Stephen A. Allen
sallen@parrett.net
©2004
“SUBTLE PATHS AND WORKINGS”: CHARACTER AMBIGUITY
AND THE LOCUS OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR IN THE CARDINAL
1.
The character of the Cardinal himself is a particular site of critical uncertainty, as his shift from verbal sparring and benevolent paternalism to rape and murder in the final act does not appear justified by the rest of the play. Attempts to explain this shift have ranged from criticizing Shirley for overindulging in theatricality (Bowers 234), to identifying the Cardinal with contemporary figures whose villainy was well-know (Forker), to showing parallels between the play’s language and that of seventeenth-century reformist rhetoric (Burks, 161-69). The character of the king as well has been the subject of conflicting interpretations. Despite being an ardent royalist, Shirley created a monarch who appears weak and vacillating, although whether this is a real or illusory weakness is open to debate.1 The other major characters in The Cardinal have also been discussed at some length, mainly by Bowers (231-33) and in the two most recent critical editions of the play (Shirley, ed. Forker lxv-lxviii and ed. Yearling 22-25), but here the analysis has served to show that the categories of revenger and victim are, to some extent, blurred in the earlier stages of the action.
Underlying all of these studies, both those that view the play as coherent and those that do not, is the persistent assumption that Rosaura, and Hernando ultimately must be the heroes and justified revengers of the tragedy, while the Cardinal and Columbo must the villains. The internal logic of the play would appear to demand this, and any ambiguities must either be a failure in Shirley’s characterization or a success in his subversive use of language and convention.2 Even if Shirley did not intend any ambiguities, they are built into the revenge tragedy genre itself, especially at moments when displacement of revenge and counter-revenge come to the forefront (Kerrigan, 4-9). What these studies fail to consider is the possibility that Shirley may not have written a play in which, in terms of the demands of revenge and counter-revenge, any of the main characters are wholly justified in their actions, but rather one in which the standards of ethical behavior only involve revenge indirectly. The Cardinal does have an internal logic, but it is not one in which standards of personal justice and revenge can be used to determine heroism and villainy.
2.
Even a brief survey of The Cardinal is enough to reveal the ambiguities of the revenge aspect of the plot. Columbo kills Alvarez. He in turn is killed by Hernando, but Hernando is acting partly on behalf of Alvarez’ widow Rosaura and partly on his own behalf in response to an earlier slight. Rosaura and Hernando plot at length to kill the Cardinal, despite the fact that he did not take part directly in Alvarez’ murder. The Cardinal, in turn, plans to kill Rosaura to avenge his nephew’s death. Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, one of Shirley’s main sources, provides a clear contrast: Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia kill Lorenzo and Balthazar because, and only because, they have murdered Horatio. Hieronimo’s murder of the Duke of Castile, who was not directly involved in the original killing, is almost an afterthought, a footnote to the main revenge. The lines between the injured revengers and their deserving targets is clear in Kyd. Shirley’s characters are much more difficult to categorize..
The first audiences to see The Cardinal would have entered the theater expecting the title character to be the villain of the drama. While individual English Catholics may have enjoyed greater toleration under the Stuarts than they had under Elizabeth I, the Catholic Church as an institution was still the subject of fear and bitter public attack (Milton; Tumbleson 13). A cardinal, by definition a foreign prelate and a clergyman subordinate only to the pope, would have been seen as an enemy of the English state and the Protestant religion (Tumbleson 13-14, 17-25). Even Shirley’s Catholicism does not necessarily argue against this view, as seventeenth-century Catholics often shared anti-clerical attitudes with their Protestant contemporaries (Barnett 1-20). Even without this wider religious context, audiences would have had in their minds the examples of powerful and reviled churchmen such as Archbishop Laud and Cardinal Richelieu. Shirley even encourages the identification of his Cardinal with Richelieu in the prologue to the play: “[w]e do believe that most of you gentlemen/Are at this hour in France” (prol.2-3). In addition to historical figures, the theater provided its own examples of villainous clergy, the Cardinal in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi being the most obvious parallel to Shirley’s creation. The opening scene of The Cardinal further establishes the title character as a powerful and fearsome figure:
2 Lord. ‘Tis not safe, you’ll say
To wrestle with the king.
