“That’s just like, the rules of feminism!”
By Jasmine Jade Plumpton
As a tragedy, Catherine Trotter’s 1696 Agnes de Castro is a play obsessed with fervent emotion, and, in particular, that pesky sinker of friendships: jealousy. So obsessed, in fact, that one could quite easily mistake the plot for an early, slightly less hot-pink draft of Mean Girls. I’m serious, the resemblance is uncanny: mysterious, otherworldly outsider arrives and wreaks havoc on the status quo by befriending the popular girl – ring any bells?
There are a few key differences, however, with one of them being that the back-stabbing in this play is *spoiler alert* rather more literal. What is interesting, then, is how the absence of this writhing emotion in the Princess is misconstrued, particularly by Elvira (who’s possibly the most afflicted by envy and is basically the play’s Gretchen Weiners) as apathy.
In Agnes, the plot is undoubtedly propelled by the acts of envy performed by the characters, who are constantly seeking revenge on one another—the classic conflict resulting from a complex web of unrequited love (sigh). Interestingly, Princess Constantia is the only character not to react on impulse with anger and envy in the face of betrayal. Instead she reflects on her situation and, empathetic with the emotional plight of others, informs her reaction with feelings of love (killing em’ with kindness, Selena Gomez might say). While the Prince begs for punishment to ease him of his guilt, she responds, ‘[o]h Dear Prince! there’s not a part of me, / That is not fill’d with softest Love for thee.’ (Act I, Scene II) Granted, it sounds like the inside of a badly written Valentine’s card, but it gets the point across.
In the world of tragedy, however, the ‘soft’ love and empathy with which Constantia responds renders her an anomaly. Elvira emphasizes the irregularity of this response in the following passage:
The Princess is a singular Example
Of Apathy, which Stoicks preach’d in vain;
For Nature’s Laws were still more strong than theirs:
But sure Constantia’s of another Kind,
Not made of the same Elements with us,
Or Nature, forming her, forgot the Fire. (Act III, Scene I)
Elvira mentions the ‘Stoicks’, who were followers of a philosophy called ‘stoicism’ which preached that the best way of combating evil was with cool indifference (keep calm and carry on, if you will).[1] One might read this as if they were thus equating the root of evil with passionate emotion, and apathy with the water that might douse such flaming temperaments (adds a whole new level of meaning to ‘the Burn Book’!)
This assumption sort of holds up in the world of tragedy, too; those plagued most with envy and rage are, after all, the ones who end up committing murders. Elvira insists that this indifferent approach was ‘preach’d in vain; / [f]or Nature’s Laws were still more strong than theirs’, insisting that our envious human nature may not be overridden by such indifference. That is, we are doomed by the ‘[e]lements’ from which we are made up to experience intensely emotional responses to acts of betrayal and wrongdoing against us, igniting a burning desire in us to fight fire with fire.
Furthermore, Elvira accuses Constantia of defying ‘Nature’s Laws’. Indeed, relationship psychology tells us that jealousy serves a crucial evolutionary function, and Constantia’s apparent lack of it may make her one ‘of another Kind’. While Elvira insists that Constantia is an outlier in the natural world, I’d like to suggest that she is, perhaps, even more of an anomaly in the world of tragedy. While she meets a classic tragic fate, her hamartia (i.e. fatal flaw) is not pride or egoism, but rather a deep empathy and tender love which cannot possibly prevail in a realm riddled with revenge and rage.
Elvira insists that Constantia lacks the natural ‘fire’ which nature instills in us; by this Elvira may be referring to the humor of ‘yellow bile’ which was believed to be one of the four metabolic agents of the elements in the human body and was thought to represent fire, an excess of which was said to be inflammatory, and thus strengthen and encourage passionate emotions such as anger, ambition and envy. If ‘Nature…forgot the fire’ whilst ‘forming her’, what it instilled instead was perhaps not exactly ‘Apathy’, but rather a soft-glowing ember incapable of being fanned to a raging fire by any self-pitying Prince or backstabbing ex-best-friend.
[1] Margret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (London: Chicago Press, 2007) p.56.
[2] Ellen S. Berscheid, ed. Pamela C. Regan, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships (New York: Routledge, 2004) p. 387.
[3] Catharine Trotter, Agnes de Castro (1696) Available online, here.