I A STUDY OF IRONIC TECHNIQUE IN THREE OF THOMAS MIDDLETON'S EARLY COMEDIES David L. Miller A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1973 Tl ABSTRACT Many critics have referred to the rich irony of Thomas Middleton’s early comedies, and some have even examined it specifical­ ly. However, no one has explored the significance of Middleton's use of ironic structures to reinforce the plays’ dramatic reversals and thus create a world within the play which is totally opposite to the characters' expectations. This dissertation examines ironic structure, Middleton’s technique of juxtaposing scenes in such a way that they contradict the meaning or significance of those scenes to which they are related. This study examines Middleton's three major early comedies, written between 1604-06, Michaelmas Term, A Mad World, My Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One. After a brief Introduction (Chapter I), which explains the overall approach and organization, three chapters are devoted to the ironic structures and techniques in each of the three plays. Chapter II reveals the injustices of the social grada­ tions and judicial decisions which make up the ironic world of Michaelmas Term. Chapter III points up the existence, in A Mad World, of an ironic world in which judgments are based upon false knowledge of self and of the real order of the world within the play. Chapter IV reinforces, in A Trick, the ironic fallibility of false judgment and the self-destructiveness of avarice. Each chapter thoroughly examines the pervasive nature of the irony in those worlds within which the plays’ actions develop. Ill ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the following study all citations and references to Middleton's works are from the text of A. H. Bullen, Ed. The Works of Thomas Middleton, 8 vols. Boston: Houghton, 1885. All bibliographic forms are based on the MLA Stylesheet and Bibliography and journals are abbreviated accordingly. I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone who has aided me in the completion of this dissertation, and special thanks are due to my advisor, Dr. Brownell Salomon, who has guided my work over many trying years, and to my wife, without whose patience and understanding I could not have succeeded. IV CONTENTS CHAPTER Page I. INTRODUCTION...................................... • 1 II. APPEARANCE VERSUS REALITY AND JUDGMENT IN MICHAELMAS TERM........ ................................. 11 III. THE MADNESS IN A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS ..................... 44 IV. AVARICE AND SELF-DECEPTION IN A TRICK TO CATCH THE OLD ONE ........................................ 71 NOTES ............................................................. 90 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................. ........ 96 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The following study examines the ironic mode employed by Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) in three of his early comedies, Michaelmas Term (ca. 1604-05), A Mad World, My Masters (ca. 1604-05), and A Trick to Catch the Old One (ca. 1605-06). The study notes the familiar tech­ niques of dramatic and verbal irony, used to reveal ironic discrepan­ cies between what the characters believe and what is actually true, and between what the characters say and what they mean. It also deals with the technique of structural irony. By structural irony, I mean that form of ironic presentation which is expressed in these plays through the juxtaposition of scenes (or other structural elements), so that the action of one scene contradicts the tone or meaning of those scenes to which it is connected. This ironic technique is used generally to reinforce the more obvious levels of dramatic and verbal irony as these devices are used to point up the various themes in these plays. By use of the above mentioned ironic technique, Middleton has created, in each of these plays, a pattern of ironic expression which presents a view of the world of the play as well as its characters and actions, as basically ironic in structure and significance. What is presented, then, is a group of plays which not only contain ironic elements, but which express within themselves ironic perceptions of their own worlds. 1 2 The focus for this study was suggested for me by a remark of f f Professor H. D. F. Kitto: "I have come to believe more firmly, . :7 as a principle of criticism, the idea that in a great work of art . the connexion between the form and the content is so vital that the two may be said to be ultimately identical."1 Upon examining the drama of Middleton, I became convinced that such a connection also existed, in the particular way suggested above, in the comedies which I have selected for discussion. This unity of form and content is evidenced through dramatic irony: not only in the limited sense of partial revelations of action to audience and characters, but in the broader sense which holds all such structures to be inherently ironic. Each of these plays is examined in such a way as to demonstrate how theme and content are combined in each of the plays in order to express the inherently ironic structure of its individual world. Many persons have done excellent studies of Middleton’s comedies, and have, indeed, discussed him as an ironist, but few have seen how Middleton employed his ironic techniques, and even fewer have concerned themselves with what he was attempting to do as an ironist. Most critics, rather, have seen Middleton primarily as a moralist, or as a realist (or both), who uses, in these comedies, techniques of satire and irony as incidental methods of developing the didactic or realistic significance of his drama. For example, Professor Samuel Schoenbaum expressed the conviction that in much of Middleton's drama, "ethical judgment is expressed . through the instrument of irony. "2 While Schoenbaum goes on to discuss the extensiveness of 3 Middleton’s use of ironic technique, his emphasis remains upon the use of ironic technique to express ethical judgment, and not upon the use of irony as an end in itself—as both the technique and meaning of the play. This view of Middleton’s intention characterizes the work of most critics in regard to the major early comedies. Indeed, Schoenbaum’s remark is typical of the most common critical opinion about the playwright. As I have suggested, this opinion regards Middleton as a conscious moralist whose satire represents a concerted attempt to mold his audience into the pattern of conventional Christian morality. This position is further developed by Richard Barker, who points out that "in both his earlier and his later drama Middleton is concerned with . vice rather than folly. He has a highly developed sense of sin, which rarely deserts him. Sin is . his principal theme, appearing in the farces, which contain some of the most despicable characters in English drama, . and in the later tragedies, which deal characteristically with somewhat sordid protagonists."3 Barker further suggests that "what is peculiar to Middleton is his persistent concern with the irony that invests the sinner's career. His thesis is that sin is blind. He wants to show that the sinner inevitably gropes in a dark world until he stumbles upon the path that leads to inevitable disaster."1* Still, irony is seen as primarily the means to an end. The opposite view of Middleton, and one finding increasing popularity in recent scholarship, is that the playwright was not concerned at all with an explicit moral or didactic function. Such critics as Felix Schelling5 and Brian Gibbons,6 though some fifty years separate their works, agree in seeing Middleton’s work as essentially amoral in tone and meaning. This position is also held by Rowland Evans, who suggests, in an unpublished dissertation, that Middleton is not "implicitly or more than momentarily explicitly interested in dramatizing critical values, moral, social, or intellectual, which might make indirectly for a better organized understanding by his audience of . contemporary society."7 While Evans believes that Middleton was concerned primarily with creating an intrigue play in which the primary function is entertainment, both Schelling and Gibbons see Middleton as generally involved in creating a realistic representation of life as he saw it around him. Such criticism presents Middleton as the cool, detached observer who exposes and examines his citizen characters as they struggle for survival in a social and economic jungle in which there is no morality or ethical guidelines. According to this view, he may occasionally satirize his characters’ machinations, as in A Trick to Catch the Old One and Michaelmas Term, or point up their ridiculous posturing, as he does in the latter play as well as in A Mad World, My Masters, but he always maintains an esthetic, almost clinical reserve. His function is not to correct or condemn, but to expose and present, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions about the social and moral significance of what is revealed. This uninvolved position has, in fact, caused some readers to see Middleton as an immoral artist, or, at least, as the author of 5 immoral works. Professor Wilbur Dunkel, in his study of Middleton’s dramatic technique, points up this problem in a passage that contains suggestions of other critical approaches to Middleton's work: "In Middleton's comedies of London life satire on various types of persons and institutions is the dominant quality of the comic. Although Middleton vents his ridicule with such bitterness at times that the personal hatred of the author seems manifest, nevertheless no motive of reform may be assigned to his satirical thrust. ... In fact, the lack of application of moral standards has caused Middleton's work to be frequently regarded as immoral.