1 Lord. More danger if the cardinal be displeased,
Who sits at the helm of state. (I.i.36-38)
Rosaura expresses a similar fear in the second act when she compares conversing with the Cardinal to walking on a serpent’s poisoned teeth (II.ii.18-20). Later in the same act, she will accuse him of more concrete wrongdoing: pride, avarice, and corruption (II.iii.143-45). This combination of anti-Catholic and anti-clerical stereotypes, historical and literary precedents, and the actual words of the play suggest that the Cardinal will be the villain of the piece and will act appropriately.
Despite this, for the first four acts of the play, the Cardinal does not act as villainously as might be expected. He takes a paternalistic interest in Rosaura, visiting her while Columbo is away. He reacts angrily to Rosaura’s rejection of Columbo and attachment to Alvarez, but even the Duchess admits that this is probably due to family partiality (II.ii.105-6). He declares to the king that he is not angry with Rosaura (III.i.51), and while it is true he might be lying at that point, he does agree to attend her wedding. Perhaps most importantly, given the later developments in the play, he is unaware of Columbo’s plan to kill Alvarez, stating that he believes his nephew to be elsewhere when the masked murderers perform their dance (III.ii.88-91).3 After Alvarez is killed, the Cardinal attempts a reconciliation with Rosaura, again denying foreknowledge of Columbo’s plot and condemning his deed (IV.ii.204 ff.). It is only in the last act, after Columbo has been killed, that he turns his thoughts to rape and murder. While this change in approach may seem to prove Bower’s statement that, at the end of The Cardinal, “the characters who have been gray throughout suddenly turn black and white” (234), an argument can be made that the Cardinal is acting not like a depraved villain but rather as a justified revenger. This, at least is how he regards himself: “good, excellent revenge, and pleasant! . . . A satisfaction for Columbo’s death” (V.i.87-89). Like Rosaura, the Cardinal justifies his actions as a debt owed to the dead:
[Duchess.] I so much
Desire to sacrifice to that hovering ghost,
Columbo’s life . . . (IV.ii.146-48)
[Cardinal.] In the revenge I owed Columbo’s loss . . . (V.iii.214)
While the Cardinal’s means of taking revenge may seem excessively barbaric, there is a element of lex talionis involved.4 Just as Rosaura “killed the soul of all [Columbo’s] fame” (III.ii.129) and compromised his honor, the basis for his character, so too will her honor be destroyed. The Cardinal had earlier warned Rosaura of the possible loss of her reputation (II.iii.115-116), and here he now attempts to ensure that loss. By framing her as a sexually ruined suicide, he will avenge not only Columbo’s death, but his dishonor. That he engages in further trickery and deception to further his revenge only demonstrates his dedication: the sentiment that death is an acceptable price to pay to carry out revenge is commonplace in revenge tragedies, and Hernando expresses much the same sentiment himself (V.iii.65-77). Even at their worst, the Cardinal’s actions can be justified as dictated by the necessities of revenge.
Unlike the Cardinal, the Duchess Rosaura has many characteristics that make her appealing, at least to modern readers. She has the “courage and wit of a fighter” (Shirley, ed. Forker lxvi); she is a “firm character” with “considerable presence” (Shirley, ed. Yearling 23); she is “attractive for her candour, courage, intelligence, and vitality” (Lawrence 186). The long passage in the second act where she confronts the Cardinal (II.iii.76 ff.) is one of the high points of the play, and even her clerical opponent admits that she “has a spirit that may rise/To tame the devil’s” (II.iii.169-70). She seems to be the natural nominee for wronged heroine and justified revenger. She is first separated from the her true love by political machinations, once she is reunited with him he is killed, and after she is denied justice she must turn to extra-judicial revenge. A more careful reading of the play, however, as well as some consideration of Shirley’s other dramas, complicates this positive image.
