Lettuce Entertain You: Floral Agency in Ralph Knevet's <i>Rhodon and Iris</i>

Ashley Howard

doi:10.21476/PP.2021.62334

Authors

Ashley Howard University of British Columbia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5505-0214

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2021.62334

Keywords:

Ralph Knevet, Rhodon and Iris, allegory, floristry, early modern, floriculture, ecocriticism, theatre studies, agency, affect, drama, critical plant studies, performativity

Abstract

This essay investigates the performativity of plants in Ralph Knevet’s Rhodon and Iris, a play that was written and performed for a feast held by the Norwich Society of Florists in 1631. The play explores at least two forms of performativity: the first is the act of staging plants for a theatrical performance, where vegetables present their virtues through floral allegories that are enacted by human players. The second form is the way plants affect and are affected by their environments, particularly as theorized by Michael Marder and Mel Y. Chen. In Rhodon and Iris, these two dimensions work together to produce a form of floral agency that decenters the human. The essay explores how floral agency collaborates with literary narratives when beings perform for plants (within a history of floral celebrations), as plants (embodying plants as allegorical figures), and with plants (floral characters using plants as ingredients in cosmetics, poisons, and antidotes). Knevet uses literature to articulate a unique plant philosophy that challenges divisions between art and nature and among literature, philosophy, and science. Rhodon and Iris thus illustrates the many ways that theatrical performances and printed playbooks, and even printed herbals and herbaria, responded to and shaped the performativity of plants.

Author Biography

Ashley Howard, University of British Columbia

Ashley Howard is a PhD student in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia. She is currently researching fish and waterscapes on the early modern stage, with a focus on drama by amateur playwrights. More broadly, her work explores ecotheory, editorial praxis, and TEI encoding. Using this combination of approaches, she aims to make more non-canonical plays accessible to a wider audience of readers and theatre practitioners. Ashley was an editorial consultant and encoder for Linked Early Modern Drama Online from 2017 to 2020. She is currently editing Ralph Knevet’s 1631 play Rhodon and Iris for Digital Renaissance Editions.

References

The Big Flower Fight. 2020. Presented by Natasia Demetriou and Vic Reeves. Netflix.

Breck, Joseph. 1833. The Young Florist; or, Conversations on the Culture of Flowers, and on Natural History. Boston: Russell, Odiorne and Co. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.69628

Charles, Amy, ed. 1966. The Shorter Poems of Ralph Knevet: A Critical Edition. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Chen, Mel Y. 2012. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822395447

Culpeper, Nicholas. 1652. The English Physitian: or An Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation. London: P. Cole. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.153561

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. 2015. Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816692576.001.0001

Dunkle, Roger. 2014. “Overview of Roman Spectacle.” In Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity, edited by Paul Christesen and Donald Kyle, 381–394. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118609965.ch25

Duthie, Ruth. 1982. “English Florists’ Societies and Feasts in the Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Centuries.” Garden History 10 (1) (Spring): 17–35. https://doi.org/10.2307/1586850

Elliott, Brent. 2001. “Flower Shows in Nineteenth-Century England.” Garden History 29 (2) (Winter): 171–184. https://doi.org/10.2307/1587369

Foucault, Michel. (1966) 1989. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Routledge.

Gerard, John. 1597. The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes. London: John Norton. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.51606

Gibson, Prudence. 2018. “Interview with Michael Marder.” In Covert Plants: Vegetal Consciousness and Agency in an Anthropocentric World, edited by Prudence Gibson and Baylee Brits, 25–34. Santa Barbara: Punctum.

Greg, W.W. 1959. “The English Pastoral Drama.” In Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama: A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England, 318–368. New York: Russell & Russell.

