Marlowe's "Passionate Shephard"

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of th purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love | Introduction

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Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” fits perfectly into the poetic genre of the period. Poets of the Elizabethan age used poetry as a way to express their wit and talent. It is likely that Marlowe’s poem would have been passed around among his friends long before its publication in 1599 in England, six years after the poet’s death. Few Elizabethan poets published their own work, especially one as young as Marlowe, and so it is fairly certain that the poem was well-known long before its publication. The composition date is thought to be about 1588, and probably it generated many responses well before its publication nearly a dozen years later. Among these responses was Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” (date unknown, but thought to be about 1592), which provides the woman’s response to Marlowe’s shepherd. Marlowe’s poem also inspired several other notable works that were similar in tone and content, including John Donne’s “The Bait” (1633), which also relies upon wit and sexuality to entertain the reader.

“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is written in the pastoral tradition that originated with Theocritus in Greece during the third century b.c. The pastoral tradition is characterized by a state of contentment and of innocent and romantic love. Rural country folk are presented in an idealized natural setting, while they contemplate their perfect and peaceful world that is absent the worries and issues of crowded city life. As was common of Elizabethan poets, Marlowe plays with the traditional pastoral formula. He introduces sexuality and includes images that make the shepherd’s plea seem ridiculous rather than ideal.

The speaker in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is a shepherd, who pledges to do the impossible if only the female object of his desires will accept his pleas. The poem is static in time, with no history or clearly defined future. Only the present matters. There is never any suggestion that the poet is asking the woman for a long-term commitment; there is no offer of marriage nor does he offer a long-term future together. Instead, he asks her to come and live with him and seek pleasure in the moment. The use of “passionate” in the title suggests strong emotions, but may also refer to an ardent desire to possess the woman sexually, since there is never any declaration of love. The shepherd makes a number of elaborate promises that are generally improbable and occasionally impossible. The woman’s response is never heard, and she is not present in any way except as the object of the shepherd’s desire.

Prior to the composition of “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” early English Renaissance poetry had been most concerned with romantic love. These poems, which included poems by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, were traditional love poems, characterized by the pleas of a rejected suitor who would find solace in the soothing atmosphere of country life. Marlowe tweaked the traditional, transforming it into a more dynamic piece. As a result, Marlowe’s poem remains a long lasting and important example of the Elizabethan poet’s talent. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is included in most literature anthologies published for academic use, including the seventh edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Summary

Stanza 1: Lines 1–4

In the first stanza of “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” Marlowe’s speaker, an unidentified shepherd, pleads with an unidentified woman that if she will come and live with him, then all pleasures will be theirs for the taking. The shepherd opens with the invitation: “Come live with me, and be my love.” He is not asking her to marry him but only to live with him. The offer is simply put, and his ease in offering it implies that the woman should just as easily agree. However, since the shepherd is forced to continue with a succession of promises, the reader can assume that the shepherd’s initial offer was not well received.

The shepherd promises the woman pleasures they will experience in all of the pastoral settings that nature can supply. Since he promises that the couple will experience these pleasures in a variety of locations, it appears his expectation is that the pleasures of the world are principally sexual. He is asking the woman to live with him, and for the Elizabethan poet, “Come live with me, and be my love” has the same connotations it would have for a twenty-first-century reader: the female is being invited to come and make love. “Valleys, groves, hills and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountains” are some of the places the shepherd suggests where the woman might yield to him, and where they might both find pleasure. The overt sexuality of this stanza is a departure from the traditional pastoral writings and romantic love poems of Marlowe’s contemporaries, which were not so bold.

Stanza 2: Lines 5–8

The second stanza suggests a time of year for the lovers’ activity, which is likely spring or summer, since they would be outdoors and the shepherd imagines it is pleasant enough to sit and watch the flocks being fed. He proposes that other shepherds will feed his flocks, since with his mistress by his side, he will now be an observer. The shepherd mentions listening to the “Melodious birds sing madrigals.” The singing of birds is often suggestive of spring, since the return of singing birds signals the advent of the new season. Because the first stanza makes clear that the shepherd wants the woman to become his lover, the shift in the second stanza to sitting upon rocks—“And we will sit upon the rocks”—suggests they might partake of the second stanza’s activities after they have made love.

