DOCSLIB.ORG

Charlotte Campton Doctoral Thesis

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Charlotte Campton Doctoral Thesis 1 The Economy of the Drinking House: notions of credit and exchange in the tavern in early modern English drama. Submitted by Charlotte Caroline Campton to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, August 2014. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: .................................................................................. 2 Abstract This thesis traces how the drinking house was used by writers of early modern English drama to try to make sense of the period’s culture of exchange. Organised around an examination of five plays, the project focuses on the way in which playwrights engaged with and examined notions of credit, circulation, and the commercialisation of hospitality. By offering close readings through the lens of the drinking house, I make fresh interpretations of the plays. Moreover, I seek to demonstrate the wider literary tradition dealing with this space that, to some extent, has been neglected. With this in mind, I also draw on other popular texts from the period, such as ballads, jest books and rogue pamphlets, which establish certain conventions and narratives that emerge in the drama. In Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV, the reckoning – or tavern bill – is used as an emblem through which Hal negotiates his moral and economic redemption, in the face of Falstaff’s threat to the wider network of credit established in the tavern space. Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho also stages credit as both a productive and unpredictable force. In the context of its Brentford location, the drinking house in that play is presented as a transformative space that allows for the possibilities of an alternative economic model. Irrepressible forces of commercialism define the Light Heart in Jonson’s The New Inn; forces that effect character transformations and champion a fluid economy in contrast with landed-estate living. In Brome’s The Demoiselle, these conventions are upended, and the commercialism of the New Ordinary is dispensed with in favour of a more settled economy. 3 The thesis testifies to the investment writers made in the drinking house as a dramatic space and as a space to be dramatised, a space through which the possibilities and energies of exchange were staged. 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Andrew McRae, for his unstinting support over the course of my studies. I could not have asked for a kinder or more encouraging mentor. I am also extremely grateful for the insights and advice provided by Philip Schwyzer. I have benefited enormously from being a part of the academic community at the University of Exeter, and very much appreciate the financial assistance I was awarded in the form of my doctoral bursary. All of my friends have been stalwart supporters over the last few years, but particular thanks must go to Hannah Ayres, Jennifer Barnes, John and Emma Birkin, Cate Cannon, Demelza Hookway, Hannah Murray, Alex and Rachael Perry, Simon and Viv Thornton Jones, and Mike Evans and Harriet Ziegler. Finally, I would like to thank my whole family, to whom I truly indebted. I am particularly appreciative of the home-from-home my father has provided whenever I stayed in Devon. My dear brother, Harry – always my champion – has cheered me on at every stage, and without him, I would never have started, or finished, this project. I would like to remember my beloved mother, Ruth, whose hand on mine I have felt so often, at the best and worst of times. I know she would have been ever so proud to see me complete a PhD. And it is to my darling husband, Paul, without whom not a single word would have been written, and whose enduring kindness, patience, and belief in me have kept me going, that I dedicate this thesis with love. 5 Contents Title page 1 Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 List of contents 5 Note on the Text 7 Introduction 8 Chapters 1. The Drinking House in Early Modern Popular Literature 23 The figure of the host/hostess 32 The reckoning 41 Commercialised sociability 48 Conclusion 56 2. The Tavern, Reckonings and Creation of Credit in William 57 Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV The creation of a tavern economy 63 Falstaff’s bad debts and his destabilisation of the tavern economy 68 Hal’s construction of identity 80 Hal’s pursuit of credit 88 The tavern must be checked – economic impulses and punishment 100 Conclusion 109 3. Lines of Credit in the Fringe Tavern Space: Thomas Dekker 112 and John Webster’s Westward Ho Brentford: locus of the illicit 117 The fringe tavern space 129 Women and diamonds: tokens of exchange 142 Conclusion 160 4. Ownership and Circulation in Ben Jonson’s The New Inn 162 Ownership and transformation 167 In “every cup and company”: Fly as enforcer 181 The owner of the inn? 199 Conclusion 212 5. Value, Cost, and Commercialism: Richard Brome’s The 214 Demoiselle, or The New Ordinary The strange space of the New Ordinary 224 Circulating money 237 The raffle: a model of exchange? 245 6 The Demoiselle, the landed gentry and the loss of estate living 259 Conclusion 270 The Economy of the Drinking House: Conclusion 271 Works Cited and Consulted 277 7 Note on the text All conflations of u/v, i/j and vv/w are routinely modernised. 