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Touching Touchets: Perkin Warbeck and the Buggery Statute*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lisa Hopkins
Lisa Hopkins*
Affiliation:
Sheffield Hallam University
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Abstract

At first sight, The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck seems to be the only one of Ford's plays that is not pointedly and openly concerned with sexual deviation; in contrast to his other plays, it presents a cast of characters who are models of sexual rectitude. Sometimes, however, dogs that do not bark can be as significant as ones that do. This paper argues that Perkin Warbeck actually encodes a trangressive sexuality so subversive that its traces are hidden deep within the fabric of the play, visible only to a reading that historicizes Ford's work within very specific contexts and connects the play with the Buggery Statute.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , Summer 1999 , pp. 384 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1999

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful for the comments and questions of Richard Dutton, Scott Wilson, and Alison Findlay when an earlier draft of this article was read to the Lancaster Renaissance Seminar, and for the very detailed and helpful suggestions of the Renaissance Quarterly reviewer.

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