This second stanza, if taken by itself, exemplifies the traditional pastoral theme of the restful shepherd watching his flocks, enjoying in quiet repose the countryside and all it offers. It is the idealization of the pastoral form, in which nature is benign and safe, filled with “shallow rivers” and “melodious birds.” In the early pastoral tradition, the shepherd would be alone, daydreaming about the woman he loves and whom he wishes to court. But in Marlowe’s poem, the introduction of sexual desire inserts the woman into the scene; she too will witness the flocks feeding and enjoy the peacefulness of country life. The isolation of the shepherd is thus removed in Marlowe’s poem.

Marlowe's Hero and Leander

Hero and Leander (poem)

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Hero and Leander is a mythological poem by Christopher Marlowe. After Marlowe's death it was completed by George Chapman. Henry Petowe published an alternate completion to the poem.

Contents [hide] 1 Publication 2 Story 3 Genre, source, and style 4 Adaptation 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Publication

Two editions of the poem were issued in quarto in 1598; one, printed by Adam Islip for the bookseller Edward Blount, contained only Marlowe's original, while the other, printed by Felix Kingston for Paul Linley, included both the original and Chapman's continuation. A third edition in 1600, published by John Flasket, printed a title-page advertising the addition of Marlowe's translation of Book I of Lucan's Pharsalia to the original poem, though the book itself merely adds Chapman's portion. The fourth edition of 1606, again from Flasket, abandoned any pretense of including the Lucan and once again joined Marlowe's and Chapman's poems together; this was the format followed in subsequent 17th-century editions (1609, 1613, 1629, 1637 and after).^[1]

[edit] Story

Marlowe's poem relates the Greek legend of Hero and Leander, youths living in cities on opposite sides of the Hellespont, a narrow body of water in what is now northwestern Turkey. Hero is a priestess or devotee of Venus (goddess of love and beauty) in Sestos, who lives in chastity despite being devoted to the goddess of love. At a festival in honor of her deity, Venus and Adonis, she is seen by Leander, a youth from Abydos on the opposite side of the Hellespont. Leander falls in love with her, and she reciprocates, although cautiously, as her parents will not allow her to marry a foreigner.

Leander convinces her to abandon her fears. Hero lives in a high tower overlooking the water; he asks her to light a lamp in her window, and he promises to swim the Hellespont each night to be with her. She complies. On his first night's swim, Leander is spotted by Neptune (Roman god of the sea), who confuses him with Ganymede and carries him to the bottom of the ocean. Discovering his mistake, the god returns him to shore with a bracelet supposed to keep him safe from drowning. Leander emerges from the Hellespont, finds Hero's tower knocks on the door, which Hero then opens to find him standing stark naked. She lets him "whisper in her ear, / Flatter, entreat, promise, protest, and swear," and after a series of coy, half-hearted attempts to "defend the fort" she yields to bliss. The poem breaks off as dawn is breaking.

No critical consensus exists on the issue of how Marlow, had he lived, would have finished the poem, or indeed if he would have finished it at all.

[edit] Genre, source, and style

The poem may be called an epyllion, that is, a "little epic": it is longer than a lyric or elegy, but concerned with love rather than with traditional epic subjects, and it has a lengthy digression — in this case, Marlowe's invented story of how scholars became poor. Marlowe certainly knew the story as told by both Ovid and by the Byzantine poet Musæus Grammaticus; Musaeus appears to have been his chief source.^[2]

Yet if Musaeus and Ovid gave it impetus, the poem is marked by Marlowe's unique style of extravagant fancy and violent emotion. Perhaps the most famous instance of these qualities in the poem is the opening description of Hero's costume, which includes a blue skirt stained with the blood of "wretched lovers slain" and a veil woven with flowers so realistic that she is continually forced to swat away bees. The final encounter of the two lovers is even more frenzied, with the two at times appearing closer to blows than to embraces.

