'Whosoever resisteth shall get to themselfes dampnacioun': tyranny and resistance in Cambises and Horestes.

This chapter examines the interplay between Elizabethan discussions of tyranny and obedience and Elizabethan anxieties about damnation in Cambises (1560/1) and Horestes (1567). Both tragedies are important to the development of English Renaissance drama because they offer evidence of the impact of the discussions on tyranny and obedience and the impact of the fear that supernatural forces can infiltrate human actions. In determining what leads a king to behave like a tyrant, as in the example of Cambises, Elizabethans questioned whether the 'role of the sinister', or, more broadly, the supernatural, was crucial to understanding acts of tyranny. That questioning, which comes through in the tragedies' concern with forms of obedience and resistance, is intimately bound up with the uncertainty in the period with regard to damnation and Hell. The primary aim of this article is to reconsider the plays in light of the contemporary attitudes to tyranny and resistance, the concern with damnation and Hell the plays engage with, and how this affects the development of Elizabethan tragedy.

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Thomas Preston's tragedy Cambises and John Pickering's Horestes address questions of obedience and resistance from opposite doctrinal perspectives. The distinction between Horestes' active duty to resist the tyranny of Clytemnestra and Egistus and the passive resistance to Cambises' tyranny in Pickering's play wholly encapsulates the complexities of Elizabethan polemical tracts on resistance and obedience.

The vigorous thematic interest in rebellion and obedience in tragedies performed during the first decade of Elizabeth's reign links directly with contemporary debates concerning the possibility that God or the Devil could influence earthly events equally. From the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, when Luther famously nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg in 1517, until the 1550s, when English reformers were writing theological treatises, the Protestant argument concerning tyranny altered dramatically. Greg Walker's recent examination of how people reacted to what he labels 'the slide into an English tyranny' in the 1530s and 1540s during the Henrician Reformation pays particular attention to the mutable political climate that Elizabeth inherited when she came to the throne in 1558. (1) Throughout the sixteenth century the debates surrounding political resistance had been passionate, but the argumentation often lacked consistency. The Calvinists contributed significantly to these discussions by underlining a distinction between the office and the person of a magistrate, and with this distinction in place, the reformers attempted to distinguish between a lawful magistrate and an ungodly one.

The next hurdle for the Protestant polemicists presented itself in the form of another question: was a magistrate who did not fulfil his duties nonetheless the recipient of a power ordained by God? On the one hand, it was agreed that magistrates were decreed by divine providence, yet, at the same time, it might be affirmed that tyrannous magistrates were not legitimate conduits at all for the expression of divine authority. Calvin's theory of constitutional resistance stated that it was for God, not private citizens, to rectify 'unbridled government', and only magistrates, on behalf of the people, should legitimately resist a ruler: 'any magistrates [...] I doe so not forbid them according to their office to withstand the outraging licentiousness of kinges'. (2) Furthermore, Calvin stated that if a magistrate did not resist a wicked ruler, then he was not fulfilling his duty to the people as an officer of God:

if [the magistrates] winke at kinges wilfully raging over and treading downe the poor cummunalities, their dissembling is not without wicked breache of faith, because they deceitfully betray the libertie of the people, whereof they know themselves to bee appointed protectors by the ordinace of God. (ibid.)

Calvin went on to argue that it was legitimate to resist a tyrant only under certain circumstances, such as when the magistrate behaved tyrannically and abused his people. (3) By the 1550s both Calvinists and Lutherans agreed that when a magistrate behaved tyrannically he could legitimately be resisted. The complex discussions of the period concerning the degrees of resistance point to the key problem in Protestant resistance theory: if God appoints tyrants to reign, then to resist their rule is to defy God's will. Philipp Melanchthon, for example, affirmed that when a magistrate behaved immorally and exceeded the limits of his office, then he eliminated himself from an ordained position. The unlawful magistrate thus reduced himself to a private citizen and became subject to the laws of that society. This uncomfortable conclusion clearly related intimately to the anxieties presented in the tragedies performed in the early part of Elizabeth Tudor's reign.

In the prose writings of the period on this same subject, polemicists often introduced the threat of divine wrath to emphasize their point. Imitating William Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christen man (1528), the author of the 1547 homily 'An Exhortacion concerning Good Ordre and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates' (reissued in 1559) cites Romans 13.2 in his argument for absolute obedience: 'whosoever resisteth shall get to themselfes dampnacioun'. (4) How keenly Elizabethans responded to this threat is made especially clear in the tragic dramas and poetry from the early decades of Elizabeth's reign. Nonetheless, the widely promulgated Tudor document 'An Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion' (1547, reprinted in 1570) defended passive resistance to tyrannous regimes. This document stressed that the only legitimate response for the political subject of a tyrant was prayer:

let us either deserve to have a good Prince, or let us patiently suffer and obey such as wee deserue. And whether the Prince be good or evil, let us according to the counsell of the holy Scriptures, pray for the Prince, for his continuance and increase in goodnesse, if he be good, and for his amendment if he be euill. (5)

When Preston and Pickering depart from the narratives of their sources, it is often in order to allude to contemporary discussions on tyranny and obedience that involve questions of divine providence. This point is made evident in the opening sequence of Horestes, where the Vice appears onstage and exclaims, 'Well, fowarde I wyll, for to prepare | Some weapons and armour the catives to quell; | Ille teache the hurchetes agayne to rebel'. (6) In Cambises, King of Persia (1560/2) and Horestes: A New Interlude of Vice (1567) both authors include a Vice character who is an abstraction of an inherently wicked quality. Interestingly, these figures can serve to distance the tyrannous actions of the rulers from concerns with divine providence. If he was not born a tyrant, Cambises is clearly shown to be predisposed to behave like a tyrant, and the Vice Ambidexter brings Cambises' wicked qualities to the fore. (7) Moreover, without any physical interaction, Ambidexter draws the audience's attention to the debate over political resistance throughout the play. Thus the role of the Vice is not central to the audience's interpretation of what causes the protagonists' tyranny, but it points up strategically how the protagonist is partial to villainy and what the consequences of tyrannous government might be.

