Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Jennifer van Alstyne: "Wives and Daughters"

Jennifer van Alstyne

Wives and Daughters: Social Acceptance and Agency in Chapman, Jonson, and Marston’s Eastward Ho

1> Eastward Ho is a 1605 city comedy staged by the Children of the Queen’s Revels and written by George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston. Written in response to Westward Ho, a city comedy by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, each play examines the River Thames as natural boundary within the city of London. Eastward Ho, of some controversy due to anti-Scottish rhetoric, revolves around goldsmith Master Touchstone, his two very different daughters Gertrude and Mildred, and his apprentices Quicksilver and Golding. The play utilizes anxiety over social issues like changing social mobility and the beginning of the privatization of the family unit which will cement itself during the 17th century in the urbanscape of London, presenting a stage of comical relationships that reaffirm those anxieties towards a more stable change.

2> The past decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Jonson’s lesser studied works including articles on Eastward Ho from Emily Isaacson, Theodora Jankowski, Shona McIntosh, David W. Kay, and Maren L. Donley[1]. Isaacson and Jankowski focus on the role of Quicksilver, Touchstone’s thieving and manipulative apprentice[2]. In her article, Isaacson suggests that Puritan conduct books, popular during this period, like city comedies, exemplify “anxieties about the family.” And, as Puritan conduct books were not only directed at the male head of household, they sought to reinforce hierarchical and patriarchal ideals within the “nexus of household relationships.” Isaacson argues that the servant role, after Northrop Frye’s dolosus servus, is central to the city comedy. Jankowski argues that The Royall King and the Loyall Subject and Eastward Ho! revolve around discussion of the way class roles were changing in 16th and 17th-century England by looking at socio-historical class models like that of Tillyard and Lovejoy[3]. New classes emerging during this time disrupted the known ideas of “gentleman” and questioned the emergence of large numbers of people in new trades that did not fit into the old system of class stratification. McIntosh on the other hand, focuses on the uncertainty over social mobility but mentions the women only tangentially to their male counterparts[4]. She discusses the different types of redemption in Eastward Ho and The Alchemist (1610).

3> Kay and Donley discuss the relationship between Quicksilver and Touchstone. Kay examines Eastward Ho as a Calvinistic double-morality play in which honor and prosperity is restored through crime and imprisonment by examining Touchstone and Quicksilver’s roles as performance and satire. Donley takes a closer look at Quicksilver’s repentance in prison. Like Isaacson and Jankowski, Kay focuses on Quicksilver and Touchstone, although he notes that typical “citizen” traits such as jealousy, cuckold, moneylending, and hypocritical Puritanism are granted to Security rather than Touchstone. I would suggest that this allows the Touchstone and his family to rise through the marriages of his daughters. Kay is one of the few critics that talk about the female characters[5]. Kay even notes that Gertrude’s “role is frequently ignored in critical discussions,” and that she may be the “true prodigal” in the play[6]. That being said, Kay’s article is largely about Gertrude’s role as satire, and my research focuses on her role as agent necessary to solidify the family’s upward social mobility[7].

4> Richard Horwich notes similarities between Shakespeare's Hamlet (1603, 1604-5, 1623) and Jonson’s Eastward Ho based on a number of things: both plays are set in a corrupted world, they contain characters named Gertrude and Hamlet, and both comment on the death or loss of chivalry. Horwich notes several specific situations in which Eastward Ho directly comments upon or parodies Hamlet, noting that “Touchstone and Golding do literally what Hamlet conceives of his mother doing only figuratively: they arrange one wedding to take advantage of food remaining from another,” (223). Horwich’s argument revolves largely around the male figures, noting both Gertrudes are considered “dupes,” (224) but also suggests the Gertrude of Eastward Ho might be revisionary, alleviating some of the blame of Shakespeare’s Gertrude.

5> While Liz Schafer’s chapter focuses on female directors of Ben Jonson plays, she notes a substantial history of the staging of Eastward Ho involves women despite Jonson’s occasional reputation for at worst, misogyny (155). She even noted, perhaps to Horwich’s disdain, that Charlotte Ramsay Lennox removed all of the Hamlet jokes and removing the more repudiating lines and characters in her production of Old City Manners (1775)[8]. That Eastward Ho has seen a high number of female directors and adapters suggests they too saw at the heart of this, a female play of reunification and regeneration. Schafer recounts a long history of feminist adaptation of the play and, while her own criticism discusses the women involved in the resurgence of this play, it also suggest the need for the continuation of feminist criticism in this field.

