Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama

This page intentionally left blank

THEATRICAL CONVENTION AND AUDIENCE RESPONSE IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA This book gives a detailed and comprehensive survey of the diverse, theatrically vital formal conventions of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Besides providing new readings of plays such as Hamlet, Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus, it also places Shakespeare emphatically within his own theatrical context, insisting on his identity as just one of many working playwrights, and focusing on the relationship between the extremely demanding repertory system of the time and the conventions and content of the plays. Lopez argues that the limitations of the relatively bare stage and non-naturalistic mode of early modern theatre would have made the potential for failure very great, and he proposes that understanding this potential for failure – the way playwrights anticipated it and audiences responded to it – is crucial for understanding the way in which the drama succeeded on stage. The book offers new perspectives on familiar conventions such as the pun, the aside, and the expository speech; and it works toward a definition of early modern theatrical genres based on the relationship between these well-known conventions and the incoherent experience of early modern theatrical narratives.            is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the College of William and Mary, Virginia. He is the author of “An Annotated Bibliography of Textual Scholarship in Elizabethan Drama, –,” Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama,  ().

THEATRICAL CONVENTION AND AUDIENCE RESPONSE IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA JEREMY LOPEZ College of William and Mary

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521820066 © Jeremy Lopez 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2002 - isbn-13 978-0-511-07387-8 eBook (EBL) - isbn-10 0-511-07387-9 eBook (EBL) - isbn-13 978-0-521-82006-6 hardback - isbn-10 0-521-82006-5 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For my parents

Contents

Acknowledgments

page viii 

Introduction   .

“As it was acted to great applause”: Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences and the physicality of response



. Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



. Managing the aside



. Exposition, redundancy, action



. Disorder and convention



  Introduction to Part 



. Drama of disappointment: character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



. Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



. Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



Plays and editions cited Works cited Index

   vii

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful for the attentive readings and criticism given this book and parts of this book in its earliest and most recent forms by: Mary Bly, Stephen Booth, Walter Cohen, Genevieve Love, Scott McMillin, Neil Saccamano, and Gordon Teskey. I am also grateful to Sarah Stanton and the two anonymous readers at Cambridge University Press for their encouraging and judicious comments. And finally, I would like to thank the many teachers, actors, and students with whom I have worked in the past several years, and who have helped me discover the extraordinary vitality of early modern drama.

viii

Introduction

Fowler you know was appointed for the conquering parts, and it being given out that he was to play the Part of a great Captain and mighty Warriour, drew much Company; the Play began, and ended with his Valour; but at the end of the Fourth Act he laid so heavily about him, that some Mutes who stood for Souldiers, fell down as they were dead e’re he had toucht their trembling Targets; so he brandisht his Sword & made his Exit ne’re minding to bring off his dead men; which they perceiving, crauld into the Tyreing house, at which, Fowler grew angry, and told ’em, Dogs you should have laine there till you had been fetcht off; and so they crauled out again, which gave the People such an occasion of Laughter, they cry’d that again that again, that again.

It is commonplace to extol the virtues of the relatively bare stage and non-naturalistic mode of the early modern theatre. Robert Weimann sees in the popular stage a “flexible platform dramaturgy” which was able to subsume a variety of theatrical modes in order to create “an astonishing variety and richness of language.” Andrew Gurr notes that the “conventions of continuous staging and unlocalized settings” in both public and private theatres allowed for an easy “interplay between illusion and reality.” Defining Jacobean private theatre as “mannerist,” Keith Sturgess does not argue for any significant difference in indoor and outdoor acting styles, but finds that the combination of indoor venue and 

 

This is from the  Knavery in all Trades (ascribed to John Tatham), quoted in Bentley’s Jacobean and Caroline Stage  (Oxford: Clarendon, ), pp. –. It is from a passage where several gentlemen reminisce about the plays of Prince Charles’s men at the Fortune Theatre and about actors such as, here, Richard Fowler. The plays of Prince Charles’s men are outside the scope of this study, and the status of this reminiscence is of course somewhat doubtful, but the passage is vividly suggestive in terms of the questions of convention, theatrical efficacy, and theatrical failure that I will be taking up and which I think are pertinent to all Renaissance drama. Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), p. . The Shakespearean Stage – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . See also Una Ellis-Fermor, The Jacobean Drama (London: Methuen, ), pp. –.





Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

stylized acting produced, in plays such as The Duchess of Malfi, “a species of melodrama which mixes farce and sentiment in a challenging way.” The transparent dramaturgy typical of adult companies was given another layer in the private, indoor theatres of the boy companies, where adult roles were acted by young boys. Michael Shapiro’s analysis of this is fairly typical: boy companies played on the audience’s “dual consciousness” of reality and illusion. “In tragedies . . . the use of child actors afforded the spectator a detachment from material that threatened his own precarious social identity. The comedies . . . are studded with various devices intended to remind the audiences of the actors behind the characters.” This book will not take issue with these estimations of the flexibility of the early modern stage and the dual consciousness of early modern audiences; indeed, it may at times seem to take them too much to heart, insisting as it does not only that Elizabethan and Jacobean drama was extremely self-conscious, but that it demanded an equal self-consciousness from its audience as well. Where my discussion will differ from others of its kind is in its insistence that the potential for failure of many of the theatrical devices indigenous to or inherent in early modern drama is an essential part of understanding their potential success. That is, to say that Elizabethan and Jacobean playgoers knew only a non-naturalistic mode of drama and were thus content with fragile illusions is not enough. Ideas about realism or naturalism would certainly have been significantly different from our own, but my goal is to demonstrate that the drama and its audience were very much aware of the limitations of the early modern stage, and that the potential for dramatic representation to be ridiculous or inefficient or incompetent was a constant and vital part of audiences’ experience of the plays. External evidence of the potential problems (and pleasures) with a practical and ubiquitous convention such as taking dead characters off-stage, which we see in the epigraph above, is unfortunately quite rare, but the evidence of such problems throughout the drama is I think visible in the plays themselves. The project of   

Jacobean Private Theatre (London: Routledge, ), p. . Children of the Revels (New York: Columbia University Press, ), pp. –. Sidney’s famous objection to the violation of the unities is perhaps another piece of external evidence of the potential strain on probability present in the drama throughout the period (see Sidney, A Defence of Poetry, ed. J. A. Van Dorsten [Oxford: Oxford University Press, ]), pp. –. In The Jacobean Drama, Ellis-Fermor notes that the “raggedness . . . to which repertory playing is liable” must have “beset the Elizabethans” ( p. ), but suggests that there was nevertheless a “flow of sympathy from auditorium to the stage and back again [which raised] the standard of acting” ( p. ). One of the best explorations of difficult, potentially awkward habits of staging and stage effects within the plays themselves is George Fullmer Reynolds’s The Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theater (New York: Modern Language Association, ).

