new illustrations.
• Method: Aston essentially composes a narrative covering the majority of editions between 1565 and 1576. Archivally, Aston connects the '68 and '72 editions to the Biblische Figuren des Alten und Newen Testaments, gantz künstlich gerissen by Virgil Solis.
• Assumptions:
• Sententiae: In the first place we might wonder whether the change of illustrations resulted from puritanical censorship. We know the view of some of the censors, for the Second Admonition to Parliament in 1572 included an acid comment on pictures in the 15688 Bishops' Bible. ... namely, when the Lord spoke from the fire in Mount Horeb, 'ye sawe no maner of image'; to which Bishop Alley's note read: 'Meaning that plagues hang over them that wold make any image to represent God by'. (271-2)

Overstanding

• Assessment: Aston's detailed examination of the illustrations is commendable--particularly for crossing language lines and investigating Virgil Solis' printed legacy.
• Synthesis: I haven't yet read much on the Bishops' Bible, but Aston's description of the interaction between English publishers and Continental toolmakers generally anticipates with the description outlined by Darnton in "What is the History of the Book? Revisited."
• Application: The application is pretty profound: the Established church is clearly involved with print ornamentation at the highest levels, and the relevant executives were willing to "play ball" with secular Continental books, even on a loaned basis. The arrangement seems to indicate a naive understanding of the Continental book trade. English authorities would be unlikely to make a similar deal after the Buckingham cartoons caricatured an English authority in the Continental print.

Edward II by Christopher Marlowe

PRIMARY SOURCE: The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, King of England: with the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer: Written by Chri. Marlow Gent
Context

• Publication:
  Published by bookseller William Jones (2) and printed by Robert Robinson in 1594. Registered to Jones in 1593, though later transferred to Barnes, Bell, and Haviland & Wright: four editions with a different publisher or printer each time. Printed in a quarto format that dropped from 48 leaves to about 40 in later editions. Performed by Pembroke's Men in 1591-2, though Greg lists Queen Anne's Men and the Red Bull theater.
• "As it was sundrie times publiquely acted in the honourable citie of London, by the right honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants."
• "Imprinted at London for William Iones, dwelling neere Holbourne conduit, at the signe of the Gunne. 1594."
• EEBO link.
• Scholarship: This is Marlowe's historical drama, drawing exact phrases from Holinshed. Formally, scholars appreciate the play's clarity and consistent characterization. Stylistically, there is less strutting and ranting than in Marlowe's antihero plays. The central homoerotic relationship exemplifies DiGangi's contention that transgressive class relations, rather than homoerotics, were seen as disruptive in early modern England. Despite Edward's failures as a king, he still draws significant sympathy in captivity.
• Why I'm reading it: The Canon

Content

• Form: Tragic History in 5 acts. 
• Genre: History (annals), tragedy.
• Summary:
1. 
   
1. Gaveston returns to England against the objections of the lords. Though they threaten rebellion, Edward loves Gaveston. A priest threatens to drive Gaveston back to France.
2. The bishop is in the Tower & Queen Isabella leaves for the forest. The lords decide to eject Gaveston and thus provoke Edward into civil war.
3. Gaveston marks his enemies at Lambeth.
4. The conspirators seize Gaveston from the king's side. They take him away and plan to rebel. Instead of overthrowing the king outright, they plan either assassination or popular rebellion.
2. 
   
1. Spenser aligns himself with Gaveston.
2. Edward obsesses over Gaveston's return rather than French invasion. Mortimer wounds Gaveston. Edward bans Mortimer from court and so begins the rebellion. Just then, Mortimer learns that the Scots are holding his uncle for ransom, a ransom that only the king could pay. Spenser becomes Edward's minion.
3. The conspirators plan to ambush the king.
4. The king's company flees the ambush. Edward overlooks Queen Isabella, who commends Mortimer to slay Gaveston.
5. The conspirators refuse to return Gaveston to Edward.
3. 
   
1. Warwick takes Gaveston back.
2. Edward makes Spenser his new favorite. France retakes Normandy. Edward hears that Warwick killed Gaveston and swears vengeance. The lords request that Spenser be banned.
3. They fight.
4. Mortimer and Kent are captured.
4. 
   
1. Kent and Mortimer leave for Queen Isabella in France.
2. Kent and Mortimer meet Queen Isabella.  The French promise aid but the young prince believes Edward will win.
3. Edward's spy reports the events of the last act.
4. Queen Isabella and Mortimer give speeches for invasion.
5. The King's party flees for the Queen Isabella.
6. Queen Isabella captures Kent and Spenser's father.
7. Queen Isabella's men capture the last of the King's party, e.g. Spenser.
5. 
   
1. Edward is imprisoned and laments haughtily. He refuses to resign, then relents.
2. Mortimer sidles up to Queen Isabella's authority. He installs a puppet as successor. The prince knows they're liars. Mortimer orders his seizure, and so loses both Queen Isabella  and the Prince as his allies.
3. Captors torture Edward. The Prince is seized.
4. Mortimer gloats. He orders Kent murdered.
5. Edward endures imprisonment. He fears for his life. Lightborn kills him and Gurney kills Lightborn.
6. Edward III swears vengeance on Queen Isabella and Mortimer. He orders a lord to kill Mortimer and sends Queen Isabella to the Tower.
• Other notes:

“The Reformation of Images and Some Jacobean Writers on Art” by Karl Josef Holten

CITATION: Holten, Karl Josef. “The Reformation of Images and Some Jacobean Writers on Art.” Functions of Literature: Essays Presented to Erwin Wolff on His Sixtieth Birthday. Ed. Ulrich Broich. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984. Print.
Understanding

• Question: How did Jacobean art writing bridge the needs of a culture and the development of a culture's institutions of knowledge (funktiongeshichte)?
• Answer: After the royal iconography of the Elizabethan era, Jacobean writers of art defended aristocratic art using Italo-philic/-phobic discourses and Tertullian's writings on church art.
• Method: Functionalism. As stated above, funktiongeschichte seeks to explain literary genre as a bridge between the needs of a culture and the developments of a culture's philosophy and institutions of knowledge. Erwin Wolff and Rudiger Ahrens think this is what Sidney developed in his apology.
• Assumptions: Obviously, the entire functionalist agenda relies on two atomistic poles of "the needs of a culture" and "a culture's philosophy." I expect that New Historicism struck functionalism like a ton of bricks.
• Sententiae: "To have a story painted, for memory's sake, we hold it not to be unlawful." (146)

Overstanding

• Assessment: An unusual essay from a field of research unfamiliar to me. It presents an opportunity for perspective to me, a person who values formal approaches to literature, to reconsider my formalist assumptions and their relevance in the aftermath of New Historicism.
• Synthesis: At least another contributor, Rudiger Ahrens, indicated that functionalism has a novel reading of Sidney's Defense. That is, Sidney bridged early modernity England's needs for poetry with the humanistic developments of the Renaissance.
• Application: I can't say I find much use in functionalism, but the article introduced me to several interesting details, such as a story about Elizabeth's crucifix disappearing from her chapter at intervals, or Peacham's defense of aristocratic drawing based on Tertullian.

Back from hiatus

I'm back and I'll stop posting silly things, I promise.