Rice University

Autolycus' Trumpery
Author(s): David Kaula
Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 16, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean
Drama (Spring, 1976), pp. 287-303
Published by: Rice University
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Autolycus' Trumpery
DA VID KA ULA
Autolycus, the entertaining rogue who
appears as part of the Bohemian scene in The Winter's Tale, is a
character with as many sides as the "many knavish professions" he
has run through since he was whipped out of court and lost his job as
servant to Prince Florizel. In the latter part of the play he wears three
different disguises and adroitly acts out several roles, as singing jester,
vagabond, peddler, cutpurse, and courtier. From one standpoint his
importance to the play is minimal, since his only contribution to the
plot is to get the old Shepherd and his son on board Florizel's ship
with the "fardel" containing the crucial evidence of Perdita's
identity. But he also serves the more general dramatic function of
ushering in the festive atmosphere of the Bohemian setting with his
songs of daffodils, doxies, and the pleasures of springtime, and of
providing a realistic counterpoise to the lyrical and mythological
pastoralism of the sheep-shearing scene. The sources from which
Shakespeare created Autolycus seem to be as diverse as the roles he
makes him perform. As Autolycus himself explains, he owes his name
and his character as a "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" to
Autolycus the son of Mercury, whom Ovid in the Metamorphoses
describes as "such a fellow as in theft and filching had no peere."'
Among his other possible progenitors are the vice of the Tudor
interludes, such picaresque heroes as Lazarillo de Tormes and
Nashe's Jack Wilton, and the petty thieves and con-men of the coney-
catching pamphlets.2
What I wish to consider here is yet another element in Autolycus'
composition, one which has not been identified before and which
may throw further light on his significance in the play. It emerges
most clearly in his soliloquy in the sheep-shearing scene after he has
sold all his peddler's wares to the gullible shepherds and "picked and
cut most of their festival purses": "I have sold all my trumpery: not a
counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book,
'Quoted in The Winter's Tale, New Arden edition by J. H. P. Pafford (London,
1963), p. 165. The translation is Golding's.
2See Winter's Tale, New Arden edition, pp. xxxiv-xxxv, lxxix-lxxxi, and Kenneth
Muir, Shakespeare's Sources (London, 1957), pp. 248-249.
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288 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my
pack from fasting. They throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets
had been hallowed, and brought a benediction to the buyer . . ."
(IV.iv.600-605).3 This characterization of Autolycus' wares as
"hallowed" trinkets is anticipated in the lines of the servant who
announces his arrival at the festival: "He hath ribbons of all the colors
i' th' rainbow . . . inkles, caddises, cambrics, lawns. Why, he sings em'
over, as if they were gods or goddesses; you would think a smock were
a she-angel, he so chants to the sleevehand, and the work about the
square on't" (IV.iv.205-212). The sacred power Autolycus injects into
his wares is suggested as well by his Orpheus-like ability to mesmerize
his customers with his songs and make them part with their money.
He sings his ballads as if "all men's ears grew to his tunes" (IV.iv. 186);
the ballad he shows to the Clown "so drew the rest of the herd to me
that all their other senses stuck in ears" (IV.iv.612-613). Such
implications also appear in the word "trumpery," which Shake-
speare uses here for the first time in his plays and employs only once
again, in The Tempest, where he applies it to the glittering apparel
which fatally diverts Trinculo and Stephano from their plot to
murder Prospero (IV.i. 186). The Oxford English Dictionary cites
Autolycus' line, "I have sold all my trumpery," to illustrate one of its
definitions of the term: "worthless stuff, trash, rubbish" (2.a). It
provides another definiton, however, which in the context seems
more appropriate: "Applied contemptuously to religious practices,
ceremonies, omaments, etc. regarded as idle or superstitious" (2.c)-a
definition supported by examples from three sixteenth-century
Protestant writers, and one from Paradise Lost (III.475). Another
term Autolycus applies to his wares, his hallowed "trinkets," could
have the same connotations in Elizabethan usage: "Applied esp. to
the decorations of worship, and to religious rites, ceremonies, beliefs,
etc. which the speaker thinks vain or trivial" (sb.'3)-a definition
likewise illustrated by several examples from Protestant writers.
In his note on the word "hallowed" in the New Arden edition of
The Winter's Tale, J. H. P. Pafford remarks that it means "made
sacred-as by being touched against some relic or blessed by a church
dignitary. Dr. [Harold] Brooks suggests that this and the reference to
'benediction' associates the comic cheat Autolycus with that other
traditional comic cheat on the pre-Shakespearian stage-the
Pardoner." Pafford then lists some Tudor moralities in which this
type is satirized.4 What Pafford's note and the definitions in the OED
3Quotations from The Winter's Tale are taken from the Signet edition by Frank
Kermode (New York, 1963).
4Winter's Tale, New Arden edition, p. 123.