6> In Eastward Ho, upward mobility is achieved through the actions and decisions of female characters who are essential in both maintaining stable definitions of hierarchical social rank and in bringing about rank change for themselves and their families. This definition is achieved by three actions: women accept or reject their own social stations through marriage; women also accept or reject their relationships and the social status of other women; and lastly, that women must forgive the men in their lives for grievous wrongs, thereby solidifying the family unit as per societal Elizabethan norms. In the patriarchal society of Eastward Ho, men’s class mobility is made possible by their female relatives in a way that gives the women agency in their outcome. Women’s actions serve to reify the roles outlined by societal norms—being a faithful wife, a good daughter, and to have their male relations accepted in larger political and economic society—as desired by their characters and obtained through a variety of choices and actions[9].

7> Of the anxieties expressed, the play ends in contentment among all characters, and Quicksilver alone on stage implores the audience be content as well. In the epilogue, he says: “Oh, may you find in this our pageant here, / The same contentment which you came to seek,” (V, epilogue, 6-7)[10]. This contentment not only refers to the play as entertainment, but to normative social hierarchical behavior as well because of its placement at the conclusion rather than the introduction and because it is spoken by Quicksilver who represents a character who conforms through crime and repentance. The contentment achieved by class-improvement refers not only to the characters of Eastward Ho, but to the audience that watches as well whom Quicksilver addresses. And, while the play reports at the end to warn the audience of potential dangers of trying to exceed one’s social standing, the characters have all managed it by the end of the play with little or no damage to themselves or the outside world.

8> Utilizing Susan Amussen’s work for structure, my research is broken into three parts based on her understanding of class and gender in order to examine the interpersonal relationships through a varied lens. Amussen proposes that family was not only the “fundamental economic unit of society; it also provided the basis for political and social order...the family served as a metaphor for the state,” (1). And while the family unit as we know it today didn’t become a private relationship until later in the 17th century, the family must be examined within a social sphere. The metaphor Amussen refers to then is only clear when examined at “different levels of social organization — from family, to village, county, church and state,” (2) in order to understand how society worked[11]. Gender and class are hierarchical systems that are intertwined: class hierarchy, dealing with property, title, and the moral reflection of worth that comes along with it is equally as dependant upon gender hierarchy[12]. Amussen says, “wives were subject to their husbands, so women were subject to men, whose authority was sustained informally through culture, customs and differences in education, and more formally through the law,” (3) but also that women, particularly wealthy neighbors and mistresses, can have authority over men. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on the systems which might be analysed through the information provided in Eastward Ho: family relationships, local society, and state or national trends.

Family Relationships

9> Family is integral to Eastward Ho, as it revolves around the Touchstones and their economic and social relationships in London as their daughters pave the pathway for upward mobility. In this section, I discuss Touchstone in relation to his two daughters, Gertrude and Mildred. Touchstone describes his daughters to the audience in the opening act[13]:

“[…] have I only two daughters, the eldest of a proud ambition and nice wantonness, the other of a modest humility and comely soberness. The one must be ladyfied, forsooth, and be attired just to the court cut and long tail. So far as she ill natured to the place and means of my preferment and fortune that she throws all the contempt and despite hatred itself cast upon it.” (I, i, l. 96-104)

10> At the start of the play, Gertrude is engaged to be married to Sir Petronel Flash, a newly minted knight. Touchstone and his wife, Mistress Touchstone, represent two different opinions of this match, as well as different opinions about the wider national issue of social mobility muddled by the practice of purchasing titles.

11> Touchstone devises an experiment to find out which marriage, Gertrude’s or Mildred’s, “thrives the best, the mean or lofty love,” (I, ii, 194) but what he believes makes for a good marriage, the basis for the test, is unusual but understandable because of his economic role as merchant-citizen. Touchstone’s negative opinion of Gertrude’s manner is made clear, but his view of Mildred, at least the qualities he suggests make her a good candidate for wife, are about her appearance rather than temperament. He says, “She is not fair, well favoured or so, indifferent, which modest measure of beauty shall not make it they only work to watch her, nor sufficient mischance to suspect her,” (I, i, 171-4) meaning she is not so beautiful she’ll be seduced away by another man, nor is she ugly enough to warrant self-fulfillment through an illicit affair. It seems the main things of import to Touchstone are fidelity and loyalty. Economically, this would make sense as Touchstone represents the introduction of merchant-citizen and the structure of the apprentice-master relationship is played out through his daughters as well. The bifurcation in personality between Golding and Quicksilver is equivalent to the differences between Gertrude and Mildred. Both Quicksilver and Gertrude seek upward mobility, but Quicksilver has made grave legal errors and Gertrude’s error in judgement was based in naivete.

