In A Mirror for Magistrates (1554–63), William Baldwin and seven other writers compose poetic tragedies in which English kings, nobles, and pretenders to power caution others about the dangers of tyranny, ambition, and pride. Such a description makes the Mirror seem unexciting, and even Baldwin tired of the monotony of it. Having combed through historical sources to produce the volume, he observes: “I was so wearye that I waxed drowsye, and began in dede to slumber” (1559 ed., N2v). Many modern readers also find the tragedies repetitive, since they are fairly uniform in style and tone, even if sometimes contradictory in their didactic messages. In English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1954), C. S. Lewis disparaged the work with his tepid praise, calling it “the greatest composite monument of the [mid-sixteenth-century] drab age” (240).
With the exception of a handful of recent articles, criticism in the twentieth century tends to emphasize the Mirror's value as a reference work. Lily B. Campbell and E. M. W. Tillyard, for instance, present it as an important source for Shakespeare and as a reservoir for universal Tudor ideas about kingship, rebellion, and ambition. In her influential edition of the Mirror (New York, 1938), Campbell argues that the volume is a compendium of “orthodox Tudor doctrine” on topics such as “the divine right of kings” (52–53). These arguments say little about the unique literary or political value of the Mirror, and, for this reason, it is not surprising that it has been relatively neglected by scholars for the past century.
Yet, many sixteenth-century readers found much to interest them in the work. Originally titled A Memorial of all Such Princes, the Mirror was suppressed by the Privy Council when it first appeared in 1554. After its republication in 1559, the collection became one of the most popular, praised, and imitated books of the sixteenth century. If it is so “drab,” why was it suppressed, and why did it become so popular?
An answer to the first of these questions (and a clue to the second) lies in the political leanings of the authors and the changes they made to their historical sources, mainly Edward Hall's Chronicle (1548). As Scott Lucas's “A Mirror for Magistrates” and the Politics of the English Reformation shows, far from embodying universal Tudor sentiments, the earliest editions of the Memorial-Mirror were the work of a coterie of evangelical Protestants who wrote primarily for like-minded readers. In the reign of Edward VI, the authors, who included Baldwin, George Ferrers, and Thomas Chaloner, supported the policies of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who was named Protector of the Realm when Edward VI, then nine years old, assumed the throne in 1547. Since the authors were “committed to the ends of the evangelical governments of King Edward VI,” they “each had suffered either materially or mentally under the new government of Mary I” (36). The tragedies provided a way to cope with the failure of Seymour's religious and political reforms and to admonish England's magistrates in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth to follow the law and to accept the advice of independent counselors, especially poets.
For example, Lucas argues that two poems by George Ferrers “seek to provide readers with models for coming to terms with the troubling, even traumatic career of the fallen evangelical hero, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset” (69). The poems focus on figures from the reign of Henry VI, “Edmund, Duke of Somerset” and “Humphrey Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester.” Ferrers reworked the historical source material to “parallel more closely the travails of Edward Seymour” (71) and to provide an explanation for Seymour's involvement in events that tarnished his legacy: the execution of his brother Thomas and the popular revolts of 1549. Ferrers aims to restore Seymour's reputation by suggesting that he was not personally responsible for these events but was rather the victim of bad luck and the conspiracy of others.
Lucas's primary argument is that the Memorial-Mirror provided consolation to the community of evangelical Protestants who were most distressed by Seymour's fall from power. Two chapters also demonstrate how the authors admonished magistrates (privy councillors, judges, and lawyers) in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. For instance, in the tragedy of the poet Collingbourne (added to the Mirror in 1563), Baldwin narrates events surrounding the poet's execution for a political epigram in the reign of Richard III in order to “urge Elizabeth's high officers to accept the independent, politically engaged poet as a beneficial and necessary counselor in public affairs” (203).
Throughout the book, Lucas seeks to examine “each [tragedy] for its individual purpose and function” (11) and, while he does not address every single poem, his book is comprehensive and convincing. Yet, this focus does not leave room to consider the Mirror as a unified collection or, more specifically, to address the function of the volume's prose frame. This describes the labor of the authors as they create the tragedies over the course of a single day, linking the poems in a coherent whole. The frame is a fiction (as Lucas himself notes), yet Baldwin created it for the 1554 volume, including it again in 1559 and 1563. All three times, he drew attention to the feature by printing it in a larger typeface than the poems themselves. One could suggest that the frame is a strategy to deflect the attention of non-evangelical readers from the controversial subject matter of the book. Thus, Baldwin's fatigue could be less his response to a dull task than a feint to downplay the political content of the work. In his opening chapter, Lucas argues that Baldwin made visual and rhetorical choices in the title pages and prefaces in order to signal the evangelical leanings of the work, on the one hand, and to minimize potential concerns of some readers, especially Marian magistrates, about its political content, on the other (49–66). But he does not discuss whether the prose frame might be a part of this strategy too. Alternatively, I have argued that the prose frame combines the tragedies into parts of the authors’ ongoing conversation about governance (Studies in Philology, 2004). This suggestion is also compatible with Lucas's thesis, since he shows that, in the Mirror, the authors’ topical commentaries address questions of how to rule. Of course, it is not necessary for Lucas to address the prose frame in order to make his main (or subsidiary) points, but his focus on the individual tragedies is so compelling that one wants to know what he would have made of this central feature of the Mirror too.
Like all of Lucas's publications, this book is meticulously researched, judiciously argued, clearly written, and very persuasive. For this reason, it should replace Campbell's work as the baseline for criticism on the Mirror for a long time to come. For current students and scholars in Renaissance studies, the book should also serve as a mirror of excellence in research in its own right.