Rosaura’s first lines in the play (I.ii.9-28) tell the audience two things: she is suffering from melancholy, and she is lying to her companions Valeria and Celinda about the cause. Her deceptiveness does not end there: she tells Antonio to conceal her reaction to the news of Columbo’s departure for war (I.ii.84), she feigns sorrow at his leaving (I.ii.118-20), and she secretly receives Alvarez after lying about her reasons for wanting to be left alone (I.ii.148-49). These deceptions may well be dictated by a fear of falling afoul of the king and the Cardinal, but in this first act she also expresses a resolve to openly defy the king (I.ii.65-68), although in the end she does not do so. Even if her lies are dictated by self-preservation, though, there are enough suggestions in the play that the Duchess is known for being deceptive. It would be difficult to explain otherwise how Columbo so quickly concludes that her letter asking to be released from the engagement is a “device” (II.i.128). The Cardinal suspects her of tricking Columbo, and sarcastically refers to her as “no dissembling lady” (II.iii.133). Even the king appears to agree with this judgement: when Columbo defends his killing of Alvarez in part on the grounds that Rosaura had lied to him and entered into an affair while they were still engaged, the king’s response is telling:
King. We have
Too plentiful a circumstance to accuse
You madam, as the cause of your own sorrows . . . (III.2.177-79)
Given this, it does not come as very much of a surprise when Rosaura decides to feign madness to further her revenge later in the play.5
Even if Rosaura’s lies are excused as being in the service of a natural, as opposed to an enforced, romance, there is still the question of whether Alvarez is a worthy choice for the Duchess’ affection. The Cardinal certainly does not think so, claiming that Alvarez will bring “more effeminacy than man/or honor to [Rosaura’s] bed” (II.iii.112-13), although his opinion is by no means unbiased. The two anonymous lords who begin the play present a more complicated comparison. They praise Columbo for his gallantry, honor, and success in war, but they also mention Alvarez’ noble birth. Still, there is the implication that Alvarez may be motivated primarily by fear in giving up his claim on Rosaura, and the first lord says outright:
1 Lord. . . . Columbo’s name is great in war,
Whose glorious art and practice is above
The greatness of Alvarez . . . (I.i.31-33)
The discussion between Valeria and Celinda in I.ii also presents a contrast between Columbo and Alvarez in which Alvarez ends up being the loser. While Valeria praises Alvarez near the beginning of the scene, emphasizing his beauty and courtliness, Celinda counters with mention of Columbo’s bravery. After demonstrating a certain amount of courtly charm, Columbo wins Valeria over, even to the point where she expresses a hesitant wish to grant him her favors:
Celinda. [To Valeria] Is not the general a gallant man?
Which lady would deny him a small courtesy?
Valeria. Thou hast converted me, and I begin
To wish it were no sin. (I.ii.135-37)
Even Rosaura herself suspects Alvarez of acting out of fear, although he denies this strenuously (I.ii.217 ff.). Read in light of Shirley’s other plays, Alvarez also appears a less sympathetic character. The uncourtly but honorable soldier is one of Shirley’s stock characters and generally a positive one (Lukow 138-39). Shirley’s courtiers and nobles are frequently positive characters as well, but not always, and Alvarez’ effeminacy, passivity, and social inferiority to Rosaura (his “meaner blood” [I.ii.201-2]) are characteristics of the nobles Shirley satirizes rather than lauds (Clark 121-26). It is no wonder that Yearling concludes that, “[t]he Duchess’s choice in marriage is puzzling” (Shirley, ed. Yearling 23).
Puzzling choice or not, Rosaura does marry Alvarez, he is killed on their wedding day, and she plans revenge against his murderer. In her pursuit of vengeance against Columbo, Rosaura comes closest of all the characters in the tragedy to being a traditional revenger (Shirley, ed. Forker lxx-lxxi). She has just cause, and she only undertakes personal vengeance after the law and those who are in power have failed her. Even here, however, there is a considerable gap between Rosaura and say, Hieronimo or Hamlet. As Bowers points out, “Shirley . . . was more concerned with brisk, sharply-outline plots than with ethical conceptions of character and justice” (217). Rosaura does not hesitate to consider whether killing Columbo is an ethically justifiable action: there is nothing in The Cardinal comparable to Hamlet’s hesitations or the soliloquy in The Spanish Tragedy where Hieronimo brings up and then rejects the possibility that it would be appropriate to leave revenge in God’s hands (III.xiii.1 ff.). When Bel-Imperia chides Hieronimo for delaying his revenge in The Spanish Tragedy, he defends himself by mentioning the care and certainty needed to carry out such an act (IV.i.1 ff.). In the parallel scene in The Cardinal, Rosaura defends herself against Hernando’s accusations by stating that she has not carried out her revenge simply because she does not have a plan: “I despise my life/but know not how to use it in a service” (IV.ii.141-42). There are no second thoughts or delays for introspection: revenge in this play is an uncomplicated matter, a knee-jerk reaction to being wronged.