Introduction



this book will be to examine this evidence, to consider the relationship between theatrical performance and failure, and to reconsider modern scholarship’s relationship to the wealth of popular, now-obscure drama that constitutes the vast majority of extant Elizabethan and Jacobean play-texts. In undertaking this project I endeavor to consider Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as broadly as possible and in doing so to provide an essential larger theatrical context within which to think about the works of Shakespeare. Early modern tragedy, Jonathan Dollimore says in Radical Tragedy, “violates the cherished aesthetic principles which legislate that the ultimate aim of art is to order discordant elements; to explore conflict in order ultimately to resolve it; to explore suffering in order ultimately to transcend it” (p. , emphasis original). This is a view to which this book will vehemently subscribe, with respect to comedy as well as tragedy. In my discussions of failure and potential failure, however, I will also assume that early modern drama’s most vital effects come from the fact that it attempts to cling to these “cherished aesthetic principles” even as it flagrantly violates them. The value and effectiveness of the violation can be measured only in relation to the drive for coherence. A brief example will serve to illustrate this point. Beaumont and Fletcher’s early comedy The Woman Hater is a play that concerns a misogynist (Gondarino), the woman he hates (Oriana), the Duke who loves her, two spies, two prostitutes, two officious advisors to the Duke, a pander, a mercer, and a “hungry courtier” character desperate to partake of an exotic fish’s head that is to be served at the Duke’s table. By the end of the play, which acts simultaneously like a humors comedy and a city comedy, Gondarino has been punished by being tied to a chair and teased by women; the Duke has “tested” Oriana’s chastity (Gondarino accuses her of being a whore) by asking one of his advisors to pretend to try to rape her; and the hungry courtier, after being arrested for and then exonerated of treason (the play is partially a satire of post-Gunpowder Plot London), has given up his desire for the fish-head after being married to a prostitute. The way in which the play’s multiple plots and its various pairings jostle against one another and complexly resonate with the play’s title, with its overarching themes, and with its theatrical and political context creates a kind of potential interpretive cacophony that is exemplary of everything literary criticism has tended to find incoherent, silly, or obscene about early modern drama. At the same time, the extent to 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

which each part of the play resonates with every other part creates a surfeit of coherence, or potential coherence. Playwrights construct plays that contain and interconnect a dizzying number of levels, to the point that the fundamental components of those levels – plot and character – are in danger of collapsing under the sheer weight of potential significance. After an introductory chapter on audiences and audience response, I undertake a discussion of three well-noted conventions of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama whose functionality has generally been but cannot be, I think, entirely accounted for simply by pointing out that they are conventions. These are: obvious, often superfluous, largely sexual puns and wordplay; asides; and expository speeches. Like Alan Dessen in Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Early Modern Interpreters, I believe that “the key to understanding what is distinctive about [early modern] drama . . . lies in the anomalies, the surprises, the moments that make us aware of the full stretch of the dramaturgy,” and that the “consideration of obscure plays of questionable merit” on a serious and minute level will help us better understand “the terms upon which an Elizabethan audience at a performance of Hamlet or King Lear agreed to meet” (p. ). Where this study will differ from and, I hope, add to Dessen’s, is in its large-scale consideration not only of anomalous or surprising moments, but also of moments, habits, and conventions in the drama that are so pervasive that they all but demand to be taken for granted. My concern with such moments is with the way that, deliberately or not, they call attention to the artificial relationships between dramatist and performer, performer and role, stage and audience. The interpretations I offer of these moments, and of their potential effects and effectiveness, will be based on the assumption that repetition in the commercial theatre is a good index of theatrical success: for a device to become conventional it must be functional and give pleasure. But while the three pervasive conventions I focus on are functional in fairly obvious ways, they are frequently deployed or exploited in ways that would seem to fly in the face of functionality and pleasure. Form gets in the way of content. It is in such inefficient moments that the value and function of convention are most tested, and it is moments like these that most clearly reveal how audiences and playwrights think about dramatic action and their own relationship to it. The final chapter of Part  is a broader discussion of some other, less 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .

Introduction



frequently noted conventions and what they reveal about the relationship between convention and genre in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. In Part  I undertake a more extensive discussion of genre, and shift my focus from an audience’s experience of specific kinds of moments in the drama in general to its experience of plot and character in comedy and tragedy. In order to make an argument that is usefully specific as well as usefully general, I structure each chapter around close readings of three plays that span the period with which this study is concerned. In chapter , on tragedy, I discuss Soliman and Perseda, Marston’s Sophonisba, and Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy; in chapter , on comedy, I discuss Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Captain, (anon.), How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, and Lyly’s Gallathea. Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, I argue, are self-conscious about genre in the same way they are self-conscious about conventional verbal and theatrical devices: virtually every play in Renaissance drama announces its genre quite explicitly, and operates under the assumption that an audience is clear about what is expected of its response to any particular genre. But the phenomenon of experiencing an Elizabethan or Jacobean play as generically coherent involves another kind of self-consciousness as well: the audience is constantly put in the position of having to react to events that do not fit with the generic demands it expects to govern the play. We see this in Renaissance tragedy’s tendency to employ a variety of tragic modes simultaneously or in rapid succession, each of which demands both a visceral and a distanced response to events that are meant to horrify and move; and in Renaissance comedy’s thematization of laughter by means of ostentatiously introducing into its movement episodes that are not funny but are structurally presented as though they are. The incoherent response which these processes provoke results in a disjuncture between the audience’s experience of character and its experience of plot. This disjuncture is significantly different in tragedy and in comedy and is of crucial importance to defining the nature of each: in tragedy, the play’s presentation and an audience’s experience of character must change from one moment to the next in the face of the action’s absurdly logical movement toward catastrophe; in comedy, the movement toward resolution occurs improbably rather than logically, but the play’s presentation and an audience’s experience of character are almost always consistent, no matter how ridiculous the turn of events. In defining and describing audiences’ experience of plays, I repeatedly return in this book to notions of space, a term whose usage I should clarify from the outset. When I use the term “physical space,” I refer to the



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

actual stage, its physical features, and the physical and spatial relationships between characters and other characters, characters and props or set, and characters and the audience. When I use the term “theatrical space,” I refer to the metaphorical “space” which the physical space of the theatre allows to be created: a space collectively shared by the audience, wherein the physical space of the stage is transformed by representation and illusion; where words, characters, and events are understood metaphorically or figuratively even while the literal, physical features and limitations of the stage continue to make themselves known. Extending the spatial metaphor, I frequently refer to audiences or characters being inside or outside of the events happening on stage. The term “inside” refers to moments when audiences are aware, or when characters show an awareness of the physical space only insofar as it allows them to become more or less wholly invested in the significance of the theatrical space – referring repeatedly to a stage-column as a tree, for example. “Outside” refers to those moments when the artificiality of both kinds of spaces is self-consciously evident, to audience or characters or both – moments such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream ., the mechanicals’ rehearsal, where Quince refers to a “hawthorn brake” as the “tiring house,” and then sends Bottom into that “brake,” only to see him return a few moments later newly attired with the head of an ass. The difficult process of making a connection between extremely limiting physical space and extremely liberating theatrical space, and the energy that results when the process is successful, is I think the distinguishing characteristic of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The period this book covers is –, and it has been important to my project to take into account as many as possible of the extant plays produced in that period. Occasionally I may seem to pursue the discussion of obscure plays simply for the sake of doing so, and at the expense of more familiar examples from Shakespeare or other major playwrights. It is my hope that the nuisance of such moments is outweighed by the advantages of looking more broadly than we yet have at the minutiae of the lesser-known Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; to this end, we might begin to better contextualize, even reunderstand, the minutiae – such as that of Shakespeare – we have come to know so well. The prevailing orthodoxy at least since Alfred Harbage’s Shakespeare’s Audience  has been that one can better understand the plays of the English 

New York: Columbia University Press, .

