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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

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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.

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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. In stark contrast, frequently praises God, and sometimes, like the the would-be tormentor himself is three young men in Daniel 3, is divinely agonized by his inability to control the protected from injury. hero. As Aelfric has Saint Vincent assert The recoil of torment upon tormentor of his tormentor: can find a variety of objects, whatever thone is beo ge-witnod . . the genre in which the topos occurs. In . . . he sylf sceal swaerran witu throwian some narratives, only the instigator of he byth ofer-swithed on minre the torment is finally punished. Con- geswencednysse. sider, for example, the fate of the false judges who wrongly condemn Susanna,

6 Hereafter the singular alone will be used for in Daniel 13. Elsewhere, though, the simplicity's sake. Nevertheless, please assume the option of punishment is generalized, afflicting the the plural. Please note that, while the topos of the tormen- tor tormented is also a folklore motif and tale-type, as well tormentor's family, as in Esther as an Old English theme, it is more than these. Therefore, 3:1-9:14; servants, as in Daniel 3:46-50; the broader term topos is used here as it is by Willard R. Lives of Saints XV, Trask in his translation of Ernst Robert Curtius's European or city, as in Aelfric's Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Bollingen Series 36 11.90-96. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), esp. 79-105; because of the potential ambiguity of the term topic, Moreover, the topos of the tormentor which Trask uses more often than topos, the Greek term is tormented is susceptible to a range of used in this study. For the classic definitions of tale-type and motif, see Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley: development, in whatever genre it ap- University of California Press, 1977), pp. 415-16. For pears. In its simplest expression, this widely used definitions of Old English theme and type- scene, see Donald Klein Fry, "Themes and Type-Scenes in Elene 1-113," Speculum 44 (1969): 35-36; but cf. Carol my affliction"; Aelfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Walter Edwards's discussion of "Definitions of the Compositional William Skeat. EETS, o.s., nos. 76, 82 (vol. 1); 114, 94 Theme" in her dissertation, "The Oral Formulaic Theory (vol. 2) (London: N. Triihner & Co., 1881: Kegan Paul, as a Poetics of Process: The Reversal of Good Fortune and Trench, TriThner & Co., Ltd., 1900); vol. 2, p. 432, Beor-Drinker in the Hall Themes in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," II. 91-93. All citations from Aelfric's Lives of Saints are Indiana University, 1980, pp. 117-27. from this edition. In this article, the Old English "When I am tormented . . . / .. . he himself will characters ash, eth, and thorn are represented by the suffer more grievous tortures / and he will be overcome in digraphs ae and th.

4 Catherine Brown Tkacz

topos presents a crude image of justice. ac tha stanas wendon with thaera ehtera Thus an eighth-century Mercian martyr- swa thaet tha ewelleras hi sylfe cnucodon.1° ology narrates the fate of a judge who When the prefect himself hurls a huge has ordered the beheading of a saint: flint, it turns back "and his heafod to- and tha thaere ylcan niht tha swealt se dema tha braec."" hine cwellan het mid unasecgendlicum sarum, When used with sophistication, this efne swa thaet he spaw his innoth ut thurh his topos is expressed with word echo, muth .8 sometimes in the form of paronomasia. Similarly, the Acta sanctae Julianae, Word repetition is found in the quota- which served as Cynewulfs source for tions from Leviticus and Matthew his Old English poem Juliana, presents above. Paronomasia occurs in, for ex- Eleusius subjecting the saint to various ample, Daniel 13: the false elders who tormenta, finally beheading her; then he wrongly accuse Susanna are revealed by himself drowns when his ship sinks (Acta their own lies when Daniel questions Sanctorum, Februarius, vol. 2, 878, par. them; he then puns on their lies to name 22). the means of their deaths. For instance, In other texts, the just reversal of tor- the first elder claims that Susanna com- ment upon tormentor is more apt in its mitted adultery details. In a sermon using the imagery of spiritual blindness, for instance, Aelfric Sub schino. Dixit autem Daniel: Recte mentitus es in caput tuum; ecce enim angelus Dei, accep- relates that the torturer beating St. ta sententia ab eo, scindet to medium." Julian lost his own eye when the re- Word echo underscores the use of this bounding rod struck it: topos in vernacular works as well. In the Hwaet tha martianus . het his manfullan ninth-century poem Juliana by cwelleras . thone halgan beatan mid heardum saglum Cynewulf, for instance, the poet Tha baerst sum sagol into anes beateres eagan swa thaet his eage wand ut mid tham slaege.9 Again, in another of Aelfrics sermons, the Natale Sanctorum Quadraginta Militum, we see the just result when an enraged prefect commands the stoning of "-But the stones turned against the persecutors / so that they knocked the torturers themselves"; Lives of the faithful saints: Saints, XI, p. 244, 11. 100-01. "L. 104. George Herbert provides a seventeenth- century example of the same pattern: "who by aspersions throw a stone / At th' head of others, hit their own." See "Charms and Knots," in George Herbert, ed. W. H. Auden (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1973), p. 80, vv. 9-10. ''" 'Under a mastic tree.' Daniel, however, said, 'Right- ly you have lied against your own head; for behold, an ""And that same night the judge, who had ordered [the angel of God, [your] sentence having been received from saint] killed with exceptional pain, died, in such a way that Him, will cleave you through the middle' Daniel he spewed his innards out through his mouth"; An Old 13:54-55; italics mine. I am grateful to Rev. Paul E. English Martyrology, ed. George Herzfeld, EETS, o.s., Beichner, C.S.C., for calling my attention to this instance no. 116 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trithner & Co., Ltd., of word play. For comments on the effective punning in 1900), p. 46. the names "Susanna" and "Daniel," see Bruce M. "To, then Martianus commanded his wicked tor- Metzger's headnotes to this narration, in The New Oxford turers / to beat the saint with hard rods. / Then a rod Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. RSV, ed. Herbert G. burst into one beater's eye / so that his eye flew out with a May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Oxford University blow"; IV, p. 98, 11. 141-43. Press, 1977); The Apocrypha, p. [213].

5 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM develops a five-word vocabulary of tor- Old and New Testaments and in Latin ment which he repeats strategically in and vernacular hagiographical works of order to show that the blessed who stead- verse, prose, and drama shows its strik- fastly trust God (e.g., Saint Juliana) en- ing popularity. Furthermore, notable in- joy equanimity even if physical torments stances of it are found in secular afflict them, while the damned (e.g., her literature in several genres, including the tormentors, Heliseus and the deofol) are lai and roman. The cycles of beast fables ceaselessly racked by torments they featuring Reynard, the fabliaux—both themselves create." Again, in at least Old French and Middle English—and one of the twelfth-century Miracles de the first farce, Maistre Pierre Pathelin, Notre Dame, the poetic justice of the all show le trompeur trompe, or the topos of the tormentor tormented is trickster tricked. Often, of course, the enlivened by word echo. A pagan trick is so crudely played that, in effect, emperor has Saint Valentine beaten "Des a tormentor is tormented. Consider, for les rains aval jusquau col" and threatens example, the Old French fabliau, "Le the saint angrily: "par mes diex, en leure meunier et les deux clers," and Chaucers mourras!" The first of the two who finds cognate piece, The Reeves Tale. The himself "a mort," however, is the former offers a unique variant of the emperor: he dies dining, a bone stuck in tormentor tormented: the miller molu his throat. The jailor, unaware of the `milled — i.e., beaten — by the two emperors death, tauntingly refers to the clerks who were to have been his victims. saints throat, about to be cut. These When they learn of his theft: references remind the audience that the Tant lont foie et debatu saints tormentor has already met his Par po quil ne lont tot molu." end, and how." In each of these In Chaucers version, two tormentors are passages, the irony and poetic justice of tormented: as in the Old French the topos of the tormentor tormented are analogues, the miller in the tale is a subtly enhanced by word echo. tormentor tormented. Symonds fate The recurrence of this topos in both within the tale is, moreover, paralleled by the lot of the teller, for when Oswald delivers a tale intended to skewer the "For a discussion of this topos in Juliana, see my paper, miller, he only exposes his own failings. "The Tormentor Tormented: Examination of a Medieval Motif with special reference to Cynewulf's Juliana," read (Olson 1-17; Heffernan, 41-42). In her at the Fifteenth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1980. A more de- tailed study is in preparation as a dissertation chapter. N.B.: the Latin vita which probably served as Cynewulf's "-They had crushed and thrashed him so much / That source employed word repetition of only one word, they had very nearly milled him entirely"; Anatole de tormenta. Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud, eds., Recueil general et "-From his thighs all the way to his neck" (p. 94, cornplet des fabliaux des XIII e et XIVe siecles, 6 vols. v. 1135); "By my gods, within the hour you will die!" (p. (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1883), vol. 5, p. 93, 97, v. 1233); Nigel Wilkins. ed., Two Miracles: La Nonne vv. 317-18. This quotation is from the A-text of this Old qui laissa son ahbaie. Saint Valentin, (New York: Barnes & French fabliau; cf. the B-text, edited by Walter Morris Noble, 1972); "Un os s'est avale et mis / En ma gorge Hart in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury . . . / [je] suis a mort!" (A bone has gone down and lodged Tales, ed. William Frank Bryan, and Germaine Dempster in my throat . . . I am dead!). Cf. also pp. 100-01, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), p. 147, vv. 1317-42. vv. 288-90.

6 Catherine Brown Tkacz

lais, Marie de France shows us the Dante underscores this punitive separa- would-be killers killed by their own in- tion by the hyperbaton of separating tended means in Equitan and, in Fresne, "partito" from its normal place in word the slanderer acknowledging herself hurt order, giving that place to the poignant by her own words: "Sur mei en est turnez "lasso!" The word "partito" is further ac- li pis." 16 In Le chevalier au lion (Yvain), cented by parechesis, chiasmus, and Chretien de Troyes uses this topos while paronomasia.° With quite a different asserting the justice of such reversals. tone, Boccaccio, in his Il Decameron, When Yvain rescues Lunete, has Pampinea conclude the first days

Et cil furent ars an la re tales with the humorous anecdote of the qui por li ardoir fu esprise; tormenting of a would-be tormentor. que ce est reisons de justise The young and beautiful Malgherida de que cil qui autrui juge a tort doit de celui meismes mort Ghisolieri, knowing the elderly maestro morir que it li a jugiee." Alberto to be fond of her, seeks to em- The use of the topos of the tormentor barrass him for sport, but his quick reply tormented in vernacular writings is by discomfits her instead: "Cosi la donna no means confined to Old English, . . . credendo vincer fu vinta." 2° For a Middle English, and Old French. In final vernacular instance of the tormen- Medieval Italian, one is scarcely sur- tor tormented, consider the Medieval prised to see tormentors tormented in Spanish exempla which feature an "ex- Dantes Inferno. In the ninth bolgia, traordinary wind [which] blows arrows Bertran de Born is aptly punished for having opportunistically stimulated rivalry between Henry II and his two trunk. / Thus is seen in me retaliation"; Inferno XXVIII. vv. 139-42, in Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, ed. elder sons, Henry and Richard: C. H. Grandgent, rev. Charles S. Singleton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 251. Note that "so Perch io parti cosi giunte persone, joined" means "joined in the relationship of father and partito porto it mio cerebro, lasso!, son"; cf. vv. 136-38. For other examples of the tormentor dal suo principio che in questo troncone. tormented in Inferno, see XXVII, vv. 7-10; and the ap- Cosi sosserva in me lo contrapasso.s palling figure of Archbishop Ruggieri in XXXII, v. 124-XXXIII, v. 90. "Parechesis is in both v. 139 and v. 140. "Perch' in parti' " and "Partito porto" are five-syllable groups, each group containing a pair of words alliterating on p with the first syllables of alliterating words ending in a rolled r. In ""Upon myself the worst of this has turned"; Marie ,de v. 139, the i of "io" produces a second, accented syllable France, Les lais de Marie de France, ed. Jean Rychner, Les for "perch'," echoed in the accented -ti of "parti'." In Classiques Francais du Moyen Age, vol. 93 (Paris: v. 140, again each of a pair of words alliterates on p and Librairie Ancienne Honore Champion, 1978), pp. 41-42, ends the first syllable on a rolled r. Moreover, the final esp. vv. 299-300; and p. 47, v. 86; cf. p. 58, vv. 469-70. syllable of "partito" is copied in the last of "porto." Thus, ""And those were burned in the fire / which had been in vv. 139-140, the conjunction asserting causality (perch) kindled to burn her; / for it is a matter of justice / that and the finite verbs expressing the cause (parti) and the ef- whoever judges another wrongly / ought to die by the fect (porto) are linked by parechesis. In that a form of same death / that he had judged for the other"; Chretien "partire" occurs second in the clause that fills v. 139 but de Troyes, Les romans de Chretien de Troyes, IV: Le first in the clause starting in v. 140, we have chiasmus. chevalier au lion (Yvain), ed. Mario Rogues, Les Finally, the variation, parti/partito, is paronomasia. Classiques Francais du Moyen Age, vol. 89 (Paris: ""Thus the lady ... expecting to conquer was con- Librairie Ancienne Honore Champion, 1975), p. 139, quered"; see Giovanni Boccaccio, I! Decameron. ed. Carlo vv. 4564-69. Salinari, Universale Laterza, vol. 26 (Rome: Editori "-Because I parted persons so joined, / Separated bear Laterza, 1973), pp. 69-72. Cf. Pampinea's tale on the I my head—alas!— / From its first place which is on this eighth day as well.

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shot against Christians back against [the] the hunter hunted and the condemning enemy" (Keller 108). slanderer condemned, also occur. 24 A The preceding paragraphs have only fine instance of the use by the Abbot of hinted at the range of genres, languages, Eynsham of the topos of the tormentor and periods in which the topos of the tormented is in his Passio sancti Vincen- tormentor tormented has been popular, tii martyris. This sermon shows how the and at the range of sophistication with topos can be used to unify a narrative which it has been used. Therefore, a and also to add subtlety of meaning for more detailed consideration of how it readers who can appreciate it, while yet has been used in one genre by one author providing a narrative straightforward is in order, to demonstrate the important enough for simpler readers to grasp.25 role this ubiquitous topos can play in a That is, in his Lives of Saints, Aelfric work. Since this topos derives substan- employs the topos of the tormentor tially from the Bible, the saints life is an tormented for both literary and pastoral

appropriate genre for this consid- ends. 26 eration. 2 Because Aelfric (ca. 955-1020) Before turning to Aelfrics sermon on has bequeathed us a well-known and Saint Vincent, briefly sketching his other unified collection of saints lives, that uses of the tormentor tormented in the collection is appropriate for this study. Lives of Saints will show the variety with Of his thirty-four Lives of Saints (Ser- which Aelfric employs this topos. mones Catholici, third series), 22 Aelfric Sometimes the tormentor simply dies, as uses the topos of the tormentor Nero does after martyring Peter and tormented in twenty-one. This number Pau1. 27 In other lives, battle is the con- is quite high, particularly in view of the text for the tormentors death or, as for fact that most of the sermons without Cadwalla, torment by defeat. 25 In Ab- this topos do not concern martyrs and salom and Alcimus, Aelfric shows us therefore would not be expected to use would-be tormentors thwarted by death it." Other types of just reversals, such as

"For another reason hagiography is appropriate for in- "For the hunter hunted, see life XXX, p. 192, 11. 41-50; itial work on this topos: for at least some variants of this for the slanderer condemned, see XXXI, pp. 236 and 238, topos, e.g., folklore tale-type 480 (also motif Q2), "The 11. 271-85. For slanderers whose torment is madness, see Kind and the Unkind," hagiography is known to be the VI, p. 158, 11. 186-97; cf. XXXII, p. 330, 11. 231-38. Brev- route through which the topos entered Western tradition; ity precludes more than a listing of the lives that feature see Stith Thompson, The Folktale, p. 117. For a thorough the tormentor tormented: II-IV, VI-IX, XI, XIV-XV, discussion of this tale-type, see Warren Everett Roberts, XVIII, XIX, XXII, XXV, XXVII-XXIX, XXXI-XXXII, The Tale of the Kind and the Unkind Girls; Aa-Th 480 and XXXV, XXXVII. Related Tales (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1958). "As Clemoes observes, the Lives of Saints "are all nar- "Although Skeat's edition includes thirty-eight lives rative pieces intended not for reading as part of the liturgy, (I-XXIII and XXIIIB-XXXVII), Peter A. M. Clemoes has but for pious reading at any time." p. 220. more recently concluded that four of these, "differing from "For a discussion of Aelfric's style as a pastoral concern, the rest in intention, style and linguistic usage, must be see the introduction of John Algeo's 1960s dissertation, eliminated at the outset as not by Aelfric (Skeat XXIII, "Aelfric's 'The Forty Soldiers' (an edition)," University of XXIIIB, XXX and XXXIII); see "The Chronology of Florida. Aelfric's Works," The Anglo-Saxons (London: Bowes & "XXIX, p. 176, 11. 115-20; cf. XXIII, p. 506, 11. 319-27, Bowes, 1959), p. 219. Perhaps significantly, none of the and p. 508,11. 347-48; and XXVIII, p. 158,11. 5-7, p. 162, four sermons eliminated use the topos of the tormentor 11. 54-57, and p. 164, 11. 117-18. tormented. 'XXVI, p. 126, 11. 7-29; cf. also III, pp. 62-66, "Cf. I, X, XII, XIII, XVI, XVII, XX, and XXI. 11. 205-76; XXV, p. 66, 11. 6-7, and p. 102, 11. 544-47.

8 Catherine Brown Tkacz

and unrepentant to the end. 29 In con- Aelfric presents in his Passio Sancti trast, other would-be tormentors are Vincentii martyris as a tormentor converted by the show of God's might, tormented with just and detailed which afflicts them; often such afflic- thoroughness. Mad at the start of the tions, like the madness of Nebuchadnez- narrative (1. 33), Datian desires the zar, cease when they have succeeded in power to kill Christians (11. 24, 28, 32). teaching the afflicted that God is Aelfric explicitly tells us that Datian sovereign. 30 Not only is madness often a Wolde aerest tha heafod-men thaes halgan form of torment in Aelfric's Lives of geleafan Saints, but madness and torment are mid witum ofer-swithan . thaet he syththan mihte shown there to be of the very nature of tha laessan ofer-cuman fram heora geleafan sin, as has been amply demonstrated to gebigan." be a medieval belief by Penelope Billings This passage is noteworthy in that it Reed Doob and Catharine A. Regan.3' combines three themes vital to this ser- Sin was seen to cause its own punish- mon: power, torment, and battle. ment—disease, madness, degradation to Moreover, this passage also presents the bestiality. Moreover, this relationship program for Datian's self-torment: he is was seen as just: to be totally, dramatically thwarted in The punishment fits the crime and [original his desires; he is to be exposed as sin's] destruction of the due order between God powerless, tormented, and defeated. and man caused—and continues to cause with every sin—psychological, moral, and physio- Consistently Datian is shown as weak. logical disorder (Doob 8). His temporal power, radically limited Mad willfulness is the source of all the because it gives him no control over the torments of the emperor Datian, whom saint, only emphasizes his essential weakness. Datian wishes to defeat a bishop; instead, the bishop's deacon,

"XXV, p. 114, 11. 722-27. clearly one of tha laessan, defeats him "For examples of such conversions or the ending of (cf. 11. 68-93). He wanted (wolde) to persecution, see VII, pp. 178-82, 11. 163-206; XIX, pp. 420-22, 11. 98-102 and 127-32; XXVII, pp. 154-58, torture Vincent (1. 55), but fails. He esp. 11. 209-14; and XXXI, pp. 244-46, 11. 388-426. Cf. wants to ease his disturbed mood by tor- III, p. 68,11. 292-317. Repentance of would-be tormentors is common in hagiography; cf. Elissa Henken, "Motif In- turing Vincent (11. 124-25), but his dex of Welsh Hagiography," M.A. thesis, University of failure to bend the saint's will causes Wales College, Aberystwyth, 1981, p. 8 of motif index. "For instances of madness as torment, see VI, p. 158, Datian himself to cry out (1. 175). Recog- 11. 186-97; XXII, p. 480, 11. 128-132; and XXXII, p. 11. nizing and infuriated by his inability to 231-38. 330. For indications that sin is madness and tor- ment, see V, p. 126, II. 161-62; XXII, p. 480, 11. 128-32; control the saint, Datian despairs at his and XXXVII, p. 426, 1. 11, and p. 428, 11. 30 and esp. weakness (1. 214). To compensate for 31-33. For an excellent study of the patristic psychology of sin, including St. Augustine's teaching that sin causes its that failure, the ineffectual emperor con- own punishment, see Catharine A. Regan, "Wisdom and tinues the battle even after the saint's Sin: Patristic Psychology in Old English Poetry," Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1966. For a helpful discussion of madness in a similar context, see Penelope Billings Reed Doob, Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of ""He wanted first to conquer with tortures the headmen Madness in Middle English Literature (New Haven: Yale, of this holy belief, so that afterwards he might overcome 1974). the lesser ones and turn (them) from their belief"; 11. 36-38, italics mine.

9 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

death, by trying to desecrate the corpse. (cf. . 11. 69-71 to 88-93). By repeating He reasons pathetically: "gif ic ofer- magan and willan, Aelfric contrasts the swithan ne mihte / hine aer cucene . ic inability of Datian to accomplish his will hine witnige deadne. 33 Failing in this, and the power of Vincent to achieve too, he complains, "ne maeg ic hine ofer- his." swithan forthon swa deadne(?)" 34 Even Vincent has the power of self-control the emperor's negative wish—"nelle ic as well, which Datian notably lacks. In hine wyrcan wuldor-fulran gyt" — is addition—or, in further diminution- frustrated, for the pagan's attempts to Datian lacks the power to afflict Vincent "overcome" the corpse only reveal how with tortures effectively. Thus are the dearly God values His saint and how themes of power and torment connected great that saint's glory is. 35 Datian is in this sermon. Although Datian afflicts forced to acknowledge this, to his Vincent repeatedly with witum, they chagrin (11. 253-54). often do not affect him physically To highlight the contrast between (11. 57-60, 176-201), and they always Christian power and pagan impotence, confirm rather than shake his stead- Aelfric uses both narrative events and fastness." Datian, however, we see word echo. Twice we see the saint suffering: he is wod (11. 30, 33, 78), ge- sublimely passive and successful while angsumod (11. 94, 212, 251), and he pales the pagans toil in vain. Datian beats his at his failures (11. 129, 213). After torturers to spur their beating of the multiplying Vincent's tortures—"wita saint, but the result is that the exhausted mid witum ge-eacnodon" (1. 164)—so cwelleras can no longer afflict the that he is wounded in every part of his passive Vincent (11. 113-28). Later, body (1. 167-68), the cry "Wala wa" re- when Datian tries for a second time to sounds in the torture chamber—but it desecrate the saint's corpse, he has his breaks from Datian, not Vincent men laboriously row the body, sewn (1. 175).38 with heavy stones into a sack, out to sea It is important that here the tormentor and cast it overboard. Nevertheless, torments himself. Juxtaposed to the before the men can row back to shore, saint's passive equanimity, Datian's the saint's body has been serenely goading himself into ever more acute delivered there to a spot where later it anxiety and suffering demonstrates both will be found and venerated (11. 253-81). that sin does indeed contain in itself its Aelfric also clarifies that Vincent is in- own punishment and that the self- deed in harmony with God's will and distortion of sin is ridiculous. A ludicrous does actively desire what he experiences

"Most occurrences of magan and willan have been cited in previous paragraphs; for other instances, see 11. 119, 138, 151. ""[Even] if I could not overcome him earlier when he 37The word witu occurs more than twenty-four times in was alive, I may torment him dead"; 11. 232-33. this sermon, far more frequently than tintrego or susle. ""May I not overcome him even now that he is dead?"; "Here Datian exhibits the "standard symptoms" of 1. 252. medieval madness discussed by Doob; see "The Symptoms "5'1 will not make him still more glorious"; 1. 217. of Madness" in Nebuchadnezzar's Children, pp. 31-33.

