Brill

Chapter Title: THE HUMANIST TRADITION – MARIA STUART (1646)

Chapter Author(s): James A. Parente, <suffix>Jr.</suffix> and Jan Bloemendal

Book Title: Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679)

Book Subtitle: Dutch Playwright in the Golden Age
Book Editor(s): Jan Bloemendal, Frans-Willem Korsten
Published by: Brill. (2012)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w76wbf.20

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 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE HUMANIST TRADITION – MARIA STUART (1646)

James A. Parente, Jr. and Jan Bloemendal

The Play, its Subject and its Sources

Maria Stuart of Gemartelde Majesteit (Mary Stuart, or Martyred

Majesty) was published anonymously in 1646. According to the title
page, it was printed ‘in Cologne, at the old printery’ (‘te Keulen, in
d’oude druckerye’), which in fact was Vondel’s publisher Abraham de
Wees. It was also this printer who paid the poet’s fine when he was con-
demned to pay one hundred and eighty guilders.1 Through the Roman
Catholic ‘crucified royal heroine’ and ‘crowned martyr’2 Mary Stuart,
who had died some sixty years earlier, Vondel indirectly but unmistak-
ably honoured his contemporary King Charles I, and through the fig-
ure of the ambitious Elizabeth I, criticized Cromwell, the leader of
Parliament and Charles’s rebellious opponent.3 For the Amsterdam
Protestants and the administrators of the Amsterdam Schouwburg,
this alignment with the Roman Catholic Queen of Scots was unaccep-
table. From their point of view, the play was polemical, blasphemous,
and inflammatory, and they ensured that the court fined Vondel for his
stance. The play was ostentatiously dedicated to Edward, Mary’s only
great-grandson and Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria,
who, like Vondel, had recently converted to Catholicism.4 Vondel also

1
The text is published in WB, 5, pp. 162–238. Kristiaan P. Aercke translated the play
into English as Mary Stuart, or Tortured Majesty; the translations of Maria Stuart in
this chapter are either taken from this translation or based on it.
2
Maria Stuart, dedication to Eduard, WB, 5, p. 164, ll. 3–4: ‘Koningklijke
Kruisheldin en gekroonde Martelares’.
3
See Parente, Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition, p. 200; Smit, Van Pascha
tot Noah, 1, pp 416–17; Vondel, Maria Stuart, transl. Aercke, pp. 11–12. Aercke also
points to Vondel’s simplification of the parallel opposition between Catholics and
Protestants, and monarchists and republicans, ibidem, pp. 10–11.
4
See Vondel’s letter of dedication, WB 5, p. 166, ll. 51–54: ‘Ick nam de vrymoedigheit
dit treurspel uwe Vorstelijcke Doorluchtig5heit op te dragen, die d’eerste van uwe
Grootmoeders nakomelingen haer heilige asschen en geest verquickt met den Katholij-
cken Roomschen Godtsdienst t’omhelzen, en haer godtvruchtige voetstappen na te

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342 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

had a personal reason for this choice of subject: Mary was executed in
the year of his birth, 1587. This symbolic connection between both
events allowed him to celebrate his own conversion. More importantly,
Mary Stuart’s execution sixty years earlier offered Vondel a possibility
of responding to the English political situation in his own times.
Ironically, the poet himself never saw the play staged.5
In Maria Stuart Vondel chose a much-debated subject.6 The story
was familiar enough: Mary I, Queen of Scots, or Mary Stuart (1542–
1587) was six days old when her father King James V of Scotland died,
and she inherited the throne. In 1558, she married Francis, Dauphin of
France, who, however, after becoming King Francis II, died in 1560.
She returned to Scotland, and five years later she married Henry Stuart,
Lord Darnley, who died in an explosion in 1567. She then married
James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was considered Darnley’s
murderer. After an uprising against the couple, she was forced to abdi-
cate the throne in favour of her one-year-old son James VI. She fled
to  England, seeking protection from her cousin Queen Elizabeth
I. Elizabeth, however, immediately ordered her arrest: Mary presented
a threat to Elizabeth’s reign, since many English Roman Catholics con-
sidered her the legitimate sovereign of England. After twenty years in
custody, Mary was sentenced to death for treason. On 8 February 1587,
she was beheaded. Vondel’s play begins on 7 February 1587, the day
before the execution, and ends on Mary’s final day.
Although the general subject was familiar, Vondel consulted sev-
eral  historical works on Mary’s life in fashioning his play.7 Vondel
acknowledged a major source on the colophon of his play: ‘Testimony

volgen’. (‘I took the liberty to dedicate this tragedy to your Royal Highness, since you
are the first of the grandchildren of your grandmother to invigorate her holy ashes and
spirit by embracing Roman Catholic faith and by following in her pious footsteps.’) On
Vondel’s conversion, see the chapter by Pollmann in this volume. As Kristiaan Aercke
put it (Vondel, Maria Stuart, transl. Aercke, p. 8): ‘Mary Stuart was an act of faith on
the part of its author: faith, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that the Queen of Scots
was innocent; faith in the justice of the political and religious causes which the poet
himself had come to embrace; and, last but not least, faith in his interpretation of the
theory and practice of poetic drama’.
5
But it was printed. On Vondel’s proofs of Maria Stuart, see Bloemendal, ‘New
Philology’, elsewhere in this volume.
6
He may have had the wish to interfere in topical debate; on the relationship
between literary culture and public opinion see Bloemendal and Van Dixhoorn,
‘Literary Cultures and Public Opinion’.
7
Since his sources are treated at length in the Volledige Werken (WB, 5, pp. 940–44,
annotations made by C.G.N. de Vooys and C.C. van der Graft), we can be brief about
them here. See also Van de Graft, ‘De bronnen van Vondels treurspel Maria Stuart’.

