<![CDATA[Pixels & Pedagogy

<![CDATA[Pixels & Pedagogy - Pedagogy]]>Sat, 25 Apr 2026 13:12:27 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Teaching Columbus' Letters about the New World with Horace's Epode 16]]>Fri, 28 Aug 2015 19:19:59 GMThttps://www.pixelsandpedagogy.com/pedagogy/teaching-columbus-letters-about-the-new-world-with-horaces-epode-16

Roman poet, Horace

I am going to take a brief break from my ongoing discussion about my course, Gender and Clothing in Shakespeare's Plays, to talk about a really productive revision that I've made to my American Lit class. I've written before about teaching Columbus to students in context with other Spanish authors in translation. This blog post will be about close-reading Columbus' letters along with Horace's Epode 16, sometimes called either "A Remedy for Civil War" or "The Isles of the Blest." Although Horace was writing many centuries before Columbus ever set sail for the New World, his poem is relevant for a discussion of Columbus' letters because he offers a model for talking about voyages and discoveries.

Here are some of the passages that resonate with Columbus' Letter to Luis de Santangel regarding the First Voyage and his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella regarding the Fourth Voyage.

Horace begins his poem with a lamentation about the destruction that the Romans have done in their Civil War:

What the neighbouring Marsians could not destroy,
Nor the threat of Porsena’s Etruscan armies,
Nor Capua’s rival strength, nor the fierceness of Spartacus,
Nor the Gauls, who proved disloyal in changing times,
Nor that savage Germany he conquered, with its blue-eyed youth,
Nor Hannibal detested by our ancestors:
Our impious generation, of cursed blood, will destroy,
And the land will belong again to beasts of prey.

I ask students to comment on what strikes them as interesting, and I tell them not to worry about proper nouns that they may or may not recognize. Usually someone notices right away that many of the lines in this section begin with "nor." I ask the students to consider the effect that this use of anaphora might have on a reader or a listener. Very dependably, some student will mention that it's to "emphasize his point," as if that's an interesting idea. So I push them a little further and ask them to paraphrase this sentence into "2015 English."

One way to paraphrase this section is to say neither this guy, nor that guy, nor this enemy, nor that enemy, none of them has been able to destroy us; through out wickedness, we ourselves have destroyed what our enemies could not.

This paraphrase helps to develop the general statement about emphasis and it also points the students towards thinking about this poem as employing a combination of patriotism (no one defeated us) and shame (we are an impious generation). Here the students can see that the poem is still a propagandistic poem that ultimately praises Rome for its past glory even as it bemoans the present political upheaval. It sets up a lovely point of contrast with the end of the poem, where Horace describes the isles of the blest.

The total devastation of Rome through civil war creates a desolation that pushes the virile out of their former city. Quite simply, it is impossible to stay and it is impossible to return. Instead, Horace (either rhapsodically or ironically) prophecies that they will head out for these mythical islands:

You who have courage, away now with womanish weeping,
Sail on swiftly beyond the Etruscan shores.
The encircling Ocean is awaiting us: let us seek out
The fields, the golden fields, the islands of the blest,
Where the land, though still untilled, yields a harvest every year…
Jupiter set aside these shores for a virtuous people,
When once he had dimmed the age of gold with bronze:
With bronze, with iron, he made the centuries harder, from which
My prophecy grants the virtuous sweet escape.

In this passage, Horace offers a beautiful depiction of paradise and he also qualifies some of his searing criticism of the Romans from the passage I quoted above. Whereas before they were an impious generation, now they are a chosen people, the virtuous ones for whom Jupiter has set aside a bountiful land of leisure.

I thought it was worth it to ask my students to talk about the idea that the land, though untilled, would still yield harvest. Intriguingly, some of my students suggested that this was a sign of "laziness" on the part of the Romans; that they wanted to reap the harvest without doing the hard work of farming. This lead to an interesting debate wherein some students maintained this idea whereas other suggested that, in Horace's poem, the land seemingly offers itself to them as a reward for their virtue. They have suffered, but now they won't any more. They see themselves as entitled to this land, which is part religious paradise and part fantasy. Horace's description is not a sign of laziness but a sign of hope.

