When studying plays from the past it is often very difficult to interpret their finer details. This arises from two main problems:

1. English has changed significantly over the last 300 years;
2. The way we interpret and perceive theatre itself has also totally changed.

To address the first part of this two-pronged problem, I would suggest that the best course of action is a close reading. Before you read further, then, please check out this plot summary to avoid any unnecessary spoilers.

At the climax of Mary Pix’s tragedy, the play’s female heroine, Queen Catharine,  is madly mourning the death of her lover, Owen Tutor.  She is temporarily relieved from her ravings by the introduction of her children. In this moment, Lord Dacres convinces her to abandon the war and go to a monastery. Dacres proclaims that  ‘there you may live in peace’; and Catharine agrees to his suggestion.  This brief respite is, however, immediately undercut by the news  of the death of the Queens’ ward[1], Isabella. What follows constitutes Queen Catharine’s most important display of powerful emotions in this tragedy.

 

Analysis

Give order for our instant March; let her corps precede the dismal journey, and let us follow as those sad friends  their best beloved to the lest stage, the Grave.

To address the second part of the problem with interpreting plays of this period, it is important to remember that our conception of tragedy has changed very significantly over time.  When this play was first performed in the late 17th century, tragedy was not primarily about fatal flaws or mistakenly incestuous heroes; it was constructed so as to exhibit extreme emotion, namely ‘passions’. Blair Hoxby’s  2015 book What Was Tragedy? sets out to explore this very brand of forgotten theatre. Hoxby suggests that passions were ‘purely displays of pathos’[4] and were ‘the primary goal and justification of tragedy.’[5] Therefore, theatregoers in 1698 were not coming to see a unique interpretation of an authentic emotion, as we might today: they were coming to see the exhibition of emotion through the use of fine-tuned technique.

This completely changes the way we view this final scene. Catharine’s character is already exhibiting extreme pathos due to the death of her lover. When Esperanza enters to break the news of her ward’s death, Catharine’s fragile assertions  of her own strength in spite of her loss ultimately collapse. This second major death thus doubles the perceived pathos of Catharine’s condition, mounting more pressure on the actor’s technique to exhibit such an exponential passion.

What is key here, however, is that Catharine’s grief evolves as her speech goes on. Her passionate sadness becomes a passionate plea for safety,  as she once again adds the expression of her maternal instinct to the expression of her emotions.  The historical resonance of this ending would have been extremely apparent at the time. ( Check out this post to fully understand this point.) Catharine historically, is the sole royal link to the Tudor dynasty, which dominated English government from 1485-1603. Catharine’s decision to save herself and her children at the end of the play is therefore a highly significant one. It not only foregrounds the eventual victor of the War of the Roses, Catharine’s grandson Henry Tudor, but casts a significant light on the Royal seed of the Tudor family.  This is highlighted by Pix’s use of military imagery, such as when Catharine speaks as though she herself were soldier, one who must ‘march’ to safety. This technique recasts her decision to bring her children to safety into a military tactic. For, as the audience would have been aware, her ancestors would ultimately be the victors in the current conflict.

Catharine thus wins the war, by being a mother. This  maternal passion is therefore not only emotionally resonate, but is highly historically significant.  This performance is in line with Hoxby’s suggestion that in the late 17th century, tragedy was ‘performed and embodied art.’ Catharine’s performance in this scene functions as an artistic allusion. This extreme and layered resonance  is what defined a tragedy in the late 17th century. Catharine’s impassioned exit marks her position as the pathetic heart of Mary Pix’s tragedy.

[1] Ward: in this context, refers to a member of a noble house who has been taken in by another noble family to be raised.
[2] Billow: a large undulating mass of something, typically cloud, smoke, or steam.
[3] Ethereal: heavenly, delicate and light in a way that seems not to be of this world.
[4] Pathos: a quality that evokes pity or sadness.
[5] Blair Hoxby, What was Tragedy?:Theory and the Early Modern Canon (London: Oxford University Press, 2015), p.8.

Mary’s Pix’s Queen Catharine is set in the midst of social unrest. This unrest is a key precursor to the Wars of the Roses, a fierce familial struggle (not unlike a popular television show) over the English Throne which lasted almost three decades and cost an estimated 50,000 lives.

A Summary of the Wars

I’m going to try to keep this as simple as possible, but the war itself and the family trees at its heart are quite complex, so bear with me here. The term ‘Wars of the Roses’ was actually coined by historians in the 19th century. Contemporary sources refer to the conflict as the ‘War of the Cousins’ alluding to how close the familial links were on either side. Christine Carpenter summaries the unrest:

What there was from about 1437 was quite simply a crisis of kingship, which threatened eventually to become a crisis of the crown.