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DA VID KA ULA 289
imply, but do not state, is that the terminology Autolycus applies to
his wares belongs to the verbal arsenal of anti-Catholic polemical
writing in Reformation England. Again and again such words as
"trumpery" and "trinkets" appear in the Protestant diatribes against
what were considered the mercenary and idolatrous practices of
selling indulgences, crucifixes, rosaries, medals, candles, and other
devotional objects. After the accession of Elizabeth such practices
were illegal in England, of course, but they were still prevalent
enough in the Catholic underground to attract the special attention
of the authorities. Thus in response to the papal bull of excommuni-
cation issued against Queen Elizabeth in 1570, the government the
following year enacted a statute which prohibited, among other
things, the importation into England of
any token or tokens, thing or things, called by the name of an
Agnus Dei, or any crosses, pictures, beads or suchlike vain
and superstitious things from the bishop or see of Rome ...
which said Agnus Dei is used to be especially hallowed and
consecrated, as it is termed, by the said bishop in his own
person, and the said crosses, pictures, beads and suchlike
superstitious things be also hallowed either by the said
bishop or by others having power or pretending to have
power for the same....5
In describing such items the Protestant writers seem to be especially
addicted to the word "trumpery," probably because, through its
derivation from tromperie, it suggests deception or trickery. They
also habitually produce Autolycus-like lists of such wares. Thus in A
declaration of egregious popish impostures, a pamphlet Shakespeare
consulted in writing King Lear,6 Samuel Harsnet denounces "craftie
priests, and leacherous Friers" who "enritch their purses, by selling
their Pope-trumpery (as Medals, agnus dei, Blessed beades, holy
water, halowed Crosses, periapts, amulets, smocks of proofe, and
such) at a good rate." Harsnet also uses "trinkets" in this sense when
he fulminates against "all the trinkets, toyes, & pedlars ware in the
Popes holy budget."7 In attacking the selling of pardons and
indulgences, William Tedder, a recanted Catholic priest, claims that
5"An Act against the bringing in and putting in execution of bulls and other
instruments from the see of Rome" (13 Eliz. I, c.2), in G. R. Elton, The Tudor
Constitution (Cambridge, 1965), p. 421. An Agnus Dei is a small wax medallion
stamped with the figure of a lamb bearing a cross.
6See Kenneth Muir, "Samuel Harsnett and King Lear," Review of English Studies,
N.S., 2 (1951), 11-21, and Shakespeare's Sources, pp. 147-161.
7A declaration of egregious popish impostures (1603), pp. 137-138, 125.
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290 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
"it is scant possible to get these great Indulgences, but by wearing a
paire of Beades, or a Chaine, Medall, Crucifixe, Picture, Agnus Dei,
or such like tromperie."8 In his sermons on the Book of Revelation
George Gifford identifies the "merchants" who serve the Whore of
Babylon (Rev. 18:3) as Catholic priests, who are "known by their
wares, euen popish marchants, euen all that made gaine of the trash
and trumperies which were solde very deere in the poperie, by which
men sought helpe for their soules."9 Yet another example appears in
an anti-papal satire entitled The popes parliament, where John Mayo
displays "a whole packe of Romish trumperies, and Antichristian
illusions," and where he has the Pope declare: "Are all our
ornaments, orders, and ceremonies, but toies, trash, and trumperies?
all our Saints and pictures, but dumbe stockes and foolerie?"10
As Autolycus is repeatedly spoken of as a "peddler" with his
"pack" of "wares," so another Protestant writer, Francis Bunny,
employs the same terminology in condemning the traffic in
devotional objects:
And besides such pedlary ware, Agnus dei, blessed graines,
and such paltry stuffe, sent abroad in great packs into all
places to abuse the world, are thought to haue many vertues,
and to be of great efficacie for many good purposes: But I pray
you my Masters of Rome, when did S. Peter bestow his time
making such trifles, or in packing vp such wares (to sell vnto
Christians all Christendome ouer) as it were in pedlers
packs?"I
Another pamphlet which uses such language and seems especially
appropriate to Autolycus is one written by the Anglican minister
John Rhodes and published in 1602 under the title, An answere to a
8The recantations as they were seuerallie pronounced by Wylliam Tedder and
Anthony Tyrrel (1588), p. 20. In the Folio textof The Winter's Tale the word is likewise
spelled "tromperie," which makes its derivation from tromperie more obvious.
9Sermons vpon the whole booke of the Revelation (1596), p. 352.
'0The popes parliament (1591), sig. Aiiii, p. 3. Some other writers who use
'trumpery" in the anti-Catholic sense are Spenser, who refers to "popishe trumperie"
in A View of the Present State
of
Ireland, ed. W. L. Renwick (London, 1934), p. 1 10; Jan
vander Noot: "their too too muche knowne trumperies, and lack an Apes plays" (A
theatre . . . of voluptuous worldlings, tr. T. Roest [1569], f. 44V); John Racster: "The
inuocation of Saints, praier for the dead, or any such trumpery" (WWilliam A labasters
seven motives [1598], f.
8v); and George Downame: "innumerable traditions,
superstitions, trumperies and fooleries" (A treatiseconcerningAntichrist [1603], p.97).
See also E. K.'s note to the May eclogue of Spenser's Shepheardes Calender, and D.
Douglas Waters' "Spenser and Symbolic Witchcraft in The Shepheardes Calender,"
SEL, 14 (1974), 3-15.
"A comparison betweene the auncient fayth of the Romans, and the new Romish
religion (1595), p. 76.
