Journal of History and Classics: Doubting Thomas: Supporting Data: Romance

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III. Thomas Doughtie: the Motion Picture – Hero of Romance and Tragedy

The Drake-Doughtie romance genre seems to bloom at the end of the nineteenth century. Several other works, most notably Rennell Rodd’s Ballads of the Fleet (1897) and Alfred Noyes’ Drake: an English Epic (1906) fixate on Drake’s mental anguish upon learning of Doughtie’s betrayal, and his grief over the inevitable denouement. Rodd is most certainly a Drake partisan, proudly declaring, in his introduction, his friendship with Julian Corbett. For the most part, the drama plays out exactly as one expects; Doughtie is an unrepentant schemer, but in the end a gentleman who knows how to lose with grace. Drake is a stern judge of what he believes to be treason against the queen, mentioning the friendship at the trial, but not stressing it unduly.

But at the last, events take a turn for the bizarre. In Rodd’s death scene, again the pair step to the side to whisper in confidence, “Then the long quarrel reconciled each kissed the other’s cheek/ And held his hand for a little space, but no man heard them speak,” (109). Cook’s account mentions that just before his execution, Doughtie embraces Drake; Johnson says offhandedly that Drake “caressed” Doughtie, a statement which, in context, seems a simple metaphor for Drake’s confidence in him. Rodd’s account embellishes this detail. But social kissing is commonly practiced, and even though hand-holding seems a little effusive, it is easily argued that a 21st century reading of a sexual subtext may well be inappropriate in nineteenth century lyrical poetry. But then what to make of this puzzling scene after Doughtie is beheaded, indeed by Drake’s own hand?

He spread his cloak around the corse, and raised the severed head

The shuddering crews drew slowly back and left him with the dead:

And long he gazed in that pale face he shielded from the rain,

Thereafter saith the Chronicle, Drake seldom smiled again. (110-111)

The bizarre image of the grief-stricken Drake, staring at the severed head, is reminiscent of Wilde’s Salome. And even more bizarrely this image is repeated again in Noyes’ poem, in which the sexual elements are even more stressed. His version of Doughtie, curiously, the secretary of Leicester even thought the agent of Burghley, is described as a villainous snake, totally unworthy of Drake,. And yet, Drake falls in love with him anyway – “there seemed one heart between them and one soul,” (36) or so it seems in this passage:

Especially did Thomas Doughty toil

With soft and flowery tongue to win his way

And Drake, whose rich imagination craved

For something more than simple seaman’s talk,

Was marvelously drawn to this new friend,

Who with the scholar’s mind, the courtier’s gloss,

The lawyer’s wit, the adventurer’s romance,

Gold honey from the blooms of Euphues,

Rare flashes from the Mermaid and sweet smiles

Copied from Sidney’s self, even to the glance

Of sudden, liquid sympathy, gave Drake

That banquet of the soul he ne’er had known

Nor needed till he knew, but needed now.

So to the light of Doughty’s answering eyes

He poured his inmost thoughts out, hour by hour;

And Doughty coiled up in the heart of Drake. (39-40)

This is clearly the language of seduction. Drake confesses his life story to Doughtie’s “half-ironic smiling lips,” including his love for Elizabeth Sydenham – again, poor Mary Drake seems not to exist. Noyes departs from the historical script by inventing an early betrayal by Doughtie in Africa – he cannot find supplies on the Mayo excursion even though honest Tom Moon does so easily. Noyes treats the incident on the Mary at length – of course, the perfidious Doughtie has slandered Thomas Drake, and has indeed stolen from the cargo, but Drake, after a period of agonized soul-searching, forgives his beloved friend. But the evidence against Doughtie grows, and Drake does what any reasonable man would under the circumstances: he runs mad.

