#vittoria corombona

[anghraine]

I'm feeling like supporting some women's wrongs! (And rights, but definitely also wrongs.)

[numinousnic]

Not to be dramatic or anything, but I would discreetly suggest the deaths of two people in a heartbeat if it meant I could play the role of Vittoria Corombona.

[themalhambird]

2021 book meme

Tagged by @nuingiliath, thank you!

1. Best book you have read in 2021 so far?

The only things I have read this year have been for my English Lit MA, which makes the best ‘book’ I’ve read this year John Webster’s The White Devil

2. Best sequel you have read in 2021 so far?

I have not read a single sequel in 2021, unless you want to count Henry IV Part I as a sequel to Richard II

3. A new release you want to check out?

Uhhhh…? I want to read Hamnet, which I have, and Detransistion, Baby, which I do not have, and a recently compiled collection of things written by Elizabeth I, which I also do not have, but the Stars Are Not Yet Aligned for all that.

4. Most anticipated book release of the second half of the year?

Haven’t the foggiest idea what’s coming.

5. Biggest surprise?

...my memory is too bad for this game

6. Biggest disappointment?

Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lanamoor. It had so much promise. It went so completely off the rails.

7. Favourite new author (either new to you or debut)?

Francis Burney for novels. Thomas Middleton for Early Modern Drama

8. Favourite new fictional crush?

Vittoria Corombona

9. Newest favourite character?

Vittoria Corombona

10. A book that made you happy?

What’s happiness?

I’m kidding I’m kidding, but nothing’s springing to mind so. Either this is my memory again or nothing I read sparked that particular emotion.

11. A book that made you cry?

...I don’t know. I remember there was something but I don’t know what…?

12. Most beautiful book you have bought or received this year?

I brought a first folio facsimile on Ebay that I’m now married to. I haven’t looked inside it much, mind you, but it sits under my coffee table looking so damn handsome.

13. What book do you need to read by the end of the year?

A friend lent me Dune, so I want to read that fairly soon. Just waiting for whenever my brain decides Okay It Is TIme To Read Dune Now.

14. What book do you need to re-read by the end of the year?

Bahaha right now I don’t feel like I’m gonna be able to read anything by the end of the year, my brain just feels like sludge. I’m thinking about rereading Mansfield Park to get me back in to the reading thing. I’m thinking about rereading the Stormlight Archive books. I’m also thinking I will probably do neither of these things and just keep listening to Emily D. Baker on youtube because she’s funny, I like her voice, and it does not involve me having to concentrate on a page

tagging @shredsandpatches, @maplelantern, @skeleton-richard, @verecunda, @ellynneversweet, @navy-matte

[pandaemoniumpancakes]

Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, My very noble and approved good masters: That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter, It is most true; true I have married her. The very head and front of my offending Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech, And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace; For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith, Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used Their dearest action in the tented field, And little of this great world can I speak More than pertains to feats of broil and battle. And therefore little shall I grace my cause In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience, I will a round unvarnished tale deliver Of my whole course of love—what drugs, what charms, What conjuration, and what mighty magic (For such proceeding I am charged withal) I won his daughter.                              ❧ This fellow’s of exceeding honesty, And knows all qualities with a learnèd spirit Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings, I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black And have not those soft parts of conversation That chamberers have, or for I am declined Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much— She’s gone, I am abused, and my relief Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage, That we can call these delicate creatures ours And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad And live upon the vapor of a dungeon Than keep a corner in the thing I love For others’ uses. Yet ’tis the plague of great ones; Prerogatived are they less than the base. ’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death. Even then this forkèd plague is fated to us When we do quicken.

William Shakespeare, Othello in act I, scene 2 in Othello. 

William Shakespeare, Othello in act III, scene 3 in Othello. 

   “Haggard is wild, unreclaimed; commonly used of a hawk. So in Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici: ‘Thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop to the lure of faith.’ A passage in The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, 1612, shows that the term was sometimes applied to a wanton: ‘Is this your perch, you haggard? fly to the stews.’”

   “Jesses are short straps of leather tied about the foot of a hawk, by which she is held on the fist. ‘The falconers always let fly the hawk against the wind; if she flys with the wind behind her, she seldom returns. If therefore a hawk was for any reason to be dismissed, she was ‘let down the wind’, and from that time shifted for herself and preyed at fortune.’ So in Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis: ‘Have you not seen, when, whistled from the fist,/ Some falcon stoops at what her eye design’d/ And, with her eagerness the quarry miss’d,/ Straight flies at check, and clips it down the wind.’”

   “Chamberers are men of intrigue. Chambering and wantonness are mentioned together by Paul, Romans 13:13: ‘Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.’”

   Romans 13:13: “So that we walk honestly, as in the day: not in gluttony, and drunkenness, neither in chambering and wantonness, nor in strife and envying.” (1599 Geneva Bible)

[necromancy-savant]

Guys I just remembered that months ago, @shimyereh gave me a link to this website: https://emed.folger.edu/featured-plays that has more plays to read. I’m currently reading Volpone and then I think I want to read Edward III and The Two Noble Kinsmen, but after that, either before or after I read the entire Faerie Queene over winter break, what do you think I should read? Here are the choices: 

The Changeling

Dido, Queen of Carthage

Doctor Faustus (actually I’ve already read this one but it was good I recommend it)

Edward the Second

The Fair Maid of the West, or A Girl Worth Gold, 1

The Faithful Shepherdess

Gallathea

The Island Princess

The Jew of Malta (apparently this has some direct connection to The Merchant of Venice so I may read it for that reason alone).