In the classical sources Cambises' madness is linked to an inborn insanity. Herodotus, whom Sidney praised for his poetic eloquence in writing history, mentions the accession of Cambises, his campaigns against Egypt and Ethiopia, and his eventual fall into madness, in a discussion of the Persian kings in the Histories; all this is also coupled with an account of Cambises' drinking habits. The section on Cambises' eight-year reign (530-522 bce) discusses his decision to invade Egypt as a result of his rage against Amasis's treachery. Herodotus tells us that when Cambises requested Amasis's daughter for marriage, the Egyptian king sent the Persian monarch the daughter of the late King Apries instead. When Cambises learned of this deception, all his rage was directed at the Egyptians and he proceeded to attack: '[this] brought down upon Egypt the wrath of Cambises, son of Cyrus'. (8) Herodotus later recounts instances of Cambises' madness, his outrage at the Apis-calf (a calf that is unable to reproduce and is understood to bear the god Apis), and his orders for the murder of his wife and his brother Smirdis. The narrative closes with Herodotus's musings that Cambises' crimes were the result of madness, but also speculates that he may have had a sickness from birth: 'there is, in fact, a story that [Cambises] had suffered from birth from the serious complaint which some call "the sacred sickness". There would then be nothing strange in the fact that a serious physical malady should have affected his brain' (p. 167).

Herodotus links Cambises' political violations directly with his madness: 'I have no doubt whatever that Cambises was completely out of his mind; it is the only possible explanation of his assault upon, and mockery of, everything which ancient law and custom have made sacred in Egypt' (p. 169). In this account from antiquity Cambises' wickedness is also linked to religious transgressions, which, in turn, may have influenced Preston's characterization of the Vice in relation to Cambises' tyranny. Herodotus's intimation that Cambises was mad from birth is a point that may have prompted Preston's reading of Cambises' inherent damnation. In developing the emphasis on the infernal nature of Cambises' actions, Preston took explicit account of contemporary discussions about political resistance and obedience, predestination and divine providence.

Cambises is mentioned in George Joye's lengthy Protestant interpretation of the book of Daniel, which draws on Philipp Melanchthon's Chronica Carionis (1532), one of the early works of Protestant historiography. (9) Commenting on the Persian king's wickedness in Christian terms, Joye says that the king acted against 'commandement': 'For Cyrus perchaunce now gone farre of to wage bataill with the Scithians (his wyked sone Cambyses left in his stede) there went forth from Cambyses a contrary commandement.' (10) Robert Fabyan's Newe Cronycles of England and Fraunce (1533) and Roger Ascham's dialogue Toxophilus (1545) mention Cambises with little relevance to Tudor history or tyranny. But in the second book of Richard Taverner's The Garden of Wisdom, a Henrician version of Erasmus's Apophthegmata and the most likely source for Preston's text, Cambises is clearly identified as a wicked tyrant. The subtitle for the relevant section in Taverner's history makes the point about his tyranny clear: 'Cambyses Kynge of Persia was otherwyse a verye wicked and cruell tyraunte'. (11) Preston's tragedy imitates Taverner's technique of taking an example of a tyranny from the past to make a point about the present, and this is especially evident when we consider Taverner's passage about divine punishment:

all rulers, what so euer they be, maye take exemple at hym, to feare God, to preserue the common weale, to execute iustice and iudgeme[n]t, to vse theyr subiectes as men and not as beastes [...] wyth a greuouse vengeaunce, God plaged him. For as he was comming out of Egypte in to Persia, when he shulde mownt on horsbacke, his swerd felle out of the skaberd and sore wounded hym in suche wyse that he dyed of it. This exemple testifyeth, that god woll not longe suffre tyrantes to reygn. (12)

Taverner's account emphasizes God's ability to monitor the tyranny of Cambises, and he repeats the aphorism that God does not allow tyrants to reign without fear of harm. Eugene Hill understands this as a reference to Henry VIII as a prototype for Cambises and Ambidexter's double-dealing: 'Preston warns Elizabeth not to follow her father in half-hearted reform, let alone in the bloody conduct that had made tyranny "an ordinary fact of life" of late Henrician England.' (13) But crucially, Preston's version does not rely on historical allusion to Henry VIII; instead, the Elizabethan author develops Taverner's moral wisdom that God does appoint tyrants to reign (though not for long). The audience is thus presented with an image of a tyrant that is complicated by the varying degrees of resistance the characters perform.

The Prologue to Cambises claims to draw upon the ancient Athenian philosopher Agathon's three key pieces of advice for a regent: 'First, is that he hath government and ruleth over men: | Secondly, to rule with lawes, eke Justice [...] | Thirdly, that he must well conceive, he may not always reign'. (14) But the play's concern with drunkenness and legitimate kingship also reworks William Baldwin's second book of the Treatise of Morall Philosophy (1547, reprinted 1564), where various ancient Greek philosophers discuss the different qualities necessary for good government. Baldwin's subtitle, 'Of Kynges, rulers, and governoures, howe they shoulde rule theyr subjectes' conveys the overriding theme of a discussion that begins with Aristotle's candid statement: 'Kinges, rulers, & Governoures, shuld first rule them selves, & than rule theyr subjectes'. (15) In Hermes' contribution to the discussion there is a warning that God will punish irreverent kings: 'If a kynge be negligent in serchyng the workes of hys enemyes, and the heartes and wylles of his subjectes, he shall not long be in suretye in hys realme'. Baldwin's Treatise, initially published in January 1547, before the start of the young Edward VI's reign, succinctly phrases its advice to kings to reflect contemporary concerns in Tudor politics. Hermes' advice to kings includes a warning against flattery and about the responsibilities of trust, and he recommends that kings punish transgressions against the realm but should be wary of expressing excessive wilfulness: 'Punyshe immediatly suche as have deserved it. Followe not your owne wylles, but be ruled by counsayle: so shall you geve your selves rest, and labour unto other' (sig. Lii).