Rosaura’s desire to revenge herself on the Cardinal is more difficult to defend. As mentioned above, Shirley makes it quite clear that the Cardinal has no foreknowledge of Columbo’s plot to kill Alvarez. The Cardinal even repudiates his nephew’s actions, although it is entirely possible he is deceiving Rosaura at this point; that at least is her interpretation of his speech. Rosaura does have cause to be angry with the Cardinal. It was at his instigation that she was ordered to marry Columbo in the first place, and he is instrumental in securing his nephew’s freedom after the third act. Still, Rosaura’s stated reason for wanting the Cardinal dead is his liability for Alvarez’ murder: “I had intent this night with my own hand/To be Alvarez’ justicer (V.iii.244-45). That the Cardinal is innocent of this murder reflects badly on Rosaura’s motivations and calls into question her status as a justified revenger.
Like Rosaura, Hernando has greater cause to wish revenge on Columbo than the Cardinal, but he still ends up killing them both. The soldiers in Shirley’s plays are concerned above all with honor, as is made obviouse in the early allegorical work A Contention for Honor and Riches and the later expansion of that play, Mammon and Honoria, where the two contenders for Honor/ Honoria’s hand are a courtier and a soldier.6 “Honor” is what “secures [Columbo’s] praise” (I.i.26-27) in the sight of the court. Columbo’s accusations of cowardice and treason are thus more than sufficient reason for Hernando to desire him dead, and it is notable that Hernando plans to take his revenge in a fashion that will show himself honorable: “I wo’ not lose so much of my own honor,/To kill him basely” (IV.ii.173-74). Hernando’s cause appears so clear that is remains something of a mystery why he would ally himself with Rosaura. As he admits, his concern with Alvarez’ death is not a strictly person one, “since the whole world has interest/In every good man’s loss” (IV.ii.163-64). Hernando hints in his verbal sparring with Columbo that he has gained a supernatural blessing upon his actions by allying himself with Rosaura:
[Hernando.] . . . while I am killing thee
By virtue of her prayers sent up for justice,
At the same time in heaven I am pardoned for’t. (IV.iii.44-46)
That he feels the need for such prayers, and that he insists on an “honorable” duel, suggests that he may be conscious that his cause is not entirely a just one, that he in fact may be guilty of the cowardice of which he has been accused. Certainly one of the other officers in Columbo’s council of war seems to find his plan to wait for the enemy to gorge and exhaust themselves to be less than daring: “[t]hat will show our patience too like a fear” (II.i.20-21).
Whether or not Hernando has just cause to kill Columbo, his hatred for the Cardinal is almost inexplicable. He has reason to fear the Cardinal’s reprisals after Columbo’s death, and allying himself with Rosaura makes the Cardinal his foe, but he expresses an enmity towards the churchman even before these events take place. Immediately after returning from the front, Hernando expresses contempt at the thought that the Cardinal will seek to attack him: “[b]ut let the purple gownman place his engines/I’th’ dark that wounds me” (II.iii.12-13). The Cardinal may give Hernando some cause for hatred by deriding his military skill (III.i.32-4 and 70-72), but none of this explains the soldier’s desire to not only take the churchman’s life but also damn his soul (IV.i.26-32). Hamlet may express the same desire about Claudius (III.iii.74 ff.), but the Cardinal has not killed Hernando’s father, or anyone else in the play up to that point. Bowers’ concession that “Hernando himself partakes a trifle too much of the overbloody nature of the misled revenger” (232) is a bit of an understatement.