Introduction



Renaissance if one better understands their audiences. In this book I want to suggest something different: that one can better understand the audiences of the English Renaissance if one better understands the plays they watched. That is, the plays contain within themselves most of the evidence needed to understand what audiences expected and enjoyed and experienced. In order to make a convincing case for this, one must look at a great many plays, and look at them quite closely. Thus in this book I will assume that plays that have been labeled as “minor,” and have been condemned to relative obscurity, have the same kind of linguistic and dramatic complexity as the works of Shakespeare, and are worth looking at as closely. One important goal of working from these assumptions will be to draw some conclusions both about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century audiences, and audiences in general, and to do so without the bias betrayed in audience studies with titles like Shakespeare’s Audience, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, The Privileged Playgoer in Shakespeare’s London, The Shakespearean Stage, and Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London. I do not claim to be discovering new masterpieces or building a new canon, nor even to be establishing a new tradition of audience study, but rather to be developing an approach to Renaissance drama that will give students of the drama a more accurate picture of the nature, variety, and scope of the drama than the massive Shakespeare text and criticism industry otherwise might. We know from their textual histories, their revivals, and the number of allusions to them that The Spanish Tragedy and Doctor Faustus and Hamlet were particularly popular; we know from the extraordinary number of editions it went through (sixteen between  and ) that Mucedorus was probably very popular; we know of the success of A Game at Chess; and we know that Sejanus was so unpopular as to be driven from the stage. The vivid idea we have of these plays’ reception is quite unusual; more commonly we have to rely on the sifting effects of time to decide what plays are worth considering as representative of the period’s drama. But given the massively disproportionate number of modern editions of Shakespeare to editions of virtually all other playwrights of the period, it is obviously not the case that only those plays that have stood the test of time are representative of the drama, or even the plays that Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences would have preferred. When one considers that, as we see in Henslowe’s Diary entries for , many new plays such as “the marchant of eamdon” or “Deoclesyan” were performed once and apparently never again; or that the five performances in July  of “bellendon” were extraordinary even for a new play (“bellendon” first



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

appears in June of that year), it is clear that the enduring popularity of, say, Tamburlaine was the exception rather than the rule, and that the greater part of a company’s commercial success came from its ability to constantly present audiences with something “never before seen.” The plays, and the conditions under which they were performed and seen have about them a sense of deliberate, exuberant haste – a sense of expendability simultaneously suggested by the nature of the repertory system and belied by the way in which playwrights constantly returned to, built on, parodied, or even simply stole one another’s plots, characters, and devices. Chapter  examines the nature of Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences and the responses they expected and were expected to have in the theatre. Here, I am not much interested in analyzing audience response by dividing audiences into ever smaller and more specific groups. Instead, I argue that the differences between different kinds of audience and different kinds of playgoers, as laid out in the audience study-tradition of Harbage, Cook, and Gurr, were very much differences of degree rather than kind: Elizabethan and Jacobean drama seems to be very sure of the response it wants from its audience as a whole at any given moment. The arguments formulated in chapter  inform all subsequent analysis, and are present in the term “audience” as it is used throughout: the audience I imagine in chapter  is the audience I imagine Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists to have imagined, and the audience for which the effects I describe would have been most effective. At the same time, however, one major project of this book is to demonstrate that non-Shakespearean drama can be taken more seriously than it has been on the modern stage as well as in the modern classroom, and to this end I often use terms like “the audience,” “an audience,” and “we” interchangeably and ahistorically. I rarely use the term “reader,” but this does not imply an absolute privileging of theatrical over readerly audiences – nor that my extremely minute close readings of theatrical language and action are valuable only when manifested as actual theatrical choices. As the work of critics such as Gary Taylor and Harry Berger, Jr. has shown, any good 

 

The Diary of Philip Henslowe, ed. R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). Even Tamburlaine’s power as a box office draw was limited in the long run. The novelty of an apparent revival on  August  produced very high box office receipts (£  s, compared to s for “Mahomet” the day before and s d for “bellendon” the day after), but the receipts and rate of performance after this become gradually more ordinary until May , after which the play only appears twice more (August and November) that year. Moment by Moment in Shakespeare (London: Macmillan, ). Imaginary Audition: Shakespeare on Stage and Page (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).

Introduction



interpretation or performance of a play must contain strong elements of readerly as well as theatrical analysis, and I try throughout to maintain a balance between them. My willingness to use the ahistorical “we” derives from what I hope my analysis shows to be an accurate estimation of the plays’ potential as theatrical and not simply historical objects. This “we” has given me rhetorical as well as analytical freedom, and will I hope do the same for others, to discuss the continuing theatrical viability and vitality of many long-forgotten texts.

 

 

“As it was acted to great applause”: Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences and the physicality of response

The purpose of this book is to explain how Elizabethan and Jacobean drama works: what it assumes of its audience and how its audience experiences it and responds to it. If this project is to be successful, a working notion must be developed of what is meant by the term “audience,” and in particular of that term as it applies to a group of playgoers for whom the plays under discussion can be imagined to have been written. That is the aim of this chapter. But the purpose of this book is also to invigorate analytical and theatrical discourse around a body of largely forgotten drama, and if that project is to be successful, the notion of “audience” must be expanded to include modern and even future audiences. The argument thus becomes more a phenomenological than a historical one. That must, for the most part, be the aim of the subsequent seven chapters. My own audience may wonder then why I begin with a historical approach only to seem to discard it. The reason is this: significant distinctions between a Renaissance audience and a modern audience are, like distinctions between different kinds of audience members in any audience, more frequently made than necessary. Modern audiences can understand and appreciate even the most bizarre conventions of Renaissance drama; this is attested to by the enduring popularity of, and the enduring willingness of directors to work with plays like The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Love’s Labors Lost. The work of the seven chapters that follow this one must be to show that these and the rest of Shakespeare’s plays are for the most part simply of a piece with the majority of extant Renaissance drama: if the phenomenology I argue for in those chapters is convincing, it will be because the claims it makes seem plausibly pertinent to hypothetical audiences of Shakespeare and his contemporaries at any time. For now I will make certain claims about Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, and these claims will absolutely pertain to the word “audience” as it is used throughout. But the claims I make about Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences should at no time be 



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

seen as exclusive of possible effects a modern audience might experience. It is essential to historicize audience response in order to be confident, as I wish to be, in making claims about what playwrights expected of dramatic action and their audiences; but it is then equally important to dehistoricize audience response in order to argue for the continuing vitality of a theatrical tradition. Most of my historical evidence in this chapter will be antitheatrical writings from between the years of  and . These writings, I suggest, represent the darker side of theatrical pleasure in the period, but the fact that they differ from protheatrical writings only in their estimation of the virtue of the tremendous hold plays could have over audiences, makes them a good index of the ways in which plays maintained this hold. In using anxiety about the theatre as a way of introducing a discussion of the pleasure of the theatre, I will lay the foundation for an ongoing discussion of the way in which plays rely on and manipulate audiences’ awareness of themselves and of dramatic artifice, and the potential for excess, self-indulgence, and failure, as well as for spectacular success that this entails. Twenty-eight purple lines into his Hecuba-speech in Hamlet, the Player is interrupted by Polonius: “This is too long” (.. ). The audience, having been taught that nothing Polonius says can be taken seriously, laughs. The simple interpretation of this laughter is that one laughs because one sees once again how Polonius is misguided in his judgment: the speech is not too long. It is notable that the audience has this kind of laugh at this point because it is prepared for quite the opposite reaction. Hamlet himself speaks the first part of the speech (lines –) and Polonius’s response, “’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion” (lines –), indicates either that the speech was bad but Polonius does not know any better, or that the speech was bad but Polonius is simply humoring Hamlet. An audience in –, immersed in the biting satire of the war of the theatres to which Hamlet and Rosencrantz allude in lines –, would probably have found Hamlet’s vivid recollection of an old play amusing more than anything else – and would have been prepared to think of it somewhat sardonically. That is, a remark like the one Polonius makes could only be made by a yes-man, since everyone would know that such plays were out of style. Further, Hamlet, who has shown himself to be “up-to-date” on matters theatrical 

In order to minimize edition-related footnotes, I have cited all editions of plays discussed in this study in the list of plays cited at the end.

