The Rainbow Portrait

This post will continue the discussion of the House of Fame, picking up where the last post left off, and will specifically explore what role the House of Fame played in Shakespeare’s time. Generally, the House of Fame was often associated with politics and war. Vincenzo Cartari’s woodcut of the goddess Fama spreading news of war emblematizes this conception of “Lady Fame,” as Benedick calls Fama in Much Ado (2.1.195). After all, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the House of Fame is only described because Fama, as a personification of rumor, brings news of the invading Greek fleet to the Trojans in Ovid’s cheeky retelling of the Trojan War. Ovid writes, “Fecerat haec notum Graias cum milite forti / aduentare rates, neque inexspectatus in armis / hostis adest” “Fama had made known that the Greek ships were coming with a strong army, and so ensured that the arrival of the armed Greek enemy at Troy was not a surprise” (12.64-6). This is right after the description of the House of Fame, which you can find a discussion of in the previous post on this blog. Fama became the prototypical herald of war in the period. In England, though, this goddess took on a greater meaning through the iconography of Queen Elizabeth I. The Crown deftly and thoughtfully shaped the image of Elizabeth that it presented to the outside world, and part of this presentation included comparing Elizabeth to Fama. The civic pageants and printed propaganda praising Elizabeth often presented her as similar to the goddess Fame.[1] Perhaps the best example of this aspect of Elizabeth’s iconography is the “Rainbow Portrait” (below), which takes its title from the rainbow that Elizabeth grasps with her right hand and the Latin motto, “NON SINE SOLE IRIS” “no rainbow without the sun,” which in the symbolic language of the painting identifies Elizabeth with the rainbow and Christ with the sun. She is the one who can see and reflect the heavenly beauty of Christ, and who therefore is chosen to protect and guide faithful adherents to what was for her government Christ’s true faith, Protestantism. The rainbow also makes her a symbol of calmness and serenity. She is also, in the words of Rene Graziani, a “peace-bringer.”[2]

The painter and the date of the “Rainbow Portrait” are unknown. Roy Strong, a renowned art historian and former director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, conjectures that the date likely falls around 1600 and that the portrait was commissioned by Robert Cecil for Elizabeth’s visit to his residence in 1602 for the last great fete of her reign.[3] I find this intriguing because Cecil was, by 1600, England’s spymaster. His status adds a whole new meaning to the numerous eyes, ears, and mouths that decorate Elizabeth’s mantle in this painting. Some argue that the eyes, ears, and mouths allude back to Vergil’s description of Fama in the Aeneid (also in the last post), and so signal that Elizabeth’s good fame—it is key to distinguish fama chiara, illustrious fame or celebratory rumor, from fama cattiva, bad fame or slanderous rumor, especially for a monarch—is spreading rapidly through the world, spoken of by many mouths, seen by many eyes, and heard by many ears. Yet, these multiple low-tech devices for communicating information could also represent, in the words of J. M. Archer, “the many servants who provided her with intelligence.”[4] The serpent, which in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia represents “Intelligenza,” or wisdom of earthly affairs, also suggests that this portrait gestures at the English intelligence apparatus established in Elizabeth’s reign (primarily by Robert Cecil’s father, William Cecil, AKA Lord Treasurer Burghley), a network of spies that was instrumental in defending England from the Armada, preventing the Gunpowder Plot from succeeding (as well as the numerous attempts on Elizabeth’s life) and ensuring that Protestant England did not return to Catholicism. In fact, the “Rainbow Portrait” may be celebrating that not only Elizabeth’s fama chiara is spreading throughout the world but also the reputation of her successful spy apparatus, which did indeed have a good reputation abroad near the end of her reign, as indicated by the diplomatic correspondence of French and Spanish officials marveling at how Elizabeth’s government survived the concerted efforts of the Continental powers to end her reign.

Elizabeth’s state surveillance apparatus maybe had the strongest reputation among her subjects. We can find numerous indications of how it operated. The Scottish secretary to the Catholic John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, anonymously wrote and printed A Treatise of Treasons, a pamphlet that rails against the unjust punishments of Catholics under the Protestant Queen and that should thus be taken cum grano salis. In this 1572 Treatise he complains of a state “where few, or none to speak of, can pass from town to town unsearched; where no letter almost goeth from friend to friend unopened; where no man’s talk with other scant escapeth unexamined; where it is accounted treason, rebellion, and sedition to have or to see, to send or receive, to keep or to hear, any letter, book or speech that might show you any part either of this conjuration, or the crafts and falsehoods used to bring it to pass … Indeed, the just commendation of any nobleman among yourselves, whom these base fellows do envy or malign, is accounted a crime and a derogation to your Queen: and where every man that justly imputeth any of these disorders unto those Catilines, is taken and punished … Can any man that hath wit or judgment see there other than thralldom and slavery?” (162-3, sig. X3^v). However, state surveillance was manifested in other cultural artifacts, and perhaps we should look to artifacts that reflect popular opinion rather than those that display the qualms of an exiled Catholic. Plays from the commercial theater, such as Shakespeare’s, more closely approximate the popular sentiment since they had to—if they didn’t, no one would go see them. Their success indicates their popularity (and Shakespeare was quite successful), and, one can assume that they also reflect popular belief.

