TWO. Emplotting Politics: James I and the “Powder Treason”

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was staged before King James I in 1604 and could have provided a model of mercy for his response to the infamous Gunpowder Plot—Guy Fawkes’s attempt along with other Catholics to demolish the Houses of Parliament. Instead, James’s response to the plot adopted another kind of tragicomic form, that associated with John of Patmos’s Revelation. Before the age of twenty, James had penned a Paraphrase upon the Reuelation and his contemporaries often interpreted the Book of Revelation as a kind of tragicomedy. Yet this variety of tragicomedy did not end happily for everyone—only for the elect, including James himself.