12> While Golding hints in Act I that Sir Petronel Flash likely does not have a castle, it is unclear until Act II in which Flash confesses to Quicksilver[14]. “Alas, all the castles I have are built with air, thou know’st,” (II, ii, 246-7) he says when Quicksilver attempts to offer him a loan on behalf of Security. The references to Flash’s castle as “Eastward,” (244), of “air” (247), “enchanted,” (256), and “invisible” (257), as well as its association with “smoke,” (244) and the “sun” (253) help to evoke the sense that the castle, like Flash’s title, is built out of smoke and mirrors. Flash says, “the sun being outshined with her ladyship’s glory, she fears he goes westward to hang himself,” (253-5). While the sun in this situation parodies Petrarchan idolization, Flash recognizes that Gertrude’s albeit temporary happiness in gained position and title, her dream of being a country lady fulfilled, is brighter than the sun. The passing of time with the sun’s movement, follows her rather than the other way around, but he also suggests that glory will be extinguished upon the discovery of Flash’s lies, associated here with the “hanging.” And, while the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, van Fossen also notes that “westward” is another allusion to the gallows at Tyburn when Quicksilver suggests Gertrude will “return and follow his [the sun’s] example,” (258). However, this is an underestimation of Gertrude’s will and character; by seeing only the frivolity in Gertrude’s quest for ladyship, the men disregard her strength and resolve.

13> When Gertrude is introduced, after Touchstone’s negative description, she is connected with a variety of material things representing the mode of dress of upper class women prompted by her tailor Poldavy. Gertrude expresses that her understanding of aristocratic women is based on these items, “I must be a lady. Do you wear your coif with a London licket, your stammel petticoat with two guards, the buffin gown with the tuftaffety cape, and the velvet lace,” (I, ii, 17-20), referring to a headdress, ornamental and embroidered cloth, and tufted taffeta. She envisions a city dame eating cherries only at “an angel a pound,” (23) referring to the cost of the cherries rather than the quality. And, while Gertrude speaks directly to Mildred, even offering “when I am a lady, I’ll pray for thee,” (50), the person she relies on for answers is the lecherous tailor Poldavy who makes use of Gertrude’s naivete. In response to one question he says, “Here was a fault in your body, but I have supplied the defect with the effect of my steel instrument, which, though it have but one eye, can see to rectify the imperfection of the proportion,” (61-5), a phallic euphemism suggesting he may correct women’s appearance through the disguise or costume of dress, and sexually as well.

14> Most of Gertrude’s advice on being a lady comes from men who, like Poldavy, have ulterior motives and likely do not know themselves. While Touchstone warns Gertrude modesty is essential, Flash tells her “Boldness is good fashion and courtlike,” (I, ii, 86), but it isn’t just contradictory advice Gertrude receives that promotes naivete. No one accurately corrects her misunderstanding of both what is said and what is misheard as when Flash discusses a match of balloon, a game involving a large inflated leather ball, which she mishears as baboon. Van Fossen notes this as “wildly intemperate sexual behavior.” Even Mistress Touchstone revels in her daughter’s upward mobility suggesting she “would ha’ dubbed you myself,” to Flash (117-9) and calling Gertrude her “lady-daughter” (124). Gertrude makes statements and asks questions about aristocratic life but it is both the lack of response and lack of understanding the motivations of people around her that results in her ignorance of her own position after marriage.

15> Mildred, like Golding with the master-servant bond, represents unwavering faith in the role she plays in relation to her father. “I am all yours: your body gave me life, your care and love happiness of life; let your virtue still direct it, for to your wisdom I wholly dispose myself,” (I, ii, 186-9). Mildred’s attempts to steer Gertrude’s traits, her acceptance of her father’s proposed marriage to Golding, and her forgiveness of Gertrude results in the stability of not only her own marriage, but Gertrude’s, Winifred’s, and Sindefy’s as well. When asked if she prefers the costly garments Gertrude aspires to, Mildred replies

“I have observed that the bridle given to those violent flatteries of fortune is seldom recovered; they bear one headlong in desire from one novelty to another; and where those ranging appetites reign, there is ever more passion than reason: no stay, and so no happiness. These hasty advancements are not natural. Nature hath given us legs to go to our objects, not wings to fly to them.” (II, i, 69-77)

16> For Mildred it seems observation, rather than Gertrude’s statement-question method of figuring one’s place in the world, is key to the status quo both she and Golding find acceptable. What appears as lack of ambition, especially when contrasted with Gertrude’s obsession with being a lady, seems at first stagnant but in this statement suggests it is not advancement Mildred finds fault with, but rather the hasty passion with which people pursue it. Mildred’s advancement follows the steady trajectory she if not aspires to, does not oppose, resulting in marriage to a dedicated apprentice of her father who gains political and economic stability when released from that service role.