The imagery and the themes of this poem dovetail beautifully with Columbus' letters. These are both excerpted in the Norton Anthology of American Literature. The first letter really captures the themes of both wonder and entitlement. In the second letter, Columbus' attempts to self-fashion as a hero even as his legacy is being tarnished and his honors are stripped away.

Here is a snippet from the first letter:

This island [Hispaniola] and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so. In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous… All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes, and all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky. And I am told that they never lose their foliage, as I can understand, for I saw them as green and as lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were flowering, some bearing fruit, and some in another stage, according to their nature. And the nightingale was singing and other birds of a thousand kinds in the month of November there where I went…

Discussion questions:

As your footnote mentions, the nightingale and the honeybee (which Columbus refers to obliquely later in the letter) are not native to the Western Hemisphere. Why does he mention them (even indirectly)?
Compare and contrast this description of what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic to the fictional Isles of the Blest that we read in Horace.

Students really liked thinking about how the island that doesn't seem to know winter and how it's similar to the island where the land yields harvests without farmers tilling the earth. Both of these texts contain a similar tone of wonder.

This lead to a great discussion about whether or not Columbus seems to think that the Indies are some sort of reward to which he is entitled because of his virtue, past toil, and the glory of the empire for which he is writing. I direct students to the following passage to develop this discussion:

I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the fleet which the most illustrious king [...] our sovereigns gave to me. And there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the first island which I found I gave the name San Salvador, in remembrance of the Divine Majesty, Who has marvelously bestowed all this; the Indians call it "Guanahani." To the second I gave the name Isla de Santa Maria de Concepción; to the third, Fernandina; to the fourth, Isabella; to the fifth, Isla Juana and so to each one I gave a new name.

Students pick up on Columbus' language here that Christ has "bestowed all this" on him and Spain, and we compare that to the idea in Horace that Jupiter has "set aside these shores for a virtuous people." The earlier debate about entitlement, reward, laziness and hope comes back to this new text. I also ask students to think about what's in a name. Why doesn't Columbus just use the name "Guanahani" to talk about the place where he landed? How does the act of renaming the island signify something. This question produced excellent student debate--about how Columbus shows what he values and what he does not value in this act of renaming.

The topic of how Columbus develops a persona for himself is a useful transition to the second letter:

The fear of this, with other sufficient reasons, which I saw clearly, led me to pray your highnesses before I went to discover these islands and Terra Firma, that you would leave them to me to govern in your royal name. It pleased you; it was a privilege and agreement, and under seal and oath, and you granted me the title of viceroy and admiral and governor general of all...

The other most important matter, which calls aloud for redress remains inexplicable to this moment. Seven years I was at your royal court, where all to whom this undertaking was mentioned, unanimously declared it to be a delusion. Now all, down to the very tailors, seek permission to make discoveries...

Who will believe that a poor foreigner could in such a place rise against Your Highnesses, without cause, and without the support of some other prince, and being alone among your vassals and natural subjects, and having all my children at your royal court? … It must be believed that this was not done by your royal command. The restitution of my honor, the reparation of my losses, and the punishment of him who did this, will spread abroad the fame of your royal nobility.

I simply ask students to identify how Columbus presents himself in these three passages. He presents himself as a proxy for the King and Queen (and thus a person of considerable power, even if it is borrowed), a heroic voyager, a genius who was first unfairly scoffed at and then poorly imitated, a slandered person who has become vulnerable, etc. The students will have a lot to say in response to this question, because Columbus is doing some considerable rhetorical work to present himself to the King and Queen.

Here a comparison with Horace is helpful. Although Horace mentions the "impious generation" (a note of shame) he does so in a way that emphasizes the past glory of Rome (a note of pride). While Columbus does discuss his relative lowliness and disgrace ("poor foreigner," "vassal"), he does so in a way that emphasizes his past heroic deeds. The idea of Columbus as a hero is one that gets picked up in later history as well. For this reason, I like to bring in 19th century paintings of Columbus.