8 Introduction In John Earle’s 1628 character book, Microcosmographie, we find among the descriptions of various people a short account of “A Taverne”: [It] is a degree, or (if you will) a paire of stayres above an Alehouse, where men are drunke with more credit and Apologie. … The rooms are ill breath’d, like the drinkers that have been washt wel over night, and are smelt too fasting next morning; not furnisht with Beds apt to be defil’d, but more necessary implements, Stooles, Table, and a Chamber-pot. It is a broacher of more newes then hogs-heads, & more jests then newes, which are sukt up heere by some spungie braine, and from thence squeazed into a Comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this musicke above is answered with the clinking below. The Drawers are the civilest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteeme of them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. Tis the best Theater of natures, where they are truely acted, not plaid, and the busines as in the rest of the world up and downe, to wit, from the bottome of the Seller to the great Chamber. (C12r-D1v) This description immediately alerts us to several intersecting ways in which the early modern tavern can be understood. Earle pays attention to its materiality, reaching as it does over several floors, with numerous rooms (some with apparent grandeur), furnished and busy with customers and employees. More importantly, however, he 9 draws out a sense of its productiveness: the tavern emerges here as a dynamic, generative space, that provides “newes” and “jests” for its customers, a hub of communication and sociability. Crucially, it also gives inspiration to writers. Indeed, Earle suggests that the tavern space provides a rich supply of material to those who may absorb the goings-on into a “spungie braine” and thereafter produce “a Comedy”. Bearing in mind that the “tavern is often depicted as a stage” in the early modern period, this particular statement invites the reader of his text to consider the way in which the tavern itself becomes a subject of drama (Smyth 199). While the space is “the best Theater of natures”, here Earle is surely aware of the way it has been staged and interpreted by those writing plays. The depiction also alights – albeit briefly – on what I suggest is a defining characteristic of the way the early modern drinking house is understood in the literature of the period. In the first sentence, Earle writes of the “men [who] are drunke with more credit and Apologie”. Not only does this invite us to consider the complicated relationship between drinking and sociability, where men may find themselves regretful, but, more specifically, I suggest that the privileging of the notion of “credit” in the opening lines also locates the tavern as a potent site for the imagining of the early modern culture of exchange. Indebtedness – or at least the deferral of payment – is the consequence of drinking in such a space. Credit is also evoked when Earle comes to sum up his description: “To give you the totall reckoning of it. It is the busie mans recreation, the idle mans businesse, the melancholy mans Sanctuary, the strangers welcome, the Innes a Court mans entertainment, the schollers kindnesse, and the Citizens curtesie” (D2r-D2v). While of course “reckoning” means an account of something, it also suggests the very emblem of exchange in a tavern: the bill. Earle’s reckoning comprises those characters who 10 frequent the tavern, but it is also a marker of a site-specific act that has resonance for the wider culture of exchange. This thesis is concerned with how certain early modern writers used the staged drinking house space to make sense of this culture. My focus is on early modern drama – Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV (1597-1600), Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho (1604), Jonson’s The New Inn (1629), and Brome’s The Demoiselle (1638) – although I also draw from the period’s popular literature in the forms of ballads, jest books and rogue pamphlets.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Bedlam, Charity, and Renaissance Drama: Reconfiguring the Relationship Between Institutions in History
    Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1997 Bedlam, Charity, and Renaissance Drama: Reconfiguring the Relationship between Institutions in History Kenneth S. Jackson Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Jackson, Kenneth S., "Bedlam, Charity, and Renaissance Drama: Reconfiguring the Relationship between Institutions in History" (1997). Dissertations. 3668. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3668 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1997 Kenneth S. Jackson LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BEDLAM, CHARITY, AND RENAISSANCE DRAMA: RECONFIGURING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INSTITUTIONS IN HISTORY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY KENNETH S. JACKSON CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JANUARY 1997 Copywright by Kenneth S. Jackson, 1997 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am tremendously grateful to the Knocs of St. Larry's -- Carolyn, Lynn, Mick, Krug, Stinger, and Dupe -- for teaching me Protestant charity in a Catholic place, and to Rita and Athena for teaching me Catholic charity in a Protestant place. Above all else, this is for Pauline for knowing and understanding the pain involved in any charitable work. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iv Chapter 1. BEDLAM, PROTESTANT CITIZEN CHARITY, AND THE DRAMA .
    [Show full text]
  • Why Was Edward De Vere Defamed on Stage—And His Death Unnoticed?