10 Catherine Brown Tkacz example that Aelfric provides is of throughout his passio, continuing to con- Datians beating his own men so that quer even after he has been killed. 42 As they will beat Vincent more severely. As with the themes of power and torment, mentioned above, the beating ac- Aelfric repeats a constellation of terms to complishes the opposite of Datians express the theme of battle. The words desire, for it wearies the torturers, who ofer-swithan, ofer-cuman, winnan, sige then stop tormenting Vincent. Thus the (vs. steam), and hrem all contribute to beating is an emblem of all of Datians the presentation of this passio as a battle actions, for they are all self-defeating. in which the tormented martyr is vic- The beating, of course, also functions as torious. Initially Datian wishes to ofer- a just tormenting of the torturers, which swithan and ofer-cuman the Christians, Vincent notes: bishops first (11. 36-38). God wills the Nu thu ge-wrecst on him opposite, however: the emperor is to be tha witu the ic throwige for thinre ofer-swithed by a mere deacon waelhreownysse . (11. 69-75). Another battle term, high- swilce thu sylf wille ge-wrecen me on him." lighted by alliteration, is introduced by What Vincent predicted initially has Vincent: "Winne he with me on thisum happened. Then the saint asserted: ge-winne nu." 43 The military connota- thone ic beo ge-witnod .. . tions of the verbs (ofer-swithan, ofer- . . . he sylf sceal swaerran witu throwian cuman, and winnan) invite us to see this he bith ofer-swithed on minre geswencednysse." as a battle with Vincent as the foot soldier triumphing over the mounted Vincent reiterates this during torture, general and his troops. Surely Datian is with alliteration stressing Datians role tormented by shame appropriate to such as tormented: " thonne thu me wit- a military defeat, as his intention to ofer- nast . thu bist sylf ge-witnod."4 swithan Vincent becomes grief that his Joined to the themes of power and tor- torturers "ne magon thusne mann ofer- ment, the theme of battle enriches this swithan" (1. 138). Vincents will is again use of the topos of the tormentor fulfilled when he bids Datian torture tormented. Battle imagery is an apt embellishment for the passio of the saint whose name means "he who is conquer- "For a discussion of Aelfric's awareness of aspect and his use of it in other homilies and sermons, see Keith Tandy, ing." Furthermore, the progressive "Aelfric and Aspect," The Old English Homily and Its aspect of this name (as opposed to the Backgrounds, ed. Paul E. Szarmach and Bernard F. Huppe (Albany: State University of New York Press, static "Victor") is borne out in the ser- 1978). The name "Victor" does occur elsewhere in Aelfric's mons narrative, for Vincent is victorious Lives of Saints; cf. Passio Sancti Mauricii et sociorum eius. LS XXVIII, p. 164,11. 90-116. In this narration, the theme of battle is developed with great irony: on the eve of a battle, the emperor has an entire legion of his own men ""Now you accomplish against them the tortures which slain because they are Christians; the 6,666 armed soldiers I suffer on account of your slaughter-greediness, as if you accept their martyrdom passively; the "Victor - is an old yourself would avenge me on them"; 11. 117-19. man who hears of the legion's martyrdom, prays to receive ""When I will be tortured . . . / . . . he himself will martyrdom with the legion, and does; and finally, Victor's suffer heavier torments / and he will be overcome in my ecan myrhthe 'eternal joy' is juxtaposed to the death in oppression"; 11. 91-93. battle of the unsaeliga casere 'unhappy emperor' 9 "And when you torment me you are yourself (11. 113-18). tormented"; 1. 112. ""Let him fight against me in this fight now": 1. 88.

11 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM him all the more "thaet thu on eallum of the tormentor tormented to express thingum the ofer-swithedene three interrelated themes concerning on-cnawe, "44 and precisely that power, torment, and battle. True happens. After further tormenting power, Aelfric would teach us, is in con- Vincent: "Wala wa cwaeth datianus we formity to the will of God. Conversely, synd ofer-swithede ."45 true torment results from sin, not from Thus Vincent is sigefaest (1. 203). The physical torture. Thus it is the tormentor saint's victory is contrasted, by juxta- who is tormented and the dead martyr position and alliteration, to the ofer- who triumphs over the pagan emperor in swithdum deofle (1. 227) and to Datian's a battle of wills. By means of the themes shame at this defeat (of-sceamod, 1. 232, and of the word echoes that express these and sceamige, 1. 257). This shame themes, Aelfric has unified his sermon. prompts the pagan to attempt to destroy Furthermore, by enhancing the simple the corpse. Even dead, however, Vin- narrative of a saint's passion with the cent wins. Left in a field for beasts to topos of the tormentor tormented, devour, his body, divinely protected, is Aelfric has succeeded at a difficult guarded by an sweart hrem. Fittingly, pastoral task: creating a sermon simple one of the three Anglo-Saxon beasts of enough for all readers to understand, yet battle accompanies the saint into this with more complex meanings for those penultimate foray with Datian. True to who can apprehend them. pattern, the raven is indeed a harbinger Now that the topos of the tormentor of victory, for Datian, ge-angsumod, tormented has been defined and its role owns that even now he cannot ofer- in Aelfric's Lives of Saints initially ex- swithan Vincent (1. 251-52). 46 Vincent, amined, it is to be hoped that the uses of he who is conquering, is still winning. this topos in myriad other works in In this sermon Aelfric has used the topos various genres by authors of differing periods will be studied. The theological ""That you may know yourself overcome completely (lit., in all things)": 1. 146. implications of the topos and the non- 45" `Walawayr cried Datian, 'We are overcomer "; biblical influences on it likewise deserve I. 175; cf. 1. 214. "For the beasts of battle as tokens of victory, see attention. Clearly such attention will be Anthony Joseph Ugolnik, Jr., "The Royal Icon: A Struc- amply rewarded by greater under- tural and Thematic Study of Cynewulf's `Elene,' " Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1975, p. 112. standing of the texts.

WORKS CITED Acta Sanctorum. Paris: Victor Palme, 1863. Boccaccio, Giovanni. II Decameron. Edited by Carlo Aelfric. Aelfric's Lives of Saints. Edited by Walter William Salinari. Universale Laterza. Vol. 26. Rome: Editori Skeat. Early English Text Society. London: N. Triihner Laterza, 1973. & Co., 1881; Kegan Paul, Trench, Truhner & Co., Ltd. Chretien de Troyes. Les romans de Chretien de Troyes, 1900. IV: Le chevalier au lion (Yvain). Edited by Mario Algeo, John. "Aelfric's 'The Fort Soldiers' (An edition)." Rogues. Les Classiques Francais du Moyen Age. Vol. Ph .D. diss., U of Florida, 1960. 89. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honore Champion, 1975. Bede, Edition pratique des martyologies de Bede, de Clemoes, Peter A. M. "The Chronology of Aelfric's l'Anonyme Lyonnais et de Florus. Edited by Dom Works." The Anglo-Saxons. London: Bowes and Bowes, Jacques Dubois and Genevieve Renaud. Paris: Editions 1959. du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1976.

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Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and The MS 177." Speculum 56 (1981): 761-85. Latin Middle Ages. Translated by Willard R. Trask. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. RSV. Bollingen Series 36. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1973. Edited by Herbert G. May and Bruce W. Metzger. New Dante Alighieri. La Divina Commedia. Edited by C. H. York: Oxford U P, 1977. Grandgent. Revised by Charles S. Singleton. Cam- An Old English Martyrology. Edited by George Herzfeld. bridge: Harvard U P, 1972. Early English Text Society. London: Kegan Paul, Doob, Penelope Billings Reed. Nebuchadnezzar's Trench, Trithner & Co., Ltd., 1900. Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Olson, Paul A. "The Reeve's Tale: Chaucer's Measure Literature. New Haven: Yale U P, 1974. for Measure." Studies in Philology 59 (1962): 1-17. Edwards, Carol. "The Oral Formulaic Theory as a Poetics Recueil general et complet des fabliaux des XIlle et XIVe of Process: The Reversal of Good Fortune and Beor- siecles. Edited by Anatole de Montaiglon and Gaston Drinken in the Hall Themes in Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Raynaud. 6 vols. Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1883. Ph.D. diss., Indiana U, 1980. Regan, Catharine A. "Wisdom and Sin: Patristic Psy- Fry, Donald Klein. "Themes and Type-Scenes in Elene chology in Old English Poetry." Ph.D. diss., U of 1-113." Speculum 44 (1969): 35-45. Illinois, 1966. George Herbert. Edited by W. H. Auden. Baltimore: Roberts, Warren Everett. The Tale of the Kind and the Penguin Books Inc., 1973. Unkind Girls: Aa-Th 480 and Related Tales. Berlin: De Heffernan, Carol Falvo. "A Reconsideration of the Cask Gruyten, 1958. Figure in the Reeve's Prologue." Chaucer Review 15 Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, (1981): 37-43. Edited by William Frank Bryon and Germaine Henken, Elissa. "Motif Index of Welsh Hagiography." Dempter. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1941. M.A. thesis, U of Wales College, Aberystwyth, 1981. Tandy, Keith. "Aelfric and Aspect." The Old English Hughes, Geoffrey. "The Tragedy of a Revenger's Loss of Homily and Its Backgrounds. Edited by Paul E. Conscience: A Study of Hamlet." English Studies 57 Szarmach and Bernard F. Huppe. Albany: State U of (1976): 395-409. New York P, 1978. Keller, John Esten. Motif Index of Mediaeval Spanish Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. Berkeley: U of California Exempla. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1949. P, 1977. Marie de France. Les lais de Marie de France. Edited Two Miracles: La Nonne qui laissa son abbaie. Saint by lean Rychner. Les Classiques Francais du Moyen Valentin. Edited by Nigel Wilkins. New York: Barnes Age. Vol. 93. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honore Cham- and Noble, 1972. pion, 1978. Ugolnik, Jr., Anthony Joseph. "The Royal Icon: A McCulloch, Florence. "Saints Alban and Amphibalus in Structural and Thematic Study of Cynewulf's "Elene the Works of Matthew Paris: Dublin, Trinity College Ph.D. diss. Brown U, 1975.

13 THE "SODEYN DIOMEDE"—CHAUCERS COMPOSITE PORTRAIT

LARRY BRONSON

Larry Bronson is a professor of English at Central Michigan University. He has published in Choice, G.B.S.: An Annotated Bibliography, Augustinian Studies, and English literary magazines.

Of the four principal characters in Criseyde, Diomede is shown to have all Troilus and Criseyde, Diomede is given the outward trappings of a courtly lover. the least space. However, despite its However, in bold contrast to the un- relative brevity, his appearance is aggressive Troilus, who takes to his bed crucial to the outcome of the poem, and in Book I after having been shot with Chaucer emphasizes the irony of the Cupid's arrow, the enterprising events in Book V by making Diomede Diomede instantly takes the offensive not only "an inferior and degraded and leads Criseyde out of Troy "by the replica" of Troilus but also a composite bridel." Furthermore, during his first of both Troilus and Pandarus.' Since long speech (V, 106-75), in which, Diomede does possess character traits among other things, he proffers friend- that are very similar to those of ship to Criseyde and also lies about his Criseyde's first lover and her uncle, it is experience in love, Diomede uses a form not at all surprising that she, whose of courtly address very similar to that of "slydynge of corage" governs all of her Troilus. 3 A principal distinction between actions, should find such a person the two men lies in the motivations attractive.2 prompting their addresses. Troilus's From the time of his first appearance speeches show that he is genuinely con- in Book V to the end of his courtship of cerned about his role in relation to Criseyde (I, 432-34; 613-15; 1065-78;

'The phrase "inferior and degraded replica," now a II, 134-47; IV, 561-74), whereas critical byword in describing Diomede, was coined by Diomede is concerned only with himself: John Speirs, Chaucer the Maker (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), p. 79. Peter Elbow, Oppositions in Chaucer Al my labour shal nat ben on ydel, (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan U P, 1975) states that "suf- If that I may, for somwhat shal I seye. ficient importunity and shrewdness" are "the qualities of Troilus and Pandarus that Diomede so happily combines," and that Criseyde will always give into any man who possesses these qualities (p. 58). 'Sanford B. Meech, Design in Chaucer's Troilus 3Ann S. Haskell, "The Doppelgangers in Chaucer's (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse U P, 1959), summarizes the im- Troilus, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 72 (1971): portant criticism from 1913 to 1958 concerning Criseyde, 723-34, refers to Diomede as "Troilus' unrestrained op- Troilus, Diomede, and Pandarus. Cf. Chapter IV, Section posite, who is free of self and societally-imposed limita- 3, pp. 386-420, entitled "Gestalten of Heroine, Hero, tions, morals, and reputation, respectively, which inhibit Rival, and Confidant." Donald W. Rowe, 0 Love, 0 Troilus' action toward Criseyde" (p. 730). Cf. also Ida L. Charite! Contraries Harmonized in Chaucer's Troilus Gordon, The Double Sorrow of Troilus (Oxford: Claren- (Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1976), believes that "it don P, 1970), p. 111, n. 1; Rowe, 0 Love, 0 Charite!, is ultimately Criseyde who is revealed to be essentially agrees with Gordon that "there are more similarities than similar to Diomede," for neither can forget himself/herself have sometimes been recognized [but] Troilus will not (p. 134). D. W. Robertson, Jr., also notes the similarity of reduce to Diomede" (pp. 75-76). See also Thomas A. Criseyde and Diomede, but prefers them to Troilus, whom Kirby, Chaucer's Troilus: A Study in Courtly Love he terms "idolatrous." See A Preface to Chaucer (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958, rpt.), pp. 231-32; (Princeton: Princeton U P, 1962), p. 499. 239-45.

14 Larry Bronson

For at the werste it may yet shorte oure weye. the reader that Diomede's motivations I have herd seyd ek tymes twyes twelve, "He is a fool that wole foryete hymselve." are entirely prompted by shrewd mental (94-98)4 calculation and are not in the slightest As the above lines demonstrate, there is a way related to his heart. One cannot very great difference between the possibly imagine Troilus setting about language Diomede uses in addressing his wooing in such a cold-blooded Criseyde and that of his private fashion. It is thus part of Criseyde's per- thoughts. All of Diomede's behavior in sonal tragedy that she never com- Book V proves unmistakably that there is prehends the shallowness of Diomede's no danger that he ever "wole foryete professions (Rowe 76, 133).6 hymselve" in anything he does. It is also So Diomede's conquest of Criseyde indicative of his characteristic behavior continues in the same unemotional that his suspicions concerning Criseyde's fashion, and she eventually gives in to Trojan lover evoke no sympathy on his him with much the same mixture of part, but instead merely arouse his motives that prompted her in Book II to predatory instincts (V, 88-90). accept Troilus as her lover. However, Somewhat contemptuously ignoring the the number of lines given over to her proverb "Men shal nat wowe a wight in deliberations in each situation differs hevynesse" (V, 791), Diomede's only greatly. In Book II the narrator spends thoughts concerning Criseyde are in over a hundred lines (702-808) describ- terms of conquest: ing Criseyde's mixed emotions regarding Troilus, but only one stanza in Book V But whoso myghte wynnen swich a flour From hym for whom she morneth nyght and (1023-29) stating her reasons for accep- day, ting Diomede as Troilus's replacement. He myghte seyn he were a conquerour. The narrator also declares in both in- (V, 792-94)5 stances (II, 666-70 and V, 1086-92) that Immediately following this questionable Criseyde's heart was not won in a short romantic attitude, he repeats his earlier time. Again, the difference in the statement concerning the least value of number of lines is a significant detail, as his conversation with Criseyde: are the events that follow in each case. Happe how happe may, Al sholde I dye, I wol hire herte seche! I shal namore lesen but my speche. (V, 796-98) 'As if to re-enforce the disparity of Criseyde's two By such lines, Chaucer makes it clear to lovers, Chaucer places the three formal portraits of Diomede, Criseyde (whose portrait comes significantly between the two male portraits), and Troilus immediately after Diomede's speech (V, 796-98). There is a splendid irony of juxtaposition between the description of Diomede, 'All references to Troilus and Criseyde are taken from who "Was in his nedes prest and corageous ... / And som The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd men seyn he was of tonge large" (V, 800 and 804), and the ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). description of Troilus, who was as "Trewe as stiel in ech 'Elizabeth R. Hatcher, "Chaucer and the Psychology of condicioun" (V, 831). For a discussion of Chaucer's sources Fear: Troilus in Book V," ELH, 40 (Fall, 1973): 307-24, for the three portraits, see Peter Dronke, "Chaucer and the calls Diomede's attitude "a grand topic for barracks-room Medieval Latin Poets," in Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Derek boasts!" (p. 316). See also Robert P. ap Roberts, Brewer (Writers and Their Backgrounds Series, Athens, "Criseyde's Infidelity and the Moral of the Troilus," Ohio: Ohio U P, 1975), pp. 168-69, and Meech, Design in Speculum, 44 (July, 1969): 383-402. Chaucer's Troilus, p. 411.

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By these means, Chaucer consistently and threats, cajoles and manipulates a emphasizes the great disparity between half-willing Criseyde into doing what he Troilus, Criseyde's worthy lover, and wants (II, 1164-69; III, 554-55). At least Diomede, the predator. twice he threatens not to see her In addition to feigning some of anymore if she will not do as he wishes Troilus's better characteristics, Diomede (II, 299-301; III, 565-67). He also becomes something of a second Pandarus threatens to kill himself at one point (II, as well. One parallel between the two is 323-29)—a very persuasive argument in their ability to assess instantly important Criseyde's inner thoughts (II, 459-69).9 facts about Criseyde. In Book II, Although he lacks Pandarus's grace of Pandarus thinks to himself: manner and has no ability to laugh at himself, Diomede does use very effec- If I my tale endite Aught harde, or make a proces any whyle, tively the technique of threatening She shal no savour have therin but lite, Criseyde.'° His threats are seemingly not And trowe I wolde hire in my wil bigyle; directed at Criseyde herself, but they For tendre wittes wenen al be wyle Thereas thei kan nought pleynly understonde; have the same effect as those of Pan- Forthi hire wit to serven wol I fonde- darus. As a result of Pandarus's threats, (II, 267-73)7 she finally agrees to have pity on Troilus; In a similar manner, Diomede reflects to as a result of Diomede's threats, she himself in Book V: makes a decision to stay in the Greek camp. Certeynlich I am aboute nought If that I speke of love, or make it tough; Ironically, the beginnings of this deci- For douteles, if she have in hire thought sion are made on the tenth day after Hym that I gesse, he may nat been ybrought Criseyde's arrival in the Greek So son awey; but I shal fynde a meene, That she naught wite as yet shall what I mene. (V, 100-05)8 Moreover, throughout Books II and III, "In Book IV, Troilus, thinking Criseyde has died, ac- tually prepares to commit suicide (IV, 1184-211). One Pandarus, by a combination of humor should also note Criseyde's questionable assertion that she would have also killed herself if Troilus had committed suicide. '°J.S.P. Tatlock, "The People in Chaucer's Troilus," PMLA 66 (1941): 85-104, stresses Pandarus's vitality; 'A good example of the difference in their moral Charles Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition characters is shown by Diomede's viewing Criseyde as (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of Calif. P, 1966, rpt.), simply one more in what would appear to be a long series describes Pandarus as providing "a view of courtly love of conquests, and the horror expressed by Troilus at Pan- under the auspices of realism" (p. 139), and also discusses darus's suggestion (IV, 400-13) that he find a new woman Pandarus's bourgeois elements (p. 140 ff.). A more (IV, 442-76). Note especially the lines, "She that I serve negative view of Pandarus is provided by Alan Gaylord, . . . / Shal han me holly hires til that I deye" (442 and "Uncle Pandarus as Lady Philosophy," Publications of the 44), and "But fro my soule shal Criseydes darts / Out Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, 46 nevere mo. . . . (472-73). One cannot imagine Diomede (1961): 571-95: "It appears that if he cannot help Troilus even considering the possibility of dying for love. out with the girls he cannot help him out at all" [V, 'Laila Gross, "The Two Wooings of Criseyde," 1723-43]. Lonnie J. Durham, "Love and Death in Troilus Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 74 (1973): 113-25, cites and Criseyde," Chaucer Review (1968-69): 1-11, suggests numerous Pandarus-Diomede parallels and suggests that that Criseyde and Pandarus are alike "in their ability to Pandarus's speech (II, 267-73) shows that "he does not adjust and survive . . . because they are, and know they seem to consider Criseyde overly bright" (p. 120). are, earthbound, and not committed to an inflexible idea" Diomede's speech (V, 100-05) would seem to indicate that (pp. 8-9). See also Rowe, 0 Love, 0 Charite!, p. 86, and he holds the same opinion as Pandarus. Haskell, "The Doppelgiingers," pp. 727-28.

16 Larry Bronson

camp—the very day on which she pro- with his gloomy pronouncements, mised Troilus that she would return. Diomede, with scarcely a pause for Diomede appears at Criseyde's tent on breath, then moves on in the very next that day pretending business with her stanza to assure her that: father. After making small talk "of this Ye shal in Grekis fynde and that yfeere, / As frendes don" (V, A moore parfit love, er it be nyght, 853-54), Diomede, having assured Than any Troian is, and more kynde himself that all is well, warns Criseyde And bet to serven yow wol don his myght. (V, 918-21) of the impending doom of Troy: He declares that he himself will serve her The folk of Troie, as who seyth, alle and some if she wishes, and then blushes a little for In prisoun ben, as ye yourselven se; Nor thennes shal nat oon on-lyve come effect. Unlike Troilus, who blushes for For al the gold atwixen sonne and se. good reasons (I, 867; II, 645; III, 82), Trusteth wel, and understondeth me, Diomede is apparently one of those Ther shal nat oon to mercy gon on-lyve, Al were he lord of worldes twies fyvel people who can blush at will. He finishes Swiche wreche on hem, for fecchynge of Eleyne, his recital by telling her that he (like Ther shal ben take, er that we hennes wende, Troilus) is a prince, and that he will con- That Manes, which that goddes ben of peyne, Shal ben agast that Grekes wol hem shende. tinue to serve her "whil I to lyve have And men shul drede, unto the worldes ende, space" (V, 921-45). 12 Criseyde's earlier From hennesforth to ravysshen any queene, determination to flee from Troy is no So cruel shal oure wreche on hem be seene. (V, 883-96)" match for this many-sided assault on her emotions, and she agrees to see him He goes on to remind her that Calkas again the next day. Although the nar- persuaded the Greeks to exchange rator assures us at this point that Antenor for her because he knew that Criseyde still "hadde hire herte on Troy would be destroyed (V, 904-06) Troilus / So faste, that ther may it non and repeats that "ther shal nat scapen arace," nonetheless, she ends the inter- oon / That Troian is" (908-09). He also view with the pathetically equivocal emphasizes the idea that Troy is ir- statement: retrievably doomed: "For Troie is brought in swich a jupartie / That it to If that I sholde of any Grek han routhe, save is now no remedie" (916-17). After It shoulde be yourselven, by my trouthe! I say nat therfore that I wol yow love, having successfully frightened Criseyde N'y say nat nay; but in conclusion, I mene wel, by God that sit above! (V, 1000-05) "George L. Kittredge also emphasizes the importance of Criseyde's reaction to this interview Diomede's description of Greek vengeance. Cf. Chaucer and His Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U P, 1915), (during which she gives Diomede a pp. 120-21. Also C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (N.Y.: Oxford U P, 1958, Galaxy books), pp. 188-89, and ap Roberts, "Criseyde's Infidelity," who believes that Criseyde does not really understand her father's motive in engineering her return until she hears Diomede's speech 'Kirby, in Chaucer's Troilus, thinks that Criseyde ac- (p. 386, n. 15). For a specific discussion of the imprison- cepts Diomede, "not as a substitute for Troilus but rather ment motif in Troilus and Criseyde, cf. Thomas A. Van, as the alternative to the utterly impossible course [of flee- "Imprisoning and Ensnarement in Troilus and The ing from the Greek camp back to Troy]" (p. 229). Kirby Knight's Tale," Papers on Language and Literature, 7 also describes Diomede's words and manners both as being (1971): 3-12. merely "skin-deep" (pp. 231-32).