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DA VID KA ULA 291
Romish rime. At the beginning Rhodes explains that he took part in a
search in which certain Catholic items were discovered, including a
"Toy in Rime, entituled, A proper new Ballad, wherein are certaine
Catholike questions ... to the Protestant." He then tells us his reason
for writing the pamphlet:
onely of zeale to the trueth, and of loue to such simple soules,
as might be snared with such pretty bayts as this Ballad is, I
haue taken a little paynes in answering the same as well as I
could.... I am perswaded, there are many such Pamphlets,
together with other like Romish wares, that are sent abroad
among the common people, both Protestants and Papists in
London and in the countrey, & that, by certain women
Brokers and Pedlers (as of late in Staffordshire there was) who
with baskets on their armes, shal come and offer you other
wares vnder a colour, and so sell you these, where they see and
know any likelyhood to vtter them.... vnder the habit of
such, many young Iesuites, and olde Masse-priests range
abroad, and drawe disciples after them.'2
From this it would appear that the "peddling " of such wares was
carried on in a more than metaphorical sense. As Rhodes refers to the
ballad as a "pretty bayt" to ensnare "simple soules," so Autolycus
uses his ballads to captivate the herd of simple shepherds. In the
central portion of the pamphlet Rhodes reproduces the Catholic
ballad, after each stanza giving his rebuttal in a stanza of his own. At
the end he speaks of it as an example of "trumpery" and produces the
usual Autolycus-like catalogue: "My chiefest purpose herein was,
that the simple and ignorant might haue benefit thereby, whom
Papists abuse by sending vnto them, such like trumpery, by Popish
pedlers.... Their Popes wares I call these things: Pardons, Agnus
Deies, Beades, holy Candels, Paxes, Crosses, Crucifixes, with sundrie
sorts of bookes. One other
pamphlet
in this vein worth
noticing
is a translation from the French of Jean Chassanion, published in
1604 under the title: The merchandises of popish priests. Laying open
to the world, how cunningly they cheate and abuse poore people,
with theyr false, deceitfull, and counterfeit wares. Adopting the
metaphor of Catholic priests as the "merchants" who serve the Whore
of Babylon, Chassanion dwells at length on the "cunning sleights"
and "queint and dexterious" methods by which they lure their
customers into buying their counterfeit wares, which he inevitably
refers to as "trumpery": "Is it not an extraordinarie aptitude, to sell
'2An answere to a Romish rime (1602), sig. A2.
'3An answere to a Romish rime, sig. FlV.
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292 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
well, and in selling, to be well payd, and that the buyer (finally) shall
haue nothing at all, but the meere sight of his wares? . . . these men,
like to luglers or Mummers, are deeply skild in this kinde of dealing,
and know very readily, to sell, & resell the sole sight of their trump-
ery..'I Although Autolycus does not practise the precise kind of
fraud described here-that of selling the mere sight of his wares
without the substance-he does suggest the counterfeit nature of
some of them when he says: "I have sold all my trumpery: not a
counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass . to keep my pack from
fasting."
All these analogies appear to indicate that one of Autolycus' several
roles is that of the cunning merchant of popish wares. Shakespeare
may be alerting his audience that he represents more than an ordinary
peddler when, just before he first appears singing his wares, the
Clown and Perdita make these enigmatic comments:
Clown. You have of these peddlers that have more in them
than you'd think, sister.
Perdita. Ay, good brother, or go about to think. (IV.iv.216-
218)
As this kind of merchant Autolycus would be a vehicle for satirizing
the well-publicized activities of the missionary priests in England, or
those who, under the habit of peddlers, "range abroad, and drawe
disciples after them." Although unusual in Shakespeare's plays, such
anti-Catholic satire would not be entirely unique to The Winter's
Tale, since Shakespeare had already done something like this in
Macbeth, where he has the drunken Porter aim some gibes at the
Jesuit technique of equivocation.'5 In that play the satire has a more
than limited topical interest since equivocation appears in various
guises throughout the play and is closely linked to the moral
predicament of its hero. The question to ask about Autolycus is
whether his "popish" associations likewise serve a broader
function-whether they have a significant relationship to other
matters presented in the sheep-shearing scene and other parts of the
play.
One of the main purposes of the sheep-shearing scene is to display
Perdita and Florizel and their ardent love for each other, a love which
is to play such an important part
in retrieving Leontes from the
wintry condition of penance in which he has existed since the
"The merchandises of popish priests (1604), sig. C3v.
"See Henry N. Paul, The Royal Play of Macbeth (New York, 1950), pp. 237-245, and
Macbeth, New Arden edition by Kenneth Muir (London, 1964), pp. xvi-xix.
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DA VID KA ULA 293
supposed death of Hermione and in bringing about the happy
reconciliations of the last two scenes. Perdita is a special focus of
attention in the scene, as her beauty, innocence, anid generosity
inspire the admiration of nearly all who see her, even the hostile
Polixenes. From one standpoint, Autolycus seems to be a counterpart
to Perdita, for as she dresses up as Flora, distributes flowers, and
displays a spring-like vitality, so he earlier sings of (laffodils, the
coming in of the "sweet o' th' year," and the reviving of the red blood
after winter. In examining the two characters more closely, however,
we can see that the differences between them are more plentiful and
emphatic than the similarities. Perdita herself shows that she is
dubious of Autolycus, and thereby implies a potential antagonism
between them, when she says shortly before he is to appear:
"Forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in's tunes"
(IV.iv.215). Later Florizel indicates what she thinks of the "'knacks"
his father urges him to buy for her from the "peddler's silken
treasury": "She prizes not such trifles as these are" (IV.iv.361). WVhat
she does prize are the less material "gifts" locked up in Florizel's
heart. On the other side, Autolycus shows how little he thinks of
Perdita and her charms in the only comment he makes about her in
the play. To him she is merely the "clog" at Florizel's heels
(IV.iv.684).
