• Impregnable Towers and Pregnable Maidens in Early Modern English Drama
• Lindsay Ann Reid (bio)

In William Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1589–93), the foolhardy Duke of Milan boasts that he has devised a fool-proof method for preserving the chastity of his daughter. “Knowing” all too well, as he puts it, “that tender youth is soon suggested,” her overprotective father “nightly lodge[s]” Silvia “in an upper tower, / The key whereof ” he keeps in his own personal possession.¹ On the one hand, the Milanese duke’s confidence that this treatment will prevent his scion from being unlawfully “conveyed away” by an amorous intruder is not entirely false (3.1.37). Tipped off by Proteus, he catches the lovestruck Valentine—who had boldly planned to access the duke’s daughter using a “ladder made of cords”—and thwarts any such attempt (2.4.175).² And yet, on the other hand, Silvia’s paternally imposed enclosure proves ultimately feeble. Its locked door does not preclude the plucky Shakespearean maiden from herself leaving: accordingly, she escapes the confines of her immured nocturnal existence and sets forth in search of her banished paramour in the comedy’s final act.

A young, marriageable, and problematically sexualized woman’s imprisonment in (and liberation from) a locked tower à la Shakespeare’s Silvia is a recurrent motif in early modern English drama, roughly constituting what Louise George Clubb might call a theatergram, or transposable dramatic unit.³ As this article details, analogous plotlines— typically set, like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in Italy—can be found in The Golden Age (c. 1611) by Thomas Heywood, Women Pleas’d (c. 1619–23) by John Fletcher, The Bird in a Cage (1633) by James Shirley, and The Cunning Lovers (c. 1638) by Alexander Brome (an authorial figure not to be confused with his better-known contemporary Richard Brome). Taking my initial cue from William N. West’s provocative suggestion that [End Page 85] the play itself might not be “the basic unit of early modern theatricality,” I approach this group of dramatic works as something of “a horizontally organized repertoire” that simultaneously “looks forward and sideways,” as well as (contra West) backward at earlier, non-dramatic literary traditions.⁴

Central to my argument is the fact that this corpus of dramatic works featuring implicitly pregnable women housed in purportedly impregnable towers collectively activates what Jean-Marie Kauth has described as a “metonymy, pervasive in European literature . . . between a woman’s body and the castle, tower, or anchorhold that encloses her.” Kauth elaborates that the “women in these architectural strongholds are seen as both contained and containing, as fragile vessels easily broken, as both closed off from the world and inviting it in by the attractiveness of the obstacles placed in the way.”⁵ My subsequent analysis of this interrelated group of early modern works arrives at complementary conclusions, for one peculiarity of towers in these plays is that they always come to symbolize inefficacy. To build a tower—any tower—would seem a conspicuously phallic display of power, yet the grand purpose for which such a stronghold is constructed (that is, to magisterially keep the outside world at bay) is consistently undermined in early modern theatrical representations of forcible gendered seclusion. The superficially enclosed space in which a woman has been embowered to restrict her access to the wider sexual economy is never simply a microcosmic world unto itself, hermetically sealed from commerce with beyond. Rather, from the moment of its on-stage introduction, we are primed to recognize the maiden-containing tower as a permeable space that can accommodate or even generate interaction with the outer, macrocosmic sphere. It is thus that, in the early modern English theater, both people and objects were habitually depicted slipping in and out of such imperfectly sealed towers.

The inherently penetrable towers in the plays here under consideration share other key qualities, as well: they are decidedly intertheatrical, as well as metaliterary and, indeed, hypertextual.⁶ Meditating upon the concept of early modern English intertheatricality, West has suggested this concept as a novel “model for understanding plays: as networks of traceable elements of action, the form and...