These three images are discussed (along with many others) at the website Painting History: Constructing National Identities with Art, on the page dedicated to Columbus and the Discovery of America. This is really cool website, and one worth reading or sending your students to for their own research!

I like to ask my students to study the three paintings and look for recurring motifs. Then I ask them to consider if they are propagating a myth of Columbus that he has set in motion in his own letters. I ask them to point to the particular passages in the letter that a painter might conceivably be thinking about.

Although Columbus might not have read Horace directly and the painters might not have read Columbus' letters, neither Columbus nor the nineteenth-century painters were working in a vacuum. Myths of heroism tend to accumulate over time. They become archetypal, drawing from recurring patterns in our culture and affecting the way we see the world around us and our place in it. This unit is just as much about myth-building as it is about close-reading.

With that in mind, I think that it is absolutely necessary to consider counter-narratives about Columbus that are much more critical of his actions. To this end, I ask student to read critiques of Columbus, both ones that were contemporary to him and ones that are contemporary to us, as I have written about before. I think that it's important to consider writers like Bartolmé de las Casas because he offers us proof that people in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were fully capable of seeing the humanity in the Native Americans and that the encomienda system that Columbus helped to establish was not an inevitable consequence of the Europeans' discovery of the Americas.

Last Page

]]><![CDATA[Teaching Act 4 of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra with myths of Hercules]]>Sat, 22 Aug 2015 19:19:05 GMThttps://www.pixelsandpedagogy.com/pedagogy/teaching-act-4-of-shakespeares-antony-and-cleopatra-with-myths-of-hercules

Antony dies in Act 4 of Shakespeare's play. This act makes references to the shirt of Nessus, a poisoned shirt that Hercules' wife Deianira gives him thinking that it is imbued with a love potion. My strategies for teaching this act build on some of the work that we did with Spenser's Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's play in our discussion of Act 3 of Antony and Cleopatra, so please make reference to that page as well.

This blog post is part of my discussion about the course I taught, "Gender and Clothing in Shakespeare's Plays." It is a texts and contexts course, and the unit on Antony and Cleopatra is focused on the "tragedy" of female authority, particularly queenship.

In conjunction with Act 4, I assign the following contextual materials that build on our discussion of the episode between Radigund and Artegall in Spenser's Faerie Queene:

A brief overview of the following myths (N.B., this website has many typos in it, but it is valuable because it synthesizes the mythic stories of Hercules from an impressive array of sources):

Hercules and Omphale at this site.
Nessus and the attempted rape of Hercules' wife Deianira at this link.
The death of Hercules at this site.

Epistle 9 (Deianira to Hercules) from Ovid’s Heroides, translated by A.S. Kline (N.B., The Heroides (The Heroines), or Epistulae Heroidum (Letters of Heroines), is a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated, neglected, or abandoned them.)

I feel that this discussion of Hercules works especially well both because Spenser's episode from The Faerie Queene draws on the myth of Hercules and Omphale and because Antony was supposedly descended from Hercules as he acknowledges in Act 4. The following is a speech that he gives after the loss at the Battle of Actium:

Antony (to Cleopatra):
Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving,
And blemish Caesar's triumph. Let him take thee,
And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians:
Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot
Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown
For poor'st diminutives, for doits; and let
Patient Octavia plough thy visage up
With her prepared nails. [Exit CLEOPATRA]
'Tis well thou'rt gone,
If it be well to live; but better 'twere
Thou fell'st into my fury, for one death
Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!
The shirt of Nessus is upon me: teach me,
Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage:
Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o' the moon;
And with those hands, that grasp'd the heaviest club,
Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die:
To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall
Under this plot; she dies for't. Eros, ho!

I like to give my students the following image to analyze in conjunction with both this passage and Ovid's ninth epistle from Heroides.

British Museum E370, Red-figured Pelike, c. 430BC

There are competing ways to read this Red-figured Pelike. According to one reading, Hercules doffs his lion skin (acquired during one of his twelve heroic labors) while he receives female clothing from Omphale or one of her servants. According to the other reading, Hercules disrobes his lion skin in order to accept a gift from his wife, Deianira. She worries that he has fallen in love with Iole, and she hopes to rekindle his love for her with a shirt imbued with magic powers. The centaur Nessus has lied to her by telling her the magic is a love potion, when it is really a flesh-burning poison.

