Chapter II

Review of Related Literature

In this chapter, the thesis writer will review the theories and other related literature which are used in the analysis. Since both dramas of John Fletcher and Francis

Beaumont are written as a critique of the social order, especially of women, in the Elizabethan period, the writer thinks that knowing the history and social life of the people during that time will help her in understanding the - dramas better. As The Scornful Lady is a comedy of manners and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife is a comedy of

intrigue, it is also necessary to give some explanation on both types of comedy.

10 11

I. The Elizabethan Women

During Elizabethan England, there is a vast difference between the treatment of women in England and the treatment which prevails in other European countries. Frederick, Duke of Wurttemberg, who visits England in 1602 writes that women in England have much more liberty than perhaps in other places. Thus, there is a proverb among other nations which said: "England is a paradise for women, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses" (Camden, 1975

: 17). This proverb is to imply that England is basically a patriarchal society, in which the popular view is that too many women are on top and this female liberty is seen as a threat to the whole social order (Braunmuller, 1990 : 106).

According to the Elizabethans, women are naturally considered as creatures set apart from men in many ways.

John Donne, in The Elizabethan Woman, sees woman as an eternal mystery, saying that women are like the sun, having a motion of their own which their husbands are unable to fathom. Therefore he warns that one must not hope to find a mind in a woman because they are considered swift and unstable (Camden, 1975 : 17-19).

Other characteristics which separate women from men are the small stature and thick hair, also the soft flesh.

Logically, soft flesh indicates a soft nature. Therefore, a woman with tender, soft and beautiful body accordingly is 12 mild, yielding and virtuous. Practically, the Elizabethan women are desirably beautiful. The beauty of women are praised and esteemed. Since men are endowed with wit, judgement and all which make him fit for contemplation and speculation, so in recompense women are given bodily beauty that they may be superior to men in this respect (Camden,

1975 : 19).

II. How to Choose a Living Partner

Since married life is regarded as the most conducive thing to happiness, the choice of a spouse is one of the most important decisions which the Elizabethan males have to make. Since married life can be a hell, it is important for a young man to exert great effort in finding the right partner to him (Camden, 1975 : 61) .

Wealth and culture are the first view that takes place in the eyes of a man in searching for a wife. What a woman ought to be, her own attributes are important in creating a happy marriage. Besides, the financial position of her parents is also important because if a wife brings a good dowry, the husband will always find something in his wife to be in love with. Therefore the Elizabethan society approve on the requirement that the girl to be chosen must always have money. However, this insistence on wealth is as the cause for the failure of many marriages since the wife who 13 brings wealth to the union will be full of pride and will feel that the husband must give her first place (Camden,

1975 : 62-63).

According to the Elizabethans, the perfect wife should be wise. In choosing her, a young man should look into her inward perfection. Therefore a woman should behave wisely in order to be chosen by a man. On the other hand, a woman should choose a man who is neither too young nor too old.

However the older man is preferred because young men are sudden, rash, indiscreet and suspicious (Camden, 1975 :

61-73) .

III. Elizabethan Domestic Relationships

The Elizabethans consider marriage bonds as holy bonds, therefore it should be treasured. In making a harmonious marriage life, there must be mutual love and agreement between man and wife. Thus, there are three principles which will help in producing the ideal relationship between husband and wife: first, they must have one heart, one will, one mind, also they must not upbraid each other for any imperfections; second, they must keep no secrets from each other, and last, they must keep no resentment unspoken but must tell grieves (Camden, 1975 : 109-110).

The first duty which a husband has toward his wife is to love her because love is natural affection of the mind 14 which inflames all the power of the lover with willing duty towards the beloved. This love must be the same as the love he bears to himself because he must love her as himself in all points. This becomes the measure of mutual matrimonial love. Besides, the husband has to rule or govern his wife in all duties that belong to marriage. Yet, he has to speak softly to his wife because sweet and fair words are important in increasing the perfect love marriage (Camden,

1975 : 112).

As the first duty of the husband is to love his wife, so the first duty of the wife is to love her husband. As a part of her love, she must give honour, reverence and respect to him since he is her lord and master. She must submit herself to him and acknowledge and reverse him as the head in all matters. She also must express her reverence towards him not only in her speech and gestures before him and to others in her presence, but also in her speech behind his back. Therefore, she must be dutiful and respectful and express humility in everything she does (Camden, 1975 :

121) .

Besides, a good relationship can be created if the husband will take pains to be a companion to his wife.