    Why Was Edward de Vere Defamed on Stage—and His Death Unnoticed? by Katherine Chiljan dward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, died on June 24, 1604. To our knowledge, there was neither public recognition of his death nor Enotice made in personal letters or diaries. His funeral, if one oc- curred, went unremarked. Putting aside his greatness as the poet-playwright “William Shakespeare,” his pen name, Oxford was one of the most senior nobles in the land and the Lord Great Chamberlain of England. During his life, numerous authors dedicated 27 books on diverse subjects to Oxford; of these authors, seven were still alive at the time of his death,1 including John Lyly and Anthony Munday, his former secretaries who were also dramatists. Moreover, despite the various scandals that touched him, Oxford remained an important courtier throughout his life: Queen Elizabeth granted him a £1,000 annuity in 1586 for no stated reason—an extraordinary gesture for the frugal monarch—and King James continued this annuity after he ascend- ed the throne in 1603. Why, then, the silence after Oxford had died? Could the answer be because he was a poet and playwright? Although such activity was considered a déclassé or even fantastical hobby for a nobleman, recognition after death would have been socially acceptable. For example, the courtier poet Sir Philip Sidney (d. 1586) had no creative works published in his lifetime, but his pastoral novel, Arcadia, was published four years after his death, with Sidney’s full name on the title page. Three years after that, Sidney’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke, published her own version of it.
    [Show full text]
  • A Greatly Exaggerated Demise: the Remaking of the Children of Paul's As the Duke of York's
    Early Theatre 9.1 Brandon Centerwall A Greatly Exaggerated Demise: The Remaking of the Children of Paul’s as the Duke of York’s Men (1608) The Children of Paul’s acting company came to a bad end … or did it? The current narrative, as developed by Reavley Gair in The Children of Paul’s (1982), holds that the troupe made its fatal error when in 1608 it staged the satiric comedy The Puritan, thereby bringing down upon themselves the wrath of the puritan community: ‘it was … a very serious miscalculation, a blunder that was to prove largely responsible for the theatre company’s demise’.1 Staging The Puritan certainly brought down the wrath of puritan divine William Crashaw. Taking specific exception to The Puritan for its lampoon of those faithful such as lived in the nearby parishes of St Antlings and St Mary Overys, on 14 February 1608 Crashaw fulminated against the Children of Paul’s in a sermon delivered from the outdoor pulpit Paul’s Cross, just a stone’s throw away from Paul’s playhouse:2 [The Children of Paul’s] be children of Babylon that will not bee healed: nay, they grow worse and worse, for now they bring religion and holy things vpon the stage: no maruel though the worthiest and mightiest men escape not, when God himselfe is so abused. Two hypocrites must be brought foorth; and how shall they be described but by these names, Nicolas S. Antlings, Simon S. Maryoueries? …. Are they thus incurable? then happie hee that puts to his hand to pull downe this tower of Babel, this daughter of confusion, happie he that helpes to heale this wound in our State: but most happie that Magistrate, who, like zealous Phinehes, takes some iust vengeance on that publike dishonour laid vpon our Churches.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pubs, Inns and Beer Houses of Brentford Introduction the General
    The Pubs, Inns and Beer Houses of Brentford Introduction The general history of the development of public houses has been well documented elsewhere. Although ale had been drunk since the Bronze Age, formal drinking establishments probably originated when tabernae (taverns) were set up at points along the road network built by the Romans from the 1st century. As well as providing facilities for travellers and pilgrims, inns traditionally acted as community gathering places. In Brentford the heyday of inns such as The Three Pigeons and The Coach and Horses was during the 18th and early 19th centuries when travel on horseback and in horse-drawn coaches was at its height. The consumption of gin, introduced from Holland in 1586, eventually gave rose to a new kind of establishment where customers were served at a bar and they drank standing up. Partly to discourage the drinking of gin the Beerhouse Act of 1830 allowed any householder to sell beer and cider on the payment of a two guinea fee to the Excise. The number of beer shops then grew very rapidly in areas such as Brentford and concern about this situation led to the passing of the 1869 Wine and Beerhouse Act which was designed to curtail the number of outlets. All drinking establishments, including beer shops were then brought under the control of local magistrates. However many houses that did not obtain a full licence managed to continue in business providing that the house conformed to all legislation and was kept orderly. These continued to simply sell beer and cider.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Dekker's Satiromastix and Their Fortunes
    Boy Companies in 1601: Thomas Dekker’s Satiromastix and their Fortunes Takaya SANO 1. Introduction The end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century saw a preva- lence of satire and the reestablishment of boy companies in English drama. However, although the latter phenomenon has been widely discussed, researchers have paid little attention to what made the reopening of these companies feasible at this point in time. I have conducted a study to elucidate the factors related to the reopening of boy com- panies and have published two monographs on them: (1) an analysis of Histriomastix, which has been thought to be the cause of the Poetomachia (or the Poets’ War)1, and (2) an inquiry into Every Man Out of His Humour, Ben Jonson’s response to Histrio- mastix.2 In these studies, I raised the importance of the role the Inns of Court played in the reestablishment of the “Children of the Chapel.” This paper will present an analysis of Thomas Dekker’s Satiromastix as the third phase of my study, and special attention will be directed to the performances by the Chamberlain’s Men and the Children of Paul’s. Through this investigation into how the play was staged, I intend to clarify the movements of two boy companies be- tween the years 1600 and 1602. 2. The Development of the Poetomachia after Every Man Out of His Humour Before we proceed, we must confirm the relationship between Jonson and His- triomastix. The Poetomachia is thought to have been brought about through Jonson’s aversion to pedantic neologism and the characterization of Chrisoganus (one of the main characters) in Histriomastix.
