Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama by Doyeeta Majumder (review)

Reviewed by: Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama by Doyeeta Majumder Rachel Willie Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama. By Doyeeta Majumder. (English Association Studies, 5) Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2019 (pbk 2022). ix+225 pp. £95 (pbk/ebk £24.99). ISBN 978–1–786–94168–8 (pbk 978–1–800–85468–0; ebk 978–1– 786–94962–2). In 1576, Thomas Bassadyne printed the New Testament in Edinburgh, adding the Old Testament to it in 1579. The Bassadyne Bible, a reprint of the Geneva Bible, contained over 30,000 words of marginal commentary. Some of this marginal gloss opposed divine-right kingship. James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) was not a fan of the Geneva Bible. Doyeeta Majumder's meticulously researched book illustrates how, despite the endeavours of monarchs in England and Scotland to assert the legitimacy of their dynasty through divine-right kingship, resistance to this ideology can also be found in early modern drama. Majumder reads sixteenth-century political drama through the lens of juridico-political theory to argue that, 'marking a departure from the tyrant drama of the early Tudor period, in the late sixteenth century the usurpation plot emerges into prominence as a result of ideological, dramaturgical, and historical developments' (p. 190). While the focus of Majumder's study is sixteenth-century drama, her analysis also considers political thought and poetics in Scotland and England. In so doing, Majumder illustrates how literary and political concerns in both kingdoms run parallel. By focusing on the figure of the tyrant, Majumder shows how both the illegitimate monarch and the evil monarch were labelled as tyrants, illustrating the overlaps and distinctions between notions of usurpation and tyranny, and how early modern drama critically explored these frames of reference. While Majunder draws on an impressive range of thinkers, central to her analysis is a synthesis of Machiavelli and Walter Benjamin and how concepts such as 'lawmaking violence' and virtù are reflected in the texts under discussion. What emerges is a shift in [End Page 404] focus between early Tudor morality plays that portray legitimate monarchs who become tyrants and historical drama from later in the period that depict illegitimate monarchs who are tyrants by virtue of their lack of legitimacy. The increase in usurpation plots and the shift in dramaturgical focus, Majumder contends, run parallel with shifts in political thought, which now more readily accepts the limits of kingship and power. Studying the Scottish context alongside the English allows Majumder to consider how the circumstances regarding Mary Queen of Scots serve as a contributory factor in this shift. Chapter 1 details the tyrant in early Tudor drama, offering a useful overview of sixteenth-century understanding of 'sovereignty' and 'tyranny' before analysing three morality plays—Magnificence, Respublica, and Apius and Virginia—and illustrates how the legitimate monarch turned bad is always punished via an agent of God. Chapter 2 shifts the focus to Scotland, where Mary Queen of Scots was considered a tyrant, in contrast to English representations that considered her a usurper. David Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, Majumder argues, is a play that counsels the monarch's counsellors: instead of seeing power as residing in the body of the sovereign, the play represents legislative and executive power as belonging to the body of the state, so that by appealing to the three estates reform can be instigated. Chapter 3 marries Buchanan's Latin play Baptistes with his treatise De Iure Regni apud Scotos, works used by their author to dismantle divine right and instead craft the state as created by humans, thus establishing the legitimacy of moves to depose an anointed monarch. Chapter 4 addresses Gorboduc, taking as its starting point anxieties with regard to Mary in England to consider the relationship between tyranny and monarchical absolutism. The final chapter then focuses on Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard III to trace how the usurpation plot develops as it moves from neo-Latin university plays to the Elizabethan playhouses, where tyranny and usurpation gradually become conflated. While the cover image of the book—Saturn Devouring...