Kevin De Ornellas, The Horse in Early Modern English Culture: Bridled, Curbed, and Tamed

by, Michael Gardiner

What drew you to the subject of horses in English culture at that particular time? 

The idea for the book came in three clear early stages. First, I simply noticed endless references to horses in early modern plays. In the pre-car era that is to be expected, of course. For example, every Shakespeare play mentions a horse – every one. Yet there is no real scope for material horses to appear on stage – although that has happened in rare, one-off, mainly outdoor Shakespearean spectacles over the centuries. So I was intrigued by the gulf between the endless verbal allusions to the horse and by its absent body on the stage. It became obvious very quickly that the horse has to function as a metaphor as well as a functional item of transport that notionally exists somewhere outside the on-stage action. Second, I was inspired by the amount of great work being done on animals in early modern culture. So many scholars are seriously addressing references to the material and metaphorical animal in Renaissance culture: a preliminary list would include Bruce Boehrer, Erica Fudge, Elspeth Graham, James Knowles and Karen Raber. As Karen puts it in a recent book, such scholars have “transformed the study of animals in the Renaissance from hobby history to serious academic subject”. In other words, a canon of secondary literature on the Renaissance beast was developing. Third, there had not been a full-length study of the horse as a metaphor in the Renaissance – I felt that given the new interest in Renaissance animals and the central role of the horse in early modern texts that such a book would be not only desirable but necessary.

You talk of “horse domination language” being applied to women of the day—particularly in the play Such use of language is indicative of a prevailing sexism of the day and lack of respect for horses. Could you say that women of the era and horses were kindred spirits in oppression? 

Not quite. One needs to phrase these things carefully. To suggest that horses can be “kindred spirits” with any group of people is to possibly anthropomorphize them or even to sentimentalize them. I hope that I have avoided such slackness in the book. It is less problematic, I think, to do what I have done and simply note that the misogynist trope of the woman as horse to be metaphorically ridden is not only a dramatic, comic deceit used in certain plays by Dekker, Fletcher, and Shakespeare but is rather a trope embedded in many cultural outputs of the time – ballads, moralistic pamphlets and early prose fiction and so on. Dominated, servile and tamed/trained only through brutality, the Renaissance horse is a suitable, vital metaphor for any person or group getting othered or marginalized in the (mainly) white male world of early modern English culture.

In Chapter One, you say “when animals suffer, humans are affected, and when humans decline, horses follow a similar course.” This sensible statement is not always heeded by humans in England at that time or even today, necessarily. Could you point to a singular cause in this way of thinking in Early Modern English culture, or even our contemporary culture? 

If I understand the question correctly, you are asking me if it always the case that hard times for animals equates to hard times for animals. Well, yes, that is the case. In that particular chapter I address the depiction in the anonymous play, Woodstock, of the neglect of horses under the misrule of Richard II and his favorites. One particular underfed horse metonymically represents not just all horses but all of under-provisioned England. A warring, poverty-struck king is obviously going to struggle to feed his horses as well as his men. Animals always suffer in war: the public embrace of the story behind the sentimental War Horse novella, play, and film has trivialized to some extent the public’s awareness of what happened to Britain’s horses during the Great War. It is well known that six million horses left Britain between 1914 and 1918 and never came back. That is a serious amount of living and dying horseflesh. Of course, the horses endured huge suffering comparable to that of the soldiers. Think too of the Second World War when, again, obviously, many horses were used sometimes in battle but more often as beasts of burden and suffered accordingly. Think of all those dangerous animals in London Zoo – spiders and snakes and so on – that were destroyed in precautions lest they somehow escape because of Luftwaffe bombing action. And think too of the neglected animals in farms and zoos in war-torn countries of today – Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria etc… During a time of human crisis animal welfare simply slips down the priority table.

A common argument of people who are against whaling is that whales shouldn’t be hunted because they display human-like attributes and are intelligent. Do you find that this argument dismisses other animals in need of care and protection, even if they don’t display “human-like attributes?” How might this argument be applied to horses? 

Yes. I think that is a limited, albeit well-intended argument. To me, whales should not be exploited simply because they have whale-like attributes which are inherently exquisite. The anthropocentric suggestion that we should protect only intelligent or human-like creatures is ultimately a speciest one because it suggests that humans are better than all other animals – and we are animals, it must always be stressed – and that organisms that are not like humans are somehow less worthy. Any conservationist will tell you that they will get far more publicity for looking after a panda bear with Tudor-like reproductive difficulties than for saving a hundred species of beetle. So zoos spend money on elaborate panda bear and polar bear and orangutan enclosures while reducing the money they spend conserving unglamorous, very un-human invertebrates and reptiles. I want to live on a planet where we can save as much biodiversity as is possible. I don’t grade the qualities of a butterfly as it compares with a hyena or the qualities of an anemone as compared to an elephant. Horses, as exploited beasts go, are probably better treated than most. After all, very few humans eat horse flesh and people generally tend to be kind to horses because of the tactile relationship we have with them. Not that one should be complacent: horses can be brutalized in low-grade horse-racing and every week a horse-owner is prosecuted for maltreatment of his charges. Ultimately, though, I value all animals – including the human animal – and I value the wonderful scholarship that is being done that asks us consider the central role of the non-human animal to our existence and asks us to always be ready to notice these animals’ crucial, powerful role as rich cultural metaphor.