Social Com petition in Middleton' s Michaelmas Term

Paul Yachnin

Thomas Middleton's growth as a social saUnst was made possible by a crucial transition from a sacramental to a scientific view of dass differentiation. The sacra­ mental view seeks to wed the social order to a divinely established universal order so that power and privilege can be presented as the natural and ordained concomi­ tants of rank. The scientific view undertakes to divorce the order of society from the ordained order of the uni­ verse. According to the sacramental view, the king is the rightful head of the body politic; according to the scien­ tific view, the king's power and privilege constitute the fruits of a successful "struggle for mastery."l As well, it should be pointed out that the sacramental view is not necessarily elitist and that the scientific view is not neces­ sarily egalitarian. Sacramentalism can serve readily to support radical egalitarianism, as it did for many ex­ treme groups during the Interregnum.2 Equally, the sci­ entific view need not be opposed to social hierarchy: when it is invoked to explain or defend elitist power structures (as, for example, in Hobbes), it merely locates the origins of hierarchy on the level of nature rather than on the level of grace.3 Middleton's very early comedies embody a sacramen­ tal view of social order. Plays such as The Phoenix, Your Five Gallants, and Family oE Love are satirical in that they ridicule the abuses to which social hierarcny is sub­ ject-the overall fluidity of dass structure, the dominance of wealth over birth, and the usurpation of true gentility by upstart "impudence." They do not, however, ridicule the idea of social hierarchy. All of these early plays un­ dertake to rebuild sacramental society: the business of

87 88 Explorations In Renaissance Culture the dramatic action in each is to precipitate the crystalli­ zation of a renewed social order in which an individual's status accords with his or her intrinsic merit. Society is taken apart and then put back together again according to the authoritative insights into each of the characters that the plays afford uso The centre holds; and anarchy is purged from the world. The sacramental view of society constitutes a powerful notional model throughtout the Elizabethan and Jaco­ bean period; however, this view imposes a severe limita­ tion on social satire because it compels the satirist to privilege at least one group and to exclude that group from criticism. Since in this view something is sacred, "sacramentalism" inhibits satirical objectivity and pre­ cludes satirical leveling. Thus, in Your Five Gallants, Middleton must present without irony Fitsgrave's crow­ ing triumph over his five upstart opponents (in effect, Fitsgrave's opinion becomes indistinguishable from the meaning of the play):

The doom is past; so, since your aim was marriage, Either embrace it in these courtesans, Or have your base acts and felonious lives Proclaim'd to the indignation of the law, Which will provide a public punishment.4

It is impossible, and probably unnecessary, to say which came first-Middleton's revaluation of the nature of society or his adaptation of the technique of ironie leveling which so perfectly expresses that revaluation. Suffice to say that at the top of its bent, Middletonian satire is perfectly unprejudiced: each group or character is permitted to make its or his best case for moral superiority, but no group or character is privileged in terms of the play's overall meaning. In plays such as A Trick to Catch the Old One, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and Women Beware Women, nothing is sacred and no one is excluded from criticism or ironie leveling. In Women Beware Women, for example, Hippolito's sting-