17 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

glove) is described in precise detail: The effect of "this sodeyn Diomede," then, is to cause the destruction, in one Retornyng in hire soule ay up and down The wordes of this sodeyn Diomede, way or another, of Troilus, Pandarus, His grete estat, and perel of the town, and, finally, Criseyde herself. Troilus And that she was allone and hadde nede dies in despair;" Pandarus is rendered Of frendes help; and thus bygan to brede The cause whi, the sothe for to telle, silent and inert;' 5 and worst of all, That she took fully purpose for to dwelle. Criseyde will later become a prostitute. (V, 1023-29) Bringing tragedy to others in his wake, And finally, in lines 1030-48, with great but remaining unscathed himself, reluctance, the narrator admits that Diomede "conquers" in more ways than Diomede eventually conquered her com- he himself could have imagined possible. pletely, ending his unhappy recital of the According to medieval attitudes, even- courtship with a refusal to commit tual good may triumph in a Christian himself: "Men seyn—I not—that she yaf heaven, but in this instance, immediate hym hire herte." Any reader familiar evil, in the form of Diomede, has tri- with Criseyde's careful and lengthy umphed on earth.th weighing of all sides of the question whether she should accept Troilus as her lover in Book II (650-812) can easily "For the Troilus as an example of the contemptus mundi predict, far in advance of the event genre and its specific application to the character of itself, the eventual outcome of Troilus himself, see Donald R. Howard, The Three Temp- tations: Medieval Man in Search of the World (Princeton: Diomede's courtship of ber.' 3 As stated Princeton U P, 1966), p. 160. See also Rowe, 0 Love, 0 earlier, part of the tragic circumstances Charlie!, pp. 139-40. E. G. Stanley, "About Troilus," Essays and Studies (N.Y.: Humanities Press, 1976), in Book V that surround Criseyde, whom 84-106, is principally a defense of Troilus. He also views the narrator in Book II had called "the both Pandarus and Criseyde as older, as well as more ex- perienced, than Troilus. ferfulleste wight that myghte be" (II, "Probably the severest criticism of Pandarus is that of 450-51), is her failure to distinguish be- D.W. Robertson, Jr., in A Preface to Chaucer, who labels him "a priest of Satan" (p. 479). Also pp. 472-503, tween the true fidelity of Troilus and the especially pp. 479-95. For a rebuttal of Robertson's views, merely feigned fidelity of Diomede. The which were originally proposed in "Chaucerian Tragedy," ELH 19 (1952): 1-37, cf. Charlotte D'Evelyn, "Pandarus a dismal last consequence of her fatal in- Devil?" PMLA 71 (1956): 275-79. ability to read perceptively the character "Howard, The Three Temptations, p. 160; C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, states that "The end of Troilus is the of Diomede is recorded in Henryson's great example in our literature of pathos pure and un- Testament of Cresseid (Lewis 188-89). relieved. All is to be endured and nothing is to be done" (p. 195). Meech, Design in Chaucer's Troilus, thinks that Diomede "is devoid of all attributes of the courtly lover ex- cept that of soldiership. . . . Never explicitly judged himself, the adventurer demonstrates by his easy triumph the baselessness of the idealist's expectations from love and "William G. Dodd, Courtly Love in Chaucer and hence promotes our acceptance of them in the Epilog" Gower (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1959, rpt.), (p. 412). Alfred David, "The Hero of the Troilus," believes that the character of Criseyde does not change: Speculum, 37 (Oct., 1962): 566-81, takes a slightly dif- "The Criseyde of the latter part is the Criseyde of the ferent approach. He views Troilus as maturing throughout earlier; only the circumstances are changed" (p. 176). This the poem, and his rejection of Pandarus's arguments in opinion is also held by Haskell in "The Doppelgiingers" Book IV shows the growing "limitations" of Pandarus. In and by Gross in "The Two Wooings." Peter Elbow, Op- David's view, Troilus's error in loving Criseyde "is to have positions in Chaucer, states that Criseyde always "means tried to love a human being with an ideal spiritual love" as well. Thus her bemusement at the end is genuine: she does opposed to Pandarus's sole concern for earthly love not feel it is her doing" (p. 58). (p. 578).

18 Larry Bronson

WORKS CITED

David, Alfred. "The Hero of the Troilus." Speculum Hatcher, Elizabeth R. "Chaucer and the Psychology of 27 (Oct. 1962): 566-81. Fear: Troilus in Book V," Journal of English Literary D'Evelyn, Charlotte. "Pandarus a Devil?" PMLA 71 History 40 (Fall, 1973): 307-24. (1956): 275-79. Howard, R. Donald. The Three Temptations: Medieval Dodd, William G. Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower. Man in Search of the World. Princeton: Princeton U P, Reprint. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1959. 1966. Dronke, Peter. "Chaucer and the Medieval Latin Poets." Kirby, Thomas A. Chaucer's Troilus: A Study in Courtly In Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by Derek Brewer. Writers Love. Reprint. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958. and Their Backgrounds Series. Athens, Ohio: Ohio U P, Kittredge, George L. Chaucer and His Poetry. Cam- 1975. bridge, Mass.: Harvard U P, 1915. Durham, Lonnie J. "Love and Death in Troilus and Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love. N.Y.: Oxford U P, Criseyde." Chaucer Review (1968-69): 1-11. 1958. Elbow, Peter. Oppositions in Chaucer. Middletown, Meech, Sanford B. Design in Chaucer's Troilus. Syracuse: Conn.: Wesleyan U P, 1975. Syracuse U P, 1959. Gaylord, Alan. "Uncle Pandarus as Lady Philosophy." Muscatine, Charles. Chaucer and the French Tradition. Publications of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, Reprint. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, and Letters 46 (1961): 571-95. 1966. Gordon, Ida L. The Double Sorrow of Troilus. Oxford: Roberts, Robert P. "Criseyde's Infidelity and the Moral of Clarendon P, 1970. the Troilus." Speculum 44 (1969): 383-412. Gross, Laila. "The Two Wooings of Criseyde." Neu- Robertson, Jr., D. W. A Preface to Chaucer. Princeton philologische Mitteilungen 74 (1973): 113-25. U P, 1962. Haskell, Ann S. "The Doppelgangers in Chaucer's . -Chancerian Tragedy, - Journal of Troilus." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971): English Literary History 19 (1952): 1-37. 723-34.

19 SHAKESPEARES COMIC WOMEN: OR JILL HAD TROUBLE WITH JACK!

FRANCES DODSON RHOME

Frances Dodson Rhome is the director of the Institute for Humanities Research at IUPUI. Her article is based on a paper that was given at the European Studies Conference in 1983.

Shakespeare's comic heroines are "old" Mistress Ann Page, not yet seven- imaged firmly in social conventions of teen. Thus, there were not many single 1588-1613 to be accepted readily by women, certainly not in the upper Elizabethan playgoers. The characters' classes. actions aptly express, however, the If marriage was economically imprac- changing attitudes toward women in tical because of insufficient dowry (as that period of intense questioning of with Marianna) or of inadequate selling numerous orthodoxies. virtues (as with Kate), the young maiden During the Elizabethan period, often was forced to face the nunnery. So women moved freely with men, attend- it is that Theseus, although ostensibly of ing plays, bearbaiting, cockfights, another age and country, offers poor taverns, and festivals. Shakespeare's Hermia a choice either to marry her women of the ordinary middle class fre- father's preferred suitor whom she did quented ale houses. The citizen's wife not love or to adopt the garb of the nun! enjoyed a modicum of independence as But there is another alternative! did the aristocrat. Widows could assume I beg the ancient privilege of Athens their husband's businesses and wield As she is mine, I may dispose of her— some local influence, but generally Which shall be either to this gentleman Or to her death, according to our law. found it economically prudent to seek (Egeus, MSND I.1. 40-44) another husband. Either way, all personal possessions of Legally all women were considered the young woman became either her the husband's "property" in the contrac- husband's or the church's property. tual marriage. Single women possessed The powerfully influential church the same rights as men. The catch was, shaped society's expectations of women's however, that few women occupied that role. From medieval insistence on chas- single state. Arranged marriages for tity in women, derived from convictions aristocratic girls and early marriages for of natural inordinate lustfulness as all flourished at what we consider a very daughters of Eve, to the Renaissance em- early age. The legal minimum marital bracing of Calvin's doctrine of chaste age for "men" was fourteen years, for marriage as a condition of spiritual girls, twelve—earlier if both achieved prestige, marriage remained and was puberty. Thus, Juliet boasted a mere stressed as an important element of life. thirteen years and forty-nine weeks, The arranged marriage for both spouses, Miranda about fifteen, Viola fifteen, however, too often became tolerable Marina fourteen, Perdita sixteen, and

20 Frances Dodson Rhome only through adultery, a practice at- to marry, and also because education tacked vigorously by Puritan preachers. was designed primarily to train boys to Customs of forced marriage, marriage become gentlemen. By the time of for money, child marriages, and mar- Elizabeth I, two types of "educated riages between very old men and very women" appeared: the simply literate young women strained the notion of with little schooling, and the daughters marital sanctity and "legitimate" births. of the rich with scholastic training ap- At the same time the proper perfect proaching that of their brothers. The maiden was urged to cultivate virtues of tart-tongued Virgin Queen was herself grace, meekness, and submission. Her an intellectual, strong woman, outstand- ultimate destiny was to become a wife ing in rank, education, and accomplish- and mother. ment. She spoke fluent Italian and Thus it was that the debate about demonstrated proficiency in a wide virginity, chastity, and single life range of subjects, thanks to her tutor generated as much controversy in the six- Roger Ascham (Pitt 27-28). teenth and early seventeenth centuries as Ruling alone, Queen Elizabeth pro- population control or abortion today. vided a model of independence and self- Puritans and Zeal-of-the-Land-Busy sufficiency, setting high cultural conservative moralists literally pushed standards for women and for herself. dramatists into talking about women's Nevertheless, the official ecclesiastical affairs. Preachers orating about attitudes view placed man at the supreme height provided playwrights with excellent con- of God's creation and woman as a troversial raw material. Agitation for secondary inferior in every way (Pitt 16). women's rights gained support from the Shakespeare brings all of those con- most talented and creative of troversies or notions into his plots in such Shakespeare's contemporaries by a way as to expose all sides. His arguments for evasion of stereotypes and aristocratic heroines reveal learning for recognition of women as individual deemed appropriate: Beatrice knows persons. Dramas written from 1590 to geography, Rosalind is familiar with 1625 became "feminist" in this sense. classical myths, Portia exhibits Stage conditions were ideally suited to knowledge in legal reasoning, Kate has reflect current attitudes about women her tutors, Bianca studies with and to please the sizable female hers—sometimes. audiences. Shakespeare is no male version of Mrs. Humanists, influenced by Erasmus Pankhurst nor she of him, even though and More, added to the controversy by his treatment of female characters seeking for a woman education that reflects a sense of emancipation, self- would exalt her character and correct sufficiency, and avoidance of stereo- her inherent "deficiencies" (Pitt 17). types. Few female characters are tradi- Few girls, however, were encouraged to tional "clinging" vines. Those who are attend grammar school, because by age contrast to a stronger heroine—Luciana thirteen or fourteen they were expected to Adriana, Bianca to Kate, for example.

21 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM These comic women can best be de- Puritan spirit in rethinking old scribed as coping people with little authorities, Shakespeare apparently dramatic deification or denigration. developed no positive feminist thesis of They transcend gender, class, society, or his own. He pictured characters as he tradition to appear as intelligent, ar- found them—men and women. In his ticulate, strong-willed women who comedies, these realistic persons gain challenge or chase after the Jacks in their their verve and vitality from a common society. The great comic characters of in- dilemma and from current social tellect (Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, situations. Rosalind) or of passion and imagination All Shakespearean comic heroines (Helena, Perdita, Viola, Miranda) and have this characteristic: they never go of affections (Hermione, Imogen), the beyond the bounds of what an Eliza- wronged ladies (Hero, Helena, Mari- bethan audience would find acceptable anna) and country wenches with more as a woman. Those who do are reduced: carnal desires (Jacquenetta, Audrey) fill a Kate submits, a Helena and a Beatrice a spectrum to which Shakespeare's audi- succumb, a Rosalind drops her disguise ences could respond (Jameson 1). We and authoritative "masculine" manner. meet the scrappy middle and lower class Their rebellious and spirited strivings who were born expecting to fight for and constancy in love lead them into sustenance, their Jack, their position, many complex and difficult situations and their very lives in a society unsym- from which they mercifully, sometimes pathetic to their needs. Mistress Nell wittily, must be extracted. Quickly operates her Boar's Head bawdy Renaissance playwrights frequently tavern; as a spirited person she caters to presented a female leading character Falstaff, loans him money, plans to disguised as a male, so plotted in order to marry him. She accepts him, loves him, catch her Jack—Julia, Imogen, serves him and takes his rejection of her Rosalind, Viola, Portia. In the disguise, as her lot. her behavior shifts from the customary

Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt feminine passive reception of authority goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the to a more directive masculine role. She round table by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday becomes more assertive, more outgoing, in Whitsun week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of more emphatic in opinions than society Windsor—thou didst swear to me then, as I was deemed appropriate for females. Such washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me behavior challenged Elizabethan cul- my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? (Henry IV, Part II. II, i, 81-85) tural upbringing, albeit ever so gently. Viola, the tender twin, has no con- Beatrice, on the other hand, appears free fidante and is a solitary sufferer trapped to choose her husband and to dictate her in disguise. In her protective male marital conditions. "No, uncle, I'll disguise, however, she more ably ap- none." From the feminism surrounding proaches Orsino, even more freely and frankly than if she were a female needing Elizabeth and from the best of the

22 Frances Dodson Rhome to practice enticements. She conse- women's societal roles, few heroines are quently establishes the base for a healthy obsessed by or attach themselves to great relationship. causes or national issues. Theirs remains Portia is another story. Disguised as a a domestic world, not a global one of lawyer to defend the merchant, she ex- military conquest, governmental con- hibits strength of wisdom, clarity of trols, or economic trade. Theirs is a judgment and noble spirit that resemble world governed by fathers, husbands, or strong "male" heroic virtues. But Portia, brothers in which their individual con- nevertheless, suffers the problem of the sciences are tested only by support or prescribed arranged marriage. She can- non-support of the male-held view. An not choose her suitor; she remains exception is pious Isabella, who in a restricted to a father's provision, which, society "ripe into rottenness" confronts fortunately for her, ultimately gains her the dominant ruling force and seeks to a true love. In her basic character of repulse destructive legal absolutes. She ideal womanhood those qualities are ex- who never married and dons the tradi- pressed neither as masculine nor tional nun's habit challenges the authori- feminine (Pitt 17). The issue of being tative powers and is drawn into a severe just, generous, and merciful outshines personal conflict of her own. Her any notion of a character's sex. courageous fight is for an Angelo who Rosalind's dilemma is far from comic. little deserved it, not for herself. In one Left without income, unfairly banished, of the history plays, Queen Margaret this winsome forest maid deserves better. grasps the soldier's sword from her weak Her adoption of a blustering bravado king's hand. In the tragedies, Lady carries her masculine masquerade. The MacBeth pushes, pulls, tugs, forces, and comedy derives from the fact that she, as knifes the way for her lord to a ruling a boy-actor-disguised-as-a-girl-actor- province; Cleopatra rules equitably and playing-a-disguised-boy, falls in love at controls her fighting vessels more ably first sight of her Jack. She is forced to than an aging, love-sick Antony. discuss love and courtship with her But few women characters clasp a beloved and even instruct the dolt in the philosophical or political issue to their nature of true love! Her situation comic- breasts. It is as though Shakespeare's ally becomes complex: as a woman she women live in an isolated state from the cannot court a male or express an un- rest of the world. Their kingdom's re- solicited love for him until he registers taining wall is the front door. They do his affection. She must suffer her true not step into the outside world but only feelings in silence. By being placed in watch from the domestic window while such a position, Rosalind skillfully royalty rules domains, men explore probes the heart of her lover to the very unknown and uncharted waters in ma- core, thus assuring herself of his basic jestic sailing ships, strange and exotic worth and of his honest affection. goods come from far-off alien lands, Even as Elizabethan and Jacobean Galileo and successive scientific col- dramatists manifest an interest in leagues strain for a grasp of the universe,

23 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM men march to and from war, great trade an ass (caused by a jealous husband act- companies seek new islands, and physi- ing like one), Olivia develops an illusive cians search for an understanding of the passion for Daesario-Julia. Two comic human anatomy. The female character, characters stand above such emotional when granted a certain independence of love spells: Beatrice, who asserts she spirit, conscience and thought, preoc- never will, then does with equal vigor; cupied herself with moral judgments, and Kate, who rebels against the obedience, merciful justice in human ultimate destiny of a wife-mother role, relations, and the grace of acquired then meekly dons the apron. All young musical and artistic culture. Hers was women, regardless of spirit and in- the world of children, of boys, of an dependence, ultimately seek a final state undeveloped man. of marital dependence. The subject of love and courtship as a The question of authority and comic theme affects all female characters woman's place in the chain of degree in Shakespearean comedy and can be in- seems even more challengeable in that terpreted as a female priority—to get marital union when Jill becomes Jack's her man, or, if you will, to "have" her partner. Matronly Adriana in The Jack. There is a playfulness, however, Comedy of Errors sufferingly questions attached to the love game that her husband's freedom of movement and diminishes the motive as an overwhelm- "liberty." She experiences painful ing one. The court ladies—Rosaline, jealousy, rightfully, for when Antipholus Maria, Katherine—using common mistakenly is denied entry to his home, sense, playfully trick those three he promptly seeks a courtesan to whom headstrong recalcitrant sworn bachelor he promises a golden chain previously lords in Loves Labours Lost, who insist purchased as a gift for his wife. No on affecting abstinence. Marianna wonder Adriana laments: catches Angelo with a bed trick rather Hath homely age th alluring beauty took improperly but nevertheless successfully. From my poor cheek? then he bath wasted it. Hermione shows up as a cold statue har- Are my discourses dull? barren my wit. boring a warm heart, unhappy Julia Do gay vestments his affections bait? dons boy's clothing to pursue her errant beloved, chaste Helena adopts also the I know his eye doth homage otherwhere, Or else what lets it but he would be here? proven successful bed trick to snare her (The Comedy of Errors, II.i.89) valid claim, resolving the relationship to Luciana counters with "servitude" and Bertram in a theatrical scene a force. an advised acceptance of a subservient Others fall under the sudden spell of role. "Why, headstrong liberty is lashed love: Miranda, protected chaste virgin, with woe," she says. succumbs to the first young male she How true Kate learned that statement meets, Jessica passionately elopes with to bel She in The Taming of the Shrew her lover after more pragmatically ran- rebels against all bureaucratic authority: sacking her father's money till, poor her father's right to choose, his selection drugged Titania falls under the spell of of her suitors, her unwelcome role as

24 Frances Dodson Rhome eldest requiring her to be first in mar- hers also is a special case: he sends poor riage, the material payment of a dowry Sly home to his presumably Bianca-type to assure a Jack's acceptance of her, and wife who may not answer his call as Kate the expected total subjection to her hus- prescribed her to do! band's will. As an independent and Regardless of source material, Shake- spirited young girl battling patriarchal speare created strong, self-directed attitudes, she fights also for a marital ac- colorful women struggling to retain in- ceptance: a "Jack" who respects her. dependence within their allotted After miserable treatment exacted by domains and to choose, or at least to par- Petruchio and endured by her, both tially control, their destinies. Clearly grow to acknowledge genuine affection they are not pawns, as our Falstaff found for and respect of each other. Hence, out when he met the Merry Wives of Kate accepts a role of "obey them, love Windsor. them, keepe and nourish them . . . Such Shakespeare asks the questions about duty as the subject owes the prince." liberty, shows the injustice and hard- With her hand placed under her hus- ships endured in forced marriages, band's foot in an extreme subjective and challenges the concept of transforming exemplary posture to "do him ease,"she true love and consequent felicitous places full authority for her well-being in domesticity, and endows his comic the province of her husband even as heroines with creative and witty minds Petruchio becomes committed "to pain- and intuitive wisdom—even as he causes ful labor" of caring for her needs. Such his Jacks to give his Jills so much trouble. was Kate's award— a doctrine of mutual Were those Jacks worth the chase? consent and harmonic agreement. Shakespeare's male characters— both Neither behavior of extreme shrew- heroic and comic—doltishly seem ishness to escape a forced marriage nor unaware of those beauteous Jills who of rabid tyranny to gain a rich wife are pursue them so arduously. A few moon any more real than the extreme posture about in a sort of Malvolain puppy or of obedience to cope or of masterful courtly role, but most appear oblivious. lordliness to control (Dusinberre 108). Few boast any visible means of support. " 'Tis a wonder" Kate was so tamed, Most are noble or upper middle class Lucentio muses, as we also question the who read and write fluently but ap- illusive vision of domestic harmony and parently hold down no nine-to-five job. submission. But did Kate give up all Demetrius certainly makes an effort to sense of independence and liberty or did snatch Hermia from Egeus's unjust she simply shrewdly maneuver Petruchio demands for an unwanted marriage into thinking so? Even though "tamed" until he falls under a forest's spell and a in an unpleasant way, Kate learned to love-in-idleness flower's drug. Princess of play verbal and intellectual games France and Rosaline in Loves Labours enabling her to form a creative, mature Lost rightfully mock the king and his relationship with a special man. companions' transparent hypocrisy. Ab- Shakespeare does not let us forget that surdly pompous and pretentious Jacks at

