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Ben Jonson and the Mirror: Folly Knows No Gender
Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 6-2001 Ben Jonson and The Mirror: Folly Knows No Gender Sherry Broadwell Niewoonder Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the Classical Literature and Philology Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Niewoonder, Sherry Broadwell, "Ben Jonson and The Mirror: Folly Knows No Gender" (2001). Dissertations. 1382. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1382 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEN JONSON AND THE MIRROR: FOLLY KNOWS NO GENDER by Sherry Broadwell Niewoonder A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan June 2001 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BEN JONSON AND THE M IR R O R : FO LLY KNOWS NO GENDER Sherry Broadwell Niewoonder, Ph.D. Western Michigan University, 2001 Ben Jonson, Renaissance poet and playwright, has been the subject of renewed evaluation in recent scholarship, particularly new historicism and cultural materialism. The consensus among some current scholars is that Jonson overtly practices and advocates misogyny in his dramas. Such theorists suggest that Jonson both embodies and promulgates the anti woman rhetoric of his time, basing their position on contemporary cultural material, religious tracts, and the writings of King James I. -
Epicoene. for the Moment, I Want to Particularly Consider
DANGEROUS BOYS DANGEROUS BOYS AND CITY PLEASURES: SUBVERSIONS OF GENDER AND DESIRE IN THE BOY ACTOR'S THEATRE By ERIN JULIAN, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University © Copyright by Erin Julian, September 2010 MASTER OF ARTS (2010) McMaster University (English and Cultural Studies) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Dangerous Boys and City Pleasure: Subversions of Gender and Desire in the Boy Actor's Theatre AUTHOR: Erin Julian, B.A. (Brock University) SUPERVISOR: Dr H.M. Ostovich NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 143 ii ABSTRACT: This thesis draws on the works of Will Fisher, Lucy Munro, Michael Shapiro, and other critics who have written on the boy actor on the early modem English stage. Focussing on city comedies performed by children's companies, it argues that the boy actor functions as a kind of "third gender" that exceeds gender binaries, and interrogates power hierarchies built on those gender binaries (including marriage). The boy actor is neither man nor woman, and does not have the confining social responsibilities ofeither. This thesis argues that the boy's voice, his behaviours, and his epicene body are signifiers of his joyous and unconfined social position. Reading the boy actor as a metaphor for the city itself, it originally argues that the boy's innocence enables him to participate in the games, merriment, and general celebration of carnival, while his ability to slip fluidly between genders, ages, and other social roles enables him to participate in and embody the productively disruptive carnival, parodic, and "epicene" spaces of the city itself. -
Performing Relevance Revised
Performing Relevance/ Relevant Performances: Shakespeare, Jonson, Hitchcock To begin: two juxtapositions. The top half of the back page of The Times for 19 April 1945 features five photographs from the recently liberated concentration camps. In one an emaciated man dressed in a striped prison uniform looks up from among a charnel house of bodies and half-dead inmates; one shows a truck loaded with corpses; another, rows of unburied dead prisoners with, in the distance, some stretcher-bearers working at the grim task of their interment. The captions are characterised by a sort of restrained shock. Sentences describing the provenance of the pictures are capped with short, unemotional lines about the scenes pictured: ‘Some had been beaten to death’; ‘The bodies were all terribly emaciated’. These truncated descriptions enact the seeming impossibility of commentary or interpretation. The pictures are arrestingly incongruous in the busy, varied page design. A Beefeater in a bearskin advertises ‘honest-to- goodness tobacco’ in the bottom left hand corner, the crossword puzzle and bridge problem are in their usual places, the right hand column has theatre listings and other small ads. And underneath these images of human depravity is a review of the Haymarket’s new production of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. No mention is made, clearly, of the context in which the production or the review appears. There are no allusions to the contemporary, although the reviewer admits that the play cannot ‘discard its thwarting modernity’. What is striking, though, is the echo in the review of the images above it. Noting as a measure of the production’s success ‘that we do not smile at the heap of corpses on which the curtain falls’, the review suggests that the play’s depiction of ‘tortures’ – presumably the death of the Duchess, or 1 the depiction of the waxwork models of her husband and children – ‘are perhaps more decorative than horrible. -
Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News
The Media Players: Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News Stephen Wittek Department of English McGill University, Montreal June 2013 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Stephen Wittek 2013 ii Abstract I argue that the early modern theatre made a significant contribution to the development of a new, more complex, idea of news that began to take root in the early seventeenth century. Unlike other means of representing current events, theatrical discourse did not present itself as true—it depended for effect on a knowing disengagement from reality, an implicit awareness that Burbage was not really Richard III and the Globe theatre was not really Bosworth Field. Compounding this formal barrier to reality, dramatists of the period typically approached topical concerns from an oblique angle, or from behind the guise of a sophisticated conceit, thus making the connection to news a matter of imaginative interpretation, or play. Paradoxically, however, such techniques did not fence the theatre off from news culture but in fact made it a unique space where formative thinking about the news could flourish, a space where the concept of news could become manifest from an elucidating distance and could accrue value in an emotionally and intellectually resonant register. Chapter One offers a parallel history of theatre and news and then moves to a discussion of how both forms contributed to a shift in early modern publicity. In the three chapters that follow, this historical and theoretical framework is applied to readings of The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare), A Game at Chess (Middleton), and The Staple of News (Jonson). -
Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Invention of the Author
11 Donaldson 1573 11/10/07 15:05 Page 319 SHAKESPEARE LECTURE Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Invention of the Author IAN DONALDSON Fellow of the Academy THE LIVES AND CAREERS OF SHAKESPEARE and Ben Jonson, the two supreme writers of early modern England, were intricately and curiously interwoven. Eight years Shakespeare’s junior, Jonson emerged in the late 1590s as a writer of remarkable gifts, and Shakespeare’s greatest theatri- cal rival since the death of Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare played a leading role in the comedy that first brought Jonson to public promi- nence, Every Man In His Humour, having earlier decisively intervened— so his eighteenth-century editor, Nicholas Rowe, relates—to ensure that the play was performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who had ini- tially rejected the manuscript.1 Shakespeare’s name appears alongside that of Richard Burbage in the list of ‘principal tragedians’ from the same company who performed in Jonson’s Sejanus in 1603, and it has been con- jectured that he and Jonson may even have written this play together.2 During the years of their maturity, the two men continued to observe Read at the Academy 25 April 2006. 1 The Works of Mr William Shakespeare, ed. Nicholas Rowe, 6 vols. (London, printed for Jacob Tonson, 1709), I, pp. xii–xiii. On the reliability of Rowe’s testimony, see Samuel Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives (Oxford, 1970), pp. 19–35. 2 The list is appended to the folio text of the play, published in 1616. For the suggestion that Shakespeare worked with Jonson on the composition of Sejanus, see Anne Barton, Ben Jonson: Dramatist (Cambridge, 1984), pp. -
Book Review: Ben Jonson. Every Man out of His Humour. Ed Helen
118 Book Reviews characterize these accounts. Where Dawson reads Henry V, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet to make his case, Yachnin offers up The Staple of News, A Game at Chess, and All’s Well That Ends Well. Ironically, it is in this chapter that the two critics’ views seem most compatible. Both agree that the playhouses took special interest in representations of representation. For Yachnin, that process looks forward to the newspaper and scandal sheet; for Dawson, it looks backward to the cultural cohesion of rituals in catholic England. What’s refreshing about this wonderful book is its intellectual seriousness. Both authors are aware that positions, as well as ideas, have consequences. So while it is possible to finish this study and grant to both authors their respective points, it is unlikely that a serious reader will feel comfortable saying (merely) that the heterogeneous audiences of early modern London probably featured some Dawson-like playgoers and some Yachnin-like ones. Although such may be true, it is not enough. The stakes, as Dawson and Yachnin realize, are higher than easy rhetorical compromise admits. Well written and cogently argued, The Culture of Playgoing is one of the most exciting books on its topic in recent years. It deserves a wide audience, and Cambridge University Press would do the field (and itself) a favor by reissuing it immediately in paperback form. Anyone interested in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and in the history of performance, will find its arguments stimulating. Douglas Bruster Ben Jonson. Every Man Out of His Humour. -