The contrasts between the two characters are indeed several and
follow a consistent pattern. If Autolycus deals in manufactured wares
such as silks, beads, and bugle-bracelets, Perdita distributes such
natural things as flowers and sends her brother to market to buy fruits
and spices. While he sells trinkets which artificially enhance female
beauty, she dislikes "painting" both in the flower garden and the
boudoir (IV.iv. 101). While he is forever contriving how to get money
through picking pockets, cutting purses, and selling his trumpery,
she freely offers her flowers, and the wealth she is associated with is
not ordinary money but "fairy gold" (III.iii.122). While he proceeds
through a series of disguises to deceive his victims, she is embarrassed
by being "pranked up" as a goddess and wishes to appear only in her
true guise as a "poor lowly maid" (IV.iv.9-10). While he sings of
tumbling with his "aunts" in the hay and peddles bawdy ballads with
refrains like "Jump her, and thump her," she and Florizel are models
of chaste (though certainly not tepid) love. If we were looking for
Freudian meanings we might find them in Autolycus' trick of cutting
the shepherds' purses. As he himself remarks, they were so entranced
with his songs "'twas nothing to geld a codpiece of a purse"
(IV.iv.615). Far from hampering the forces of generation, Perdita on
the other hand is given the aspect of a fertility goddess through her
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294 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
association with Flora and Proserpina, and she also shows her
willingness to "breed" with Florizel (IV.iv.103).
The general distinction between Autolycus and Perdita, then,
seems to be one between the artificial and the natural, the predatory
and the charitable, the licentious and the chaste. But there is more to
the contrast than this. Shortly before Autolycus enters the scene
Perdita is praised by the other characters for her singing, dancing, and
other accomplishments, for doing everything "featly." Florizel tells
her in his "wave o' th' sea" speech: "when you sing,/ I'd have you buy
and sell so; so give alms,/ Pray so . . ." (IV.iv.137-139). After this,
Autolycus and his particular talents are announced: his singing so
that "all men's ears grew to his tunes," his chanting over his wares as
if "they were gods and goddesses." Clearly, as the religious
connotations of these lines suggest, Shakespeare is asking us to
compare the two characters in terms of their different modes of
singing and praying, the types of spirituality they represent. It is in
terms of this contrast that Autolycus' "popish" associations assume a
broader significance. In chanting over his wares as if they were "gods
and goddesses" or in "hallowing" his trinkets so that they appear to
convey a "benediction," Autolycus is turning them into objects of
idolatry. As he himself observes, what he appeals to in his selling
techniques is the senses of his customers, their gullible eyes and ears,
which apprehend only the external appearance of things, in contrast
to genuine faith, which focuses on the invisible spiritual reality, the
"euidence of things which are not sene" (Heb. 1: :1).16 In the anti-
Catholic polemics of the Elizabethan period "Catholicism" is treated
as virtually synonymous with "idolatry," since it was thought to
depend for its appeal on the "glittering shew of outward things,'
"1
on
ceremonies, images, relics, chanting, or everything summed up by the
word "trumpery.
" In the official Elizabethan homily Against perill of
idolatrie, and superfluous decking of churches, an extended diatribe
against the "lewde paynting, gilding, and clothing of Idoles and
Images," the Catholic Church is equated with the Whore of Babylon,
who "doeth (after the custome of ... harlots) paint her selfe, and decke
and tyre her selfe with gold, pearle, stone, and all kinde of pretious
iewells, that she shining with the outward beauty and glory of them,
may please the foolish fantasie of fonde louers, and so entise them to
spirituall fornication with her."'8 As a purveryor of artificial aids to
'6Biblical quotations here are taken from the Geneva-Tomson Bible (ed. 1599).
'7Gifford, Sermons vpon Revelation, p. 326.
18Certaine sermons or homilies appointed to be read in churches, ed. Mary Ellen
Rickey and Thomas B. Stroup (Gainesville, Fla., 1968), Second Tome, p. 69. There are
many other such descriptions of the bejewelled and "painted" Whore of Babylon in the
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DA VID KA ULA 295
female beauty, Autolycus deals in this kind of external decoration or
"painting"-the "painting" which Perdita, in her argument with
Polixenes over the cultivation of flowers, vigorously rejects:
I'll not put
The dibble in earth, to set one slip of them;
No more than were I painted, I would wish
This youth should say 'twere well, and only therefore
Desire to breed by me. (IV.iv.99-103)
As the homily piously observes that "vsually spiritually and carnall
Fornication goe together,"'9 so Autolycus' connection with "spiritu-
all fornication" is implied by his promiscuous affairs with his
"aunts" and "drabs" and his bawdy ballads. One effect he has on his
customers is to stimulate bawdy chatter between the Clown and his
two girl friends. Consistent with this is his metaphorical gelding of
the shepherds, his encouraging a licentiousness among them which is
actually a form of barrenness, the antithesis of Perdita's fecundity.20
A common practice in the Protestant polemics is to compare the
Whore of Babylon with her opposite, the Bride of Christ or true
church, represented by the Bride of the Lamb in Revelation (19:7,
21:2) and the Bride in the Song of Solomon.2' Thus after describing
the glittering Whore in the passage quoted above, the homily Against
idolatrie delineates the Bride:
anti-Catholic polemics (Spenser's Duessa comes to mind, "Purfled with gold and
pearle of rich assay" [FQ Iii. 13]). Some other examples appear in Gifford, Sermons
vpon Revelation, pp. 325-326, and Robert Cawdrey, A treasvrie or store-hovse of
similies (1600), pp. 501-502.