25 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM all levels of the social scale are grossly her and to get his way. unself-aware and deserve a come- Orsino suddenly recognizes his sweet uppance. Berowne, Longaville, and page whose service was done "so much Dumaine, even Armado and Holofernes against the mettle" of her sex, and "so far in their "still and contemplative" beneath" her "soft and tender breeding" Academe overboldly "play's foul play" as a desirable woman. He permits her to with their oaths, "neglected time," become her "master's mistress." Bertram deservedly failed to "gain" immediately finally recognizes Helena's worth and their Jills, and consequently were devotion, vowing "If she, my liege, can brought to a truly austere twelve months make me know this clearly / I'll love her of "insociable life" for an "annual dearly, ever, ever dearly" (V.iii. 15-17). reckoning." Petruchio, the dowry-seeker, comes to Inconstant Proteus, one of the recognize Kate exclaiming in admira- "gentlemen" of Verona, rejects faithful tion, "Why, there's a wench!" Mooning Julia the moment he is away from her, Orlando finds it a bitter thing to look tries to win the love of his friend Valen- into happiness through another man's tine's sweetheart, and even attempts an eyes and discovers—finally—"if there assault on Silvia's chastity. The passion be truth in sight," she is his Rosalind. so suffered by Proteus turns him into Claudio, with his romantically stereo- flatterer, liar, betrayer, would-be rapist, typed attitudes and his financially ad- and finally guilty self-hater. Unrecog- vantageous match, accepts a false nized Julia, plucky and resourceful rumor, bringing Hero to insufferable though she may be, patiently and loyally grief and denunciation. The painful ex- observes this inconstancy and as patient- perience teaches him little, but Hero ly forgives in happy resolution. Proteus's mercifully gives him a second chance, "penance" is but to hear "the story" of accepts him anyway, and marries him. his loves discovered. He hardly deserves the surprise of her Even in fairyland, Oberon jealously generous wedding gift. Angelo, who fails to recognize Titania's virtuous and dishonorably repudiated his solemn con- merciful vow to care for the orphan In- tract when Mariana's marriage dowry dian babe and strains that love relation- disappeared at sea, comes to be grateful ship by shamefully placing her in an em- for her long-suffering love and uses the barrassing and absurd yoking. The sight age-old tactic of switching the blame, "Is of her "dotage" evokes his pity; her tear- this her fault or mine? The tempter or ful begging of patience is to no avail. the tempted who sins most?" Benedick, Only the giving up of "the changeling who strutted in disdain of women, falls child" makes Oberon undo the hateful hard when he "hears" Beatrice loves "imperfection." The two are joined him, and she responds similarly to him. "new in amity" with a "field-dew" con- He says, "Come, I will have thee; but, secrate and "sweet peace" even though by this light, I take thee for pity." She Oberon failed to understand her obliga- retorts, "I yield upon great persuasion; tion and used his superiority to punish and partly to save your life, for I was

26 Frances Dodson Rhome told you were in a consumption." happily and harmoniously. The agents of Falstaff alone refused to recognize happiness and order are those superior Mistress Quickly's devotion, preferring heroines who reflect the correct to follow Prince Hal where he meets an understanding of the original problem. unexpected rejection. These male heroes Whether it be a matter of friendship, the come to acknowledge, accept, and disruptive influence of love, of family elevate the female's adoration, usually relations, of levels of love—courtly or with a proffered marital request. romantic—it is the female characters And so the Jacks too succumb. They who reach toward and bring a resolving have their Jills, and the Jills have won understanding. their prize! "Nought should have gone Self-knowledge is the primary award ill," but their "devised sport" of "falling in nearly every instance, although we in love" leads to throbbing headaches are not certain about the man Sly. A and throbbing hearts, no longer a jesting theme of forgiveness by the mistreated or matter. The wonder of it all is the misprized female forms a major theme. tolerance, patience, and mercy shown by From Kate we learn of the need for har- Jill. mony and understanding within marital In the process of courtship, the Jacks, bonds. From Adriana, we meet the pro- however, do grow into mature persons. test for women's rights within that mar- The remedies solve, resolve, illuminate riage and the consequence of a husband's the whole human condition, and allow seeming neglect of home and hearth; valid insights to both sexes. Attitudes from Viola, the mediating corrective of distill from a reservoir of medieval- true love; from Marina, the healing Renaissance conventional premises of properties of time and the value of pa- Christian faith and intrigue and tience in adversity; from Portia, the transform into conflicts of individuals quality of mercy, the ideal womanhood with varied philosophies. A cumulative expressed as generous, noble, just, and effect images a wide understanding of wise, and "sunny looks". Hermia shows men and women's instincts, sexuality us that the course of true love never did and human behavior (Kirsch 6). No run smooth, for love is blind and eyes miraculous cures occur, although often betray judgment. miraculous illusions certainly are In the numerous Shakespearean com- present. In most instances, the painful edies, thus, a host of brides, complaisant punishment fits and transforms the courtesans, and virtuous but loving "crime" and is consistent with justice; young women achieve their desired ends the measure is as good as it is exact in in tricky manipulations, disguises, their "merry war." pretenses, bed tricks, simulations, and Reconciliations in Shakespearean dissimulations. In the "thickening" wit comedies correct understandings of the of accident and miscomprehensions are original problems. Where all begin fortunate, happy coincidences and perplexed and threatened, they end discoveries through shipwrecks, rings,

27 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM caskets, and birthmarks. Recovery tions, and suggestive answers apparently brings discovery in the dominant mis- have hardened into conventions. Per- takings and matings. In Shakespeares haps also that is why today Jills continue comedies a consequent quality of an in- to love their Jacks, even as they cry ner life with capacities for introspection piteously—nay, some even clamor — and closed gaps in awareness result for "Why should their liberty than ours be both Jacks and Jills. more?" And the Jacks continue to answer And for us all who share and love The man shall have his mare again Shakespeares works, we find the issues, And all will be well. watch various challenges to them, and And Shakespeare smugly and "Slyly" seek an answer within our own lives. But goes off to bed! Puritan ideas about women, new ques-

WORKS CITED

Di sinherre, Juliet Stainer. Shakespeare and the Nature of Kirsch, Arthur C. Shakespeare and the Experience of Women. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975. Love. Cambridge, England: Cambridge U P, 1981. Jameson, Anna B. Shakespeare:s Heroines. Reprint of Pitt, Angela. Shakespeare's Women. London: Barnes and 1913 edition. London: Folcroft, 1977, Noble, 1981.

28 AUDIENCE MANIPULATION IN JONSON'S COMEDIES

RENU JUNEJA

Renu Juneja teaches English at Valparaiso University. She has published in such journals as The Journal of South Asian Literature, South Asian Review, The Cresset, Renaissance and Reformation, and Comparative Drama.

Perhaps no major commercial theatre watches with Andrea and Revenge the ever made a greater attempt to bring its main plot just as it is asked to keep awake audience into the action on stage than with Christopher Sly through The the Elizabethan. From its native tradi- Taming of the Shrew. In Henry V, the tion, it sustained the didacticism of the Prologue begs for the imagination of the morality play where the audience found audience, in Troilus and Cressida ex- itself mirrored and exemplified by ac- plains "what may be digested in a play," tors. Theatrical practice as late as The and in Henry VIII insists that "ye Knight of the Burning Pestle broke down see / The very persons of our noble the wall between audience and play just story / As they were living." Hamlet as devils had burst into spectators typifies Elizabethan stage business when crowded around medieval booths. The he, Horatio, and the audience watch the stage itself in the new theatres thrust out king watch the player-king. In tragedy into the audience as if all the world were and comedy, actors become spectators a stage. Not only the groundlings were and lead the audience through their immediate to the actors—C. Walter responses. Hodges estimates that the most distant Comedy, however, presented a spectator in the uppermost gallery was somewhat more complex problem to the only fifteen yards away. And we know playwright than tragedy. As critical that insistent wealthy patrons broke any theory maintains, tragedy aims at an illusion of theatrical distancing by sitting engagement of the audiences emotions on the stage itself. When Elizabethan with the protagonist; comedy aims at drama elevated itself by turning to the distancing character and spectator. The classics, it borrowed particularly those common resolution in Elizabethan com- devices that encouraged mutual par- edy is illustrated again by Shakespeare in ticipation of actor and spectator in the A Midsummer Nights Dream. The au- play. Inductions and prologues, dumb dience is invited to laugh with Theseus shows, and plays-within-plays fused and the court at Peter Quince, Bottom, stage spectator with theatre spectator. In and their amateur theatrics. Spectators The Spanish Tragedy the audience on stage and in the audience make up one audience distanced from the buf- foonery of the comedians. The solution, however, is not so simple when comedy 'Estimated from Hodges's sketches for the model of the First Globe. These prints (no pagination) are part of the is explicitly didactic and turns to satire. Harvard Library Theatre Collection. No playwright wrestled so long and so

29 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM uneasily with his relationship with his after play, folly is so laid out that we can audience than Ben Jonson, How to only observe coolly and condemn criti- distance and yet engage, how to teach cally. Jonson continually encourages his and yet delight, how to correct, to audience to learn what Barish calls "the chastise and yet sustain popularity impartiality appropriate of a law court obsessed him throughout his career. rather than the quick emotionality of Like his contemporaries, Jonson freely fellow sharers" (29). 3 On the other hand, used inductions and other framing Jonson could not ignore the exceptional- devices in order to dramatize and so con- ly responsive nature of his audience and trol the responses of his audiences. Like the immediacy of his theatre. Like any his contemporaries, he constructed professional dramatist, he could not plays-within-plays, masques, and dumb- dismiss the social, economic, and shows to highlight the practice of psychological attitudes of the same au- playwatching. Like his contemporaries, diences urged by the choruses in Henry V he made fun of the naive citizens and to "work their thought" into a glowing amateur actors who confused illusion forge. No doubt Jonson distrusted the with reality. But he wanted much more; naive sentimentality and the cheap emo- through these devices and others he tionalism of the public theatre but not its wanted to educate the taste of the au- capacity for imaginative involvement dience, to distance the spectators with plot and characters on stage. In intellectually, to hone their critical ob- fact, as an author of masques, Jonson jectivity. On the one hand, in adherence was more experienced than most of his to classical theories of comedy, he used contemporaries in the ritualistic par- every available dramatic convention to ticipation of audience in performance undercut emotional involvement and where, in Orgel's words, "the courtly au- detach the spectator from the play. 2 We dience is transformed into an idealized see Asper change into Macilente but back world of poet's vision." Although in his into his own role at the end of Every plays such direct, physical engagement Man out of His Humour to bracket the was neither possible nor desirable, play as a play. We listen to the actor in Jonson searched for techniques to the epilogue to Volpone refer to his part achieve sympathetic identification from and dissipate any horror we may have public audiences with those characters felt at Volpone's punishment. In play who represented, if only partially, the ideal viewer—the true wit (Orgel 2).4

See Jonas Barish, "Jonson and the Loathed Stage" and Clifford Leech, "Incredibility of Jonsonian Comedy" in A Celebration of Ben Jonson, ed. William Blissett, et al. 'See also L. A. Beaurline, Jonson and Elizabethan (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1974), pp. 19, 29; M. C. Brad- Comedy (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1978), pp. 6, brook, The Living Monument (Cambridge: Camb. U P 7, on the connections between comic and legal rhetoric. As 1976), p. 31; Thelma Greenfield, The Induction in Beaurline points out, the use of legal metaphor was fairly Elizabethan Drama (Eugene: U of Oregon P, 1969), conventional when addressing the audience. p. 83. This most common and popular view of Jonson's in- 'M. C. Bradbrook, The Living Monument, pp. 25-26, teraction with his audience continues to find expression in uses the term "sympathetic audience identification" in more recent studies. See, for instance, Peter Carlson, reference to Elizabethan history plays. Jonson, according "Judging Spectators," ELH, 44 (1977): 443-57. to her, never achieves this effect.

30 Renu Juneja

All of Jonson's comedies, with perhaps have appalled Jonson: a young dramatist the exception of Volpone, strive for such begins his career superbly confident that sympathetic identification. In his plays, he will educate his audience, and the Jonson asks for at least a duality of confidence is expressed in haughty ar- response: a critical judgment un- rogance. Commercial interests and a encumbered by emotion and a sym- thirst for popularity force an accom- pathetic experience in the alliance of modation with the audience; he stifles playgoer with true wit. Jonson's critics criticism of their taste and behavior. Yet have only superficially acknowledged distrust rankles; the aging poet is sure of the latter. Thus, even Beaurline, with all neither himself nor the spectators. Alter- his emphasis on Jonson's growing accom- nately, he is touchingly apologetic as in modation and tolerance, continues to the epilogue to The New Inn and mildly suggest a radical antithesis between aggressive as in the induction to The Shakespeare's loving approach to his au- Magnetic Lady. The curtain falls on the dience and Jonson's insistent sense of a sick poet who has lost both skill and faith threatening tension between himself and in the stage. his audience (Beaurline 6-10). Conse- Whatever the truth of the psy- quently, no one has noticed that Jonson, chological ambivalence, a more re- too, at least partially, strives for and warding approach to Jonson's dramatic achieves the very response we commend skills is to study his experiments in in Shakespeare. Jonson's apparent plia- manipulating the audience toward a bility, his indulgent attitude to his au- sympathetic experience in the theatre. dience, is but one element of a larger For we have now begun to realize that strategy to make the spectators active Jonson, far from being a conservative participants through their identification classicist, was a relentless experimenter with discerning characters within the (Kay 18-28). From the earliest to the last plays. Frequently, even when Jonson's plays, he struggled with dramatic forms critics see a complex and paradoxical and conventions to handle and man- relationship between dramatist and au- handle his audiences. In fact, the manip- dience, they ascribe it to conflicting ulation of the audience between critical psychological attitudes which Jonson detachment and sympathetic identifica- brought to the stage, the spectator, and tion is a signal of the degree of success of his entire profession. 5 Indeed, the am- the play. While I may touch on other bivalence has often been sketched out in plays for supportive evidence, I want to a sentimental drama whose plot would consider in particular the techniques of manipulation in three plays: the early Every Man out of His Humour, the mature Bartholomew Fair, and the late lonson's conflicting relationship with the stage is analyzed by Barish in "Jonson and the loathed Stage." For The Staple of News. Each has a critical comments on Jonson's insecurity about his profession see induction, and each adopts a strategy G. E. Bentley, The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time (Princeton: Princeton U P, 1971), representative of other plays composed 38-9. within the same period.

31 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

Every Man out of His Humour is one of aggressive and a little too defensive. Jonson's earliest experiments. Audiences Since "they're all corrupt," "grow ranke were ordinarily untrustworthy even with in sinne / Puffing their soules away in familiar plays and could not be expected perj'rous aire," the righteous Asper fears to respond judiciously to new forms. no one (Induction, 20-30). He is osten- Jonson interlaced the material with sibly addressing his companions and not strong threads to guide his spectators, the actual audience, but the fiction is too particularly the induction and the grex. thin. Consequently, when he turns to the They serve to preempt negative criticism spectators, pretending that he had not of the play and to instruct the audience noticed them before, the gracious in a response approved by the dramatist. welcome he offers rings hollow. Although the induction may not have Most of the other ploys used in the in- been put on the stage as we now have it, duction are equally obvious; it is as if an certainly some portion of it was per- amateur were trying his hand at build- formed. And, as Greenfield has pointed ing—the nuts and bolts are too visible. out, the remarks of the grex are placed For instance, in the opening induction, neatly to coincide with stage business Mitis and Cordatus often make feeble at- (75). 6 Jonson hoped to gain several tempts to control Asper, to quiet his dramatic advantages through the induc- fury, with advice like "be not thus tion: the grex would stand as a model of transported with the violence" (1. 45) or the ideal audience; the nature of the play "You will be thought too peremptorie" would be dissected and the real audience (1. 74). The purpose of these interjec- anatomized; the audience would be in- tions—to soften Asper's rebukes, to an- structed directly and openly. The induc- ticipate and so preempt the audience's tions of later plays set out similar goals criticism—is evident. In later plays, but employ different techniques. Jonson resolves the audience's reserva- One distinguishing feature of the in- tions much more subtly. In this play, if duction in Every Man out of His Jonson feels that the audience must be Humour is the discomfiting directness instructed in his theory of humor, Cor- and transparency with which Jonson datus and Mitis obligingly persuade pursues his objectives. Cordatus, Asper, Asper to explain humor. If Jonson wants and Mitis appear on the stage, and the audience to appreciate a particular without much ado, Asper starts declaim- character or passage, Cordatus steps in ing the goal of the satiric dramatist—to with appropriate remarks like "Is not "strip the ragged follies of the time" (In- this purely good" (I.ii.31). And like duction, 17). 7 Asper's tone is a little too Mitis, the actual audience is supposed to nod its head and agree. Indeed, Mitis has 'For debate on whether the induction was put on the leave to make objections, for "its the stage, and in what form, see Una Ellis Fermor, Jacobean special intent of the author, you [Mitis] Drama, 5th ed. (1936; rpt. London: Methuen, 1965), p. 99. should do so: for thereby others (that are 'All references to the text are from C. H. Herford and present) may well be satisfied, who hap- Percy and Evelyn Simpson, eds., Ben Jonson, 11 vols. (Ox- ford: Clarendon P, 1925-52). pily would object the same as you doe"

32 Renu Junej a

(II.iii.305-08). Mitis and Cordatus serve tators exercise their own initiative. In- as rather obvious surrogates for the stead of being browbeaten, they are author, ready to serve Jonson's needs as a prompted to dissociate themselves from commentator on his own work. So, if what the dramatist would consider a Jonson needs to point out that he does foolish or reprehensible response. In his not believe in a slavish conformity to the later plays, Jonson goes further: he ancients, Cordatus obligingly tells us so. shapes the playgoers by encouraging Not only are Jonson's attempts to con- them to involve themselves imagina- trol the audience's reaction too obvious tively, even empathetically, with char- here; they also inevitably force the au- acters he might regard as perceptive dience into a passive role. The audience playgoers. Looking back, we can see that has been told what to reject and what to Jonson's greatest failure in Every Man approve and denied the opportunity to out of His Humour is his inability to con- make up its own mind. Jonson may sider the tastes and psychology of his au- never have wanted his audience to be too dience when offering role models. The independent, but he does learn to main- spectators are offered three possible role tain appearances, to make his audience models: Cordatus, Mitis, and Asper. The believe it is its own master. Even a brief scholarly Cordatus, the dull and pliable look at the very next induction Jonson Mitis, and the militant and bitter Asper was to write for Cynthias Revels is can hardly capture the enthusiasm of the enough to reveal how much he has playgoers. Essentially, Jonson has failed learned about audience manipulation. to create wits with whom the audience The lively, energetic induction spoken can sympathize. In his youthful ar- by the children in Cynthias Revels is free rogance, he expects the "better" of the pompous declamatory quality of elements in the audience to identify with the induction to the earlier play. In scholars and cynics. generating its own comedy, it blends Almost all the early plays contain a better in tone with the rest of the play. poet figure (invariably a satirist), who, Above all, it instructs less obviously. however imperfect, functions as a quasi- When the third child is permitted to tell authorial spokesman. Since Jonson fre- the plot, the perceptive spectators can quently implies that the characters who conclude that intrigue or suspense will frequent the stage also people the au- not be a crucial element in the play. dience, the actual audience has no choice When their conclusions are confirmed, but to see itself as a victim of the satirist. they will be flattered by their prescience In the absence of any other positive and sagacity and, therefore, will be figures but those of the poet and the unlikely to fault the play for lack of monarch, Jonson fails to draw that en- suspense. thusiastic response he will achieve later Jonson's success lies in learning to con- when the satirist figure has metamor- trol his audience subtly. In Cynthias phosed itself into several characters, Revels, he has begun to make his spec- each of whom possesses the character-

33 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM istics likely to attract the audience beyond the grex stands the audience. (Bryant 39).8 Such practical lessons in critically obser- Indeed, there is evidence in Every ving and assessing gradations of Man out of His Humour that Jonson has awareness can be particularly effective begun to experiment with less obtrusive when the most perceptive characters in methods of audience manipulation even the play are those very ones that the au- in this early play. The little by-play be- dience wishes to identify with. In giving tween Cordatus and the prologue that his audience this sense of omniscience, ends in discomfiting Cordatus captures Jonson flatters it, paying it a far more some of the ironic tone that characterizes telling compliment than any of the the induction to Bartholomew Fair. gracious adjectives mouthed by Asper. When Carlo Buffone joins the grex, Jonson the elitist moralist was also a pro- demanding a round in the place of a pro- fessional entertainer. It did not take him logue and drinking to the health of the long to learn that the audience is not audience, Jonson seems comfortable entertained when it feels abused. He enough with this ironic handling of the changed the ending of Every Man out of audience to indulge in some humor at his His Humour because the first audience own expense. Also, when Carlo Buffone did not relish it. It is no accident that the insists that the poet cannot put him out metaphor of feasting appears in the of his humor—"Sbloud, and he get me revised conclusion of the play. out of the humour hee has put mee in, Ile In plays that follow, Jonson grows trust none of his Tribe againe" (Induc- more skillful at engaging his audience. tion, 346-47)—the audience can exercise For supporting evidence of this shift in its own discrimination in rejecting strategy, we have only to look at the pro- Carlo's boast without being forced to logues and epilogues. The metaphor of listen to Cordatus or Asper telling it to do feasting recurs in the prologue to Epi- so. Similarly, within the play itself, the coene and in the short epilogue that Face audience is helped to expand its addresses to the audience in The awareness of the process of watching by Alchemist. Jonson is not always as char- being placed on the outer edge of a cone ming as he is in these plays, but with the of narrowing awarenesses. Fools like exception of the "Ode to Himself" Sogliardo are observed and manipulated attached to The New Inn, he is never as by Carlo; Carlo is observed and com- aggressive and harsh as he was in the in- mented upon by Macilente; beyond the duction to Every Man out of His envious Macilente stands the grex, and Humour. On the other hand, we cannot conjure visions of a mellow, easygoing Jonson, for he continues to warn foolish

"Recently, Michael Shapiro, Children of Revels (N.Y.: spectators against misapprehension as Columbia U. P, 1977) 39-44, has suggested that Jonson trenchantly as ever in the prologues to learned to flatter his aristocratic audiences when writing for the children's troupes. I resist drawing such lines, for The Alchemist, The Staple of News, and Jonson continued to engage the sympathies of his audience The New Inn. The "Ode to Himself" at- in plays written later for the more motley crew that flocked to the public theatres. tached to The New Inn, where the au-

34 Renu Junej a

dience is reduced to pigs, is a sufficient superior to the stage keeper and thus en- reminder that the old man can be as bit- couraged to reject his taste. The irony is ter and arrogant as the young practi- that the play will offer, at least super- tioner. This ode, however, was attached ficially, much that is associated with the to the play at the time of publication, fair—the pig woman, the horse courser, and was not part of the acting text. the puppet show. As the book holder Whatever he may have thought privately later sneeringly tells the audience, the (or publicly) of his audience, Jonson no stage keeper is competent to judge for longer chose to subject them to "the Author bath writ it just to his Meri- Juvenalian harangues. 9 The change, dian, and the Scale of the grounded then, is best defined as one in strategy. Judgements here" (11. 56-57). Jonson is Jonson's tone is less peremptory and his doing several things here. He is trying to attack less blatant because he now guides embarrass his audience out of endorsing his audience indirectly. the stage keeper's judgment through The induction to Bartholomew Fair what Robert C. Jones has called "guilt offers a superb example of what might be by association" (75). He is deliberately called indirect guiding or subversive toying with expectations—what will the manipulation. The stage keeper appears play called Bartholomew Fair actually on the stage to apologize for the delay in offer? He is gradually drawing the au- starting and immediately starts to fault dience into the play. And when they the play that is yet to be staged for being finally meet some of the common figures "a very conceited scurvy one" and for and see some of the common sights failing to provide "a little Davy to take associated with lowbrow entertainments toll o' the Bawds there . . . a jugler with like the fair ("there's none goes thither of a wel-educated Ape to come over the any quality or fashion" says Mistress chaine" (11. 15-18). What the stage Grace—I.v.131), they are likely to be keeper prefers is the normal fare surprised and delighted, and above all, associated with the Hope, and the made to think. playgoers who have come to see a play The "Articles of Agreement" read out by Master Ben Jonson and not bear by the book holder and the scrivener to baiting know better than to expect such the audience do not really represent any sights. Should they have retained any major accommodation on Jonson's part false expectations, Jonson has very to the taste of the populace. Nor do they cleverly enlightened them. They know signify a genial Jonson who is willing to better now not because some surrogate slacken his hold on his audience. poet has made them squirm for their bad Although he seems to be agreeing to their taste and foolish expectation but because demands, he has made no actual com- they have been made to feel innately mitment to cater to plebian desires. The play will be merry, full of noise and sport, but "in stead of a Jugler, with an °Beaurline, Janson and Elizabethan Comedy, p. 21, Ape," he will give them "A wise Justice makes a convincing case for Jonson's interest in Horace as contributing to his new pliability. of Peace meditant" (11. 82, 123-24).

