The Blotted Line

Could it be a dead British dramatist?

Your not-so-humble protagonist has been the recipient of a fair bit of metaphorical applause of late. By which I mean one or two folks* have complimented me on my archiving. I do note, however, that my readership has nearly doubled in the last two days, and while I’m sure Gaurav deserves some of the credit for this with his recent “Operation Promote Erin’s Archive in the Guise of Mockery and/or Complaint” (OPEAGOMOC)[i], I think this phenomenon is mostly due to my somewhat spectacular wit [ii].

But I hear some grumbling in the background.

It’s coming from a man named Ben.

You see, I advertise this archive as “The only non-material archive starring an English undergraduate, a potted plant, and a dead British dramatist.” Well, you’ve met me and you’ve met Bartholomew,[iii] but I feel somehow like I haven’t given Ben the proper introductions. Without further ado, then, I give you

Poet, Critic, Dead British Dramatist: Ben.

I first met Ben when I was 16 and in high school. I met him through a theatrical friend of mine, by the name of Will. We were discussing the titles of Will’s tragedies: Will is a decent playwright, but as I’ve told him countless times, if you always name your tragedies after the person who’s going to die, well, you tend to give the plot away.

I had brought a folio of his works along, just to prove my point: “King Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet…are you seeing the trend, Will?” I turned more pages.

It was then I stumbled upon a poem I had not noticed prior to this: “To the Memory of Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us” [iv]. This was just about the snidest poem of praise I’d ever encountered, and Jonson barely attempts to hide that he’s using the occasion to present his own ideal poetics.* I mean, it takes him 15 lines to even get around to the subject of Shakespeare. Too, look at the following lines:

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence, to honour thee… (31-32)

Does it surprise you that Jonson himself was an infamous translator of Greek and Latin poetry? Or that he footnoted every source for his two Roman plays, Sejanus and Cataline?[v] This is an act of arrogant pompousity for two reasons. First, plagerism didn’t exist in the early modern period*. Everyone stole from everyone else; footnoting your sources was the mark of pedantry.* Second, plays in the English Renaissance were kind of like the mass-market paperbacks of today: entertaining, but you wouldn’t consider them art — especially once they’re in print, as at this point they’ve lost their novelty and marketable value on stage; Jonson footnoting his plays suggests he considers them “literature.”

Arrogant, pompous, cantankerous, narcissistic. He’s also a good poet, as I hope you’ll come to learn.

I started reading Jonson’s poetry (in a lazy and piecemeal sort of way) in high school. Then, in Martin’s second-year Shakespeare course, I decided to write my comparative paper on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Jonson’s The Alchemist. [vi] By the end of the assignment, I was fairly good friends with Ben, and so decided to write my 4P99 paper on him.

You’ve probably heard a lot of grumbling/excited chatter [vii] about this paper in the last year-point-five, but maybe you’d like to know what it is, exactly (maybe you wouldn’t; in which case, you can skip the rest of this post and look at this exciting link instead:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/263.shtml).

The assignment is essentially an undergrad thesis, 60-80 pages, and a requirement of the Liberal Studies program at Brock. I get a year (plus a summer extension!) to work on the paper. I’ll have a one-hour defense at the end of August.

Last year, then, was spent reading around the time period: reading Jonson’s work and the work of his contemporaries, reading early modern and contemporary criticism of Jonson’s work. Most of the recent criticism about Jonson is on four plays from the middle of his career: Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, and Barthol(o)mew Fair. These are usually considered his “best” plays, which is a bit of a shame because it means his other works are neglected. Admittedly, one or two of his earlier works would be a bit stagnant on stage, but are engaging when read. His later works show the dramatist reflecting on his entire career, as well as responding to generic conventions like the festive and city comedy, and to early modern theories of theatre, metatheatre, and gender theory.

This last is critical for my work.[viii] You see, Jonson’s “best” play[ix], Epicoene, takes as its subject a female character. This was an unusual turn of events: in all of Jonson’s works prior to 1609 women were somewhat incidental to the plot.