He plunged with bursting heart and burning brow;

And once again, like madness, the black shapes

Of doubt swung through his brain and chattered and laughed

Till he upstretched his arms in agony…

The madness of distrustful friendship gleamed

From his fierce eyes: “Oh villain, damned villain,

God’s murrain on his heart! (102)

Fortunately, Drake has both a religious epiphany, feeling "his unity with all/ The vast composure of the universe," (106) and a vision of a more practical sort – looking out to sea he notes that one of the ships is missing and that Doughtie had stolen it! But although Drake captures, imprisons and brings him to trial, his speech after Doughtie’s conviction still reveals his passionate attachment, affirming his love for Doughtie and comparing him to Jonathan - the subject of the most overtly homoerotic incident in the King James Bible, whose love “was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Sam) and whom David loved “as he loved his own soul” (repeatedly in 1 Sam). Indeed, it is interesting how often these famous phrases concerning David and Jonathan are echoed in the Drake-Doughtie discourse. Noyes’ Drake leaves Doughtie’s fate in the hands of his jury, but adds silently, “Yet oh, my friends, I would not have him die!” (123).

Nevertheless, the historical script must be followed. As they reconcile and dine, the verse includes an oddly prolix depiction (7 lines of iambic pentameter) of Doughtie’s apparel. This is significant because the historical narratives, in their description of Doughtie, focus on his intellectual gifts and spiritual proclivities. But as the story becomes more romantic, Doughtie shifts to becoming a more traditional object of desire whose physical characteristics are emphasized. Again, Drake sits a lone wake with the severed head while the poet regales us with a long elegy to betrayed love. In the dawn, a pagan Patagonian ritual takes place, “so near that by their light Drake saw/ The blood upon the dead man’s long black hair/ Clotting corruption,” (130). The next section can only be described as “Drake Agonistes,” “His burning spirit wandered through the wastes/ Wandered through hells behind the apparent hell,” (132) and, just so that we don’t miss the reason for Drake’s emotive despair, “the green grass that clothed the fields/ Of England (shallow, shallow, fairy dream!)/ What was it but the hair of dead men’s graves...” (133). During his period of brooding, Drake questions the righteousness of his cause, and, tellingly, if there is such a thing as faithful love.

But the drama does not end here. When Drake’s men return to him after dawn, he urges them on with his famous speech proclaiming the equality of the gentlemen and the sailors, and vows his wrath upon any further hint of mutiny – but the reason is far, far different than the histories have it. Because he sacrificed the man he loved for the voyage, in his name the journey must go onward, for if they were to turn back now, Doughtie’s death would be for naught. “...I swear/ over this butchered body if any swerve/ Hereafter from the straight and perilous way/ He shall not die alone,” (139). And significantly, it is only after Doughtie, the improper love object, is dead, that we see Bess Sydenham, the proper love object, pining away for Drake at home.

We see much the same relationship at the opening of L. Lamprey’s short story “The Fleece of Gold,” (1923): “The air was thick with rumors of war with Spain when Drake arrived in London years later, in the company of a new friend, Thomas Doughty,—courtier, soldier, scholar, familiar with every shifting undercurrent of European court life. Never at a loss for a phrase, ready of wit and quick of understanding, Doughty could put into words what the frank-hearted young sea-captain had thought and felt and dreamed” (223). Again, the emphasis is on their particular intimacy, “And on board the little flagship Doughty and Drake talked together as those do whose minds answer one another like voices in a roundelay,” (225). Lamprey is the first author who attempts to adequately address the question of class between Drake and Doughty, and she does so adroitly through the use of dialogue:

"'Tis the strangest thing in life, that whatever we are most averse to, that we are fated to do."

"Eh?" said Drake with a laugh, looking up from Eden's translation of Pigafetts. "Accordin' to that you can't even trust yourself. D'you look to see me set up an image to be worshiped?" Then he added in a lower tone, "That's foolish, Tom. God don't shape us to be puppets."