Columbo, the fourth self-styled revenger in the play, is as ambiguous a villain as his uncle, the Cardinal. He is generally praised as a brave, noble, and honorable man, even after the brutal murder of Alvarez: “except for this cruelty upon Alvarez,/Columbo has no mighty stain upon him” (IV.i.38-39). Valeria may criticize him as “a rough-hewn man” (I.ii.54), but in his first appearance on stage he speaks and acts in a courtly manner. This is not his natural mode of interaction (“I have not long to practise these court tactics” [I.ii.107]), but he is convincing enough at it to impress Valeria. In fact, his attempt to move within the cultural world of the court may contribute to his mistaking Rosaura’s letter of rejection for a test. Morton argues that Columbo’s murder of Alvarez at a social function for the court is deliberately intended to contrast the soldier’s honesty and straightforwardness with the conceits and deception of courtly life (233), and the fact that he does so by making use of a masque, the epitome of courtly disguise, would seem to support this.7 When he attempts to justify his actions, he does so on the basis of his lost honor and Rosaura’s deceptiveness, and has been mentioned above, the king appears to give this argument some credence. In the end, what proves Columbo’s undoing is the act of lèse majesté he has committed by carrying out his bloody vengeance in the presence of the king. In arguing that he is compelled to act because of the slight to his honor, Columbo resembles Hernando: if this is considered as a righteous cause for revenge by the latter, it must also be granted the former. Columbo is described as being short-tempered (“Our general is not well-mixed,/He has too great a portion of fire” [II.i.139-49]), but is not seen as a fault. In fact, the argument is made that this makes him an excellent match for Rosaura, whose “complexion/ Carries some phlegm” (II.i.141-42). Despite his temper, and the murder of Alvarez, Columbo is treated as a hero by many of the characters in the play. As the two anonymous lords point out at the beginning of the last act (V.1.1-4), his death disturbs not only the Cardinal, but the king as well, and overshadows the murder of Alvarez.
The competing claims on justice by the four man characters of the play make it difficult to classify The Cardinal as a revenge tragedy. This is not to say that revenge tragedies must have clear-cut heroes and villains, or that competing claims for revenge are impossible. Were this the case, Hamlet, among others, would have to be removed from the genre: Laertes may plot with Claudius and use unscrupulous means to gain his revenge, but he has just cause for seeking to kill Hamlet. The problem here is that all of the revengers in the tragedy can be seen as simultaneously justified and unjustified, and their revenge is never problematized or analyzed. Bowers argues that Shirley “found revenge as a leading motive in the older drama, and thus utilized it as an important keystone in his own” (216). Thus, while the history of revenge tragedy may be helpful in placing The Cardinal in an historical context, it does not explain or indicate the dominant concerns of the play. In the end E. M. Yearling’s assessment of the play seems correct:
Shirley deploys the plot-motifs of revenge, the masque of death, the lustful villain, the devious poisoning, but despite its four avengers, his plays themes and ideas have little to do with vengeance.
This leaves the problem: if revenge is just a motif, what is the ideological center of Shirley’s play, and what is the locus of ethical and unethical behavior for his characters?
3.
