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| ISBN-13: | 9780857282156 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Union Bridge Books |
| Publication date: | 06/15/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 146 |
| File size: | 728 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Old, Bold and Won't Be Told
Shakespeare's Amazing Ageing Ladies
By Yvonne Oram
Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2013 Yvonne OramAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85728-215-6
CHAPTER 1
EARLY MODERN OLD WOMEN – ONSTAGE AND OFF
Old Women Onstage: Not a Pretty Sight?
Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing
So aged as this seems.
The Winter's Tale, 5.3.28–29
The immediate reaction of Leontes when faced with the 'statue' of the wife he hasn't seen for 16 years is to exclaim at her loss of looks. And while this alerts us to the possibility of sculptural chicanery (the statue later comes to life) his response also typifies male antipathy towards the visible effects of female ageing. This is often shown far less subtly as distaste and derision in Early Modern drama and Shakespeare's plays are no exception. In Richard III (1592–93) the old Lancastrian matriarch Queen Margaret is described as a 'foul, wrinkled witch' (1.3.164), while Lear's vituperative cursing of his daughter Goneril in King Lear (1610) includes the fond hope that any child she has will 'stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth' (1.4.263). Clearly, wrinkles were problematic well before moisturisers hit the market place in a big way. However, general signs of decay were also targeted in literature. In his comic poem on the ages of women, Thomas Tusser refers tartly to 'trim beauty' falling off rapidly as women turn into 'matrons or drudges'.
But was it just those tell-tale outward signs which caused a woman to be labelled as old in Shakespeare's day? Fifty was often marked as 'the end of adult maturity and the start of old age, though not necessarily the start of decrepitude'. Early Modern dramatists don't always indicate the age of a character but a reliable onstage guide is when the woman is designated old by her own account or by the unbiased witness of others. And it's a fair assumption that she's an ageing woman if she has children of her own who are of marriageable age. Very few women married as young as Shakespeare's 14-year-old Juliet. The fact that he refers specifically to her youth in the exchanges between her mother and her nurse in Romeo and Juliet (1595) Act 1 scene 3 suggests that he needs to establish Juliet as unusually young to be a potential bride, for the benefit of an audience more used to the marriage conventions of their own society. This is supported by detailed work on parish registers, where analysis establishes 'a mean age of marriage for women of about 26' for the majority of the population.
It's also difficult to assess how women in Shakespeare's day felt about getting old. Although old age 'has long been predominantly a female experience' men were the ones who wrote about its attendant pros and cons. However, there are examples of the pressures upon women to deny the ageing process, most notably in the public appearances of Queen Elizabeth I. The monarch took great pains to present herself as ever young, despite all evidence to the contrary. Paul Hentzer, a German visitor to London, records seeing the Queen 'in the 65th year of her age [...] very majestic; her face oblong, fair but wrinkled'. Yet there are 'amazing images of Elizabeth painted by Nicholas Hilliard [...] in the last decade of her reign' depicting the Queen as a young girl, as well as her 'rejuvenated face' in the famous Rainbow Portrait of c.1600. Those wretched wrinkles were obviously a matter of concern to even a 'very majestic' woman. As Elizabeth approached the menopause she began receiving timepieces – 'a new kind of gift [...] to be worn on her body'. This fashion for giving women the means of measuring time in this way increased during the Early Modern period and could certainly carry negative imagery – 'the aged crone emblematized the body clock gone wrong: disordered, intemperate, injuring man'. This view of the timepiece gift as a wake-up call for women is convincing. What better means of controlling ageing women with their problematic bodies than the use of time itself, the passing of which can so alter the physical attractions of youth? Instead of valuing, even celebrating their changing physicality women themselves will come to see all alteration in negative terms through internalisation of male standards of what is physically attractive. So, the ageing woman losing her youthful looks faces male condemnation of an inescapable process, an irony hardly ever explored in Early Modern drama. Shakespeare is the exception here, as I show in this book – particularly in my discussion of his characterisation of Cleopatra.
Not surprisingly the predominantly male-authored drama of the period also has old female characters expressing disquiet about getting on. John Marston's The Malcontent (1604) shows an ageing, albeit unfaithful wife, Aurelia, so deeply wounded by the reported insults of her lover – he is supposed to have called her a 'dried biscuit' (1.6.18) – that she promptly replaces him to bolster her damaged self-confidence. In Webster's The White Devil (1612) Isabella, going into battle against a rival for her husband's affections, hopefully reminds herself that her lips are 'not yet much withered' (2.1.167).
Stereotypical ridiculing of an older woman because she is losing her looks is closely linked on stage to mockery of her sexuality. When the aged Nurse is exposed to Cupid's influence in Dido Queen of Carthage (1587) Marlowe and Thomas Nashe show her as a willing recipient:
Say Dido what she will, I am not old;
I'll be no more a widow; I am young,
I'll have a husband, or else a lover.
