CHAPTER 1

Teaching Revenge

Social Aspirations and the Fragmented Subject of Early Modern Conduct Books

How were early modern subjects trained in civil vengeance, and what were the consequences of that training? These are the central questions that organize my first chapter. To propose an answer, I read popular conduct manuals, which include the works of Desiderius Erasmus, Baldassare Castiglione, and Roger Ascham, to chart how they refashioned their readers’ retributive impulses. Situating the genre of conduct literature within the context of another major cultural movement—the Tudor ban on private vengeance—I argue that these manuals provided valuable service in the cultural shift from private vengeance to the punishments meted out by the Crown. The second half of the chapter examines the process of conduct formation alongside the period’s entrenched class divisions and expanded opportunities for social mobility. As I theorize the relation between social grooming and civil vengeance, I demonstrate how conduct literature mobilizes disgust to elicit shame and direct its readers’ behaviors. Disgust fractures individual subjects and estranges them from their laboring-class origins; such consequences I read as examples of civil vengeance against aspirational sorts. Thus, this first chapter offers both a historical account of the turn to civil vengeance and an examination of its class-based permutations.
Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, a play that inaugurates the genre of early modern revenge tragedy and whose central conflicts are distinctly class-based, emerges as the ideal text through which to frame this chapter’s concerns. There, romantic trysts temporarily bridge the chasm between the nobility and the middle class yet culminate predictably in disaster; spoiled brats compete against the lower classes and resort to deception to secure victory; and dutiful civil servants learn only too late how little their loyalty is regarded, retaliating in spectacular fashion against their social superiors. Indeed, what presents in The Spanish Tragedy is an implicit relationship between vengeance and social status, and scholarship bears out the play’s preoccupation with social division. James Siemon identifies Kyd’s tragedy as a “fantasy of a middling social stratum [that] meets an impasse inherent in its position,”1 while C. L. Barber insists that Hieronimo’s liminal status marks him as the character with whom early modern London middle classes identify.2 In the play, Brian Sheerin recognizes an analogue to and warning about the Elizabethan court’s precarious system of patronage and gift bestowal, which exacerbates existing class tensions.3 Extending the class analysis to Kyd himself, a few scholars have even identified him as a political radical who intimates his political leanings in The Spanish Tragedy and makes explicit those views in, for instance, his translation of Torquato Tasso’s Il Padre de Famiglia.4
With this critical history in mind, I proceed to two moments from the play to tease out the matter of early modern class tensions as they relate to vengeance, social mobility, and performance—issues that will concern the remainder of the chapter. Let us first begin with Hieronimo in his capacity as Knight Marshal and as he meets with the aggrieved subjects of Spain—all in the wake of his beloved son’s murder. Of Hieronimo’s unimpeachable reputation, First Citizen insists, “There’s not any advocate in Spain / That can prevail, or will take half the pain, / That he will in pursuit of equity” (3.13.52–54).5 But neither characters nor audience members are obliged to rely on secondhand assessment, for they soon witness how Hieronimo’s commitment to equity directs his professional dealings. When Don Bazulto, a fellow father of a murdered son, approaches the Knight Marshal with his supplication for justice, Hieronimo’s grief overwhelms him, and he conflates Bazulto’s loss with his own. This conflation is staged expressly through an exchange of belongings in which Hieronimo impulsively offers his possessions to Bazulto: “But here, take this, and this—what, my purse?— / Ay, this and that, and all of them are thine, / For all as one are our extremities” (3.13.90–92).6 Because “extremities” catalyze a remarkable democratization, metamorphosing “all” into “one,” Hieronimo also imagines his position as structurally interchangeable with the very subjects he serves, and we can chart this through his transfer of property. For instance, his use of singular demonstrative pronouns strips him of prior ownership, and his solitary reference to a personal possession is complicated by the fact that it prompts confusion (i.e., “what, my purse?”). That is, Hieronimo’s use of the interrogative puts into question the very subject of ownership and its attendant privileges, and this challenge to the logic of property remains a central conundrum of the play: property, propriety, and what is proper.