Reading questions:

How does this pelike construct clothing as dangerous?
How does that accord with Ovid’s poem?
In what ways are women associated with clothing, and is it the clothes or the women that undercut Hercules’ heroic masculinity?
How does that echo in the episode about Artegall and Radigund from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene?
How does that echo in Act 4 of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra?

Here is a passage from Ovid's Epistle that is pertinent to the discussion. Note that the poem is addressed to Hercules (aka Alcides), so all the "you" pronouns are meant as addresses to him. Deianira mocks him for having worn the female clothes of Omphale and for having deigned to do the woman's work of cloth-making.

Did your hand not draw back, assigned its smooth basket,
Alcides, conqueror of a thousand labours,
and did you draw out the thread with your strong thumb,
and was an equally handsome weight of wool returned?
Ah! How often, while your rough fingers twisted the thread,
your over-heavy hand broke the spindle!
Of course you’ll have told of deeds, hiding that they were yours…

Can you speak of [all your heroic deeds], marked out by Sidonian dress?
Shouldn’t your tongue fall silent curbed by your clothing?...

But why do I recall this? Written news comes,
rumour that my husband’s dying from the poison in his tunic.
Ah me! What have I done? What madness has my love caused?
Impious Deianira, why do you hesitate to die?

Reading questions:

Discuss the various ways that this passage echoes with both Spenser’s poem and Shakespeare’s play.
Why would Hercules’ tongue be curbed by his clothing?
Compare and contrast the two types of “bad” clothes that Hercules receives: one from Omphale and one from Deianira. Why does Omphale give him women’s clothes? Why does Deianira give him Nessus’ shirt? What are the various ways that women are associated with clothes?
What's dangerous to Hercules: clothes or women?

I think that this is an excellent place to consider the passage from Act 2 wherein Cleopatra reveals that she and Antony would cross dress as each other as part of their debauchery/erotic play:

That time,—O times!—
I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night
I laugh'd him into patience; and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan.

This is a key passage to keep in context with the reference to the shirt of Nessus. Antony, like Hercules, has traded his masculine accoutrements as a warrior to put on a powerful woman's feminine attire and mantles. Now, later in the play, he feels that his clothing is poisoned and that he is repeating the history of his ancestor. By making aligning Antony so neatly with Hercules, Shakespeare condenses both Omphale and Deianira into the character of Cleopatra. She both robs him of his masculine clothing (presumably so that she can take it for herself) and endangers him with her poisoned love. This is something that is worth exploring. What are implications of that condensation?

The rest of the class we spent on following passages: 1) Enobarbus' last words, 2) Antony's famous monologue wherein he mournfully assesses the loss at Actium as a loss of his own identity and a betrayal by Cleopatra, and 3) Antony's last words. In many ways, these three speeches all highlight the loss of heroic identity that has defined Antony. The following discussion questions help students to work through this theme that dominates Act 4.

How, exactly, does Enobarbus die?
Can Antony will himself to die? What does it matter that Enobarbus can will himself to die, but Antony cannot?
Notice the last word that Enobarbus utters. What does Cleopatra ask Mardian to tell Antony is the last word that she utters (see 4.13 and 4.14)? What does it matter that Enobarbus actually does utter the word that Cleopatra pretends is her last word?
In some ways Enobarbus has the ideal death that both Antony and Cleopatra desire: he simply dies of a broken heart (as Antony wishes he could do) and he dies demonstrating his love for Antony (as Cleopatra wishes to do). Why does Shakespeare give him this idealized death?
Why do you think Antony spends so much time talking about things that dissolve like clouds, reflections, and bodies that cannot hold a shape? What, exactly, is dissolving in 4.14?
What do we make of his later claim that Cleopatra has robbed him of his sword? And that he says so in front of the Eunuch?
What do we make of his immediate grief, even after he was so sure of her betrayal? Does he not really believe that she has betrayed him, or is he (like she) made of infinite variety?
Compared to Eros and to Enobarbus, doesn’t Antony rather botch his suicide? What is significant about that? Is this the final, undignified failure that he must face?
He asks a character named “love” to stab him in the back. What is significant about that? But “Love” doesn’t actually stab him in the back. Significance?
Cleopatra’s words to Antony once they have him hoisted up to the monument play on the sexual pun, “die.” What’s up with that?
Why does he say, “The miserable change… I can no more"?
What is triumphant in Antony’s last speech and what is defeated? Compare these last words with Enobarbus’ last words.
So it’s the end of Act 4 and Antony is dead, but Cleopatra lives on. What?! Who is this play really about? Why doesn’t this end like Romeo and Juliet, with Cleopatra killing herself immediately?