“As it was acted to great applause”



in the way that his audience would be, might simply be playing another verbal game with Polonius or the Player or both, the irony of which will soon become apparent. This would have been the audience’s frame of mind as the Player himself began to speak. If Polonius’s interjection at line  is to have the proper effect, however, there would have to be a moment in the Player’s speech where the audience stopped thinking sardonically and, even if only because of the Player’s genuinely “good accent and good discretion,” began to take it seriously. At the same time, the sardonic tendency could not be squelched entirely, because audiences are wary of missing opportunities for irony. Thus Polonius’s line provides a moment where the audience can remember how it is supposed to feel about speeches like this. Hamlet’s own interruption of the speech just as it is about to get going again (“The mobled queen?” [line ]) provides similar breathing room and reintroduces the possibility that Hamlet is simply playing a mysterious game. But that Shakespeare was aware of the potential for this kind of speech actually to affect audiences seems clear from the fact that he gives the player fifteen more lines, at the end of which Polonius and Hamlet are actually in agreement.    Look where he has not turned his colour, and has tears in’s eyes. Prithee no more.    ’Tis well, I’ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. (lines –)

If Polonius and Hamlet are not genuinely moved, Hamlet’s later use of the players will not have much force. In this way Hamlet strikes a doubleedged blow in the war of the theatres, not only giving its audience the satire and railing it expects and enjoys (as at lines – or –), but also making that audience susceptible to, and thus proving the effectiveness of, a public theatre style that even public theatre audiences of  would have claimed to find silly. And still further, that same audience is given with line  an opportunity for irony that it can simultaneously take and pass up – Polonius’s line expresses what one would think one should feel but, since it is spoken by Polonius, ends up also expressing something worth disagreeing with. I want to suggest that the multileveled experience I have just described was among the chief pleasures Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences looked for in plays, and that Hamlet’s consistent and highly efficient presentation of such experience was what made that play among the most popular plays of its age. While I will not be discussing Hamlet very much



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

throughout this chapter, I feel that it is a useful point of departure for a discussion of what audiences value in plays because both contemporary accounts and the subsequent centuries of criticism give ample testimony to the play’s ability to “please all.” It is worth noting, however, and usually not noted, that when the author of Daiphantus, who is talking about what an Epistle to the Reader should be, said this about Hamlet, he went on to say that if his Epistle were like Prince Hamlet, “it were to be feared he would runne mad: In sooth I will not be moonsicke to please: nor out of my wits though I displeased all.” This conveys a certain anxiety about the potentially frantic nature of something that tries to or actually can “please all,” and this is an important point, which will become more relevant in later chapters where I discuss the plays’ potential for failure. The question of audience has become more and more fraught over the last one hundred years, and has resulted in the tradition of audience study we see most clearly in Alfred Harbage, Ann Jennalie Cook, and Andrew Gurr. This tradition has generally presented audience study and debate about audiences as a hard science. The four major works on audiences in the last sixty years – Harbage’s Shakespeare’s Audience and Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, Cook’s The Privileged Playgoer in Shakespeare’s London, and Gurr’s Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London are full of numbers, statistics, charts, measurements, and original documents, all combining to create an impressive, quite exact picture of the playhouse’s physical, social, and economic place in early modern England. There is much classification: of “popular” and “coterie” plays and audiences in Harbage; of “privileged” and “plebeian” plays and audiences in Cook; of “amphitheatres” and “halls,” “citizen” and “artisan” audiences, and even different kinds of “mental composition” in Gurr. All of this classification, used to provide a context within which to consider the drama, gives on the surface the impression of more rigidly segregated audiences and more easily dichotomized audience tastes than the evidence actually yields up. 

 

This phrase appears in the Epistle to the Reader of the  Daiphantus (ed. Alexander B. Grossart [ Manchester: Charles Simms, ]). For further discussion of Daiphantus and Hamlet see Josephine A. Roberts, “Daiphantus (): a Jacobean Perspective on Hamlet’s Madness,” Library Chronicle . (): –. Roberts notes that Daiphantus demonstrates the way in which “echoes of Hamlet’s role could be combined in a skillful burlesque of the stock literary convention of the tormented lover” – an idea that will be important to consider alongside the arguments I will make in the final chapter of this book.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, . New York: Macmillan, . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .

“As it was acted to great applause”



Harbage can in some ways be seen as responsible for this: his separation of popular and coterie plays combined with his valorization of the “Shakespearean” audience as “an audience of the many” inspired the desire to break down the idea of a sentimentalized “popular” audience and to set up new, more accurate categories than “popular” and “coterie.” Anne Jennalie Cook supplied the categories of “privileged” and “plebeian.” Gurr, taking exception to these, reestablished a broad category of “playgoers,” and then attempted to break that category into the smallest pieces possible, searching for truth in a mosaic rather than a panoramic picture. Audience study begets audience study, and the search for new, more accurate categories is as seductive as the search for a common humanity in a diverse audience – and not always more useful, as we see in Gurr’s highly detailed but frequently redundant The Shakespearean Stage, –. The encyclopedic impulse obscures the importance of the idea of a playgoing public which is at the heart of even the later audience studies. Gurr, for example, provides surprising evidence for unity in spite of his search for distinct categories, noting that only “by  – though not much before – the . . . Red Bull and Fortune served a distinctly less gentlemanly clientele than the hall playhouses in the City . . . and, in the summer, the Globe” (The Shakespearean Stage, p. ); and that there was essentially no “class loyalty” to “specific repertoires” (p. ). And while Cook devotes much energy to implying a distinction between “privileged” Londoners and the rest of the people who lived there, she all but renders that distinction useless in terms of the theatre by arguing that anyone who could go to a play was “privileged.” The increasing exactness, especially in the economic focus, of audience study may have moved us away from facile discussions of “the common man,” but it may also have begun to be unnecessarily paralyzing, making it seem as though we cannot talk about the effects of a play on an “audience” until we understand the exact composition of that audience. But Antonio’s Revenge, an utterly unexpected sequel to Antonio and Mellida, was acted at Paul’s in , with presumably heavy indebtedness to the “ur-Hamlet ” of some ten or more years prior; was probably written to capitalize on the popularity of Hamlet (probably first produced in  and similarly indebted to the older play) and revenge tragedy; and was  

Shakespeare’s Audience, p. . James P. Bednarz says that Antonio’s Revenge was probably staged “to capitalize on Shakespeare’s revival of revenge tragedy” and also argues, agreeing with Honigmann’s  “The Date of Hamlet,” that Hamlet’s “little eyases” passage was added to the text in , shortly after the staging of Poetaster, Satiromastix, and Troilus and Cressida. See Bednarz, Shakespeare and the Poets’ War (New York: Columbia University Press, ), p. .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

then parodied by the Chapel Children in Poetaster the same year. And the awareness each play assumes its audience has of the others, and the way the plays themselves (especially Antonio’s Revenge and Hamlet) do not conform very rigidly to what we might expect from their auspices, would seem to suggest that we can to a large extent generalize a playgoing public even while acknowledging that it was in no way homogenous. One of the main problems with using audience study as a tool for understanding plays, over and above London society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is that the impulse to divide and classify inherent in such studies can make arguing for a collective experience – which is what plays try to provide – more difficult than it needs to be. Passages like Middleton’s prologue to No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s are frequently invoked to prove the diversity of audience constitution and response: How is’t possible to suffice So many ears, so many eyes? Some in wit, and some in shows Take delight, and some in clothes; Some for mirth they chiefly come, Some for passion, for both some; Some for lascivious meetings, that’s their arrant; Some to detract, and ignorance their warrant. How is’t possible to please Opinion toss’d in such wild seas?

