Unit Five: Drama and Reform

Lesson 12:

Collier’s “Short View” & Rowe’s Jane Shore

Jeremy Collier

1650–1726, English clergyman.

Collier was imprisoned as one of the nonjurors, who refused to pledge allegiance to William III and Mary II.

What is a Nonjuror?

Nonjurors are those English and Scottish clergymen who refused to break their oath of allegiance to James II and take the oath to William III after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

They upheld the principles of hereditary succession and the divine right of kings, and their refusal to recognize William as king led to their removal from office.

Outlawed Priest

He later was outlawed (1696) for absolving on the scaffold two of those involved in the assassination plot against William.

But he was well known for the Short View and its follow-ups.

Source of Fame

Collier's principal fame comes from:

Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698)

Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1708, 1714).

In 1713 he was ordained a nonjuring bishop.

Understands His Culture

His work was incredibly influential. He understood the times and was reflecting people’s reaction against the immorality of the 70s and 80s.

And he used lots of specific examples in his work, so people could see he knew what he was talking about.

Nicholas Rowe

1674- 1718New Style playwright

Shakespeare’s Editor

Still famous today as the first editor and biographer of Shakespeare.

Most of his act and scene divisions and several of his emendations are still retained in editions of Shakespeare's plays.

Also preserved valuable anecdotes from the acting tradition through Thomas Betterton.

Very Successful Playwright

After some temporary early successes, he scored a major hit with The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714)

From that time on, several of his plays were regularly performed and reprinted for more than a century.

Popular Playwright

Three of his tragedies: Tamerlane

The Fair Penitent

Jane Shore

were among the most frequently performed, after Shakespeare's, in the eighteenth century

Influential Playwright

The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore had a profound impact on the development of bourgeois tragedy, not only in England but on the Continent as well.

Master of “She-tragedy”

She-tragedies, so-called because their protagonists are women.

Following in the tradition of Thomas Otway, and Thomas Southerne, Rowe was a master at portraying women characters under stress.

Friend to Actresses

He thus provided great vehicles for the premier actresses of the eighteenth century--Elizabeth Barry, Anne Oldfield, Susannah Cibber, and Sarah Siddons.

Barry Oldfield Cibber

Sarah Siddons as Tragic Muse

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse, 1784 (Huntington Library Art Collection)

Sarah Siddons lived 1755-1831, but famously portrayed a number of Rowe’s heroines.

Material for Feminist Critics

And his women, particularly Calista from The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore, now provide excellent subjects for feminist criticism.

Their complaints against the tyranny of men ring poignant over the centuries.

Literary Friends

Studied to be a lawyer, but writing intervened.

Became good friends with Jonathan Swift.

Also friend with Alexander Pope.

Jane Shore

When published in February 1714, amidst a great deal of hype, this play was dedicated to the teenaged Charles Douglas, duke of Queensberry, son of the duke under whom Rowe had served, who is urged in the opening paragraph to emulate his father.

Pope’s Support

From this time on the letters of Pope suggest how warmly Pope fostered and encouraged Rowe's work in drama (reporting that this play "has been worth about five hundred pounds to Mr. Rowe") even though the two now had political differences.

Strong Opening

The Tragedy of Jane Shore premiered on 2 February 1714 and had an initial run of thirteen nights.

This run, among plays produced up till that time, was second only to Joseph Addison's Cato in the previous year.

Strong Numbers

It outdistanced all but Otway's Orphan and Rowe's own Tamerlane revived every year to honor William III and, by

extension, the revolution

in performances of serious plays, outside Shakespeare's, over the next two-thirds of a century and was still in the repertory more than a century later.

Anne Oldfield

Part of Jane Shore's success is its providing of a wonderful vehicle for Anne Oldfield.

Oldfield, who originated the role of Jane Shore

Strong Blank Verse

Another part is its excellent blank verse, written in imitation of Shakespeare. As James R. Sutherland has written, no other Englishman of his time could write blank verse as well as Rowe.

Foreign Appeal

It was translated into French, German, and Spanish and, along with other plays by Rowe and Otway, influenced the development of domestic tragedy abroad.

Religiousity

The play’s religious message probably appealed to emergent middle-class morality of the day, with all its societies for reformation.

But perhaps what else contributed to the play's immense popularity was a political ambiguity that allowed both Whig and Tory to consider it as espousing the Truth.

The Real Jane Shore

~1445 - ~1527 was one of the many mistresses of King Edward IV

Her Biography

Jane married before she was quite out of girlhood to a merchant named William Shore, who though young, handsome, and well-to-do, never really won her affections.

It appears that he was impotent, for their marriage was eventually annulled on that ground in 1476. (Well, it was a good excuse, wasn’t it?)