    [Show full text]
  • The Works of John Webster Volume 4 Frontmatter More Information Www
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76601-2 — The Works of John Webster Volume 4 Frontmatter More Information This is the fourth and final volume of the Cambridge edition of the complete works of John Webster. Volume one contains The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, Volume two The Devil’s Law-Case, A Cure for a Cuckold, and Appius and Virginia, and Volume three Anything for a Quiet Life, the Lord Mayor’s pageant Monuments of Honour, and Webster’s Induction and additions to John Marston’s The Malcontent, as well as his non-dramatic work, chief amongst it A Monumental Column, his elegy on the death of Prince Henry. This final volume contains four plays Webster wrote in collaboration, one—Sir Thomas Wyatt, a historical tragedy based around Lady Jane Grey—as part of a team of five led by Thomas Dekker, two—Westward Ho and Northward Ho, city comedies that prompted Chapman, Jonson, and Marston’s Eastward Ho—with Thomas Dekker alone, and one—The Fair Maid of the Inn, an Italianate tragicomedy of which Webster wrote the largest share—with John Fletcher, Philip Massinger and John Ford. With the inclusion of these four plays, this Cambridge edition becomes the first com- plete works of John Webster. The edition preserves the original spelling of the plays, poetry, and prose, and incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including valuable information on Webster’s share in the collaborative plays, and new critical methods and textual theory. In particular, the edition integrates theatrical aspects of the plays with their bibliographical and literary features in a way not previously attempted in a scholarly edition of a Jacobean dramatist.
    [Show full text]
  • (Dis)Obedient Wives: Manifestations of Collective Female Agency in Early Modern City Comedies
    BERBERYAN, LILIT, PhD. (Dis)Obedient Wives: Manifestations of Collective Female Agency in Early Modern City Comedies. (2017) Directed by Dr. Michelle Dowd. 225 pp. In the three decades between 1596 and 1626, roughly sixty city comedies were composed by early modern playwrights: these plays—some of which are largely out of print while others are frequently printed, anthologized, and taught—create a composite image of how drama imagines the lives of ordinary London citizenry. Partly due to the growth of London’s marketplace economy, citizen wives and working women gain financial stability and visibility within early modern society during this period. City plays depict the female characters’ negotiation of issues of power and agency; theater imagines the possibilities that might give these characters the capacity to manipulate societal expectations to gain power and agency. In this study, I use exemplary city plays—including works by Dekker, Jonson, Middleton, and Shakespeare—from the aforementioned catalogue of city comedies to delineate and discuss three models of agency: defiant, subversive, and acquiescent. These models of agency are contingent on the subject’s continual negotiation and reassertion of her positionality. Defiant agency is made possible through the rejection or visible challenge of patriarchal forms of control. Subversive agency requires the female characters’ thorough understanding of modes of conduct to which they are supposed to conform; however, their obedient behavior ultimately ends with a subversion of societal expectations. The final model of agency I discuss is acquiescent agency. In this model, the female characters’ behavior is in keeping with the societal regulations, but this behavior enables the female characters to occupy the role of validating patriarchal forms of control.