This is what Cook quotes, by way of making this point: “Besides the various tastes of the audience, the playwright also had to contend with distractions from the performance. It was a difficult, if not impossible task, as Thomas Middleton openly confessed” (The Privileged Playgoer, p. ). But such an interpretation of this and other, similar prologues ignores the fact that this kind of self-reflexivity is a tool for unifying the spectators; for making each person see him or herself good-naturedly as a part of an unruly bunch, and also as someone above the “ignorant” who “detract.” It seems to me that if Middleton had really been worried about the diversity of tastes in his audience ruining his play, he would not have risked taunting this audience quite so casually, or in such bad poetry. Further, Cook omits from her argument and her quotation the last four lines of the prologue, in which we see Middleton’s confidence in being able to get a diversity of collective response from his diverse audience. 

Her footnote to the quotation, which does not give line numbers, even seems to suggest that she has quoted the prologue in its entirety.

“As it was acted to great applause”



Yet I doubt not, if attention Seize you above, and apprehension You below, to take things quickly, We shall both make you sad and tickle ye.

Open hostility to audiences from the stage is rare, even in the case of the pugnacious Jonson. More typically, such hostility is saved for prologues for readers, as in Webster’s “Address to the Reader” of The White Devil, or the much less subtle “Dedication to the Reader” of Jonson’s The New Inn. The reason for these remarks is not the diversity of response, but a collectively negative response, something with which Jonson was quite familiar; and the reason for putting these remarks on the page rather than the stage is to avoid further such collective responses. In his plays, Jonson, and others with gripes about audiences, are more carefully equivocal: remarks like the one about the man who will “swear, Jeronimo, or Andronicus are the best plays” (Bartholomew Fair, Induction, lines –) assumes that anyone in the audience who feels this way will laugh at himself, and that the audience in general is in agreement about these old plays. Similarly, his parody of theatre gallants in The Devil is an Ass (..  –) mocks the members of the play’s actual audience, but does so in a way that assumes that the ironic laughter the joke will provoke will both give pleasure and incorporate distracting behavior into the desired response. Above all, playwrights seem simply to have wanted audiences that would pay attention to their plays and laugh or be moved in the right places. While we do not have very much evidence about how audiences felt about specific plays or specific moments in specific plays, we do have a fair amount of evidence about how plays and playgoing in general were perceived. Somewhat unfortunately most of this is negative evidence, in the 



Jonson’s first prologue to Epicoene is in fact highly solicitous – or at least seems to be. Comparing poets to cooks and audiences to diners, Jonson condemns poets who “will taste nothing popular” (line ) and promises that there will be “cates” fit for “ladies . . . lords, knights, squires, /. . . your waiting-wench and city-wrens /. . . your men and daughters of Whitefriars (lines –).” It is difficult to see this as anything but disingenuous, coming from the pen of Jonson – particularly in light of the second prologue (occasioned by the “Prince of Moldavia” scandal that had Epicoene suppressed in February ) in which all particular audience response is made subject to the judgment of the poet (lines –). Examples from Jonson must always be considered rather separately but the idea of the first prologue to Epicoene seems to be fundamentally similar to Middleton’s attitude and the attitude of playwrights of the period in general: the audience is made a collective when each person in the audience believes the play is specifically speaking to him (or her). Webster said that his play “was acted, in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted . . . a full and understanding auditory” (The White Devil, lines –). Jonson found his audience to be full of a “hundred fastidious impertinents, who . . . make affidavit to the whole house of their not understanding one scene” (The New Inn, lines –).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

form of antitheatrical tracts and responses to them. This is unfortunate because most of the antitheatricalists, with some notable exceptions such as Gosson, did not really patronize the theatres – or at least betray no knowledge of plays specific enough to suggest that they did. And because the antitheatricalists tended to repeat and even plagiarize each other’s arguments, it can be difficult to take them seriously. In The Antitheatrical Prejudice, Jonas Barish says that no antitheatrical pamphlet between  and  “makes an important dialectical contribution. Rarely do they pursue an argument closely; more often they disintegrate into freeassociative rambles. They repeat themselves, and each other, without shame or scruple” (p. ). This dismissive point of view is seductive, but also worth being somewhat wary of, as it potentially implies that the Puritans ought to have imagined the possibility of a protheatrical prejudice, and engaged seriously with the opposition – made a “dialectical contribution” – when it is clear from all their writings that this was quite literally out of the question. If the antitheatricalists repeated the same scriptures again and again as evidence for the Biblical proscription of playgoing, it was generally not so much out of laziness as out of a sincere conviction that the players and playgoers had to be made to hear what was obviously true. Elbert N. S. Thompson, in The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage, makes this point about Puritan redundancy and plagiarism: without acknowledgment Northbrooke incorporated in his [Treatise wherein Dicing, Dauncing, Vaine Playes, or Enterluds . . . are reproved . . . ] the words of a forerunner [ William Alley]; Stubbes described the subject matter of plays in almost Gosson’s exact words, as if the passage were the common property of all Puritans; and now we see how closely the author of the Refutation [of The Apologie for Actors] was dependent on Stubbes . . . These passages reveal the intimate relation between the different Puritan attacks. In its argument there is nothing especially new in the Refutation, but in its spirit evidences both of changed feelings and changed conditions are noticeable. (pp. –)

The “changed feelings and changed conditions” Thompson refers to are that the moderate, more careful condemnation of the stage seen in Northbrooke is gone by the time of the Refutation (), and that the author of the latter work clearly writes with at least the feeling of a great deal of public support behind him. Repetition in this case works only to validate that which is being repeated, and the increasing vehemence in  

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, . New York: Henry Holt, .

“As it was acted to great applause”



antitheatrical attacks would eliminate the need for nuance in or variation on old arguments. Indeed, the arguments only get simpler in later years: by the time of the Refutation, there is less attention to other idle pastimes like dicing and dancing. Says Thompson, “Of all the unlawful and artificial pleasures devised by Satan, stage-plays, the author felt, were ‘the most impious and pernicious’ ” (The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage, p. ). As with the plays themselves, I assume that repetition in antitheatrical writings is an index of perceived success, and a key to understanding what the authors were trying to achieve with respect to their audience. The antitheatricalists employed rhetorical methods similar to those of the medium they opposed in order to persuade those who were not clearly on one side or the other of the debate. The consistent repetition, increasing in intensity, of antitheatrical arguments, culminating in the massive and highly redundant Histrio-Mastix of William Prynne (), shows that there was a sense among the antitheatricalists that the plays themselves were always the same, both in substance and in their effects. Of course, a certain narrowness of mind can be blamed for this, and one might easily argue that since the antitheatricalists were probably not going to plays they simply relied on the arguments of writers like Northbrooke and Gosson, who did have theatrical experience, and supplied the appropriate invective. But this argument is not entirely sufficient, since no protheatrical writer ever really contradicts the central antitheatrical argument that plays teach audiences to do bad things. Rather, they simply provide the opposite (but not mutually exclusive) point of view. “[W]hat English blood,” asks Heywood in his Apologie for Actors (), seeing the person of any bold English man presented and doth not hugge his fame, and hunnye at his valor, pursuing him in his enterprise with his best wishes . . . as if the Personater were the man personated, so bewitching a thing is lively and well spirited action, that it hath power to new mold the harts of the spectators and fashion them to the shape of any noble and notable attempt. (Br)

This is itself a repeated idea among the defenders of the stage, and I will return to it later. I introduce it here to emphasize that the perception of plays as having an importantly collective effect is a constant on both sides of the debate, and that the issue at stake is whether the effect is positive or negative. Even when Heywood, or Lodge, admits that different plays might have different (negative rather than positive) effects, the focus is collective rather than individual.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

. . . if you [Gosson] had reprehended the foolish fantasies of our Poets nomine non re which they bring on stage, my self would have liked of you and allowed your labor . . . I abhor those Poets that savor of ribaldry: I will with the zealous admit the expullcion of such enormities; Poetry is dispraised not for the folly that is in it, but for the abuse which manye ill wryters couller by it.

