Thomas Heywood and William Rowley’s Fortune by Land and

Written in collaboration by Thomas Heywood (1570s-1641) and William Rowley (1585-1626), the play, as Jowitt records, “was not published until 1655, though there are records of performance by Queen Anne’s Company at the Red Bull in 1607–9, and again in 1617” (“Piracy” 221). Strikingly, the play demonstrates a marine body whose agency shapes, constructs, and re-constructs the human agency. Fortune by Land and Sea is a tragi-comedy shedding light on the politics related to sea and varying attitudes towards piracy in the Jacobean era. The play runs a double plot – one offers fortune in London on land, the other offers absolute freedom in unregulated waters which leads people towards piracy. The play starts with the murder of Frank Forrest, whose revenge is taken by Frank’s elder brother, Young Forrest. Escaping from the authorities, Young Forrest is helped by Old Harding’s wife, who sends him to sea as a vanishing point.

Throughout the play, the sea is offered instrumentally valuable as an environment which provides a reservoir for fortune. To reverberate the sea as a means of acquiring wealth was a common practice in the Renaissance period: “Renaissance iconography … commonly depicts fortune in a nautical setting, such as Nicoletto da Modeno’s engraving of fortune standing in the sea” (Douglas 224). The sea seems a vast space for transportation on which the products of human civilisation (such as ships) can sail to previously unexplored regions. Henceforth, the sea is a means for human beings to procure a path towards enrichment and upward mobility in the societal class system.

However, how you acquire the fortune out of the sea is significantly questioned in the play by interweaving the practices of piracy and privateering since one of these two concepts is legal under the legislative stsyem, and the other is criminalised. The minor figures of the play, Pursevant and Clown, display a remarkable word play through which their acts oscillate between piracy and privateering:

PURSEVANT Whereas two famous rovers on the sea – CLOWN Whereas two famous rogues upon the sea.

PURSEVANT Purser and Clinton, long since proclaimed pirates – CLOWN Long since became spirates –

PURSEVANT Notwithstanding her Majesty’s commission – CLOWN Notwithstanding her Majesty’s condition. (IV. ii. 45)

Within this framework, plundering and violence are at times equated with commercial and mercantile politics of the country whereas the same plundering acts are sometimes categorised as treason within the framework of parliamentary laws. The play problematises this double-standard, and criticises England’s attitudes towards the blurred distinction between piracy and privateering.

In this vein, what is at stake at the core of the play is the varying authorisations of Elizabeth I and James I for the piracy and privateering actions on the sea. Barbara Fuchs makes a distinction between pirate and privateer by defining the latter as attacker of

ships of a hostile nation for supposedly private purposes but with a mandate from one’s government, … authorized and fully justified by the state and its pressing needs. Without such a mandate, one remained a pirate, even though the attacks carried out might be directed at the same ships, in the same manner, and with the same concrete results. (46)

Nonetheless, the sharp legislation changes bring about chaotic situations in the open sea because during Elizabeth’s reign, piracy is legalised and even accepted as a remarkable and honourable service to one’s country. Queen Elizabeth must have realised the power seized by the pirates, especially those famous heroes of the nation: Drake and Ralegh who guaranteed the nation the most glorified naval victory ever, that is the defeat of the Spanish Armada. For this very reason, the distinction between piracy and privateering was not clear enough to accuse someone of treason. On the contrary, pirates and privateers were rewarded and nationally honoured for they made huge and respectable contributions to national development.

James I, on the other hand, swiftly tightened the legislative control over the plundering acts in the sea, and disregarded the nationalistic role of the pirates in expanding English rule. Claire Jowitt points to the underlying reason for this quick change, and clarifies it as a Jacobean strategy for maintaining good foreign relations: “As early as 1603, when the Venetian ambassador complained that the Lord High Admiral was abetting piracy, James was outspoken in his response exclaiming ‘By God I’ll hang the pirates with my own hands, and my Lord Admiral as well’, and he followed up these sentiments by issuing official proclamations against pirates” (“Piracy” 218-219). James I also delivered public speeches in relation to this sharp and swift distinction, and he himself

made a contrast between his own policies and those of Elizabeth I. The proclamation he made at Greenwich in June 1603 is as follows:

We are not ignorant, that our late deare sister the late Queene of England, had of long time warres with the King of Spaine, and during that time gave Licences and Commissins to divers of her, and our now Subjects, to set out and furnish to Sea, at their charge, divers ships warlikly appointed, for the surprising and taking of the said Kings subjects and goods, and for the enjoying of the same, being taken and brought home as lawful prize. (qtd in. Jowitt, “Piracy” 219)