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 343

from Camden, Elizabeth’s historian, a Protestant’ (‘Getuigenis uit

Kamdeen, Elisabeths historischrijver, een Protestant’).8 This testimony
is the translation of a passage from William Camden’s Annales rerum
Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabeth (Annals of English and
Spanish History during the Reign of Elizabeth).9 As always, one has to be
cautious with the author’s own statements, for more sources are trace-
able. These would later be printed in a compilation work by Samuel
Jebb, De vita et rebus gestis Mariae Scotorum reginae (The Life and
Deeds of Mary, Queen of Scots, 1725): a part of L’Histoire de l’incomparable
Reyne Marie Stuart (History of the Incomparable Queen Mary Stuart)
by the French Jesuit Nicolas Caussin,10 and Florimond Remond’s
Opgang, Voortgang, en Nedergang der ketteryen dezer eeuwe (Rise,
Advancement and Fall of the Heresies of this Age).11 Other sources for
Vondel’s play included in Jebb’s compilation were Jacques-Auguste du
Thou, Historiae sui temporis (History of His Own Times, 1604–1608)
and Romoaldus Scotus, Summarium de morte Mariae Stuartae (Short
Report of the Death of Mary Stuart, 1588). Except for Camden, all these
authors were Roman Catholics. In these ‘historical sources’, Vondel – as
an heir to the humanist tradition – went ad fontes.
Vondel’s commingling of Catholic and Protestant sources did not
mitigate his unabashed partisanship for the Catholic ‘martyr’ in the
eyes of his contemporaries. But his historical ecumenicalism was
intended not to inflame sectarian tensions but to bring together
Catholics and Protestants under the aegis of an idealized vision of an
irenic, universal Roman Catholic Church.

Vondel and the Humanist Tradition

By the time Vondel published Maria Stuart in 1646, tragedies in Dutch

generally appeared in neo-classical form.12 The neo-classical style orig-
inated in the humanist school plays of the sixteenth and early seven-
teenth centuries that were written by the teachers of grammar and
rhetoric in humanist (i.e. Latin) schools for the edification of their

8
WB, 5, p. 940.
9
The first part appeared in London, 1615. Editions of the entire work were printed
Leiden 1625, London 1627, and Leiden 1639.
10
Jebb, De vita et rebus gestis Mariae Scotorum reginae (1725), vol. 2, pp. 53–104.
11
Its subtitle runs: Uit het Frans in ’t Nederduyts vertaelt door v[ander] K[ruyssen] P
Antwerpen, 1646.
12
See also Parente, Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition, passim.

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344 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

students in Latin style and elocution, and, most importantly, Christian

ethics and the Christian (Catholic or Protestant) interpretation of his-
torical or contemporary events. Latin school drama enjoyed an efflo-
rescence in the Low Countries of the sixteenth century, and some of the
acknowledged masters of the form, Gulielmus Gnapheus (1493–1567),
Georgius Macropedius (1487–1558) and Cornelius Schonaeus (1540–
1611), who honed their craft in schools in The Hague, ’s-Hertogen-
bosch, Utrecht, and Gouda, published works that were disseminated
across Northern Europe, chiefly in the lands of the Holy Roman
Empire.13 In the sixteenth century, the comic language and form of the
Roman dramatist Terence was especially popular, but as the century
ended, the tragedies of Seneca were more widely imitated. In keeping
with the late antique prescription that tragedy should illustrate the fall
of kings or the tumultuous affairs of state, academic playwrights turned
to historical events from antiquity through the early seventeenth cen-
tury for their dramatic material. The rediscovery of Seneca as a stylistic
model coincided with the outbreak of the Eighty Years’ War, and
humanist tragedians from the Catholic and Protestant camps turned
the school stage into a forum for debating the politics of the day. Caspar
Casparius (1569–c. 1642) and Daniel Heinsius (1580–1657) adapted
Seneca for their historical tragedies on the heinous assassination of
William of Orange.14 In the Catholic provinces, however, Panagius
Salius (d. 1595) presented arguments against revolution, and the pro-
lific Leuven playwright, Nicolaus Vernulaeus (1583–1649) encoded
political messages of contemporary relevance about kingship, pruden-
tia, and the primacy of the Roman Church over secular kings in his
medieval and early modern historical dramas. Alongside these Latin-
language works, Dutch-language playwrights such as Guilliam van
Nieuwelandt (1584–1635) and Jacob Duym (1547–before 1624)
adapted and even ‘classicized’ the traditional form of rhetoricians’
plays to convey lessons in political deportment, and, as is well known,
P. C. Hooft (1581–1647) was an early proponent of the tragic form as a
vehicle for moral-philosophical and political instruction.15 At the turn

13
See, for instance, Bloemendal, Spiegel van het dagelijks leven? and Bloemendal and
Norland, Companion to Neo-Latin Drama.
14
See Heinsius, Auriacus, ed. Bloemendal and Bloemendal, ‘De dramatische moord
op de Vader des Vaderlands’.
15
See, for instance, Porteman and Smits-Veldt, Een nieuw vaderland voor de muzen,
pp. 278–83 on Van Nieuwelandt and pp. 215–28 on Hooft; Grootes and Schenkeveld,
‘The Dutch Revolt and the Golden Age’, pp. 197–98; 203–07.

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 345

of the seventeenth century, historical plays, be they in Dutch or Latin,

reflected the passionate fervour of the Eighty Years’ War, and the form
was readily used to celebrate the heroic grandeur of the past – such as
the revolt of the Batavi, or the defeat of the assassins of Count Floris
V  – in order to stoke the patriotic enthusiasm of the Dutch, and to
contrast ancient and medieval moments of dire adversity with later
seventeenth-century political and economic achievements.
By the late 1640s Latin historical tragedies were rapidly disappearing
from the academic stage, displaced by Dutch-language translations, or
even completely new historical works. Vondel’s Maria Stuart is, to a
certain extent, a conservative retreat into a once popular dramatic
form. When viewed against the formal sophistication of Gysbreght van
Aemstel and the complex characterizations of the Old Testament Joseph
and his brothers in Joseph in Dothan, Maria Stuart seems unidimen-
sional and uninteresting. Is Maria Stuart a step backward for Vondel?
To what extent has he been able to incorporate his zeal for Catholicism
into his dramatic work without sacrificing the complexities of his ear-
lier plays? How does Vondel transform earlier humanist treatments of
the subject into a worthy subject for neo-classical, Aristotelian drama?
For most of the twentieth century, Vondel scholarship has betrayed a
tendency to diminish the importance of works such as Maeghden
(Maidens) and Maria Stuart in order to reclaim Vondel as a great Dutch
(lege: Protestant) playwright. In the analysis that follows, we re-exam-
ine Vondel’s work in light of earlier humanist dramatic treatments of
Mary Stuart. Although it is unlikely that Vondel knew these works
because of their limited circulation in print, the comparison will reveal
the way in which Vondel transformed previous neo-Senecan explora-
tions of the topic into a more Aristotelian tragedy of action.