    [Show full text]
  • John Webster: a Darker Playwright for Renaissance England
    Published on Great Writers Inspire (http://writersinspire.org) Home > John Webster: A Darker Playwright for Renaissance England John Webster: A Darker Playwright for Renaissance England In the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, a young boy seen feeding a live mouse to a cat identifies himself as John Webster (1580-1634). When Will Shakespeare asks the boy what he thought of Titus Andronicus [1], Webster replies, "I like it when they cut the heads off. And the daughter mutilated with knives? Plenty of blood. That's the only writing." While hyperbolic, Hollywood, and of course fictional, the joke about the budding playwright John Webster [2] is grounded in reality. His plays would introduce a new grittiness to the English stage. He was a playwright unafraid to grapple with the darker sides of mankind: whether in The White Devil [3] (1612) or The Duchess of Malfi [4] (1614), Webster was willing to deal out gruesome ends to his characters. The White Devil tells the story of the affair between the Duke of Brachiano and Vittoria Corombona (both married to other people), encouraged by the pandering of Vittoria's brother Flamineo. Brachiano has his wife and Vittoria's husband murdered, and Vittoria is tried for the murder of her husband and sent to a convent for penitent whores. The banished Count Lodovico, in love with Brachiano's now dead wife, returns and avenges her death with an impressive array of murders. Vittoria's dying words are, not unreasonably: "O happy they that never saw the court, Nor ever knew great man but by report." In The Duchess of Malfi, the widowed duchess marries her social inferior, Antonio, against the wishes of her two brothers.
    [Show full text]
  • Medicine and Medical Practice in the Works of Thomas Middleton and His
    Medicine and Medical Practice in the Works of Thomas Middleton and his Contemporaries Hannah Margaret Ridge Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English September, 2013 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Hannah Margaret Ridge The right of Hannah Margaret Ridge to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Acknowledgements My thanks go to my supervisors Dr. Jane Rickard and Professor Martin Butler for their support, rigour, patience, and kindness. Their confidence in me and my work, alongside their generosity of time and good humour has been invaluable. I would also like to thank Kat Gupta, Julia Ihnatowicz, Bethany Layne, J. Novales, Dr. Jennifer Sarha, Chris Wallish and all my other friends who provided clarification and support. For your willingness to show (or feign) interest I commend you. Thank you for listening when I needed it. Thanks for listening and reiterations of belief also go to Derek Ridge. My final thanks are to Mary Slattery and Allan Leak, without whose generous moral, emotional, and financial support this thesis could never have been begun, let alone finished. I dedicate this thesis to you.
    [Show full text]
  • N​O T ​S​H a K E S P E A
    N​ O T S​ ​ H A K E S P E A R E D​EVIANTS, R​ ​OGUES AND C​ ​RIME ON THE R​ ​ENAISSANCE S​ ​TAGE EL 484 | Fall 2019 | WFF 756 | TB 240. TB 415. Dr. Ethan Guagliardo | [email protected] | Office Hours William Shakespeare is such a towering presence in the modern literary canon that he often leaves his contemporaries, Marlowe excepted, languishing in obscurity. This influence distorts our view of early modern theater. Shakespeare did not write in a vacuum, but from within a vibrant literary and theatrical scene, a scene that is often far wilder, madder, weirder, and closer to the stenches and scandals of life in early modern London. Shakespeare’s plays can moreover obscure this scene because, despite the radical questions they sometimes pose, they also cater to conservative literary tastes, dwelling on monarchies and marriages, the nation and God. The intention of this class is to introduce you to the other side of Renaissance drama, and through