‘come, Here’s The Map’: Chorography And The Configuration Of Kingship In Shakespearean Drama

Come, here s the map : Chorography and the Configuration of Kingship in Shakespearean Drama

In Forms of Nationhood, Richard Helgerson engages in an analysis of the chorography produced in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries (1992: 107-141). Helgerson tracks the development of localized chorography, beginning with the publication of Christopher Saxton s Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales (1579). Saxton s project of surveying and mapping England in detail began as an initiative of the crown, with the royal arms on almost every page of Saxton s Atlas to proclaim royal sovereignty over the kingdom as a whole and over each of its provinces (1992: 112). However, Helgerson argues that instead of strengthening the perception of royal dominance over England, the localized cartography had the ideological effect of strengthening the sense of both local and national identity in those who viewed and created them, at the expense of an identity based on dynastic loyalty, creating a conceptual gap between the land and its ruler . Helgerson evidences this interpretation through material analysis of the maps that were created in the years after Saxton s Atlas, particularly in the dwindling representation of the monarchy in these maps. Focusing upon maps of Somerset, Helgerson identifies how the large royal coat of arms present but already displaced from the land itself into the sea in Saxton s map is replaced in William Camden s Britannia (1607) by an ornamental cartouche for Somerset and in John Speed s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611) is replaced by the a more detailed map of Bath. Significantly, both of these maps are close copies of Saxton s in their layout and cartographic method, making this ideologically-charged presentation choice to represent the county s local identity at the expense of representing the crown s dominance over the land very marked. Maps of England feature on stage as physical props in Shakespeare s Henry IV Part I (1597) and King Lear (1606, 1623), and chorographic descri ption of the country features heavily across Shakespeare s other British history plays. Helgerson s analysis of contemporary chorography may therefore provide a useful critical frame for analysing the relationship of rulers and their land in these plays.

The opening scene of King Lear can be read productively as a dramatic manifestation of Helgerson s notion of a conceptual gap between the land and its ruler, in that the presence of a physical map on stage highlights by contrast Lear s abstract understanding of his kingdom. Referring to his map of England, Lear rewards his daughter Goneril with all these bounds even from this line, to this which creates a sense of disconnection with the land in the seemingly arbitrary selection which Lear makes, based upon lines of a map rather than the land itself (Shakespeare, 2005e: 1,1,63). Whilst Lear goes onto describe how the land is endowed With shadowy forests and with champaigns riched, / With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, (1,1,64-65) his use of detail seems generalized and empty. This continues as Lear rewards Regan with this ample third of our fair kingdom, / No less in space, validity, and pleasure (1,1,80-81), using an equally vague tricolon of abstract nouns identifying the region which highlight his lack of connection with the land as he represents it. The context of this scene also functions to distance Lear as ruler from his land. Lear is deciding upon how to split and ensure the future government of his land by testing his daughters on their love for him, as he elucidates in his opening speech:

Tell me, my daughters

Since now we will divest us both of rule,

Interest of territory, cares of state

Which of you shall we say doth love us most,

That we our largest bounty may extend (1,1,48-52)

This love-test to decide upon the governance of land indicates a total separation between the king and his familial concerns and the concerns of the land which he is supposed to govern. Whilst in the Folio version of King Lear Lear at least makes clear his political intentions of divesting himself both of rule, / Interest of territory, cares of state the Quarto version does not include these two lines, which creates the implication that Lear perceives his land merely as the currency of his familial love test (Shakespeare, 2005d). The map-scene of Henry IV Part I is significantly different in that none of the men stood over the map are king: Act 3 Scene 1 has the rebel leaders Mortimer, Glendower and Hotspur debating over their division of the kingdom if they succeed. Glendower even distinguishes himself from the King in terms of his greater affinity to the land:

Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head

Against my power thrice from the banks of Wye

And sandy-bottomed Severn have I sent him

Bootless home and weather-beaten back. (Shakespeare, 2005a: 3,1,61-64)

In spite of the lexis of localized proper nouns such as Trent , Burton and the Severn used by the rebel leaders, their intentions for the land as rulers-to-be again seem to be at odds with the land itself. Hotspur protests the plans for the division of land as unfair, stating See how this river comes cranking in / And cuts me from the best of all my land (3,1,95-96), which phrases his issues with the plan in terms of an imposition upon his territory by the geography of the land itself. This contention with the natural geography continues as Hotspur declares a plan to have the current in this place dammed up, / And here the smug and silver Trent shall run / In a new channel fair and evenly (3,1,98-100) personifying the river as a smug antagonist to his ambitions as a ruler.

Examples of this disconnection between the ruler and their land can be found in less obvious terms in Henry IV Part II (1599), Richard II (1595) and Macbeth (1606). In Macbeth, this disconnection is encoded into Macbeth s fall from power according to the witches prophecies. Upon receiving his prophecy in Act 4 Scene 1, Macbeth scorns the possibility that Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him , rhetorically demanding Who can impress the forest bid the tree / Unfix his earth-bound root? (Shakespeare, 2005f: 4,1,109-112) Within the cryptic context of the prophecy, Macbeth s scorn seems justified. However, upon learning that the forest had indeed moved to Dunsinane in Act V Scene V, Macbeth interprets the omen as an act of antagonism from nature itself, stating how he wished th estate o th world were now undone (5,5,48), which implies within the larger narrative of Macbeth s downfall that his inability to bid the tree /Unfix his earth-bound root is as failing on his behalf as a ruler. In Henry IV Part II this disconnection appears briefly in the amusing exposition of the setting for the first scene of Act 4, which occurs in a dialogue between two rebel leaders, the Archbishop of York and the Earl of Hastings:

York: What is this forest call d?