Adrianus Roulerius’s Stuarta Tragoedia (Stuart, a tragedy)

Stuarta tragoedia,16 written by the Catholic neo-Latin poet and priest

Adrianus Roulerius or Adrien de Roulers (d. 1597) is one of the first
tragedies on Mary Stuart’s death ever written.17 This Roulerius was

16
Roulerius, Stuarta tragoedia, ed. Woerner; see also Woerner, ‘Die älteste Maria
Stuart-Tragödie’; Kipka, Maria Stuart, pp. 94–103; Phillips, Images of a Queen,
pp. 193–95.
17
See Kipka, Maria Stuart, pp. 94–103 and Woerner’s introduction. The very first
play was the Maria Stuarta tragoedia by Jean de Bordes, printed in Milan, 1589, and

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346 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

born in Lille, where he also died. He became a priest, who taught at the
Benedictine Abbey of Marchienne at Douai and later became a vicar
and the rector of the seminary in his native city.18 As a teacher of poesis
at the Douai Abbey he wrote his Latin tragedy, which was performed
by his pupils on 13 September 1593. The play, the full title of which
runs Stuarta tragoedia sive Caedes Mariae serenissimae Scot[orum]
Reginae in Anglia perpetrata (Stuart, a Tragedy, or the Murder of Mary,
the Most Illustrious Queen of Scots, Committed in England), was thus
performed and published only six years after the execution.
The play is well-documented and based on historical sources, even
down to the smallest detail.19 Roulerius mentions them himself, but as
Woerner, the editor of Stuarta, has shown, some sources were mere
‘name-dropping’, since they did not even treat the final events.20 The
humanist will have used the ‘Brevis chronologia vitae et gloriosi per
martyrium exitus Mariae Stuartae’ (‘Short Chronology of the Life and
Glorious Martyr’s Death of Mary Stuart’), which was a supplement to
the first edition of Romoaldus Scotus’s Mariae Stuartae […] supplicium
et mors pro fide catholica constantissimae (The Punishment and Death
for the Catholic Faith of the Most Constant Mary Stuart) of 1587.21

twice produced before May 1590; see Phillips, ‘Jean de Bordes’ “Maria Stuarta tragoe-
dia” ’ and Phillips, Images of a Queen, pp. 189–93.
18
On him M.A. Nauwelaerts, Moderne Encyclopedie van de Wereldliteratuur, 8,
p. 177; Roulerius, Maria Stuarta, ed. Woerner, pp. iii–xx; A. Roersch, Biographie
Nationale de Belgique, 20, coll. 219–21.
19
Woerner, in his edition of Stuarta tragoedia, pp. iii–iv: ‘Er verwertet bis ins klein-
ste eine Flugschrift von Augenzeugen über die Enthauptung, ja er gewinnt die besten,
fast realisitsch anmutenden Dialogstellen seines Werkes, wie die Gespräche Marias mit
Buckhurst, Beale und Paulet, durch sorgfältige Nachbildung des eigenen brieflichen
Berichtes der Königin über die Vorgänge in Fotheringay an den Erzbischof von
Glasgow.’ (‘Right down to the last detail, he uses a pamphlet about the beheading writ-
ten by witnesses, and indeed he attains to the best, nigh on realistic-seeming dialogues
of his oeuvre, such as Mary’s discussions with Buckhurst, Beale and Paulet, through
careful emulation of the queen’s actual letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow on the
events in Fotheringay.’)
20
Woerner in Stuarta tragoedia, p. viii: ‘Die drei [John Lesly von Ross, De origine,
moribus et rebus gestis Scotorum (Rome, 1578) Natalis Comes, Universae historiae sui
temporis libri XXX (Venice, 1581) or Gilbertus Genebradsu, Chronographiae libri IV
(Cologne, 1584)] also werden von dem Professor der Rhetorik lediglich aus
Gelehrteneitelkeit vorgechoben. Und es fragt sich, ob er sie je geöffnet hat.’ (‘Thus the
three are put forward by the Professor of Rhetoric merely for reasons of academic van-
ity. And it has to be asked whether he ever opened them.’)
21
Romoaldus Scotus, Mariae Stuartae Scotorum reginae, principis catholicae, nuper
ab Elisabetha regina et ordinibus Angliae post novendecim annorum captivitatem in arce
Fodringhaye interfectae supplicium et mors pro fide catholica constantissimae. In Anglia

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 347

Another of Roulerius’s direct sources was some letters of Mary Stuart’s,

compiled by Adam Blackwood in 1587, Martyre de la royne d’Escosse
(Martyrdom of the Queen of Scotland).22 As a humanist, Roulerius went
ad fontes; as an apologist, however, he selected his sources carefully.23
As a literary work the tragedy is modelled on the five-act scheme of
Seneca’s tragedies, and moulded into his lofty style as well. In the first
act Roulers makes the ghost of Henry VIII appear from hell. In the
second scene he depicts Elizabeth as a monstrous malefactrix in a dia-
logue with ‘Dudelaeus’ (Dudley, i.e. Leicester). This criminal creature is
contrasted with the innocence of Mary in Act II, shown in a conversa-
tion with her doctor. Her only ‘sin’ is the Scots’ Catholic faith.24 She is
told that the court is formed and will meet soon. The main scene of the
third act is a discussion between Mary, Buckhurst, Beale, and Paulet.
She ponders on the injustice that will be done to her, now ‘impiety has
triumphed over the good’.25 Mary’s innocent martyrdom is highlighted

vernacula lingua primum conscripta, […] Additis succinctis quibusdam animadversioni-