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There will never be "a Servant-monster" play. Again, under the guise of giving in the play, and "let the concupiscence of the vulgar what they want, Jonson is Jigges and Dances, raigne as strong as it manipulating the actual audiences so will amongst you," he will not feed such that they repudiate such vulgarity. appetites. In short, he is willing to ac- When Cokes asks, "doe you play accord- commodate them only as far as it suits ing to the printed booke?" he is answered him and no further. The "Articles of that Marlowe's version is "too learned, Agreement" are a disarming device used and poeticall for our audience" to cover up and make palatable the same (V.iii.106-11). So Littlewit has altered strictures against audience behavior that the text to "delight you, Sir, and please drew the ire of Asper: censuring for the you of judgement" (V.iii.129-30). Even sake of censuring without cause or then, Leatherhead is afraid that justice, censuring by contagion, fickle Littlewit's debased version may contain opinion, unwarranted expectation, the "too much learning" and so offend the vice of interpretation. However personal audiences (V.1.15-17). Unless the actual or idiosyncratic the note of this induction audience wishes to admit any kinship and however topical and local some of with Littlewit and Cokes, it must will- the concerns, Jonson has as usual moved ingly dissociate itself from such trivia. to universal principles and is setting up a This is not all. Jonson makes an ironic normative position and point of view. final point. Even in this debased form, Nevertheless, in making a pact with the worthy only of contempt of understand- audience, or at least going through the ing auditors, art or theatre can defeat motions of making one, Jonson has made the opposition and serve a function. the audience a contributor to the play In the mature comedies, the (Greenfield 86, Styan 189). The spec- characters who draw the spectators' tators are no longer passive onlookers or sympathy are no longer poet figures but victims as in Every Man out of His witty gentlemen. They have something Humour, but participants without of the dramatist's ability to plan and ex- whose gracious permission the play ecute intrigues, to manipulate fools and cannot go on. The contract calls upon reveal their folly, to create multiple each spectator to "exercise his owne perspectives on action where their point judgment" (11. 97-98, my italics). Thus of view is the most complete and the induction, the framing device, which penetrating. Since they represent the at one level distances the viewers from most desirable role models to the aspir- the play, has also, paradoxically, nar- ing citizens of Elizabethan England, rowed the gap between the audience and they can induce the audience to look at the play. other characters and the play as a whole Within the play, there are obvious from their point of view. Truewit, analogies to be drawn between some of Clement, Dauphine, Lovewit, Winwife, the characters and different types of Quarlous are not ideal men; they do not spectators. The parallels become explicit have to be in order to serve as in- when Leatherhead sets up the puppet struments of shaping audience response.

36 Renu Junej a

Indeed, their very lack of perfection Overdo's misapprehensions, the au- makes them effective agents of change dience, in aligning itself with Quarlous, because they now share, and so affirm, transforms itself, for the moment, into the basic humanity of the audience. A perceptive spectators, free of preconcep- combination of wit, humor, flexibility, tions and distorting lenses. and imagination makes these gentlemen After Bartholomew Fair, Jonson's not only successful men but also good au- handling of his audience does not show diences. Thus Dauphine, in Epicoene, the same ease, tact, or playfulness. We waits for the unravelling of his scheme see this change reflected in his tendency with true patience, devoid of all false ex- to state his purpose more often rather pectation. Truewit learns patience and than let the audience draw its own con- generously applauds the wit and im- clusions, and to insist on the rightness of agination of his friend. The three wits in his judgment as against the spectator's. Epicoene expose and punish those given Since there is little evidence for Jonson's to libel and petty desires to upstage and alleged artistic decline, we may explain ruin another's play. In The Alchemist, this new stance in terms of his changed the defeat of Surly by Lovewit affirms perception of his audience as no longer precisely these qualities of humor and capable of grasping mere implication or imagination, which Lovewit possesses as increasingly fragmented in taste. and Surly lacks. Lovewit, as Michael Whatever the reason, the late plays Flachmann has suggested, is the "ideal reveal a new and curious mixture of in- viewer—he is trusting, attentive, and direct manipulation and direct moraliz- completely receptive to the schemes of ing. Although there is enough subversive his clever servant" (Flachmann 280). manipulation of the audience to remind Lovewit deserves to win, just as the good us of Jonson's successes in his mature audience deserves a feast of fun, because comedies, there is also a seeming rever- he has trusted himself to the experience sion to his earlier habit of lecturing the of the little play staged by Face. In audience. And yet, these late plays are Bartholomew Fair, Winwife and clearly distinguished from an early play Quarlous often act as choric commen- like Every Man out of His Humour by tators on the action and thus invite the Jonson's effective avoidance of too overt audience to share their perspective. and unmitigated expressions of hostility. Through such sharing, the audience Indeed, if we were to characterize gains a sharpened perception of its own Jonson's dealings with his audience in processes as an audience and learns to the late plays, we could say that they are develop a comprehensive point of view. no longer fully consistent in their The failure of Overdo to make proper strategy. judgments about the enormities of the For evidence of a definite shift we may fair stems from imperfect viewing. He look once again at the prologues. The has not observed enough and, like a tone of the prologues gets progressively picklock of a scene, has jumped to wrong more unresolved. The prologue may conclusions. When Quarlous corrects begin by flattering the audience and by

37 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM promising to please its taste, but may elements within the audience. In his af- end by asserting that the audience is fability, his ungrudging efforts to satisfy foolish and deficient for not approving even the recalcitrant customer, the Boy what the poet offers. Significantly, is far removed from the pontificating Jonson's prologue to The Devil is an Ass, Cordatus and the impertinent Asper. in its attempt to achieve sympathetic Given the provocation, however, he too engagement, is still reminiscent of the will decry an intractable audience: "all strategy he used in Bartholomew Fair. other intreaties, or attempts—are vaine. The relationship between the spectators You are fitter Spectators for the Beares, and the stage is contractual. Should the then us" (Chorus after Act II, 70-71). play not please, both the poet and the The Staple of News, with its skillfully audience can damn the devil (and not handled induction, offers an instructive each other): example of this new mixing of modes.

If youll come Despite the petulant note in the pro- To see new Playes, pray you affoord us logue, the induction is free of ill temper roome . . or sententiousness. As before, Jonson sets Or, if, for want of roome, it must mis-carry Twill be but justice, that your censure tarry, out to unsettle his audiences and Till you give some. And when sixe times you preempt their criticism by making their h seent responses a part of the play. The gossips If this PLAY doe not like, the Devell is int. (11. 19-26) who thrust themselves unceremoniously on the stage, to the dismay of the pro- In the prologue to The Staple of News we logue, have anticipated in their com- see the change. The spectators are still ments all the complaints likely to be spoken of as guests, although the host is made against the play. Surely but in- not the poet but the actors. But this con- directly, Jonson discredits their opinion viviality is renounced in the last lines, by revealing their lack of perception and which allow no room for any disagree- taste. They see the moment of discovery ment with the author: "And then he (when Peniboy Canter throws off his says / If that not like you, that he sends beggar's cloak, and Peniboy Jr. achieves tonight / 'Tis you have left to judge, not self-recognition) as a catastrophe, and hee to write" (11. 29-30). The prologue to reject the only character with judgment The New Inn, again, begins most and discretion as a "beggarly Jack." graciously. The fat cook promises to They are taken in by the academy of serve the spectators dishes made "to your canters, and by Master Fitton's gentle- wish." But soon the irascible note in- manly appearance. At the beginning trudes and the guests are accused of hav- Mirth shows more sophistication than ing a displaced mouth and a sick palate her companions. She recognizes that the for not enjoying the dish. In The play is an allegory and that Jonson is Magnetic Lady, which has no prologue, restating old truths in a new way: Jonson's ambivalence about his role af- fects the induction. The Boy, who speaks That was the old way, Gossip, when Iniquity for the poet, is quite genial towards came in like Hokos Pokos, in Juglers jerkin, with Probee and Damnplay, who represent false skirts, like the Knave of Clubs! but now

38 Renu Juneja

they are attir'd like men and women o' the time, house like a "miserable emblem of the Vices, male and female! Prodigality like a patience" after having torn his book in young heyre, and his Mistresse Money .. . prank't up like a prime Lady, the Infanta of the "a poetical fury and put himself to Mines. silence in dead sack" (61-74). The dif- (Second Intermeane, 14-20) ferences between the old method and the new appear far greater when we turn to Mirth's perceptiveness, however, does the play proper. Here Jonson is even not last through the five acts, for she too more forthright in his moralizing. finally joins in condemning Canter, the Within the play, Peniboy Canter acts as poet, and the play. In realizing the folly a chorus. Thus, for instance, after he has of the pseudo-audience, the actual au- exposed the jeerers, he launches into a dience aligns itself with the playwright. description of a true courtier, soldier, Jonson is working indirectly, but and doctor (IV.iii.140-65). Such without the deliberate toying with ex- preachy garrulousness may be in pectations that characterized the induc- character, but we are left with the sus- tion to Bartholomew Fair. Essentially, picion that Jonson is offering us moral he takes no chances in establishing the tags. In fact, the play ends with such a normative function of his induction. tag about the golden mean. The Compelled to make the instruction clear, playgoers are not permitted to draw he depicts the gossips as easily iden- their conclusions about theme and tifiable types and even gives them character; the moral has been handed to allegorical names. A comparison with them almost as if Jonson did not trust Beaumont's citizens in The Knight of the them to draw the right conclusions. Burning Pestle makes evident the choices Jonson is also careful to establish Jonson has deliberately avoided. Beau- Peniboy Canter's kinship with himself. mont's citizens also reflect a part of the Mirth makes the comparison explicit audience, but whereas Beaumont seems when damning Canter's part in the play: content with ironic exposure and com- "A beggarly Jacke it is . . . and kin to the plex interaction between different poet" (Fourth Intermeane, 4-5). Jonson perspectives, Jonson opts for heavily has, however, not ceased to experiment, generalized figures as instruments of for Canter is quite unlike the satirist reform. reformers we saw in the earlier satires. What makes this induction so in- In allowing him to be tricked by Pick- teresting is the remarkable blend of lock, Jonson establishes both his directness and indirectness, of didac- vulnerability and his humanity. Never- ticism and irony. The irony may not be theless, he is unlikely to involve the au- dience's sympathies in the same way as as subtle as in Bartholomew Fair, but, as in the earlier play, not all of it is at the the urbane and witty gallants of the expense of the foolish playgoers. In a major plays; and so he cannot provide an remarkable speech at the end of the in- effective bridge between the play- duction, Mirth caricatures the over- wright's and the spectator's point of zealous Jonson who sits in the tiring view. Peniboy Jr., also sympathetically

39 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

treated, provides Jonson with better late plays is similar. The morality struc- opportunities for molding audience re- ture in The Devil is an Ass and the sponse. When Peniboy Jr. learns to dis- debate between qualities in The New Inn tinguish between idle spectacle and true help Jonson deliver the message plainly, worth, between good poets and bad (he without any danger of misunderstand- is taken in by Madrigal initially), the au- ing. The less than realistic treatment of dience too shares in the learning process. characters ensures that the audience does The reciprocal relationship between not mistake art for reality. In Jonson's Peniboy Canter and Peniboy Jr. attests last play, even the induction forces the to Jonson's realization that he needs the spectators into a passive role. Probee, the audience as much as the audience needs lacklustre good guy from the audience, him. As McKenzie has pointed out in his declares: "Our parts that are the Spec- excellent analysis, several other elements tators . . . are to await the process, and of the play mirror the interaction be- the events of things, as the Poet presents tween the dramatist and his audience. them" (Chorus after Act IV, 10-13). The The Staple provides a competing image audience is being denied the chance to of the theatre. The jeerers play the role contribute, and the problem is com- of malicious gossips who damn without pounded because the poet is no longer understanding. Thus the vice of inter- content to present—he is too ready to pretation not only is dramatized through point out his practice and purpose. the induction but becomes the subject of Is the didacticism of the late plays the play itself. The play provides "suc- merely a reversion on Jonson's part? cessive audience-actor creations," as we Jonson spoke of coming "full circle" in move from the morality of the prodigal The Magnetic Lady as if this were a con- son to the degenerate theatre of the scious return. The deliberate echo of Staple to the antimasque of the jeerers to Every Man out of His Humour in the the rival creation of Lickfinger, the subtitle links this play to the earlier one. poet/cook, and so on (McKenzie But there are real differences between 94-100) . Such intricately laid-out the earlier didacticism and the later, dif- perspectives enhance the audience's ferences that stem largely from Jonson's awareness of play watching. refusal to abandon techniques of au- In the late plays, such devices to in- dience manipulation that he developed duce the audience to participate in the so successfully in his mature comedies. play exist side by side with a renewed The tentative experiments with creating didacticism. The mixture of tactics often a dual response that begin in Every Man reflects itself in a mixture of styles—for out of His Humour and Cynthias Revels example, the mixture of realism and merely take a different turn in the late allegory in The Staple of News. The plays. The newness of these experiments allegory functions much like direct is worth emphasizing. Jonson no longer moralizing in that it ensures that the relies on the satirist-poet figure. His spectators pay attention to the larger judgment of the audience is far less ob- argument. The technique of the other trusive and overbearing. Although he

40 Renu Juneja

leans towards instruction, he continues critical detachment and sympathetic to work his audience in indirect ways as identification has tipped away from well. Despite the obvious guideposts engagement. We are no longer drawn helping the playgoers reach the "proper" fully into Jonson's dramatic world. Yet critical evaluations in plays like The even when he falls short of his highest Staple of News, Jonson has left them achievements, Jonson continues to shape some room for creative participation. dramatic forms and conventions in order Jonson has not abandoned the strategy of to manipulate his audience. The variety, seeming accommodation. The gossips the flexibility, and often the palpability reign unfettered in their corner; the of Jonson's experiments are a measure of jeerers are thrown out, but the less iras- his self-conscious use of the dramatic cible figures are allowed to reform. The form. M. C. Bradbrook's felicitious com- last plays allow for a change of heart; ment—"Ben Jonson adopted every kind Jonson closes his doors only to the ab- of attitude to his audience, but he never solutely irredeemable. ignored it" (27) —captures the delibera- We fail to respond warmly to the last teness, the commitment Jonson brought plays because the balance between to his dealings with his audience.

WORKS CITED

Barish, Jonas. "Jonson and the Loathed Stage." In A Fulwell's Like Will To Like," Yearbook of English Celebration of Ben Jonson. Edited by William Blisset et. Studies, no. 3. London: The Modern Humanities al. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1974. Research Association, 1973. Beaurline, L. A. Jenson and Elizabethan Comedy. San Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson. Edited by C. H. Herford and Marino: Huntington Library, 1978. Percy and Evelyn Simpson. 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, Bentley, G. E. The Profession of Dramatist in Shake- 1925-52. speare's Time. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1971. Kay, W. Daniel. "Ben Jonson and Elizabethan Dramatic Bradbrook, M. C. The Living Monument. Cambridge: Convention." MP 76 (1978): 18-28. Cambridge U P, 1976. Leech, Clifford. "Incredibility of Jonsonian Comedy." Bryant. The Compassionate Satirist. Athens: U of Georgia In A Celebration of Ben Jonson. Edited by William P, 1972. Blisset et al. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 197'. Carlson, Peter. "Judging Spectators." ELH 44 (1977): McKenzie, D. F. " 'The Staple of News' arid the Late 443-57. Plays." In A Celebration of Ben Jonson. Edited by William Blisset et al. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1974. Fermor, Una Ellis. Jacobean Drama. 5th ed. 1936. Re- print. London: Methuen, 1965. Orgel, Stephen. Ben Jonson: The Complete Masques. New Haven: Yale U P, 1969. Flachmann. "Ben Jonson and Alchemy of Satire." Studies in English Literature 70 (1977): 259-80. Shapiro, Michael. Children of Revels. New York: Colum- bia U P, 1977. Greenfield, Thelma. The Introduction in Elizabethan Drama. Eugene: U of Oregon P, 1969. Styan, J. S. Drama, Stage and Audience. London: Cambridge U P, 1975. Jones, Robert C. "Jonson's Staple of News Gossips and

41 NEWSPAPER PUBLICITY AND POLITICS: W. T. STEAD AND THE ENGLISH SOCIALISTS IN THE 1880S

JAMES MENNELL

James Mennell was born in Chicago, Illinois, and received his B.A. from the University of Illinois, his M.A. from De Paul University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He has been teaching history at Slippery Rock University since 1965.

William T. Stead, editor of the Pall pen. In fact, such were Stead's jour- Mall Gazette during much of the 1880s, nalistic powers that he was able to at- was a daring and resourceful editor. His tract at least 100,000 people to a Socialist press campaigns had the impact of demonstration by 1887 and to bring the bombshells on the English public and Socialists into a working relationship usually obtained concrete results. His with the Radicals for a time. emotional plea for the "Bulgarian One is likely to ask why the editor of a maidens" in 1876 created the Bulgarian respectable newspaper would risk get- Atrocities issue that helped produce the ting involved with the outcast Socialists. Liberal election victory of 1880; his Stead could not hope to sell more pioneering use of the public interview newspapers by supporting such an un- with General "Chinese" Gordon created popular group; indeed he risked a much of the public pressure that forced decline in circulation figures. In fact, his Gladstone to send Gordon to Egypt; and support for the Socialists helped cost him his most famous press campaign, "The his job in 1888 (Whyte 1:277). We must Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" in look elsewhere for his motive in publicly 1885, aroused England to change the supporting the Socialists. law to protect young girls from white Stead's basic motive seems to have slavery. been political. Although he was clearly Stead conducted another press cam- not a Marxist like the Socialists he would paign that affected politics but has been deal with, Stead was a Radical with a largely forgotten. In 1885 he began a genuine sympathy for the poor. He be- campaign to guide the young Socialist lieved that people should be given every movement into the Radical camp by of- opportunity possible to improve them- fering free and sympathetic publicity in selves. To promote this idea he had the PMG in return for influence on turned an obscure pamphlet, The Bitter Socialist policy. Such attempts to sway Cry of Outcast London, into a very suc- political opponents with cajolery are not cessful press campaign to awaken the new. But such tactics nevertheless may public to the plight of the poor. (Inglis influence events and may cast light on 69). But at the same time that Stead sym- facets of politics hitherto unnoticed. And pathised with the poor he was aware when a talented editor like Stead is that their new voting power could easily involved, something big is likely to hap- be manipulated. What if some politician

42 James Mennell

like Joseph Chamberlain were to pander A recognizable bond seems to appear to the mass of voters to win political with the Oxford Street looting incident power? Chamberlain had only recently in February 1886. After an open-air publicly asked what ransom the rich meeting in Trafalgar Square held by the would pay to remain in power. For SDF on behalf of the unemployed, some Stead this question raised the spectre of of the unemployed looted stores and ruinous taxation of the successful to broke windows in Oxford Street. benefit the unsuccessful (Whyte 1:153). Hyndman and two other leaders of the This concern with Chamberlain helps SDF, John Burns and H. H. Champion, to explain Stead's courting of the were arrested and charged with inciting Socialists. One would assume that Stead the looting (Elton 100)1. thought the Socialists even more Stead took advantage of this incident dangerous than Chamberlain since their to pull the SDF into the Radical position Marxist aims were far more threatening with timely protection. Stead stoutly than Chamberlain was likely to be. Yet defended the SDF as persecuted Stead never attacked the English Radicals. He published a full report of Socialists as vehemently as he attacked the prosecution, explaining why the men Chamberlain. Stead apparently believed were being tried and suggesting that the that deep down inside an English Government had no case. He said Socialist lay an English Radical similar nothing about the merit or lack of merit in views and sincerity to Stead himself. of Marxism but concentrated on the Stead had many times already shown high-handed behavior of the police himself to be the most dynamic editor in (PMG 16 February 1886). England, unafraid to go against prevail- Stead's defense of the SDF in the Ox- ing views. It is in the Stead mold for him ford Street affair seems to have been to have believed that, for all their Marx- decisive in creating a bond of trust with ist ideology, the Socialists were not as Hyndman, who reacted in Justice with a dangerous as commonly thought, but at note of surprised pleasure: heart were Radicals if only they could be The Pall Mall Gazette has certainly taken a bold gently pushed to see it. Stead was bold stand in supporting our right to free speech, and enough to make that push even if it re- in protesting against the attempt to crush Social quired an editorial position that would Democrats by a State prosecution, because a riot followed upon some speeches in Trafalgar jeopardize his career with the PMG. Square. Stead's plan had no chance of success Such conduct is rare among journalists in the unless there was a willingness by the face of the bitter feeling of the upper and middle classes against our comrades. We thoroughly ap- Socialists to moderate their behavior in preciate it, and we hope the day may yet come return for the free publicity from Stead. The Social Democratic Federation, which in 1884 had brought together 'Elton comments: "Two days after the window break- ing, on the tenth, London at least believed that the Revolu- most active Socialists, was in such need tion had actually begun. It was a day of dense fog and of publicising its cause to the public at somehow the report ran through the town like a forest fire that John Burns at the head of sixty thousand men was large that it soon began to cooperate. marching on the West End.-

43 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

when the editor and conductors of the Pall Mall a later issue of Justice. A month after the Gazette will not regret having stood by us when trial Hyndman was still smarting over we were comparatively few and unorganized (Justice 20 February 1886). the unflattering comments to which he had been subjected by the "capitalist Even after the trial of Hyndman and press." By contrast, Stead fairly shone as the other SDF leaders had ended with the one "honourable exception": their acquittal, Stead's support was still appreciated. Apparently Hyndman had Those who have ever expected that the labour- ing classes in any country would get fair play felt somewhat beleaguered and was from the capitalist press when they began to sincerely grateful for Stead's solitary show a little vigour in claiming a reasonable support: share of the wealth must have been fully undeceived of late. Nothing more disgraceful Throughout the late proceedings at Bow Street than the conduct of the press during the last few and the Old Bailey the Pall Mall Gazette and its months has been recorded even in all its annals Editor, Mr. W.T. Stead have most courageously of deliberate turpitude. Take the riots in Pall and handsomely supported our comrades. We Mall and Piccadilly [Oxford Street]. With one owe that journal and its Editor our sincerest honourable exception— the Pall Mall thanks. Though we may differ on some points Gazette—the whole of the London newspapers we hope Social Democrats will never fail to howled for the immediate arrest and speedy remember and if possible to repay the kindness condemnation of the four men who were after- which they have received at a time when they wards acquitted by a middle class jury (Justice wanted it (Justice 17 April 1886)2. 15 May 1886). Below the remarks just cited were Perhaps it is an indication of the effect quotations taken from the Times, the Stead's publicity was having on the Standard, and the PMG on the trial SDF's attitude toward Radicalism that results which were no doubt expected to only a little later Hyndman commented speak for themselves: in Justice: Times: — criticized the law which failed to What is wanted to secure fair play is payment of convict the Social Democrats. all election expenses and of members out of the Standard: —the tribunal showed a generous public funds. This every Radical candidate and blindness. every Radical newspaper should go for (19 June Pall Mall Gazette:— As to the wider issues 1886). raised by the trial, we do not suppose that anyone will dissent from the opinion that a This statement suggests that Hyndman more splendid stroke of good luck never was not averse to working with and attended the Social Democrats than this perhaps even joining the ranks of miserable prosecution (Justice 17 April 1886). Radicalism. The decisive effect of Stead's support A time came when Stead was able to for Hyndman in the trial is confirmed in use his good will with the Socialists to 'With the passage of time Hyndman apparently lost his make a positive attempt to alter SDF gratitude to Stead. In The Record of an Adventurous Life, policy in a more moderate Radical direc- p. 373, Hyndman wrote only: "It [the riots and the trial] had been very useful to the propaganda of Socialism from tion. The SDF announced that they start to finish. It had awakened people to the fact that would hold a counter-demonstration at there really was a Socialist party in Great Britain, and that party numbered among its members men who knew what the same time that the traditional Lord they were talking about. Moreover, the SDF was en- Mayor's Day parade was being held. couraged at a moment when encouragement was specially needed." Threats were made that the traditional