Some Antecedents of the Puppet Play in Bartholomew Fair
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi) Studies in English Volume 7 Article 7 1966 Some Antecedents of the Puppet Play in Bartholomew Fair James E. Savage University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/ms_studies_eng Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Savage, James E. (1966) "Some Antecedents of the Puppet Play in Bartholomew Fair," Studies in English: Vol. 7 , Article 7. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/ms_studies_eng/vol7/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in English by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Savage: Some Antecedents of the Puppet Play in Bartholomew Fair SOME ANTECEDENTS OF THE PUPPET PLAY IN BARTHOLOMEW FAIR by James E. Savage The literary antecedents of the Puppet Play in Jonson’s Bar tholomew Fair have been generally listed as two: The Marlowe/ Chapman Hero and Leander, and the Edwards play, Damon and Pythias.1 It is my wish to add a third item to this list, the Lenten Stuffe of Thomas Nashe, for it is here that Jonson might have found in juxtaposition the stories of the Hero and Leander and King Dionysius, who is associated with Damon and Pythias in Jonson’s play. The question of this juxtaposition is of importance since what Jonson has produced in the Puppet Play is a new action carried on jointly by the four characters Hero, Leander, Damon, and Pythias, rather than a recapitulation of the action found in either of the sources. -
Censorship in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair and a Tale of a Tub
ABSTRACT “A man may have wit, and yet put off his hat” Censorship in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair and A Tale of a Tub Joshua J. Crain, M.A. Thesis Chairperson: Maurice A. Hunt, Ph.D. Ben Jonson’s career gives us an interesting window into English Renaissance censorship, since a number of his plays were scrutinized, altered, or suppressed by the authorities. In response to the critical consensus that Jonson’s negative view of censorship was mollified over time, this study looks at two comparatively later plays, Bartholomew Fair and A Tale of a Tub, for evidence of Jonson’s continued and even growing antipathy toward censorship. In particular, this study examines the Jonsonian trope of pretended obsequiousness as a pattern for understanding Jonson’s own behavior toward censorious authority. For instance, given the spirited defense of free speech in Bartholomew Fair, we have reason to doubt the sincerity of the Epilogue’s claim to submit to James’s censorship. Likewise, A Tale of a Tub, in both its composition history and thematic treatment of censorship, illustrates Jonson’s antagonistic attitudes toward court involvement in artistic production. "A man may have wit, and yet put off his hat" Censorship in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair and A Tale of a Tub by Joshua J. Crain, B.A. A Thesis Approved by the Department of English Dianna M. Vitanza, Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Approved by the Thesis Committee Maurice A. -
The Play of Metatheatre in Jonson's Comedies
Self-Reflexivity through Self-Reflectivity: The Play of Metatheatre in Jonson’s Comedies Bhargav Rani independent research scholar, Banaras, India Abstract Metatheatricality, or self-reflexivity, refers to the practice of exposing theatre as the subterfuge that it is, in all its insincerities and falsities. Although recognized as a popular theatrical paradigm only in the mid-twentieth century, practices of a distinctly self- reflexive nature percolated the works of a number of dramatists and poets since the early Elizabethan period. This paper attempts to explore the play of such metatheatrical devices in the works of one such Elizabethan poet, Ben Jonson, who showed unparalleled propinquity to this practice of disillusionment among his contemporaries. I shall adopt three of his comedies, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, and The Magnetic Lady, for study and analysis in this paper and attempt to plot the nature of the dramatist-spectator relationship in the Elizabethan period, and delineate the poetics of lying that are integral to the play of metatheatricality. [Keywords: Metatheatricality, self-reflexivity, Jonson, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, The Magnetic Lady] Metatheatre: Disrupting the Chimera of Reality One did not need Tom Stoppard to write Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a metatheatrical work subverting its antecedent Hamlet to an embedded, auxiliary plot, a play-within-a-play, to throw light on the abounding self-reflexivity of its parent play. Nor did one need a Pirandello orchestrating the search of an author who could construct a plot to contain six already theatricalised characters, to comprehend the modulations of metatheatre. Although unrecognized as a theatrical concept at that time, inflections of a distinctly self-reflexive nature surfaced undeterred in the works of playwrights as early as the Elizabethan period. -
