Italy in Philip Massinger’s The Maid of Honour

Abstract

This article discusses Philip Massinger’s The Maid of Honour, showing how this tragicomedy set in Italy is resonant of stories, ideas, theories and characters from the Italian literary and cultural tradition. On the one hand, I will shed light on Massinger’s use of an Italian ambience, concentrating on the choice of Palermo and Siena as a setting. The pseudo-historic setting of the play may be seen as a pretext to dramatize the author’s moral needs and convey a form of political ideology, which reflects the social tensions and the political concerns of the period. On the other hand, I will discuss the different forms of legacy from the Italian world, focusing on the cultural forces, and the moral and ideological motivations behind the playwright’s choice of the genre of his play, the changes concerning plot, setting and the characters’ names in the original Italian text on which the tragicomedy is based. Moreover, this tragicomedy, characterized by a profound didactic and moral intent, also seems to combine some elements of the late 16th century commedia grave, mainly in the presence of an exemplary female protagonist, Camiola, who embodies the providential spirit of the Counter-Reformist attitudes in vogue in the period. Finally, I will examine the way an image of Italy is portrayed through language, analyzing the very marginal occurrence of the Italian language and the presence of Latin words and tags.