(5.1.21–3)
Cupid's disgusted response – 'A husband, and no teeth!' (5.1.24) – encourages an audience to laugh at such unseemly desires in one who is clearly past it.
Of course, there is a double standard at work with regard to sexuality in old age. In John Day's The Isle of Gulls (1606) the elderly Duke Basilius and his wife, Gynetia, both pursue Lisander who, disguised as an Amazon, is secretly wooing one of their daughters. Basilius is taken in by the disguise and woos Lisander as a woman, while Gynetia recognises his masculinity. The behaviour of the Duke in chasing a much younger 'female' is not questioned, while Day gets much comic mileage out of the folly of Gynetia – 'old Autumn' (5.1.G4v) – in her pursuit of Lisander. The Duke registers hypocritical disgust at her inappropriate desires – 'that a dry sapless rind / Should hold young thoughts, and a licentious mind' (5.1.HIr).
The sexual experience of older women, along with their being past childbearing age and 'imagined as both lustful and undesirable', made them 'figures at the juncture of sexual anxieties' at this period.[10] Such anxieties may account for the old woman on stage often being depicted as desperate with desire and either having to buy sex or cheat her way into bed with the male she lusts after. In The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon (1598) Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle show the lustful Queen Elinor disguising herself as the true object of the Earl's affections to satisfy her sexual longings:
Now shall I have my will of Huntingdon
Who taking me this night for Marian,
Will hurry me away instead of her;
(418–20)
Elinor fails in her attempts but another lust-driven ancient, Erictho, has better success in John Marston's Sophonisba (1605). Using her infernal powers Erictho disguises herself as the lovely Sophonisba and so tricks her way into Syphax's bed. Come the morning Erictho is triumphant, having satisfied her desire 'to fill / Our longing arms with Syphax' well-strung limbs' (5.1.14–15). Syphax perfectly reflects male fear and loathing here, angry less at being fooled than at being fooled into having sex with an old woman. He immediately reaches for his sword to destroy the 'rotten scum of hell' (5.1.2). Male concern about female sexuality extending into old age also fuels specific physical insults as we find in John Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed (1609–11). Jaques' description of one of the older women marching to support the heroine focuses with disgust on her vagina, saying this 'Looks like the straits of Gibraltar, still wider / Down to the gulf [...]' (2.3.45–6).
Along with her sagging skin, voluminous vagina and scandalous sex-drive the Early Modern stage persona of the badly behaved old woman is also easily recognised by her uncontrolled volubility, reflecting the misogynistic view of pamphleteer Joseph Swetnam that 'a woman's chief strength, is in her tongue. The serpent hath not so much venom in his tail, as she hath in her tongue'. Generally, the garrulous crone is a figure of fun like Gammer Gurton. This old woman's frenzied behaviour has house and locality in an uproar in Gammer Gurton's Needle (1553, published in 1575) by William Stevenson (?), particularly when she gets into a shouting match and fist fight with her equally loquacious old neighbour, Dame Chat. Similar amusement is had at the expense of the old, deaf countrywoman in The Woman Hater (1606) by Beaumont and Fletcher. She mishears everything and will not be silenced, as her despairing victim Gondarino confirms – 'What can she devise to say more?' (4.1.105). However, comic garrulous ramblings can also develop into dangerous speaking by older women. In Greene's Alphonsus King of Aragon (1587) Amurack is so incensed by his wife's refusal to be silent about his marriage plans for their daughter that he banishes the 'prattling dame', Fausta, from court and country on pain of death (3.2.1057). The Old Lady in Henry VIII, co-authored by Shakespeare and Fletcher, creates a risky situation through rambling repetition of Henry's dearest hopes when she presents news of Anne Boleyn's confinement to the King:
King Henry. [...] is the Queen delivered?
Say, 'Ay, and of a boy.'
Old Lady. Ay, ay, my liege,
And of a lovely boy [...]
'Tis a girl
(5.1.163–5, 166)
Inappropriate speaking in the old woman is also evidence of her potentially subversive power. Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy (1611) demonstrates the dubious influence of the ageing female conspirator, Sempronia, on the married Fulvia. The older woman encourages the younger to pursue an affair, advising 'make / Use of thy youth and freshness, in the season' (2.186–7). Similar concern appeared previously in the comic piece The Schoolhouse of Women (1541), attributed to Edward Gosynhill, where the older wife mischievously stirs up the younger to rebel against her husband:
Then saith the elder, 'Do as I do;
Be sharp and quick with him again.
If that he chide, chide you also,
And for one word give you him twain.'
Jonson alerts us to Sempronia's essential triviality by having her reflect with surprise that 'states, and commonwealths employ not women / To be Ambassadors sometimes!' (4.715–16). This confirms her own lack of good sense rather than demonstrating a bold aspiration, for she has already shown her folly by parading her scholarship and dismissing visiting male ambassadors who do not speak Greek (4.711). So, although she boasts of her influence in helping Catiline:
We shall make him Consul,
[...] Crassus, I, and Caesar
Will carry it for him.