The Formal Choruses in the Comedies of Ben Jonson
Studies in English Volume 11 Article 4 1971 The Formal Choruses in the Comedies of Ben Jonson James E. Savage University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/ms_studies_eng Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Savage, James E. (1971) "The Formal Choruses in the Comedies of Ben Jonson," Studies in English: Vol. 11 , Article 4. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/ms_studies_eng/vol11/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in English by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Savage: The Formal Choruses in the Comedies of Ben Jonson THE FORMAL CHORUSES IN THE COMEDIES OF BEN JONSON by James E. Savage Though the cast of characters through which Ben Jonson achieves his massive satirical commentary is large, it divides itself in reality into a few recurring types. Frequently a single figure, larger than life, makes for the author comic assessments and assigns comic fates, whether reformation or cutting-off is proposed. Such figures, looking remarkably like Jonson himself, are Horace of The Poetaster and Peniboy Cantor of The Staple of News.1 On other occasions, wits, of the Wellbred or Truewit type, wind up the victims to the revelation of their follies, and give the comic coup de grace. A third group, whom Satan of The Devil is An Ass designates as members “of our tribe of brokers,” provides the bait at which the greedy nibble, whether they be hypocrites or fools. -
Book Review: Richard Harp and Stanley Steward (Eds). The
102 Book Reviews reception theories. White is an interesting choice for author of this particular essay because he is at odds with much of what the primary perspective of the volume represents. He writes, of a broadly defined materialist criticism, that while it ‘opens up new interpretation ...itisfair to say that it risks losing some of the strengths of earlier modes like new criticism, which focused attention on textual details, and formalism, which illuminates dramatic structure in ways that explain theatrical effect’ (290). Although his essay could hardly be called dissenting, it does remind us how much might be lost in the name of theory. Any book that offers itself as a work of reference should have reasonably up-to-date bibliographies. Each essay here is followed by its own reading list, but they vary widely in quality and comprehensiveness. Honigmann’s contains only four titles, two of them published in the 1930s. Mowat’s contains 21, almost all of them published after 1986. The volume aims to make up for this inconsistency with Dieter Mehl’s valuable survey ‘Shakespeare reference books’. This is an updating of his contribution to the 1986 volume, in which under a variety of subheadings he identifies the best or most useful reference tools, including a number of Internet sites. There is one interesting omission. In his 1986 survey Mehl included in the category ‘handbooks’ the 1971 Companion edited by Muir and Schoenbaum. It is gone from his updated survey and is not replaced by the 1986 volume. The implicit though surely unintended suggestion that the new Companion has displaced its predecessor should, I think, be ignored. -
Ben Jonson's Eloquent Nonsense
Early Theatre 17-2 (2014), 95–117 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12745/et.17.2.1211 Hristomir A. Stanev Ben Jonson’s Eloquent Nonsense: The Noisy Ordeals of Heard Meanings on the Jacobean Stage (1609–14) Ben Jonson’s avid staging of noise, aural loss, and inadequate heard meanings in Epicene (1609) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) transforms the plays into peculiar venues for studying and negotiating early modern histories and theories of auditory reception. The ordeals of hearing in each play further betray deeper concerns with the increasingly alienating nature of voiced forms of communication in Jonson’s overpopulated urban setting. This study uncovers local histories of aural failure which indicate that the plays were meant to be heard and in so doing question the very nature of hearing both in the crowded playhouses and within the extended topographic perimeter of Jacobean London. An enthusiastic lover of learning, erudition, and the humanist ideal of imi- tating the classics, Ben Jonson is surpassed only by John Milton as the most learned of all early modern poets.1 Jonson’s scholarly preoccupations culmin- ate in Timber, or Discoveries, an elaborate commonplace book first published posthumously in 1640.2 In this work Jonson lays down diverse observations on the manners, morals, education, and language of his contemporaries. In the last third of Timber the author argues that effective locution reflects the very essence of humanity: ‘language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee … No glass renders a man’s form, or likeness, so true