Hastings: Tis Gaultree Forest, an t please your grace. (Shakespeare, 2005b: 4,1,1-2)

Hasting s response places the scene in a forest in Yorkshire and humorously refers to how the Archbishop of York has a position of sovereignty over this land in the phrase an t please your grace , indicating the Archbishop s disconnection with the land which he governs. In Richard II, Richard s disconnection as ruler with his land is also indicated with a degree of humour, in his speech at the opening of Act 3 Scene 2:

Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,

Though rebels wound thee with their horses hoofs.

As a long-parted mother with her child

Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,

So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,

And do thee favours with my royal hands. (Shakespeare, 2005g: 3,2,6-11)

If this expression of love for his country seems hyperbolic and ridiculous then Richard s following requests for the land to Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies / And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower, / Guard it I pray thee with a lurking adder (3,2,18-20) totally removes Richard s speech from the reality of his kingdom into his own fictional, romanticized perception of his land, once again creating this disconnection in representational frameworks between the ruler and his land.

The configuration of Hal as a ruler in relation to his kingdom and the subjects who represent it is more multifaceted and complex, due to the longevity of the character across the trilogy of history plays. In the first scene of Henry V (1599), the Archbishop of Canterbury elevates Hal s character as a ruler above the common man, depicting his coronation as a divine moment:

Consideration like an angel came

And whipped th offending Adam out of him,

Leaving his body as a paradise

T evelop and contain celestial spirits (Shakespeare, 2005c: 1,1, 29-32)

This imagery portrays Hal as the perfect demonstration of the contemporary theory of the king s two bodies, referencing the notion of a divine spirit of monarch which between kings (Axton, 1997: 97). However, Ely s attempt to explain the Hal s sudden transformation: so the Prince obscured his contemplation / Under the veil of wildness is reminiscent of Hal s soliloquy earlier in the trilogy of history plays, in the second scene of Henry IV Part I:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

Being wanted, he may be more wondered a

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists (1,2,194-199)

This image implies retrospectively that Hal s sudden transformation into the elevated model king was not the result of divine election but instead part of a calculated plan and it is not unlikely that the audience of Henry V would have remembered this earlier statement of Hal s, as most of the audience would have been to see the previous two plays in the past 3 years. Marie Axton uses this soliloquy in particular Hal s declaration that I ll so offend to make offence a skill (1,2,213) to argue that Hal s character in fact serves to debunk the notion of the king s two bodies, replacing divine ordination with Machiavellian manipulation (1997: 114). I would argue that this interpretation goes too far to homogenize Hal s character across the three plays in which he features. In a sense, the references to Hal s earlier character at the opening of Henry V work to highlight an interpretation of the king s two bodies, in that it highlights the tension and multiplicity in Hal s character: he is both a man who has lived in his country as a citizen and the divinely ordained ruler of his kingdom.

Richard II, the three Henry plays, Macbeth and King Lear exist within a historical context of political insecurity surrounding the monarchy: firstly, the succession crisis in the 1590s after Elizabeth s lack of an immediate heir, and then James I s controversial attempts to create Great Britain in the first decade of the 17^th century. Theories pertaining to the identity of the monarch surrounded the succession crisis not least the aforementioned king s two bodies theory but were perhaps made most plain in James address to parliament 19^th May 1603 in which he announced his plans to unite England and Scotland. James argued his case in terms of the body-politic theory, stating of his dual sovereignty over Scotland and England that I being the Head, should have a divided and monstrous body which was in need of unification (James I, 1918: 271-3). Whilst James refers to his body as divided and monstrous due to the fractured state of the British Isles, this image provides a useful key to consider Shakespeare s configuration of rulers in the plays discussed. Further than Helgerson s notion of a conceptual gap between the land and its ruler, I would argue that Shakespeare creates conceptual tension within the identity of a ruler, which is made more potent by his dramatic apparatus. In perceiving the king on stage, the audience see both a man who is of his country, and also the idea of a divine sovereign of that country.

Bibliography

James I, Speech of 1603-4 , The Political Works of James I, ed. by Charles H. McIlwain (Cambridge, Mass., 1918)

Shakespeare, William, The History of Henry the Fourth , The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), (pp 483-509)

Shakespeare, William, The Second Part of Henry the Fourth , The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), (pp 539-567)

Shakespeare, William, The Life of Henry V , The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), (pp 597-625)

Shakespeare, William, The History of King Lear , The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), (pp 911-941)

Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of King Lear , The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), (pp 1155-1184)

Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of Macbeth , The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), (pp 971-993)

Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of Richard II , The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), (pp 341-367)

Helgerson, Richard, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992)

Axton, Marie, The Queen s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession, (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977)