After a warning about dishonesty in kings has been voiced ('the honest exercise of kings, men wil insue the same', l. 12), the crux of the tragedy Cambises is made clear: 'But, contrariwise, if that a king, abuse his kingly seat, | His ignomie and bitter shame, in fine shalbe more great' (ll. 13-14). With this, Preston's tragedy is located within the de casibus tradition: Cambises may be seen as a mirror for the present. However, the tragedy is not a simple mirror for bad kingship or tyranny; it goes further and asks the audience to consider the implications of Cambises' dramatic transformation from a just king to a terrible tyrant. The audience is reminded that Cambises was once a good king, that he appoints a judge to rule in his absence, and then he punishes that judge for his transgressions. The cause of Cambises' turn to wickedness is suggested, I wish to argue, in the cup that the counsellor advises Cambises to avoid. Indeed, by the middle of the play, Shame, who appears on stage from Hell, reveals that Cambises drinks daily from the 'damned Vices cup' (l. 348).

Like Henry VIII, Cambises begins his reign as a reputable king, but eventually the king descends into tyranny and he ceases communication and counsel with his advisors. (16) At the beginning of the play Cambises expresses his desire to increase his father's legacy:

   You knowe and often have heard tel my
   fathers worthy facts:

   A manly Marsis hart he bare appeering
   by his acts.

   And what? Shall I to ground let fall my
   fathers golden praise?

   No, no, I meane for to attempt, this fame
   more large to raise.

      (ll. 7-14)

His desire for fame here is not interpreted as a sign of tyranny, for he is also shown to ask his counsellor and the attending lord for advice. The counsellor advises him that if he leaves Persia in search of martial rewards, he should appoint a magistrate in his stead, but he also recommends that the king 'Extinguish vice, and in that cup to drink have no delight' (l. 33).

At the start of his political career Cambises outwardly follows this advice, but before he appears on stage a second time, the figure Shame discloses to the audience hidden information about the relationship between Cambises and Hell, and Cambises returns to the stage as a tyrant. Shame, not the Fame anticipated by Cambises on his return from the wars, comes up on stage from Hell and reveals that Cambises has already turned to vice:

   From among the grisly ghosts I come, from tirants testy train.
   Unseemely Shame, of sooth, I am, procured to make plaine
   The odious facts and shameles deeds that Cambises king doth use.
   All pietie and vertous life he doth it cleane refuse;
   Lechery and drunkennes he doth it much frequent;
   The tigers kinde to imitate he hath given full consent;
   He nought esteems his Counsel grave ne vertuous bringing-up,
   But dayly stil receives the drink of damned Vices cup.

      (ll. 341-48)

When Shame links tyrants with 'grisly ghosts', we are reminded of Thomas Sackville's 'Induction' and the figure Sorrow, who says she lives 'Among the furies in the infernall lake: | Where Pluto god of Hel so griesly blacke | Doth holde his throne'. (17) Sackville also uses the word 'grisly' to describe Avernus and the mouth of Hell later in the 'Induction': 'first to the griesly lake | [...] An hydeous hole al vaste, withouten shape, | Of endles depth, orewhelmde with ragged stone, | Wyth ougly mouth, and grisly Jawes doth gape' (ll. 120, 141-43). The word 'grisly' was commonly used to describe infernal qualities in Elizabethan tragedies: Jasper Heywood's translation of Seneca's Thyestes identifies Pluto as the king of the 'grisly ghosts of Hell'. But Shame does not instigate any immoral or wicked behaviour in the king; she is simply a messenger: 'As Fame doth sound the royal trump of worthy men and trim, | So Shame doth blow with strained blast the trump of shame on him' (Cambises, ll. 351-52). Shame reveals that she blows her horn only for men who drink from the cup of vice, and her confession maps a predetermined plan on to the life and deeds of Cambises, which accounts for his degeneration into tyranny. The fact that Cambises is portrayed as the divinely ordained ruler explains in part why no one in the play is allowed actively to resist Cambises (and to survive). More importantly, however, Shame's confession exonerates Ambidexter from blame for Cambises' decline, since the king has not even met the Vice at this stage in the drama. The phrase 'damned Vices cup', however, denotes the sinister or hellish character of the cup.

When Shame links the 'damned Vices cup' that Cambises drinks from with his wickedness, the spirit may be encouraging the audience to recall the cup from which the Whore of Babylon makes kings drink in the book of Revelation: 'And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hands full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication' (Revelation 17. 4). Cambises' 'damned Vices cup' also recalls the cup that holds the wrath of God, mentioned earlier in Revelation (16. 1): 'And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth'. According to Revelation 16. 14, the most pernicious effect of God's wrath relates to the unclean spirits that are released when the seven angels empty the vials: 'For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth'.

Preston's depiction of Cambises' tyranny reflects his familiarity with the complex treatises on resistance and obedience that he read while at Cambridge. For example, the treatise Whether it be a mortall sinne to transgresse ciuil lawes which be the commaundementes of ciuill magistrates by Heinrich Bullinger, Rudolf Gwalther, Martin Bucer, and Matthew Parker, printed in England in 1550, examines a theory of constitutional resistance with reference to Romans 13 cited earlier. In Bucer's interpretation, the passage in Romans reveals that magistrates, however inferior, are still God's ministers, and as such, claims Bucer, it is their obligation to correct political wrongdoings. Furthermore, in De regno Christi, Bucer states:

[a King] reigns, [...] according to his Father's and his own counsel [...] he sets over [his people] princes and kings who [...] are primarily concerned about instituting and promulgating religion and allow no one in the commonwealth to violate openly the covenant of the Lord. (Martin Bucer, De regno Christi Library of Christian Classics, v. 19, ed. Wilhelm Pauck, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969, p. 189)

Bucer justifies certain instances of resistance when a ruler violates God's trust: 'It is the duty of all good princes to take every precaution to prevent any one of their subjects from doing injury to another' (p. 189).

