Claire Jowitt

Colonialism, Politics, and Romanization in John Fletcher's Bonduca

The essay first explores the ways in which John Fletchers Roman play Bonduca engages with early-seventeenth-century British colonial ambitions, particularly in relation to the Virginia colony. Secondly, the article focuses on the topical political allegory in the play. The leadership styles of the two Britons Caratach and Bonduca are read in terms of the colonial policies of James I and Elizabeth I. Fletchers Britons and Romans are shown to serve multiple political functions as both groups are seen to represent aspects of contemporary British colonial concerns.

Imperial dreams? Margaret Cavendish and the cult of Elizabeth

Abstract Margaret Cavendish appropriated images of Elizabeth I in order to how her support for an imperialist England and to question the status Restoration society awarded to women. During the seventeenth century hagiographic representations of Elizabeth I were increasingly used to criticise the policies and personalities of the Stuart monarchs. William Cavendish, for example, harked back to Englands glorious past under Elizabeth in order to inculcate in Charles IIs government expansionist and imperialist policies. Margaret Cavendish in The Blazing World demonstrates similar concerns but Cavendishs work is also interested in using representations of Elizabeth I as a way of exploring both the disenfranchisement of women and, I argue, the possibility of female empowerment.

A pirate for all seasons? Captain Kidd and pirates in popular culture A review of ‘Pirates: the Captain Kidd story’, an exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands, 20 May–30 October 2011

The recent exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands – ‘Pirates: the Captain Kidd story’ – was developed by Tom Wareham and Hilary Davidson. This exhibition took advantage of the widespread popular appeal of pirates – most vividly epitomised by the worldwide success of Jerry Bruckheimer’s Pirates of the Caribbean film phenomena (2003; 2006; 2007; 2011) with Johnny Depp’s charismatic and tongue-in-cheek depiction of the ambiguously anti-heroic Captain Jack Sparrow. However, the museum show focused on the life and death of one of England’s most famous real-life pirates, William Kidd (c. 1645–1701). Like Jack Sparrow, who emerges as a fully formed pirate at the beginning of The Curse of the Black Pearl with no Bildungsroman-style back story, very little is known about Kidd’s early life. He was a Scot, and was probably born in the 1640s, but his first appearance in the historical record only occurs in 1689, when he was a member of a pirate crew who turned privateer against the French in the West Indies. However, the most interesting aspects of Kidd’s life, and the events on which the exhibition focused, are from the midto late 1690s. Secretly financed by a powerful but secret Whig syndicate made up of some of the most illustrious English peers of the day – including the earls of Shrewsbury, Orford and Romney, as well as John, Lord Somers – Kidd was licensed to capture pirates in the Indian Ocean. Equipped with a powerful ship, the Adventure Galley, Kidd soon returned to piracy himself. In 1697, he sailed to the Red Sea and unsuccessfully attacked the pilgrim fleet en route for India, before heading for the west coast of India where he attempted to take a number of other ships. His crew, who were on a ‘no prey, no pay’ contract, were increasingly unhappy and tensions increased until, during a fight for control of the ship, Kidd killed his gunner, William Moore. Kidd went on to capture six ships, of which only two, which were carrying French passes, could be considered legitimate prey under his commission. He then sailed to Madagascar and openly consorted with the pirates he had been sent to capture. As a result, the East India Company, punished by the Mughal government for the depredations of the pirates, campaigned against Kidd, so that he was proclaimed an outlaw in 1698 and instructions were issued for his capture. He was finally arrested by one of his former backers, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont and governor of New York and Massachusetts Bay, and sent to London for trial. During Kidd’s absence from England the political landscape had changed markedly. Kidd’s secret Whig patrons were out of power and he was approached by the Tories to testify against them. Though Kidd refused, the Whigs (themselves facing charges of treason) let matters proceed against Kidd in order to get him out of the way. One unusual feature of his trial was the fact that the French passes he had seized from two vessels could not be found for him to use as evidence. Unsurprisingly, Kidd was sentenced to death for the murder of Moore, and for piracy. He was hanged at Execution Dock, Wapping, on 23 May 1701. Two attempts were needed, since the first time the rope split and had to be rapidly replaced. Kidd’s hoard of

Massinger’s The Renegado (1624) and The Spanish Marriage

Massingers The Renegado is read as a political allegory concerning the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Buckinghams abortive mission to the Spanish court to woo the Infanta Maria. The characters of Donusa and Vitelli, Muslim princess and Venetian gentleman, are seen as representations of the Infanta and the Prince, and the ideological difficulties of their relationship are read as expressions of concern about the wisdom of the match. The Jesuit character of Francisco is shown to allegorise the Duke of Buckingham, and the politics of Massingers unusually positive representation of a militantly Catholic figure are explored.

