CHASTITY AS SPECTACLE IN WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S CYMBELINE AND THOMAS MIDDLETON’S HENGIST

Gabriela CHEAPTANARU

doi:10.24193/subbphilo.2025.1.12

Authors

Gabriela CHEAPTANARU Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. E-mail: cg.gabriela31@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1275-6756

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2025.1.12

Keywords:

agency, chastity, commodification, the gaze, spectacle

Abstract

Chastity as Spectacle in William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Thomas Middleton’s Hengist. This paper is concerned with the depiction of female chastity in Thomas Middleton’s Hengist and William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. It employs Lacanian and Foucauldian perspectives on the concept of the gaze, combining feminist and psychoanalytical approaches in order to illuminate divergent perspectives on chastity, which serve as crucial contrasts between Middleton’s and Shakespeare’s art. Hengist’s Castiza and Cymbeline’s Innogen are both portrayed as paragons of chastity, but this moral feature is perceived differently in the two plays. Unbeknownst to her, Castiza becomes the victim of rape by her husband and subsequently faces public judgment for her supposed dishonour. This analysis demonstrates that this represents the jarring effect of politicizing chastity in the play, of stripping it of its moral valences and instead transforming it into a social currency. The main assumption is that chastity becomes a panoptical spectacle in Hengist, due to the male gaze by which women are kept under societal control. Conversely, although Innogen also experiences the intrusive gaze of Iachimo, her virtue empowers her to confront her wrongdoer by assuming a male disguise. The analysis identifies a fundamental contrast in the treatment of chastity between the two plays: in Cymbeline, it remains a personal conviction impervious to external scrutiny, whereas in Hengist, it devolves into a social commodity that diminishes Castiza’s ability to retaliate.

REZUMAT. Castitatea ca spectacol în Cymbeline de William Shakespeare și Hengist de Thomas Middleton. Articolul de față are în vedere reprezentarea castității feminine în Hengist de Thomas Middleton și Cymbeline de William Shakespeare. Articolul utilizează perspective lacaniene și foucauldiene asupra conceptului de privire (regard), combinând abordări feministe și psihanaliste pentru a pune în lumină perspective divergente asupra castității, ce servesc drept contraste cruciale între arta lui Middleton și cea a lui Shakespeare. Castiza din Hengist și Innogen din Cymbeline sunt ambele portretizate ca modele de castitate, dar această trăsătură morală este percepută diferit în cele două piese. Fără știrea ei, Castiza devine victima violului conjugal și se confruntă ulterior cu judecata publică a presupusei sale dezonorări. Această analiză demonstrează că o asemenea consecință reprezintă efectul zguduitor al politizării castității în piesă, al golirii castității de orice valențe morale, transformând-o într-o valută socială. Principala premisă este că, în Hengist, castitatea devine un spectacol panoptic, din cauza privirii masculine prin care femeile sunt ținute sub control. Prin comparație, deși Innogen se confruntă de asemenea cu privirea intruzivă a lui Iachimo, tocmai virtutea îi permite să își înfrunte calomniatorul, recurgând la o deghizare masculină. Analiza identifică un contrast fundamental în tratamentul castității între cele două piese discutate: în Cymbeline, ea rămâne o convingere personală imună la controlul extern, pe când în Hengist, castitatea involuează, devenind o comoditate socială ce limitează abilitatea Castizei de a reacționa.

Cuvinte-cheie: agentivitate, castitate, comodificare, privire, spectacol

Article history: Received 15 December 2024; Revised 26 February 2025; Accepted 06 March 2025; Available online 25 March 2025; Available print 30 April 2025.

References

Primary Bibliography:

Attersoll, William. 1618. A Commentarie upon the Fourth Booke of Moses, Called Numbers: Containing the Foundation of the Church and Commonwealth of the Israelites, While They Walked and Wandered in the Wilderness. Laying Before Us the Unchangeable Love of God Promised and Exhibited to This People ... Heerein Also the Reader Shall Finde More Than Five Hundred Theologicall Questions, Decided and Determined by William Attersoll, Minister of the Word. London: Printed by William Iaggard. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, 2011. Accessed March 16, 2024. URL: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A22507.0001.001/1:4.35.2?amt2=40;amt3=40;c=eebo;c=eebo2;g=eebogroup;rgn=div3;view=toc;xc=1;q1=enforced*;op2=near;q2=marriage*.