In this context, Fuchs elaborates on the Jacobean shift in the legal regulation for piracy as a way to ensure the monarchial authority: “As piracy grows uncontrollably, mimicking the English state in ruling the seas, it poses a challenge to the very powers who had authorized it” (45). Under the light of these discussions, Jowitt and Fuchs hint at the political criticism in Fortune by Land and Sea. But the former thinks that Heywood and Rowley illustrate their distaste in Jacobean politics, and notes that

“Fortune by Land and Sea should be seen, then, as an early expression of anxieties about James’s leadership and, moreover, as one which, in its championing of buccaneers, needs to be seen as helping to create the oppositional climate of the second decade of the king’s reign” (“Piracy” 233). On the other hand, Fuchs contends that the play shows a social unrest regarding Elizabethan expansion politics: “One might thus read here a veiled critique of Elizabethan expansionism both when the pirates are most like England – that is, when they behave like a shadow state – and when, in surpassing it, they resemble it the least” (55). Taking these two interpretations into consideration, what is propounded in the play is the critique of human nature for grabing all the chances to upgrade himself/herself at the cost of other people’s lives. Hence, rather than a mere political critique, the play is beyond politics since it questions the anthropocentric drives in human beings. The double-plot uncovers this criticism since, in these two differing settings, human beings are just chasing money with a close attachment to materiality. For instance, Old Harding dies towards the end of the play before signing the warrant of inheritance. According to the rules of primogeniture, the elder son gets the inheritance, that is Philip, son and brother out of favour because of his marriage to Susan Forrest. The two younger sons of Old Harding, William and John, laments for the loss of inheritance, rather than the death of their father. Hence, what is central to the lives of the younger sons is the material acquisition.

The differentiation between piracy and privateering, in this regard, is a paragon to hint at the anthropocentric acknowledgement of one’s superiority over other human or nonhuman beings. Piracy, for the characters, becomes the way of uttering their complaints in the societal and civil order, whereby the acts of piracy turn into a social protest. Jowitt remarks that according to the pirates, “the lack of social mobility in England is what has caused them to turn to piracy” (“Piracy” 223). The pirates want to feel high in rank, and the sea gives them this feeling. The pirates of the play, Purser and Clinton, even refer to themselves as kings at sea whose reign is free, absolute, and boundless in a vast space they can blend in within their agency:

PURSER How is it with thee, Clinton?

CLINTON Well, well.

PURSER But was it not better when we reigned as lords, nay, kings, at sea? Those were days.

CLINTON Yes, golden days, but now our last has come and we must sleep in darkness.

PURSER Worthy mate, we have a flash left of some half hour long; that let us burn our bravely. Leave not behind us a snuff of cowardice in the nostrils of our noble countrymen. (V. i. 51)

On the other hand, the land does not provide them with a unique power, which entrains a severe analogy between two differing environments even contrasted in the title.

The land plot is familiarised with the Harding family. Old Harding’s elder son, Philip, discerns love over his father’s land, and marries a woman without rank, as a result of which he is to be disinherited and decreased to the status of servants with his wife, Susan Forrest. However, Old Harding dies before signing the warrant of disinheritance, and his land and fortune by land are passed onto Philip, rather than to his greedy and ruthless younger brothers. On the other hand, the sea plot is centred around Young Forrest who kills Rainsford in a duel to take the revenge of the murder of Frank who is Forrest’s brother. Yet, he is pursued by the local authorities. Harding’s second wife, Ann Harding, pitying young Forrest, helps him by offering him to sail with her merchant brother. Forrest accepts this without hesitation since he has lost his faith in the legislative justice in his own country, which he reveals as such in the play: “Then sir, will you provide me a safe waftage over to France, to Flanders, to Spain or any foreign coast? I dare not trust my native country with my forfeit life” (IV. i. 41). The play draws

parallels between these two contrasting settings. In relation, Jowitt underscores that “the contrasts between the brave and adventurous young Forrest, and the passive, arguably weak, Philip can be seen as tapping into a nostalgia for Elizabethan values that threatens to undermine Jacobean policies” (“Piracy” 218). By means of this juxtaposition, the sea is portrayed peevish, dangerous, and free while the land is more passive and easier to be taken under human agency. This categorisation is also reflected in the personality of the characters. As a matter of fact, Forrest is active, an innovator, and at times a rebel whereas Philip withdraws into his own shell, satisfied with what he has, and passive.

Jowitt makes a comparison between two main figures of the play and explicates that “in young Forrest we see the expression of aggressive expansionist policies at odds with James” whereas “Philip’s passivity, by contrast, … [displays] a version of James where virtue is rewarded, but his success is achieved only through the intervention of aggressive, war-like forces – young Forrest and the pirates – that are inimical to the values Philip espouses” (“Piracy” 233). Their differences are based on their environments since human beings are influenced by elemental bodies.