The Hero and the Sea: Sea Captains and their Discontents

Les capitaines de navire a l’epoque de la premiere modernite etaient en premiere ligne dans les tentatives anglaises pour assurer a la nation sa part de territoire et de commerce, et leurs interventions sont au cœur des recits d’exploration et d’aventure rediges durant cette periode. Cet article se concentre sur deux recits de commandement maritime autour des annees 1590. Pour rendre compte du role du capitaine dans les ambitions expansionnistes maritimes de l’Angleterre, j’evoque d’abord l’importance de l’execution dans des circonstances contestees de Thomas Doughty, sur ordre de Francis Drake pendant la premiere circumnavigation anglaise, et ce afin de comprendre plus generalement les valeurs et la pratique du commandement en mer. Cependant, ma principale preoccupation est la signification des circonstances troubles qui entourent la mort du second circumnavigateur anglais, le celebre Sir Thomas Cavendish, et les conditions de mutinerie a bord qui ont mene a ce resultat. Mon etude vise a analyser les defis et les opportunites lies au commandement en mer a cette periode et a examiner les ideologies qui etayaient ou qui etaient etayees par cette pratique.

Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe

This collection brings together essays examining the international influence of queens, other female rulers, and their representatives from 1450 through 1700, an era of expanding colonial activity and sea trade. As Europe rose in prominence geopolitically, a number of important women—such as Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine de Medici, Caterina Cornaro of Cyprus, and Isabel Clara Eugenia of Austria—exerted influence over foreign affairs. Traditionally male-dominated spheres such as trade, colonization, warfare, and espionage were, sometimes for the first time, under the control of powerful women. This interdisciplinary volume examines how they navigated these activities, and how they are represented in literature. By highlighting the links between female power and foreign affairs, Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe contributes to a fuller understanding of early modern queenship.

The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630–1730 – By Benerson Little

and reintegration to those that offer an identity in terms of persecution and resistance” (47). But alas, orthodox writings say nothing about problems with the capacities of language itself to define sin, while Wycliffite writings often question the adequacy of language to get at the inner truth of persons. This produces a “crisis of the speaking subject” that Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve deal with in various ways, as seen in the last two chapters (64). Chaucer’s Parson displays a Wycliffite inability to use narrative to personalize sin; Gower represents the Lollards as disarmed by traditional confession; and Hoccleve, hostile to Lollards, has assimilated their objections to confession so much that he cannot represent it as bringing comfort or self-illumination. This book has solid scholarship, with copious use of primary sources, an extensive bibliography, and intelligent reinterpretations. It is also very abstruse and difficult to read. The description of its not uninteresting main points that appears above was quarried from the granite of the text with a good deal of effort. Its audience may primarily consist of scholars who are in sympathy with the very theoretical approach pioneered by Foucault to the question of how people of the past thought about or defined themselves. Other medievalists may question whether any writer in the period ever had a single thought about such things as “the absence of interpretive links between the text and the self-definition of his listeners” (86). Little has established that the Wycliffites realized that not everything can be expressed in language; she has not established that this reasonable human insight amounted to a “crisis” that affected anybody’s self-definition in practical terms. One can see how it might have done so, but more evidence is needed that it did.

Introduction: Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

Pirates have long held a significant place in literature. Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Story, for instance, begins in media res on a corpse-strewn Egyptian beach.1 It is only five books later in the romance’s account of Theagenes’ and Cariclia’s adventures that the reader becomes fully aware that the dead men were in fact pirates, and the events and significance of the enigmatic opening scene is explained as characters’ reactions to the test of piracy are indicative of their moral and religious principles. Pirates likewise make frequent appearances in Renaissance literature. In Shakespeare’s plays pirates play small but important roles: in Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Pericles, The Merchant of Venice, for example, pirates intervene in the action in ways crucial to each play’s plot development. Both the number of literary pirates, and their ability to change the course of the story despite the size of their role, indicate that these figures haunted the literary imagination. Sometimes they take up roles centre stage — such as John Ward in Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk — but more often than not, pirates appear on the sidelines of literary texts, unruly, discontented figures, excluded from the main story, but refusing to be wholly suppressed. For example, in Measure for Measure the conveniently deceased pirate Ragozine plays a crucial role in saving Claudio from Angelo’s injustice, when the first substitute, the condemned Barnadine, refuses to co-operate in providing a severed head to show Angelo.2