Sidney, Religious Syncretism, and Henry VIII

¹ On similarities between Henry VIII and the romances, see also Palfrey Citation1997: 177, 200. Sidney is not cited in Micheli Citation1985.

² Sidney’s religious affiliation has been variously termed “Protestant,” “Calvinist,” “Puritan,” and “Reformed.” I retain these terms to emphasize the variety of his non-Catholic characterizations.

³ The overlapping of various social components can make it difficult if not impossible to distinguish among varieties of syncretism at work in the same culture. “Where religious observance is inseparable from other social practices, we lose the ability to differentiate syncretism from other sorts of cultural bricolage and hybridization” (Stewart & Shaw 1994, 10).

⁴ For a brief summary of the concept and a somewhat different etymology of the term, see Colpe Citation1987.

⁵ See also Peel Citation1968 and Stewart Citation1999.

⁶ On Elizabeth’s project and Sidney’s participation in it see also Rouse & Neill Citation1967: 54–60.

⁷ John Jay quotes from it at the end of his second essay on the United States constitution in the Federalist (1787–1788), Mr. Crawford recites it in chapter 34 of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814), and it appears in McGuffey’s Sixth Eclectic Reader (1878) as a selection for oral recitation by American school children. Jay ends his essay by saying, “… I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim, in the words of the poet: “FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS.” See Jay Citation2001, Baker Citation2008, McGuffey Citation1879.

⁸ Offering a source for Fletcher’s speech by appealing to Shakespeare’s practice in plays of which he is sole author raises the complex issue of dramatic collaboration. Despite the proposals that have been made for the authorship of portions of Henry VIII, it is unwise to assume that these sections were written completely independently and then assembled without further editorial attention by the dramatists. “Collaborative plays … are in effect fully authorized by Shakespeare, even if only partly written by him” (Lyne Citation2007: 13–14), and “it is reasonable to suppose that [Fletcher] rises to such heights under the stress of collaboration with Shakespeare” (Frost Citation1968: 237). I agree with the practice of Jonathan Baldo, who refers to the play as the work of “Shakespeare and Fletcher” but readily compares it to earlier histories by Shakespeare alone, such as King John or Henry V (see Baldo Citation2004).

⁹ Unless otherwise noted, all references to the play are to Hinman’s edition (Citation1968).

¹⁰ Bowers observes that “editors have customarily called the text ‘clean,’“ but he notes the presence of “an unusually high proportion of misunderstandings of the syntax and sense” (Bowers Citation1989:VII, 11). The modern consensus is that Wolsey’s speech is the work of Fletcher. For a review of the play’s authorship, see the Textual Introduction in Bowers 1989: VII, 4–7; and Foakes Citation1957: 180–199.

¹¹ McMullan does not cite “Certain Sonnets” in his discussion of “Analogues” (Citation2000: 174–80) though he links the play’s genre to Sidney’s famous stricture on the blending of genres from the Apology for Poetry (106).

¹² Simpson’s conclusions were challenged by Alden (Citation1924).

¹³ Kermode, terming the speech “a sort of aria” and noting its “slowly evolved imagery of promise and failure,” observes that it “bears a stronger resemblance to the meditations of Henry VI than to the Machiavellian contortions of much verse in Henry VIII” (Kermode Citation2000: 306); he retains the Folio punctuation. Thomas Churchyard, in his poem on Wolsey in the Mirror for Magistrates, writes that Wolsey “gaue vp the ghost, and bad the worlde farewell” (Churchyard Citation1938: 510); see also Kiefer Citation1979. McMullan notes that “a long farewell” “appears only once elsewhere in the Shakespeare canon [Antony and Cleopatra 5.2.291], but is frequent in John Fletcher” (McMullan Citation2000: 354n).

¹⁴ References to Sidney’s poem are from the edition of Duncan-Jones Citation1989. The impact of Certain Sonnets on either Shakespeare or Fletcher has received little attention. Shakespeare was influenced by Astrophil and Stella; see, for example, Quitslund Citation1984. On Fletcher’s indebtedness to Sidney in The Faithful Shepherdess see Bliss Citation1983. On Certain Sonnets generally, see Rudenstein Citation1967: 278–283 and Marquis Citation1994.