Thomas Preston began his studies at Cambridge in 1553, and although he did not personally encounter the influential German Reformer Martin Bucer there, he certainly witnessed his influence on Cambridge life. When Mary came to power, she attempted to eradicate Protestantism at Cambridge and had Bucer and Fagius tried posthumously for heresy, ordering their bones to be exhumed and burned in public in Cambridge in 1557. After Elizabeth's succession, Cambridge University held a commemorative ceremony to honour Fagius and Bucer and to restore them to their important place in English Reformation history. (18) Preston contributed a selection of Latin verses at Cambridge's honorary ceremony for the German Reformer in 1560 and clearly had access to his teachings while studying at Cambridge.

Bucer and his compatriot Paul Fagius arrived in England in 1549 and began a translation of the Bible into Latin, which was later used as an authoritative source for an English translation after the death of Mary. He received an enthusiastic welcome at Cambridge, and was soon awarded the honorary degree of Professor of Divinity. In 1550, in the atmosphere of fervent reform at Cambridge, he completed his most significant and influential work, De regno Christi (On the Kingdom of Christ), as a gift for the young King Edward. The effects of the English winter, however, proved fatal to Bucer, who died (probably from tuberculosis) in 1551. The German reformer's influence on English Protestantism is remarkable, considering that he had never learned to speak English and that his immediate influence was somewhat delayed. After his death, his wife took De regno Christi back to Strasburg; it was not printed until 1557 (in Basel), but within a year had been translated into French and German. The impact of Bucer on Edwardian Reformation policy before the young king's death in 1553 was significant, and would continue to be important after the interim period of Marian Catholicism. Edward's attempt to initiate changes in the English polity reflected the importance he gave to Bucer's teachings, especially regarding the introduction of a catechism, which would form the basis for training in schools. In De regno Christi, and in his editorial contributions to the Book of Common Prayer in 1551, Bucer showed a concern for the role of the Church in legislative matters, and his understanding of doctrinal law contributed to the reform of English canonical law. According to Bucer, the Church and State were accountable for maintaining the true religion, and it was therefore a duty for magistrates and political leaders to attend to this: 'the kings of this world also ought to establish and promote the means of making their citizens devout and righteous (Bucer, ed. Pauck, p. 180).

In his theological teachings Bucer firmly reverted to an old Lutheran doctrine for his theory of resistance and obedience. He insisted that since all rulers and magistrates were ordained by God, any act of resistance (even to a tyrant ruler) by an ordinary citizen (who was not an ordained magistrate) was an act against God and therefore punishable with damnation. By identifying Cambises' actions as damnable and locating his tyranny within this framework of reference, Smirdis gives dramatic voice to the dictum that obedience to a tyrant king is illegitimate.

When Praxaspes expresses his concern over the king's drinking habits, he learns a harsh lesson in obedience. In reply to Praxaspes' concern, Cambises promises to prove his sobriety by shooting Praxaspes' son: 'When I the most have tasted wine, my bow it shalbe bent,--| At hart of him even then to shoote, is now my whole intent; | And if I his hart can hit, the king no drunkard is: | If hart of his I doo not kil, I yeeld to thee in this' (ll. 511-14). After shooting the young boy in the heart, Cambises mocks his advisor: 'Esteem thou maist right well therby no drunkard is the king | That in the midst of all his cups could doo this valiant thing' (ll. 564-65). It is the king's outward appearance of sobriety here that suggests the cup affects him in a hidden way. There is irony in Cambises' assertion that despite 'all his cups' he was successful in shooting the boy in the heart. Attendance and Diligence respond to Cambises' debauchery with good counsel: 'If that wicked vice he could refraine, from wasting wine forbere, | A moderate life he would frequent, amending this his square' (ll. 632-33). When Diligence and Attendance enter with Smirdis, the ethereal troupe agrees that Cambises could stop his wicked deeds if he ceased taking the wine, but Ambidexter, with further support from Diligence, advises Smirdis to remain silent and obedient to his brother's tyranny. Since the audience knows the nature of the vice character, and we are witness to his double-dealing throughout the play, this advice should not be taken at face value; after all, it is Ambidexter who later voices Smirdis's disapproval of Cambises' deeds--the action that leads to Smirdis's murder.

Preston presses further the association of Cambises' tyranny with Hell when Smirdis replies to Murder and Cruelty as they attack him on Cambises' orders: 'Consider, the king is a tirant tirannious: | And all his dooings be damnable and parnitious' (ll. 724-25). When Smirdis asks the executioners to consider that the king is a tyrant, he is unequivocally questioning Cambises' authority: if the king is a tyrant and his acts are damnable, then he may no longer be considered a rightful king and subjects are not under any obligation to obey him.

The executioners may agree with Smirdis that the king is a tyrant, but to be caught admitting this would bring charges of treason, as the next scene demonstrates, when Ambidexter accuses Hob and Lob of treason (ll. 754-811). The 'Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion' advised people to follow the example of obedient subjects, and speculated, 'If we will have an evyl prince [...] God wyll eyther displace hym or of an evyll prince make hym a good prince' (p. 215). Given this context, Smirdis is in the wrong to protest against his brother's behaviour, and Preston's wide-ranging interest in the theme of resistance in the play demonstrates that Elizabethans clearly distinguished between varying degrees of resistance. Ambidexter's recommendation for passive obedience is complicated for two reasons: first, because it is difficult to trust such a duplicitous character; and secondly, we must take into account Diligence's agreement with Ambidexter. In Smirdis's form of passive resistance and Cambises' punishment of him, Preston's critique of resistance theory is plainly unveiled: even with diligence, men cannot determine the right course of action.