Local Society

17> In terms of local society as lens, the three interpersonal relationships I address are Golding as political representative in relation to both Touchstone and Mildred, followed by a discussion of Sindefy and Gertrude. While Quicksilver and Golding begin as Touchstone’s apprentices, neither man ends up that way by the end of the play. Apprentices, as Isaacson notes, were “in both a learning and service relationship” (64), and Touchstone’s release of Quicksilver for fault and Golding for virtue, removes the constructed outlines of that formal working relationship. And while Golding represents a dedication to learning, duty, and honor, he also shows a lack of passion both in his work and in his relationship with Mildred: “you shall want nothing fit for your birth and education; what increase of wealth and advancement the honest and orderly industry and skill of our trade will afford in any, I doubt not will be aspired by me,” (II, i, 87-9). While contemporary ideals might want for a more pronounced ambition in the workplace, a complete lack of ambition in the Jacobean-era, as exemplified by Golding, is an extreme.

18> As a wealthy merchant-citizen, Touchstone encompasses two worlds without belonging to either of them, but Golding gains upward mobility without intention. Golding, like Mildred, represents a lack of ambition, a dedication to work, and a comfortability with the status quo. Isaacson says, “Golding seems never to have any higher ambition than being an honest member of this adopted family, though he keeps finding himself rewarded for his hard work and honesty,” (77) which results in a variety of promotions on the first day of his freedom: deputy to the alderman and election to the Common Council. Beyond Golding’s own success, however, the promotions also change Touchstone’s understanding of those positions and their role in his own economic security, saying he “shall think the better of the Common Council’s wisdom and worship while I live...Forward, my sufficient son, and as this is the first, so esteem in the least step to that high and prime honour that expects thee,” (IV, ii, 75-70). Touchstone feels his experiment is validated by Goldings political success and, by calling him a “sufficient son,” the master-servant bond is released by the elimination of the apprentice contract and solidified anew by the marriage contract between Golding and Mildred, both of which Touchstone attributes to his own credit[15].

19> Touchstone vehemently opposes Gertrude’s ambition, but the smallest glimpse of upward mobility in Golding results in a foreseen trajectory of continued social mobility Touchstone delights in:

“I hope to see thee one o’ the monuments of our city, and reckoned among her worthies, to be remembered...and thou and thy acts become the posies for hospitals, when thy name shall be written upon conduits, and thy deeds played i’ thy lifetime, by the best companies of actors and be called their getpenny. This I divine. This I prophesy.”
(IV, ii, 79-89)

20> Touchstone likens Golding to great political and charitable figures of the day. I suggest that there is no way to tell if Golding achieves promotion solely through his own merit, or if the placement of this announcement after Gertrude’s wedding allows room for the possibility that Golding’s new connection to the aristocracy, purchased or not, promoted his name to the council for consideration. And, while Golding is the catalyst for the legal forgiveness of Quicksilver, Flash, and Security, I wonder if the task would have been important if Mildred hadn’t taken the mission upon herself first.

21> There is some support to the idea that Gertrude’s marriage has a wider reach than her own family, certainly resulting in agency through the power of gossip. Mistress Fond and Mistress Gazer are citizen’s wives, of Touchstone’s class, who watch Gertrude’s departure for Flash’s castle upon her marriage. In their only scene, the women discuss Gertrude’s match in terms Gertrude herself must have spread: “O she’s married to a most fine castle i’ th’ country, they say,” (III, ii, 22-3). Mistress Fond’s use of the pronoun “they” also suggests Gertrude’s speech act of announcement and promoting her husband’s title through gossip is successful, as had they heard from Gertrude herself, “she” would have been used instead. The gossips also suggest similar naivete in their thinking about castles, titles, and aristocracy , likening Flash to medieval romantic heroes: “they say her knight killed [the giants] ‘em all, and therefore he was knighted,” (25-6). The gossips say only ten lines between them, but their role in proving Gertrude’s ability to paint a portrait of her own marriage, her husband’s gallantry, and the romantic life she heads to as a country lady allows for our understanding of how Gertrude got her naive understanding of Flash. The family is only able to find stability after Flash is jailed and then forgiven. It is the social aspect of gossip that creates acceptance, even weaves lies in favor of stability, in which the Touchstones and their daughters can gain upward class mobility through scandal but also social forgiveness and acceptance[16].

