‘A true sign of a readie wit’ : Anger as an Art of Excess in Early Modern Dramatic and Moral Literature

XVII-XVIII Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 71 | 2014 La Mesure et l’excès ‘A true sign of a readie wit’ : Anger as an Art of Excess in Early Modern Dramatic and Moral Literature Christine Sukič Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/1718/393 DOI: 10.4000/1718.393 ISSN: 2117-590X Publisher Société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles Printed version Date of publication: 31 December 2014 Number of pages: 85-98 ISBN: 978-2-9536021-6-6 ISSN: 0294-3798 Electronic reference Christine Sukič, « ‘A true sign of a readie wit’ : Anger as an Art of Excess in Early Modern Dramatic and Moral Literature », XVII-XVIII [Online], 71 | 2014, Online since 17 May 2016, connection on 23 September 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/1718/393 ; DOI : 10.4000/1718.393 XVII-XVIII is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. “A TRUE SIGNE OF A READIE WIT”: ANGER AS AN ART OF EXCESS IN EARLY MODERN DRAMATIC AND MORAL LITERATURE Anger is an excessive passion in the early modern period, both in most treatises on the passions and in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. This article examines the representations of anger and the contradiction of a passion which is both admired when it is the excessive outburst of a great hero such as Achilles, and condemned because it is seen as violent, uncontrollable and uncivilized. It seems that in the early modern treatises on the passions as well as in some English plays of the same period (comedies or tragedies) anger becomes an outward appearance more than the essential part of a temperament. La colère est vue comme une passion excessive dans la littérature de la première modernité, à la fois dans les traités des passions et dans le théâtre élisabéthain et jacobéen. Cet article étudie les représentations de la colère et la contradiction de cette passion qui est à la fois admirée quand elle caractérise un grand héros comme Achille, et condamnée parce qu’elle est vue comme violente, incontrôlable et allant à l’encontre d’une attitude civilisée. Il semble que dans les traités des passions, aussi bien que dans le théâtre de cette période, à la fois dans les comédies et les tragédies, la colère devient une apparence plutôt que la partie essentielle d’un tempérament. O ne of the clichés about Elizabethan and Jacobean drama is their aesthetic and thematic excess: as an example, Antonin Artaud’s lecture about “Theatre and the plague” shows his interest in the hyperrepresentation of violence on stage, and the gory aspect of many plays of that period. Artaud was struck by the excesses of John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, especially the passionate outbursts of the characters as well as their absence of moral compass: “We follow them from one demand to the other, from one excess to the next” (18). Christine SUKIČ. “ ‘A True Signe of a readie wit’: Anger as an Art of Excess in Early Modern Dramatic and Moral Literature.” RSÉAA XVII-XVIII 71 (2014): 85-98. 86 CHRISTINE SUKIČ Anger is not just an excessive passion: it is also an inherent sign of heroism, as well as of authority and power. At the same time, it is condemned by most early modern moral philosophers as a violent and unnatural passion. In this paper, I would like to focus on this ambiguous status of anger and consider the passion both in its dramatic and philosophical representations. Revenge tragedy could be seen as the ultimate form of aesthetic excess on stage: it is a theatre of passions, especially anger and revenge. Nicolas Coeffeteau, in his famous treatise on the passions, A Table of Humane Passions (translated into English in 1621), describes the process of revenge and its relation to anger: “Choler 1 is an ardent passion, which upon the apparence there is to be able to revenge our selves, incites us to a feeling of a contempt and sensible injury, which we beleeve hath been unjustly done, either to our selves, or to those we love” (550). The process was first defined by Seneca, in his De ira: Anger is that which goes beyond reason and carries her away with it: wherefore the first confusion of a man’s mind when struck by what seems an injury is no more anger than the apparent injury itself: it is the subsequent mad rush, which not only receives the impression of the apparent injury, but acts upon it as true, that is anger, being an exciting of the mind to revenge, which proceeds from choice and deliberate resolve. (79) Revenge tragedies also associate anger and revenge. In Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy – usually considered to be the precursor of English revenge tragedy – Hieronimo is not only affected by melancholy after the death of his son; he cannot restrain his anger, represented in the play as a excess of humour that has to come out. He pretends to be mad, so that he can better imagine and plan his revenge, which takes place during the performance of a play. Hieronimo’s behaviour corresponds to the description of anger in the theories of the passions. The representation of his anger is in keeping with its definition in the moral treatises of the time: excessive, without limit. As Coeffeteau puts it, “Of all the passions of the soule, there is not any one that takes 1. There is no real distinction at the time between the two terms. They are used indifferently in the theories of the passions, since choler is both a humour and its corresponding temperament, and in that case can be difficult to distinguish from the passion of anger. The OED gives Palsgrave’s grammar book L’esclarcissement de la langue francoyse as the first occurrence of the word “choler” in the modern sense of “anger” (1530) and then jumps to 1560 for a similar example. RSÉAA XVII-XVIII 71 (2014) ANGER AS AN ART OF EXCESS 87 such deepe root, or extends her branches farther then Choler; whereof, neither age, condition, people, nor nation, are fully exempt” (547). John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1601) also partakes of such hyperrepresentation of anger. Antonio, who is supposed to revenge his father’s murder, clearly states his opposition to the control of passions when asked to be patient: ‘Slid, sir, I will not, in despite of thee; Patience is slave to fools, a chain that’s fixed Only to posts and senseless log-like dolts. (1.5.35-37) Interestingly, the passions are also compared to chains in moral treatises. For instance, in the English translation of Jean-François Senault’s work, De l’usage des passions (1649), 2 the frontispiece represents a man chained to his passions. Marston inverts the image: patience prevents Antonio from acting; anger goads him on. Revenge is physical in the play and shows the complete involvement of the body when it is led by passions, the “motions of the soul” as they are often called in the early modern period. In Marston’s play, the physical dimension of revenge is rendered through numerous images of gluttony, blood-drinking, and even cannibalism. When (...truncated)