Preston, in the plays' Epilogue, returns to the anxieties concerning the nature of divine providence: in the final prayer to Elizabeth is expressed an affirmation of the duty of passive obedience and an even stronger affirmation of the counsellor's obligation to guide the monarch with wise advice:

   As duty bindes us, for our noble Queene let us pray,
   And for her Honorable Councel, the truth that they may use,
   To practice justice and defend her Grace eche day;
   To maintain Gods woord they may not refuse,
   To correct all those that would her Grace and Graces lawes abuse;
   Beseeching God over us she may raigne long,
   To be guided by truth and defended from wrong.

      (Cambises, Epilogue, ll. 15-21)

Preston's text points to a reading of Cambises' accidental death as part of a divine plan of punishment for his political violations and his profound impiety. At the end of the play one of the lords comments: 'A just rewarde for his misdeeds, the God above hath wrought' (ll. 1186-87). The lord's message and epilogue clearly state God's role in bringing Cambises' reign and life to an end. The final scene reaffirms the just course of non-resistance to tyranny, because it must be left to God to punish tyrants in the end.

Nonetheless, Cambises' death remains problematic, not least because it subverts the traditional account of his fall: disaster does afflict the tyrant in the same way that it afflicts the protagonists in de casibus texts such as A Mirror for Magistrates and Richard Robinson's epic poem The Rewarde of Wickednesse (1574). The audience witnesses Cambises' decline into sin, but, as Peter Happe notes, Preston fails to present a tragic pathos linked to the tyrant's suffering. (19) The moral of the play is most apparent in the scene concerning Smirdis's murder. Taverner's version limits the discussion of Smirdis's murder to just two lines, but Preston expands this episode by working the Vice into the scene: 'Preston's treatment of the episode and his addition of the Vice are so arranged that through action and commentary the evil of playing with two hands is made an essential element in the downfall of Cambises.' (20) Indeed, Preston's Cambises offers a sensational example of divine punishment, not only because the hero dies, but because he dies without an heir. Thus Preston's play asks its audiences to consider, first, what makes a king behave like a tyrant, and second, to what degree resistance to the king or tyrant might be sanctioned.

John Pickering's tragedy Horestes: A New Interlude of Vice similarly explores issues of political obedience and resistance, but it presents a different interpretation of the consequences of resistance. Pickering's depiction of resistance as a duty when confronted with a tyrant is brought sharply into focus in the closing lines of the play, which are spoken by Duty and Truth. His position contrasts starkly with Preston's dramatic emphases in Cambises and demonstrates the very varied nature of Elizabethan discussions relating to political obedience and resistance. Like Preston's play, Horestes stages a unique vice character, Revenge, who departs from the traditional jovial role seen in other interludes and participates in the play's complex account of moral and political failings. Horestes' desire for revenge against his mother is supported throughout the play: first, divinely and morally, by the Vice disguised as a messenger from the gods; then, legally, by king Idomeus; and finally, politically, by his regal relatives and the other nobles. The Vice's role in Horestes' revenge is crucial to an understanding of this tragedy. Horestes never knows the Vice's true identity, and Pickering places the moral, legal, and political voices in the play in tension with Nature, who remains resolutely against Horestes' decision to kill his mother.

In the first scene Horestes appeals to the gods with questions about his fate and whether or not it is right and honourable to revenge his father's death:

   Oh godes therfore sith you be iust, vnto whose poure & wyll,
   All thing in heauen, and earth also, obaye and sarue vntyll.
   Declare to me your gracious mind, shall I reuenged be,
   Of good Kynge Agamemnones death, ye godes declare to me
   Or shall I let the, adulltres dame, styll wallow in her sin,
   Oh godes of war, gide me a right, when I shall war begyn.

      (Horestes, 183-88)

Despite his outward concern with divine approval, Horestes has already decided to seek revenge against his mother. Here, he asks for assistance when he goes to war with his mother, not if he goes to war, and thus imposes conditions on the gods that they support active rebellion against a legitimate ruler.

To complicate further the question of whether or not the gods support Horestes' revenge, we later learn that the Vice, who answers the call to the gods of war, is actually Revenge. The Vice, still not revealing his true identity, tells the eager Horestes that if war is the way he wishes to avenge Agamemnon's death, then he shall guide his steps: 'in the hast you armour take, your fathers fose to slaye | And I as gyde with you shall go, to gyde you on the way' (ll. 191-92). The Vice says that the gods sent him to Horestes to reveal how to avenge his father's death, and Horestes identifies him (incorrectly) as a messenger of the gods. This initial misunderstanding of his new companion's identity leads Horestes to believe that his actions are justly ordained.

Horestes senses a paradox in the Vice's conviction and questions him about his real identity. Learning that he is Courage, sent from Mars, Horestes accepts his 'divine' help. If the Vice had disclosed his real identity, Horestes (who cross-questions the Vice exhaustively) would not have the first vote of approval that he requires to proceed with his revenge. Since the Vice's approval is couched in divine terms, Horestes believes he is morally right to seek revenge. Despite all of the dramatic exchanges between Horestes and Revenge about his decision, the Vice does not impact directly upon Horestes' actions. The latter was intending to kill his mother before he has the Vice's approval, but his inclusion in the drama serves to highlight the presence of the force of evil already present in the protagonists' actions.

The second vote of approval Horestes requires to sanction his revenge is legal approval from King Idumeus. The king admires Horestes because he is Agamemnon's son and also a future leader of Greece. He says that he will allow Horestes what he desires provided it is within the law: 'What thing is that if we suppose, it laufull for to be, | On prynces faith without delaye, it shall be given the' (ll. 249-50). Horestes draws upon the language of kingship in order to articulate his request, and refers to his royal lineage with reference to his father, whose grace was defiled, in order to appeal to the king's sense of duty:

   O gratious king this thing it is, I let your grace to know
   That long I have request to vew, my fathers kingley place,
   And eke for to revenge the wrong done to my fathers grace.
   Is myne intent wherefore o king, graunt that w[ith]out delaye,
   My earytage and honor eke, atchyue agayne I maye.