James Shirley was a staunch royalist, and this is reflected in his plays (Lukow 18-20; Clark 117 ff.). At first glance, the King of Navarre seems like a weak monarch, indecisive and dominated by the Cardinal. The conflation of the Cardinal with Archbishop Laud would suggest that the King of Navarre can be read as a version of Charles I, perhaps intended as a sort of warning to the English king to change his ways.8 There are two major problems with this reading of the King of Navarre. First, absolute monarchism is never seriously challenged in any of Shirley’s plays, and such challenges as there are come not from the king’s weakness but from the unethical behavior of those around him (Clark 120, Lukow 149). Secondly, the characters in The Cardinal, with a few significant exceptions, never speak badly of the king. It is telling that, in places where the king is briefly criticized, some ameliorating factor is immediately adduced, frequently the manipulations of the Cardinal. Thus, in I.i, after the first Lord mentions that Rosaura has been separated from Alvarez “[b]y the king’s power,” the second Lord adds “[a]nd council of the Cardinal” (I.i.16-17). When Alvarez justifies surrendering Rosaura, he mentions the king’s possible displeasure, but he blames the situation on the Cardinal’s plans. When the king attempts to take some of the blame for Alvarez’ murder on himself by admitting that is “did exceed the office of a king/To exercise dominion over hearts” (III.ii.185-86), the first Lord turns this about by suggesting that the king did not act selfishly, but out of love for Columbo (III.ii.192). After Columbo has been released, Hernando blames this not on any defect in the king, but rather on the Cardinal’s “chains/Of magic” (IV.i.10-11). Perhaps the most stunning example of this refusal to speak ill of the king comes in IV.ii, after the Cardinal has argued to Rosaura that the king’s pardon of Columbo was more just than an execution. Rosaura responds with a charge of tyranny, but it is not directed against the king:
Duchess. This is a greater tyranny than that
Columbo exercised; he killed my lord,
And you not have the charity to let
Me think it worth a punishment. (IV.ii.258-261)
Throughout this exchange, Rosaura does not question the king’s right or justice in pardoning Columbo; rather, she expresses her fury at the Cardinal and plans to revenge herself against him.
Rosaura’s refusal to openly criticize this apparent gross miscarriage of justice is, at heart, a refusal to criticize the king not only in his actions but his very being. The king is inherently just: “Sir, you are the king,/And in that sacred title it were sin/To doubt a justice” (II.iii.29-31). The kings justice is responsible for Columbo’s victory (III.i.44-45). When Alvarez is killed, Rosaura calls upon the king for justice, and suggests that if the king is not just it will result in the complete collapse of the moral and religious order:
[Duchess.] You will take our faith off else, and if here
Such innocence must bleed and you look on,
Poor men that call you gods on earth, will doubt
To obey your laws, nay practice to be devils,
As fearing if such monstrous sins go on
The saints will not be safe in heaven. (III.ii.06-11)
Hernando echoes this connection between the king’s justice and the divine after Columbo has been set free: “my faith has been so staggered since/The king released Columbo, I’ll be now/Of no religion” (IV.i.18-20). The king is not simply just, but he must be just to be the king: being just is part of the basic definition of kingship here, as is also the case in Shirley’s other plays (Clark 121).
It follows from that the king, in order to remain the king, cannot be unjust. This is indeed one of the major concerns of the play. As mentioned above, whenever a potentially unjust action by the king is mentioned, the Cardinal is usually immediately blamed. The Cardinal’s defense of Columbo’s pardon in IV.ii is based on the very principle that the king cannot be unjust. If Rosaura sees an injustice, the fault is in her:
[Cardinal.] . . . if you look on him, you will find
His pardon to Columbo cannot be
So much against his justice, as your erring
Faith would persuade your anger. (IV.ii218-21)
In fact, to execute Columbo, the military savior of Navarre, would itself be more unjust than to hold him accountable for Alvarez’ death (IV.ii.228-236). The pardon, in the end, is an example of the king’s justice being superior not only to the desire for revenge (IV.ii.231), but even to the law itself (IV.ii.251-54). The Cardinal may be engaging in sophistry here, but again, Rosaura does not challenge the king’s decision. The audience, however, may still doubt the justice of the king’s action, and here it is significant that the pardon is granted to Columbo offstage and between acts. In a situation where it is possible to argue that the king has acted unjustly, he must not be allowed to be seen doing so.
Belsey argues that the conflict between the justness of the king and the injustice required to make The Cardinal a revenge tragedy accounts for the “radical incoherence” of the play (167). In her view:
In order to be a play about revenge, The Cardinal has to become a play about a crisis of justice. But because the ideological project foregrounds the figure of the King, the crisis of justice is not merely the context of an act of revenge: on the contrary, it is at the center of the play. (168)
As has been argued above, the conflicting motives and varying claims on justice make it difficult to classify The Cardinal as a revenge tragedy. Furthermore, Shirley’s royalism ensures that there can be no “crisis of justice” in the play simply because the king cannot be unjust. Rather, the tragedy of The Cardinal is not in any failure of justice, but in the ways the various characters subvert royal justice to their own ends and in doing so betray their king. This is what the King of Navarre realizes at the very ends of the play:
[King.] How much are kings abused by those they take
To royal grace! Whom, when they cherish most
By nice indulgence, they do often arm
Against themselves; from when this maxim springs:
None have more need of perspectives than kings. (V.iii.293-97)
Whereas the act of taking revenge in more traditional revenge dramas is a way for individuals to attempt to achieve justice when those in power will not guarantee it, in The Cardinal, the act of taking revenge is in fact an abuse of the king’s largesse. In addition, each of the four revengers demonstrates, through their words and acts, a betrayal of the king beyond the simple desire to subvert royal justice in the name of personal revenge.