[edit] Adaptation

In Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson lampoons the poem in the fair's puppet show; his Hellespont is the Thames, and his Leander is a dyer's son in Puddle-wharf. The composer Nicholas Lanier set the poem to music in 1628; this may have been one of the earliest works in recitative in English. King Charles I was fond of the work, and had Lanier perform it repeatedly; Samuel Pepys also admired it, and had it transcribed by his "domestic musician," Cesare Morelli.^[3]

Marlowe's Dr. Faustus

Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe

Plot Overview

Doctor Faustus, a well-respected German scholar, grows dissatisfied with the limits of traditional forms of knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and religion—and decides that he wants to learn to practice magic. His friends Valdes and Cornelius instruct him in the black arts, and he begins his new career as a magician by summoning up Mephastophilis, a devil. Despite Mephastophilis's warnings about the horrors of hell, Faustus tells the devil to return to his master, Lucifer, with an offer of Faustus's soul in exchange for twenty-four years of service from Mephastophilis. Meanwhile, Wagner, Faustus's servant, has picked up some magical ability and uses it to press a clown named Robin into his service.

Mephastophilis returns to Faustus with word that Lucifer has accepted Faustus's offer. Faustus experiences some misgivings and wonders if he should repent and save his soul; in the end, though, he agrees to the deal, signing it with his blood. As soon as he does so, the words “Homo fuge,” Latin for “O man, fly,” appear branded on his arm. Faustus again has second thoughts, but Mephastophilis bestows rich gifts on him and gives him a book of spells to learn. Later, Mephastophilis answers all of his questions about the nature of the world, refusing to answer only when Faustus asks him who made the universe. This refusal prompts yet another bout of misgivings in Faustus, but Mephastophilis and Lucifer bring in personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins to prance about in front of Faustus, and he is impressed enough to quiet his doubts.

Armed with his new powers and attended by Mephastophilis, Faustus begins to travel. He goes to the pope's court in Rome, makes himself invisible, and plays a series of tricks. He disrupts the pope's banquet by stealing food and boxing the pope's ears. Following this incident, he travels through the courts of Europe, with his fame spreading as he goes. Eventually, he is invited to the court of the German emperor, Charles V (the enemy of the pope), who asks Faustus to allow him to see Alexander the Great, the famed fourth-century b.c. Macedonian king and conqueror. Faustus conjures up an image of Alexander, and Charles is suitably impressed. A knight scoffs at Faustus's powers, and Faustus chastises him by making antlers sprout from his head. Furious, the knight vows revenge.

Meanwhile, Robin, Wagner's clown, has picked up some magic on his own, and with his fellow stablehand, Rafe, he undergoes a number of comic misadventures. At one point, he manages to summon Mephastophilis, who threatens to turn Robin and Rafe into animals (or perhaps even does transform them; the text isn't clear) to punish them for their foolishness.

Faustus then goes on with his travels, playing a trick on a horse-courser along the way. Faustus sells him a horse that turns into a heap of straw when ridden into a river. Eventually, Faustus is invited to the court of the Duke of Vanholt, where he performs various feats. The horse-courser shows up there, along with Robin, a man named Dick (Rafe in the A text), and various others who have fallen victim to Faustus's trickery. But Faustus casts spells on them and sends them on their way, to the amusement of the duke and duchess.

As the twenty-four years of his deal with Lucifer come to a close, Faustus begins to dread his impending death. He has Mephastophilis call up Helen of Troy, the famous beauty from the ancient world, and uses her presence to impress a group of scholars. An old man urges Faustus to repent, but Faustus drives him away. Faustus summons Helen again and exclaims rapturously about her beauty. But time is growing short. Faustus tells the scholars about his pact, and they are horror-stricken and resolve to pray for him. On the final night before the expiration of the twenty-four years, Faustus is overcome by fear and remorse. He begs for mercy, but it is too late. At midnight, a host of devils appears and carries his soul off to hell. In the morning, the scholars find Faustus's limbs and decide to hold a funeral for him.