"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had great store of antiquated sentiments—like those in the chronicles of the paladins. I knew his nephew well—a witty fellow, but visionary. He laughed at the old cavalero, but he was fond of him, and our affections rule us and ruin us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would get on at court." (225-226)

The Italianate gentleman ends the conversation with an Italian quote: “Doughty stroked his beard with a light complacent hand. ‘Seriously, it is not a kindness to expect of men without traditions more than they are capable of doing. E meglio cade dalle fenestre che tetto.’”

Despite what soon reveals itself as irreconcilable class differences, Drake still moons over his companion, who is the last thought on his mind as he goes to bed. “What was there about the man that made his arguments so plausible when one heard them, so false when his engaging presence was withdrawn? And yet how devoted, how sympathetic, how witty and companionable he could be! Drake found himself excusing his friend as if he were a woman,—laughed, sighed, and went to sleep,” (228). Once again we see the motif of Doughtie as substitute female.

And again, in the tragic denouement, Drake’s grief is manifest and eternal: “In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice,” (230). Drake mournfully shoulders the guilt, and yet attributes the problem to some intrinsic flaw in the gentleman’s nature: “’He couldn't help being as he was,—I reckon. If I'd known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I never knew—till too late’” (230).

William McFee’s “The Sun Was Over the Foreyard,” (1933) is quite restrained in comparison to the previous tales, neither mentioning Drake’s great love nor his grief over the death of Doughtie. The emphasis in the story is far more on the political intrigue and witchcraft perpetrated by Doughtie, and also on an increasing sense of class consciousness. It is interesting that this theme is barely emphasized in pre-twentieth century Drake-Doughtie literature and then comes to the fore. However, the emphasis on Doughtie’s physical qualities over his intellectual ones continues: the author makes mention several times of Doughtie’s handsomeness, as if this is a factor in his beguiling of Drake.

McFee also mentions Doughtie’s “nicely tended beard.” It is peculiar to note the emphasis throughout this body of literature on Doughtie’s hair or beard. Although the historical Doughtie’s hair color is never noted, and no portraits of him seem to exist, in every account and every illustration Doughtie’s hair is consistently dark, perhaps in contrast with the ginger-blond Drake (although often no physical description of Drake is offered) or perhaps to indicate Doughtie’s morally ambiguous nature in the text. Perhaps the most effusive account of this is a peripheral mention of Doughtie from 1833 in a sentimentalized “memoir” by Mary Howitt:

I was reading that evening in a folio volume, the voyages of Sir Francis Drake; I had come to that incident which has left a blot on his memory – the murder of Mr. Thomas Doughty on the coast of Brazil. I was much struck with the enormity of the act; and the relation being accompanied by a large print, showing that calm, gentlemanly person, Mr. Thomas Doughty, with his hands tied behind him, and his fine head covered with a profusion of rich hair, standing in the midst of his determined and cruel enemies, so wrought upon my imagination that the tears streamed from my eyes.

Later in the same passage, the narrator speaks of his absent father, “I do not recollect that I ever had a description of his person, but he lived in my mind as Mr. Thomas Doughty – the same gentlemanly figure, in the prime of life, and with such flowing locks as painters give to our first parent, descending gracefully upon his shoulders.” The emphasis again upon Doughtie’s physical beauty is remarkable, but perhaps more so the fact that he appears as a romanticized, tragic figure, a symbol in his own right outside of the Drake narrative. Divorced from Drake, he is no longer a villain, but carries the positive signification of a man unjustly subject to tyranny.

Francis Drake; a Tragedy of the Sea is unusual for its focus on Doughtie’s point of view, indeed is far more a play about Doughtie than about Drake. S. Weir Mitchell compares him in his foreword to Iago, and if that was not enough to give the reader a fair taste of things to come, he makes a point of saying, “It is worthy of note that there is no woman in this tragic story,” (vii). Doughtie is a moody antagonist, lacking in understanding of his own motivations, and a tragic hero in the classic sense: at the beginning Wynter laments how he has fallen from the man he once knew, dutiful, tranquil, learned. Doughtie hints that his change of temperament may be due to his occult practices, but again, this matter is inserted peremptorily and then dropped.