The Cardinal’s abuse of the royal trust is perhaps the most obvious betrayal. He advises the king badly, and manipulates him to further his own causes and those of his nephew. He is the one to blame for the king’s apparently unjust decisions. When Rosaura confronts him and lists his sins, one line is given to his pride, one to his avarice, and eight to his corruption of the court and the king (II.iii.143-52). To Rosaura, the Cardinal is not merely a corrupt advisor, but a physical violation of the body politic:
[Duchess.] How vast are your corruptions and abuse
Of the kings ear! At which you hang a pendant,
Not to adorn, but ulcerate . . . (II.iii.145-47)
This is the first charge that the Cardinal chooses to lay against himself while he is dying, again using a medical metaphor: “My blood is now the kingdom’s balm; O sir,/I have abused you ear, your trust, your people” (V.iii.200-1). The irony is that he is still abusing the king’s trust here in order to pursue his revenge, something the king himself acknowledges at the Cardinal’s moment of death: “[w]ith him/Die all deceivèd trust (V.iii.284). It is the Cardinal who formulates the arguments to influence and justify the one decision of the king that appears most unjust, if not to the characters in the play then at least to the audience: the pardon of Columbo. In this, he comes closest to actually making the king unjust, and thus not a king
Rosaura’s betrayal takes the form of both defiance and deception. Her continued pursuit of Alvarez and the lengths to which she goes to free herself from Columbo constitute the main grounds for the subsequent violations of order and the king’s trust late in the play. Even in the first act, she contemplates open defiance of the king:
[Duchess.] I must repair
My poor afflicted bosom and assume
The privilege I was born with; which now prompts me
To tell the king he hath no power nor art
To steer a lover’s soul. (I.ii.64-68)
The king does end up admitting this on his own initiative (III.ii.182-188), but Rosaura never does carry through on the desire expressed in this passage. Instead, in order to appear loyal and obedient, she conceals her true thoughts and plans. She implies the king is cruel for separating her from her love, but it is in the context of deceiving Columbo into thinking she is sorry to see him leave for war (I.ii.120). Moments before meeting with Alvarez to reaffirm her love for him, she tells the king, “[y]our will must guide me” (I.ii.147). Although the king orders her reconciliation with the Cardinal (III.1.49-50), and she claims to have complied (IV.ii.291, 305), she still nurses a bitterness that ends in murderous schemes. In her final moments, she admits a need of forgiveness from the king (V.iii.289-90), which is in effect and acknowledgment that she has offended him.
Columbo’s betrayal of the king is more in keeping with his nature as a bluff, direct soldier. His offence is to commit murder in the king’s presence, an unpardonable act of disrespect towards the person and safety of the monarch:
[King.] Has my
Indulgence to you merits, which are great,
Made me so cheap, your age could meet no time
Nor place for your revenge, but where my eyes
Must be affrightened and affronted with
The bloody execution? This contempt
Of majesty transcends my power to pardon . . . (III.ii.208-214)
It is difficult to comprehend, from a modern perspective, why committing a murder in the king’s presence is any worse than committing a murder elsewhere, but this neglects the semi-divine status claimed for kings, “gods on earth” (III.ii.108) in the Stuart period (Clark 13). The royal personage was sacrosanct, and to shed blood in his presence was as much an offence against God as shedding blood in a church.9 Columbo compounds this offense by showing direct contempt for the king, accusing him of acting dishonorably and being ungrateful (III.ii.220 ff.) Columbo arrogates to himself the role of preserver of the kingdom, a role which is rightly the king’s, which even the Cardinal realizes is a step too far, telling his nephew: “[h]umble yourself/To th’ king” (III.ii.242-43). As if to compound this unjust assumption of royal rights, Columbo formulates his revenge on Rosaura in terms of exercising control over her future marital condition, an act that Hernando describes as tyranny (IV.ii.186). Here, Columbo is usurping the king’s role as the one responsible for ordering the domestic life of his subjects, especially those closest to his person.
