BALL STATE UNIVERSITY / Muncie, Indiana Volume XXV / Number 2
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FORUM BALL STATE UNIVERSITY / Muncie, Indiana Volume XXV / Number 2 / Spring 1984 EDITORIAL POLICY The Ball State University Forum encourages writing of high quality in poetry, short fiction, drama, essay, and criticism. The journal will publish creative and imaginative work that reflects excellence in thought and expression and scholarly articles of general interest and significance in the humanities. CONTRIBUTORS All manuscripts submitted to the Ball State University Forum should follow The MLA Style Manual. Manuscripts should be typed on 8 1/2 " x II " bond paper, one side only, with all copy double spaced, including notes and block quotations. Scholarly articles should use parenthetical documentation and should contain a list of "Works Cited." INDEXED/ABSTRACTED Ball State University Forum is indexed or abstracted by Abstracts of English Studies, American Humanities Index, American Literature, Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, Arts and Humanities Citation In- dex, Current Contents/Arts and Humanities, Index of American Periodical Verse, Journal of Popular Culture, Literary Criticism Register, Mark Twain Papers, MLA In- ternational Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures, Philological Quarterly, Poe Newsletter, Shakespeare in Translation, Shakespeare Newsletter, Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespearean Research and Opportunities, and Year's Work in English Studies. Cumulative indexes to the Ball State University Forum are published at five-year intervals. FORUM BALL STATE UNIVERSITY Volume XXV / Number 2 / Spring 1984 Bruce W. Hozeski, Editor Frances Mayhew Rippy, Editor Darlene Mathis-Eddy, Poetry Editor Kathleen Barlow, Editorial Assistant Mary Clark-Upchurch, Managing Editor Louise Jones, Editorial Assistant Patricia Martin Gibby, Production Editor Gary Phillips, Editorial Assistant EDITORIAL BOARD Thomas L. Amos Dolores Frese Helen Tirey Michael W. Tkacz Hill Monastic Manuscript Library Professor of English Owner, The Book End Research Editor Cataloguer of Western Manuscripts University of Notre Dame Muncie, Indiana Publications Program Saint John's University Notre Dame, Indiana Smithsonian Institute Libraries Collegeville, Minnesota Washington, D.C. Ball State University Michael Gemignani, Dean of Sciences and Humanities Anthony 0. Edmonds, History Robert D. Habich, English Paul W. Ranieri, English Christopher M. Ely, English Lathrop P. Johnson, Foreign Languages Thomas A. Sargent, Political Science The Topos of the Tormentor Tormented in Aelfric's Passio Sancti Vincentii Martyris Catherine Brown Tkacz 3 The "Sodeyn Diomede"— Chaucer's Composite Portrait Larry Bronson 14 Shakespeare's Comic Women: Or Jill Had Trouble With Jack! Frances Dodson Rhome 20 Audience Manipulation in Jonson's Comedies Renu Junej a 29 Newspaper Publicity and Politics: W. T. Stead and the English Socialists in the 1880s James Mennell 42 The Web and the Twitch: Images in All the Kings Men Alfred J. Levy 53 Recreating the Magic: An Interview with Lanford Wilson Gene A. Barnett 57 The cover: Hans Holbein the Younger, German (1487-1543). Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1530-31. Oil on wood. 18.2 x 14.2 cm. Permanent loan from the E. Arthur Ball Collection, Ball Brothers Foundation. Ball State Uni- versity Art Gallery. © Ball State University 1986 Trust Fund The editors of the Ball State University Forum announce the creation of a trust fund for the journal. Contributions should be made payable to the Ball State University Foundation with the direction that they are for the Ball State University Forum Fund. Contributions may be mailed to the editors or to the foundation. Subscriptions The Ball State University Forum is printed quarterly. The subscription price for volume 25 (1984) and volume 26 (1985) is $10.00; $3.00 for single issues. The subscription price for volume 27 (1986) and subsequent volumes is $15.00; $4.50 for single issues. New subscriptions and renewals should be mailed to the Editors, Ball State University Forum, Muncie, Indiana 47306. Advertisements As a quarterly, the Ball State University Forum solicits advertising for books, periodicals, scholarly societies, and academic enterprises. Rates for one issue are $100 for a full page; $60, a half page; $40, a quarter page. Four con- secutive insertions of the same size will be discounted 10 percent. Back Issues In filling orders for back files, the following issues are in critically short supply: I, i-ii; II, i-ii; III, i-ii; IV, i-ii; V, i-iii; VI, i-iii; VII, i-iii; VIII, i-iv; IX, iii-iv; X, i-iv; XI, ii; XVI, ii; XVII, ii-iii; XVIII, i-ii, iv; XIX, i. Subscribers who return any of these to the editors will have their subscrip- tions extended by the same number of issues. THE TOPOS OF THE TORMENTOR TORMENTED IN AELFRIC'S PASSIO SANCTI VINCENTII MARTYRIS CATHERINE BROWN TKACZ Since this article was accepted in 1981, Catherine Brown Tkacz has completed her Ph.D. in medieval studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is now project manager of the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium at Dumbarton Oaks. Her publications include articles in Chaucer Review and the Ball State University Forum as well as entries in the forthcoming Dictionary of Biblical Traditions in English Literature. The topos of the "tormentor In the New Testament, impetus for such tormented" by the same punishments he recompense is found in the Sermon on sought to inflict on an innocent hero was the Mount: popular in Judeo-Christian culture long Nolite judicare, ut non judicemini. In quo enim before Hamlet, foreshadowing the fate judicio judicaveritis, judicabimini: et in qua of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, first mensura mensi fueritis, remetietur vobis. gloated that " 'tis the sport to have the Matthew 7:1-2' engineer / Hoist with his own petar" In Old and New Testament alike, this (III.iv.210-11). 2 Such poetic justice divine justice was expressed through the derives much of its popularity from the topos of the tormentor tormented. Quite dictum of the Mosaic Law: naturally, western hagiographers adopted this topos, using it in numerous Qui percusserit, et occiderit hominem, morte moriatur. passions and lives of saints and even in brief entries in martyrologies, 5 as well as Qui irrogaverit maculam cuilibet civium in a variety of other genres including the suorum: sicut fecit, sic fiet ei: Fracturam pro fractura, oculum pro oculo, lai, the roman, and the religious drama. dentem pro dente, restituet: Given the widespread importance and Qualem inflixerit maculam, talem sustinere cogetur. Leviticus 24:17, 19-20' him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, he will pay back: whatever sort of wound he will have in- flicted, just the same sort let him be compelled to sustain." 'This article is based on research for a chapter in my All translations in this paper are the author's. As far as dissertation, "The Topos of the Tormentor Tormented in possible, they preserve the word echo and, at times, the Selected Works of Old English Hagiography," University word order of the original where these enhance the topos of Notre Dame, in progress. I am grateful to the University of the tormentor tormented. of Notre Dame for a Zahm Research Travel Grant that 4 "Do not judge, that you be not judged." For with what greatly facilitated research for this work. judgment you will have judged, you will be judged: and in 'Hamlet, of course, sees himself as an innocent hero and what measure you will have measured, it will be measured Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as thwarted tormentors. back to you." For a quite different, accurate view, see Geoffrey Hughes, 'See the treatment of St. Alban in Bede's prose martyr- "The Tragedy of a Revenger's Loss of Conscience: A Study ology: Edition pratique des martyrologies de Bede, de of Hamlet," English Studies 57 (1976): 395-409. For other l'Anonyme lyonnais et de Florus, ed. Dom Jacques Dubois instances of the topos of the tormentor tormented in and Genevieve Renaud (Paris: Editions du Centre Hamlet, see IV. vii. 138-46 and V.ii.284-305, especially National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1976), p. 112. For Laertes's dying words, first to Osric, then to Hamlet an illustration of Alban's tormentor being tormented, see (290-91, 302-03). figure 2 of Florence McCulloch's recent article, "Saints '"Whoever will have struck and killed a man, let him Alban and Amphibalus in the Works of Matthew Paris: die by death. Whoever shall have inflicted a wound on Dublin, Trinity College MS 177," Speculum 56 (1981): anyone of his fellows, just as he did, so will it be done to 783. 3 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM popularity of this topos, that it has not Moreover, the tormentor is also often yet been defined and examined is sur- physically injured or even killed, fre- prising. Briefly defining it and quently by his own method of torment or demonstrating its pervasiveness will in a manner reminiscent of it. The show its popularity; noting Aelfric's uses jealous officials in Daniel 6, for instance, of it in his Lives of Saints, especially in who connived to condemn the Hebrew the passion of St. Vincent, will saint to death in lacum leonum are demonstrate how it can be used for both themselves devoured by the lions after literary and didactic ends. Daniel emerges unscathed from the pit. In the topos of the tormentor The topos of the tormentor tormented tormented, a tormentor (or group of as it is used in the Bible and Christian tormentors) first subjects someone (or hagiography can be more precisely some group) to one or more torments,6 described. The tormentor is almost sometimes after or while threatening the always a pagan and is usually a ruler, intended victim by describing to him his judge, suitor (or some combination of impending torment. Often, however, these), parent, or demon; his victim is a the proposed victim is unharmed by the saint who usually scorns the tortures, torment.