ABSTRACT
This final chapter has three sections. It starts with martyrdom, a topic which in some ways unites the book’s two themes: it is about seeking glory through death. I suggest, drawing on Erich Fromm’s ideas in The Heart of Man, that the extreme positionalities of the opposing religious factions in the sixteenth century were in part an expression of group narcissism. The Protestant and Catholic martyrologies of the period are considered, as are John Donne’s views on martyrs as expressed in Biathanatos, and the writings of Jesuit poet and martyr Robert Southworth. From there, we move to the group narcissism of the court, and attempts to satirise it in stage plays by John Marston and Ben Jonson, and the poetry of Fulke Greville. The final section turns to narcissistic rulers and their depiction on the stage, in particular Greville’s Alaham, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and, finally, King Lear whose narcissism sets off the action of that play. I suggest, following Peter Schwartz and David Graeber, that both Tamburlaine and Lear are depicted as infant-like in their absolutism, where the parent-child relationship seen during the stage of primary narcissism becomes a political model for absolute rule.