Of the four main characters, Hernando betrays the king the least grievously. Although Columbo accuses him of treason as well as cowardice (II.i.36-7), the king does not appear to treat the general’s outburst as serious (II.iii.1-7) and immediately thereafter Hernando states that he must obey the king’s wishes (II.iii.12).10 After the murder of Alvarez, however, Hernando begins to refer to the king in a less than respectful manner. When it appears that Columbo’s defense of his actions will prove successful, Hernando speaks of the king as charmed by the Cardinal and questions his commitment to justice (III.iii193-95). Shortly thereafter he uses the familiar “thou” instead of the proper “you” in indirectly addressing the king (III.iii.216).11 Once Columbo has been released, Hernando’s contempt for the king grows. He again refers to the king as being enchanted (III.iv.10-11) and becomes the only person in the play to squarely place the blame for a bad decision on the king, rather than on the Cardinal: “[t]he king released Columbo” (IV.i.19). His actions thereafter also constitute affronts to the royal person. As the first Lord notes: “Columbo’s death doth much afflict the king” (V.i.1), and when Hernando kills the Cardinal, despite his claim that the he has done the king a service, the king replies that it is a “bloody service” (V.iii.189). The death of the Cardinal parallels that of Alvarez: in both cases the murder is committed outside of the king’s presence, but he is forced to confront sights that “affrightened and affronted” (III.ii.212). In this light, it is possible to provide a different interpretation of the king’s comment “[s]o impious” (V.iii.194) immediately after Hernando dies. Yearling inserts the stage direction “[To Cardinal]” at this point (Shirley, ed. Yearling 147), and Lawrence shares this opinion (Lawrence 258).12 The case can be made that the king is referring here to the Cardinal’s attempted rape of the Duchess, but in light of the concern with royal justice elsewhere in the play, it can also be read as the king’s repudiation of Hernando’s claim to be acting on his behalf. Such a reading would add another layer of meaning to the king’s closing exclamation: “How much are kings abused by those they take/To royal grace!” (V.iii.293-94). Hernando has indeed been favored by the king in this play, a surprising reception for a soldier dismissed from the field for cowardice. This makes his usurpation of the king’s role as the source of justice all the more abusive.
In this reading of The Cardinal, where revenge is not the central concern of the play but rather a signifier of the departures of the main characters from their proper reverence towards the monarch, Alvarez takes on a much more important role. If the play is read a simple revenge tragedy, his main function is to be the victim of the first killing whose death spawns the convoluted cycle of revenge and counter-revenge. As such, he is a minor character, the equivalent of Hamlet’s father or Don Andrea, “too empty to interest us for long” (Shirley, ed. Yearling 25). When he is read with his attitude towards the king in mind, however, he takes on a new level of interest. In both of his major speeches, he expresses gratitude and reverence towards the king. In I.ii, he cites Rosaura’s nobility and closeness to the king since birth and Columbo’s status as court favorite, contrasted to the recent attention the king has paid him, as sufficient reason to surrender his own love for the Duchess at the royal behest. Here the king is seen as a sort of benevolent patriarch, one who has “pleased to cast a beam, which was not meant/ To make [Alvarez] proud, but wisely to direct/And light me to safety” (I.i.189-91). When he is speaking directly to the king about Rosaura, he cites “her happiness and [the king’s] election” (II.iii.23) as equal reasons why he is willing to forego his love. Here, Alvarez shows himself to be a loyal subject, fully aware that his desires must be subservient to the royal will. His murder is thus the one true catastrophe of the play: while the other major characters suffer the necessary consequences of their betrayals of the king, Alvarez dies the undeserved death of an innocent. His death is the central tragedy of The Cardinal.
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