Would-Be-Politics Early Modern Travel Writing and the Drama of Political Expertise

Abstract

In what may be the most quoted aphorism on early modern diplomacy, the English ambassador Henry Wotton famously wrote to a friend that “[a]n ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”¹ While most critical uses of this aphorism emphasize the double, or possible triple entendre present in Wotton’s use of “lie,” it is worth considering that Wotton defines the work of ambassadorial labor as a mode of political travel. While Wotton’s comment does highlight the degree to which the job of the agent of state is to deceive their host for the betterment of the nation, it is also key to public and social understandings of clandestine government service that this was labor performed away from the British homeland. This essay examines discourses of foreign travel with an eye turned towards the degree to which it was imagined as aspirational labor which could generate social and political capital for travelers. Looking at the drama of Ben Jonson and his representations of the aspirational traveler, this essay argues that Volpone critiques social discourses which sought to valorize travelers as educated servants of state who could serve as educators to English audiences.