Court (Not Courtroom) Drama - Primary Sources

During my search for primary sources in English court drama (and not courtroom drama like I had initially - and mistakenly - understood the prompt), I found some rather interesting works. There are several notable authors within the sub-genre, but those whose works I found most intriguing were those of John Heywood, Thomas Middleton, and - I would argue, at least - William Shakespeare.



Thomas Middleton is a very well-known Jacobean playwright, one whom you may have heard of before. The work of Middleton's I chose was The Revenger's Tragedy, a play about Italian court and treachery within. It is considered an "anticourt drama" which is to say that it aims to highlight the issues within courtly life and behavior and point a finger at the reasons it should be reformed or more closely inspected. It involves themes of revenge, murder, necrophilia, and is generally dark and, well, tragic. While it is Italian court, it still was written and played in England, making it ostensibly English, and while the court members would not necessarily be familiar to the audience, that makes it all the more easier to accept; generally it was expected that the populace looked up to the court as an example of how to proceed themselves, and in many ways the royal family and more specifically the king were considered in a way to be a 'father' or 'mother' for the populace. So using an unfamiliar lineage to portray these sorts of critical ideas would make the message easier to accept by the audience, perhaps without them ever realizing the true aim of the play.

John Heywood is a lesser known playwright, though merely because his poetic works were believed to be "drab" by such influential authors such as C.S. Lewis. He is a Henrician playwright and a predecessor to Middleton and Shakespeare. The work of his that I chose to look more closely at is The Play of the Weather. The story of this play is that, in essence, Jupiter (as in the old Roman mythological god) is coming to England to ask its people what their ideal type of weather is, so that he may then have it changed to better the relationship between heaven and earth. The interesting aspect of the play, however, is how the English deal with the event themselves, and now how Jupiter interacts with them An Englishman, Merry Report, is tasked with spreading word to the English about Jupiter's mission, though he then begins to choose who gets to see Jupiter in order to argue their point and petition for their choice of weather. It deals with social class and industry and other such matters, though the conclusion to the play is that everyone is - or at least should be - considered equal, portrayed through Jupiter's decision to not alter how weather is, so that everyone is pleased for at least some of the time, instead of a small group for all of the time. This could then clearly be applied as a commentary on the court, and how it would be possible for them to entertain only a small group of peoples' interests rather than the interests of the country at large, something we still have trouble with today in our more developed forms of government. The play also makes allusion to King Henry the VIII's search for a male heir through a changing of brides, casting it in a negative light. This is a more direct commentary on the court, and would be much more potent then for the audience at the time than it is now.

Lastly, I chose to look at a Shakespearian play, and not one that is typically considered - at least from my research - a court drama. The play in question is Macbeth, and there are several reasons I believe it to be a court drama play. First and foremost, it centers around the actions of Macbeth and his wife, known only as Lady Macbeth, who become the heads of the court of Scotland through treachery and murder. It points to all the things that the Macbeths do as being wrong - morally and from the view of what is 'natural'. As I suggested earlier, the king was viewed as a father figure, making Macbeth's act patricide - more morally reprehensible than standard murder, if that's even possible. So, it depicts essentially how not to run a court. However, this is only part of the story; this play was written specifically for King James VI - who is (very much not) coincidentally also from Scotland. Macbeth's foil, Banquo, is the forefather and ancient relative of the king, at least in legend. So not only did it point a finger at the things that should not be done by or within the court, it also then pointed to the current King and ostensibly the current court as an example of the opposite; as I said Banquo was Macbeth's foil, equal but also opposite. The implication there would be then that the traits were passed down from him through a long line of heirs to the current king. It is obviously not the only work of Shakespeare's that could be looked at from this point of view, but seeing as how it was directly connected to King James VI it felt appropriate to discuss. There were also his historical plays of Henry the IV and V, as well as Richard II and III; I am however more familiar with Macbeth and felt most confident on analyzing and speaking on it from this new point of view.

In summary, then, my findings on court drama were that they often analyzed and criticized some aspect of court, while others would support certain actions or members of the court; in a sense, my earlier title is still apt, "Society on Trial", as a large part of established society back then was depicted in courtly proceedings, and thus a commentary on the court could be seen as a commentary on the society as a whole.