The Holy Bible. 1611. King James Version. London: Robert Barker. https://archive.org/details/1611TheAuthorizedKingJamesBible/page/n1/mode/2up

Homer. (8 century BCE) 1919. Odyssey. Translated by A.T. Murray and revised by George E. Dimock. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/DLCL.homer-odyssey.1919

Jonson, Ben. 1641. The Sad Shepherd. In The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, 115–155. London: Richard Meighen and Thomas Walkley. https://archive.org/details/vvorkesofbeniami00jons/page/n543/mode/2up

Kerwin, William. 2005. Beyond the Body: The Boundaries of Medicine and English Renaissance Drama. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Knevet, Ralph. 1631. Rhodon and Iris: A Pastorall. London: Michael Sparke. https://archive.org/details/rhodonirispastor00knev

Knevet, Ralph. Forthcoming. Rhodon and Iris. Edited by Ashley Howard. Digital Renaissance Editions. Victoria: University of Victoria. https://dre.uvic.ca/emdRho_M.html.

Knight, Leah. 2009. Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture. Farnham: Ashgate.

Laidler, Josephine. 1905. “A History of Pastoral Drama in England until 1700.” Englische Studien 35: 193–259.

Leong, Elaine. 2014. “‘Herbals she peruseth’: Reading Medicine in Early Modern England.” Renaissance Studies 28 (4): 556–578. https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12079

Marder, Michael. 2013. Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. New York: Columbia University Press.

McEleney, Corey. 2018. “Allegories of Breeding: Milton’s Queer Disfigurations.” In Queer Milton, edited by David Orvis, 65–91. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97049-3_3

Meeker, Natania, and Antónia Szabari. 2020. Radical Botany: Plants and Speculative Fiction. New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823286638.001.0001

Nardizzi, Vin. 2013. Wooden Os: Shakespeare’s Theatres and England’s Trees. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442664173

Ovid. (1 century CE) 1931. Fasti. Edited and translated by James George Frazer. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/DLCL.ovid-fasti.1931

Ovid. (c.8 CE) 1916. Metamorphoses. Translated by Frank Justus Miller and revised by G.P. Goold. Vol. 1–2. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/DLCL.ovid-metamorphoses.1916

Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. 2002. “morphew, n.”. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/122341

Pollard, Tanya. 2005. Drugs and Theatre in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199270835.001.0001

Rosenberg, Jessica. 2016. “Poetic Language, Practical Handbooks, and the ‘vertues’ of Plants.” In Ecological Approaches to Early Modern English Texts, edited by Jennifer Munroe, Edward J. Geisweidt, and Lynne Bruckner, 61–69. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315578668

Scullard, H.H. 1981. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. London: Thames and Hudson.

Shakespeare, William. (1599) 2008. Romeo and Juliet. In The Norton Shakespeare: Early Plays and Poems, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus, 897–972. New York: Norton.

Shakespeare, William. (1600) 2017. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri. Arden Shakespeare Series. New York: Bloomsbury.

Shakespeare, William. (1623) 2015. Macbeth. Edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. Arden Shakespeare Series. New York: Bloomsbury.

Smith, Homer. 1897. “Pastoral Influence in the English Drama.” PMLA 12 (3): 355–460. https://doi.org/10.2307/456249

Strode, William. c.1632–1635. “A Prologe crownd with Flowres. On the Florists Feast at Norwich.” MS C.C.C. 325, ff. 125r–126r, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Virgil. (c.37 BCE) 1916. Eclogues. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/DLCL.virgil-eclogues.1916

Willes, Margaret. 2014. “A Passion for Flowers.” In The Gardens of the British Working Class, 90–112. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Willes, Margaret. 2014. “Vital Remedies.” In The Gardens of the British Working Class, 33–63. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Wiseman, T.P. 2015. The Roman Audience: Classical Literature as Social History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718352.001.0001

Yang, Sharon Rose. 2011. Goddesses, Mages, and Wise Women: The Female Pastoral Guide in the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Drama. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press.

Ziegler, Catherine. 2007. Favored Flowers: Culture and Economy in a Global System. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390015