19Certaine sermons, p. 19. The homily elaborates on the locus classicus of this idea,
the attack on idolaters in the first chapter of Romans.
20The connection between idolatry and barrenness is indicated by Samuel Gardiner
in a passage on the Whore of Babylon: "for as the open strumpet, who without any
difference, admitteth all companions alike that come vnto her, is alwaies barren, and
without fruite of wombe: So the Romish strumpet admitting into the lappe and
bosome of the Church, a confused chaos of very rascall rudiments [i.e., traditions and
ceremonies], no maruaile it is that they [Catholics]
are barren of grace, and the
immortall seede of Gods most holy word can not regenerate and better their affections"
(A pearle of price [1600], pp. 8-9). We notice that fruits and seeds, including "rice,"
figure prominently in the shopping list Perdita gives to her brother (IV.iii.37 ff.), the
money for which Autolycus filches. These together with her flowers are the things she
plans to distribute at the festival, in contrast to Autolycus' fancy trinkets.
21John Bale refers to the two figures in the title of his commentary on Revelation,
The Image of Both Churches (1545), in Selected Works, ed. Henry Christmas for the
Parker Society (Cambridge, 1849). Such a comparison is standard procedure in all the
Elizabethan commentaries on Revelation.
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296 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
Whereas on the contrary part, the true Church of GOD, as a
chaste matron, espoused (as the Scripture teacheth) to one
husband, our Sauiour lesus Christ, whom alone shee is
content onely to please and serue, and looketh not to delight
the eyes or phantasies of any other strange louers, or wooers is
content with her naturall adornments, not doubting by such
sincere simplicitie, best to please him, who can well skill of
the difference betweene a painted visage, and true naturall
beauty.22
Perdita is similarly distinguished by her fidelity, simplicity, and
unpainted natural beauty, and indeed the play affords several
indications that her betrothal to Florizel is meant to represent, on one
level of symbolism, the union between Christ and his Bride. Lest this
seem a desperate exercise in allegory-hunting, it is well to recall that
the analogy between human matrimony and the union between
Christ and the church was an Elizabethan commonplace, and that
one was often interpreted in terms of the other. It is stated both in the
Bible- 'Husbands, loue your wiues, euen as Christ loued the
Church" (Eph. 5:25)-and in the marriage service of the Booke of
Common Prayer, which begins with the pronouncement that "holy
Matrimonie . . . is an honorable estate, instituted of God in paradise,
in the time of mans innocencie, signifying vnto vs the mysticall vnion
that is betwixt Christ and his Church." Shakespeare first intimates
the analogy when Perdita and Florizel appear at the beginning of the
sheep-shearing scene, when she says:
Your high self,
The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured
With a swain's wearing; and me, poor lowly maid,
Most goddesslike pranked up. (IV.iv.7-10)
Florizel has descended from his exalted level to appear in the guise of
a shepherd, a notion he further accentuates when he compares
himself to the gods who humbled "their deities to love," including
"Golden Apollo," who, like himself, became a "poor humble swain"
(IV.iv.25-31). Perdita and Florizel are stating in the language of
pastoral romance and pagan mythology what can be said with equal
validity of Christ: his humbling his deity to love and adopting the
guise of a shepherd. If the analogy between Christ and the licentious
gods seems dubious, Florizel himself makes the crucial distinction
when he claims that his love is more chaste than theirs:
22Certaine sermons, p. 69.
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DA VID KA ULA 297
Their transformations
Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,
Nor in a way so chaste.... (IV.iv.31-33)
Later in the scene, when Polixenes reveals himself and disrupts the
betrothal ceremony, he applies courtly and dynastic values rather
than Christian ones when he rebukes Florizel for presuming to play
the shepherd, and he also reverses God's acknowledgement of his son:
"This is my beloued Sonne, in whome I am wel pleased" (Matt. 3:17):
Mark your divorce, young sir,
Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base
To be acknowledged. Thou, a scepter's heir,
That thus affect'st a sheep-hook! (IV.iv.421-424)
Despite the paternal displeasure, however, Florizel remains true to his
devotion and is "nothing altered": "What I was, I am" (IV.iv.468)-
again like Christ, who is the "same yesterday, and to day, and for
euer" (Heb. 13:8).