In Shakespeare’s hugely popular Titus Andronicus (it was so popular it was the first Shakespeare play to be printed in Germany), the villain Aaron says:

The emperor’s court is like the house of Fame,
The palace full of tongues, of eyes, and ears:
The woods are ruthless, dreadful, deaf, and dull (1.1.626-628).

Although Titus Andronicus is set in Ancient Rome, it still is relevant for and reflects on Shakespeare’s own time. Henry Peacham’s 1615 (or 1595, depending on how you do the math) illustration (below) of the play shows that the actors he saw acting this play, or imagined acting it, dressed in costumes from different ages—and some even dressed like his contemporaries, not Romans. Thus, the play certainly conjured up the present even though it was set in the past. In the speech from which this particular quotation is taken, Aaron is planning a crime, the rape of Titus’s daughter Lavinia. He therefore sees the “court” as a place to avoid since it, like all places “full of tongues, of eyes, and ears,” is not conducive to criminal activity. Instead, he prefers places like the “woods,” where crimes can go undetected. The “court,” as “the house of Fame,” is a place not only of surveillance, “full of tongues, of eyes, and ears,” but also of the rule of law, while the “woods,” which lack any surveillance, are ideal for crime. Surveillance here comes across as more protective than something inducing “thralldom and slavery.” 

Shakespeare, however, does not merely present surveillance the way governments that engage in spying want it to be presented. Titus Andronicus displays ambivalence about covert observation. Aaron himself spies on Titus when Titus, thinking he will be receiving his living sons in exchange for letting his hand be cut off, instead receives the severed heads of his dead sons:

I pried me through the crevice of a wall
When, for his hand, he had his two sons’ heads,
Beheld his tears, and laugh’d so heartily,
That both mine eyes were rainy like to his (5.1.114-7).

Aaron shows that spying—and this includes state surveillance—can easily be abused for selfish ends. Keep in mind that at the point in the play when he is spying on Titus “through the crevice of a wall,” Aaron is deeply involved in the activities at “court” as Tamora’s unofficial messenger, advisor, and servant (in more ways than one. HELLO!). Just the fact that a villain such as Aaron spies on others and is in a position of power at “court” has to cast surveillance in a negative light. Shakespeare, though, is not interested in justifying or vilifying surveillance. He just wants to present a narrative that will resonate deeply with the patrons of the commercial theater. Since surveillance was such a big part of life in Elizabethan England, it made its way into his plays. One final note: Titus Andronicus is a really violent play—and was savagely popular. It may be easy to say, oh, they were so barbaric back in those dark ages (even though we associate Elizabethan England with the Renaissance). But, it would be better not to overlook the spying and violence in our own culture and to reflect on what that says about us, that our culture is approaching that of those dark ages. Another way to look at it is to say that, yes, Elizabeth’s regime engaged in torture, which is inexcusable, and surveillance, which is morally dubious, but (and this in no way is intended to justify the unjustifiable), without Elizabeth’s state surveillance apparatus, we would not have the Shakespeare we have. “Non sine sole iris.” He is the rainbow to early modern England’s culture of surveillance. His writings were influenced by surveillance, and can tell us as a culture how to navigate the treacherous waters of spying, how to ensure one steers toward the smooth waters of protective surveillance and avoids the shoals of abusive spying.   

To conclude, here is this post’s edition of Canon Confidential. Below is a fuller explanation of the answer to Tweet #2: Anielday Efoeday was not beloved by his contemporaries, one of whom called him a “prostitute” writer who “writes for bread and lives by defamation.” In fact, Defoe skillfully integrated his talents as a writer and a spy. He became, in the words of one scholar of intelligence studies, “one of the great professionals in all these centuries of secret service.” He was “in himself almost a complete secret service.”[5] Working for Speaker Robert Harley, Defoe infiltrated almost all dissenting or dissident groups in England and Scotland (his cover was that he was somewhat of a Dissenter, so most dissident groups trusted him), while he published in his groundbreaking Review articles that swayed public opinion toward his employer’s party and used his extensive contacts in the press to glean information on political opponents and establish an intelligence network never before seen in England. The development of printing and the nascent growth of periodicals like the Review and later the Spectator were boons not only to printers but to the intelligence services, too. Perhaps when Defoe writes in Robinson Crusoe, “it is never too late to be wise; and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let them come from what invisible intelligence they will,” he is telling us more about how his experience as a spy shaped his belief than we have previously acknowledged.

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[1] Kiefer, “Rumour, Fame, and Slander in 2 Henry IV” Allegoria 20 (1999): 3–20, 12.

[2] Graziani, “The ‘Rainbow Portrait’ of Queen Elizabeth I and Its Religious Symbolism” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972), 247-259, 248.

[3] Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 45-6.

[4] Archer, Sovereignty and Intelligence: Spying and Court Culture in the English Renaissance (Stanford UP, 1993), 4.

[5] Rowan, The Secret Service: Thirty-Three Centuries of Espionage (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967), 102.