Innocence Framed: Classical Myth as a Strategic Tool in Jacob Duym’s Nassausche Perseus (1606)

Are there any limits to the effectiveness of a written text? An interesting question perhaps, asking for the conditions under which the reader holds opinions in resistance to the writer’s framing or reframing. In 1606 Jacob Duym, a Leiden rhetorician, published a ‘Memory Book’ (Ghedenck-boeck), a compilation of six stage plays based on and recalling collective experience. They dramatize episodes of the Dutch Revolt against Spain (1568–1648) to remind the readers of the atrocities committed by the Spaniards and the hardship endured by the Princes of Orange. Since the 1560s, the Netherlands became involved in a revolt against ardent militant religious policies of Spain. After a war of iconoclasm and violent attacks by Protestants on churches and monasteries spread through the Netherlands in 1566, the catholic Spanish king Philip II send the duke of Alba (nickname: ‘The Iron Duke’) to Brussels, to repress the rebellion and root out Protestantism. Alba acted with extraordinary rigour to suppress heresies. Thousands of people facing accusations of rebellion fled to England and Germany or were executed. In this paper I will focus on framing aspects in the first play of Duym’s Ghedenck-boeck: the Nassausche Perseus, i.e. a member of the House of Nassau as Perseus, thus a combination of the myth of Perseus and Andromeda and historical topicality.1 The myth of the ill-fated Andromeda is well-known.2 The girl had been chained to a rock and fallen prey to a sea monster because of her mother’s pride. She was saved by the hero Perseus who fell in love and took her as his bride. According to the subtitle of the Ghedenck-boeck, Duym used the dramatized episodes to have his readers