Sydney-"Astrophel and Stella"

Astrophel and Stella

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The 1591 text of Astrophel and Stella

Likely composed in the 1580s by Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella an English sonnet sequence containing 108 sonnets and 11 songs. The name derives from the two Greek words, 'aster' (star) and 'phil' (lover), and the Latin word 'stella' meaning star. Thus Astrophel is the star lover, and Stella is his star. Sidney partly nativized the key features of his Italian model Petrarch, including an ongoing but partly obscure narrative, the philosophical trappings of the poet in relation to love and desire, and musings on the art of poetic creation. Sidney also adopts the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, though he uses it with such freedom that fifteen variants are employed.^[1]

Some have suggested that the love represented within the sequence may be a literal one as Sidney evidently connects Astrophel to himself and Stella to Penelope Rich, the wife of a courtier. Payne and Hunter suggest that modern criticism, though not explicitly rejecting this connection, leans more towards the viewpoint that writers happily create a poetic persona, artificial and distinct from themselves.^[2]

Contents [hide] 1 Publishing history 2 Selected sonnets 3 Further reading 4 References 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] Publishing history

Many of the poems were circulated in manuscript form before the first edition was printed by Thomas Newman in 1591, five years after Sidney's death.^[3] This edition included ten of Sidney's songs, a preface by Thomas Nashe and verses from other poets including Thomas Campion, Samuel Daniel and the Earl of Oxford.^[4] The text was allegedly copied down by a man in the employ of one of Sidney's associates, thus it was full of errors and misreadings that eventually led to Sidney's friends ensuring that the unsold copies were impounded.^[5] Newman printed a second version later in the year, and though the text was more accurate it was still flawed. The version of Astrophel and Stella commonly used is found in the folio of the 1598 version of Sidney's Arcadia. Though still not completely free from error, this was prepared under the supervision of his sister the Countess of Pembroke and is considered the most authoritative text available.^[4] All known versions of Astrophel and Stella have the poems in the same order, making it almost certain that Sidney determined their sequence.

[edit] Selected sonnets

1

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain:
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain:
Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
'Fool' said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write.'

6

Some lovers speak when they their Muses entertain,
Of hopes begot by fear, of wot not what desires:
Of force of heav'nly beams, infusing hellish pain:
Of living deaths, dear wounds, fair storms, and freezing fires.

Some one his song in Jove, and Jove's strange tales attires,
Broidered with bulls and swans, powdered with golden rain;
Another humbler wit to shepherd's pipe retires,
Yet hiding royal blood full oft in rural vein.

To some a sweetest plaint a sweetest style affords,
While tears pour out his ink, and sighs breathe out his words:
His paper pale despair, and pain his pen doth move.

I can speak what I feel, and feel as much as they,
But think that all the map of my state I display,
When trembling voice brings forth that I do Stella love.

31

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies !
How silently, and with how wan a face !
What, may it be that even in heav'nly place
That busy archer his sharp arrow tries?
Sure, if that long with Love acquanited eyes
Can judge of Love, thou feel'st a lovers case;
I feel it in thy looks, thy languished grace,
To me that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant Love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those Lovers scorn whom that Love do possess?
Do they call Virtue there ungratefulness?

Johnson--to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth

POEM

A Sonnet to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth

by Ben Jonson

I that have been a lover, and could show it,

Though not in these, in rithmes not wholly dumb,

Since I exscribe your sonnets, am become

A better lover, and much better poet.
Nor is my Muse or I ashamed to owe it

To those true numerous graces, whereof some

But charm the senses, others overcome

Both brains and hearts; and mine now best do know it:

For in your verse all Cupid’s armory,

His flames, his shafts, his quiver, and his bow,

His very eyes are yours to overthrow.