The argument is that certain plays affect whole audiences negatively, not that certain audience members make of good plays bad ends. The antitheatricalists and those actors and playwrights who respond to them do not make much of a distinction between public and private theatres or privileged and plebeian playgoers. While in each case this obviously reflects an agenda – to lump all playgoers and players together as sinners or as saints – I think it also indicates fairly clearly that, outside of individual playwrights’ quarrels with audiences, the pleasures and perils of playgoing were seen by Londoners on both sides of the debate as applicable to any member of any audience of any play. It will be useful here to list some of the most common repetitions in antitheatrical literature between  and . These are: a propensity for voluminous lists of the evils in plays, the evil effects of plays, and/or the evil people who patronize plays; a form that either mimics or seems to mimic the form of the drama it is condemning; the presence of at least one statement clarifying the difference between comedy and tragedy; and the use of at least one metaphor involving food as a means of illustrating the effects of the theatre. Obviously there are more common characteristics than these. I have chosen these, and listed them in this order, because I find them to be particularly important for the issue of what kind of experience antitheatricalists see plays providing, and because they will allow me to move from a discussion of general trends in antitheatrical criticism to specific moments in specific texts. Philip Stubbes’s The Anatomie of Abuses () spends only about six pages on plays (pp. –), but manages to cover most of the ground that other writers cover in three times that number. The project of Stubbes’s work is essentially to catalogue the various “abuses” in English society at the time, and the overall structure necessitated by such a project is recapitulated at the level of individual chapters, paragraphs, and sentences. For the sake of example I will quote at some length three passages from the short section on plays. The first discusses the stage’s abuse of the sacred word of God.  

Reply to Stephen Gosson’s Schoole of Abuse, in Thomas Lodge, A Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays, ed. David Laing (London: Shakespeare Society, ), p. . Ed. Frederick J. Furnivall. London: N. Trubner & Co., –.

“As it was acted to great applause”



All the holy company of Heauen, Angels, Archangels, Cherubins, Seraphins, and all other powers whateuer, yea, the Deuills themselues (as Iames saith) doo tremble & quake at the naming of God, and at the presence of his wrath: and doo these Mockers and Flowters of his Maiesty, these dissembling Hipocrites, and flattering Gnatoes, think to escape vnpunished? beware, therefore, you masking Players, you painted sepulchres, you doble dealing ambodexters, be warned betymes. . . . ( p. )

The second is on the evils that plays “induce.” Do not they maintaine bawdrie, insinuat folery, & renue the remembrance of hethen ydolatrie? Do they not induce whoredom & vnclennes? nay, are they not rather plaine deuourers of maydenly virginitie and chastitie? For proofe whereof, but marke the flocking and running to Theaters & curtens, daylie and hourely, night and daye, tyme and tyde, to see Playes and Enterludes; where such wanton gestures, such bawdie speaches, such laughing and fleering, such kissing and bussing, such clipping and culling, such winckinge and glancinge of wanton eyes, and the like, is vsed, as is wonderfull to behold. ( p. )

And the third is on what one might “learn” from plays. If you will learn to rebel against Princes, to commit treasons, to consume treasurs, to practise ydlenes, to sing and talke of bawdie loue and venery: if you will lerne to deride, scoffe, mock, & flowt, to flatter & smooth: If you will learn to play the whore-maister, the glutton, Drunkard, or incestuous person: if you will learn to become proude, hawtie, & arrogant; and finally, if you will learne to contemne G and al his lawes, to care neither for heauen nor hel, and to commit al kinde of sinne and mischeef, you need goe to no other schoole. ( p. )

These lists are typical of the rhetoric of antitheatrical writings in the period. Compare, for example, Northbrooke’s warning against the slippery slope of taking pleasure in idle words; or Gosson’s discussion of the behavior of audiences in The Schoole of Abuse; or I. G.’s lists of the matter and characters of plays in the Refutation of the Apologie for Actors; or almost any page of Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix. While such passages certainly have a shrillness about them – are in fact stylistically among the chief reasons it is so easy now to dismiss antitheatrical pamphlets with a laugh – they also reveal quite clearly what must have been one of the most powerful forces against which the authors had to fight: audiences’ love of the variety offered by plays. The lists give a sense of a wide variety of desires among playhouse audiences,   

In his  A Treatise against Dicing, dauncing, Plays, and Interludes, with Other idle Pastimes, ed. J. P. Collier (London Shakespeare Society, ), p. . Ed. Edward Arber (London: Alex Murray, ), p. . Ed. Richard H. Perkinson (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, ), pp. –.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

and of the ability of plays to satisfy them all. They are almost a direct inversion of Middleton’s prologue to No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s; the all-encompassing appeal of plays unites the disparate desires of the spectators into a collective evil. At the same time, it is as though the Puritan writers are attempting to drown out or substitute for the sumptuous variety of personalities, events, and costumes on stage, with their own elaborate stylistic displays. Indeed Stubbes’s entire work seems to epitomize this project. By providing an extensive, minute, and endlessly colorful picture of England’s abuses, he attempts to draw readers away from the abuses themselves. While other antitheatrical authors are not always as successful as Stubbes, they are certainly on the same path. They clearly take pleasure in writing these lists, and hope that their readers will take pleasure in reading them; and that the attention and interest sparked by this pleasure will lead to a realization of the truth of the words. One might argue to the contrary that the repetition of such lists over time would make them less pleasurable. It is probably true that by the fourth or fifth pamphlet one read one would begin skimming over the lists, but this would come about because the claims of the lists began to be taken for granted: the lists took on the status of a convention which one looked for as part of one’s experience when coming to a pamphlet. Puritan authors, of course, would not have thought of their tracts or the lists in them as “fun,” but rather as instructive. The primary function of the lists is to show an awareness of all sides of a given issue (which is not the same as a desire to give any credence to the opposing side). Whether or not Stubbes or I. G. or Prynne has been to a play, each seems to be encyclopedic in his knowledge of them, seems to know his adversary well enough to justify his invective. This kind of rhetoric aims at inspiring a sense of knowingness in the reader, and it is not necessarily appealing only to those who agree with its argument. As the popularity of Stubbes’s book would seem to demonstrate, even people participating in the many abuses listed by the book took pleasure in reading about them. The kind of pleasure involved in reading The Anatomie of Abuses, or the more vigorous sections of the antitheatrical works, can be similar to the kind of pleasure involved in watching the first scene with the Players in Hamlet. One can take pleasure in seeing a picturesque description of certain activities one knows well or participates in, even as they are being condemned; or one can feel that one sees the whole of the situation and is therefore in a position to judge both sides. Obviously the antitheatrical 

In Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ) C. L. Barber says of the Anatomie’s invective against May Day:

“As it was acted to great applause”



writers are looking for a positive judgment on one side and a negative on the other in a way that Shakespeare is not, but they also seem to be trying to harness the impulse that would obtain for plays as a step toward converting the skeptical reader. Whether antitheatrical tracts were read by avid playgoers who did not (like Lodge or Heywood) have a vested interest in refuting them is uncertain. But they must have been read by a fair number of on-the-fence Londoners, and this undecided readership, those who perhaps found playgoing to be a slightly guilty pleasure, would have accounted for much of the rhetorical usefulness of the lists I have just discussed. This undecided readership would also have accounted for the usefulness of the dialogue or quasi-dramatic form in which antitheatrical tracts are written, and their apparent eagerness to clarify and define dramatic genres. As to the first of these, much could be and has been made of the fact that Northbrooke’s Treatise is in the form of a dialogue between Youth and Age; that Gosson followed his Schoole of Abuse with Plays Confuted in Five Actions; that Stubbes’s entire book is in dialogue form and in fact creates an imaginary, anagrammatic land, Aligna, to stand in for Anglia; and that Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix is divided into two “tragedies,” each consisting of thirteen “acts,” complete with prologues and choruses. Elbert Thompson sounds a useful note of caution with regard to pursuing an ironic reading of tracts not as explicitly “theatrical” as Gosson’s or Prynne’s: “to the Puritan, dialogue had no necessary connection with the drama. The Book of Job had that form; it was used by Grindal . . . and later by Bunyan; and even to those Puritans unfamiliar with Plato no inconsistency in Northbrooke’s method could have suggested itself ” (The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage, p. ). At the same time, even while protheatrical respondents to the Puritans do not make anything of the potentially self-contradictory form of the Puritan writings, it seems hard to imagine that the irony would not occasionally suggest itself to a reader, especially when it is obviously intentional, as in Gosson and Prynne. The desired effect of this irony, from the antitheatrical point of view, can be seen magnified one hundred-fold in Prynne’s work which, as Barish says, both exploits “the possibilities inherent in It is remarkable how pleasantly the holiday comes through in spite of Stubbes’ railing on the sidelines. Partly this appeal comes from shrewd journalism: he is writing “a pleasant invective,” to use a phrase from the title of [Gosson’s] similar School of Abuse. Partly it is the result of the fact that despite his drastic attitude he writes in the language of Merry England and so is betrayed into phrases like “sweet nosegays” [ placed on the horns of oxen in May Day parades]. And his Elizabethan eye is too much on the object to leave out tangible details, so that, astonishingly, he describes “this stinking idol” [the May Pole] as “covered all over with flowers and herbs.” ( p. ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

[a dramatic] arrangement, and [creates] a running irony, to turn the terminology of dramatic structure against its usual practitioners and make it serve a godly rather than a satanic purpose” (The Antitheatrical Prejudice, p. ). As with the catalogues of abuses in and at plays, the dramatic structure of the tracts allows the antitheatricalists to capitalize on a reader’s desire to feel knowing and sophisticated, to feel that the irony of a potential contradiction can be resolved neatly into a sound judgment. A related but different appeal to the judiciousness of the reader is involved in the statement of generic characteristics that can be found in virtually every antitheatrical tract. Northbrooke provides an example that is striking in its detachment from any antitheatrical argument. This comes at the very end of the section on stage plays, just after Age has laid down some rules for the acceptable academic use of theatre.    What difference is there, I pray you, between a tragedie and a comedie?   . . . a tragedie, properly, is that kind of play in the which calamities and miserable ends of kings, princes, and great rulers, are described and set forth, and it hath for the most part a sadde and heauy beginning and ending. A comedie hath in it humble and private persons; it beginnith with turbulent and troublesome matters, but it hath a merie ende.

Immediately after this passage, Northbrooke moves on to “An Inuectiue Against Dice Playing.” This moment feels tacked on – no judgment is made about the virtues or relative virtues of either genre – and also like something Northbrooke thought essential to get in one way or another. His successors feel the same way, but do more to make the generic specifications part of the argument against plays. I. G.’s Refutation provides a typical example. To discribe the matter of prophaine playes, wee are to consider the generall kindes of Playes, which is the Tragedy, and the Comedy. The matter of Tragedies is haughtinesse, arrogancy, ambition, pride, iniury, anger . . . Of Comedies the matter is loue, lust, lechery, baudry, scortation, adultery, vncleannesse, pollution. ( pp. –)

The need to make these kinds of generic claims seems tied to the antitheatricalists’ fear of the seductive variety provided by the theatre, and bespeaks a desire to order that variety by means of categories with distinct characteristics (which nevertheless, as we see in I. G., sometimes overlap), the better to judge them. At the same time, no author making such generic claims makes them as though they are unknown – rather, there is a sense of amplifying with invective and hyperbole something

“As it was acted to great applause”



that is taken for granted. This again responds, I think, to an impulse the Puritans saw in the audiences they were trying to convert or correct: the impulse to give a single and simple name to an experience of great variety and even disparity in its parts. That this impulse was something audiences felt would seem to be at least partly corroborated by the title pages of printed plays of the period, on which the genre of the play is almost always mentioned; or by works such as Meres’s Palladis Tamia, which is incessantly, often tediously exact in its “Comparatiue Discourse,” dividing authors into the “best” of various modes and genres, usually by means of encyclopedic lists. Each of the three repetitions I have discussed – lists, dramatic or dialogic structure, statements of generic characteristics – as well as the repetition of similar or identical Biblical arguments by different authors, is a deliberate rhetorical strategy. The authors employ these strategies for specific stylistic reasons and, I have suggested, do so in response to habits they perceive in the theatregoing public they are attempting to convert. The repetition of food metaphors, however, is not something the antitheatrical authors insist on, or seem concerned to call attention to. That is why I have singled it out as particularly important. Food metaphors seem to be something that antitheatrical authors are able to call up automatically as an obvious way of thinking about their subject, and thus they represent something particularly inherent to the writers’ assumptions about theatre. I now list some key examples, starting as far back as the early fifteenth century, with the anonymous Lollard piece, A Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge. I list them to the end that we might see both the development and the various expressions of the common idea. For right as the children of Israel, when Moyses was in the hil bisily preying for hem, they mistristing to him, honouriden a calf of gold and afterward eetyn and drinken and risen to playn, and afterward weren sleyn of hem thre and twenty thousend of men . . . So this miraclis pleyinge is verre wittnesse of mennus averice and covetise byfore . . . for that that they shulden spendyn upon the nedis of ther neighbors, they spenden upon the pleyis. (Miraclis Pleyinge, pp. –)  I marvayle why you do speake against such enterludes and places for playes, seeing that many times they play histories out of the scriptures.  Assuredly that is very evill so to doe; to mingle scurrilitie with diuinitie, that is to eat meate with vnwashed hands. (Northbrooke, Treatise, p. ) 