Middleton, Thomas. 2007. Hengist, King of Kent; Or, the Mayor of Queenborough, edited by Grace Ioppolo. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, 1451-1487. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Middleton, Thomas. 2007. A Game at Chess, edited by Gary Taylor. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, 1825-1885. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Middleton, Thomas. 2007. Women Beware Women, edited by John Jowett. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, 1488-1541. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shakespeare, William and George Wilkins. 2020. Pericles, edited by Suzanne Gossett. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Shakespeare, William. 2017. Cymbeline, edited by Valerie Wayne. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Shakespeare, William. 2011. The Tempest, edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Bible. 2014. Authorized King James Version, edited by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary Bibliography:

Bald, R.C. 1938. “Introduction”. In Hengist, King of Kent; Or, the Mayor of Queenborough, by Thomas Middleton, edited by R. C. Bald, xiii-liv. New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Bretz, Andrew. 2012. “Emergent Identity: Masculinity and the Representation of Rape on the Early Modern Stage, 1590-1620”. PhD diss., University of Guelph. https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/1044b44a-13f5-4830-95f2-dc181c1d2997/content. Accessed March 18, 2024.

Briggs, Julia. 1990. “Middleton’s Forgotten Tragedy ‘Hengist, King of Kent’.” The Review of English Studies 41 (164): 479–95. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/516275. Accessed April 20, 2024.

Couliano, Ioan P. 1987. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. Translated by Margaret Cook with a Foreword by Mircea Eliade. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Di Leo, Jeffrey R., and Christian Moraru. 2023. “Introduction: Weak Theory—A Report on the Contemporary.” American Book Review 44 (1): 13-21. Project MUSE. https://doi.org/10.1353/abr.2023.a902816.

Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79, edited by Michel Senellart. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gillen, Katherine. 2017. "Chaste Treasure and National Identity in ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ and ‘Cymbeline’." In Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare's Stage, edited by Katherine Gillen, 135-157. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Ioppolo, Grace. 2007. Preface to Hengist, King of Kent; Or, the Mayor of Queenborough. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, 1448-1451. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kaethler, Mark. 2021. Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Lacan, Jacques. 1981. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Lander, Bonnie. 2008. “Interpreting the Person: Tradition, Conflict, and ‘Cymbeline’'s Imogen.” Shakespeare Quarterly 59 (2): 156-184.

León-Alfar, Cristina. 2017. “‘Paper Bullets of the Brain’: Revising the Cuckoldry Play in ‘The Winter's Tale’ and ‘Cymbeline’.” In Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays: Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal, edited by Cristina León-Alfar, 167-206. London: Routledge.

Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Screen16 (3): 6-18.

Mulvey, Laura. 1989. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Papahagi, Adrian. 2023. Shakespeare interpretat de Adrian Papahagi. Pericle. Cymbeline. Furtuna. Iași: Polirom.

Schoenbaum, Samuel. 1970. Middleton's Tragedies: A Critical Study. New York: Gordian Press.

Simpson-Younger, Nancy. 2013. “‘The Garments of Posthumus’: Identifying the Non-Responsive Body in ‘Cymbeline’”. In Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theater, edited by Sara Morrison and Deborah Uman, 177-188. London: Routledge.

Spolsky, Ellen. 2004. “Women's Work is Chastity: Lucretia, Cymbeline, and Cognitive Impenetrability.” In The Work of Fiction: Cognition, Culture, and Complexity, edited by Alan Richardson and Ellen Spolsky, 50-81. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Stewart, Kathleen. 2008. “Weak Theory in an Unfinished World.” Journal of Folklore Research 45 (1): 71-82.

Wareh, Patricia. 2014. “Reading Women: Chastity and Fictionality in ‘Cymbeline’.” In Renaissance Papers 2013. Edited by Jim Pearce and Joanna Kucinski, 131-146. Rochester: Boydell & Brewer.

Wayne, Valerie. 2002. “The Woman’s Parts of ‘Cymbeline’.” In Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama, edited by Jonathan Gil Harris and Natasha Korda, 288-315. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.