• 早期现代英语戏剧中的坚不可摧的塔和可孕的少女
• 林赛·安·里德（生物）

在威廉·莎士比亚的《维罗纳的两个绅士》（约1589–93年）中，鲁the的米兰公爵以他为保护女儿的贞洁而设计出一种防呆的方法。正如他所说，“太了解了”，“很快就会建议温柔的年轻人，”她保护过度的父亲“每晚在楼上的住所”西尔维亚“ /他所拥有的关键”是他个人拥有的。 。¹一方面，米兰公爵相信这种处理将防止他的接穗被一个多情的入侵者非法“运走”的信心并不是完全错误的（3.1.37）。他被普罗特斯（Proteus）送走，抓住了被情欲打击的情人（Valentine），后者曾大胆计划使用“用绳子做成的梯子”来访问公爵的女儿-并阻止了任何此类尝试（2.4.175）。^2个然而，另一方面，西尔维亚（Silvia）父辈强加的禁令最终证明是微不足道的。它锁着的门不从自己排除勇敢莎士比亚少女留下：因此，她逃脱她的界限在搜索长年累月夜间存在，并阐述了她放逐在喜剧的最后一幕印象大打折扣。

莎士比亚的《西尔维娅》（Silvia）锁着的年轻塔楼中的一名年轻，可结婚且有问题的性行为女性的监禁（或从中解禁）是早期现代英语戏剧中的反复出现的主题，大致构成了露易丝·乔治·俱乐部（Louise George Clubb）可能称为戏曲或转座戏剧的单位。³如本文所述，类似的情节线通常在意大利设置，例如维罗纳的两个绅士，可以在托马斯·海伍德（Thomas Heywood）的《黄金时代》（Women Pleas'd）（约1619–23年）中找到。约翰·弗莱彻（John Fletcher ），詹姆斯·雪莉（James Shirley）的《笼中的鸟》（1633）和狡猾的情人（约1638年），亚历山大·布罗姆（Alexander Brome）（作者人物，请勿与他更为著名的当代理查德·布罗姆（Richard Brome）混淆。以我从威廉N.西方的挑衅性的建议最初线索是[尾页85]但该剧本身可能不是“早期现代戏剧性的基本单元，”我走近这个群体戏剧作品为“水平有组织的剧目”的东西，同时“追溯向前和向侧面看”，以及（与西方相反）早期的非戏剧性文学传统。⁴

我的论点的核心是这样一个事实，即这些戏剧性的作品集包含了据称稳固在高耸的塔楼中的隐性怀孕妇女，共同激活了让·玛丽·考特（Jean-Marie Kauth）所描述的“在欧洲文学中普遍存在的隐喻”。。。在女人的身体和包围她的城堡，塔楼或锚点之间。” 卡特（Kauth）阐述道：“这些建筑据点中的妇女既被容纳又被容纳，易碎的船只容易被折断，与世隔绝并被障碍物的吸引力所吸引。⁵我对这组相互联系的早期现代作品的后续分析得出了互补的结论，因为这些戏剧中的塔的独特之处在于它们总是象征着无效。建造塔楼-任何塔楼-似乎都是阳具的力量展示，但是，在这样的早期现代戏剧作品中，始终如一地破坏了建立这样的据点（即在军事上阻止外部世界）的宏伟目的。强迫性别隔离。妇女为了避免进入更广泛的性经济而陷入困境的表面封闭的空间绝不是简单的自身微观世界，与商业和其他外部密不可分。更确切地说，从其上台介绍的那一刻起，我们准备承认包含少女的塔楼是一个可渗透的空间，可以容纳甚至与外部宏观宇宙进行互动。因此，在早期的现代英国戏剧中，习惯上描绘了人和物体从这样不完善的密封塔中滑入和滑出的习惯。

此处考虑的剧本中固有的可穿透塔楼也具有其他关键特征：它们绝对是剧场间的，元文学的，甚至是超文本的。⁶考虑到早期现代英语戏剧性的概念，韦斯特建议将此概念作为一种新颖的“理解戏剧模型：作为可追溯的动作元素，形式和行为网络”。