      (ll. 259-63; emphasis added)

In response, Idomeus does not make an impulsive decision when Horestes explains his intent, but refers the question to his counsellor. Here the king, wise enough to seek advice from his counsellors before acting, refrains from immediate action against another regent. These actions in the play cast Idomeus as a good king, and, from within the context of Elizabethan debates upon resistance theory, he emerges as a wholly legitimate office holder.

Based on the advice of his counsellor, the king eventually grants Horestes legal permission to enact his revenge against his mother, and he even offers a small army to assist Horestes. This is crucial to our understanding of Horestes' undertaking: by presenting his revenge as a legal action, approved by the king and his counsellor, Horestes' revenge can be represented as the lawful, justified resistance advocated by some Protestant reformers. Although the audience should understand Horestes' revenge in terms of legitimate resistance, the Vice is still present and his comments (to the audience) make it uncomfortable for us to accept wholly the legality of his chosen course. (21)

The perspective is complicated further by the fact that Horestes seeks assistance from Idumeus against his mother and Egistus, because Idumeus is a foreign power and, in theory, represents a potential military threat to Horestes' realm. John Ponet stated that rulers who introduce a foreign threat to his country overstep the boundaries of their office: 'If [a prince] goes about to betray his country and to bring the people under a foreign power, he is a traitor, and as a traitor ought to suffer.' (22) Therefore, Ponet argued, such rulers should no longer be regarded as lawful magistrates and should be deposed from office as traitors. However, if a magistrate is deemed to be tyrannous or ungodly, Ponet and Goodman both concluded that private citizens should use forcible resistance against that magistrate.

Another complexity introduced by trying to justify revenge in the play focuses upon the presence of Nature, who keeps reminding Horestes that to kill his own mother is contrary to human nature. In response to Nature's protests, Horestes says that Clytemnestra's offences are against God, and because God loves his people, Clytemnestra must be punished. In this way Horestes' belief that it is his moral duty to punish his mother clouds the overall moral vision of his intended deed.

Horestes' preparations for his revenge place the tragedy firmly within the discourses of Renaissance and Reformation resistance theory: he seeks lawful approval from his king--the gods' representative on earth--and, with the king's approval, he defends his actions in the name of obedience to the gods. When Nature approaches him and asks him to reconsider his intent to kill his own mother, he protests that both the gods and the law have sanctioned his revenge: 'bloud for bloud my fathers deth doth crave, | And lawe of godes and lawe of man doth eke request the same. | Therefore, oh, Nature, sease to praye; I forse not of my name' (ll. 442-45). Horestes' example draws contemporary theories of resistance into question, showing that despite following all the legal and religious guidelines for resistance, his actions still defy Nature; and this is made explicit when Nature actually abandons Horestes.

Pickering's Virgilian construction of Horestes' pietas sheds some light on why Horestes does not kill Clytemnestra, a commitment that is spelt out in the work's extended title: 'A Newe Enterlude of Vice conteyning the History of Horestes with the cruell revengment of his Fathers death upon his owne naturall Mother'. (23) First, when he asked Idumeus for his approval, the counsellor said that he thought it was right that Horestes should seek revenge on the person(s) responsible for Agamemnon's death: 'A prynce for to revenged be on those which so dyd kyll | His fathers grace' (ll. 268-69). Following this, Horestes persists in his intent to kill his mother, and he is consequently abandoned by Nature, who cannot see any logic in legitimizing Horestes' revenge against his mother. After the battle, Horestes appears onstage with his mother as captive and she appeals to him: 'Pardon I crave, Horestes [...] I have offendyd, I do confesse; yet save my lyfe, I praye' (ll. 732-34). He hesitates for a moment, as Aeneas does when Turnus begs for pity in the final book of The Aeneid, indicated in the stage direction: 'Let Horestes syt hard'. In response to his hesitation, the Vice begins to weep, reminding Horestes of his divine duty to avenge his father's death: 'By all the godes, my hart dyd fayle [...] That all most I had graunted lyfe to her, had not this be | My fathers death, whose death, in south, chefe causer of was she' (ll. 749-52).

At this moment of reflection Egistus enters onstage. When he begs for mercy, Horestes recalls how he killed his father Agamemnon--again like Aeneas recalling young Pallas's face when Turnus brutally and mercilessly killed him in Book x of The Aeneid (x. 474-509). Immediately, he has Egistus hanged and sends Clytemnestra offstage with Revenge. Interestingly, Horestes interprets his actions primarily in terms of the safety of the realm: 'Stryke up your droumes, for enter now we wyll the citie gate; | For nowe resistaunce none there is, to let us in there at' (Horestes, ll. 835-38). The hero sees his actions as his Christian and magisterial duty to eradicate the tyrannous usurpation of his realm by an adulterous mother and her lover Egistus. However, when Nestor, Idumeus, and Menelaus meet with Horestes, the problem regarding Horestes' lack of pity is foregrounded by Horestes' uncle, Menelaus, who comes to the conclusion that the kings should banish Horestes: 'Wherfore sith that he thus hath wrought, as far as I can see, | From Mycoene land we should provid him exylyd to be' (ll. 968-69). Horestes is supported by the other kings, Idumeus and Nestor, when he defends his actions and relies upon legal and divine justifications for resistance: 'I never went revengment for to do | On fathers fose, tyll by the godes I was comaund there to, | Whose heastes no man dare once refuse, by wyllingly obaye' (ll. 973-74). Here, once again, the comparison with Aeneas when he abandons Dido in Carthage to follow the gods' command is evoked.