As for Perdita, in her first lines she describes herself as following a
course opposite to Florizel's descent from high to low: "and me, poor
lowly maid,/ Most goddesslike pranked up." Perdita as a "poor lowly
maid" exalted to the level of the divine suggests another figure
traditionally equated with the Bride of Christ, the Virgin Mary,
specifically as she speaks of herself in the Magnificat: "For he hath
looked on the lowlinesse of his handmaiden.... He hath ... exalted
the lowly" (Luke 1:48, 52).23 Perdita is called a "goddess" again when
she appears before Leontes (V.i.131), and is thus distinguished from
the sham "gods and goddesses" into which Autolycus converts his
trinkets. Several other superlatives are applied to her: Florizel
"prizes" her more than all worldly honors and possessions (IV.iv.376-
380); she is the "fairest" princess, the "most peerless piece of earth," a
"woman/ Worth more than any man" and the "rarest of all women,"
a "paragon" (V.i.87, 94, 111-112, 153). This terminology
suggests
the
various biblical accounts of the Bride of Christ as a creature of
incomparable beauty and worth, the paragon of creation, such as the
23This reading is from the Bishops' Bible, which comes somewhat closer to "poor
lowly maid" than the Geneva-Tomson, 'For hee hath looked on the poore degree of his
seruant," though elements of both appear in Perdita's phrase. In traditional iconology
Mary and the Bride of Christ are fused in the
figure
of the Bride in the Song of Solomon.
Perhaps the fruits, spices, and flowers associated with Perdita are meant to suggest the
same items which figure so prominently in the Song. One of the emblems of the Bride,
the "garden inclosed" (Cant. 4:12), would be equivalent to the "rural garden" with
which Perdita is implicitly identified as its choicest flower (IV.iv.84).
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298 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
Bride in the Song of Solomon: the "fairest among women" (Cant.
5:9); the pearl of great price or heavenly kingdom, more valuable than
all worldly treasure (Matt. 13:45-46); and the Bride of the Lamb or
New Jersusalem in Revelation, whose "shining was like a stone most
precious" (Rev. 21:1 1). Leontes' servant, who is responsible for much
of this eulogizing of Perdita, also says of her:
This is a creature,
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else; make proselytes
Of who she but bid follow.
(V.i.106-109)
Again a distinction is implied between the kind of worship Perdita
inspires and the enchantment Autolycus exercises over the "herd"
who follow him. If Perdita and Florizel beget "wonder" (V.i. 133), and
if the discovery of her identity produces "admiration" in the
beholders (V.ii. 12), what Autolycus lures his customers into admiring
is a mere illusion: "No hearing, no feeling, but my sir's song, and
admiring the nothing of it" (IV.iv.616-618).24
From the Protestant standpoint, the Bride of Christ was thought to
signify the true Christian church, recently resurrected by the
Reformers after several centuries of obscurity and persecution during
the period of papal darkness. Jewel maintains that the new Church of
England is not actually new but a restoration of the primitive church
of the apostles and early fathers, a "pure virgin, spotted as yet with no
idolatry nor with any foul or shameful fault," in contrast to the
corrupted Catholic Church, the "most gorgeous harlot Babylon. "25 If
Perdita is intended to shadow forth the Bride of Christ, then she
would logically represent this true "Protestant" church as opposed to
the idolatrous "Catholic" church represented by Autolycus, much as
Una and Duessa and her accomplice Archimago are contrasted in
these ecclesiastical terms in Book I of The Faerie Queene.26 Later in
24A parallel to the sort of "admiration" Autolycus engenders appears in Harsnet's
Declaration. In attacking a group of Catholic exorcists, Harsnet claims that their aim
was "by playing ouer all the trinkets, toyes, & pedlars ware of the Popes holy budget...
to aduance the credit, of the Catholique church, and to bring into admiration theyr
owne persons, and priestly power, that so they might catch the poore Gudgins, they
fished so industriously for" (p. 125). It is while the shepherds are "admiring" the song
that Autolycus picks and cuts their purses.
25John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England, tr. Ann Bacon (1564), ed. J. E.
Booty (Ithaca, N. Y., 1963), pp. 121, 127.
26For Spenser's use of this symbolism see Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution
of "The Faerie Queene" (Chicago, 1942), pp. 108-123; D. Douglas Waters, Duessa as
Theological Satire (Columbia, Mo., 1970); and John Erskine Hankins, Source and
Meaning in Spenser's Allegory (Oxford, 1971), pp. 99-119.
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the sheep-shearing scene something rather curious happens to
Perdita, however, when Polixenes removes his disguise and tries to
prevent the betrothal from taking place. Reversing his earlier
adulation of Perdita as the "prettiest low-born lass that ever/ Ran on
the greensward" (IV.iv.156-157), he speaks of her scornfully as a
"fresh piece/ Of excellent witchcraft," "this knack," and an
"enchantment,/ Worthy enough a herdsman" (IV.iv.426-427, 432,
438-439). What Polixenes is doing is implicitly identifying Perdita
with what he himself a little earlier called the cheap "knacks" in
Autolycus' pack (IV.iv.353), the gaudy "trifles" she herself rejects, the
trumpery with which Autolycus enchants the "herd."27 Two of the
terms he applies to her, "witchcraft" and "enchantment," often occur
in the anti-Catholic polemics, the Whore of Babylon being one who
deceives all nations with her "inchantements" (Rev. 18:23). William
Perkins accuses the Catholic priesthood of practising "Magicke,
sorcerie, or witchcraft,'28 Cawdrey likewise calls them "Magicians,
Witches, and Sorcerers," 29 and Gifford employs the witchcraft
metaphor when he writes that the Whore of Babylon "hath played the
witch, and by her witchcraft hath bewitched all nations, and seduced
them to commit whoredome with her."30 Like Leontes earlier, who in
his jealous fury transformed the chaste Hermione into a spotted
"adult'ress" and called Paulina a "witch," Polixenes in his paternal
rage is blind to Perdita's true spiritual worth and converts her into her
antithesis.31
After this, to escape the wrath of Polixenes the two lovers disguise
themselves and take to a ship. Florizel changes garments with his
former servant Autolycus, and Perdita is told to "muffle your face"
and "disliken/ The truth of your own seeming" (IV.iv.655-657). Since
Perdita's disguise seems rather superfluous, it may be intended to
have a symbolic function. Perhaps its significance is that, like the
27The word "trifle" is associated with Polixenes' view of Perdita in Leontes' later
remark to Florizel: "I'd beg your precious mistress,/ Which he counts but a trifle"
(V.i.222).