This strategy for teaching Act 4 went over extremely well in the classroom. Students were very interested in the connections between Antony and Hercules, but they were even more interested in the connections between Cleopatra and Omphale/Deianira. Omphale and Radigund worked well with each other, and Deianira complemented some of our earlier discussion of Queen Elizabeth.

Last Page

]]><![CDATA[Teaching Act 3 of Antony and Cleopatra in the Context of the Elizabethan "Maid Martial"]]>Thu, 20 Aug 2015 20:04:27 GMThttps://www.pixelsandpedagogy.com/pedagogy/teaching-act-3-of-antony-and-cleopatra-in-the-context-of-the-elizabethan-maid-martial

Hildegard Neil as Cleopatra in Heston's 1972 film version of the play

So I want to start off right away by saying that I did too much for this day's lesson. If I could go back and do this one over, I would break this into two days of discussion. It was so fruitful, and it helped the kids to think about the gender politics of Antony and Cleopatra in a variety of ways. In addition to Act 3 of Shakespeare's play, I asked my students to read the following texts:

Queen Elizabeth’s Armada Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, August 9, 1588, anthologized in Collected Works, pp. 325-6.
Excerpt from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (5.5.1-26): Artegall, a powerful male knight, fights Radigund, an equally powerful female Amazon. He suffers both defeat and humiliation.

I am a huge fan of Spenser's Faerie Queene, so I really, really wanted to include this text. It was, in my mind, going to serve as a transition piece as we moved from the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra to the romance of Cymbeline. It also served as a preface for the Hercules and Omphale story that we read in conjunction with Act 4 of A&C. I think that we only began to scratch the surface of this text. If you were pressed for time you could omit this, but in the future I will just ask my students to spend two days on Act 3 and our contextual material.

The Tilbury Speech

"Queen Elizabeth exhorting her People, to stand firm in defence [sic.] of their Queen and Country," by W. Belch or Edward Langley, London: 1820s. Border image for a handwriting broadsheet for children to practice penmanship. Click on the image to learn more. Image courtesy of www.georgeglazer.com, George Glazer Gallery, New York City.

Although scholars debate whether or not Elizabeth was actually at Tilbury right before the battle with the Spanish Armada in 1588, she is frequently figured in the popular imagination as having been there to deliver her famous speech in person. This speech (if authentic) has been reconstructed by history as having been delivered by her in person (as opposed to by a proxy). As history progressed, more details were added so that she is imagined to have been in armor and on a horse when giving the speech. It's a great speech, no matter what its actual authenticity. Here it is:

I have been persuaded by some that are careful of my safety, to take heed how I commit myself to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I tell you that I would not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects. Wherefore I am come among you at this time but for my recreation and pleasure, being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all, to lay down for my God and for my kingdom and my people mine honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too!

Shakespeare's Cleopatra wrestles with some of these same issues in Act 3 of the play. When Enobarbus tells her that she cannot fight in the war both because women fighters are too distracting to men and because Rome will use her presence as a way to defame Antony, she responds as follows:

Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
That speak against us! A charge we bear i' the war,
And, as the president of my kingdom, will
Appear there for a man. Speak not against it:
I will not stay behind.

Of course, Enobarbus' words come true in the play. Cleopatra is a distraction for Antony at Actium, and the Romans do accuse him of being emasculated by his love for her.