But then his mother’s sweets you so apply,

Her joys, her smiles, her loves, as readers take

For Venus’ ceston every line you make.

Ben Johnson--Epicoene

Epicoene, or the Silent Woman: Still to be neat, still to be drest

by Ben Jonson

Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powder'd, still perfum'd:
Lady, it is to be presum'd,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th' adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

The Tragedy of Mariam

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The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean era closet drama written by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary, and first published in 1613. The play is the the first work by a woman that was published under her own name. The play received only marginal attention until the 1970's, when feminist scholars recognized the play's contribution to English literature. Since then the play has received a large amount of scholarly attention.

The play was written between 1602 and 1604,^[1] was never staged in its own historical era, and apparently was never intended for stage performance by its author. It was entered into the Stationers' Register in December 1612. The 1613 quarto was printed by Thomas Creede for the bookseller Richard Hawkins. Cary's drama belongs to the sub-genre of the Senecan revenge tragedy. The primary sources for the play are The Wars of the Jews and The Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus, which Cary used in Thomas Lodge's 1602 translation.

[edit] Synopsis

The Tragedy tells the story of Mariam, a member of the Hasmonean dynasty and the second wife of Herod the Great, king of Palestine 39-4 B.C. When the play opens, in 29 B.C., Herod is thought dead at the hand of Octavian (later Caesar Augustus), and Mariam faces her ambivalent feelings about her husband; Herod had loved her, but had also murdered her grandfather and brother. In Act IV, however, Herod returns, dispelling the false report of his death. Herod's immoral and "villain"^[2] sister Salome I falsely convinces Herod his wife has been unfaithful in his absence which results in him ordering Mariam's execution. Though Mariam is the title character and the play's moral center, her part in the play amounts to only about 10% of the whole;^[3] Cary uses a set of secondary characters to provide a multi-vocal portrayal of Herod's court and Jewish society under his tyranny. The ending of the play is consistent with the tyranny of both its fictional Herod and the actual historical figure: six characters die, including Mariam. The play also explores the themes of divorce and female agency through the characters of both Mariam and Salome.

Article by: Tiffany Rašovic
7/22/99 Dismembering Discourses in The Tragedy of Mariam

The figure of Mariam in Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam has been of tremendous interest to feminist critics who view her as a character embodying the contradictions of female identity in patriarchal culture. The play exposes this culture as conflicted in itself because of contradictory ideas about the proper "performance" of femininity which not only sever the female subject, but also create irreconcilable dilemmas for males. Mariam must choose between speaking as her own "inner" voice dictates, or conforming to the demands of a masculine culture that insists upon females being silent and obedient to the males who control them, in Mariam's case, Herod, her husband. She strives for an integrity of body and mind: to have both under the control of her will, even as the masculine discourses of femininity strive to divide her will from her exterior performance of obedience.

As Catherine Belsey suggests in her discussion of ideology and subjectivity in the essay, Constructing the Subject: Deconstructing the Text, for a woman, the contradictions between competing "subjectivities"-e.g. her own inner voice, her public role, her role as wife-are incredibly problematic and often seem insurmountable, escapable through only sickness or death. Despite Mariam's evident awareness of, and resistance to, the contradictions of her public and private roles, she ultimately is destroyed by them. She never achieves the unity or "integrity" of matching her outward looks and speech to her inner mental or perhaps spiritual state, rather, she dies by a literal and final severing of body from mind, an ultimate dramatization of the impossibility if feminine "integrity." The only option for her at the mercy of the male ideology is a transcendent sort of martyrdom: to leave the contradictions behind by death of the body that, at least in the Judeo-Christian sense, allows the mind/spirit to survive intact and indivisible.