28A reformed Catholike (1598), p. 345.
29Treasvrie of similies, p. 538.
30Sermons vpon Revelation, p. 363. Harsnet also uses the metaphor in the
Declaration, pp. 150-151.
5'A similar conversion appears in Othello, where Iago functions as the evil magician
or Archimago who destroys Othello's faith in Desdemona by transforming her from the
chaste bride into the "cunning whore," the "fair devil" who bewitched him. Hamlet's
mother is another female figure who is transformed, though in her case the conversion
is more than an illusion. Clearly, the theme of the "two images" of the Bride and the
Whore is one to which Shakespeare attached considerable significance. For his
handling of it in another play see my article, "'Mad Idolatry' in Shakespeare's Troilus
and Cressida," Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 15 (1973), 25-38.
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300 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
wandering Una, Perdita must conceal her beauty beneath a veil and
journey in the wilderness, this being the fate of the true church in a
time of spiritual darkness and persecution, or, as the prospering
Autolycus says, a "time when the unjust man doth thrive"
(IV.iv.678).32 Similarly, as Una's final reunion with her parents and
betrothal to Redcrosse are accompanied by allusions to the
presentation of the Bride and her marriage to Christ near the end of
Revelation,33 so the discovery of Perdita's identity is surrounded with
apocalyptic overtones. One of the gentlemen who describe the happy
scene says: "they looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one
destroyed" (V.ii. 15-17)-words which suggest the creation of "a newe
heauen, and a new earth" and the passing away of "the first heauen
and the first earth" (Rev. 21:1). A little later the other Gentleman says:
"The oracle is fulfilled; the King's daughter is found; such a deal of
wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be
able to express it.... This news, which is called true, is so like an old
tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion" (V.ii.24-3 1). We notice
several echoes here of the earlier lines of Father Time when, covering
the sixteen-year gap in the middle of the play, he speaks of Perdita as
now grown in grace
Equal with wondering. What of her ensues
I list not prophesy; but let Time's news
Be known when 'tis brought forth. (IV.i.24-27)
The news Time chooses not to prophesy is finally brought forth in
the fullness of time, just as the unlikely promises of the Old
Testament, that "old tale," are fulfilled by the "good news" of the
coming of the redeemer-news which, however much "wonder" it
causes, is nevertheless "Most true" (V.ii.35). The reference to "ballad-
makers" recalls the mock wonders with which Autolycus amazed the
shepherds in his ballads-wonders he insisted were "Very true"
(IV.iv.268).
321n Una's case, this symbolism is based on the Bride's veil in Cant. 5:7 and the
woman's flight into the wilderness in Rev. 12:6. Perdita and Florizel's comparable
flight into a wilderness is suggested by his lines: "as th' unthought-on accident is guil-
ty/ To what we wildly do, so we profess/ Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies/
Of every wind that blows"; and Camillo's: "a wild dedication of yourselves / To
unpathed waters" (IV.iv.542-545, 570-571). Una is likewise "Long tost with stormes,
and bet with bitter wind," and forced "To wander, where wilde fortune would me lead"
(FQ, I.vii.28, 50). Implicit in the imagery of both passages is the familiar emblem of the
church as a ship "ofte tossed and tourmoyled with outragious stormes and tempestes"
(John Day, in preface to Henry Bullinger, A hzndred sermons vpon the Apocalips
[1561], sig. Aiii).
"See especially FQ, I.xii.22-23, where, with the removal of her veil, Una's "heavenly
beautie" shines forth.
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DA VID KA ULA 301
After displaying his virtuosity as peddler and cutpurse in the sheep-
shearing scene, Autolycus becomes a less interesting and significant
character. Having sold all his wares, he next adopts the disguise of
supercilious courtier, parodying the infuriated Polixenes by telling
the old Shepherd and his son what terrible punishments are in store
for them. At this point he unintentionally contributes to the working
out of the invisible providential design, or the "secret purposes" of
the gods, by getting the two shepherds on board Florizel's ship with
the precious "fardel." Although he ridicules them as "two moles,
these blind ones" (IV.iv.843), he is actually just as blind himself, and
ends up "doing good" despite himself (V.ii.132). Then in Sicily he
finally appears as their social inferior, the recipient of their simple
charity and "gentle" courtesy. Having reverted to his original role as
Florizel's servant, he resumes his proper place within the social order
after his period of vagabondage and trumpery-peddling.