The Knight of the Burning Pestle

The London Prodigal

Love's Cure, or The Martial Maid

The Malcontent (this one strikes me as something I would like)

The Massacre at Paris

The Old Wives Tale

Perkin Warbeck

The Renegado, or The Gentleman of Venice

The Revenger's Tragedy (I read this one too and it was fucking awesome except lots of content warnings so I do highly recommend it but maybe be careful)

The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse (I saw this at the library and it piqued my interest)

The Shoemakers' Holiday, or The Gentle Craft

Sir John Oldcastle, 1

The Spanish Tragedy (Hieronimo is Mad Again)

Tamburlaine the Great, 1

Tamburlaine the Great, 2

The Taming of a Shrew (we talked about this one in class and the Induction actually has an ending) 

'Tis Pity She's a Whore

The True Chronicle of King Leir

The White Devil (Vittoria Corombona)

The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed

Also I’m thinking maybe I would like The Alchemist but these are just the ones that are on the website. Actually I think at the time we were discussing the idea of someday doing a Social Shakespeare-like reading of a different Early Modern play. I think The Revenger’s Tragedy would be my first choice but The Duchess of Malfi might be a good one too. 

[anghraine]

dontstandmedown replied to this post:

re:tags could you share the playwright you're talking about? :0

No problem! For others, the tags in question are this:

#thinking about this partly because the softer & gentler versions of fanfic discourse keep crossing my dash #and partly because i've written like 30 pages about a playwright i adore who was just not very good at 'original fiction' as we'd define it #both his major works are ... glorified rpf in our context but splendid tragedies in his #and the idea of categorizing /anything/ in that era by originality of conception rather than comedy/tragedy/etc would be buckwild

I am always delighted to share the good news of John Webster! If you're not familiar with him, he was an early seventeenth-century English playwright known for being a slow, painstaking, but reliable writer. He did various collaborations with other playwrights (and acknowledges a bunch of his peers in an author's note to The White Devil, including Jonson and Shakespeare) and wrote some middling plays in various genres that could be more or less termed "original fiction," but he's remembered for two brilliant, bloody tragedies.

The basic premises/plots of both of these were essentially ripped from the headlines of the previous century, and Webster makes zero attempt to conceal that fact.

I couldn't shut up about my guy so more under a cut!

The White Devil is based on the actual murder of Vittoria Accoramboni in the late sixteenth century and the characters in the play are generally given the same or similar names as the real life people in the story as known at the time, so there's no attempt to conceal the play's origins (the anti-heroine/villain???[debatable] is named Vittoria Corombona in the play, for instance).

The original production of The White Devil largely failed, which Webster blamed mainly on bad weather and an audience who just didn't get his ~vision and what he was trying to do. It would not be unsurprising for a contemporary audience to struggle with it given that it's a complicated play in which, among other things, Vittoria is put on trial and rhetorically shreds the underlying misogyny of the entire legal process.

The Duchess of Malfi, generally considered a still greater achievement, is based directly on the murder of Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi by her brothers (it was presumed, likely correctly). Lope de Vega also wrote a play about this tragedy not long before Webster did, though the plays are very different and it's unlikely that Webster would have had the time or linguistic knowledge necessary to read Lope's version. Probably part of the reason for the differences between Lope's and Webster's takes is that Lope had to be careful about the reception by the Catholic Church given that one of the murderers was a cardinal, while obviously an English Protestant like Webster could say whatever he wanted about eeeeevil cardinals.

Webster takes a lot of artistic license, a normal approach at the time to adapting previously-established narratives, but the source material is very recognizable. One of the commendatory verses at the beginning of the play (blurbs in poetic form from other playwrights) is like "I'm sure the real duchess was cool but she couldn't be as cool as Webster's heroine, wow <3". (One of the other commendations is by another fave of mine, John Ford.)

Bosola, the historically mysterious minion of the Duchess's murderous brothers (=Bozolo in the historical narrative) gets an elaborate quasi-redemption arc in the play. And the play is extremely critical of various characters' obsession with and attempts to control the Duchess's sexual behavior (a fixation that is often extremely normalized in early modern British drama, but which comes off really badly here).

Ultimately this obsessiveness leads to her brothers, the Cardinal (=the historical Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona) and Ferdinand (=Carlo d'Aragona) orchestrating her torment and murder in which she emerges with her sanity and integrity intact and dies with dignity. Meanwhile, the Cardinal is exposed as a remorseless villain (he proceeds to murder his mistress with a Bible) and Ferdinand's already-shaky sanity snaps under the realization of what he's done.

Webster's Duchess is often considered the first real female tragic hero in British drama—the tragic is especially significant because tragedy was typically considered a higher art form than comedy and the truly great female characters from that era of drama are often restricted to comedies or secondary roles in tragedy (a marked trend in Shakespeare, for instance). The Duchess in the play is virtuous, strong-willed, witty, and fairly unabashedly sexual in the context of the time, a concept that several hundred years of critics have struggled with. (My favorite OTT complaint is from Martin Sampson, an early 20th century critic who lamented the conspicuous absence of a "strong active man, following righteous things" in Webster's work, to which I say l m a o.)

Anyway, among scholars of early modern British drama, Webster is often considered second only to Shakespeare as a tragedian, on the basis of those two plays. And the modern obsession w/ originality and novelty makes this kind of fascinating, given that his "original" work (in our sense—again, the original vs fanfic dichotomy was not a thing in that cultural context) is sort of meh but his work with pre-existing sources turns them into these staggering dramatic achievements.