Compare and contrast Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury with Cleopatra’s decision that she will fight at war in man’s apparel. Why is Cleopatra’s biological sex a distraction for Antony (and the other men fighting), but Elizabeth’s presence is a rallying battle cry?

Note--this question prompted a lot of discussion from the students. It was a great way to get them to close read both the speech and the play, and it prompted some really interesting speculation about the types of feminine authority that were comforting or threatening.

The idea that Cleopatra would dress like a man when she went to war is interesting in light of both Act 3's representation of how monarchs use clothing to construct power and the trope of the Maid Martial in English poetry.

Clothing and Monarchical Power

In terms of Cleopatra and clothes, we can build off of our discussion from Act 2 by considering the extended discussion of monarchy and clothing that develops in Act 3.

Caesar. Contemning Rome, he [Antony] has done all this, and more,
In Alexandria: here's the manner of 't:
I' the market-place, on a tribunal silver'd,
Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold
Were publicly enthroned: at the feet sat
Caesarion, whom they call my father's son,
And all the unlawful issue that their lust
Since then hath made between them. Unto her
He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her
Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,
Absolute queen.

Mecaenas. This in the public eye?

Caesar. I' the common show-place, where they exercise.
His sons he there proclaim'd the kings of kings:
Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia.
He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assign'd
Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia: she
In the habiliments of the goddess Isis
That day appear'd; and oft before gave audience,
As 'tis reported, so.

Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra in the 1934 film Cleopatra, dir. Cecil B. DeMille. In this still, Cleopatra is dressed as Isis.

Isis, an Egyptian goddess. Often depicted wearing a headdress shaped either like a throne or with the sun disk encircled by cow's horns.

I found it useful to refer back to the Armada portrait that we had discussed in relation to Act 2. Discussion questions:

Why is Caesar scandalized by the gold thrones and the costume of Isis? Is he scandalized by Antony “going native” or is he scandalized by Cleopatra’s queenship?
Compare and contrast with both Fulvia and Octavia. How are "good" women supposed to act in this play, especially women that have some degree of power?
Compare and contrast the costume of Isis (as we can glean from the images above) and the gown that Elizabeth wore in her Armada Portrait. How do these two sets of clothing perform female authority?
Does Cleopatra perform her queenship or is it innate as Elizabeth claims that hers is (she “needs” no clothes—she is a queen even when she is in her petticoats)?
What do you make of Elizabeth’s claim that she only needs her petticoats when she actually wore such elaborate clothing?

I am very lucky to be friends with Valerie Billing who is doing exciting work on the erotics of size in Early Modern English literature. She generously shared with me some of her work in progress on Queen Elizabeth and clothing.

About the Armada Portrait, Billing writes:

Elizabeth constructs the enormous size of her political power in a number of ways, one of the most visual involving clothing. The costumes she wears in her portraits become ever larger throughout her reign, with hoop skirts, neck ruffs, puffed sleeves, and headwear growing increasingly more enormous while the costumes continue to accentuate her narrow waist and tiny hands... [Her] representational body stands for an eroticized political identity made all the more desirable because it hides the gendered, human body of the monarch, dwarfed beneath the royal robes.

And about the "Petticoat Speech," Billing adds:

While Elizabeth most likely stands before Parliament in her full robes of state [to deliver her speech], she figures herself in her undergarments, enticingly vulnerable yet unabashed and in control. She styles herself as clothed only in a garment worn close to the body and that, though it helped fashion the largeness of her outer layers, was not itself voluminous, enacting a kind of sartorial miniaturization that nonetheless asserts the queen’s authority: she can rule with her natural body, small and gendered female by the petticoats, and does not need her enormous robes of state.

These short passages were a great touchstone for my students to contemplate if a similar eroticized spectacle was at work in Cleopatra's presentation of herself, either as a maid martial or as the goddess Isis. If Elizabeth's performance of power operates through a simultaneous revealing and concealing of her body, does Cleopatra repulse Caesar because she is too much on display? How would that work in performance if the boy actor playing Cleopatra in the play's original performance couldn't reveal too much of his corporeal body? Does her self-display even matter if it is only giving to us through other people's words? How could she control that? How is Antony implicated in all this? Does he feminize himself when he puts himself on display with Cleopatra (according to Caesar)?