Interpreting Hieronimo’s behavior as an affecting display of empathy rather than disconcerting mania, Second Citizen concludes, “This gentleness shows him a gentleman” (3.13.94). Insofar as he acts in his assigned capacity as Knight Marshal, he cannot be mistaken for nobility, of course; therefore, the compliment divorces aristocratic behavior or “gentleness” from social status, subscribing to broader definitions of nobility. Even still, the passage’s meaning hinges on and is complicated by the multivalence of “show.” Because the term refers to proof, Hieronimo’s kindness functions as the guarantor of his aristocratic status. But “show” also gestures toward the realm of spectacle or playacting, and The Spanish Tragedy in particular leans heavily on this second definition.7 Thus, the overlapping definitions of “show” tap into the triangulation of nobility, proof, and performance only to raise additional questions: Who may claim nobility? How does nobility appear? And might the ephemeral performance itself count as material proof?
Whereas the first example from The Spanish Tragedy suggests how the text expands definitions of nobility and gentility, the second example that I will examine gestures toward the consequences reserved for those who would overstep their stations. For this, let us turn to the scene of Horatio’s death. Following the demise of his beloved friend Don Andrea at the outset of the play, Horatio finds himself wooed by Bel-imperia and an unwitting participant in her project of revenge. When the two meet in Hieronimo’s garden one evening, they exchange tokens of love and playful words of war. Yet Lorenzo’s machinations soon disrupt their consummation, while Bel-imperia is “rescued” from the disastrous consequences of a dalliance with a social inferior. Lorenzo’s primary objective here is the disposal of Horatio, who is both hanged and stabbed to death in his father’s arbor. The gratuitous hanging creates a perverse spectacle, and Lorenzo offers a vicious eulogy for his victim: “Although his life were still ambitious proud, / Yet is he at the highest now he is dead” (2.4.60–61). His contemptuous words, in conjunction with the humiliation of the hanging, function as an ironized punishment for the threat Horatio posed to Lorenzo, to his kin, and to his kind. Although the origins of Lorenzo’s aggression are not especially transparent in the play—much like Iago’s, his is a motiveless malignity—his words intimate that part of his animus derives from class-based competition. “Once Horatio begins to seem a rival to people like Lorenzo and Balthazar,” as Katharine Eisaman Maus observes, “his very excellences make him vulnerable.”8 Because Horatio is left hanging in his father’s arbor, his lynching also functions as an episode of terrorism intended for other “middling sorts” who might overstep their positions as well as for their too-proud parents. In fact, Hieronimo signals his receipt of the message when he laments his lack of recourse and naturalizes this class-based oppression: “Nor aught avails it me to menace them, / Who, as a wintry storm upon a plain, / Will bear me down with their nobility” (3.13.36–38).9 Despite the fact that both the play and its historical period rely on an expanded definition of gentility, Horatio’s death highlights how middling sorts remain vulnerable to the retribution of their social superiors for their perceived encroachment on the privileges reserved for higher classes. With the issues raised by The Spanish Tragedy in mind, issues that will be developed further in our examination of conduct literature, we now contextualize a privilege long reserved for the aristocracy: the execution of private vengeance.
The cultural transition away from private vengeance was a shift centuries in the making. Because one’s honor was bound up in the ability to avenge wrongs, the tradition of private vengeance proved especially difficult to criminalize. Anglo-Saxon freemen viewed their right to feud (faehthe) in order to resolve conflict and pursue justice as “inalienable,” and the privilege distinguished them from lower classes.10 Rulers who remained vulnerable in their need for loyalty and support did not challenge the right to engage in private warfare, but enterprising ones—recognizing the siren call of opportunity—could exploit private vengeance to consolidate their power and augment their coffers. By making public an otherwise private concern, sovereigns could demand a share of the wergild, or payment reserved for the injured family.11 Further, when they were paid in criminal cases, the transaction established that offenses were never just between subjects but also against the sovereign and state.12
Such mercenary impulses, rather than a genuine investment in justice, impelled Tudor rulers to pursue a program of state justice in England. Ronald Broude explains that by expanding the felony category (i.e., offenses against the king) to include traditionally lesser offenses (i.e., “torts”), the Crown received fees for cases tried in its courts and also seized the possessions of convicted felons.13 Though legal reform held great financial appeal for Tudor rulers, other motives prompted the shift as well. With the memory of the Wars of the Roses too close for comfort, Henry VII consolidated his power against forces that could challenge his rule or even hurl it into the path of destruction.14 Specifically, he remained wary of the vengeful feuds between aristocratic families and their enduring effect on sovereigns and their kingdoms. To crimin...