44 James Mennell parade would be broken up by the tion (PMG 27 September 1887)3. counter-marching SDF. Such tactics Stead now condemned the decision to clearly went beyond Stead's Radicalism. counter-march on the Lord Mayor's Day The time had come to test his ability to with the suggestion that the SDF wanted control the SDF. He began by suggesting to make trouble only to pocket as much that he might withdraw his support: Tory gold as possible (PMG 28 October

No one is likely to charge us with attempting to 1886). This accusation attacked the SDF scold the Social Democrats. On the contrary, we at its most sensitive spot. Obviously have given them the fullest fair play, and on one Stead was showing Hyndman that pub- critical occasion [at the time of the Oxford Street affair], when it seemed to us that they were licity could work two ways: the PMG being treated unfairly, the best defense in our could either support the SDF or become power. an effective antagonist. Stead then demanded that Hyndman, Apparently in reply to Stead, Champion, and Burns rescind their Hyndman wrote this justification of his plans for the Lord Mayor's Day counter- actions in Justice: demonstration. If they did not, Stead We knew that we were running a risk, in the implied, they were no longer in the present state of mind of the governing classes, by Radical camp and "the public will have calling upon the unemployed to follow the Lord Mayors Show unless some measures were at confidence in Sir Charles Warren's [the once adopted for their benefit. But what were police commander's] ability to meet we to do? We had exhausted every other means them on their own ground" (Justice 19 of directing attention to the most important sub- ject of the day. October 1886). Stead went on to show that he was try- Hyndman seems to be appealing to Stead ing to manipulate the Socialists when he to understand, and he apologized regret- brought up the "Tory gold" issue in fully for refusing to alter his decision to another article a week later, on 28 Oc- march: tober 1886. In the General Election of The Pall Mall Gazette has done us so many good 1885, financial aid had been offered to turns and stood by us so staunchly on a critical occasion, that we are really sorry not to be able Hyndman by the Conservatives to put up to accept its advice at the present time (Justice SDF candidates in London, hoping to 31 October 1886). split the Liberal vote. Hyndman had ac- Stead scornfully rejected Hyndm an's cepted the financial aid knowing that by claim to have exhausted all constitu- doing so he risked creating division in the tional means before embarking on SDF. He had intended that any such ob- calculated violence. English Socialists, jections would be submerged in the elec- said Stead, had far greater constitutional tion triumph. But the gamble had lost, opportunities than Continental Social- and the SDF had won no seats in the ists, and yet the English Socialists had election (Maccoby 336). The "Tory gold" not accomplished anything in politics issue then became the most divisive force among the members of the SDF and eventually led to a split in the organiza- 'At least Stead so commented later.

45 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM compared with the hard-pressed Con- police order, and the police massed for tinental Socialist parties (PMG 28 the expected violence. But the SDF October 1886). called off its counter-demonstration on This iron-fisted attitude, in such great the eve of the Lord Mayor's Day. It was contrast to earlier comments, climaxed a decided to hold instead a demonstration few days later with Stead's assertion that in Trafalgar Square without reference to moral reform was more effective than the other parade. The decision probably violence. If the Socialists had blundered was Hyndman's because, according to a politically, said Stead, they had remark made in the PMG a year later, blundered even worse morally. "Con- Champion had deserted the SDF as a stitutional methods and moral improve- direct result of Hyndman's decision not ment involve, we know, far harder and to counter-march on the Lord Mayor's less conspicuous work than street pro- Day (PMG 27 September 1887). cessions and political riots; but then they The threatened opposition of the PMG are far more efficacious" (PMG 1 may well have had an important in- November 1886). fluence in Hyndman's decision not to Now that Stead had damaged his in- counter-march. Certainly the resump- fluence with the Socialists by such frank tion of support by the PMG was not lost criticism, he immediately began to on the editor of Justice. Three weeks flatter them again: "The trouble with after the demonstration had been the Social Democrats is that they have peacefully carried out, Hyndman wrote such a good case." He again emphasized in Justice: "Our very best thanks are due the tenets of the SDF program that to the PMG, which has treated us most found common ground with the handsomely throughout the business." Radicals: This resumption of support, Hyndman noted, contrasted strongly with what the You cannot with satisfaction to your own conscience argue the question of the abstract other papers were saying about the SDF: right of processions with men who assure you in "To mention all the newspapers which reply, with a good deal of truth, that they are have criticized us would fill this journal the only organization claiming to be heard on behalf of the million homes in Great Britain to twice over" (Justice 20 November 1886). which the coming winter will bring actual grim A week later, on 27 November 1886, starvation. Hyndman was still grateful and perhaps Perhaps with a last-minute compromise a little relieved that it was all over: "The in mind Stead now gave the SDF his only journal in London which has ever blessing to demonstrate so long as no pursued a line of conduct opposed to its calculated violence was involved (PMG 2 advertising interests is the Pall Mall November 1886). Gazette" (Justice 27 November 1886). As the Lord Mayor's Day approached, The most notable influence Stead shopkeepers in the vicinity of Trafalgar made on the Socialists may well have Square boarded up their shops, been his role in publicizing the Trafalgar blockades were thrown up by the police, Square riots of late 1887 and the ensuing the trams in the area stopped running by

46 James Mennell funeral of the martyr, Alfred Linnell. Trafalgar Square. The civil rights issue Historians seem to have taken for implicit in the SDF's right to speak in granted that Socialist leaders were Trafalgar Square was another good op- responsible for Linnell's public funeral portunity for Stead. And this time it was (Elton 136) 4 , which produced probably to lead to a great but temporary union of the largest funeral procession since the Socialists with the Radicals. Wellington's. But the publicity behind To accomplish this union, Stead the public funeral was primarily Stead's claimed all the rioters as Radicals: the work on behalf of all Radicals, with speakers in Trafalgar Square were whom Stead continued to insist that the peaceful and, therefore, were only Socialists belonged. Radicals. He also pointed out that Rioting by the unemployed resumed in parades of the unemployed were not the the autumn of 1887. Sir Charles Warren, invention of the SDF since such parades the official in charge of the police, gave were occurring spontaneously all over Stead yet another issue with which he England. Finally, the basic issue was not could attempt to unite the SDF with the the rightness of Socialism, he claimed, Radicals. This time the police virtually but purely one of civil rights: forbade any public meetings in This is a grave and deliberate attack upon the Trafalgar Square. right of public meeting in London, and it argues This year, however, was different ill for our principles that most of us have not cared to protest against such an attack because from those preceding it. For there was a we do not approve of the persons or doctrines cumulative tension from the experiences immediately affected (PMG 21 October 1887). of the previous few years of rioting of the This stratagem seems to have been vir- unemployed. As a result, the police tually the exclusive idea of Stead among seemed determined to prevent law- the London press. He demanded that the lessness and the recurrence of the press look at the rioting with open eyes previous year's looting and window and noted that only the Globe had begun smashing. The police did not spare any to do so (PMG 22 October 1887). The heads as they beat speakers assembled in Times had become so frightened that panic overtook its editor: "If the law is

'Elton states it as a matter of fact. Nethercot, against us, let us break the law and trust pp. 249-50, implies it by failing to be specific. Besant, to an act of indemnity" (8 November Autobiography, p. 327, does not even mention Stead in describing the Linnell funeral. Neither does Bax in his 1887). memoirs. Yet in a letter of November 22, 1887, Bernard Stead found the time ripe to call for a Shaw wrote to Morris: conference of representatives from "all I wish generally that our journals would keep their tempers. If Stead had not forced us to march on the bodies which represent the masses, and Square a week too soon by his "Not one Sunday must who are interested in the rights and be allowed to pass" nonsense, we should have been there now. It all comes from people trying to live down privileges of the people, from the Social to fiction instead of up to facts. Democrats to the Salvation Army, and Morris Collection at the British Museum, AM 45345. from the Secularists to the League of the Clearly Stead was a significant and influential force in this Radical-Socialist activity, whether Shaw liked it or not. Cross." The inclusion of the Salvation

47 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

Army and the League of the Cross in the use of force had produced a riot and the proposal was certainly not inspired by arrest of the demonstration leaders. The the SDF or Annie Besant. Several times next day, 14 November 1887, the PMG the PMG had contained appeals to looked like a Socialist newspaper. The observe that the Salvation Army was arrest of Cunningham Graham and John either doing the same work as the Burns in Trafalgar Square was detailed Socialists or preventing Socialism from with great sympathy. To heighten the capturing the "semi-socialist" poor (9 excitement Stead vehemently denied November 1887). It appears therefore that the police had released the two men that Stead himself was responsible for on bail. Letters written that same day by the inclusion of this Christian organiza- Burns and Cunningham Graham, per- tion in the proposed conference. In addi- haps at Stead's request, were printed. tion, the inclusion of Radical groups Another article told of "The Lies and would put the Socialists in a minority. In Libels of the Times." One wonders what this way the SDF could be controlled, or a casual purchaser of the PMG must at least influenced. have thought was happening to respec- Stead now began an effective cam- table London journalism. Even Eleanor paign to arouse Radicals and Socialists Marx-Aveling got a by-line (PMG 14 alike to the need for his proposed con- November 1887). ference. He spent the week before the The affair of 13 November 1887 was next Sunday demonstration of the another opportunity for Stead to tie the unemployed in creating an atmosphere SDF to the Radicals. The use of the army of tension in London. A crisis had been made the civil rights issue even more reached, he said, and Londoners must acute. The arrest of rioters, especially prepare to act (PMG 10 November Cunningham Graham and Burns, pro- 1887). Even the anti-Socialist Charles duced an immediate need for lawyers, Bradlaugh was prevailed upon to write bail bonds, and provision for the families an article for the PMG defending the of the prisoners. Some group had to be right to meet in Trafalgar Square (PMG formed to answer these needs. Stead 11 November 1887). Then Stead called therefore dropped the idea of a con- for thousands of "determined but or- ference and adopted an aim more prom- derly" working men to march down ising for a Socialist-Radical alliance: a upon Trafalgar Square on the following permanent Law and Liberty League Sunday (PMG 12 November 1887). should now be formed to aid in fighting The day after the demonstration the civil rights cases (PMG 14 November PMG exploited the use of troops by the 1887). Government to win over the Socialists to Each day of the following week the his proposed conference. London would subscription list for the Law and Liberty not soon forget, said Stead, the "glimmer League grew longer, and Stead worked of the bayonets" nor the "clanking steel to keep emotions high: "London, it is of the Life Guards" who had prevented said [by whom he did not say], is within anyone from entering the square. This four days of a massacre." (PMG 16

48 James Mennell

November 1887). John Burns's ex- Besant, William Morris, Dr. Hunter, M.P., and many other well-known men and women of all periences of the previous Sunday were creeds and opinions was a thoroughly represen- printed in the P11/IG on Thursday (17 tative one, and that the Law and Liberty November 1887). On Friday an inter- League then formed will be a great success we have no doubt whatever. We Social Democrats view with Graham proclaimed him "The cannot, of course, expect that those who work Hero of the Hour" (18 November 1887). side by side with us in this great movement will On Friday night at a meeting of five at once accept our doctrines, cordially as they greeted our comrades. But men and women of hundred people the Law and Liberty the well-to-do class have pledged themselves to League was founded. In his report of secure for us the same treatment that is accorded that meeting, Stead emphasized that to others in the Courts, and to see to it that Salvationists and Secularists, Teetotalers, although the group was heterogeneous, Radicals, Social Democrats, and Anarchists "Secularist and Salvationist" and have fair play in their propaganda. For this we "Radical and Socialist" were highly sym- thank them, and are ready to do our part towards working cordially and loyally with pathetic toward the common cause: those who have shown themselves ready— apart from their opinions—to work cordially and Men and women who are in some things the loyally with us (24 November 1887)5. poles asunder, people who in their daily prop- aganda are in the deepest antagonism, found If Justice is any guide, then Stead was themselves for once on common ground, in the PMG the instru- defense of a common interest (PMG 19 the key figure and the November 1887). ment by which the Law and Liberty This banding together seems to have League had been formed. Nor did been the object of Stead's long courting Stead's influence stop there. The selec- of the SDF: the Law and Liberty League tion of those who sat on the platform in was his accomplishment to end the that first meeting strongly suggests polarization of Radicals and Socialists. Stead's influence: Jacob Bright, M.P. , a The extent of Stead's role in creating this Christian feminist who had the chair; alliance can be seen in the comments of Steward Headlam, a Christian Socialist; Justice: Benjamin Waugh, a Nonconformist min- ister who later wrote a sympathetic No more noteworthy meeting has been held in London for two hundred and fifty years than the biography of Stead; and Stead himself. gathering of determined men and women who It is likely that Stead chose Bright to were present in the Memorial Hall on November preside so that any outbursts from the 18th. That meeting was due to the initiation of SDF would be controlled. In any case, the Pall Mall Gazette, which has played a very noble part throughout the whole of this the SDF was outnumbered. unemployed agitation and Tory Terror business. That Mr. Jacob Bright should have taken the 5 0n the same day William Morris commented in much chair and that speeches should have been the same spirit in Commonweal: "The League which the delivered by such different men as Mr. Stead, Pall Mall Gazette has set on foot will, if it performs its Mr. William Saunders, the Reverend Stewart functions duly, take up one side of the attack, and will assuredly give good service. All Socialists will be glad to see Headlam, the Reverend Benjamin Waugh, Dr. Mrs. Besant's name on the committee as an earnest of due Pankhurst, Mr. Foote, Mr. Tims, Mr. Winks, fulfillment of its promises; and although 'votes of thanks' and our comrades Burns, Culwick and are not in favour amongst us, it would be unfair and Hyndman was enough of itself to show how re- ungenerous not to acknowledge the great services which cent events have helped on the cause of peaceful the Pall Mall Gazette has done to the popular cause revolution. The audience which included Mrs. throughout this agitation."

49 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

Stead's influence in the early days of major importance for the purposes of the Law and Liberty League must also publicity. In another demonstration in have been great. He was quick to refer to Trafalgar Square on December 4th, the the league as an organization of police rode down an innocent bystander, "liberals" (PMG 23 November 1887), Alfred Linnell, an indigent law copyist and Justice did not protest. Coin- who was just watching the excitement. cidentally with the formation of the Suffering from a compound fracture of league, Stead began to suggest in his the thigh, he died in a few hours. newspaper some Radical solutions for In an era when staid journalism still ending the unemployment problem, the predominated, Stead's headlines the next basic cause of the seasonal rioting. One day fairly screamed out: "Killed by the of these was soon afterward adopted by Police! A Martyr of Trafalgar Square." the league: a register of those unem- For Stead was too experienced at arous- ployed who were willing to work was to ing the public to miss the value of a be presented to the House of Commons martyr. "Poor Linnell!" wrote Stead, with the demand that something be done His groan was but the instinctive, inarticulate to provide employment (PMG 25 outpouring of the natural indignation of the November 1887). human heart when suddenly confronted by the At the same time, Stead began to de- tyrannous and brutal abuse of force. emphasize violence in Trafalgar Square. Nor was Stead content to leave it at that. He had achieved his aim of uniting the Linnell deserved more than a pauper's factions involved. Now violence would funeral, he insisted. Nothing less than a aid only the extremists. Therefore, Stead public funeral was called for (PMG 5 began to advise the Government that December 1887)8. they were foolish to provoke the working Why was Stead doing this when he classes just to compel people to keep out had already achieved the alliance of of Trafalgar Square: "We would like to Radicals and Socialists in the Law and ask our well-to-do respectable classes to Liberty League? The reason was prob- reflect whether the game is worth the ably that he had to show his value to the candle" (PMG 26 November 1887). No league to help keep Radical control of inflammatory articles were printed this that group. The need for control was time when the police cleared Trafalgar already arising, as this complaint by Square of Sunday demonstrators on 27 Justice indicates: November, one week later. And Stead Is the Law and Liberty League to be Another was quick to congratulate Sir Charles Middle-Class Affair? Russell for being the first Liberal M.P. to denounce the Government's policy in "Ironically, two other men who actually participated in that 4 December demonstration and were fatally injured Trafalgar Square (PMG 28 November received no honored funeral: they died too late for Stead's 1887). purposes. Nethercot, p. 251, notes: "Mrs. Besant and her friends gave [one of the dead men] another public funeral But Stead's pacification program but it had nothing like the success of that of 'poor Linnell'." ended in a rush when an event occurred Stead had not publicized the second public funeral. This is further evidence, then, that the success of the Linnell that made the Trafalgar Square issue of funeral was due to some extent to Stead's publicity.

50 James Mennell

Vigorous working men will have to be the the head of the procession had the same backbone of the business if any real work is to be character as the Law and Liberty done for London. Yet we hear of meetings in the afternoon working-men delegates cannot League; these were not exclusively possibly attend, and unless we are misinformed, Socialists, in spite of the fact that the which is not likely, a nasty intrigue is on foot to SDF had borne the brunt of the fighting capture the whole thing for mere political pur- poses. Now, Mr. Stead, it is the duty of the Pall in Trafalgar Square. Stead's influence Mall Gazette to nip this sort of thing in the bud, was apparent also in that as the body and to secure thorough democratic public went past the packed sidewalks, people meetings of all delegates in the evening, when the workers can be present (10 December 1887). cried out, "Murdered by the police," Stead's headline which had opened the Within two days Stead reported that press campaign (Nethercot 250). his suggestion to give Linnell a public The response of the people of London funeral had met with a hearty response; to the funeral left Hyndman in awe: a meeting of the Law and Liberty League had decided to take it up. The Mile End Road is the broadest thoroughfare in London . . . where large open pieces of ground proposed funeral removed Socialist stretch along either side of the wide roadway. As pressure on the Radicals in the league. far as my eyes could reach [from the top of a Stead's Radical influence caused the tram-car], towards the City and towards Bow, was one sea of heads (Justice 24 December league to propose to invite all the Liberal 1887). members for London, and to ask the Bishop of London to read the service at Unfortunately for Stead, his usefulness the grave. Stead played a key role in the to the Socialists lasted only as long as league's propaganda too: those desiring they needed his publicity. His very suc- to communicate with the league about cess in his part of the bargain had made participation in the funeral parade were the Socialist cause well known: 100,000 to contact the LLL through the PMG, people had appeared for the Linnell not through Justice or William Morris's funeral. The sense of independence, growing in the Socialists a few weeks Commonweal (PMG 7 December 1887). The Linnell funeral may well have later, can be seen in William Morris's been the greatest publicity stunt of the Commonweal of 3 March 1888: 1880s. Justice thought as much and ad- Where Are the Radicals? mitted that Stead had made it possible: Isnt it about time that the Radicals did a little of the real fighting for free speech or showed a The extraordinary success of this demonstration little pluck of some sort? They have all been at poor Linnells funeral, largely due, as all must talking very big about what they have done and admit, to the Pall Mall Gazette, will mark an the risks they have run, and how they wont co- epoch in the history of the Social Democratic operate with S-Ds— as if we ever ran after movement in Great Britain (24 December them—unless we go the way they want us to 1887). and so on. What, however, we should like to The funeral was not, as Godfrey Elton know is where are the Radical prisoners for free speech and justice to the unemployed? What says, a Socialist-sponsored affair (136). have the Liberal and Radical Clubs of London Stead had been the driving force in its been doing since the 13th November? That was organization, as shown in the funeral their meeting, remember, and their defeat, not ours. itself. The allegiance of the notables at This obvious sense of independence

51 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

probably stemmed from what was to be is also clear that they were very wary of a crushing blow for Stead's attempted coming under Radical influence. Stead control of the Socialists: the capture of a was unable to dispel this attitude. In major London daily, the Star, for fact, the Socialists appear to have used Socialist propaganda without any strings Stead as long as they needed him and attached (Thompson 98) 7 . Stead no dropped him as soon as they could when longer had any leverage with the they found a more accessible newspaper Socialists, and the Law and Liberty for their publicity. If it is true that the League quickly faded away as did the Socialists only used Stead, then the Socialist-Radical alliance. Radical nature of their practical What does this study reveal? It ap- program can be deceptive, for the pears that Stead's belief that the Socialists, including Hyndman, must not Socialists could be brought into the have been Radicals at heart. Yet in spite Radical camp was unfounded. Although of the failure of Stead's plan, the tthe Socialists could be influenced to Socialist-Radical alliance of 1886-1887 moderate a specific goal temporarily, it demonstrates that William T. Stead was

'The Star achieved an enormous daily circulation of a remarkable journalist: although a 140,000 when it began publishing in January 1888. The Radical, he did more than any other assistant editor, H.W. Massingham, who would soon join the Fabians, managed to insert articles in the paper which person to raise the Socialist image in the were sympathetic to Socialism. 1880s.

WORKS CITED

Elton, Godfrey. England Arise. London: Collins, 1954. Nethercot, Arthur. The First Five Lives of Annie Besant. Inglis, K. S. The Churches and the Working Classes Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1960. in Victorian England. Toronto: Routledge and Kegan Thompson, Paul. Socialists, Liberals and Labour. Paul, 1963. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. Maccoby, Simon. English Radicalism 1853-1886. London: Whyte, Frederic. The Life of W.. T. Stead. 2 vols. London: George Allen and Unwan, 1938. Garland Publishers, 1925.