22> Sindefy, Quicksilver’s mistress, is utilized in the plot by Quicksilver who inserts her into Gertrude’s new household as a gentlewoman, but he does not recognize Sindefy’s ability to rise above her station as mistress, saying “these women, sir, are like Essex calves: you must wriggle ‘em on by the tail still, or they will never drive orderly,” (266-7). Referring to women as cows, as well as the sexual innuendo of “wriggle ‘em,” does not account for Sindefy’s ultimate friendship with Gertrude[17]. While she is aware of her position, and gladly accepts her role, it is doubtful Security or Quicksilver could have predicted the social elevation from mistress to “gentlewoman of the country, new come up with a will for a while to learn fashions,” (II, ii, 195-7) would stick. And yet, from the moment Gertrude accepts Sindefy into her household, she is exactly what she is pretending to be, encompassing the role for her own benefit[18].

23> It is Sindefy who accompanies Gertrude on her coach trip eastward, and when Touchstone welcomes her back with proverbial snide remarks on her failed marriage, Gertrude reveals herself to be a strong-willed woman despite humiliation, especially when her mother tells her to kneel, “Kneel? I hope I am not brought so low yet; though my knight be run away, and has sold my land, I am a lady still,” (IV, ii, 134-6). Gertrude’s stubbornness might appear to some as ridiculous, but in this scene Gertrude stands up to a father who seeks to humiliate her further, and a mother who has transitioned from pushing her daughter towards an unexamined match to attempting to force Gertrude into physical submission. Isaacson suggests that by Touchstone casting Gertrude out of the house, “Touchstone risks his public reputation in this moment, since he is admitting to his inability to control the members of his household, but this is the price he must pay in order to keep...the noble portion of his family intact,” (77). Noble in this sense, would refer to morality rather than hierarchy, but it is through this action, Gertrude’s separation from both her husband and family, that she is granted the ability to find her own moral center.

24> Sindefy, who might have returned to Quicksilver upon returning to the city, and again upon finding Gertrude is to be cast onto the street, remains showing a sisterly bond was formed perhaps through betrayal by men, a loyalty Gertrude reciprocates when imagining their future. When Gertrude asks her if she has ever heard of such happenings to a lady and her servant, Sindefy responds, “Not I, truly, madam; and if I had, it were but cold comfort should come out of books now,” (V, i, 4-5). Such calamity is unimaginable in their understanding of how life ought to happen that comfort is found in each other, even if Gertrude has little understanding of Sindefy’s own past because their bond is based on a lie constructed by Quicksilver. Getrude sells her jewels and gowns and even considers selling her title, “I’m sure I remember the time when I would ha’ given a thousand pound, if I had had it, to have been a lady,” (73-5). And while she does not wish to sell her title, she has some economic brilliance in the suggestion of leasing it, “I would lend it— let me see— for forty pound in hand, Sin; that would apparel us; and ten pound a year; that would keep me and you, Sin, with our needles, and we should never need to be beholden to our scurvy parents” (80-5), and by extension, the men who control the money. While this isn’t a feasible plan, Gertrude envisioning a world in which she could keep herself is far from her original understanding of her place as woman. Her generosity towards Sindefy who has shown a great deal of loyalty, proves a noble character that needed a catalyst of necessity and independence in order to emerge and for this reason, marriage to Sindefy is part of Quicksilver’s repentance, solidifying her once pretend role of gentlewoman.


25> With a wider scope of Eastward Ho at the level of state, analysis revolves around two things: how Winifred subverts social commentary on expeditions to the new world, and how the final acts of forgiveness create stability for the social relationships at the play’s end. Gertrude’s eastward journey to the country and Flash and crew’s eastward journey to Virginia end without reaching their respective destinations. Each of the major characters wash ashore in a location particular to their crime: Security who has gone after his wife, lands at Cuckold’s Haven, Winifred finds herself at Saint Katharine’s which van Fossen notes is a “reformatory for fallen women,” and the rest of the lot land on the Isle of Dogs which at the time was a “refuge for debtors,” (32). Each location outside of the city reflects the actions of the characters who land there, but also comments on the roles each play in the wider narrative.

