Dr Lotte Fikkers
Leiden University
‘Richer, then doing nothing for a Babe’: Wardship in early modern English law and literature
Please register for the event here.
When:
Wednesday, Mar 11, 16:15-17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel invites you to a lecture by Dr Lotte Fikkers (Leiden University), entitled “‘Richer, then doing nothing for a Babe’: Wardship in early modern English law and literature“. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Dr Lotte Fikkers: For centuries, editors have debated what the character Belarius in William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (c.1610) meant when he said that he felt ‘Richer, then doing nothing for a Babe’ (l. 3.3.23). Many of them have even gone as far as to suggest that ‘Babe’ must be a misprint and is to be replaced with ‘bauble’ or ‘bribe’ in order to make sense. When an 18th-century editor suggested that we ought to read the line in the context of wardship – a system through which minors or legally incapacitated people (so-called ‘wards’) were placed in the care of a guardian – this idea was dismissed as ‘a very forced interpretation’. Far from being farfetched, however, this paper suggests that the wardship context is vital for our understanding of not only Cymbeline, but of much early modern English drama more generally. Indeed, more than half of Shakespeare’s dramatic works contains references to wardship and Shakespeare is far from the only early modern English dramatist to make mention of it in his plays.
This paper will discuss the various abuses related to the wardship system (including the selling of children to the highest bidder and forced marriages) in order to explain the popularity of the trope in early modern English drama. It will then read plays like Cymbeline and King Lear (c.1606) in relation to wardship, showing that, although modern audiences may have lost touch of the context of wardship (as such missing the social criticism at the heart of many 16th– and 17th-century plays), it was, in fact, a common theme and literary device in early modern English literature.
About Dr Lotte Fikkers
Lotte Fikkers is Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher in the English Department at Leiden University. Her research sits at the intersection of early modern law and literature, with a particular interest in early modern women’s writing. Her postdoctoral work is part of the ERC Consolidator funded project FEATHERS, which investigates early modern collaboration and authorship.