52 THE WEB AND THE TWITCH: IMAGES IN ALL THE KINGS MEN

ALFRED J. LEVY

Alfred J. Levy is a professor of English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has published articles on Hawthorne, Hemingway, and Twain. The Twain article was published in 1979 in Forum. He is currently at work on manuscripts on Nick of the Woods, The Grapes of Wrath, and a study of the incest theme in the early American novel. In explicating themes and images of consequences nor, incidentally, do they All the Kings Men, a number of critics provide any rationalization for easy grief have pointed out various relationships or gratuitous repentance. ("It does not between the spider web notion that caps matter whether or not you meant to the Cass Mastern story and the Great brush the web of things" (Warren 189). Twitch, an elaborately concocted extra- The slightest brush ripples the entire polation that Jack Burden periodically web, and "what happens always invokes to console himself in his deeply happens" (Warren 189). Cass Mastern cynical moods. Jerome Meckier and understands this truth when he writes in Beekman Cottrell both emphasize cer- his journal: "I have lived to do no man tain aspects of this relationship. James good, and have seen others suffer for my Simmons, in a brilliant analysis, goes so sin. I do not question the Justice of God, far as to call the Great Twitch "the ex- that others have suffered for my sin, for treme antithesis of Cass Mastern's image it may be that only by the suffering of of the cobweb, denoting interdepen- the innocent does God affirm that men dence, and irresponsibility" (86). are brothers, and brothers in His Holy I agree emphatically with this linkage, Name" (Warren 187). but I want to suggest some additional The notion behind the image of the facets and, moreover, to suggest a poetic spider web totally contradicts Jack's as well as substantive set of connections idiosyncratic interpretation of philo- between the two notions. sophical Idealism. Very early in the The spider web image does indeed sus- novel, in his wisecracking idiom, Jack tain a view of the world which reflects Burden loosely paraphrases Berkeley's the interdependence of man's actions, as famous paradox as he forces the Ideal- well as the corollary that any act, no istic position to support his own repudia- matter how subtle, provokes a conse- tion of individual responsibility for one's quence within the surrounding social own actions. ("What you don't know fabric and indeed out to the remotest don't hurt you, for it ain't real" Warren perimeter. Furthermore, we are ad- 30). Small wonder that the Cass Mastern monished at the end of this chronicle of chronicle comes to be a reproach to betrayal and anguished remorse that in- Burden, who finds himself paralyzed tentions do not necessarily control the beyond response, able only to lapse into

53 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

the Great Sleep, his own private defense Twitch, and the Holy Ghost" (Warren that inhibits both personal commitment 319). and recognition of responsible commit- I want to suggest, however, another ment in the lives of others. level of interrelationship between these If Jack's poetic mind constructs the two images and the philosophical spider web image to subsume the world notions they evoke. Warren is not con- of Cass Mastern, it also forces the notion tent merely to poise the spider web and of the Great Twitch from the image of the Great Twitch against each other on a the face of an old man to whom Jack substantive level and to allow Jack to gives a ride during one of his periodic perform his intellectual gymnastics with driving jags. As with the web, Jack each. This sort of ingenuity would amuse derives a philosophical position from an for a while but would fade much as the apparently casual observation; too many novelty wears off from an intellectual carefully delineated details resist co- parlor game. I think Warren has pre- incidental reading. In the face of the old empted this danger by balancing the two man, in an otherwise static, almost image/notions in poetic terms—by frozen set of features "as stiff and employing the web and the face as sym- devitalized as the hide on a mummy's biotic, imagistic paradigms. Taken jaw" (Warren 313), there occurs together they convey the same geometric periodically a twitch in the left cheek. image even though they reflect polar Remarkably, this twitch affects nothing views of the world—and the word else in the face. No other feature moves; "world" is insisted on in each—and of no other adjacent part is pulled up or the consequential effects of any man's down. And once again Jack derives a actions within that world. private inference that "the twitch was Notice that in quick succession the old simply an independent phenomenon, man's face is twice described as being unrelated to the face or to what was "like sun-brittled leather" (Warren 313). behind the face or to anything in the This reiterated phrase, together with the whole tissue of phenomena which is the suggestive "tissue of phenomena," evokes world we are lost in" (Warren 312). a geometric pattern of lines, a linear The Great Twitch, therefore, im- design within the finite limits of the face, mediately and thereafter, comes to re- that recalls the intricate pattern of lines inforce the private application of within the finite limits of the spider web. Idealism derived by Burden earlier and, On the one hand, the slightest brush necessarily, contradicts the inferences ripples the web to its outermost edge, that Jack is either unwilling or unable to and Cass Mastern is exquisitely aware of draw at this time from the Mastern both touch and ripple, act and con- story. It is no accident that Jack, after sequence. On the other, the twitch, watching Adam Stanton perform a pre- however pronounced, produces no vis- frontal lobectomy, cynically wants to ible effect within the pattern that con- baptize the "conditioned" patient "in the fines it, and the old man indeed is no name of the Big Twitch, and the Little longer aware of it at all—the twitch

54 Alfred J. Levy having no relation to intention. This or we remember, the geometric lace of contradiction reflects yet another the spider web while we recall the lines reciprocal relationship between the of "sun-brittled leather" in the old man's inverse images. face. Were this visual resonance missing It would be surprising, as a matter of the novel would be less rich. fact, if a cerebral poet such as Warren When, therefore, Jack comes to say did not compact both substantive and that this "is the story of a man who lived poetic levels in images that sustain so in the world and to him the world looked consistently the central theme of the [my emphasis] one way for a long time novel—the acknowledgment and free, and then it looked [my emphasis] even joyous, acceptance of the conse- another and very different way" quences of one's acts, intentional or not. (Warren 435), he is recalling both im- This theme receives endless examination: ages, and we do not require further ex- in Jack's insistence on regulating his life plicit reiteration. Every mention of the by the Idealist paradox and the Great Great Twitch is meant to trigger a flash Twitch until the trauma of discovery of both web and face. And when Jack about his responsibility for his father's adds that "many things happened, and death; in Willie Stark's attempts to that man did not know when he had any deflect his own responsibility by pre- responsibility for them and when he did tending that his ethics of expediency not" (Warren 435), we understand that have a basis in Scripture; in the rigid, he has begun his metamorphosis even preemptive idealism that forces Adam though this uncertainty cannot represent Stanton into destroying his entire world his final position. when that world does not conform to the Perhaps Warren packs too much neat picture of it that he carries in his head; resolution into the final few pages of the finally in the systematic, almost complex, resonant, otherwise slowly Aristotelian, examination of the degrees paced book. Notwithstanding, one of of responsibility attributed to Adam, Jack's decisions is to resume the writing Sadie Burke, and Tiny Duffy for their of Cass Mastern's story, a story once a roles in Willie's assassination. reproach to him which he may now Whereas there is no further explicit come to understand. It is possible for denotation of the spider web image after Jack to resume his work with the the Cass Mastern episode, the Great Mastern material only after he has en- Twitch recurs constantly—as a defensive tirely repudiated the Great Twitch as consolation for Burden in his most well as the defensive protection of the cynical moments. Nonetheless, I main- Great Sleep. It is not possible, I think, tain that both images—web and for Jack to deal with the Mastern face—remain subliminally in the material without understanding and ac- reader's consciousness. Poetically they cepting the spider-web notion and all are inversions of the same image that that it implies. Burden has come full defines so much meaning in Burden's life circle at last, and Warren controls his as well as in the reader's mind. We see, movement by implicit reference to the

55 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM two worlds of web and face—Mastern Burden move "into the convulsion of the and the Great Twitch. Only after work- world, out of history into history and the ing through the cynicism of the Great awful responsibility of Time" (Warren Twitch and repudiating its God can 438).

WORKS CITED

Cottrell, Beekman W. "Cass Mastern and the Awful King's Men." Studies in the Novel. Vol. 2, No. 1: 7-21. Responsibility of Time." In All The King's Men: A Sym- Simmons, James C. "Adam's Lobectomy Operation and posium. Edited by Fred Sochatoff et al. Carnegie Series the Meaning of All The King's Men." PMLA 86 (1971): in English, No. 3: 39-49. 84-89. Meckier, Jerome. "Burden's Complaint: The Disintegrated Warren, Robert Penn. All The King's Men. New York: Personality as Theme and Style in Warren's All The Bantam Modern Classic, 1968.

56 RECREATING THE MAGIC: AN INTERVIEW WITH LANFORD WILSON

GENE A. BARNETT

Gene A. Barnett, a native of Missouri, holds the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin. He has taught at Wayne State University and is now a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck Campus. He is the author of the volume on Irish playwright Denis Johnston in the Twayne English Author Series and of several articles on subjects related to modern drama and American Literature. He is completing a book on Lanford Wilson for the Twayne American Author Series.

The following interview with playwright Lanford Wilson was conducted by Dr. Gene A. Barnett on April 21, 1981, at the offices of the Circle Repertory Company in New York City. Wilson's most recent play at that time, A Tale Told, was being prepared for a premier at the company's off-Broadway theater. Dr. Barnett, like the playwright, is a native of Southwest Missouri. He is currently working on a critical study of Lanford Wilson.*

Barnett: Why do you write plays as not a story. So I started writing it in opposed to novels or poetry, or to put play form which, for me at that time, it another way, what is there about was just dialogue. I didn't know the medium of drama that makes it a what, technically, a play was except compatible form of expression for dialogue, but I instantly knew that you? was what I should have been doing all Wilson: I think I was attracted to along, instantly knew that I was a theatre almost before I was attracted playwright. The dialogue had always to writing. I wrote stories when I was been better in the stories. As a matter very young and was also active in of fact, the dialogue was usually so plays, but I have a feeling that I didn't real that the narrative looked stupid know scripts were written. I didn't and stiff compared to the dialogue. know plays were written. They were And the dialogue almost didn't work just handed down from somewhere; in the stories because it was so dif- we just got them from Samuel French ferent from the narration. But when it or Dramatists Play Service. In writing was just dialogue, it was something a bunch of stories—why I was writing that I had under control and had I have no idea at all—but in writing a always been attracted to—juxtaposed bunch of stories, one day I came sounds and rhythms of characters— across an idea that I said—probably and so it was really natural. That's because of its similarity to The Glass not to say anything about my attrac- Managerie—I said, this is a play and tion to the theatre which ran parallel to the writing all along. I kind of

*Since the above was written, A Tale Told has undergone major revisions. The revised version—under the new title of Talley & Son—opened off-Broadway in October 1985 for a limtied run at the Circle Repertory Company theater.

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knew I wasn't an actor, but I certainly theatre from that moment. I have a didn't know I was a playwright until I feeling that I was trying in that first had written a couple of pages of a dreadful play, and probably in other play. Why write plays instead of plays since then, to recreate some of something else? I think my talent was that magic. I mean, that magic was just there, and luckily I found it. what I was always drawn to. Barnett: When did that begin? Was Barnett: Was that at Southwest Mis- there any particular initial impetus souri State College? toward that first play, that is to say, a Wilson: Yes, that was at S .M. S. production, a performance? Barnett: What did you see in the Wilson: No, I was living in Chicago theatre first? at the time, and they were doing no new scripts there at all. Now they Wilson: First? A touring company have a thriving off-Broadway, off-off- production when I was living in Broadway type theatre scene, but Springfield [Missouri] plus the Clare they did not at that time at all. The Tree Major plays, children's theatre, only thing in town was the Second things like Pinocchio and Peter Pan. I City and a few stock companies and particularly remember Hansel and professional theatres. They had no Gretel. About the first professional off-Broadway activity at all. And so play I saw was a touring company of there certainly wasn't the impetus of Brigadoon which they did for grade getting a play on. schools and high schools. They had to It's just that I saw this character as stop it about five times because the narrating rather than me narrating kids were laughing so loud and mak- and so saw it first-person with all ing so much noise. Of course, I sat very close to the front, and I was very these people conjured up very like The annoyed and very embarrassed by all Glass Menagerie — a very different the noise. I was about twelve then. story but the same technique as The Again, the city appearing out of Glass Menagerie actually, conjuring these people from the past. I had seen nowhere and the whole magic of that play just mesmerized me. a production in college of Death of a Salesman, and it was the most Barnett: Did what you saw very early magical thing I'd ever seen in my life on influence you to write plays or in- when, in the middle of the man's fluence the kind of plays you wrote? remembrance, the clothesline from Wilson: Closer to influencing the kind the old buildings all around the house of play. When I was in high school, gradually faded into big, huge beech Rex Bowers taught English and also trees. I nearly collapsed! I'd never directed the plays at Ozark High seen anything like that in my life. It [Ozark, Missouri]. I was in a one-act was just the most extraordinary scenic play that I don't remember, and then effect, and of course, I was hooked on he mercilessly cut The Glass

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Menagerie to a one-act play. We me for a loop. It was the funniest play entered it in a one-act play festival. I I'd ever seen in my life and serious at think that came closer to influencing the same time, and I think that was the way I write. important to me, that and an amateur Barnett: You were Tom? production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which was also funny and serious at Wilson: Yes, I was Tom, and it was a the same time. I think that at an im- terrific experience. I just loved it. pressionable age they made me think Later on, the senior play—or the that serious plays should, or at least junior play—was Dark Victory, and I could, be funny. The absurdity of played some silly part in that. We also some of Ionesco's plays rubbed off in did Mother was a Freshman, and I Home Free and Lady Bright just a bit, had a comic part in that. just a little bit, maybe. Then I saw a Barnett: Are you able to pinpoint your play called Next Time Ill Sing to You, influences in various aspects of by James Saunders, and again I was dramaturgy, style, structure, theme? knocked completely out. I had no idea Wilson: From time to time I am. I before that you could write a play knew just the straightforward that wasn't z. play. It was just people American plays up until the time I talking—it was almost a lec- came to New York, "straightforward" ture—they were conjuring up the including Thornton Wilder. I was remembrance of this guy. It was so very attracted to his work, again thrilling to me; it was just incredible. because of the magic and because of Hired actors to present the man's just throwing time to the winds, talk- story, and in a completely unusual ing to the audience, and things like shape, and that made me aware that. I just loved it. I'd never seen it. again—and want to use—we are Barnett: When I read The Family actors standing on a stage talking, Continues, I thought of Wilder's The creating this for you, and I used that Long Christmas Dinner. from time to time, but almost always they're the character rather than Wilson: Sure, of course, The Long hired actors. In Serenading Louie at Christmas Dinner. The talking to the one point, they said that they were audience and many of the devices that actors hired to play the parts that he used were attractive to me, so they're playing, and you just sat there reading those plays was certainly in- in the audience and said, "no, you fluential; but as I say, that was my en- aren't, you're those people," because tire background, that and some of the it was thrown in so late and you were classics, Ibsen and the least bit of so believing that they were those Shakespeare. people that it was just so obtrusive you But when I came to New York, the never believed it at all. first thing I saw at the Caffe Cino was Ionesco's The Lesson, and that threw Barnett: I don't remember that.

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Wilson: Oh no, its not in there any- Barnett: Lemon Sky was easy? more; I cut it out, because it just Wilson: It didnt go and it didnt go didnt work. So that was a strong in- and it didnt go. Id been trying to fluence. And then after Serenading work on it for years and not getting Louie, Lemon Sky and Gingham Dog anywhere, so Id just put it aside and were written, I started reading the write something else. I was writing all complete works of Dickens and im- the time; I carried a notebook with mediately said my characters are so me, and I wrote all the time, and square and so ordinary and so plain, when Id get enough to where I knew and youd think I had no imagination what I was doing, then the play at all. Theyre so damned suburban. would fly. It would really go quite And I certainly tried in Balm in quickly, and sometimes with the one- Gilead and some of the extraordinary acters theyd really go in a matter of a early characters that Id had—tried week or so. Great Nebula was rather deliberately under his influence to easy, and Hot-1 was easy. I was strug- create a little more vibrant, a little gling like crazy to write a different more exciting, or a little more unusual play. I was going to write a play type characters. And that was a very called The Negro Plot, and it was a definite influence. I went directly to historical play. I still have the inten- him at a number of times, saying how tion of doing something with it, but I in the devil does he do this? just did not at the time trust my Barnett: Thats very interesting; I motives. It was just so voguish. What wouldnt have guessed that. in the hell am I doing? And because of Wilson: No, I dont think it shows, that I couldnt get into my point of but it was a very strong, really a very view or anything else, and Marshall strong influence, just to try to shake [Mason] had given me a date to have a me out of that suburban rut that Id play. gotten into. I dont know where it had Barnett: Does having a date for a play come from, but I wasnt very excited work for you? by it, especially after reading Dickens Wilson: Well, it worked that time. I because hes so vivid and so extreme always say, have an alternative and so outrageous that it was really available and dont tell me about it so marvelous. that you wont be hung up. Im Barnett: Almost caricatures. always afraid Im going to hang some- Wilson: Yes. one up and not finish—and I have—several times, but thats just Barnett: Did writing then—or does it the nature of commissioning things, I now—come hard for you? guess, or scheduling things before Wilson: It was the easiest thing in the theyre written. We have that all the world to do the first through Lemon time. All the writers keep saying, Sky, and then- nope, didnt get it done. So I told

60 Gene A. Barnett myself that I have this idea, its just so happens in the third act? And I didn't tentative—I don't know what it is. know. I said, well, I've got a lot of It's like a long, aching lament for the stories— I know I have to wind up lost railroads because I'm a railroad about five different stories. I also freak. Write it, write anything, he don't know what tone the third act said. We were working on the sets, ac- should have. So I said, this is a com- tually the modules for the audience to edy— that's why I set it in the spring. sit on, up at the old Circle Rep. And I I deliberately tried to have a positive started talking about it, and he statement at the end of this play, so I [Marshall Mason] said, go write it. set it in spring—all comedy is sup- The next day I started working on this posed to be in the spring. I read The play that would take place in a hotel Cherry Orchard, and that ends with right next to the railroad tracks. It them all having champagne. They was a real bitch for about a month, I open a bottle of champagne—the think, or maybe three weeks. It was wine ritual, of course! And that's very difficult, and I couldn't get it. It where the champagne and Suzy's was sounding very much like Balm in party come from. As soon as I said Gilead. It was the same hotel, actual- "champagne," I said, Suzy is leaving. ly, and there was a lot of violence and She's found herself a John—she's leav- a lot of strange things around, but it ing—there's a party—it's as simple as wasn't quite what I wanted. Then can be. That's where I got the idea. there was a railroad engineer, but still There's no relationship at all other nothing was working until April came than, of course, in spring you have to in. I had Millie who was from that have the wine ritual, and in a comedy first play that I wrote, the very first you have to celebrate the harvest. play. I had Millie, and I liked Right? You celebrate the new wine, so her—that was the tone that I wanted that's what did it. to have—so I had Millie's first scene and the girl's, and I quite liked her. Barnett: How long does the process of But when April came into the play, I generating a play take for you? said, all right, what is it? She's a pros- Wilson: I run around bothering every- titute. I know exactly what this hotel one, saying I don't have anything to is: it's a prostitute's hotel; it's half write; I shouldn't have been a writer prostitutes and half elderly people. I'd to begin with. I never did have seen that in Chicago. I said, ahl of anything to say; I'm no good at this course, and then it flew from there anyway, and I have nothing to say on. and never have had anything to say I did the first act in a month and and bother just absolutely everyone in took off a week. I did the second act, sight. One day I say, well, there is this which was a little more difficult, in character, and he's somewhere—she's about two months and took off a cou- somewhere and her particular gripe is ple of weeks, saying, what in the hell this. I often write that, write a

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monologue until another character at them at night." That's where I says, "shut up," and then I have two started, and then as I started reading points of view. Sometimes much of about the mound builders, I dis- that ends up not in the play. Then I covered that all the mounds were struggle around trying to have them numbered and most of them had been tell me where they are and what the dug. It was a whole different thing problem is, and other people come in. from what I thought. So that's the That's one process. way I got into that and also got into Another is when I have nagging all of the research, which took a good little scenes that I've thought of. In year. That's why I couldn't get that The Mound Builders, I remember the play finished because as soon as I only thing I knew about the first scene discovered they were archeologists—I is that there are two women talking thought they were land developers at on a screened-in porch, and the first— I just threw my hands in the air daughter of one of them wakes up at and said, oh no, do you know the night frightened and screams. The mountains of research I'm going to mother goes off to tell her that it's have to do before I can write this perfectly all right— they're in a new play? So that was the genesis—little place, a summer house—and the tiny grains of things. It comes to- other one says, "Yeah, it's getting late; gether—style, and the characters and I'm gonna go to bed too." I knew then where they are and who they are that the men were out fishing. She come together in such different ways. turns off all the lights and leaves, and Barnett: What gives trouble in suddenly, with the transparency of writing? the screens, you see a moon out on the Wilson: water in this lake that just goes Well, since I'm working from forever, and suddenly I said, oho, the characters and letting them tell there's something right outside the me the theme, I sometimes don't have door that's gonna get you. I knew that a story that has a strong enough thrust there was something— a dragon sniff- to it. The audience goes wandering off ing right outside the door. And that's on their own. After huge scenes are what I started with, that and a written and I discover what the story husband/ wife scene: the woman says, is, it's very difficult to interpolate a "What do you know about the mound plot into these long, wandering builders?" And he says, "It's a motel scenes. And so the rewriting, trying to out on 65." She says, "No, the In- shape them so they'll hold an au- dians." "What Indians? Not a thing dience, has always been difficult. The first draft of except they left all those mounds that Talleys Folly wouldn't are scattered around there." And she have held an audience at all; not says, "Well, then why is someone enough was at stake there. Thanks to dickering with them? There's talk all the workshop we have here at Circle through town that someone's digging Rep, I found that out early. I think I'm working more and more toward

62 Gene A. Barnett

understanding plot and story and grip Sometimes in the first act, which is and things like that and trying to have disappointing because I like to wait a them at the service of the play rather little longer than that. Sometimes in than melodramatically obvious. the first act, I'll make marginal notes Barnett: I think they do serve the play. of what is going to happen in the second, some of the events that are Wilson: Yes, well, lately they have going to take place, because I know if been a lot more than in some of the a character starts here, how her story earlier ones. When I started working ends or how his story ends. I'll make a on character with, say, Serenading little note "this will develop into," but Louie, maybe—no, Serenading Louie I don't work it out. still has that flashy technique. Anyway, I wanted to concentrate on Barnett: Do you feel that there are character and character development, certain structural forms or dramatic and in doing that I think I lost some of styles that you are using, experiment- the grip that maybe some of the ing with or even rejecting? earlier plays had just by being flashy Wilson: Not necessarily. I work so out and exciting. of character I would use anything. I would gladly use any style. I'd like to Barnett: What comes first, the image do a minstrel show, but that's a way or the structure? down the road. I'm certainly not re- Wilson: The image, the structure is jecting any style. I tend not to like the last thing I do. I weave an entire didactic work just because it makes tent and then go around trying to me very uncomfortable. That doesn't prop it up with posts. mean I don't want to say something, Barnett: You don't outline your plays but I don't want to let people know then before you start? I'm saying it quite so obviously as, Wilson: No, I did with A Tale Told. say, some of the late Brecht plays. I had all of the scenes for the first act Barnett: Do you feel that you've and some of them for the second and developed certain techniques—and I then went through and made an out- am thinking of a choral effect, over- line of a possible order for them so lapping dialogue—that haven't been that I would have a structure in the really utilized by anyone before? first act. Then I typed up the scenes in Wilson: I dont know that order and discovered that I had a if they have or not. As I said, I was very interested in very strong structure, so maybe I'm the juxtaposition of characters' learning what is necessary. rhythms even in the first play. In Barnett: The play is not finished in Home Free, the page splits; they're your head at any point before you both talking and arguing at one point. start writing, nothing like that? It works well, and I was excited by it Wilson: No, half-way through the when I saw it. In Lady Bright the second act I think I know how it ends. dialogue starts tumbling and there're

