Censorship and Forgiven Violence in Mucedorus

Censorship and Forgiven Violence in Mucedorus Richard Finkelstein Although Mucedorus w a s popular in both city and country for two centuries, its form is n o w out of favor. It has an episodic structure with characterizations typical of early Renaissance romance and pastoral comedy. A s also found in genres on which it draws, its action contains several logical inconsistencies, in two senses: no clear cause and effect connects characters' actions to either seeming motivations or priorbehavior; and attitudes which individual figures take vary from scene to scene. These inconsistencies, however, give the play an ideological flexibility accounting for its popularity with varied audiences. Mucedorus is popular kind of pastoral romance, part of a genre which includes the m u c h more erudite, intellectualized comedies of 1 For an outline of the play's unusually long performance history at cou and with provincial groups, seeArvin Jupin, Mucedorus: A Contextual Study and Modern Spelling Edition (New York: Garland, 1987), pp. 1-2,15-18,28-37. M. C. Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973), p. 72, notes that its was printed more frequently than any play of its time. George Reynolds tries to account for the play's popularity in 'Mucedorus, Most Popular Elizabethan Playl'Studies in the English Renaissance Drama (New York: N e w York University Press, 1959), pp. 248-68. There has been scant critical attention to the play in this century. In addition to Bradbrook and Jupin, significant references to the comedy are in G. F. Tucker Brooke, ed., The Shakespeare Apocrypha (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), pp. xxiv-xxvii; David Bevington, From Mankind to Marlowe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 85,186; and Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare andthe Rival Traditions (New York: Macmillan,1952), pp 109-10/174,177. Harbage finds all the play's characters stainless and innocent. 90 Richard Finkelstein Lyly that respect classical theories of decorum. Its relative lack of fo organization initially makes Mucedorus seem a popular challenge to aesthetic hierarchies found in plays similar to Lyly's, and associated with political authority. Actually, the inconsistencies and episodic form of Mucedorus result from a cautious ideological agenda. Its caution places Mucedorus with m a n y other examples of popular culture: it flirts with subversion but ultimately shows relatively conservative impulses. M a n y of the goals w e assign to the anonymous authors of Mucedorus relate to the artifacts of publication history. Because the 1610, Q 3 edition contains additions to the 1598 Q l play, critical discussion usually fixes on the adaptations, particularly the epilogue, which remake for James the play's compliment to Elizabeth. However, theoretically informed textual studies have reshaped evaluations of Renaissance dramatic works to emphasize not only revision, but the performance driven changes which continually reshape texts. Textual critics often deemphasize authorship or a stable authorial intention. W e cannot assume the publication record of Mucedorus represents the 'textual' record of either the author or of all early performances, especially given its centuries of popularity. Adaptations both small and large probably marked performances which took the play to court, country, popular, and academic settings. 2 In Gallathea, for example, Phyllida and others address the play's own obedience to rules of decorum and 'nature' by openly discussing crossdressing in such terms. 3 Richard Halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissa Culture and the Genealogy ofCapital (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) notes the importance of reading style in the context of political discourses. See, for example, pp. 79-85, for connections between scriveners' wandering lines and ideological errancy, or p. 91, on copia and material prosperity. 4 See Margreta De Grazia, Shakespeare Verbatim: The Reproduction ofAuthenti and the 1790 Apparatus (Oxford:- Clarendon Press, 1991). Less Foucauldian but insisting on textual indeterminacy is Grace Ioppolo, Revising Shakespeare (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 1-43,184-87. Janet Clare, 'Art Made Tongue-Tied byAuthority': Elizabethan and Jacobean Censo (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1990), p. x, points out that dramatic censorship is inevitably linked with local circumstances at the time of performance, a statement which implicitly reminds that productions of Mucedorus were unlikely to have...