26> Several of the voyagers capsize in the storm and wash up on the Isle of Dogs; their expedition to Virginia is an avenue by which we can look at state relations. On the Isle of dogs, Flash, who speaks French, attempts to communicate with two gentlemen who remark on the foolhardy decision to begin such an expedition during a storm. Further, they humiliate Flash for his purchased title when Gentleman 1 says, “Farewell, we will not know you for shaming of you. I ken the man weel; he’s one of my thirty-pound knights,” (IV, i, 196-8). Gentleman 2 goes further to say, “he stole his knighthood o’ the grand day for four pound, giving to a page all the money in ‘s purse, I wot well,” (199-200). The view of the newly minted knight on foreign land reinforces the perception of purchased titles, even outside of the country. Beyond that commentary about Flash, and the idiocy of setting out during a storm, the legitimacy of a Virginia expedition is also questioned. Van Fossen says in his introduction that “during this period the name ‘Virginia’ might mean a place anywhere from Florida to Newfoundland,” (18). This is significant because after the failed colony at Roanoke, Sir Walter Raleigh had only a limited amount of time to establish a colony in the new world in order to maintain his right[19]. As such, “the Virginia venture is central not only to both plots of the play but also to the sophisticated social commentary which provides much of its sharpest humor and many of its most serious implications,” (17). The failure of this venture represents that social commentary, and Winifred, the only woman on the expedition, revises that narrative by returning home and convincing her husband she’d never left.

27> Parallels to Eastward Ho can be made to Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599), particularly in reference to what Winifred refers to as “woman’s wit, and fortune” (IV, i, 281). Winifred washes up on Saint Katharine’s, but she is not taken for an adulterous by the Drawer who cares for her after the boat capsizes, nor does anyone find issue with her presence as sole woman on the boat. She even awakens to find “a gentlewoman’s gown, hat, stockings, and shoes,” (IV, i, 104-5), the modes of dress discussed earlier about Gertrude as the costume or outward appearance of a lady, and receives the confidence of the Drawer who brings her back to his tavern so she may return home unseen at which point she asks to be left with her wit. This may refer to lines from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, performed in the year or two before Eastward Ho,

“Or else she could not have the wit to do this: the
wiser, the waywarder: make the doors upon a
woman's wit and it will out at the casement; shut
that and 'twill out at the key-hole; stop that, 'twill
fly with the smoke out at the chimney.”
           (V, i, 160-5)

—a play which also features a character named Touchstone, although Shakespeare’s Touchstone is a court jester[20]. Winifred’s wit creates a further disparity between herself and her husband, Security the usurer because he has followed and capsized himself in the fitting Cuckold's Haven, so Winifred has ample time to return home and claim she’d never left. Winifred revises the narrative of the journey itself, as well as the narrative Security believes to be, and indeed is, true.

28> While Winifred returns home, the rest of the traveling party is taken into custody at Golding’s order and the men, including Security, go through moral transformation in the enclosed space of the prison. It is Golding who acts as go-between, as the only character with enough social trust to trick Touchstone, won over only by Quicksilver’s song of “Repentance,” into witnessing that transformation. Critics like Isaacson and Donley have attributed this act of forgiveness to Golding’s machinations, but the scene’s appearance after Gertrude’s discussion with Mistress Touchstone to, “Go to thy sister’s, child; she’ll be proud thy ladyship will come under her roof. She’ll win thy father to release thy knight, and redeem thy gowns, and thy coach, and thy horses, and set thee up again,” (V, ii, 177-81), suggests Mildred’s agency if not over her father, certainly her husband. Golding, of self-stated no ambition, shows an unusual amount of loyalty to his previously fellow apprentice. It is Mildred who helps relay the message of Golding’s faux arrest and, while Touchstone’s response to his “virtuous” daughter is, “Away, sirens, I will immure myself against your cries, and lock myself up to your lamentations” (V, iv, 7-8), I suggest Mildred’s agency lies in Golding’s plot through her own decision to forgive her sister which happens offstage. As such, rather than emphasizing Golding’s agency, the repentance which most matters to the security and stability of the relationships and social standing of Touchstone’s family lies with Gertrude’s apology and Mildred’s forgiveness and the strength of that sisterly bond.