bus et notis, brevisque totius reginae eiusdem vitae Chronologia, ex optimis quibusque
auctoribus collecta (Cologne: Godefridus Kempensis, 1587). A second edition, without
the ‘Brevis chronologia’, was published in Ingolstadt (at Wolffgang Eder’s printery),
1588.
22
The second edition has the title: Martyre de la royne d’Escosse, douairiere de
France, Contentant le vray discours des trahisons à elle faictes à la suscitation d’Elisabeth
Angloise, par lequel les mensonges, calomnies et faulses accusations dressees contre ceste
tres-vertueuse, tres-Catholique et tres-illustre Princesse sont esclarcies et son innocence
averée. Avec son oraison funebre prononcée en l’Elgise nostre dame de Paris. Pretiosa in
conspectu Domini mors sanctorum eius (Martyrdom of the Queen of Scotland, Dowager
of France, containing the true story of the treason committed to her on the initiative of
Elizabeth of England, in which the lies, calumnies and false accusations brought forward
against this highly virtuous, highly Catholic and highly illustrious Princess are elucidated
and her innocence is proved. With her funeral oration delivered in the Church Notre
Dame of Paris. The death of his saints is dear to God) (Edinburgh [= Paris], Jean Nafield,
1588). Mary Stuart was a patron for this Adam Blackwood (1539–1613); she enabled
him to study at Paris and Toulouse. Blackwood taught philosophy at Paris. At the time
of Mary’s death, he was Judge at the Court of Poitiers on her behalf. Woerner, in his
edition (pp. xii–xvii), shows exactly which source inspired each scene.
23
As Phillips, Images of a Queen, pp. 194–95, states: ‘[he] relied heavily, if not exclu-
sively, on the principal propaganda documents produced by Mary’s supporters on
the continent, and particularly on those written by Adam Blackwood’. These texts
were particularly available in Douai, the centre of Counter-Reformation, because of the
mercantile connections between Douai and England, and because in this city the first
English seminary was established; see Kipka, Maria Stuart im Drama der Weltliteratur,
p. 95.
24
Roulerius, Stuarta, l. 449: ‘fidei professus dogma Romanae Scotus’ (the Scots
believing in the dogma of Catholic faith). The quotations are from Woerner’s edition;
unless stated otherwise, the translations are my own.
25
Roulerius, Stuarta, l. 770: ‘Vicit impietas bonos’.

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348 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

by a comparison to David: ‘Thus Saul in madness wreaked havoc on

Abraham’s descendant David; but he was able to flee the threat of the
ruler who chased him. For us in our captivity there is no window open,
no Michol who can let us go.’26 But she is prepared to die for ‘ancient
faith’.27 In the fourth act she is told that Elizabeth actually wants her
death. Her desperate position is underlined by Paulet’s warnings not to
try and flee. In the fifth act the scaffold is ready, even though it is not
visible throughout the act. Two maidens relate the beheading itself,
whereupon the executioner brings Mary’s head in.
Just as in Seneca’s Thyestes, Roulerius opens the play with the mono-
logue of a ghost, and just as in Seneca’s dramas, the first four acts are
concluded with a chorus song. The style and metres of these songs,
however, are derived from Virgil and Horace, while the other parts of
the acts are written in the iambic trimeters of Seneca’s plays. In line
with his classical model, Roulerius viewed the protagonist more as a
victim of fate and political machinations.28 But he was also convinced
that piety with regard to Mary Stuart involved assailing the Protestant
heresy that had martyred her.29 The action of Stuarta concentrates on
the last few hours of Mary’s life and on her friends’ and foes’ efforts to
save her or to persuade Elizabeth to have Mary executed, and, finally,
on Mary’s fate – and the freedom of her soul to be a voluntary martyr:
Do you have the same power over my soul as you
Mistreat my body? And will you prohibit me to get
A foretaste of my heavenly Father’s love, in sweet hope?
I only place my hope on that. The God who shed
His blood for me, will see from heaven my blood
Shed for Him, and for the sake of the ancient rites
Of the great Church.30

26
Roulerius, Stuarta, ll. 901–05: ‘Sic in Abramiden Saul / Davida demens saeviit
motu truci; / Sed ille tecto fugit instantis minas / Potentioris; nulla captivis patet / nobis
fenestra, nulla qua emittat Michol.’
27
Roulerius, Stuarta, ll. 906–13: ‘Te, rex paterque caelitum, testem invoco, / quem
praeterire consili nostri potest / Nihil: subire praesto, quodcumque imperi / Deiecta
mulier culmine alienum ad iugum / Exsulque potis est, millies decies neci / Adsum
parata, si tot animabus feras / Abolere pestes impiae haereseos genus / Atque revocare
liceat antiquam fidem.’ (You, King and Father in Heaven, whom none of our thoughts
escapes, are my witness: I am ready to suffer whatever a woman who is cast down from
the top of power under another’s yoke and who is an exile, can suffer, and I am pre-
pared to die hundreds of thousands of times, if it is possible to destroy impious heresy,
that curse that assails so many souls, and to restore ancient faith.)
28
Parente, Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition, p. 200, n. 105.
29
Phillips, Images of a Queen, p. 193.
30
Roulerius, Stuarta, ll. 808–14: ‘An quam male exercetis in corpus, foris / Animae
est potestas? Siccine erga me patris / Praecipere studium spe bona aetherie vetes? / Illa,

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 349

As such, the history of Mary Stuart illustrated for the students and their
audience, and indirectly for the audience ‘out there’, the necessity to
choose sides.