Although the conflict began in 1455, battlelines were drawn back in 1376 which the death of Edward III’s son Edward the Black Prince during the Hundred Years War with France. Although The King had three sons, tradition dictated that the throne must pass to the Black Prince’s son, Richard, who was just a child. Richard II was crowned King in 1377 much to the anger of his uncles, John, Duke of Lancaster, and Edmund, Duke of York. The struggle of these figures and their descendants over the same throne led to the eruption of the Wars of the Roses in 1455.

The war itself began under King Henry VI (Queen Catherine’s son.) Due to his weak-willed nature and the continuing economic fallout of defeat in the Hundred Years War with France, a power struggle emerged between Henry’s General and Lord Protector Richard, Duke of York, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who was allied to the  Lancasters. Despite her husband’s somewhat mixed position, as  Michael Hicks states in his Book The War of the Roses,  Margret pursued a ‘stridently anti-yorkist line’ (p. 72).  Tensions in England finally erupted in 1455. York forces attempted to remove Lancaster influence from the throne, by  gathering armies in the north of England and invading Lancaster territories, officially beginning the Wars of the Roses. To retaliate, Margaret made a deal with the King of Scotland for an army, attacking and severely weakening York’s power, leaving London without a king in 1460.  The York family retaliated by swearing in a new king, King Edward IV, and defeated the Lancasters again in 1461. A few revenge plots and betrayals later, a Lancaster army invaded from France in 1470. York then re-invaded in 1471, killing Henry VI and his son and capturing Margaret, seemingly removing the Lancaster problem. Things then remained  stable until 1483, with the death of Edward IV. Yet another power struggle occurred, this time between Edward’s brother Richard and Henry Tudor (The grandson of Catharine and Owen Tudor), both sought a claim to the throne. Tudor crossed the channel in 1485 and killed Richard. To prevent more bloody rebellion, Henry Tudor married the former King Edward’s daughter, thereby uniting the two roses under his reign and finally ending the Wars of the Roses.

So How Accurate is the Play?

Phew… after all that, it might be difficult to locate Mary Pix’s play in the middle of all these plots and invasions. The Queen Catharine that the play’s title refers to is Katharine of Valois, who married King Henry V in 1420 and gave birth to his son who later became Henry VI. As I’ve said, Henry V died in France in 1422 leaving a young windowed Catharine, who was, by all accounts still marriageable.  This left a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the English Throne: as a Frenchwoman Catherine was rumoured to be seeking French suitors due to an infant king leading to a serious power vacuum in the county.  As Christine Carpenter states  in her book (again aptly titled) Wars of the Roses, at this time, English parliament was ‘anxious’ about the possibility of having to ‘subvent an English government in France'( Carpenter p. 75).  This suspicion and uncertainty led to old familial divisions becoming apparent.

Such tension is matched by the tone of Mary Pix’s play. However historically speaking, divisions between Lancaster and York were yet to erupt into violence at this time.  Although the violence in Pix’s tragedy is thus not wholly accurate, perhaps Pix’s tragic emblems were an attempt to represent the tense zeitgeist of the time in general. Pix also seems to settle a historical debate surrounding Catharine’s death. It has been recorded that Catharine died shortly after childbirth. It is unclear whether she died as a direct result of childbirth in Westminster or from a childbirth related illness in Bermondsey Abbey. As seen here, Pix sets  the ending of the play on Catharine’s journey to the Abbey for safety.

The play’s main glaring historical inaccuracy is in its royal figures. King Edward was only born five years after Catharine’s death in 1437. This creative decision could have been based on two factors. Perhaps historical records at the time were not accurate or readily available. The far more likely factor however, is that by the time of Henry V’s death, the York influence in court lacked a centralised royal figure. Due to the royal-centric nature of theatre in 1698, a political battle between two opposing families would have been best represented through the eyes of a pair of royal antagonists. Pix may have bent history in this way to make her play more accessible and entertaining. In a modern context, it’s kind of like Jeremy Corbyn and Winston Churchill competing in an election. They are figures of different political eras, but PMQs would be very entertaining if they went at each other!

Pix and Shakespeare

The play makes for an interesting comparison to Shakespeare’s work on a similar period in history. Shakespeare penned a tetralogy surrounding the subject of Catharine’s husband and son, Henry V and Henry VI.  Catharine is depicted as Princess Catherine, getting married to Henry V after the famous battle of Agincourt. However, Shakespeare largely avoided the period of uncertainty surrounding Henry V’s death, focusing more on the character development of Henry VI in the wake of his father’s death. During the Restoration period, Shakespeare regained a nostalgic following, with pre-restoration actors claiming to maintain Shakespeare’s very commands. Pix’s addition to a popular Shakespearean period of history is, to use a modern word, a form of reboot, capitalising on the theatrical popularity of the historical era and providing a unique perspective of an understood and widely known story. This can also be seen in the unique exploration of the secret relationship between Catharine and the Welsh courtier Owen Tudor. As audiences would be very aware of the Tudor family and its series of monarchs, an exploration into its familial history allows Pix’s play to allude to and expand on hundreds of years of English Royalist history, encompassing the three royal dynasties in its scope.