Book contents
- The Rule of Manhood
- Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
- The Rule of Manhood
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Emasculated Kingship
- Chapter 1 Tyranny, Manhood, and the Study of History
- Chapter 2 A Chaste Virginia
- Chapter 3 ‘And thus did the wicked sonne murther his wicked mother’
- Chapter 4 Neronian Corruption in Caroline England
- Part II The Masculine Republic
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - A Chaste Virginia
Tyranny and the Corruption of Law in Jacobean England
from Part I - Emasculated Kingship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2021
- The Rule of Manhood
- Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
- The Rule of Manhood
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Emasculated Kingship
- Chapter 1 Tyranny, Manhood, and the Study of History
- Chapter 2 A Chaste Virginia
- Chapter 3 ‘And thus did the wicked sonne murther his wicked mother’
- Chapter 4 Neronian Corruption in Caroline England
- Part II The Masculine Republic
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the third chapter of his Curtaine Lecture (1637), intended as ‘Encouragement to young Virgins and Damosells to behave themselves well in their single estate, that they might become eminent Wives and Matrons’, Thomas Heywood praised ‘that brave Roman knight’ and great ‘Arch-champion of virginitie’, Virginius, for killing his chaste daughter Virginia rather than allowing her body to be ‘vitiated and dishonoured’ at the hands of the corrupt and lustful judge, Appius Claudius.2 As a Curtaine Lecture, intended to satirise how wives ‘carp’ at their husbands in bed, Heywood presented the state of marriage as honourable and to be desired as long as unruly wives could be tamed.3 To exhort women to such good behaviour, Heywood employed historical exempla, ‘calling to remembrance the famous and notable acts of illustrious persons’, that women may through ‘observation and imitation’ become ‘inflamed’ to ‘aspire unto that celsitude honour and renowne to which they arrived before us’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Rule of ManhoodTyranny, Gender, and Classical Republicanism in England, 1603–1660, pp. 66 - 107Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020