it, the “others” of early modern life. Course Objectives Introduction to early modern drama beyond Shakespeare in various genres | Working with primary and secondary sources | Using the past to think through key theoretical issues in the present | Learning how to do scholarly work in the field of literature Assessment ❖ Adopt a Play Project (55%) ➢ Choose Play: paragraph rationale for project (5%) ➢ Editing Project (15%) ➢ Annotated Bibliography (5%) ➢ First Draft (8-10pp) (10%) ➢ Final Paper (8-10pp) (20%) ❖ Participation 15% ❖ Midterm Exam: 15% ❖ Final Exam 15% Adopt a Play Project​: Over the course of the semester, every student will adopt a play of their own, on which you will write a final term paper.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Dekker
    Published on Great Writers Inspire (http://writersinspire.org) Home > Thomas Dekker Thomas Dekker [1]Woodcut from title page of published play (Dekker his Dreame) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Very little is known of Dekker's early life, though it is likely he was born in London around 1572. While he probably did not attend university, his capable Latin translations suggest he did attend grammar school. Dekker married a woman named Mary and had three daughters in 1594, 1598, and 1602. From around 1598 he worked as a playwright for The Admiral's Men, and engaged in the War of the Theatres with Ben Jonson and John Marston. Dekker wrote more than forty plays for The Admiral's Men, many of which are lost. His works include collaborating on Shakespeare's Sir Thomas More, Old Fortunatas and Satiromastix. He collaborated with Thomas Middleton on The Honest Whore [2] and The Roaring Girl [3], and with John Webster [4] wrote Westward Ho and Northward Ho. Dekker was seriously impoverished for most of his career, in and out of debtor's prison for much of his life (including in 1598 and 1599, the year The Shoemaker's Holiday [5] was performed). From 1612 to 1619 Dekker was imprisoned for seven years because of a debt to the father of fellow playwright John Webster. In addition to plays, Dekker wrote a series of pamphlets in the early seventeenth century, including popular cony-catching pamphlets describing tricks of conmen and thieves. Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday is often credited as being one of the first city comedy plays.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Dekker in 1611: the Roaring Girlにおける時代性と演劇的意識
    Thomas Dekker in 1611: The Roaring Girlにおける時代性と演劇的意識 佐 野 隆 弥 1 ．Dekkerと演劇的主体性 一般的に，ある特定の劇作家の時代性を検証する際，同時代の言説と相互に 交渉を行うサブスタンシャルな主体を措定しておく必要がある．しかし，伝記 的データや歴史的事実の記録が乏しい Dekker の場合，その主体そのものが， Philip Henslowe の日誌を始めとする同時代の演劇資料や，Dekker 自身の戯曲 や散文から抽出された事象から構成されていて，言うなれば Dekker の主体と は，同時代の演劇的ネットワーク空間の中で絡め取られ，演劇的リアリティの 中で構築され，存在するものとなっている点に特徴がある． 本論では，そのような前提に立脚した上で，演劇的存在である Dekker の キャリアにおける転換点もしくは結節点であると著者が考える 1611 年の主要 作である The Roaring Girl に注目する．その上で同戯曲を軸に，作品中で言及 される戯曲群や演劇的事象とのネットワークを解析することで，Dekker の持 つ時代性――1611 年の春というピンポイントの時点における Dekker の意識 ――の一面を記述することを試みる． その理由は，The Roaring Girl という戯曲が，同時代のロンドンを喚起する 市民劇的なフレームワークを使用する一方で，同時期に舞台にかけられた複数 の戯曲に言及することを通して，劇作家は戯曲のクラスターの相互参照による 意味空間を生成しようとしていると考えられるからである．また，そこに Dekker という主体の発信する，1 つの時代性が存在すると考えられるからで もある． 2 ．1611年のDekker――戯曲制作の転換点 上述したように，著者は Dekker の演劇的主体性という概念を提案し，その 前提を受けて The Roaring Girl が創作された 1611 年が，Dekker のキャリアに 佐 野 隆 弥 おける重要な転換点もしくは結節点として考えることができるのではないかと 主張した．次に，その点について敷衍しておこう．先ず，論末に付した作品年 表を参照してもらいたい．1 このリストを検証すれば，Dekker のキャリアが大 体 3 つのステージで構成されていることが判明し，そのうち第 1 ステージか ら第 2 ステージへの移行は，時代区分で言えば王朝交替とおおむね対応して いると考えてよい． 第 1 ステージに当たる 1598-1602 年は Elizabeth I の治世下であるが，ジャ ンル面では市民劇からロマンスもの，歴史ものから諷刺劇にいたるまで，また 創作形態も共作を主体に単独作も数編手掛けながら，（特にこのステージの前 半においては）Henslowe の下で非常に活発な活動を展開していたことが理解 できる（仮にDekkerの創作数を 60 数編と見積もった場合，このステージだけ で 60％以上の制作数となる）．おそらく Dekker は，この時期，主に受注生産 体制的な創作状況にあり，興行需要に応答できる技術の向上を図っていたもの と考えられる． しかし，James I が即位する 1603 年あたりから， 従来の劇作に加えて， Dekker はパンフレット等散文作品と，新国王を迎えての戴冠余興など新機軸 を打ち出しているが，両者に共通するのはトピカリティへの関心であり，その ヴェクトルはSir Thomas Wyatt やThe Whore of Babylonなどの戯曲における宗 教政策へのコミットメントにも顕著に露見している．
    [Show full text]