After Horestes defends himself against Menelaus's accusations, the other kings try to persuade the hero's uncle to accept him as the lawful king in the manner of a wise counsellor. Idumeus begs Menelaus to reconsider and help to bring an end to the discord and a return to stability:

   Sease of, syr kyng, leave morning; lo, nought can it you avaylle.
   Not with standing, be rulyd now, we pray, by our counsaylle.
   Consider first your one estate, consider what maye be
   A joyefull mene to end at leyngth this your calamytie.

      (ll. 1006-08)

With their unanimous support for Horestes' marriage to Hermione (Menelaus's daughter), the four kings leave the stage to celebrate the new peace in Greece. As they head offstage, the Vice enters onstage to lament his own superfluity now that the kings have made peace: 'A begginge, a begginge, nay, now I must go; | Horestes is maryed--God send him much care--| And I, Revenge, am driven him fro' (ll. 1045-47). He explains that the policy for Peace put forward by Idumeus convinced Menelaus to forgive Horestes, and thus Revenge was replaced by Amity and Duty. Despite his active rebellion, Horestes comes to be received as a hero, and the commons even offer their gratitude for their new king and praise for his care of the commonwealth: 'Peace, welth, ioye, and felycitie, o kinge it is we haue, | And what thing is their y[et] which, subiects ought more to craue' (ll. 1152-53). Because he brought an end to the discord caused by the murder of Agamemnon and by Egistus's rule, Horestes is regarded as a king who is concerned with the commonwealth rather than his own ambition.

Nature is the only voice in the tragedy to counter Horestes' actions (aside from Menelaus, but he does not interject before Horestes acts and so could not influence his actions). The play presents a case for political resistance that opposes the demands of Nature, and yet falls within the legal boundaries of needful political action, and Menelaus's objections at the end highlight this contradiction: 'I must confesse that I revengyd should have be, | If that my father had byn slayne with such great cruelte; | But yet I would for natures sake have spard my mothers lyfe' (ll. 1002-04). There never really is divine approval for Horestes' rebellion, since it comes from the mouth of a Vice, but given that the king is the voice of the law and God, Idomeus's sanctioning of Horestes' actions may be seen to offer legal and moral approval. The king's approval of Horestes actions demonstrates that resistance to unlawful rule is legitimate when legal and divine approval are offered. Nonetheless, we are never allowed to forget that Nature's absolute disagreement with Horestes' actions, even after the human characters in the play have praised him, complicates such a clear-cut understanding of the tragedy.

It is now generally agreed that John Pickering was actually the lawyer John Puckering. He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1559, where the general consensus about Mary Stuart was that she should be vehemently punished, even executed, for her alleged assassination of her husband, the Earl of Darnley. John Puckering openly advised Queen Elizabeth that her cousin ought to be reprimanded for her treasonous behaviour and insubordination. Puckering advised Elizabeth that Mary presented a danger to her and the true religion, and that, as God's ordained magistrate on earth, Elizabeth was dutifully bound to execute justice against her Scottish cousin.24 In Horestes the concern with tyrannous magistrates may thus be seen to correspond closely with Puckering's involvement with Tudor policy; just as Puckering couched his advice to Elizabeth in legal and theological terms, Pickering's protagonist employs accepted formulae for resistance theories to prove that the gods sanction his actions against Clytemnestra. But the tragedy goes further than simply professing support for resistance to tyrannous magistrates, and this radically complicates the narrative with the inclusion of the Vice character. Although he plays no active role in bringing Horestes to murder Clytemnestra, his presence indicates a malevolent influence already working towards the murderous revenge. Pickering's Vice prefigures Marlowe's Mephistopheles when he responds to Faustus's questioning:

FAUSTUS         Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee? Speak.

MEPHISTOPHELES  That was the cause, but yet per accidens.
                For when we hear one rack the name of God,
                Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ,
                We fly in hope to get his glorious soul'. (25)

The fact that Nature is forced in the end to abandon Horestes highlights the human difficulties in adopting such a response to God's ordinance: Horestes accepts the advice of the Vice because he thinks it comes from the gods, despite the fact that what he is proposing is so impious. Furthermore, because Horestes views kingship in explicitly divine terms (namely, that kings are God's appointed agents on earth), he assumes legal approval from another king effectively to sanction his revenge against his mother.

In the 'Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion', which has been central throughout this discussion, the author argues that God ordains both evil princes and good princes; consequently, to rebel against any prince will only provoke God to chastise the people more. Instead of rebellion, prayer will rouse God to improve the evil prince: 'let us according to the counsell of the Holy Scriptures pray for the Prince, for his continuance and increase in goodnesse, yf he be good, and for his amendment yf he be evill' ('Homily', p. 215). The author of the 'Homily' identifies ambition as one of the two main causes of rebellion: 'the principall and most usuall causes [of rebellion], [are] ambition and ignoraunce' (p. 236). The 'Homily' further identifies the two sorts of men who instigate rebellion: 'there specially two sortes of men in whom these vices do raigne, by whom the devyll, the aucthour of all evil, doth chiefely stirre up all disobedience and rebellion' (p. 236).

Thomas Preston's Cambises was performed for the queen at the beginning of her rule, showing, most especially in the example of Praxaspes, that it is most prudent for all subjects to be obedient at all times. Looking at the theories of political resistance examined in both of the tragedies discussed here, it is evident that Elizabethans, as one might expect, struggled to adopt a consistent approach when dealing with the question of tyranny.

Contemporary discussions alternated between supporting a theory of resistance and totally condemning resistance in favour of complete obedience at all times. In Cambises Preston invokes a Vice and Shame to highlight the hero's wickedness, which grows when he drinks from the cup of vice. In Horestes Pickering reversed Preston's angle of vision and complicated it further by exploring how resistance to tyranny might constitute a moral and political duty. Pickering employs the Vice figure to drive a wedge between the ways in which the audience perceives the hero and the ways in which those on stage understand him. Horestes' actions are excused in the world of the play, but the audience must negotiate for itself how to accept the influence of the Vice. In presenting these two contrary ways of understanding Horestes' actions, Pickering shows the contradictions inherent in any theory of resistance.