¹⁵ The motto possibly was noted by Sidney’s readers and perhaps gained a currency of its own, as in John Lilliat’s contemporary translation: “ffowle vanities, to you / for evermore adieu.” Bodleian Ms. Rawl., poet. 148, f. 1; see Ringler Citation1962: 434.

¹⁶ “What is brilliant about 32 is that by itself it is a spiritual tour de force in which the lover announces the commiato [the farewell to love], and turns towards the heavenly world”; but “in the context of the preceeding poems the images of the final poem are ambivalent” (Marquis 1992: 74).

¹⁷ McMullan calls attention to the biblical tone of Wolsey’s language and terms this speech his “swansong” (McMullan Citation2000: 354n). See also Halio Citation1999: 44–45, who retains the comma in the line under discussion.

¹⁸ This similarity also seems to extend to the “grace-from-above motif” (Lyne Citation2007: 73–78). Fulke Greville may have had Sidney’s poem in mind as he recorded the knight’s own farewell to his troops before dying: “But above govern your Will, and Affections, by the Will and Word of your Creator; in me, beholding the end of this World with all her Vanities” (Greville Citation1971, 140). On Greville’s use of Certain Sonnets 32 see Klein Citation1998: 111.

¹⁹ It is somewhat illogical either for Wolsey suddenly to appear surprised at his demise or for him momentarily to stop and question whether this truly is his farewell, since he had already recognized the inevitability of his fall in another moving passage some hundred lines earlier: “I shall fall / Like a bright exhalation in the Euening / And no man see me more” (3.2.222–224; TLN 2104–2106). Fletcher could be glancing at Sidney’s motto as well in Little French Lawyer (5.1.126–127): “Farewell wench, / A long farewell from all that ever knew thee” (Waller Citation1906: III, 444).

²⁰ The comma here fulfills a purpose cited by Samuel Daines in his Orthoepia Anglicana (1640): “The Coma [is used] onely in long sentences, in the most convenient places to make a small pause for the necessity of breathing; or in Rhetoricall speeches (where many other words are used to one effect) to make a kinde of Emphasis and deliberation for the greater majesty or state of the Elocution”; qtd. in Graham-White Citation1995: 42. The comma is also retained by Margeson Citation1990: 60.

²¹ For a summary of the similarities between Henry VIII and the late romances, especially The Tempest, see Foakes 1957: xxxix–xlv); for a critique of Foakes, see Tanner Citation2010: 481–485. “Henry VIII has enough in common with the four major romances to warrant consideration along with them, as commentators since Coleridge have recognized: he referred to it as ‘a sort of historical masque or show play’” (McDonald Citation2006: 25). See also Palfrey Citation1997: 200–201, 177–178.

²² The “forcefulness with which the misguided men are condemned” is a motif central to Henry VIII, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale (Cooper Citation2004: 276).

²³ For a caution against overemphasizing Sidney’s poetic piety at the expense of his humanism, see Stillman Citation2008, chapter 3.

²⁴ “When the Cardinall sawe the Captaine of the Garde, he was sore astonished, and shortly became sicke, for then he perceiued some great trouble toward him, & for that cause mē said, that he willingly toke so much quātitie of a strong purgatiō, that his nature was not able to beare it. Also the matter that came frō, him was so blacke, that the stayning therof could not be gottē out of his blākets by any means” (Foxe Citation2011, Book 8, p. 1020).

²⁵ Henry’s reaction echoes Calvin’s comment on predestination. “One of the most interesting facets of Calvin’s discussion of predestination in The Institutes is his frank acknowledgement of its deeply troubling emotional consequences. The mind, Calvin writes, ‘boils and rages’ at the seeming unfairness of the doctrine which says that ‘[t]hose … whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children’” (Anderson Citation2012: 100).

²⁶ He goes on to note that they are “keenly bent on external exercises; when they seem to have deeply wounded the heart, they cure all its bitterness by a slight sprinkling of ceremonies” (Calvin Citation2008: 3.4.1, 407).

²⁷ Shakespeare also may be giving the king’s “heart” a similar Reformed intent in Henry V: “The ‘good heart’ (5.2.163) that Henry has purified within himself might be a model for Protestants sitting or standing in the Globe Theatre” (Hunt Citation1998: 200).