Autolycus' "popish" associations seem to be limited to his
peddler's role, and to try to extend them to his other activities would
be to commit one of the cardinal sins of Shakespeare criticism, the sin
of over-allegorizing. Some of the motifs connected with that role do
come into play again, however, in the final scene, in the events
surrounding the resurrection of Hermione. After leading the
spectators into a chapel, Paulina draws aside a curtain and reveals the
supposedly lifeless statue. She calls it "my poor image," and warns
the enraptured Leontes not to kiss it lest he stain himself with "oily
painting" (V.iii.57, 82). "Image" and "painting" are suggestive
words, both because one of them echoes the "painting" Perdita
rejected in her argument with Polixenes, and because in Elizabethan
usage they are redolent with connotations of idolatry. The homily
Against idolatrie combines the two words when it condemns a "gylte
or painted Idole or Image" and the "lewde paynting, gilding, and
clothing of Idoles and Images.
"34 In the Protestant polemics the
biblical injunctions against the making and worshipping of images
are repeatedly directed against Catholic devotional practices, such as
the setting up of saints' statues in churches. In comparing the ways of
Christ and Antichrist, for instance, Thomas Becon writes that
"Christe in his holie lawe ... forbiddeth to make, sette forthe, or kepe
any Image to be worshipped," whereas "Antichrist saieth, it is lawful
not onely to haue images to sette them vp in Temples, Chapels,
Oratories, &c. but also to worshippe theim, to kneele before theim, to
kisse them, to praie before them, yea, 8c to them."35 Thus Leontes,
34Certaine sermons, pp. 61, 66.
"The actes of Christe and Antichriste (1577), sigs. Ei-EiV. For an attack on saints'
images in particular see Certain sermons, p. 54.
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302 AUTOLYCUS' TRUMPERY
who has come to think of Hermione as "sainted" (V.i.57), must be
warned against kissing her image lest he "stain" himself, and Perdita,
when she kneels before the statue, prays to it, and makes a move to kiss
it, is aware of performing what might be seen as "superstitious"
actions:
And give me leave,
And do not say 'tis superstition that
I kneel, and then implore her blessing. Lady,
Dear queen, that ended when I but began,
Give me that hand of yours to kiss. (V.iii.42-46)
Like Leontes, Perdita must be warned against kissing the statue
because it is freshly painted, the "color's/ Not dry" (V.iii.47). Their
attitude of gazing wonder at the sight of the statue, while certainly
understandable and dramatically effective, bears a resemblance to the
mindless "admiration" of Autolycus' customers in listening to his
tunes. As Autolycus says of the latter, "No hearing, no feeling, but my
sir's song, and admiring the nothing of it," so Leontes observes of
himself and Perdita:
I am asham'd; does not the stone rebuke me
For being more stone than it? 0 royal piece!
There's magic in thy majesty, which has
My evils conjured to remembrance, and
From my admiring daughter took the spirits,
Standing like stone with thee. (V.iii.37-42)
The implication is that both sets of admirers have through their
ecstasy become like dumb idols themselves- "idoles ... of stone, and
of wood, which neither can see, neither heare, nor goe" (Rev. 9:20).
The important difference is, of course, that Leontes and Perdita are
fully aware of what they are doing and comment on their attitudes,
and what they are admiring is much more than an illusory image or
'"nothing."w36
36Leontes and Perdita's adoration of Hermione's painted image may provide the
explanation for Shakespeare's much-debated choice of "that rare Italian master, Julio
Romano" as its fictitious maker (V.ii. 104). "Romano" is close to "Roman." The Third
Gentleman describes him as having an almost god-like creative power: "had he himself
eternity and could put breath into his work, [he] would beguile Nature of her custom,
so perfectly he is her ape"; and Paulina: "her dead likeness I do well believe/ Excels
whatever yet you looked upon,/ Or hand of man hath done" (V.iii. 15-17). According to
the Reformers, this is the kind of power the Pope blasphemously claimed for himself:
"the Pope is said to haue an heauenly power and authority, and therefore also to
chaunge the nature of thinges, by turning the substance of one thing into another. And
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DA VID KA ULA 303
To move them from potentially idolatrous to genuine adoration,
Paulina proceeds to convert image into reality, dead stone into living
flesh. To accomplish this apparent miracle she must depend not on
illicit spells or magical deception but on the spiritual dedication of
the beholders: "It is required/ You do awake your faith" (V.iii.94-95).
As the Reformers would say, it is not the adoration of images or other
outward ceremonies but the strengthening of faith which makes
spiritual regeneration possible. After Hermione descends from her
pedestal, Paulina is then able to tell Perdita to "kneel,/ And pray your
mother's blessing" (V.iii.1 19-120). Such kneeling and praying no
longer smack of idolatry. The blessing Hermione then asks the gods
to bestow on her daughter is a last reminder of the difference between
this kind of spirituality and the sham "benediction" Autolycus sold
with his hallowed trumpery.
University of Western Ontario
of nothing he can make something" (Henry Bullinger, Of the end of the world, tr.
Thomas Potter [? 1575], sig. HiV; Thomas Bell repeats this accusation in The hvnting of
the Romish foxe [ 1598], pp. 3-5). The point the Reformers made about the Pope is the
one implied about Romano, who did not really make Hermione. Such power properly
belongs only to a higher Maker. Shakespeare may have selected Romano because his
first name would also give him "papal" associations, linking him both with Julius
Caesar, whom the Reformers saw as the progenitor of the popes (see Junius' marginal
note to Rev. 7:18 in the Geneva-Tomson Bible), and with one of the more notorious
Renaissance popes, Julius II.
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