29> Eastward Ho results in five reaffirmed or created marriages who have resolved or forgiven each other’s errors. It is by separating actions of the female characters into various levels or lenses of analysis that their agency becomes more pronounced. The women in this play utilize tools like acceptance of marriage, speech act and gossip, and controlled forgiveness, to solidify their relationships and the positions of their husbands on the political and economic sphere. And while they are given fewer lines, and some significant acts of forgiveness like that of Gertrude and Mildred happen offstage, the offerings I have proposed give new understanding to their overall agency within the text. While Gertrude, Mildred, Winifred, and Sindefy are given stock personality traits—ambition on the marriage mart, contentment with the status quo, unhappiness within a marriage, prostitutes—it is through their shared dedication to each other, and to finding stability and happiness within their relationships, that ultimately extends that stability to the men in their lives as well.

Works Cited

Amussen, Susan Dwyer. An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England. Columbia UP, 1988.

Chapman, George, et al. Eastward Ho. Edited by R.W. van Fossen, Manchester UP, 2006.

Donley, Maren. “The Mechanics of Virtue: Quicksilver’s ‘Repentance,’ and the Test of Audience, and Social Change in Eastward Ho,” Renaissance Drama, vol. 41, no. 1/2, pp. 25-55.

Gibbons, Brian. Jacobean City Comedy. Routledge, 1980.

Horwich, Richard. “Hamlet and Eastward Ho,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 11, no. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, 1971: 223-33.

Isaacson, Emily R. “Indulgent Masters and Sleights of Hand: Servants and Apprentices in City Comedy,” Ben Jonson Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, 2015: 62-82.

Jankowski, Theodora A. “Class Categorization, Capitalism, and the Problem of ‘Gentle’ Identity in The Royall King and the Loyall Subject and Eastward Ho!Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 19, JSTOR, 2006, pp. 144–174.

Kay, W. David. “Parodic Wit and Social Satire in Chapman, Jonson, and Marston’s Eastward Ho!.” English Literary Renaissance, vol. 42, no. 3, 2012, pp. 391–424.

Kay, David W. and Suzanne Gossett. “Eastward Ho,” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online, 2012.

Leggatt, Alexander. Citizen Comedy in the Age of Shakespeare. U of Toronto, 1973.

McIntosh, Shona. “Space, Place and Transformation in Eastward Ho! and The Alchemist,” The Idea of the City: Early-Modern, Modern, and Post-Modern Locations and Communities. Cambridge Scholars, 2009, pp. 65-78.

Schafer, Elizabeth. “Daughters of Ben,” Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice, Theory. Eds. Richard Cave, Elizabeth Schafer, and Brian Woolland. Routledge, 2005, pp. 155-77.

Shakespeare, William. "As You Like It." The Norton Anthology. 2nd ed. Eds. Greenblatt, Stephen, et al. W.W Norton, 2008, pp. 377-444.


[1] R. W. van Fossen states in his introduction that, “until quite recently, by far the greatest portion of the published commentary on Eastward Ho has been preoccupied with the question of its collaborative authorship,” (1). This makes Isaacson, Jankowski, and Kay’s work particularly relevant to my own because it moves beyond that focus.

[2] Leggatt notes that while financial trickery is essential to New Comedy, “comes about largely through the work of Thomas Middleton...Jonson is often cited as the prime influence,” (see note on 10).

[3] The Great Chain of Being: The History of an Idea (1937) argues for a chain of power and intelligence on a scale of nothingness to God, suggesting humans were able to touch both the world of the spiritual higher powers because of their ability to examine the senses, as well as love and reason, but the can also lower themselves through sin to the level of animals.

[4] That being said, she does propose a rather astute observation that both Eastward Ho and The Alchemist are set during plague time in which the playhouses are closed, which might be considered another level of stagnancy beyond social mobility.

[5] Gibbons chose Eastward Ho the example for Jacobean city comedy in his introduction because of its “characteristic atmosphere and texture” representative of the plays of the genre (8). However, in the several pages he dedicates to the play, Gibbons mentions Touchstone’s daughters once, and does not even provide their names: “Corresponding to the two apprentices are the goldsmith’s two daughters; one is humbly earnest and modest, the other vain, empty-headed and licentious,” (9). That the plot of a play largely about women and marriage can be described without discussing either shows the need for continued research in this field.

