Conjurer + Lawyer Flashcards
The Dumb Show
The Dumb Show foregrounds the artifice of Vittoria’s trial - presents a sense of detachment and unreality before the very real injustice and spectacle of Vittoria’s trial
Suggestions that ‘the white devil’ is the establishment of state and law and no one person through foreshadowing fustian latin
‘They’d make men think the devil were fast and loose, with speaking fustian Latin’
The Dumb Show
Refs to art - ‘oil’ as the basis of art as well as the basis of sin - reflects Puritan idea of extravagance being sinful and reminiscent of the Catholic Church (+disease imagery - infection of machiavellian act of concealing the reality)
‘Spirit’ of the renaissance must flourish so Isabella (non-machiavellian chara) must die- sibilance is sinister
‘infects it with oil’
‘suffocate her spirits’
The Dumb Show
Camillo is killed and placed under vaulting horse - ‘vaulting’ also means to mount sexually so Cam’s position under the horse presents his sexual inadequacy
‘lays him folded double as ‘twere under the horse’
The Dumb Show
The audience are now suddenly brought into the action and the brutality of the murders is suddenly very real - provides a jolting effect which mirrors that of appearance v reality and highlights the sinfulness and immorality of society
‘come with purpose to apprehend your mistress, fair Vittoria; we are now beneath her roof’
The Dumb Show
Weeds as machiavellian corruption, hiding behind the flowers (virtuous ppl) who fall to protect the machiavellian order - Isabella - direct ref to how B is immoral and wrong through half rhyme
‘Sun’ is God - homophone - religion is what you make of it -bad (weeds), or good (flowers)
‘both flowers and weeds spring when the sun is warm, and great men do great good, or else great harm’
The Lawyer after being told to speak in common tongue
Uses unintelligible words with unintelligible syntax - tries to continue to exclude the court and maintain patriarchal injustice but easy for the audience to see his idiocy
Vittoria recognises Lawyer’s idiocy - her wisdom is threat to patriarchy - Lawyer has swallows prescriptions (long winded) and presents Catholic disdain for ‘backwards’ countries like Wales and perhaps England too
‘graduatically’
‘this lawyer here hath swallowed some pothecary’s bills… why is this Welsh to Latin?’
The Lawyer after being dismissed
M+F see threat of Vittoria and her wisdom so send the lawyer away to uphold patriarchal justice system
Mouthpiece of legal system is gone - shows how patriarchal aristocracy control legal system - they now judge V - unjust bc have opinions and motives - seemed barbaric to English
‘put up your papers in your fustian bag’
Fustian = inflated, made up