It is not long before the quasi-romantic elements of the drama become apparent. Wynter describes Drake as a man who “on the greens/Sat half the night a-talking poesy.” He criticizes Doughtie for judging “men by their love, as maidens do,” (5). To this, Doughtie responds, of Drake, “The admiral in his less distracted times/Hath some rare flavor of the woman in him.” Again there is the motif of the substitute female; this curious exchange seems key to understanding the dynamic between Doughtie and Drake.

Unlike the narratives which paint Doughtie as melodramatic villain, in a Doughtie-centered fiction, his spirituality is soon evident – indeed, he is somewhat of a mystic and poet:

Mark how the southward splendor of the cross

Shines peace upon us. When the nights are calm

I joy to climb the topmast’s utmost peak

And, hanging breathless in the unpeopled void,

Note how the still deep answers star for star (8).

If there is any doubt that Mitchell intends to give us Francis Drake in the style of Shakespeare, Leonard Vicarye appears on the scene as a tragic jester straight out of King Lear, replete with poignantly cryptic utterances. And of course, a villain is necessary, taking, improbably, the form of the chaplain, Francis Fletcher. Doughtie confesses his alliance with Lord Burghley to the scheming cleric, but then argues that his aim is to save : “I am no man’s man; I am the Queen’s/ I shall serve best my God in serving her,” (16). This romanticized Doughtie’s motivations are worthwhile, if misguided.

Drake attempts to speak to Doughtie, to warn him that his path will lead to his downfall. The exchange between them is long and emotional, and it does not take much effort to read sublimated homoerotic content into their discussion. At the climax of his speech, Drake says, “Let him that loves you whisper to your soul/ The thing he would not say,” (19). When Doughtie departs, Drake pleads with Vicarye to look after him, and both men agree that Doughtie is both self-destructive and childlike, requiring their protection.

Doughtie’s sedition grows worse; he stokes discontent, even inadvertently, by singing a song of England which makes the men homesick. “I think you would breed mutiny in heaven,” Wynter laments (35). Poignancy wrestles with overworked Shakespearian allusions; Vicarye, who complains that he shall “never laugh again,” wanders the shores of St. Julian, philosophizing over the skull of Don Carthegene like some Patagonian Hamlet. But this Vicarye is capable of a few stirring lines, such as when he attempts to convince Drake not to hang Doughtie: “...many a year that rope will throttle me/ Who am no traitor...” (44). Drake finally offers Doughtie the threefold choice of fates given in The World Encompassed.

But having pushed the homoerotic subtext so far, Mitchell loses his nerve. Although he has stated that there is no woman in this story, he inserts one, a waiting lover who Doughtie would be ashamed to face should he return to England. He chooses an honorable death for her sake. Mitchell returns to the historical text as Doughtie faces death cheerfully, mystically, and to the dismay of the others around him, especially Vicarye, who is near to tears. Doughtie asks if he will be reunited with Drake in the afterlife; Drake assures him that he believes so. Again, there is a scene where Drake and Doughtie confer silently – it is most curious how every one of the Drake-Doughtie authors avoids filling this historical space with an attempt to solve the mystery of what passed between the two men. The last lines of the drama are a curious final exchange between the pair; Doughtie says “Take my love. Still let me live a friendly memory – Come with me.” Drake responds, “No, I cannot, cannot come,” (59). As a memory, Doughtie might go with them, but for Drake to come with Doughtie, suicide must be implied. Surely Doughtie is not serious, or is this conversation pendant to what they discussed in secret? Furthermore, the phraseology of Drake’s denial implies not unwillingness, but adherence to duty.

Mitchell would have Doughtie as Iago, and like Iago’s relationship to Othello, the odd behavior of the pair is explained if an underlying homoerotic tension is supposed. During his first conference with Fletcher, Doughtie confesses, “I am like a wine thick with confusing lees/ To-day they settle and tomorrow morn/ Another shakes me, and I’m thick again,” (15). It is clear that through much of the play, he himself does not understand the motivation for his own actions.

