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introduction
Virtues That Matter
For use almost can change the stamp of nature. —Shakespeare, Hamlet, III.iv.151.8 Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour —Chaucer, General Prologue, I.1–4
This book investigates premodern “vertue,” or the embodied excellence that enables women’s ethical action in vernacular English poetry between 1343 and 1623.1 To study this kind of virtue, the following chapters address skepticism regarding women’s capacities for ethical action, by which I mean the concrete ability to enact principles that organize an everyday way of life in premodern England. When Hamlet advises his mother to abstain from sex with Claudius, “Assume a virtue if you have it not,” he treats virtue as a power that Gertrude might exercise (III.iv.151).2 Yet, when he concludes his counsel with the remark, “For use almost can change the stamp of nature” (my emphasis), he suggests that Gertrude cannot fully enact this or any other virtue (III.iv.151.8). Instead, he imagines Gertrude’s virtue as a decorative covering, as “a frock or livery / That aptly is put on” (III.iv.151.4–5). Hamlet renders Gertrude’s virtue as superficial, and, by so doing, he forecloses her potential for ethical action. This devaluation of “virtues that matter”—as well as the association of these embodied powers with women—focuses the ensuing argument.
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