While many critics, feminist and otherwise, would agree with these statements, few have addressed the connections between the dismembering and decapitating imagery of the play and the male ideology of womanhood as a sort of dismemberment or decapitation of her subjectivity and agency. I hope to employ this metaphor of dismemberment to enhance a critique of the competing discourses and the ensuing psychic severing and the failure/death of Mariam. Mariam is not the only victim of competing discourses: in fact, the men themselves become caught in a destructive and "dismembering" game of definitions and contradictory ideology: each one has a slightly different method of discursively decapitating the female, but ultimately the failure to re-draw or reconstruct women as possessors of an autonomous will or agency will undermine their goals also. For example, Constabarus cannot overcome his misogynistic mistrust except by death; the ever moralistic Chorus is rendered answer-less in the final scene, unable to explain the "moral" of the play; and Herod is driven to murder and madness because of his obsession with Mariam's body. These contradictions, coupled with the imagery of psychic, physical, and social dismemberment and destruction make the very plot and theme of the play "deconstruct." Here I somewhat disagree with such authorities as Margaret W. Ferguson who sees both a "radical attack on the Renaissance concept of the wife as 'property' of her husband" and a tendency for the play to "justify, even advocate, a highly conservative doctrine of female obedience to male authority." Rather, in The Tragedy of Mariam, everyone is undone by the "dismemberment" of femininity: the text seems to reveal the ultimate untenability of individual integrity if it must exist amidst such violent contradictions.

The first character to fall under these pressures is Constabarus who is ultimately glad to die after his refuge in male friendship fails to shelter him from the double dealing of his wife, Salome. Ironically, Salome's behavior involves an adherence to one form of prescribed femininity: she is the darling of the Chorus who insist upon the public and outward silence and acquiescence of females-they disparage Mariam for her honest, but public, speech and are oblivious to Salome's private, but corrupt, machinations. Salome acts and speaks appropriately in public, but in private she seeks only to fulfill her will. She knows that her public role is proscribed-for example, she cannot have the right to divorce-so she seeks to achieve her desires by making men such as her brother and Pheroras act in her stead. This might be acceptable to the Chorus, who are contented when the woman is publicly silent, but Constabarus has a somewhat different expectation. Constabarus sees women as hopelessly divided: they are lovely on the outside but rotten on the inside. Salome makes no secret of her desires to him, but he cannot abide her duplicity, for he must be satisfied that her private will is good: "A virtuous woman crowns her husband's head." (1.6, ll. 396.) Even more problematically, Salome is constrained to act duplicitously so that her public actions are approved by the Chorus. As Constabarus goes on to say, the condition for private behavior in the woman is that her actions and speech reflect his own will-obedience over candor: "...Yet boast no more, but by me be advis'd./ A benefit upbraided forfeits thanks:/ I prithee, Salome, dismiss this mood,/ Thou dost not know how ill it fits thy place..." (1.6, 407-410) What he interprets initially as a reversal (of male and female roles) is in fact the logical outcome of Salome's accomplished division of her public and private roles. Unlike Mariam who seeks integrity of inner/private and outer/public behavior, Salome uses an a tactic of conscious personal "dismemberment" to survive and maintain agency in a male dominated society: "for my will I will employ my wits." (1.4, 296) Constabarus' double-bind is that when women are all acting a particular way to please society or husband, that is, hiding or denying their will, of course he cannot know their "minds": "She merely is a painted sepulchre,/ That is both fair and viley foul at once:/ Though on her outside graces garnish her,/ Her mind is filled with worse than rotten bones." (2.4, ll. 325-328)