Jacobus Zevecotius, Maria Stuarta / Maria Graeca

Zevecotius’s Maria Stuarta was never published as such. Before the

publication its author, Jacobus Zevecotius or Jacob van Zevecote
(1596–1642), removed any allusion to the history of the Queen of
Scots.31 He made the protagonist a Byzantine princess, the wife of the
Emperor Constantinus VII, and published the tragedy as Maria Graeca
(The Greek Mary, 1623). This remake had to do with his conversion to
Protestantism.32 He changed the play once more after his migration
from Ghent in the southern Netherlands to the Dutch city of Leiden in
1624, where he lived under the protection of men such as his relative
Daniel Heinsius. The revisions to the Maria Graeca stemming from
this period were particularly extensive.
It is telling that the play could rather easily be changed from a Roman
Catholic tragedy into a Protestant or even Reformed one. This has to do
with his literary model, the tragedy in pure Senecan style Auriacus, sive
Libertas Saucia (Orange, or Liberty Wounded, 1602) of his kinsman
Daniel Heinsius. The question is whether Senecan literary imitation
prevailed over topicality, even though the ‘Argumentum’ of the Maria
Stuarta version is explicit:
Mary Stuart, once the wife of the King of France Francis II, ruler of
Scotland, and true Queen of all Great Britain (declared to be illegitimate
by her father Henry VIII because of Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne
Boleyn), having taken refuge in England after having suffered several

illa spero. Qui Deus pro me suum / Fudit cruorem, fundier pro se meum / Ecclesiaeque
veteribus magnae sacris / Caelo videbit.’ The translations from Latin are made by
Bloemendal.
31
On him W.J.C. Buitendijk in Moderne Encyclopedie van de Wereldliteratuur, 10,
pp. 341–42; IJsewijn in his synoptic edition of the play in Humanistica Lovaniensia,
pp. 258–64.
32
For instance, he changed the names: ‘Maria Stuarta’ into ‘Maria’, ‘Haeresis’
(‘Heresy’) into ‘Haeresis Iconoclastarum’ (‘Heresy of Iconoclasts’), and ‘Joanna’ into
‘Melicerta’, but also some allusions such as ‘Haeresis / Foecunda’ (‘widespread heresy’,
ll. 11–12), which he turned into ‘omnium / Libido’ (‘lust of all’) and ‘nulla foedifragae
fidem / Damnaret Anglae’ (‘no woman would condemn the faith of the treacherous
Anglian Queen’, ll. 115–16) into ‘nulla damnaret sui / Fidem mariti’ (‘no woman would
condemn the faith of her husband’).

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350 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

tokens of injustice, having been held in custody for twenty years by order
of the same Elizabeth in the castle of Fotheringay, is beheaded by
the sword.33
In contrast to Roulerius’s play, in Zevecotius’s Maria Stuarta the char-
acters are abstracted from historical persons, bearing rather ‘timeless’
names, except for the protagonist ‘Mary Stuart’. The others were called
Heresy, Joanna, Old Man, Headman, Messenger, Faith and Chorus.34 In
the adaptation, the ‘Chorus of fugitive English men and women’
became a ‘Chorus of Greek men and women who fled the tyranny of
Constantinus and the heresy of Theodora’.35
In the Mary Stuart version, Mary expresses an acquiescent, Stoic-
Christian worldview. It is as if Vondel’s irenic desire to have done with
schism is given an equivalent here in the transhistorical desire not to
take sides but to contemplate:
Father, will at last that day come that I
Begged for so long in prayers, that last day
Of my sorrow, on which You will give me
For the lost Scottish crown an eternal one?
Recede, false world, now I am bound to die,
I have no debts to you anymore; everything the fatal day
Will take from my remains, is stolen from me by life.
And before death, my raging, perfidious cousin ordered that
I should be bereft of the purple, the sceptre, and my belongings.36
Being a creative imitation of its model, Heinsius’s Auriacus, sive Libertas
saucia (1602), the tragedy ends with a funeral lamentation. Whereas

33
IJsewijn, ‘Jacobus Zevecotius: Maria Stuarta / Maria Graeca’, p. 275: ‘Maria
Stuarta, Francisci 2. Galliae regis olim coniunx, Scotici sceptri domina, ac totius maio-
ris Britanniae (ob Elisabetham, Annae Bolaenae filiam, iussu patris Henrici viii. ille-
gitimam declaratam) vera princeps, in Anglia profuga post varias perpessas iniurias et
viginti annorum carceres iussu eiusdem Elisabethae in arce Fodringana securi
percutitur.’
34
IJsewijn, ‘Jacobus Zevecotius: Maria Stuarta / Maria Graeca’, p. 275: ‘Maria
Stuarta, Haeresis, Joanna, Senex, Comes Executor, Nuncius, Fides, Chorus.’
35
IJsewijn, ‘Jacobus Zevecotius: Maria Stuarta / Maria Graeca’, p. 282: ‘Chorus
Anglorum et Anglarum fugientium’, ‘chorus Graecorum et Graecarum tyrannidem
Constantini et Theodorae haeresim fugientium’.
36
Zevecotius, Maria Stuarta, ed. IJsewijn, ll. 1009–17: ‘Ergone, Genitor, illa tam
lentis diu / Petita votis imminet tandem dies / Mei laboris summa, qua pro perdita /
Scotiae corona, non relinquendam dabis? / Abscede fallax Munde, nil ultra tibi /
Moritura debeo, quidquid a liquis dies / Fatalis aufert, vita praeripuit mihi; / Et ante
funus purpura, sceptro, bonis / Carere iussit neptis infidae furor.’ In the Maria Graeca
version the words ‘Scotiae’ and ‘neptis infidae’ are replaced by ‘mundi’ (world) and
‘coniugis diri’ (my awful husband) respectively.

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 351

Heinsius made the character of Liberty mourn William of Orange,

Zevecotius has the lamentation performed by the Chorus and by Faith
(Fides). The entire world and even the cosmos itself should mourn this
deceased monarch. This too is a martyr drama, but its form is Senecan,
and its scope is not so much pagan-fatalistic as Christian.

