Emblems of the wounded heart in the drama of Beaumont and Fletcher.

Abstract

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher use the emblem of the wounded heart to dramatize a penetrative mode of reading concerned with revealing hypocrisy, locating truth in the human body, and exposing dramatic artifice. Unlike the typically documented occurrence of emblem in early modern drama, their use of emblem is only partially iconographic, instead participating in a discourse which emphasizes the gap between surface appearance and underlying significance. Wounding the heart becomes their metaphor for negotiating that gap. Arguing against scholars who read the drama of Beaumont and Fletcher as absurd, sensationalistic, or lacking in artistic skill, I argue that their use of the emblematic marks them as highly skilled artificers whose artistic vision seeks to reshape the way the audience perceives dramatic spectacle. Examining emblems of the wounded heart in seven plays from the corpus of Beaumont and Fletcher, I analyze the drama in relation to emblematics, theories of the body, problems of genre, and the early modern concerns with hypocrisy. Chapter One introduces the study and situates it with respect to current criticism. Chapter Two reconsiders emblem theory and proposes a mode of reading which emphasizes the privileging of text over image. Chapter Three provides a case study of dramatized emblems in <italic>Philaster</italic>, demonstrating the dual functions of the image of the wounded heart in the dramatic plot and the emblematic tableau. Chapter Four traces the structural connections between emblems and the genre of tragicomedy in <italic>A King and No King, The Maid's Tragedy</italic>, and <italic>Love's Cure</italic>, and argues that emblem is used for polemicizing in these political tragicomedies. Chapter Five examines emblematic and literal readings of the wounded heart in three allegories of love: <italic>The Faithful Shepherdess</italic> and <italic> The Mad Lover</italic> by Fletcher, and <italic>The Two Noble Kinsmen</italic> by Fletcher and Shakespeare. Fletcher exposes the limitations of the emblem of the wounded heart by forcing the audience to read it literally. In all seven plays, emblem is employed as a mode of reading in order to revise the audience's perception of the dramatic scene.