Furthermore, the husband should realise that his company is due to his wife. He should remember that his wife wants to hear the events that are taking place in the world. As a 15 sign of love, he should also tell his wife his secrets. It is believed that men will find comfort by taking counsel of their wives. Therefore, there should be no secrets between a man and a wife. A wife should also tell her troubles to her husband and let him console her. This can help to create a harmonious relationship in the family (Camden, 1975

: 118-120).

There are also four reasons why marriage is instituted.

First, it is designed for the procreation of children. God creates men and women, endowing them with a natural desire to be fruitful. The next reason is that marriage is a way of avoiding fornication. Third, it is not good for man to be alone, therefore marriage provides for mutual society, giving them the help and comfort which they need of each other, so that they can perform their duties in this world in a better and more comfortable manner. At last, marriage is instituted by God so that the 'holy seed' can be procreated and the Church of God may be kept holy and chaste

(Camden, 197 5 : 80) .

IV. Fletcher and Beaumont's Plays

John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont are two of the giants in the Elizabethan Age in England (Grebanier, 1961 :

243). They concern about the dominance of women in the society which put money and honour above all. Therefore, 16 satire enters in their plays to attack the morality of the society. Fletcher's The Scornful Lady and the collaborator's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife present a sharpened conflict in the merry war of lovers. The struggle for dominance between man and woman is viewed with airy, fantastic mockery. In those plays, pursuit not only of love but also of the right matrimonial status is eventually gratified in both plays (Bradbrook, 1956 : 177).

Their comedies are full of verve, and suspense is usually skilfully exploited. Their plot and subplot reinforce with each other. The settings are remote from the contemporary life. Their favourite theme is the sexual love duel. The Wild Goose Chase offers one of Fletcher's favourite themes, the sexual duel is expressed through witty argument (Kilvert, 1979 : 61).

Beaumont and Fletcher are interested in a topic that fascinated the modern world, that is the problem of identity and the playing out of roles. As Clifford Leech observes:

"Men avoid nakedness by doing what they feel the codes and traditions of society demand from them" (Kilvert, 1979 :

62). As a result, the plays written by the collaborators reach a higher point of excellence than anything either one writes alone. The reason is because in their combined work, there is sureness of touchy, humour, sentimentalism and intensity (Bellinger, 1927 : 237). Their plots are 17 generally regular and they understand and imitate the conversation of gentlemen much better (Sidnell, 1991 : 286).

That is why their collaborative works are impressive (Ousby,

1993 : 67). After 1660, the comedies of Shakespeare are comparatively neglected, but those of Beaumont and Fletcher are frequently revived (Shuterland, 1969 : 88). They are easily the favourites with ten unaltered plays, The Scornful

Lady and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife are two of them

(Boswell, 1966 : 105).

V. Comedy of Manners and Comedy of Intrigue

In comedy, deviations from the standards of society are its chief targets, and deviant characters are the stock comic character-types, to be isolated and ridiculed at least until their faults have been cured. The primary aim of comedy is to make sport of all kinds of fools and of human folly and absurdity (Murray, 1978 : 22-23). Therefore, a comedy is regarded as a ludicrous, farcical or amusing event or series of events to provide enjoyment and produce smiles or laughter (Shaw, 1905 : 84-85). In Keys to Understanding

Drama which was edited by Holmes and Lechman, Louis

Kronenberger says:

Comedy appeals to the laughter, which is part at

least the malice, in us; for comedy is concerned 18

with human imperfection, with people's failure to

measure up either to the world's or to their own

conception of excellence. ... Comedy is

criticism, then, because it exposes human beings

for what they are in contrast to what they profess

to be (1970 : xviii).

Generally, a comedy of manners, one of many types of comedy, is used to refer to the realistic comedy of

Elizabethan and Jacobean times. It concerns with the manners and conventions of an artificial, highly sophisticated society, such as their stylised fashions, manners and outlook. In this comedy, satire is directed to be against the follies and deficiencies of typical characters, such as fops, would-be wits, jealous husbands, coxcombs and others who fail to conform the conventional attitudes and manners, also elegant society (Holman, 1986 :

100). Besides, a comedy of manners presents characters of a lustrous, polished quality who wears beautiful clothes and lives in a beautiful setting, but the characters have second-rate values. The more they talk of their own importance, the more they reveal their very ordinary human qualities. The dialogue is completely unrealistic and glittering to create comic spirit which prevails throughout the play while the audience laughs heartily at their own 19 human weaknesses (Holmes and Lechman, 1970 : xviii).