Amazons

Inigo Jones' costume for Penthesilea Queen of the Amazons from "The Masque of Queens," 1609.

In terms of the trope of the maid martial, I asked my students to read an excerpt on Amazons from Spenser's verse romance, The Faerie Queene, which was written while Queen Elizabeth was still alive. Indeed, the poem was written with Elizabeth in mind. Spenser read portions of him poem out loud to Elizabeth, and he instructs his readers that he has "shadow[ed]" Elizabeth in multiple places in the poem.

In the passage that we read, the Amazon (Radigund, a female) bests the knight (Artegall, a male) when the two are fighting. Then, she humiliates him by making him wear women's clothes and perform menial women's tasks related to cloth-making and sewing. The episode is based on the myth of Hercules and Omphale, which we discuss at greater length in conjunction with Act 4. Here are some stanzas 20-21 from Spenser's poem, which are an excellent starting point:

Then tooke the Amazon this noble knight,
Left to her will by his owne wilfull blame,
And caused him to be disarmed quight,
Of all the ornaments of knightly name,
With which whylome he gotten had great fame:
In stead whereof she made him to be dight
In womans weedes, that is to manhood shame,
And put before his lap a napron white,
In stead of Curiets and bases fit for fight.

So being clad, she brought him from the field,
In which he had bene trayned many a day,
Into a long large chamber, which was sield
With moniments of many knights decay,
By her subdewed in victorious fray:
Amongst the which she causd his warlike armes
Be hang'd on high, that mote his shame bewray;
And broke his sword, for feare of further harmes,
With which he wont to stirre vp battailous alarmes.

The idea of the broken sword is everywhere in the latter half of Shakespeare's play. Here is a pertinent example from Act 3:

Cleopatra. O my lord, my lord,
Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought
You would have follow'd.

Antony. Egypt, thou knew'st too well
My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings,
And thou shouldst tow me after: o'er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knew'st, and that
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me.

Cleopatra. O, my pardon!

Antony. Now I must
To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
And palter in the shifts of lowness; who
With half the bulk o' the world play'd as I pleased,
Making and marring fortunes. You did know
How much you were my conqueror; and that
My sword, made weak by my affection, would
Obey it on all cause.

Discussion questions:

Explain the imagery of the weakened or broken swords in both these passages from Spenser and Shakespeare.
Cleopatra and Antony are allies not competitors, so how has she broken his sword?
Why does Antony call her his conqueror? How does Radigund conquer Artegall? Is that the same thing?
What kind of comment does this make about romantic love and/or attraction?
What kind of comment does this make about masculinity and/or femininity?

Spenser ostensibly wrote this poem for Queen Elizabeth. How does he get around offending her when he depicts female authority as emasculating for men, especially in Stanza 25?
Does Shakespeare's text seem critical of female authority or nostalgic for it (he was writing this play after her death)?
Who is to blame for Artegall and/or Antony’s defeat? The Spenserian narrator balances stanza 25 with the comment about Artegall’s “owne wilfull blame” (V. v. 20.2). Compare this to Enobarbus’ comment that it is “Antony only, that would make his will / Lord of his reason” who is at fault (3.3.3-4).

The kids easily linked the broken sword imagery with all of the other imagery of emasculation in the play. This, once more, raised the question of why it was energizing when Elizabeth supposedly appeared in armor to the troops at Tilbury, especially if it was enervating when Cleopatra and/or Radigund participated in battle with or against men.

I feel like we did not really do justice to Spenser's poem by breezing through it so fast. These questions, however, really engaged the students, and they prompted some excellent class discussion about what Early Modern English people might have thought of as appropriate female power. I think that one could overcome the rushed feeling that I experienced by not trying to cram it all in an hour's class. I would definitely recommend this collection of texts again, but I would advise you to spend more than an hour on it!

Last Page

]]>