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several things happening and the want to develop and I suppose others music—. I think maybe it was just the might draw real people, just delib- result of having come to New York erately start out to do something and the cacophony of sounds all of a biographical. Which of these would sudden that's around you. come closest to describing the way you Sitting in that cafe working on would develop a character? Balm in Gilead, I said, all of this has Wilson: Early on I wrote about got to take place at once, so what I'm several people who interested me. really writing is the sound of the Sometimes I used one person for the whole thing rather than a linear series personality and another for the situ- of scenes. But if it's been done before, ation. In Home Free, that's two I don't know. I know I was conscious- people I knew—not brother and ly experimenting with it. I've seen sister—two people I knew, plus a other people use it just to horrible ef- brother and sister I also knew, and fect. The Open Theatre was working together they made Laurence and on some techniques that are kind of Joanna. I had to do damn little work similar—transition and things like on that because they were very much that—where a new character will like that. Ludlow Fair has a girl I'd come in, and whereas you were at a known at Hunter College. Agnes is ballgame, suddenly you're in an alley more or less a composite of the New shooting crap. It's a very abstract kind York girl who was very new to me, a of thing. sort of smart-mouth New York girl Barnett: Montage, almost; I think who was not pretty but a lot of fun. that's what [Mel] Gussow called it. Well, actually she goes back to the girl Wilson: Right. The Open Theatre who was in Sand Castle, the smart- was working on that quite inde- mouth one who's a little frigid. Now pendently, and I saw some of their everyone in Sand Castle is directly work. I said, hey, there's someone from people I went to school with in working in that same area. I have a San Diego: those kids and that mother feeling that that was one of the things and her story and the whole damn I was particularly excited by, one of thing— except the bus driver who is a the things I was deliberately doing. fabrication out of the blue just Barnett: Some writers say that they because he was necessary for some sort don't consciously develop or manip- of a story. The boy, Owen, is the same ulate their characters, that the char- guy who was in Home Free, the same acters emerge, as it were, from the character, a different side of him. head of Zeus. Pirandello does this in They were kids from school, my buddies in school. Six Characters in Search of an Author. Lemon Sky, of Other playwrights begin with an course, is directly autobiographical. actor they're writing for. Others start I've just tried to catch the rhythm and with a type of personality that they the speech and the motivation of all those people and understand them as

64 Gene A. Barnett best I could. Almost all those char- point of view in practically every play acters in Balm in Gilead were there in I've written. One person who was in- that cafe. Then I started pulling terviewing me said, there's no simi- away, and by Serenading Louie, it's larity at all in your plays. They're so composites or imaginary or not really different; there's no running theme. I based on anyone at all. In Hot-1, it's said, you're absolutely right. In the about half and half. second act of Gingham Dog, those Barnett: Do the characters ever get people in a completely empty, prac- out of hand the way Pirandello talks tically deserted apartment bear no about? relationship at all to the ghost town in the Midwest, which bears no relation- Wilson: Oh, yes. In Fifth of July, ship at all to a hotel that's being torn Gwen— especially in the first act— down in Baltimore, which bears no just absolutely ran right away with relationship—and went straight the play, just said, oh, this is my play. through almost every single play, and I could have written her for six weeks. they're identical. There is an over- I could just sit down and write her. I lying theme in there somewhere. And, had to cut back and cut back, because of course, in The Mound Builders, when I discovered what I was writing there's the village that is being about, she served it, yes, but it wasn't destroyed, the Indians' work, along her play, and I had to cut her down to with the boy's life, the son of the land- proportions. She still runs away with owner, and their work. A theme is in the play. Shirley, the same thing; there somewhere. Shirley should be cut down a little. She would run right away with the Barnett: Do you see yourself as work- play also, but I can't cut her down ing in anything that could be called a any more. tradition of drama? Barnett: Do you suppose you'll ever Wilson: Oh, I don't know. You know, come back to Gwen? I'm more realistic and more ordinary than I would like to be. I look back at Wilson: I don't imagine. Balm in Gilead and say, why can't I Barnett: What are your major themes write like that any more? Why don't as you see them? I? Why can't I try some of that stuff Wilson: I'm very bad on themes. It again? But I don't much. I think of gets in my way to think about them the plays as vaguely traditional, but I because when I'm working through couldn't tell you what tradition they character—well, just with the are in—vaguely descended from mid- method of my work, I'm better off not Ibsen and late Chekhov, I suppose, thinking about themes. When I start through Williams and Miller and thinking about themes, I can't write Wilder. I might like to write more ab- at all. I know that there is something surdist and more Pinteresque, but it either being torn down or destroyed doesn't come out. If I try to manufac- that might have been valuable if it ture tension in that way, it's patently had been looked at from a different obvious, and I giggle and throw it

65 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

away, so I guess I'm stuck with the I'm not working, but while being way I work. what people consider extremely pro- Barnett: Since the themes of most plays lific, I feel I'm not working up to a are universal, would it be fair to say third of my energy or capacity. That's that although your settings are on days when I'm not just exhausted regional, your plays deal not just with from having worked. When I'm not American conditions but with the uni- doing too much, I'm doing too much. versal condition? Barnett: Are you now a religious Wilson: I would hope. person in any conventional sense? Is this reflected in your plays except Barnett: How has being from the Mid- incidentally? west affected your plays, some of which are set, for example, in Califor- Wilson: I think so, without thinking nia and New York City? about it too much. I have a feeling that I am rather, but it never quite Wilson: I don't think the effect is gets in the plays. I'm always rather nearly as much as one might suppose. alarmed at how irreligious they are It's just that I grew up in the Midwest, and chose Lebanon [Missouri] because had eighteen years there; I certainly I thought those plays in that series know the people, and I certainly were going to be religious rather than know the sound. I was very excited by political. It turns out they're political the possiblity of capturing that sound rather than religious, and to my sur- for the stage, but there are a lot of prise. I have a feeling, you see, that, other things I intend to do, hope to writing about people as I see them—I do—and hope I'm doing. I hope I see them as a little un-religious in don't go back to the Midwest for a their behavior at least—it's very dif- long while. ficult to get a religious point of view Barnett: Are you getting tired of it? from their behavior, except to see how Wilson: Oh, yes, and tired of history these people are not doing what they too. You hear too many things on the say they're doing or what they believe street you couldn't possibly use in a they're doing, in many cases. 1944 play that are so exciting and so Barnett: How political are your plays? marvelous, and you just can't use them. Wilson: I think they're very political. I couldn't defend them against Brecht Barnett: Do you acknowledge any- or Weiss or some of those overtly thing like the midwestern Protestant political playwrights. I'm not writing work ethic background? In the Matter of J. Robert Oppen- Wilson: Well, I was raised a Southern heimer or The Cattonsville Nine, but Baptist. And you know, you work, I have always thought of them as and if you have a gift, if you have political. I used to have violent something to give, it's a sin not to do arguments with Joe Chaikin. He'd it. Yes, that was thoroughly in- say, Lanford, I love the way you grained. I feel like I'm goofing off if write, but I wish you'd said more.

66 Gene A. Barnett

And I kept saying, it's there, dammit; and if I'd had a means to support you're just not seeing it. It's there. I myself, as she did, that I would have. think The Great Nebula in Orion is an Barnett: What role does geography overtly, outrageously political play, have—city, place, region—in but try to prove it to someone, try to developing a play? say that to someone who has a very Wilson: It's incredibly important, I different interpretation of what a think, because they're all saying, political play is. They're political what are we tearing down? What are enough for me. I don't think I could we throwing out? I'm nowhere on a get them any more political and be play—even though I start with the happy with them at all. characters—until I know where they Barnett: Certain plays, Lemon Sky, are. And I often don't know until for example, seem rooted in quite late, so I'm going crazy. I think autobiography more than others. To the setting has always been very im- what extent do the plays reflect your portant: the place, yes, and the time; own personal past? for example, the Second World War Wilson: My own personal past? in Talleys Folly. Lemon Sky and Sand Castle. I was in After the first reading—no, after Sand Castle at the beginning and dis- the dress rehearsal—one of the kids covered—in the first draft—that I came up to me and said, "Lanford—" was so incredibly dull that I just left (this is one of the daughters of one of me out. So I concentrated on those the actresses)—"do you know how other people, so that is not my own many countries you mentioned in this personal past except through observa- play?" And I said, "no." "See," she tion. I am the guy who is sitting at the said, "it takes place in some dinky counter teaching the Columbian boy little Missouri town, and you mention how to count in English in Balm in twenty-six countries." That's because Gilead, the guy who is sitting around I was trying to show the whole world saying, my gosh, there's a lot of activ- in turmoil in that period between the ity here, the square one. I think First and Second World Wars. She there's a lot of me in the individual had sat there and counted, and we characters, some in the girl, I sup- really do, we really go around the pose, in Hot-l. Probably why she's so globe on that one. Again, I noticed in damned dull. A Tale Told there's some of that: Barnett: That's the one who loves place and time. railroads? Barnett: How has writing for a reper- Wilson: Yes, just because of the rail- tory company affected your work? road and having travelled so much, Wilson: For one thing, it's a haven, but I certainly have not been to every and it's also a place where you can state in the Union. But I feel if I'd concentrate on the work and not on been just a little more of a train freak your career. I found right after the

67 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

pressure of the two Broadway shows There's an old man we just do not that I was supposed to write the Great have. American Play or something, and I Barnett: How do the Friday readings was just completely stymied, because of the plays at the Rep influence you? I was looking from the outside rather Wilson: Well, they're damned helpful than working from—. Sit down and because we say, o.k. the play is good write "The Great American Play" or the play is bad. It doesn't matter, across the top of the page, and you're and we don't care. What did you not not going to write another word. It understand? Where were you con- took me a year to lose that and fused? Describe the relations as you redirect myself to just writing a play see them. Sometimes they're so far off to get on. that we just say, we're a long way For another thing, it's been fun to from clear. My plays are usually so challenge specific actors to do things late getting in that they don't have a they thought they couldn't do or Project in Progress where we can talk hadn't done before; in doing that, I to the audience, so they just have the challenged myself an awfully lot too. workshop, and it's all right, talk The part of D. K. Ericson for Tanya quick, because we have three weeks to [Berezin] is just one of the most com- rewrite before we go into rehearsal. plicated things I've ever done, and Tell us exactly what you didn't that's because she had said she understand. Out of the blue come couldn't play a genius, and she also these questions about things we had a great fear of comedy, of being thought were so clear or problems funny. I said, no, if it's strongly that people had. We have to go back enough rooted in a specific character, and look at it very differently. Of you're not going to have any problem course, there are also some asinine at all. After I had the initial thrust of comments that you just have to ignore that character, I said, oh, this is just and assume that this is a singular case, the challenge for Tanya. I very rarely but there are others that are very start with the actor and write some- helpful. thing for him. I get the character and then say, oh, this is going to be Barnett: What contributions do you Tanya's. Then I can direct it toward see Marshall Mason as making to your that challenge. Sometimes I don't; work-in-progress? there's at least half of A Tale Told Wilson: Oh, a lot. I read him scenes, that's not cast. I wrote the characters but all he does now is say, "oh, that's because I needed them, and we don't marvelous, that's wonderful," be- have anyone for them. cause he's learned that if he makes the Barnett: Will you go outside the least little negative vibration, I can't company? go on with it. So in the middle of something, he's just very positive and Wilson: On a couple of them we will.

68 Gene A. Barnett

very encouraging and sometimes has little impatient and a little confused. suggestions on the order of, oh, that If they dont understand, important reminds me of when I was in Texas things are going to slip by because growing up, and I did this. And I say, theyre worrying about something yes, I either can or cannot use that; else. Its just a matter of telling the usually I cant. Also, just little side story in a coherent fashion. comments that he makes: hell say, Barnett: How does your own acting theres such a thrust, or this one affect your writing? doesnt have that kind of thrust that Wilson: Not much. I havent acted you usually have. I find that really ex- that much, and I think I get off more citing. I look back and say, all right, on watching other actors work than I how can I get some thrust into it be- do on being on stage myself. Actors cause thats probably what hes are organic; their whole training is to saying. make something happen on that stage Barnett: What about the critics? Do right in front of your eyes, and so you read them? Are they any help? theyre really looking at the person Wilson: Oh, I read them like crazy, theyre talking to—theyre not per- and I read them all the time. Are they forming with a capital P. Conse- any help? No, Im just curious if quently, when I get on stage, Im very were going to run or not. uncomfortable because theyre look- Barnett: Thats practical. How do you ing right at me and saying—. Im just feel about the audience? What do you so had at it that I didnt get past high get from the audience? school acting which had nothing to do with really looking at someone. These Wilson: When theyre not laughing at actors are trying for something dif- something I thought was funny, when ferent, and I think I stick out like a theyre restless, or when they walk sore thumb in the company. Only a out, its because theyre not being couple of times have I been successful. held. They dont know what theyre I just admire them for being able to do supposed to follow; they dont know something that I cant do at all. where the action is. They just have not latched on to what I think they Barnett: What about directing? Does should be latching on to, so I have to it teach you anything about your own make clearer signposts for them. We plays to direct somebody elses or to have discussions in some of the direct your own? previews of such questions as how Wilson: I havent directed my own in many people knew this was the a long time, and Ive only directed a daughter, this was the son, this the couple of things, just because we mother and father, because I dont couldnt find someone else. I enjoy it. usually explain that fully. I think its Im a very good stager, but I can make going to be clear, but Ive discovered a play very interesting and miss it that until people get it clear, theyre a completely, so I think Id better leave

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directing alone too. I'm aware all Barnett: I was going to ask about that. along that the damned things have to Wilson: There are a number of very be staged. With Marshall [Mason], I powerful scenes and a number of very practically do not write stage direc- cinematic scenes. Since I studied art tions anymore, because I know that and painting, I think that's why I he'll have a life going on there. I have stage well too. That's what I thought I maybe ten stage directions in A Tale was going to be early on. So I think I Told, and one of them is because it's a had some very strong visual incidents silent scene, and another is because in One Arm that would be particular- it's a joke; another is because ly exciting in a movie, but as I say, I it can be taken two ways, and I want really have not sat down to write an to point the actor in the right original script. I'm going to do that direction. this summer [1981]. I'm going to Barnett: How do you feel about writ- write a movie script for Talleys Folly. ing for television? Barnett: What do you learn from your Wilson: I don't like it. I don't like early work? it. You write something, and they Wilson: That I was a lot flashier than change it and rearrange it and do it I am now. I want to avoid that, of differently. You're writing for them; course, but at the same time, I wish I you're writing for a boss. I don't like could find a way to get the sheer writing for a boss. You are a hired theatricality of Home Free and of writer—I don't care what anyone Rimers and, especially, of Balm in says—you might as well be working Gilead into the sort of play I'm in an office. You're doing their prod- writing now. Some of them I can't uct and not yours. All of their exper- read because I didn't develop a tise is in making a writer think that he character as much as I should have, is working for himself. That's their like Josh in The Rimers of Eldritch. only skill, making a writer com- Rimers is another, of course, with that fortable with the idea or the illusion incredibly strong juxtaposition. that he is doing his own project while Maybe I can get that in the more he's really bending it into something realistic format that I'm working in they find acceptable. now. Maybe I can get that the way Barnett: What about films? Albert Innaurato, for instance, does Wilson: I've never worked on films in Gemini—that sudden juxtaposi- that much. I've worked on a couple tion. It's almost abstract; it's just too that have never been filmed, but I've beautiful. never really attacked it as, o.k., here's Barnett: What is that early work like, a film. I've never worked from an beyond what you've already said original idea—they were all adapta- about it being flashy? tions. I did a film script of Tennessee Wilson: What's it like? I don't know. Williams's One Arm.

70 Gene A. Barnett

It's—well, it's flashy, the strong it. I finished Hot-1 and said, oh, it's patterns and things like that. I'm still easy, it's ridiculous, it's not that good. working like that but in a much It was just published in the acting ver- subtler way, I think. They were writ- sion, and I had to reread it. It is not ten very rapidly, those plays, and so bad at all; it's just not bad at all. I was they're sort of all one inspiration. It's perfectly happy with it. Untitled Play difficult for me to analyze my work or was an experiment, and I don't like it think about it. Sometimes I enjoy it any more. I don't think it works, but quite a bit, and sometimes I don't at it served as an experiment. Gingham all. But I'm only ashamed of about Dog, I like the second act and don't half of it. like the first. Lemon Sky I haven't is silly. Barnett: Which of your plays are your reread in ages. Ikke, Nye I don't care much favorites now? Which of the early Family Continues, I work are you quite dissatisfied with for that anymore. Serenading Louie think is very unsuccessful. It's some of now? the best writing I've done and the Wilson: I like The Mound Builders. worst play. Again, like The Mound Great Nebula in Orion. I like I like Builders, it doesn't quite prepare the Talleys Folly for what it is because audience for where it's going. Ludlow it's so complete. I didn't bite off more Fair I like a lot. This Is the Rill Speak- than I could chew in that, and what I ing, I think is perfectly o.k. did bite off I think I handled very well. I don't think it accomplishes Barnett: Lady Bright? nearly what the others set out to ac- Wilson: Lady Bright, I haven't seen it in complish, but it might do it a little a while. The whole homosexual com- better. Mound Builders is my favorite munity is so political now, and I have by a mile. I'm going to rewrite the a feeling that it's saying a rather beginning of that because I think I political thing if it's taken in that haven't led the audience into the ex- light. If it's taken just as the story of a pectation of that disaster. Conse- desperately lonely, rather misplaced quently, by the time they get to the person, I quite like it. If it's taken as end, they think it's all gratuitous the first homosexual play, I have a where, in fact, we've been heading feeling that I'm not very fond of it there from the first. I think if we knew because politically I don't like what it was going to be a thrill, we'd be a it's saying in a vaguely polarized lot more excited by it and take a lot scene. That will pass, I think, and it'll more of those long speeches, those be just the story of a lonely person. I long, late-evening scenes, a lot better. think it's quite successful for that, and So I want to look at it again. It might technically it's exciting. be my favorite, because I know it Barnett: It seems to me that Lady Bright needs work. I am more fond of Hot-1 may be the first portrait in American Baltimore than I was when I finished

71 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

drama of a really flamboyant type of Barnett: But you did something quite homosexual, certainly pre-Emory in different with your two characters. The Boys in the Band. Wilson: Yes, I did something quite Wilson: I got the idea for the play when different. They aren't just actors hired I was working at the Americana Hotel for the occasion or something. They in the Reservations Department. We have one scene where they're talking had just done Home Free, I think, and as though they are actors who started No Trespassing, which is largely a sleeping together during rehearsal monologue and was rather unsuc- period or something, so that's very cessful. It's the play I wrote half an different. There's all sorts of reality hour after reading Zoo Story, and so that keeps changing that way. it's very Zoo Story-esque, very So I was sitting there saying—my poetical. There's some perfectly nice gosh, what an interesting idea. I went writing in it. The bum who doesn't to work and wrote the first paragraph say anything or has maybe ten lines of the thing—the first title was "Will steals the show because you're so sick Someone Please Escort Miss Bright to of this other's prattling on. I had the Lounge." I said, oh, my God, and monologue on the mind; I had just called up Neil Flanagan who directed seen Funny House of a Negro and had Home Free. I said, "Neil, what can said at a party that I didn't like it at we get away with down there [at all—I was about as interested in see- Caffe Cino]—I mean, I know you ing this silly little black girl go balked at incest a little bit. Can we bananas in her own room as I would have an absolutely flamboyant, be in seeing some sily little queen screaming queen going crazy on go—oh, my God. Suddenly, I liked stage?" And he said, "Write it and Funny House of a Negro enormously, then if we can't do it, we won't do it, enormously, and had not liked it at all but write it and we'll see." I didn't when I saw it. I went back and said really know the rules down there. You oh, my God, what a play. So Lady know, it was my first experience. I Bright is just Funny House of a Negro think we can do just any damned re-written, the same thing exactly. I thing we want to. It's not like we're told Adrienne Kennedy that, and she going to be censored; it's not like the said, well, I can't see that. If you can, police come by and say, oh, you can't fine. Those two characters on the side do that. So I just wrote it straight out who come in and out and play dif- and took it down to him because he ferent parts—it's the same thing. had done such a wonderful job direct- ing Home Free and No Trespassing, Barnett: You borrowed those from especially Home Free, which was still Funny House also? on. While it was still playing, he and Wilson: I borrowed them right his wife took Lady Bright into the from—there's a landlady and—some- dressing room and read it and came thing else. I've forgotten.

72 Gene A. Barnett

out and said, "You're going to have to can't slow down." Strictly Sam find a marvelous director for this. He Shepard, from his early one-act play; just has to be so good." And I said, it's not me at all. "Oh, I was hoping maybe you'd want Barnett: Anybody else? Williams? to direct it." He said, "No, I'm going Wilson: To an extent, of course, yes. to play it, and we're going to have to I can't read anything that's any good find a marvelous director." I said, without wishing I'd written it. John "But it's not you at all, you're so Guare. I'm in awe of these people. We far— ." "I'm going to play it! You're all write so differently that it's just going to have to find a marvelous wonderful to see how different and director," so we got Denis Deegan, how exciting they are. Albert In- who was excellent. naurato. I just hope I can get some of Barnett: What playwrights in America that energy that used to be in my do you currently most admire? Have work, that's in his work now, back in- you borrowed from them? to my work and some of those out- Wilson: Some. Sam Shepard, cer- landish juxtapositions. They're just tainly. I think he's the best. Talleys too marvelous. Entrances at com- Folly—its for no one to notice except pletely unexpected times— a girl com- me—when I thought of the idea of ing in when two guys are embracing. the ice skating on the bare floor, I At the top of the argument, the family said, this is a Sam Shepard idea. In comes out with a birthday cake, and Red Cross, the young man teaches the you're just flabbergasted. I mean, this maid how to swim. They're both on is not happening! It's too wonderful the bed in the camp, and as he's that this is happening. That sort of teaching-her how to swim, she stops thing I would certainly like to get in and starts to drown. She goes through my work. The marvelous, the incred- a whole thing of drowning. I think of ible set-up for a speech that Jules Feif- that as a Sam Shepard idea. If I'd fer has in Knock, Knock that starts out never seen Sam Shepard, I probably with a series of jokes: I'll give you the would never have thought of this—it answer, and you give me the question, would never have occurred to me, and he does two answers, and she anything this silly. I signed it with a doesn't understand, and then he has little thank-you note of about a five- to give the question, and it just keeps line Sam Shepard speech that's my going and going and going, and you own but in Sam Shepard's style. I'd realize you're in the middle of his life never done anything like that before, story. And Feiffer has so disarmed you and it's an absolutely Sam Shepard that I don't know another way he speech: "The trees are coming up. could have written this that would be They're looming in front of me. With so delightful. I was delighted that firelight flickering from the campfire, would be so delightful. I was de- they're coming closer and closer. I lighted that I was completely fooled

73 BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FORUM

by it. It was just the most beautiful in your way. If you remember any of set-up for a story that I've ever seen. I that, it's back to writing the Great tried to steal that bodily, as I told American Play. You have to remem- Jules, for the "Lit-Lat" story in ber all those times when they didnt Talleys Folly and, of course, screwed get what you were writing, and they it up completely. However it comes didnt understand, and so therefore out, it comes out the best I can make it you're not nearly as good as they're come out, but it doesn't. It's not near- saying you are. Also fortunately I ly as good. So that is just a technical have a number of people whose work thing that I tried to do and accom- I'm very fond of who are not suc- plished only fifty percent. cessful and are not trumpeted as the Barnett: Has success changed your Second Coming. It helps an awful lot approach to your work at all? to know there are other people around Wilson: I hope not. You have to not who are not recognized, and so I'm think about that at all. It has to be not really what I'm cracked up to be. outside, and I don't mind it in the All these things are self-protective and least. Success has it all over failure. help me get up, grow a tough hide, as But you can't think about that when I think Harper Lee said. you're working on a play; it just gets

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ARTICLES

Gene A. Barnett Larry Bronson Renu Juneja Alfred J. Levy James Mennell Frances Dodson Rhome Catherine Brown Tkacz