King’s Mistress

She probably became mistress of the king in late 1475 or 1476.

Edward did not discard her as he did many of his mistresses, and their relationship lasted until Edward's death in 1483.

Was Hasting’s Mistress

Afterwards she was mistress of the queen's oldest son Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset

Also of William Hastings, who was convicted of treason and executed in the Tower of London on 18 June 1483. This was a political execution.

Jane’s Punishment

Jane was required to do an open penance at Paul's Cross for her promiscuous behavior, though this may have been motivated by suspiscion she had harbored Dorset when he was a fugitive.

She went in her underdress through the streets one Sunday with a taper in her hand, attracting a lot of male attention all along the way.

Captivating Woman

While she was in prison for her misconduct, she so captivated the King's Solicitor, Thomas Lynom, that he actually entered into a contract of marriage with her.

Later Life?

We have a letter of King Richard III to his chancellor on the occasion, pardoning Jane so she could be released from prison (into her father's custody) but asking the chancellor to dissuade Lynom from the match, if possible.

Some sources say they were married and had one daughter. Although Lynom lost his position as King's Solicitor when Henry VII defeated Richard III, he was able to stay as a mid-level bureaucrat in the new reign.

Back to the Play...

The exaltation of self, largely negative in the seventeenth century, becomes positive in the heroic literature of the eighteenth: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722), Cato (1713).

Rising Democracy

And it is connected with a blossoming rhetoric of democracy. Jane properly maintains that "Highborn" beauties of the court are far worthier than she, but Alicia--and we--remain impressed that she was raised to a monarch's attention and remains attractive to Hastings.

“Natural” Dignity

We are further impressed by the dignity and fortitude she exhibits in the face of calamity despite her class, for which Richard and his cohorts demean her.

Shore vs. Hastings

When Jane's husband stands up to Hastings, and with his sword at that--a very aristocratic martial art--he boasts, "no gaudy Titles grac'd my Birth, ... / Yet Heav'n that made me Honest, made me more / Than ever King did, when he made a Lord.”

After he disarms Hastings, Shore credits his own "inborn Virtue" and triumphantly asks, "where is our difference now? ... a Lord / Oppos'd against a Man is but a Man."

Whiggish Thought

Contemporary Whigs would have been comforted by this kind of rhetoric.

They Would have read Richard's attempt at usurpation as the threat of the return of arbitrary government if ever a Stuart were to return.

They would have welcomed the lines describing Edward IV's entailing of the royal succession "in Concurrence / With his Estates assembled."

Republican Thoughts

Hastings's characterization of the evils of faction and Jane's admonition to leave government to the professionals also seem supportive of at least republican if not democratic theory.

Tory/Jacobite Sentiments

But Jane and Hastings's strident defense of the principle of hereditary succession, especially as expressed in the rhetoric of Catesby's description of Hastings--"he bears a most religious Reverence / To his dead Master Edward's Royal Memory"--and Jane's refusal to "see [Edward's] Children robb'd of Right" must have given aid and comfort to Jacobites.

Pope’s Aid

Perhaps it is no wonder that Pope helped Rowe get his play published.

Rowe may have intended that his play serve as a warning, as the death of Queen Anne approached, against the breaking of the Protestant succession established by Parliament and against the return of arbitrary, tyrannical (read: Catholic, Stuart) government.

What was Rowe up to?

But Jane's and Hastings's defenses of hereditary succession must have seemed, at least to the Jacobites, as the political Truth, hurled in the teeth of those about to ignore the son of their legitimate monarch and seek for "hereditary" Protestant succession in the ranks of distant cousins in the distant provinces of Germany. Was Rowe conscious of the ambiguity? Was he himself ambivalent?

Poet Laureate

Whatever Rowe's real political allegiances, his economic fortunes improved tremendously with the success of Jane Shore, for that success contributed to his being named in the following year poet laureate to the first of the Hanoverians, George I.

Quick Note on George I

Born 1660Reigned 1714-1727Never came to England until he was king.

Queen Anne didn’t want him there.His mother, Sophia, was the

granddaughter of James I.Never learned English!

Back to Rowe...

Rowe's ascension to the laureateship was aided most by his last play, The Tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray, produced in April 1715.

In it Rowe's politics no longer seem the slightest bit ambiguous. John Loftis has properly characterized the play as Whig propaganda. Another she-tragedy, it’s not read much today.

Politics in Jane Grey

Jane is a pious educated young womanHer husband, Dudley, is constant and self-

reliant (he wasn’t!)Both are seen not as ambitious opportunists

but Protestant saints (straight out of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) who gladly sacrifice their lives for the Whig buzzwords of Liberty, Country, and the Protestant Religion.