Three Ladies of London unquestionably bears a relation to " pedagogy " but the precise form of that relation is elusive. When " pedagogy " is deployed in connection with early modern drama it usually takes us straightaway into the...
moreThree Ladies of London unquestionably bears a relation to " pedagogy " but the precise form of that relation is elusive. When " pedagogy " is deployed in connection with early modern drama it usually takes us straightaway into the humanist grammar school. To the extent that the grammar school trained boys as actors as well as rhetoricians, developing the skills of some performers and the connoisseurship of audiences, then all plays in the period have some relation to humanist pedagogy, even those such as Three Ladies that belong so clearly to the vernacular morality tradition. Moreover, because The Three Ladies of London claims didactic intent, the title page of the 1592 quarto extolling it as a " perfect patterne for all estates to looke into, and a worke right worthie to be marked, " it arguably bears some relation to the catechistical aspect of humanist pedagogy as well. But these are tenuous connections. Despite copious lip service, catechesis in fact received much less attention in the grammar school than did the training in classical rhetoric and poetics that produced the eloquence, bearing and modes of cognition of Christian gentlemen that would distinguish them from Christian men and women more generally. And, as is frequently observed, this training served a view of human nature and experience that did not align perfectly with Christian doctrine in any of its sectarian manifestations, even as it sustained ecclesiastical learning. But the play's didacticism is not exactly doctrinal in its focus either, or at least not in the way that the didacticism of morality plays is preoccupied with soteriological matters. In fact, as I shall argue, if there are lessons to be learned from The Three Ladies they are lessons that humanist training may have also inadvertently imparted to its pupils. The relation The Three Ladies of London bears to pedagogy lies in the interplay between its didactic intent and the inescapable effects of humanist training on the subculture of the commercial stage. In this paper my aim is to distinguish some of the features If we take " pedagogy " to refer specifically to the practices, effects, and beliefs associated with humanist education, then it might make more sense to invoke The Three Ladies as an example of what that education disrupted. For example Ruth Lunney argues that Robert Wilson's play trades in ways of seeing which the plays of Christopher Marlowe, that product of humanist pedagogy, profoundly challenged. Its allegory merely asks recognition from its audience, the recall of a familiar meaning, while, Lunney asserts, Marlowe's plays present audiences with characters whose " perceptions…are distorted by the intensity of an inner conflict, " demanding that audiences recognize idiosyncratic states of mind (59). As Lynn Enterline has recently demonstrated, this attention to minds under the influence of the passions can be traced directly to the practices of English grammar schools and particularly to the exercises in prosopopeia prescribed in Aphthonius's Progymnasmata that led English school boys to impersonate lamenting Didos and weeping Niobes. But if it is possible to ascribe the Marlovian departure from the theatrical values of Wilson's play at least in part to grammar school pedagogy, the reverse does not follow: that the theatrical values of Wilson's play do not participate in the styles and goals of humanist pedagogy. We know nothing about Robert Wilson's own education. Francis Mere's praises the player Wilson (who, let's assume, is the playwright Wilson) for both " learning and extemporal wit " , and compares him to Tarleton, thereby defeating any easy categorization of him as a representative of classical or popular tradition.