William Wycherley's The Plain Dealer (1674), Sir George

Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676), William Congreve's The

Way of the World (1700), Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to

Conquer (17/3), Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals

(1775) and The School for Scandal (1777), also Oscar Wilde's

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) are typical comedies of manners (Holman, 1986 : 101).

Unlike a comedy of manners, a comedy of intrigue puts a stronger tone on the manipulation of the action by one or more characters to their own end than on the characters themselves. This comedy is another name for comedy of situation which concentrates chiefly on ingenuity of plot rather than on character interest. Ridiculous and incongruous situations, a heaping up of mistakes are important. Ben Jonson's Epicoene and Thomas Middleton's A

Trick to Catch the Old One are examples of the Elizabethan comedies of situation or intrigue (1986 : 100-101) .

Besides, Fletcher is also skillful in the treatment of social situations and it is seen in his The Wild Goose Chase

(1621), Rule a Wife and Have a Wife (1614) and Monsieur

Thomas (1610) (Hochman, 1984 : 177). 20

VI. Characters in the Comedy of Manners and the Comedy of

Intrigue

Character is a complicated term in literature. It includes the idea of the moral constitution of the human personality, the presence of moral uprightness, and the simpler notion of the presence of creatures in art that seem to be human beings of one sort or another. Besides, character is also a term applied to a literary form that flourishes in England and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a brief descriptive sketch of a personage who typifies some definite guality. Inspite of describing the person as an individualised personality, it describes the person as an example of some vice or virtue or type, such as a busybody, a glutton, a fop, a bumpkin, a happy milkman and others (Holman, 1986 : 81).

The basic feature of all comedy is its profoundly social character: comic characters are presented in groups and in a social environment. Traditional comedy tends to affirm the fundamental rightness of society: the norms of society are the moral norms of comedy. Deviations from the standard of society are the chief targets of comedy. A primary aim of comedy is to make sport of all kinds of fools and of human folly and absurdity. Another feature of comedy is that its victims tend to be absurd (out of harmony with their societies) rather than evil because they are dominated 21 by a single passion or obsession. Therefore, the comic victim may be seen as an alien figure whose behaviour and ideas cast doubt on those codes of practice and belief which the majority of people accept as sane and normal. As a result, the victim is isolated and ridiculed for his acting contrary to the views of the "sane" majority. Thus there are the conventional comic miser, the glutton, or the gossip. These comic types can often be identified by their names, such as Lady Sneerwell ( a woman who is as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile) and Sir Benjamin

Backbite in Sheridan's School for Scandal, Tony Lumpkin

(Lumpkin is a compound of 'lumpen' and 'bumpkin') in

Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Yet, a comedy of manners which involves sophisticated characters and fashionable, polished society becomes its native element (Murray, 1978 :

22-24) .

One of the most notable figures in Fletcher and

Beaumont is the comic madman. According to Bradbrook's close observation, these fantastic characters are seen as the victims of love and therefore they are always curable. In

The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy, Bradbrook says: "The melancholy of lovers was sympathetic, and interest in it became more pronounced upon the late Jacobean stage. The madness of lovers was a heroic passion, and

Fletcher and Beaumont's soldiers were specially prone to it. 22

It also was the defeat of wit by passion. Therefore, since wit was the standard of excellence, these madmen were legitimate comic butts" (1956 : 181-182).

VII. Comedy of Manners as Satire

Satire is a literary manner that blends a critical attitude with humour and wit for the purpose of improving human institutions. Its chief aim is to diminish the status of its subject in the eyes of its readers. The satirist does this by arousing ridicule, amusement, contempt, hatred, anger, scorn, disgust or other hostile emotions. The amendment of vices and the reformation of manners are the examples of the satirist's aims. Therefore, the classic targets of satire are folly and vice, and its subject is human society. The satirist is fully conscious of the contrast between the way things are and the way they ought to be and exploits the differences that exist between appearance and reality, between what people officially stand for and how they behave, also between words and deeds

(Murray, 1978 : 138).

In a comedy of manners, satire is directed in the main against the follies and deficiencies of typical characters, such as fops, would-be wits, jealous husbands, coxcombs, and others who fail to conform to the conventional attitudes and manners of elegant society. This satire is also directed against the deviations of social behaviour (Holman, 198 6 :

100) .