‘A Defence of Pretence’ by Indira Ghose review

How do we define ‘pretence’? The obvious answer is that it is an attempt to make something false appear true, or to convince others that we possess a skill or quality that we do not. Surely, then, pretence is an act of incivility. Nobody likes to be duped. Then again, how often is civility itself a pretence? If civility is taught as a means of reinforcing social status, achieving personal goals, or excluding others for our own advancement, it surely begins to resemble a technique of manipulation rather than a moral ideal. Questions such these permeated the early modern print marketplace.

While European notions of civility were rooted in the classical tradition, with Cicero’s De officiis, by the 16th century a thriving industry had emerged devoted to teaching manners and conduct, with such works as Erasmus’ De civilitate morum puerilium and Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano. Ideas of civility were consumed by a wide readership, including playwrights and playgoers, and their influence extended across early modern media. In A Defence of Pretence Indira Ghose argues that the commercial playhouses of Renaissance London were one of the central sites in which these cultural ideas were explored, tested, and contested.

Ghose’s book is an ambitious project, which sets out to recover the layered historical meanings of ‘civility’ by placing conduct literature in dialogue with early modern drama. Individual chapters examine the cultivation of personal appearance as it appears in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice; manners in several city comedies by Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton; the strategic value of dishonesty in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus; the erosion of social courtesies in Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall; and the social limits of humour in Jonson’s Epicene and Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. At first glance, the subject might ideally seem the province of strictly academic critical analysis, but Ghose’s lucid prose and sensitivity to the social anxieties refracted through these texts make this study unexpectedly relevant for our own fractious times, when ‘civility, we are told, is in crisis’ – as Ghose writes in the book’s opening. The parallels between early modern concerns and contemporary debates about public discourse are hard to miss.

What makes Ghose’s approach distinctive is her insistence that these ambiguities do not make civility a problem to be resolved, but are in fact its central features. Civility, she demonstrates, was (and is) messy, negotiated, and frequently performative. The conduct books Ghose explores offer advice that ranges from the mundane, such as advice against using vulgar humour in polite company, to the vividly comic, such as Giovanni Della Casa’s admonition in his Galateo that ‘when thou hast blowne thy nose, use not to open thy handkercheif, to glare uppon thy snot, as if thou hadst pearles and Rubies fallen from thy braynes’. Those who engage in such abhorrent behaviour, we sense, handicap themselves in front of those they seek to impress. Such moments enliven the study and reinforce Ghose’s argument that civility functioned as a form of social performance. Displays of respect, deference, or affability could be instrumental in advancing self-interest, avoiding conflict, or securing alliances.

While Ghose’s analysis is fascinating, it is not always perfectly executed. The emphasis on conduct literature means that drama often feels like a secondary concern. Chapters typically begin with an extended discussion of courtesy texts before turning to dramatic works. In some cases the chosen play is very relevant to the texts used: in the chapter on Jonson’s Sejanus Ghose reads Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Mind, noting that ‘Wright has been named as the priest who guided Jonson in his conversion to the Catholic faith’, and the Coriolanus chapter explores Thomas North’s 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, which includes a life of Caius Martius Coriolanus. Yet while Ghose promises to ‘read Shakespeare’s Coriolanus together with a number of’ courtesy books, the play is not discussed until over halfway through the chapter, creating an imbalance between contextual material and literary reading.

There are also occasional inaccuracies. Writing of Shakespearean references to the Italian political thinker Machiavelli, Ghose refers to ‘the stage Machiavel, Richard, Duke of Gloucester [the future Richard III], in Henry VI, Part 1 and Part 3’. Richard does not appear in Part 1, making only a brief appearance towards the end of Part 2. More problematic is a claim in the Sejanus chapter that: ‘The Quarto appeared in 1605; on 7 November 1605, two days after the Gunpowder Plot, Jonson, who had attended a dinner hosted by one of the plotters, Robert Catesby, only a few weeks before the attempted coup, was summoned before the Privy Council to defend himself against the charge of “popery and treason”.’ The 1605 warrant was in fact to enlist Jonson’s help in locating ‘a certaine Priest’. Jonson did later claim to have been accused of ‘popery and treason’ by the earl of Northampton over Sejanus, but it is unknown when. Jonson complained in the 1605 edition that he had to edit the text for publication after running into trouble over the original, suggesting that the accusation related to the 1603 performance, not the 1605 printing. While the Gunpowder Plot does not dominate the chapter, this remark risks giving a misleading impression of the play’s reception.

While such issues may be noticeable to some, they do not undermine Ghose’s wider contention that early modern plays were closely entwined with the wider social preoccupation with civility. A Defence of Pretence offers historians of the Renaissance a valuable new perspective on the relationship between social norms, literary culture, and public life. Ghose provides a salutary reminder that civility has never been synonymous with simple politeness. The history of civility is not a straight line towards refinement but a conversation, often contentious, about practice, performance – and the shared artifice that underpins social life.

• A Defence of Pretence: Civility and the Theatre in Early Modern England
  Indira Ghose
  Princeton University Press, 280pp, £84
  Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link)

William David Green is a historian of early modern theatre history and culture.