On similar grounds, Purser makes a clear comparison between land and sea as such:

PURSER Whats that to us? men of our known condition Must cast behind our backs all such respects,

We left our consciences upon the land When we began to rob upon the sea.

CLINTON We know we’re pirates, and profess to rob;

And would’st not have us freely use our trade?

If thou and thine be quite undone by us, We made by thee; impute it to thy fortune, And not to any injury in us;

For he that’s born to be a beggar, know,

Howe’er he toils and trafficks, must die so. (IV. i. 100)

Throughout the play, the readers and the audience are constantly reminded of the geographical differences between landscapes and waterscapes and the reflection of these differences in the human realm. But Purser’s above-quoted statement adds another dimension. In relation to this, Kurt Eric Douglas states that waterscape differs from landscape in terms of “a moral and metaphysical standpoint as well. He implies that providence and the moral sense (conscience) that corresponds to it in humans simply do not exist at sea, that the sea is not a place where moral considerations structure events”

(228). In this regard, the land is perceived to be a passive and mute entity on which humans can exercise their ultimate control and agency, whereas the sea is more difficult to be seized under human captivation as its agency exceeds that of humans.

Moreover, it is more difficult to limit waterscapes to the legislative discourse; hence violent acts of piracy and privateering persevere in the depths of the ocean. What is ironic, though, is that there is not a precise segregation between these two concepts. The play problematises these intertangled notions especially with the portrayals of Young Forrest as a privateer, and Purser and Clinton as pirates. However, they are all Englishmen, carrying the Cross of England and St. George on their ships, which further blurs their differentiation. Fuchs notes that the central theme of the play is “[t]he concept of loyalty to England, and the possibility of defining that Englishness by a subject’s behavior at sea” (54), which is believed to be displayed through young Forrest.

Nevertheless, they are all loyal to England, yet with different courses of conduct.

Furthermore, hypocrisy lies beneath the real reason of young Forrest’s sailing out to sea, which is to escape from the legislative retribution he would probably get as well as his mistrust of the national criminal justice system. Hence, as Douglas also contends, “[t]he reason Forrest goes to sea in the first place is similar to the reasons the pirates are at sea.

[Yet, t]he pirates conceive of themselves as monarchs similar to the English monarch to whom Forrest remains loyal” (223). Like young Forrest, Purser and Clinton escape from being judged under these legal conditions, yet not because of “any inherent injustice in their actions,” as Douglas points out, “but because of inconsistencies with the law itself.

… [T]he play suggests that the initial cause of Purser and Clinton’s criminality is that they have been caught out by a shift in English law concerning piracy, not that their actions as pirates are essentially criminal. The law has not discovered their criminal nature; rather, it has criminalized them” (241). Therefore, the pirate figures are legally criminalised under certain conditions:

PURSER Nay, since our country have proclaim’d us pirates^

And cut us off from any claim on England,

We’ll be no longer now call’d Englishmen. (IV. i. 100)

On the other hand, young Forrest refashions himself in the sea, and adopts the sea’s agential magnitude into his own agency, and reframes himself as a nationalistic hero

struggling against traitors. In this way, young Forrest becomes a tool to illustrate legal gaps:

YOUNG FORREST Come, descend.

The pirate! Fortune, thou art then my friend!

Now, valiant friends and soldiers, man the deck, Draw up your fights, and lace your drablers on;

Whilst I myself make good the forecastle, And ply my musket in the front of death.

… ; and the colours

Of England and St. George fly in the stern.

We fight against the foe we all desire.

Alarum, trumpets! gunner, straight give fire! (IV. ii. 104)

Winning a naval battle enhances human beings beyond their limits because this means the absorption of watery powerful agency inside the more fragile human body. This creates ecophobia when human beings encounter a more coordinated and magnificent agency of water as it cannot be controlled. Even if attempted to be controlled, the human body just dissolves into the sea. Water is an incomprehensible sphere for human beings. Serres underlines the metamorphosis in the human body when encountered the agency of water as such: “Life at sea quickly attains the status of a work of art because inhabiting that part of the uninhabitable Biogea requires a reversal of the body and soul that can convert the sailor to the divine” (11). The overwhelming part of the human being divided into body and soul not only proves his/her strength over the defeated but also certifies the agential convenience of his/her presence to that of waterscapes. In Fortune by Land and Sea, the sea provides ultimate freedom and fortune since it is an unlimited hydography difficult to be restricted by the civil order and legislative system.

Moreover, political unrest around the distinction between piracy and privateering also renders how waterscape is efficient in producing political and legal discourses.

Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass portrays a different waterscape prominent in early modern imagination, hence capturing ecophobic treatment of water from a different viewpoint.