Sharing the political stage : unusual counsel in times of crisis

Résumé En

In early modern England, counsel was a “ubiquitous and inescapable element of life” (Jacqueline Rose, 2016) and the 1590s saw a resurgence of counsel on stage, particularly in history plays. If it was then difficult to debate topical issues and give specific advice to the sovereign through plays written for a popular audience, some playwrights chose for example to engage popular audiences into appropriating the idea of counsel. This could happen by presenting the voices of those not actively or directly involved in governance in the space of political discussion, sharing it temporarily with more courtly or authorized ones – thus suggesting that the common good was the affair of all citizens. By presenting a wide range of advising characters instead of a typical figure of the counsellor, these plays turned counsel into a mask anyone – and not only courtiers – could try and wear, even for a brief moment. In this paper, I will focus on one of these plays, The First Part of King Edward IV, by Thomas Heywood (c. 1599), which is set in times of crisis (both popular revolt and dynastic uncertainty) and builds on that context to present an unusual adviser: Hobs, the Tanner of Tamsworth. I would like to show that, by playing on the tension between private and public, the play questions the possibility and the visibility of popular counsel.