(2.99–101)
and although it seems that her candidate is grateful to her, praising her remarkable powers – 'you've done most masculinely' (3.687) – it really comes as no surprise to learn that this older woman is merely tolerated 'to procure moneys' (2.194). Catiline's true feelings about her involvement in his campaign are shown in his private disgust at having to rely on the help of 'ev'n the dregs of mankind [...] whores, and women!' (3.716–17).
Uncontrolled outspokenness in an old woman at this time could also result in accusations of witchcraft. This is referred to in The Winter's Tale where Paulina takes pains to avoid being thought 'assisted / By wicked powers' (5.3.90–91) when she undertakes the transformation of Hermione's statue. She is very much in control of this performance, as I discuss later, so the fact that she appeals for King Leontes' approval of what she will do is unexpected but also understandable, given his earlier angry references to her as 'a mankind witch' (2.3.68). His reassurances now are part of the dramatic process of healing and reconciliation but Paulina's concerns also reflect social attitudes. Although historical evidence is thin about the numbers of old women accused of witchcraft the fact of their being aged seems to have been crucial to commentators at the time. The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) identifies the witch as 'commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles'. It was doubtless 'easier to accuse those women who were more vulnerable, such as the old, widowed and poor' and not surprising that 'some of the old women who were prosecuted for witchcraft were senile and of unsound mind'. Clearly, Paulina is aware of the dangerous assumptions which may be made about her and moves to pre-empt these.
But if witchcraft accusations are not an option there's another way of checking the old woman's runaway tongue which beleaguered male characters can use – they can dismiss her as having completely lost her marbles. In Richard III wrinkled Queen Margaret suffers such a fate and the effect of her prescient warnings about Richard – 'Look when he fawns, he bites;' (1.3.288) – is lost because Richard's linguistic trickery is designed to show her as slow, confused and, most repressively, 'lunatic' (1.3.277). It is telling that one of Shakespeare's more powerful older female characters, Volumnia the mother of Coriolanus, has a similar experience after her son's disgrace and dismissal from Rome. In Act 4 scene 2 she too becomes the butt of lunatic jibes – 'They say she's mad'; 'Why stay we to be baited / With one that wants her wits?' (Coriolanus 4.2.11, 18, 46–7).
Early Modern writing implies that the perfect old woman of the period is one who accepts her aged state without fuss, denies her sexuality and most importantly, provides a good example to younger women. We see the Abbess in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors (1594) take Adriana to task for jealous nagging and the young wife accepts the justice of the older woman's criticisms – 'She did betray me to my own reproof' (5.1.91). This echoes Thomas Becon's earlier stricture in Catechism (1564) that 'old and ancient matrons' should teach young ones to be 'sober-minded [...] discreet, chaste, housewifely; good, obedient to their husbands'. Similarly, William Harrison's The Description of England (1587) praises the 'ancient ladies of the court' for rejecting idle behaviour in favour of such quiet occupations as reading religious texts and 'writing volumes of their own or translating of other men's into our English and Latin tongue'. For Harrison the good example shown by these older women appears to be more important than the possibly challenging nature of their literary activities. The good old woman on stage guides young men as well as young women, as can be seen in Sappho and Phao (1584) where John Lyly gives the mature Sybilla a substantial role as advisor to Phao on the trauma of unrequited love. In Greene's Orlando Furioso (1591) the 'old witch', Melissa, (4.2.1236) cures the infected Orlando and sends him off to battle, earning his gratitude and his admiration of her as a 'sacred goddess' (4.2.1340).
These are general dramatic stereotypes and I will explore specific presentations of good and bad old women in Part Two of this book. Yet even in this initial overview it's clear that the 'message' from the Early Modern stage was that the old and ageing female should strive to deny her own sexuality, guard her wayward tongue and do as she was told. If not, she risked male mockery as being wrinkly, randy, mouthy and mad.
Old Women Offstage: Out and About
Historians show that during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods most women, including those of advanced years, were active beyond the domestic sphere. While it was possible to access some charitable support – through the poor rates for example – there was no state provision of social services for the elderly. So, unless she was seriously physically disabled, retiring from work just wasn't an option for the Early Modern woman without financial independence. Indeed, these old women continued to be key elements of the workforce, operating in all areas of the national economy including the cloth trade, farming, and food preparation and sale. They also worked in other retail areas, were involved in education and training, figured largely in public and private health and care work and were also active in the sex trade. In fact, 'post-menopausal women appear to have been seen as having a positive value in society which men over 50 would have lacked'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Old, Bold and Won't Be Told by Yvonne Oram. Copyright © 2013 Yvonne Oram. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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