The Evolution of Satyr Duality in John Marston's

THE EVOLUTION OF SATYR DUALITY IN JOHN MARSTON'S DRAMA by James Omer Taylor A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School University of Ottawa In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Under the supervision of Richard N. Pollard, Ph.D. Ottawa, Ontario October 1973 (j) James Omer Taylor, Ottawa, 1974, UMI Number: DC53861 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform DC53861 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. 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CONTENTS Page CURRICULUM VITAE i ABSTRACT ±± ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I The Satyr in a Dramatic Context His trio-Mastix 59 Jacke Drum's Entertainment 7 7 CHAPTER II Satyr Tension in Transition Plays Antonio and Mellida 9 4 what You Will 125 CHAPTER III The Satyr in the Revenge Play Antonio's Revenge 151 CHAPTER IV The Satyr Mask The Malcontent 176 The Dutch Courtezan 19 2 The Fawn 222 CHAPTER V The Satyr Faces in Tragedy Sophonisba 247 CONCLUSION 316 BIBLIOGRAPHY 322 CURRICULUM VITAE James Omer Taylor Born: March 12, 1942 Graduated from Antigonish High School: 1959 Bachelor of Arts (English), St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish: 1963 Master of Arts (Medieval English) Fordham University: 1965 Course Work towards Ph.D., University of Ottawa: 1969-71 i ABSTRACT This study examines the satyr convention in rela tion to Marston's dramatic development. The understanding of this convention is arrived at through an examination of a special character type in Marston's plays who functions as a critic and satirist. In all of Marston's plays this satirist appears to have a split personality. He is either an indignant righteous scourge of vice or a perverse voyeur who takes ghoulish delight in dwelling on the very evil he scourges. In Histrio-Mastix, by presenting the satirist as a hypocrite, Marston utilizes this duality in the simplest way possible. In subsequent plays, however, the duality of the satirist becomes the basis for the development of a com plex character who synthesizes the two extreme moral positions ever present in Marston's works, positions that view man's nature as being either exclusively angelic or exclusively bestial . Jacke Drum was Marston's first attempt to overcome certain practical problems that arose from the satirist's duality. Marston continues to experiment with the dramatic potential inherent in this conventional type in Antonio and Mellida. And in his next play, What You Will, Marston suc cessfully presents the satirist in a dramatic context in ii which he contributes to the atmosphere of decadence. In the second part of Antonio and Mellida, Antonio's Revenge, the revengers' fascination with attacking evil taints them as it taints all satirists - In short, the convention plays an important part in censuring the blood code. The Malcontent marks a new stage in Marston's use of the convention. By expressing the odious side of his personality in terms of a disguise, Marston uses the sati rist to present a poetic vision that was more positive and optimistic than was previously possible. In The Dutch Courtezan and The Fawn, Marston continues to use the dis guise element in a similar manner with the result that the satirist finally arrives at a more balanced view of man's bestial and angelic nature. In Sophonisba, Marston's last complete play, no one character can be seen as a satirist inasmuch as the single-minded characters are very one-sided. Yet the in fluence of the convention is present. The protagonists represent in isolation the two faces of this conventional type. An awareness of this separation of the two faces of the satirist is central to an understanding of Marston's conception of tragedy. Hi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following people for their contribution to my dissertation: My director, Dr. Richard N. Pollard, for chis in sightful, critical observations and his personal interest and encouragement; Dr. Hazel (Batzer) Pollard for her initial advice on the direction of the work and for suggestions on matters of form; Mr. Joseph Lyons, whose discussions on the synthesis of opposing moral viewpoints clarified my thinking on Sophonisba; Mrs. Beverly Maclsaac, for her patience, compe tence, and professional attitude while typing this dis sertation . iv INTRODUCTION This dissertation is concerned with a conventional character type and its relationship to the overall structure and development of the plays of John Marston. It is clearly recognizable as a type with certain characteristic features. A general description of the type and his role in the play would be as follows: he is frequently the protagonist; if he is not the central figure, he nevertheless manages to manipu late a large number of persons in the play and usually they are manipulated so that they become aware of their own stupidity- The personality of this type is very often complex. The type is a self-righteous railer and is constantly attack ing specific and general vices in a language that is charac teristically violent and forceful. He sees himself as a scourge of villainy and uses metaphors that describe his self-appointed task in terms of a whipper. He wants to rid the world of cor ruption, but he tells us little of the joys of the new kind of society that would apparently exist if everyone were purged of his vileness. His motivation as a scourge is not always clear, but there is never any question about the compulsive nature of his urge to reform. But) paradoxically, this type exhibits simultaneously another side of his personality which is not 2 always so obvious but nevertheless is invariably present. He is fascinated with the very vice that he attacks and in most cases the vice attacked is lust. He dwells on his de scription of perversity. He delights in bearing to a lover the ill tidings that his or her beloved has been unfaithful/ he relishes describing at length the details of adultery or for nication to the cuckold. When this dark side of his nature comes to the fore it is usually easy to discern that he is motivated by envy. Some times he acknowledges this envy within himself, and at other times, although not acknowledged as such, his envy takes the form of bitter disillusionment. In short, he is tainted by the very vice he scourges. This type is not entirely peculiar to Marston, although he employs it more frequently and more uniquely than any other dramatist. Moreover, it was used in formal verse satire before the ban in 1599 and was later (prob-s- ably as a result of the ban) adapted so that the impulse to satire could find outlet in drama. The transfer of this con vention —— called a convention in that it is a consistent re curring type — from formal verse satire to drama was the main problem that Marston had to overcome. The various dramatic innovations and devices used to overcome this problem will be one of the central concerns of this dissertation. I will also attempt to show that the convention becomes a device that is the matrix for Marston's world view and, from a more practical perspective,,it determines the dramatic movement in his plays. 3 From the outset, the extent of my debt to and depen dence on two particular works should be clearly acknowledged. Alvin Kernan's book, The Cankered Muse, and his dissertation, "John Marston's Concept and Use of Satire, Formal and Dramatic," are the works that provide the context for my examination of Marston's plays. They are the only studies parallel to mine. However, my dissertation differs very significantly in focus and approach, and, as a result, my interpretation of seven of the nine plays leads to different conclusions. The other two, Histrio-Mastix and The Malcontent, while more directly depen dent on Kernan's ideas, differ in emphasis. In The Cankered Muse, which is an expansion and fur ther development of his dissertation, Kernan posits a critical theory that . originally derived from an attempt to un derstand one part of English Renaissance satire, the plays of John Marston. This in turn led on to an examination of the Elizabethan conven tions and theories of nondramatic satire. For Kernan, the character type described above is a convention that naturally grows out of the satiric genre. The scourge of villainy with his dual personality is a persona, a literary device used by many satirists from classical times to the pres ent, and it is a mistake to equate the character with the 1 Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Re naissance (New Haven: 1959). 2'Alvin Kernan, "John Marston's Concept and Use of Satire, Formal and Dramatic" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale Univer sity, 1954). 3 • • Kernan, The Cankered Muse, p. vn. 4 author; it is a persona in its own right. This persona manifests itself in two ways: there is a public face and a private face.

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