It is notable that the Drake-Doughtie story, for all its lingering fascination, on the whole has spawned unsatisfactory, curiously flat works of literature. The best are the works by Noyes and Weir Mitchell, both of which seek to explore the interior lives of their subjects (Drake and Doughtie, respectively), both of which occasionally reach poignant moments of beauty or insight, and both of which are terribly flawed by an amateurish attempt to imitate the style of some great master (Wordsworth and Shakespeare respectively). Another example not previously discussed is Robert E. Howard’s 1962 poem “The One Black Stain.” Perhaps the best work of literature dealing with the subject, it is noteworthy that both Doughtie and Drake are incidental to the real focus of the narrative, the author’s own fully-developed character, Solomon Kane. But Doughtie, mysteriously smiling at the moment of his death, and Drake, tyrannical in public, grieving in private, are the caricatures we have come to expect.

The rest of the literary works discussed range in quality from dull to out-and-out humorous. The problem in all of them is exactly the same: Drake and Doughtie are not real people, but symbols. There is far more of an attempt to explain events – enormous amounts of detail are pulled from the historical narratives – than to develop character. It is extremely noteworthy that no author attempts to reveal the nature of the secret conversation between Drake and Doughtie. Surely, if the authors were interested in the interior lives of the characters rather than a rationalization of historical events, this most mysterious moment would be the ideal place to delve into an independent exploration. This never happens: if Drake and Doughtie are developed beyond the simple hero and villain needed to fit the imperialist narrative, Drake is distorted into a tragic lover who chooses an inappropriate love-object at the beginning of the tale, but his unhealthy attachment to Doughtie is replaced at the end of the narrative by a more benign union with Elizabeth Sydenham. Indeed, if these stories covertly explore homoerotic attraction, then the message is ultimately one of heterosexual propaganda. For these purposes, it is necessary for Doughtie only to play the role of seducer, silver-tongued and physically beautiful.

Attempts to put the Drake-Doughtie story on film avoid such excesses, incorporating the details of the historical narrative to radically varying results. An episode of the 1961 television show Sir Francis Drake called “The Doughty Plot” unintentionally satirizes the textbook reading of the Doughtie affair by trying to cram all of the relevant details into one half hour. Drake (played by Terence Morgan) plans his secret raid with the encouragement of Queen Elizabeth (Jean Kent). Yet Drake still takes along the useless gentleman adventurers who believe they go to Alexandria. When the truth is revealed, Drake rationalizes that the adventurers should be happy despite the fact they are going around the world and through a very dangerous passage because they will get a good return on their investment. Doughtie, sounding very much like an egomaniacal CEO, argues more-or-less that the stockholders should be directing the company. He then bribes many of the crew into rebelling; shortsightedly, no one thinks about the fact that Drake is the only navigator they have. Finally, as Doughtie is condemned, Drake makes a grand speech proclaiming that from henceforth, the captain is the master of the ship, and it applies everywhere, forever, because he said so. Other guilty pleasures of this fiasco include a swashbuckling Leonard Vicarye who saves Drake’s life during the mutiny. It is perhaps notable that, contrary to the romantic narratives, the actor who plays Doughtie in this drama, Frederick Jaeger, is both far older than Drake and balding.

The 1980 movie Drake’s Venture suffers from none of these flaws – indeed, Paul Darrow, the actor who plays Doughtie, has the requisite thick dark hair and well-trimmed beard. The scriptwriter, John Nelson Burton, attempts to be scrupulously fair to the principles, inserting into the narrative almost every complaint made against Doughtie: sedition, challenging the plan of the voyage, sorcery, classism. At the same time, the portrayal of Drake by actor John Thaw is sublimely nuanced; Drake is both admirable and deeply flawed, courageous and paranoid, determined and inflexible.