Humanist Poetics: Gerardus Joannes Vossius, Poeticae Institutiones

In 1647 the professor of history at the Athenaeum illustre in Amsterdam

and a good friend of Vondel’s, Gerardus Joannes Vossius (1577–1649),
published his Poeticarum institutionum libri III (Institutes of Poetics, in
Three Books).37 It offered no ‘new’ literary theory; rather it was a com-
pilation of everything known about poetics from Antiquity and his
own time. For instance, both the Horatian principles of utile dulci and
probability, and the Aristotelian unities and the theory of katharsis are
treated. Its major contribution to poetical theory is, then, the structur-
ing and arrangement of known poetical ideas.
It is tempting to read Vondel’s play alongside this manual, since he
and Vossius were close friends and valued each other.38 Vondel wrote
poems of consolation for his friend at the death of his son Dionysius
and his daughter Cornelia. They discussed matters of poetics, and the
professor’s rich library was always open to the studious Vondel. The
poet dedicated his Gebroeders (Brothers, 1640) to the humanist profes-
sor, who in his turn highly praised this play and assured its author that
he had written for eternity.39
The Poeticae institutiones is divided into three parts. Part 1 treats
poetic fiction and invention, character, meaning, order, style and
metre. In this part, the classification of poetry according to the medium
(language, harmony and rhythm), the object (good or bad people)
and the mode of representation (narrative, dialogue or mixed) are
treated, as well as the division of the genres. Genres are discussed in
the second  part, beginning with drama: tragedy, comedy and other

37
On Vossius, see Rademaker, Life and Work of Gerardus Joannes Vossius and idem,
Leven en werk van Gerardus Joannes Vossius. See also Vossius, Poeticarum institutio-
num libri tres / Institutes of Poetics in Three Books, ed. Bloemendal.
38
See Rademaker, Life and Work of Gerardus Joannes Vossius, pp. 260–63; 305–06. It
is somewhat remarkable that the Roman Catholic Vondel and the Protestant Vossius
were close friends, but Vossius was quite moderate; they were also both born in the
German Empire (Cologne and Heidelberg respectively).
39
Brandt, Leven van Vondel, ed. Verwijs and Hoeksma, p. 187: ‘scribis aeternitati’.

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352 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

dramatic genres. The third part is devoted to epic and other genres.
Since Vondel in his Maria Stuart renders the protagonist both a tragic
and an epic heroine, we will concentrate on two issues: Vossius’s dis-
cussion of tragedy and his treatment of the epic hero.40

Vondel’s Maria Stuart, The Humanist Tradition and Beyond

Vondel was part of the humanist tradition. As a beginning dramatist,

he wrote plays imitating the style and structure of Senecan drama.
In the mid 1640s, he became acquainted with Aristotelian poetics with
their mixed characterization of the hero. For this reason, in the dedica-
tory preface to Maria Stuart, Vondel felt the need to defend the tragic
heroine’s status as neither virtuous nor evil. However, his attempt to
disguise his enthusiasm for the martyred queen only cast her moral
qualities in even greater relief.
Aristotle’s laws of the theatre hardly allow a character who is so
completely innocent, as perfect as she is, to serve as the protagonist of a
tragedy […]. My solution for this problem was to shroud Stuart’s inno-
cence and the justice of her cause with the fog of contemporary gossip,
slander, and evil, so that her Christian and royal virtues that are obscured
now and then would shine forth even brighter.41
This may have been intended to serve as an apologia for his non-Aris-
totelian approach to his protagonist, but given the unpopularity of
Mary Stuart in the Protestant Netherlands Vondel’s expectations may
have been overly optimistic.
The hagiographical tone of the last hours of Mary Stuart recalled the
panegyrical representation of Mary’s life and death by earlier humanist
playwrights. In the plays by Roulerius and Zevecotius, Mary had been
a heroine without fear or reproach. She is portrayed as a woman who

40
In accordance with Aristotle, Vossius associates tragedy and epic in Poeticae insti-
tutiones, 3, 2, 4: ‘Epic, too, only has to do with plot, characters, diction and thought, but
tragedy observes both these four and moreover spectacle and melody. Hence Aristotle
writes: “Anyone who knows about tragedy, good and bad, knows all about epic, too,
since tragedy has all the elements of epic poetry, though the elements of tragedy are not
all present in the epic.” ’
41
WB 5, p. 165, ll. 30–38: ‘De tooneelwetten lijden by Aristoteles naulicks, datmen
een personaedje, in alle deelen zoo onnozel, zoo volmaeckt, de treurrol laet spelen; […]
waarom wy, om dit mangel te boeten, Stuarts onnozelheit en de rechtvaerdigheit van
haere zaeck met den mist der opspraecke en lasteringe en boosheit van dien tijdt ben-
evelden, op dat haer Kristelijcke en Koninklijcke deugden, hier en daer wat verdonck-
ert, te schooner moghten uitschijnen.’

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 353

shows a flawless perseverance in her final hours, aware that she will
exchange a temporary crown for an eternal one. Both authors por-
trayed her as a moral example for their pupils, so that they might learn
Latin and be imbued with pious zeal. Moreover, the history of Mary,
Queen of Scots was dramatized to serve as Catholic propaganda in the
battle against heresy. It was not accidental that Roulerius made the
Chorus of captive boys and girls compare the evils in Scotland resulting
from neglect of religion with the apostasy of the Jews.42
As a result of the authors’ overtly didactic and political purposes,
their protagonist became a rather ‘flat’ character, who is unquestiona-
bly a blameless martyr. The humanist Mary Stuart plays could reflect
the pamphlet literature disseminated by Mary’s ardent supporters and
especially by Blackwood.43 Vondel, as a more Baroque author, can use
Mary to symbolize his own conversion to Catholicism. Her mistreat-
ment could at the same time evoke the turmoil of Cromwell’s revolu-
tion, so that ‘the fires of Vondel’s heated defence of Mary Stuart were
not so much stoked by her tragic death almost sixty years before […] as
by contemporary events in England’.44 But what is more, in his preface
Vondel constructed an elaborate parallel between Christ’s Passion and
Mary’s final hours. Mary dies as a sacrificial lamb for her people, just as
Jesus did. She celebrates a ‘Last Supper’ with her maidens, she forgives
her enemies and she commends her soul to God.45 As such, Maria’s fate
served as a post-figuration of the Passion. Moreover, she is an exem-
plary Queen, rendering Maria Stuart a ‘Fürstenspiegel’ (‘mirror of rul-
ers’) too: ‘Sovereignly and patiently, she bent her shoulders under
the  cross, and served thus as an example to all Christian rulers’.46
Vondel  combines this exemplary function with her royal ancestors,

