Thomas Heywood's the Royall King, And the Loyall Subject and the Fall of Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex‪.‬

Many recent studies have portrayed England's early modern theater as a venue carefully monitored by a government suspicious of subversion, but as Paul Yachnin, Leeds Barroll, and others have shown, official stage supervision tended to be inconsistent in both its attention and punishments, (1) Governmental reactions to plays that seemed to allude to the controversial fall of Queen Elizabeth I's Earl Marshal and favorite Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, exemplify this inconsistency. (2) For example, it is true that the Privy Council questioned Shakespeare's company regarding their Richard II performance one day before Essex's revolt on 8 February 1601, Ben Jonson in 1603 for apparent references to the earls fall in his Sejanus, and Samuel Daniel for his Philotas in 1605; still, such actions were hardly as harsh as Jonson's imprisonment in 1597 for The Isle of Dogs and again with George Chapman in 1605 for slurring Scots in Eastward Ho. One early-seventeenth-century play that apparently drew no official attention, despite its portraying an English monarch urged by envious courtiers to destroy an heroic Marshal and thus seeming to mirror a common interpretation of Essex's fall, is Thomas Heywood's The Royall King, and the Loyall Subject. (3) This play has received very little attention from scholars, but examined in conjunction with its historical context and its author's published dramatic philosophy, it offers much instruction regarding at least one dramatist's understanding of the professional theater's social voice. Given the uncertainties of official reaction to controversial plays and playwrights, one wonders why a writer so invested in the theater as Heywood, an actor-sharer in the earl of Worcester's men who would later state in The English Traveller (1633) that he had "either an entire hand or at least a main finger" in over two hundred plays, would risk dramatizing a volatile event like Essex's downfall. But in An Apology for Actors (1612), Heywood reveals his belief that while plays should entertain, they should also teach. Noting that the Greeks knew the instructive potential of plays, Heywood states that they "could by their industry, finde out no neerer or director course to plant humanity and manners in the hearts of the multitude then to instruct them by moralized mysteries, what vices to auoyd, what vertues to embrace; what enormityes to abandon, what ordinances to obserue: whose liues (being for some speciall endowments in former times honoured) they should admire and followe: whose vicious actions (personated in some licentious liuer) they should despise & shunne ..." ([C3.sup.r]). Recognizing that in the sixteenth century, the term emulation could mean identifying another as an exemplar, or possibly even at the same time rival (Rebhorn, 77), this essay will examine how the "moralized mystery" of The Royall King, and the Loyall Subject alters its source to draw energy from anxiety connected with a competitive, destabilizing politics capable of destroying a popular hero like Essex. But the playwright does not simply expose a problem; he proposes a solution through the possibilities of intercession and reconciliation, giving Royall King a happy ending as its unfortunate Marshal's wife and daughters successfully beg for his life. In light of this, the essay will also note connections between (in some cases, highly publicized) attempts by women in Essex's life to intercede with the machinery of justice with those of female characters in Royall King. Finally, this paper will compare the play with other writings by Heywood to see how the message of Royall King fits with his dramatic practice. We will find that Heywood's play teaches its audience to "despise and shun" the "vicious actions" of its emulous courtiers, and to "admire and follow" the virtuous patience of its Marshal, the merciful intercession of its women, and the reconciliation afforded by its king.