But whatever has gone before is completely eclipsed by the drama which unfolds at San Julian. This film makes manifest the problematic nature of the Doughtie affair, the reason the incident haunts students of history to this day. In his magnificent and poignant death-scene, Doughtie at last eclipses Drake. The upstaging of the lead is so total that the end of the film, depicting the success of Drake’s expedition, is rushed and feels incidental. The climax is the beheading of Doughtie; by this point the identification with the passion of the martyred Doughtie is so complete that the viewer’s reaction is one of shock and trauma. The disturbing nature of the incident is echoed in the film’s final scene, the knighting of Sir Francis Drake, where the queen jokes that the King of Spain has asked for Drake’s head. “Here in England we approve our heroes, not cut them down,” the Queen quips at the accolade, to the disturbed reaction shots of the other characters, who clearly remember another time and place where heroes are beheaded.

Ironically, the availability of these two media productions is inversely proportional to their quality. Sir Francis Drake has been released as a boxed set of dvds. Drake’s Venture, on the other hand, never received a commercial release. Perhaps it was its disturbing nature that caused the admirable film to sink into obscurity, shown only once in England and once in the United States (Masterpiece Theatre in March of 1983). Nevertheless, the film has a cult following, with worn copies of home-recorded videotapes circulating from hand to hand, and has spawned a considerable body of fanfiction, most of which makes both overt and explicit some of the underlying motifs hinted at in the published Drake-Doughtie oeuvre.

It is peculiar that the genre most sympathetic to Doughtie is children’s literature. Works such as Under Drake’s Flag (1883), and The Boy’s Drake (1910) at the least question the incident, if not show outright sympathy to Doughtie. When reduced to the level of simplicity needed for a child’s understanding, Drake’s actions become entirely obscure. The adult rationalizations that Drake followed his duty, or that sternness of discipline was required become completely hollow. In the words of Henty, “...it certainly seems extraordinary that on such a voyage as this Captain Doughty could not have been deprived of his command and reduced to the rank of a simple adventurer, in which he could, one would think, have done no harm whatsoever to the expedition,” (271). The approach taken by the recent You Wouldn’t Want to Explore with Sir Francis Drake avoids these problems by being entirely satirical. The story is told from the perspective of the hapless Francis Fletcher, and, to illustrate the premise of the book, David Antram’s cartoon illustration of the beheading of Doughtie is on the title page.

Conclusions

For some 430 years, Thomas Doughtie has been held captive in Drake’s imperialist narrative. What little we know of him from primary sources reveals a man, both admirable and flawed, neither saint nor villain. Accounts of history and fiction have equally distorted the man’s character. The argument has been made (by Vaux, for one, xxxix-xl) and disproved that no objection was made to Doughtie’s fate at the time. Indeed, the contemporary accounts of Fletcher and Cooke belie this, as well as the futile and self-destructive behavior of John Doughtie upon his return to England. Quinn believes that the Doughtie affair was still controversial as of 1589 (42) and argues that a possible reason for the suppression of Hakluyt’s original narrative of the “Famous Voyage” was that Walsingham objected to a pro-Drake version of the Doughtie story (40). It would be more truthful to say that there was no great defense of Drake’s behavior, for Cliffe and Pretty treat the incident with measured distance, and Drake’s new and powerful friends tactfully elide all mention of it in their discourse. Hatton, Burghley, Dee, Doughtie’s friends at the Inner Temple – faced with the rising tide of Drake’s public acclaim, none leave any record of Thomas Doughtie and his life. If a great injustice was done to Thomas Doughtie on the “Island of Blood,” perhaps a greater injustice is the vast, and perhaps deliberate, silence of his peers, a silence that virtually eradicates his life save for the part he plays in the story of the man who killed him. It is hoped that this article, by exposing both the facts and the distortions, will in some sense finally rescue the life of Thomas Doughtie from the hands of his adversary.

Acknowledgments and References

This article is a working preliminary draft, NOT yet submitted for peer review. Leave your comments on the discussion page (talk page) or contact the First Author, Scaine, at their talk page or by email.

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