Constabarus thus abandons the society of women-misogynistically based on the assumption that one "bad" woman means that they are all so-and looks for security and integrity in masculine friendship where he perceives a unity of action and mind. When he fights Silleus, saying: "I hate thy body, but I love thy mind" (2.4, l. 388), it sounds as if he were reversing what he said to Salome. In his friendship with Babas' sons he articulates this new-found integrity through male friendship: "Then is the golden age with them [male friends] renew'd,/ All names of properties are banish'd quite:/ Division, and distinction, are eschewed:/ Each hath to what belongs to the others right." (2.2, ll. 103-106) Unfortunately, Constabarus himself has no means of redress against Salome and all his railing on the scaffold in Act Four, scene six, does nothing to thwart her success because she has the "public" on her side, hence his demand for feminine integrity, like Mariam's, ends in his own dismemberment-literally, in division from life with its unbearable contradictions. Perhaps underlying his death one might read a severing of his sexual body, that has gone from heterosexual to homosocial desire, from his idealistic mind. The similarity between Mariam and Constabarus is upheld by the speech he makes upon the scaffold, and he predicts that her demise will be brought about by the divisive double-dealing of women such as Salome: "You wavering crew: my curse to you I leave,/ You had but one to give you any grace:/ And you yourselves will Mariam's life bereave;/ Your commonwealth doth innocency chase." (4.6, ll. 311-314) Later we shall see again how the failure of the Chorus' public/private rhetoric of femininity fails for Mariam just as it has for Constabarus, who although full of hate, is simultaneously a victim of irrational male prescriptions for feminine behavior.

The Chorus, as hinted at above, although it condemns Mariam's public speech, seems to understand that there is such a thing as the female will. They certainly suspect its origin, calling any public manifestation of it inherently "unchaste." They prescribe that women must submit to the will of their husbands and relegate all ideas and urges they might have to a completely private sphere. Hence, they are severed from public voice or agency. Of course, in the case of Salome, the Chorus seems unconcerned that the woman's will might be tainted, or could be dangerous or "unchaste" even in private, rather, they seem merely concerned that she keep her "tongue" as chaste as her body, but only in the public realm. Thus integrity means different things for men and for women, a dangerous equivocation. In the passage below the Chorus does not claim Mariam's views are corrupt, but that they are inappropriate because they are made public.

That wife [Mariam] her hand against her fame doth rear,
That more than to her lord alone will give
A private word to any second ear,
And though she may with reputation live,
Yet though most chaste, she doth her glory blot,
And wounds her honor, though she kills it not.

When to their husbands they themselves do bind,
Do they not wholly give themselves away?
Or give they but their body, not their mind,
Reserving that, though best, for others' prey?
No sure, their thoughts no more can be their own,
And therefore should to none but one be known. (3.3, 227-238)

Again, the division is made distinctly between the mind and the body of the woman and both of them must be under the dominion of the husband regardless of the content of that mind. This is the fatal flaw of their logic: if chastity is merely a public display then the abuses of Salome are unpunished, and the public slander of Mariam is enough to convince Herod of her transgression. From a legalistic standpoint, women are an impossible subject. Also, Herod and Constabarus are not solely interested in proscribing their wives' public roles, but their private ones as well: the female essentially has no space for utterance or agency; they are both cut off and hidden away. Unfortunately, regardless of the males' attempts to kill them, Mariam's thoughts are still her own-as all thoughts are perhaps the "property" of the thinker-and the fissure of public speech and private speech, that the Chorus cannot anticipate because they assume that private speech will not be problematic, leads to Mariam's corporeal dismemberment-she cannot demonstrate her integrity because it is not admitted into discourse of any realm, public or private.

Mariam's problem is essentially private, although she begins the play by attempting to sway public opinion in her favor by exposing that her husband has killed her kin and has provided for her own murder. Mariam's spiritual/intellectual "dismemberment" then is twofold: she utters what she thinks in public and is condemned by the Chorus, but she is also unable to express herself, "chastely," to her husband because her desire is to separate herself from him also. Her decision to withhold her body is an act of private defiance even though it might prove her worthy in public eyes-or ears. Throughout the play she describes her actions and her body as if they are objects beyond her self. When Herod returns she finally rejects the division of body/will for good: she insists upon withdrawing both from his influence or dominion. She cannot be like Salome. Herod, one might have already guessed, has the totally reverse expectation. Unlike the Chorus, or even Constabarus, he has no concept of Mariam's inner life as an independent force or perspective. He is obsessed with Mariam's surface and his directives to her imply that changing one's outside somehow influences the inner self-(if there is such a thing in women at all.) Mariam tells Herod about her suspicions regarding the murder of her brother and grandfather and Herod circumscribes any challenge to his version of the story saying: "I will not speak, unless to be believ'd,/ This froward humor will not do you good:/...Yet smile my dearest Mariam, do but smile,/ And I will all unkind conceits exile." (4.3, ll. 139-144) Mariam finally discloses her thoughts into his "private ear", like the Chorus' recommendation, but the outcome cannot be as she hoped. Herod wants obedience, not the revelation of her private thoughts. Yet Mariam "...cannot frame disguise, nor never taught/ My face a look dissenting from my thought." (4.3, ll. 145-146)

