Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-76761-3 - Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Jane Kingsley-Smith
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C U PI D I N E A R LY MODE R N
L I T E R AT U R E A N D C U LT U R E
Cupid became a popular figure in the literary and visual culture
of post-Reformation England. He served to articulate and debate
the new Protestant theory of desire, inspiring a dark version of love
tragedy in which Cupid kills. But he was also implicated in other
controversies, as the object of idolatrous, Catholic worship and as
an adversary to female rule: Elizabeth I’s encounters with Cupid
were a crucial feature of her image-construction and changed subtly
throughout her reign. Covering a wide variety of material such as
paintings, emblems and jewellery, but focusing mainly on poetry
and drama, including works by Sidney, Shakespeare, Marlowe and
Spenser, Kingsley-Smith illuminates the Protestant struggle to categorize and control desire and the ways in which Cupid disrupted
this process. An original perspective on early modern desire, the
book will appeal to anyone interested in the literature, drama, gender politics and art history of the English Renaissance.
j a n e k i ng s l e y- s m i t h is Senior Lecturer in the Department of
English Literature and Creative Writing at Roehampton University
and is a regular guest lecturer at Shakespeare’s Globe. She is the
author of Shakespeare’s Drama of Exile (2003) and has also published
on a range of topics including representations of Shakespeare in
popular cinema, Elizabethan love tragedy and John Ford’s ’Tis Pity
She’s a Whore.
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-76761-3 - Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Jane Kingsley-Smith
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C U PI D I N E A R LY
MODE R N L I T E R AT U R E
A N D C U LT U R E
JA N E K I NGSL E YSM I T H
© in this web service Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-76761-3 - Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Jane Kingsley-Smith
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c a mbr idge u ni v er sit y pr e ss
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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© Jane Kingsley-Smith 2010
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2010
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
i s b n 978-0-521-76761-3 Hardback
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in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
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978-0-521-76761-3 - Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Jane Kingsley-Smith
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For Roxana
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Jane Kingsley-Smith
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Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
page ix
x
Introduction
1
2
3
1
Cupid, art and idolatry
24
The Cupid-idol: medieval to Renaissance
Tottel’s Miscellany and Cupid-worship
Sidney and Cupid-art
Condemning iconoclasm: the Arcadia and Cupid’s Revenge
Cupid and iconoclasm in The Faerie Queene
Cupid and the art of Busirane
26
32
35
44
50
54
Cupid, death and tragedy
60
Part one: love and death come closer together
Here love dies: the putto and the skull
Cupid and Death: ‘De Morte & Amore’
The Cupidean plague-angel
Part two: Cupidean tragedy
Cambyses, King of Persia
Gismond of Salerne and Tancred and Gismund
Cupid’s Revenge
61
62
64
71
74
76
77
84
Cupid, chastity and rebellious women
94
Producing female desire: Cupid and Mary Stuart
Cupid, Chastity and Time
Succumbing to Cupid
Threatening female chastity: Cupid and Elizabeth I
Churchyard’s Shew of Chastity
Sappho and Phao
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Faerie Queene: Belphoebe and Amoret
96
98
103
105
106
110
112
116
vii
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Jane Kingsley-Smith
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viii
Contents
Displacing male desire: Cupid and Lady Mary Wroth
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
Love’s Victory
4 Cupid and the boy – the pleasure and pain of boy-love
5
121
123
128
133
Cupid as beautiful boy
Desiring Cupid in Italian Renaissance art: Pontormo,
Bronzino, Caravaggio
Dido, Queen of Carthage and Cupid as boy actor
Cupid and effeminacy: Middleton’s The Nice Valour
Cupid, sodomy and castration: Soliman and Perseda and Cupid’s Whirligig
The pleasures of infantilism: Sidney vs. Greville
Cupid and maternal nurturance on the early modern stage
136
142
146
149
153
157
‘Cupid and Psyche’: the return of the sacred?
163
Cupid and Psyche: Apuleius, Fulgentius and Boccaccio
Reading Adlington’s Cupid
Heywood’s Love’s Mistress
Cupid in the Caroline masque: Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis
and The Temple of Love
Conclusion: Cupid in the English Civil Wars
163
166
170
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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135
177
183
186
231
260
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Jane Kingsley-Smith
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Illustrations
1. ‘Sleeping Venus’ after Titian, Dulwich Picture Gallery.
By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery.
DPG 484.
page 39
2. Vanitas by Bartholomaeus Spranger (c. 1600), Wawel Castle,
Krakow. Copyright © Zamek Królewski na Wawelu.
62
3. Andrea Alciato, ‘De Morte, & Amore’, Emblemata (1550).
Copyright © The British Library Board. G.11572.
65
4. Geffrey Whitney, ‘De morte, & amore’, A Choice of Emblemes
(1586), Leiden. Copyright © The British Library
Board. 12305.bbb.37.
67
5. Anon., ‘Portrait of a Lady’, The Royal Collection.
Copyright © 2005, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
99
6. Francesco Rosselli, The Triumph of Love (c. 1485–90),
New York, Metropolitan Museum. Copyright © Photo
SCALA, Florence, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.
107
7. Caravaggio, Amor Vincit Omnia (c. 1602), Gemäldegalerie,
Berlin. Copyright © bpk / Gemäldegalerie, SMB / Jörg
P. Anders.
137
8. Agnolo Bronzino, Allegory of Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
(1544–5), National Gallery, London. Copyright © National
Gallery, London.
139
9. Orazio Gentileschi, Cupid and Psyche (c. 1628–30),
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Copyright © The State Hermitage Museum / Photo by
Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets.
176
ix
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Jane Kingsley-Smith
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Acknowledgements
I would like first to acknowledge the funding of the Leverhulme Trust
whose fellowship was invaluable in allowing me to complete this book,
and Roehampton University for supporting my application and facilitating
my research through study leave. Further thanks go to the staff of the
British Library, to Kate Welch at the Shakespeare Institute Library and
to Sarah Stanton and Rebecca Jones at Cambridge University Press, who,
along with the anonymous readers, ensured that the publishing process
was one that greatly enriched the book.
I am extremely grateful for the encouragement I received from Michael
Dobson, Kate Chedgzoy and Ton Hoenselaars, who also supported my bid
for funding. Clare McManus and Farah Karim-Cooper did not blanch at
being asked to read the draft and offered characteristically generous and
insightful suggestions. Lucy Munro and Lesel Dawson shared with me
their own research to improve considerably the chapters that they read,
whilst Mark Knight offered valuable advice on style, structure and a more
subtle use of the long dash. I am also grateful to Gordon McMullan and
to the organizers of the November 2008 conference, Les Échanges d’Eros,
at Paul-Valéry University, Montpellier, for providing opportunities for me
to air some of this material, and to delegates Agnes Lafont, Andy Kesson
and Marguerite Tassi.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Margaret and Trevor, and
James for their unstinting support and encouragement. I hope they know
what they mean to me. I would also like to thank Roxana for timing
her birth so beautifully and for providing new insights into the nature of
love.
Chapter 1 is reprinted with permission from SEL Studies in English
Literature 1500–1900 48, 1 (Winter 2008).
x
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