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Counterpoint: Its Use in Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist"

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Counterpoint: Its Use in Ben Jonson's COUNTERPOINT: ITS USE IN BEN JONSON'S "THE ALCHEMIST" by GARY NORED, B.A. A THESIS^ IN ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Approved December, 1970 FOREWORD The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a new viewpoint, the structural techniques Ben Jonson employed in creating his comedy, and to illustrate, in brief, the universality of their applications to all the arts in Renaissance England. This new viewpoint will be obtained from the application of musical analytical tools to the material of literary scholarship, and it is hoped that a more cogent rationale may be obtained, through these means, of Jonson's structural techniques. A great deal of material has been written that concerns itself with the structure of the various comedies of Ben Jonson, and with good justification. One need merely glance at the "Discoveries" to see hov7 Jonson was occupied with ideas of structure, form and content, stylistic appro­ priateness, virtuous intent, and decorum. Moreover, although many penetrating analyses of these matters exist, none is yet completely satisfactory. With this information in mind, it seems not inappropriate to insist that the need for addi­ tional studies of the subject remains. This paper, while not pretending to present any ultimate analysis of Jonsonian structure, does undertake to offer fresh alternatives to the presently existing scholarship. iii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEI^NTS 11 FOREWORD iii Chapter I. THE BACKGROUND 1 II. "EPICOENE" AS MONOPHONY 13 III. COUNTERPOINT DEFINED 2 4 IV. "THE ALCHEMIST" AS COUNTERPOINT 30 V. CONCLUSIONS 4 7 NOTES CHAPTER I 52 CHAPTER II 54 CHAPTER III 55 CHAPTER IV 56 LIST OF WORKS CITED 59 APPENDIX 62 IV CHAPTER I THE BACKGROUND Ben Jonson, the man to whom "to bee able to convert the substance, or Riches of an other Poet, to his owne use," was a great virtue, felt little disinclination to convert the substance of Roman comic plot, structure, and character to the new environment of his com.edy. To read through Jonson's plays is to see a kaleidescope of comic schemes, situations, and characters mirrored from the classical past with as much fidelity as the Renaissance single perspective would permit. Jonson's borrowing power seems at times unlimited. The list of his "thefts" covers the complete gamut of classical comedy. Jonson borrowed indulgent fathers, overly strict fathers, ridiculous lovers, young suitors, scheming servants, parasites, gallants, gulls, braggart soldiers, pedants, rus­ tics and even some classical ideas of women from the Greek and Roman stages. He borrowed, too, from classical plots and situations as well as from classical criticism. Structurally, he modeled his comedies after the then-believed-to-be clas­ sical five acts plan, and seemed to display little or no influences from the French fabliaux. He was said to have practiced a "learned plagiary of all the others; you track him everywhere in their snow: if Horace, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, Seneca, and Juvenal, had their own from him, there 2 are few serious thoughts which are new in him." Jonson's devotion to the ancients and the general level of his scholarly achievement were truly amazing, but more amazing still was his ability to borrow from the past and convert his borrowings into usable material for the pres­ ent. In the essay "Of Dramatic Poesy" Dryden wrote that Jonson "was deeply conversant in the Ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them: there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline.' But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a mon­ arch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we 3 had seen less of it than in him." But Jonson did not merely plagiarize from the past. The resemblance of his new works to the originals from which they were taken lies primarily in the spirit in which they evolved, not in the minute details of their construction. Jonson was, of course, concerned with the details of literary construction, but I feel confident in saying that he surely never engaged in a serious argument concerning the exact moments of the day that Aristotle might have had in mind when he discussed the unity of time in the drama. Rather, Jonson was concerned that too vast an action not oppress the eyes and exceed the memory, or that too little scarce admit either. Although he held a high reverence for classical works and ideals, Jonson did not slavishly devote himself to the classical forms of comedy handed down to him, but rather deviated from these forms as his art demanded, and as he felt such deviations were consistent with good taste, classical ideals, and his own moral and didactic purposes. Jonson realized that the mere translation of classical comedy, and the presentation thereof (timely reverence for the ancients not withstanding) could not assure the success of the work. The threads of that comedy came from the tapestry of Greek experience, v/ere open to the enjoyment and analysis of the Romans, but had been irrevocably lost long before the cathe­ dral at Salisbury was ever contemplated. If Greek drama was to survive on the Elizabethan stage, assistance would have to be brought to bear. The assistance that was brought to Elizabethan comedy came in the guise of realism. Successful comedy of this sort almost invariably brought in elements of "hometown" England-- characterizations belonging strictly to the English: washer­ women, chimney sweeps, costardmongers. The characterizations were perhaps universal, but were drawn with an English pen and seasoned with an English flavor as distinctive as Mutton soup. The character types must have had dealings with almost every social strata visiting Cheapside theaters, and in the observation and recreation of these characters, Jonson has no parallel. His experiences had brought him into contact with almost every conceivable straca of society, from bricklayers to the king. The experiences, neatly transformed through the comic vision of a categorizing and vivacious mind, and injected into the materials he took from Rome, made his work unique and appealing. His observations led him to an interest in the "humors," and this interest ultimately led to the creation of the "comedy of humors." The humor play is unique, and this uniqueness has been observed by several scholars. P.V. Krieder concludes that "the comedy of humors is distinguished in part by its episodic structure. Around the singular character or char­ acters, the dramatist groups a number of either related or disjoined incidents, the purpose of which seems to be not the advancement of a continuous narrative, but the examination of 5 peculiarities under varied circumstances." Indeed, the comedy of humors attempts to demonstrate the activities of a man dominated by a single motivational passion, or humor. This was not the first, or the last time that such a dramatic experiment would be conducted, but it was one of the most effective. Medieval dramatists had utilized the technique to illustrate the fall of a man y dominated by a single passion, and the romantic dramatist attempted it some two hundred years later. It was not a particularly novel idea in Jonson's time, nor was it so when Wordsworth conceived the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads." Joanna Baillie wrote an entire series of plays illustrating each of the important passions, feeling that she was fulfill­ ing a role peculiarly belonging to tragedy. She states in the discourse introductory to the Plays on the Passions that the "task . belonging peculiarly to tragedy,—unveiling the human mind under the dominion of those strong and fixed passions, which, seemJngly unprovoked by outward circum­ stances, will from small beginnings brood within the breast, till all the better dispositions, all the fair gifts of nature, are born down before them,--her poets in general have entirely neglected." What Joanna Baillie failed to under­ stand, and what Jonson most certainly did understand (whether intuitively or otherwise), was that to write in such a manner, and to abstract one's characters in such a way, one robbed them of their complexity, and hence, their humanity. In 179 8 Wordsworth proclaimed that in his poetry the "feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and 7 situation, not the action and situation to the feeling." Herein the great weakness of most Romantic drama can be seen, and the great strength of Jonson's revealed. For in a world of abstracted characters, any motivation displayed must be singly explainable within the contents of the dominating passion; in Jonson's world, the situations yield their own minor motivations for action, and the drama assumes the role of displaying the guiding passions as they must of necessity cope with a world not so oriented. Thus, in Jonson's work we .see the constant interplay of humors and the world, in Baillie's, the constant obsession. In the comic struggle of Jonson's stage, characters react to contrived situations; situations "arranged" to illustrate the ludicrous hilarity of such humors. In placing his emphasis upon the action or comic situation rather than on the characters themselves, Jonson allows his characters to come into full conflict with the world and to display their humors at their best. Thus, despite Sir Morose's somewhat improbable (but funny never­ theless) distaste for noise (his own excepted), he is realis­ tic.
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