42
Cf. Phillips, Images of a Queen, p. 194. This is explicitly summarized in the
‘Synopsis’ that preceded the play; see Roulerius, Stuarta, ed. Woerner, p. 8: ‘[…] cap-
tivorum chors iuvenum et puellarum mala Scotiae religionibus neglectis comparet vet-
eris Iudaeae malis.’
43
Cf. Phillips, Images of a Queen, p. 191.
44
Parente, Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition, p. 200; Smit, Van Pascha tot
Noah, 1, pp. 416–17.
45
WB, 5, p. 164, ll. 10–12: ‘Weinigen streecken hier die kroon van (Gode en zijn eere
ten dienst) een zichtbare kroon en dit leven te versmaden. In de heilige boecken wort
Moses en Kristus alleen die lof toegeschreven.’ (Not many people can boast that they
have spurned on earth, for the sake of God and religion, a crown, or even life itself. As
an example in the holy books, you will find only Moses and Christ who have thus dis-
tinguished themselves.)
46
WB, 5, p. 165, ll. 24–26: ‘Zy buight haer vrye schouders gewilligh, geduldigh
onder het kruis, ten spiegel van alle Kriste Vorsten.’

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354 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

thus stressing the righteousness of her claim to the throne and conse-
quently her innocence of the charges of revolution brought against her
by Elizabeth.
Vondel also equates Mary Stuart and Mary, the mother of Jesus.
According to Vondel, it is ‘perfectly just’ that the martyred queen ‘is
seated at the feet of Mary. For Mary’s name she bore very worthily, and
she resembled her far more than any other queen; indeed, like Mary,
she carried her cross no less than twenty years, and she, too, was pierced
with the daggers of solemn vicissitude’.47 In the play itself, the chorus of
Mary’s ladies-in-waiting add to this parallel by highlighting the resem-
blance of the New Testament Mary going to see her cousin Elizabeth,
and Mary Stuart seeking refuge from her homonymous cousin.48
As indicated above, Vondel was aware that the protagonist of his play
was too innocent in the eyes of God and the Church to really be an
Aristotelian tragic hero who was both virtuous and flawed. Therefore,
in the letter of dedication to Edward of Bavaria he made a feeble attempt
to weaken Mary’s excellence. But he also added to her ‘humanity’ by
having Mary ascribe her untimely end to her own sinfulness:
My own sins were to blame, they deserved such a penalty.
Most warnings go unheeded; he from whom God withdraws His
Protection does not see the trap that lies before his feet.
You become wise through disasters, and notice too late
That you are floating at your neighbour’s mercy.49
Later, however, she declares once more her own innocence (‘I, devout
and blameless’; ‘ick, vroom en zonder smette’), which is perhaps a
political, but certainly a moral and spiritual innocence. She avows her
sins in Vondel’s weak attempt to make her an Aristotelian character,
but all in all, she is perfect. ‘By likening his heroine to the Virgin Mary,
Vondel had acquitted her of all evil, including the most grievous of all

47
WB, 5, p. 165, ll. 27–28: ‘aen de voeten van Maria, wiens naem zy zoo waerdigh
gedragen heeft.’
48
This choral ode is an imitation of poem 16 in Romoaldus Scotus’s collection
Summarium de morte Mariae Stuartae (Ingolstadt: Sartorius, 1588). The poem and the
chorus hint at the same comparison of the two Marys by stating that both had sought
comfort from their kinswoman Elizabeth (cf. Luke 1:39–45), although with contrasting
success.
49
Vondel, Maria Stuart, ll. 336–40, WB, 5, p. 181: ‘Mijn schulden hadden schult, die
zuclk een straf verdienden. / Men waerschuwt al vergeefs: wien Godt zijn hoede ontzeit,
/ Bemerckt den valstrick niet, die voor zijn voeten leit: / Men wort door rampen wijs,
en ondervint te spade, / Hoe los men henedrijve op ‘s nagebuurs genade.’

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 355

human afflictions: original sin.’50 But this portrayal of her innocence

eventually serves a secular purpose. By these religious parallels, the
injustice of Mary’s foes and of her martyrdom is underscored, and her
political goals – and indirectly that of Charles I against Cromwell’s
attacks – are justified.
Mary’s martyrdom in Maria Stuart does not attain the complete oth-
erworldliness of the Jesuit martyrs, but attests to the proud attitude of a
dishonoured queen. Ultimately she never forgives her enemies; in fact,
she is not able to relinquish the throne. Indeed, she cannot keep her
stoic calm, nor the resignation of the world she expresses in the lines:
‘What is the world, with all its vanities, but smoke? / An instant, a
naught!’51 Although she even consoles the Chorus bewailing her immi-
nent death ‘Entrust yourselves to God, for He’ll make good the loss.
The king of kings will protect and feed His children’52 later on in the
play she will declare her sovereignty, without stoic calm, without
Christian endurance, and without any sign of Christ’s mercy, when she
begs the earls to grant the presence of some confidants at her
execution:
[…] I beg by the eternally living God,
Do not refuse the niece of Henry the Seventh,
Elizabeth’s kinswoman for eternity,
Surviving heiress of all France and Valois,
Anointed Queen of Scotland, this simple request now,
A request made in distress, which no savage Turk, no Mongol
Has ever refused a Christian!53
According to Vossius – in Aristotelian tradition – the tragic hero or
heroine should occupy the middle ground between good and evil.
Another requirement, one in line with tragedy, concerns the social

50
Parente, Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition, p. 202; he mentions as an
example of a Christian author who considers Mary to be free from original sin
Augustine’s De natura et gratia, 36.42.
51
Vondel, Maria Stuart, ll. 1242–43, WB, 5, p. 219: ‘De weerelt is maer rook met al
haer ydelheden, / Een oogenblick, een niet.’
52
Vondel, Maria Stuart, ll. 1250–51, WB, 5, p. 219: ‘Betrouwt op Godt, die kan uw
schade licht vergoeden: / Die groote Koningk zal zijn kinders wel behoeden.’
53
Vondel, Maria Stuart, ll.1402–08: ‘Ick bezweer u by dien eeuwigh levenden, /
Ontzeght toch nu de nicht van Henderick den Zevenden, / Elizabeths verwante en
maeghschap voor altoos, / Een boedelhoudster van gansch Vranckrijck en Valois, En
dit gezalfde hooft der Schotten niet een bede, / Een nootbe, van geen Turck, noch
Tarter, woest van zede, / Oit Kristensch mensche ontzeit.’ Cf. Parente, Religious Drama
and the Humanist Tradition, p. 203.

