The Duchess of Suffolk ed. by Thomas Drue (review)

Katherine Willoughby, the Duchess of Suffolk (1519–80), was the ward of Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk who, in the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47), married her when she was fourteen, and forty-five years his junior. He left her an extremely wealthy widow, and, after his death, she engaged in some property disputes in which she stood her ground against Henry. After the death of her two sons, finding herself without a male protector, she married her gentleman usher, Richard Bertie. Speaking out against arranged marriages, she is known to have said, "I cannot tell what more unkindness one of us might work more wickedly than to bring our children into so miserable a state [as] not to choose by their own liking such as they must profess so strait a bond and so great a love to forever" (cited in Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers [Oxford University Press, 2002]). An avid Protestant reformer, Katherine died in 1580, happy that the reign of the Protestant Elizabeth I (1558–1603) was at last established.

The first record of The Duchess of Suffolk appears in 1624 in the office book of the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert. Herbert, who licensed it for performance, also censored it, no doubt because the play contains controversial religious material. It was entered for publication in the Stationers' Register in 1629, and finally published in 1631. The title page attests to many performances, apparently acted by the Palsgrave's Men at their regular venue, the Fortune Theater. The author, Thomas Drue, was known to be an actor by 1624. A shareholder in Queen Anne's Men, Drue left the company in 1618 and began writing plays. The Duchess of Suffolk is his first play, and the only one to survive. He died in 1627.

The first scene of the play quickly dispatches with the duchess's conflicts over property and depicts her marriage to Bertie as her own choice made from among an array of prominent suitors. "Pleased or displeased, you women choose your liking," declares the Earl of Arundel, "Choose madam choose, and please thine own content" (1.1.184, 188). Echoing the Duchess of Malfi in John Webster's 1613 play of the same name, the Duchess of Suffolk responds heroically, openly and independently: "Come worst of fate, /Bertie I choose thy self my marriage mate, / Upon this low foundation I erect / The palace of mine honors, on this knee / I place the head of mine authority" (1.1.194–98).

Unlike the Duchess of Malfi, the Duchess of Suffolk's marital choice is open and proud. However her fears come neither from being pursued by psychotic brothers in particular, nor from the issue of forced marriage in general. Although a descendant of Katherine of Aragon, the devout Catholic queen and first wife of Henry VIII, the duchess is an eager protagonist of the Reform movement. The play begins with the death of the Protestant Edward VI (1547–53), Henry's son from his third wife Jane Seymour, and the ascendancy of the Catholic Queen Mary I (1553–58), Henry's eldest daughter from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. Almost from the start, the duchess and Bertie are in trouble for their fervent beliefs. The play depicts their flight to the Continent, their relentless pursuit by agents of the crown, their miraculous escape from their pursuers, and, finally, their triumphant return to an England ruled by Elizabeth I.

The conflicts in The Duchess of Suffolk center on the salient painful turmoil of the sixteenth century: religion and its inextricably intertwined relation to politics. The play was written and performed at least seventy years after the events depicted. Herbert found the play to contain "dangerous matter, which was much reformed for my pains" (1...