• Thomas, Lord Cromwell Recontextualized:An Economic Fable in Response to The Merchant of Venice
• Igor Djordjevic (bio)

The True Chronicle Historie of the Whole Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell by "W.S.," printed in 1602, was first performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men around 1599, and it remained part of the company's repertory.¹ The play's title upon publication links the play with a historical figure, leading virtually every critic to treat Cromwell as a history play, regardless of how one defines the genre.² If considered a history, the group of texts with which it could most readily be associated is the topical cluster focusing on the court intrigues that brought about the rise and fall of the "three Thomases" who served as chief ministers to Henry VIII: Sir Thomas More by Anthony Munday and John Chettle (1600), revised by Thomas Dekker, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Heywood (post-1603); Chettle's lost play The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (1601) and its prequel The Rising of Wolsey (1601) by Chettle, Munday, Michael Drayton, and Wentworth Smith; Samuel Rowley's When You See Me You Know Me (c.1603; printed 1605); and Shakespeare and John Fletcher's All Is True/Henry VIII (1613).³

The printed title suggests that it might have been conceived as a type of humanist vita grafted onto a de casibus tragic arc, unfolding sequentially from Cromwell's youth in Putney, through his maturation on the Continent, to the pinnacle of his political success, and thence rapidly to the last station of his progress around Fortune's wheel—a sudden, undeserved downfall and death. Cromwell's life-trajectory, when considered in these terms, does indeed present a de casibus tragedy—an [End Page 389] unsubtle hint taken up by Michael Drayton in writing his long poem in ottava rima, The Legend of Great Cromwell (1607), which Richard Niccols included in his 1610 text of The Mirror for Magistrates. True to the generic form, Cromwell's fall is unambiguously predicted and effected by Bishop Gardiner in the role of the envious rival and villainous political enemy, and Cromwell responds to the misfortune with the decorous humility of a virtuous sufferer (F4^v–G1^r).⁴ In his last moments as a tragic hero, Cromwell indulges in the stock affective tropes that "humanize" characters whose high political status or historical and cultural remoteness keep them apart from the common experience of the average theatre-goer, and attempts to control memory in a de rigeur moment of tragic parting with a little child (G2^r–v).⁵

But to present the synopsis of Cromwell in this fashion is to miss the true points of interest and emphasis in the play's plotline. Here history plays a cameo role. Historical reality barges onto the stage for a moment, tracing within the span of a dozen lines Cromwell's meteoric rise to the pinnacle of power through a shower of titles (D4^v), only to exit and return ten quarto pages later, to conclude Cromwell's decade-long political career in another breathtakingly fast descent. The play actually unfolds according to a very different generic template—one commonly associated with comedy. Though it ends in political tragedy, the threats to happiness and welfare in its central plots are resolved so rapidly that it does not resemble tragicomedy either, because that form typically relies on protracted yet unfulfilled threats of misery. For most of the play, Cromwell's life is crowded out of the center of our attention by the economic bustling of other characters, lending credence to Baldwin Maxwell's hypothesis that the printed text may be an imperfect "telescoping of a two-part play into a play of five acts."⁶

If the play belongs to the Henry VIII topical cluster, understanding its place in the group is crucial for any attempt to decipher its messaging as well as to identify how it might have been responding to other texts or initiating contacts with future respondents in a larger cultural conversation. Following dates suggested by the Oxford editors and G.K. Hunter, the first play would be Sir Thomas More (c.1593) written collaboratively for...

• 托马斯，克伦威尔勋爵重新语境化：回应威尼斯商人的经济寓言
• 伊戈尔·乔杰维奇（生平）

托马斯·克伦威尔勋爵一生和死亡的真实编年史由“WS”印刷，于 1602 年印刷，于 1599 年左右首次由张伯伦勋爵的手下演出，至今仍是公司剧目的一部分。¹该剧出版时的标题将该剧与一位历史人物联系起来，导致几乎所有评论家都将克伦威尔视为一部历史剧，无论人们如何定义这一类型。²如果将其视为历史，那么最容易与之相关联的一组文本是关注宫廷阴谋的主题群，这些宫廷阴谋导致了担任亨利八世首席大臣的“三位托马斯”的兴衰：爵士托马斯莫尔由 Anthony Munday 和 John Chettle（1600 年）撰写，由 Thomas Dekker、William Shakespeare 和 Thomas Heywood（1603 年后）修订；Chettle 遗失的剧本The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (1601) 及其前传The Rising of Wolsey (1601)，作者是 Chettle、Munday、Michael Drayton 和 Wentworth Smith；Samuel Rowley 的When You See Me You Know Me（约 1603 年；1605 年印刷）；以及莎士比亚和约翰弗莱彻的《一切都是真的》/亨利八世(1613)。^3个

印刷的标题表明，它可能被认为是一种嫁接到de casibus悲剧弧线上的人文主义生活，从克伦威尔在普特尼的青年时代，到他在欧洲大陆的成熟，再到他的政治成功的顶峰，然后迅速展开直到他绕着命运之轮前进的最后一站——突然的、不应有的垮台和死亡。从这些方面考虑，克伦威尔的人生轨迹确实呈现出一场de casibus悲剧——迈克尔·德雷顿 (Michael Drayton) 在他的长诗《伟大的克伦威尔传奇》 (1607)中采用了 [ End Page 389]毫不含糊的暗示，理查德·尼科尔斯 (Richard Niccols) 在他 1610 年的《治安官之镜》(The Mirror for Magistrates)文本中包含了这一点. 与一般形式一样，克伦威尔的垮台被加德纳主教明确预测和影响，扮演嫉妒的对手和邪恶的政治敌人，克伦威尔以善良的受难者的高雅谦逊回应不幸 (F4 v ^–G1 r ⁾。⁴在他作为悲剧英雄的最后时刻，克伦威尔沉迷于惯常的情感比喻，这些比喻使那些政治地位高或历史和文化遥远的人物“人性化”，使他们远离普通戏剧观众的共同经历，并试图控制记忆在与小孩悲惨离别的礼仪时刻 (G2 ^r–v )。^5个

但以这种方式呈现克伦威尔的概要是错过了该剧情节的真正兴趣点和重点。在这里，历史扮演了一个客串角色。历史现实瞬间登上舞台，在十几行字的范围内追踪克伦威尔通过大量头衔迅速崛起到权力的顶峰（D4 ^v), 只是退出并在十个四开本页后返回，以另一个惊人的快速下降结束克伦威尔长达十年的政治生涯。该剧实际上是根据一个非常不同的通用模板展开的——一个通常与喜剧相关的模板。虽然它以政治悲剧结尾，但其核心情节中对幸福和福利的威胁得到了如此迅速的解决，以至于它也不像悲喜剧，因为这种形式通常依赖于长期但未实现的苦难威胁。在剧本的大部分时间里，克伦威尔的生活都被其他人物的经济繁荣挤掉了我们的注意力，这使鲍德温麦克斯韦的假设更加可信，即印刷的文本可能是一个不完美的“将两部剧伸缩成一出戏”五幕。” ^6个

如果该剧属于亨利八世主题群，那么了解它在这个群体中的位置对于任何试图破译其信息以及确定它可能如何回应其他文本或与更大文化中的未来受访者开始接触的任何尝试都至关重要对话。按照牛津编辑和 GK 亨特建议的日期，第一部戏剧将是托马斯·莫尔爵士（约 1593 年）为...