Mariam's death represents a shift in the purpose of her actions. If she begins by seeking integrity of body and mind, she ends up giving her body to death and letting only her soul continue on "uncompromized." As Ferguson suggests in her essay and in the introduction to her edition of the play, Elizabeth Cary herself might have been concerned with presenting Mariam as a Catholic martyr who chooses death over giving her body to an evil cause. This formulation makes sense if we interpret the alternative construction of femininity in the play as being more Protestant in feeling and connected to Cary's own English Renaissance background. Whatever the case, the drama certainly demonstrates that there is no place for a woman of "integrity" in the terrestrial world or in linguistic representation. The discourses of femininity are so limiting and so narrow as to brook no alternative, and thus, Mariam the integrated subject must die. To view this death as positive, as the play seems to urge us to do with its language of Mariam's innocence and Herod's guilty lamentations, we must ourselves abandon the quest for female subjects' unity and agency and accept a model of (Christian) transcendence and accede the ultimate supremacy of the soul in the afterlife. In this way perhaps the dramatic text itself has collapsed under its own depiction of tangled and irreconcilable discourses; forced instead to choose some other rhetoric to attempt closure.

In addition to the image of Christian martyrdom, there are two other problems at the end of the play which demonstrates its incoherence. First, Herod's realization of Mariam's innocence and his recognition of her integrity-"But now I see Heaven in her did link/ A spirit and person to excel." (5.1, 245-6)-still cannot change the construction of femininity, partly because he now participates in his own martyrdom and wishes to die with no more revelation than this epitaph, Othello-like: "Here Herod lies, that hath his Mariam slain." (5.1, 258) He chastises himself for her death, (not his crimes before hand), and like Constabarus, constructs Mariam more as a saint than as a woman who attempted to be more than her society allowed.

Finally, the last word goes to the Chorus who are left, atypically, with no grand pronouncement or editorial on the action. As explored above, it could be primarily their ideology that created this whole destructive spiral to begin with-it is as if they are Culture itself and emblems of its anti-feminist traditions. They seem, like Edgar at the finale of Lear, expected to close up the loose ends of the drama with some moral or teaching, but instead they are mute-having learned nothing, they have nothing to teach. They recount the events of the play and conclude:

This day's events were certainly ordain'd,
To be the warning to posterity:
So many changes are therein contain'd,
So admirably strange variety.
This day alone, our sagest Hebrews shall
In after times the school of wisdom call. (5.1, 289-294)

At every other appearance of the Chorus they have had a lesson to teach, a course of action to suggest, always against Mariam, and these commands have been more or less faithfully performed by the actions of the other players. Pessimistically, albeit perhaps without intent, in the end they do not examine themselves but rather retreat into vagaries and confusion, relying on "ordination" to explain what they have been implicated in, and agents of, all along. Like Constabarus' escape, Mariam's martyrdom, Herod's guilty longing for punishment, the Chorus also abandons its initial function in the work as social pundits, revealing the point at which this narrative cannot sustain its critique of the discourse of femininity in male ideology. It can reveal the contradiction and the destructiveness of "severing" but it cannot find a coherent way to revise or remedy these conflicts through language or representation-it dismembers without reversal.

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