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356 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

status of epic characters: ‘Persons should preferably be grand and illus-

trious, like heroes, kings and rulers.’54 Both represent heroic, outstand-
ing and weighty actions.55 In an epic, the heroes are often virtuous,
such as Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid. However, first and foremost an epic
hero must be consistent.56 Another marked difference between the two
genres is that, while epic represents people through narrative, tragedy
does so through action, although epic ‘commonly refers to mixed
poetry because the epic poet introduces persons who use direct
speech.’57 Due to historical circumstances, then, one could argue that
Vondel has infused tragedy with epic.
Vondel did follow Aristotle’s rule that a protagonist should be nei-
ther virtuous nor evil – as expressed in Vossius’s Poeticae institutiones
and probably discussed by the scholar and the poet – more than he had
wished to. The presentation of the protagonist, however, went much
further than school drama had done. Presentation became representa-
tion – of Mary, Queen of Scots murdered by Elizabeth, of Roman
Catholicism challenged by Protestantism, of the rebellion of Cromwell
against Charles; in sum, representations of several forms of legitimate
and illegitimate sovereignty. Presentation became representation,
which is characterized by likeness or resemblance between two phe-
nomena; by genesis, the presentation of one phenomenon arousing the
other; by identity or correspondence; or by embodiment.58 In humanist
Latin drama, the representing and represented subjects remained dis-
tinct, since plays were mainly part of a pedagogical programme that
aimed at pupils learning Latin and being shaped morally. Its public was
always relatively limited and part of the pedagogical project. In this
situation Latin drama played a role in public debate, indirectly, behind
and beyond its primary educational function. That is to say that the

54
Vossius, Poeticae institutiones, 3, 1, 3: ‘Personae potissimum sunt grandes et illus-
tres, ut heroes, reges, duces.’
55
Cf. Vossius, Poeticae institutiones, 3, 2, 1.
56
Vossius, Poeticae institutiones, 3, 5, 5: ‘But such a character has to be sustained to
the end as it has been fashioned at the beginning. This is Horace’s advice. […] The poet
[…] relates everything in such a way that there seems to be no inconsistency in a char-
acter.’ (Talis vero ad extremum servanda est persona qualis ab initio fuerit constituta.
Monet hoc Horatius [Ars Poetica, 126–27]. […] Poeta […] ita omnia exsequitur ut
nihil pugnans in persona videatur.)
57
Vossius, Poeticae institutiones, 3, 1, 9: ‘[…]epopoeiam vulgo ad mixtam referri
poesin eo quod poeta epicus personas etiam directa oratione loquentes inducat.’ Cf.
ibidem, 3, 2, 3.
58
On this see Korsten, ‘Macropedius’ experimental plays’.

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 the humanist tradition – maria stuart 357

dramatic situation, stressing the pre- or post-figuration of the protago-

nist, created a distance and distinction between object and image so
that drama could work indirectly as a consequence. In Vondel’s Maria
Stuart, post- or pre-figuration and post- or pre-figurated coincide to a
far larger extent due to the more publicly direct operation of theatre,
the sacrosanct character of Baroque theatre and its desired affective
pull. It was this iconic aspect that turned Vondel’s dramas into danger-
ous public vehicles. To be sure, Maria Stuart was not performed on
stage. It was not made part of public opinion through direct staging,
whereas many earlier humanist dramas were. But Maria Stuart was
made public through the printing of the play and as such the work pre-
sented a character that was not to be explored pedagogically, but that
embodied, artificially, a divine presence. Whether in the minds of audi-
ences reading the printed version or on stage, the actor or actress play-
ing Mary became identical to the Mother of Christ – and through that
identification to Charles I and to Roman Catholicism. In this way, as
Vossius observed, drama is potentially more immediate than other
genres, for following the Greek philosopher, a poet represents actions
rather than characters.59
Aristotle also requires that tragedy arouse pity and fear to bring
about a katharsis in the audience. The audience must be able to identify
– again! – with the characters, especially with the protagonist. For this
(rhetorical) reason, the protagonist should be neither entirely spotless
nor extremely bad; he or she must exhibit the flaws inherent in all
human beings. This is the main result of the turn from Senecan to
Aristotelian drama. Neo-Senecan playwrights revelled in the rhetorical
exploration of the emotions and placed their characters in a reactive
mode; in Aristotelian neo-classical drama, action rather reaction or
passivity is central to the representation. In the humanist Mary Stuart
plays of Roulerius and Zevecotius, drama provides the occasion for sta-
sis and reflection; in Vondel’s martyr play, Maria re-enacts the passio
Christi in thoughtful preparation for her death.
Vondel is clearly not writing for schoolboys, nor is his Mary Stuart a
fearless or irreproachable heroine. She is simultaneously the embodi-
ment of Christ and a flawed human being beset by sin – even if she is
morally and religiously superior to others. Vondel wished to legitimize

59
Vossius, Poeticae institutiones, 1, 2. Vossius deals with character – and the
Aristotelian middle course – in 1, 5. There Vossius combines Aristotle’s law with the
rhetorical – Horatian – demand of appropriateness.

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358 james a. parente jr. and jan bloemendal

political action, or discussed questions of sovereignty,60 so that Mary

Stuart could become immortal, not by Christ’s grace, but by her act of
imitation of Christ, an imperfect but thereby all the more convincing
imitation. This delineation of her character, and the more direct role
ascribed to theatre in the seventeenth century as the locus for political
debate and action, made Maria Stuart a dangerous drama, and its poet
a potentially subversive force in Calvinist Amsterdam.

60
See Korsten, Vondel belicht and idem, Sovereignty as Inviolability.

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