[6] This would make Leggatt’s comment that “by far the subtlest and most elaborate parody of the standard prodigal story is to be found in Eastward Ho,” (47). But, while he analyzes Quicksilver’s behaviour as “copybook prodigal—spendtrift, drunken, roistering, and scornful of all good advice,” his analysis of Gertrude is that she “certainly is a fool, and has none of Quicksilver’s wit.” By noting her character as “more amusing than offensive,” “a child indulging in pre-Christmas fantasies, and lording it over her less imaginative playmates,” (49) Leggatt sees Gertrude’s same basis in naivete as I, but fails to recognize her agency in setting the social moves in motion.

[7] In Kay and Gossett’s new edition of The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson, Gossett includes a detailed “Textual History” and analysis of Eastward Ho in which she focuses on “the play’s creation and political impact.” Gertrude is mentioned three times, largely in relation to printing mistakes. Kay’s “Stage History,” on the other hand, pointedly notes changes in characterizations of Gertrude’s character in productions by Nahum Tate, David Garrick, and Charlotte Lennox.

[8] Old City Manners (1775) written by Charlotte Lennox, was adapted from Eastward Ho. Schafer notes in the prologue, George Coleman suggests the original play had become “by time perhaps, impair’d too much.” Lennox’s adaptation chose to remove the most characters like Slitgut, and highlight the romance lacking from the original play. Of course, highlighting the romance might make Lennox’s adaptation fit in less with the genre of citizen comedy, which is typically underplayed as per Leggatt.

[9] This may well be true for other Renaissance Dramas. Certainly female agency has been addressed in plays like Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (1592) and Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl (1607).

[10] The epilogue is unassigned in the original, but Van Fossen notes all modern editors attribute the epilogue to Quicksilver (36).

[11] Amussen’s study examines gender and class through examination of five Norfolk parishes in order to emphasize the importance of analysing both national trends such as wage increases between 1500-1620, population growth, and inflation, as well as local ones (8-9).

[12] Amussen defines gender as “the process by which meaning is given to the perceived biological differences between women and men, a process which turns biological facts into social relationships,” (4).

[13] That a male opinion of the female characters is presented before the introduction of the characters shapes our understanding of how those women are viewed by their father. This fits with Touchstone’s many instances of proselytizing particularly at the end of his speeches.

[14] Golding refers to this by saying, “Pray heaven the elephant carry not his castle on his back,” (I, i, 163-4), which refers to a common British image, “Elephant and Castle,” derived from the Hindu tradition of Howdah. For more, see van Fossen’s note to the text and R. Withington’s “A Note on Eastward Ho, i, ii, 178” in Modern Language Notes, 1928).

[15] Van Fossen notes of Golding and Mildred, “they and their marriage are as much the objects of ridicule in the play as are Sir Petronel and Gertrude and theirs,” (30). Their lack of passion aligns with a mariage de raison.

[16] I would also argue that gossip in this sense is gendered as a female mode of communication, and thus, an aspect of female agency.

[17] This assertion that women must be controlled by men might also be taken back to Poldavy’s sexual reference to his needle with one eye. Quicksilver’s likening women to chattel that must be guided by both sexual control and forceful modification (Poldavy through appearance, Quicksilver through drive).

[18] Sindefy’s name is equally as contradictory as her position as both mistress and gentlewoman. Van Fossen notes that “The name suggests (1) one not only sinful but defiantly so; (2) ironically, one who defies sin,” comparing her to Win-the-Fight in Bartholomew’s Fair. Sindefy’s social rank changes from mistress of an alcoholic apprentice attempting to disrupt society to wife of a reformed man attempting to right his wrongs by improving the lives of societal outcasts. This change solidifies Sindefy as one both accepting of her sins, acting to change her station, and achieving social mobility through female friendship.

[19] Van Fossen also notes that between 1589 and 1602, Raleigh made five failed attempts to find and ‘relieve’ Roanoke (17).

[20] Shakespeare’s Touchstone also proselytizes regularly, and like the Touchstone character of Eastward Ho, has the ability to understand and comment upon others. The Touchstone character of As You Like It acts almost as precursor to Gertrude’s relationship in that he marries Audrey, whom he finds to have sought the match because she wishes, like Gertrude, to become a courtly lady.

Jennifer van Alstyne is a Peruvian-American poet and scholar. Her work has been published in numerous journals, including The Citron Review, COG, Crack the Spine, ELKE, The Foundling Review, Paper Nautilus, Stonecoast Review, Sweet Tree Review, and Whiskey Traveler. She holds an M.F.A. from Naropa University where she was the Jack Kerouac Fellow, and is currently a graduate fellow in English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern
Literature and Culture,
ISSN: 1946-1992,
Volume Ten (2017): Artefacts

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