Page 29 [29]
OCR
THE DRAMATURGICAL AND THEATRICAL HERITAGE monarch’s personal struggle as part of a political one.” This idea is perfectly compatible with the Renaissance idea that dramatic works, tragedies in particular, were attributed moral and political force. As Sir Philip Sidney explains in his Apology for Poetry, which was published in 1595, while comedies aim to display “an imitation of the common errors of our life,” tragedies are meant to reveal social and political issues when they represent a diseased body politic on stage with an overtly didactic purpose: “the high and excellent Tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humours; that with stirring the affects of admiration and commiseration, teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilden roofs are builded.”” In his translation of Cicero’s De Officiis, which was published in English in 1606 under the title Foure bookes of offices enabling privat persons for the speciall seruice of all good princes and policies, Barnabe Barnes, one of Shakespeare’s fellow dramatists, also explains why people should read the “histories,” of the states and lives of princes of old times: The interior goodnesse and bountie (which accompanieth him) is decently garnished with temperance, innocencie, faithfulnesse, gentlenesse, humanitie, prudence, and foresight; requiring a vertuous circumspection and doubt, as in not committing any thing to the wheele of fortune, but vpon ineuitable necessitie, least his actions be racked vpon it, as hath beene found in diuers captaines, which by the like temeritie fell downe, when they with all their forces leaned vpon her wheele.”° It is no surprise that both Skelton’s and Shakespeare’s playtext provide ample allusions to the same wheel of Fortune (rota Fortune), a conventional trope of the “fall of princes” tradition representing the unpredictability of human life. In Magnyfycence, Poverty warns the monarch: “Syr remembre the tourne of fortunes whele / That wantonly can wynke and wynche with her hele / Nowe she wyll laughe; forthwith she wyll frowne / Sodenly set vp and sodenly pluckyd downe.”” In King Lear, it is Kent who first recalls this image when he is sitting in the stocks: “Fortune goodnight, / Smile, once more turne thy wheele;"" but later Edmund, having lost all his power, also alludes to the wheel 74 Walker: A Domestic Drama, 93. > Sir Philip Sidney: “An Apology for Poetry.” English Critical Texts, ed. F. Enright — L. Chickera, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1962, 31-32. 7° Barnabe Barnes: Foure bookes of offices enabling privat persons for the speciall seruice ofallgood princes and policies, London, Printed at the charges of George Bishop, T. Adams, and C. Burbie, 1606. 169 B. 77 Skelton: Magnyfycence, lines 2056-2059. 78 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. E3r. + 27 +