ALLYNA WARD

Newcastle University

(1) Greg Walker, Writing under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

(2) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. by John T. McNeill, trans. by Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols, Library of Christian Classics, xx and xxi (London: SCM, 1961), i, 31.

(3) The most complete description of Reformation thought in Europe is that of Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Age of Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Skinner's examination of Lutheranism, Thomism, and Calvinism highlights the reformers' emphasis on tyranny and damnation.

(4) Cited in Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570): A Critical Edition, ed. by Ronald B. Bond (London: University of Toronto Press, 1987), p. 164.

(5) A Homily against Disobedience, ed. by Bond, p. 215.

(6) John Pickering, Horestes: Three Tudor Classical Interludes, ed. by Marie Axton (D. S. Brewer: Cambridge, 1982), pp. 94-138 (ll. 5-7).

(7) Horestes' concern with legality and legitimization, both morally and politically, does not derive from the source material and betrays Pickering's intimate knowledge of the sixteenth-century legal process. Karen Maxwell Merritt persuasively illustrates that Pickering's source was not William Caxton but Lydgate's Troy Book; see Merritt, 'The Source of John Pickering's Horestes', Review of English Studies, 23 (1972), 255-66. In his discussion of revenge in a frame of resistance to tyranny, Pickering's unique inclusion of a vice departs from his primary sources. As Janette Dillon notes, 'The [traditional] Vice represented vice or sinfulness either explicitly or implicitly, and his name varied between labelling him allegorically as a vice (Mischief in Mankind, Pride in Nature (c. 1490-1500), Iniquity in King Darius (1564-5)) and suggesting his difference from the more narrowly conceived allegorical figures by allowing the negativity of the name to shade into a more frivolous register through rhyme or alliteration (Hardydardy in Godly Queen Hester (1529-30), Nichol Newfangle in Like Will to Like (c. 1567-8))'; Dillon, The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2006), p. 89.

(8) Herodotus, The Histories, trans. by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 154. (Further page references will be given in the text.)

(9) For a full discussion of Melanchthon's influence on English Protestantism see Avihu Zakai, 'Reformation, History, and Eschatology in English Protestantism', History and Theory, 26 (1987), 300-18.

(10) George Joye, The exposicion of Daniel the prophete gathered oute of Philip Melanchthon (1545), Short-Title Catalogue [STC], 14823, chap. 10.

(11) For detailed discussions of Preston's reliance on Taverner see Peter Happe, 'Tragic Themes in Three Tudor Moralities', Studies in English Literature, 2 (1965), 207-27; and Karl Wentersdorf, 'The Allegorical Role of the Vice in Preston's Cambises', Modern Language Studies, 11 (1981), 54-69. For the Anglicization of Erasmus's text see John K. Yost, 'Taverner's Use of Erasmus and the Protestantization of English Humanism', Renaissance Quarterly, 23 (1970), pp. 266-76.

(12) Richard Taverner, The garden of wisdom (1539), STC 23711a, sig. Cii.

(13) Eugene Hill, 'The First Elizabethan Tragedy: A Contextual Reading of Cambises', Studies in Philology, 89 (1992), 404-33 (p. 429).

(14) Thomas Preston, Cambises, Dodsley's Old English Plays, 4th ed. notes by W. Carew Hazlitt. London: Reeves and Turner, 1874-76, ll. 3-5.

(15) William Baldwin, Treatise of Morall Philosophy (1547), STC 1252, sig. Iii.

(16) Cf. Sir Thomas Elyot's concern with Henry VIII's tyrannous behaviour and the lack of intervention in the political arena from his counsellors. See especially the early 1530s pamphlet Pasquil the Plain, in which Elyot comments on the speechless counsellors: 'It describes, by implication, the paralysis that is created at the centre of government when counsellors practice timeserving and flattery rather than offer the King honest advice'; Walker,Writing under Tyranny, p. 181. Similarly, in Preston's tragedy, the counsellors are distracted by their desire to please and flatter Cambises, and also by their fear of him, so they fail to engage him in a discussion about ruling well.

(17) Thomas Sackville, 'Induction', in A Mirror for Magistrates (1559 and 1563), ed. by Lily B. Campbell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), pp. 298-317 (ll. 109-11).

(18) See N. Scott Amos, 'Bucer, Martin', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; and Hill, 'The First Elizabethan Tragedy', pp. 411-13.

(19) See Happe, 'Tragic Themes'.

(20) Happe, 'Tragic Themes', p. 211.

(21) James E. Phillips argues that Clytemnestra can be read as Mary Stuart and that the play makes reference to her imprisonment under Elizabeth; see, for example, Phillips, 'A Revaluation of Horestes (1567)', Huntington Library Quarterly 18 (1955), 227-44.

(22) John Ponet, 'Proper Responses to Unjust Tyrannical Governments', in A Short Treatise of Politic Power, 1556 (Menston: Scholar Press, 1970), p. 9.

(23) Mike Pincombe argues that the term 'interlude' was not original but most probably added to the play's title by the printer, William Griffith, as a clever means of advertising. The popularity of the interlude in the 1560s was matched by the growing commodification of tragedy, and the advertisement for Pickering's play highlights the tragic aspects of the play. See Mike Pincombe, 'A New Interlude of Vice: Generic Experimentation in Horestes', Theta VII: Outsiders within (dedans/dehors): Figures of Mediation (2007), http://www.cesr.univtours. fr/Publications/Theta7 [accessed 19 December 2007], pp. 163-78, esp. pp. 169-71.

(24) See James E. Phillips, who presents the most convincing argument that Pickering is also Puckering. He argues that Horestes should not be read as an allegory for events in Scotland, as David Bevington claims, but that Pickering presents the 'fundamental question of political theory and practice' ('A Revaluation of Horestes, p. 230).

(25) Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993). A-text i. 3. 46-50.