To give the plot away (though if you know what an “epicene”* is, it’s already spoiled), it turns out that Epicoene isn’t a woman at all, but a boy in disguise. This causes much hilarity and confusion, as one of the characters has married Epicoene somewhere along the way. Aside from this hilarity, Epicoene marks an important moment in Ben’s career; women start conniving their way into his works after this point, with his “late” plays (written during the reign of King Charles I) demonstrating the dramatist’s obsession with the problem of women in society and on the stage.

Except that because of the prohibition of female actors in the English renaissance, there are no women on Jonson’s stage. Intriguing?

I thought so. Here’s what I proposed:

This project will examine Jonson’s use of the body on stage in his late plays, in particular the female body. Through an examination of the development of Jonson’s dramatic strategies (his use of allegory, meta-drama, or poetic theory) it will examine what it means to be a “female” body in an overtly masculine period where women were marginalised socially and economically. Using the figure of the transvestite body on Jonson’s stage, it will discuss what Jonson’s late drama suggests about the performative nature of gender in general. It will further examine the gendering of practices of consumption within and without the play world.

I thought this was promising a lot, at the time, but now that the “project” has progressed*, I’m pleased to note that I actually am discussing all these things!

Updates to follow.

End Notes:

[i] I know, the acronym’s terrible. I’d like to see you make a better suggestion.

[ii] I’m also charming.

[iii] As I’m living and not a plant, I hope you can tell the difference between us.

[iv] At this point, you should realise that William is dead and I’m not actually talking to him. It sounded a lot more interesting than “I was leafing through Shakespeare’s plays looking for material to write a speech on Hamlet for the regional public speaking comps.” Don’t judge me.

You can read the entire poem at http://www.bartleby.com/40/163.html or, pick up any folio of Shakespeare’s works — this poem is included in almost every edition. Usually you’ll find the “not of an age, but all time!” (43) line on the back of the dust jacket too. Most frequently, when referring to Jonson’s poetry, I’ll be using Stephen Orgel’s edition of Jonson’s Complete Poems. (London: Penguin, 1996) Orgel is also a well-known Jonson critic, and a major “player” in my thesis: I’m responding to his criticism of crossdressing in Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) as well as his work on Jonson’s masques.

[v] Sejanus good. Cataline terrible. Seriously, who footnotes these days?

[vi] For those of you desperate to know, I never actually wrote on either of these plays. Discussing my topic with the Martin, we got a bit sidetracked and started talking about allegory. With brilliant lack of foresight, I said something along the lines of “hey, can I write on that?” (I was eloquent in those days.) Turns out, The Alchemist and Midsummer Night’s Dream wasn’t the greatest pairing for a discussion of allegory, so I ended up reading three more Jonson plays, and, ultimately, wrote a paper on Measure for Measure and Jonson’s The Devil Is an Ass.

[vii] Depending on what kind of day it is.

[viii] Technically, it’s all “critical.” Hahahahahahahaha. What? That’s funny.

[ix] Ever since Dryden said so back in 1668, and the most “Shakespearian”. Get used to saying it with me: “poor Ben”

12 April 2008 ~ St. Catharines

Glossary of Terms:

Early modern period. n. Period from the 1500s to the 1700s, also known as the “English Renaissance” (to distinguish it from the Italian Renaissance a century or so earlier). Characterized by renewal of classical literature and Christian humanism (a lot of Anglicans read Plato and discussed how smart they were).

Epicene.n (obs.). An androgyne.

Folks. n.pl. People I know, mainly Jenn. Not Kari, she just makes irrational demands.

Pedantry.n. Concerned with minutiae with which no one else bothers. Generally, pedants are annoying and you should turn your back on them at parties. Unless it’s me.

Poetics. n. One’s theory of poetry: what it should accomplish, what it should look like, what it should avoid.

Progressed. v.(pft. and plpft.) To have moved forward or developed. A relative term. For example, “Erin thought her project had progressed, but her thesis supervisor was growing nervous. Probably. Well, if he was he was kindly not saying anything.”