Ed. Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

I may well liken Homer to Mithecus, and Poets to Cookes, the pleasures of the one winnes the body from labor and conquereth the sense; the allurement of the other drawes the mind from vertue, and confoundeth wit. (Gosson, Schoole of Abuse, p. ) . . . those wanton spectacles . . . will hurte them more, then if at the Epicures table they had nigh burst their guts with ouerfeeding. For if the body bee ouercharged, it may bee holpe; but the surfeite of the soule is hardly cured. (Schoole of Abuse, p. ) . . . the exercise that is nowe among vs, is banqueting, playing, pipyng, and dauncing, and all suche delightes as may win vs to pleasure, or rocke vs a sleepe. (Schoole of Abuse, p. )     [Some say] that [plays] be as good as sermons, and that many a good example may be learned out of them.   Oh blasphemie intollerable! Are filthie playes & bawdie enterluds comparable to the word of God, the foode of life, and life itselfe? (Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, pp. –) [Whether plays] be diuine or prophane, they are quite contrary to the word of grace, and sucked out of the Diuil’s teates to nourish vs in Idolatry, heathenry, and sinne. (I. G., Refutation of the Apology for Actors, p. ) [Papal Rome showed its decadence] not onely in their great solemnities and festivals, which were spent commonly in bellie cheare and Playes . . . much after the fashion of the Israelites, sitting downe to eate and drinke, and rising up to play: but specially in their rich Iubilies. (anon., A Short Treatise of Stage Plays, p. ) Those who are temperate and abstemious at all other times, prove Epicures and drunkards [during Christmas revels]. Those who make conscience to redeeme all other seasons, deeme it a point of Christianity to mispend all this, eating drinking, and rising up to play, whole days and nights together. (Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, p.  [Ccccc v], emphasis original) All the eloquence and sweetnesse therefore that is in stage-playes, is but like the drops of honey out of a poysoned limbecke, which please the palate onely, but destroy the man that tastes them. (Histrio-Mastix, p.  [Hhhhhv], emphasis original)

These examples of the food metaphors are by no means all the same. But the differences between the passages, combined with the fact that they are all based on a common idea, reveals the idea of food generally to facilitate an important confluence of a number of different but related ideas about plays. Here are some of the relevant associations I think there are between food and playgoing in these passages: food and “play” showed the sin and 

London, .

“As it was acted to great applause”



brought about the death of the Israelites in the desert, and are therefore against God’s will; eating, like playgoing, and especially eating excessively, is time spent indulging oneself when one could be serving or helping others; food, like the sumptuous variety of sensory experience at plays, provides the potential for surfeit, which is gluttony; eating, like playgoing, requires leisure time, which can lead to idleness; food nourishes the body as the word of God nourishes the soul, and as one destroys the body by feeding it improperly (or starving it), so one destroys the soul by indulging in things contrary to (or lacking) the word of God. This is all fairly obvious from the passages and, above that, conventional. I present the list as a synthesis rather than a revelation. What I want to look at more closely is the attitude in these passages toward both the physical effects of plays and toward the human capacity for self-control. The author of the Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge does not mean that the Israelites in the desert put on a play after “eetyn and drinken,” but the ease with which his analogy moves into a condemnation of “miraclis pleyinge” hardly calls attention to the distinction between the two kinds of “play.” Subsequent authors, as we see in the Short Treatise and Prynne, are more than happy to continue the punning connection. Preceding the easy phonetic slip into “pleyinge,” is the causally automatic association of eating, drinking, and “play.” Once the Israelites have worshiped the golden calf, they inevitably tend toward the misuse of nourishment and free time. The Lollard author clearly has not spent a lot of time creating his figure and analogy here, but the very automaticness with which food and “play” get associated bespeaks the attitude that the misuse of one inevitably leads to the misuse of the other. We see a similar automatic association of “banqueting” and “playing” as pernicious vices of the age in the third passage from Gosson, and in the first from Prynne. In the first Gosson passage, the analogy between poets and cooks makes explicit what is probably going on in each author’s mind in the other works. Here, both food and plays are seen as inescapable traps of gluttony. The diner or the playgoer is a relatively passive victim, “conquered” or “confounded” by the sensory feast before him. What is more, the distinction between the works of the poet and the cook is initially even more blurry than one would expect. The structure of Gosson’s analogy turns out to be chiasmatic – Poet: Cook. Food: Poetry – but one could quite easily think at first that “the one winnes the body 

Prynne makes a similar analogy, citing the Roman Marius’s claim that “he kept never a stageplayer nor costly cooke about him, as other voluptuous, effeminate, dissolute Romans did” (Histrio-Mastix,  [ Mmm v])



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

from labor and conquereth sense” was the first part of a former–latter construction, and referred to the poet and poetry rather than to the cook and food. Thus the differences between “labor” and “vertue,” “sense” and “wit,” which are meant to be the differences of things physical and things mental, also become blurred so that the upshot seems to be that going to plays destroys you both physically and mentally. This is similar to what happens in Northbrooke’s figure, where the discussion of “meate” makes “diuinitie” into something that one almost consumes physically simply by representing it or seeing it represented. There is the sense that once you have mixed divinity with your vain play, you have set a disease in motion in your body: it is not within your power any longer to control it. Even as there is this identification of playgoing with poisoned or unnourishing food, there is also the implicit claim that playgoing is worse than eating too much, or eating the wrong kind of food. For, as Gosson says, “if the body bee overcharged, it may bee holpe; but the surfeite of the soule is hardly cured” (Schoole of Abuse, p. ). Underlying this notion is the idea in the central argument of Stubbes, where plays are opposed to “the word of God, the foode of life, and life itselfe.” Stubbes begins his discussion of plays by invoking the gospel of John and the equivalence of the word and God: “Wherefore, who so euer abuseth this word of our God on stage in playes and enterludes, abuseth the Maiesty of G” (Anatomie of Abuses, p. ). And since the word of God is the “foode of life,” indulging in something contrary to that word is to eat the food of death. Nowhere is this more clearly expressed than in the Refutation, with its metaphor of the “Diuils teates” (to which Prynne’s discussion of eloquence and honey runs a close second). This last passage brings together a number of related and slightly contradictory ideas floating around in all of these passages: that plays, like the word of God, are a form of “nourishment,” but the wrong kind; that the nourishment is taken both voluntarily (one wants to eat) and passively (one must eat, or satisfies an appetite automatically, as an infant would); and that the nourishment affects the body (draws it from labor, tempts it with idleness, leads to other kinds of gluttony), but even more the soul (takes over the mind, replaces the word of God with something else). If we take as the basic metaphor at work in all these passages that plays are like, in Gosson’s words, a feast at “the Epicure’s table,” the general idea seems to be that one cannot help partaking of this feast once one comes to the table, that one’s sense – in all senses of that word – is overcome, that the satisfaction of the appetite only increases that appetite, and that the food begins to

“As it was acted to great applause”



destroy one both inside and out. Nowhere do the authors suggest that one might be able to check the appetite once the fruit, as it were, has been tasted. That the antitheatricalists did not labor to create these connections – that they were, rather, fundamental to their, and others’ way of thinking about the theatre – seems clear from the fact that the defenders of the stage do not labor to respond to them; Heywood and Lodge, who are responding quite directly to most of the literature noted here, do not much talk about food. Where they do overlap with the ideas of selfcontrol and experience at work in the antitheatrical tracts, the defenders of the stage actually seem to agree with their adversaries; arguing from the same assumptions about the effects of plays on audiences, they only put a more positive spin on their conclusions. Even though he finds Heywood’s Apologie for Actors to be the “only comparable attempt [after Sidney’s Defence] to defend the theatre itself ” in the period (The Antitheatrical Prejudice, p. ), Jonas Barish shows little admiration for the tract. Peppering his discussion with words like “absurd,” “inept,” and “clumsy,” Barish faults Heywood for managing, like the Puritans, to “befog the distinction between the real and the imaginary” ( p. ). . . . when he attempts to defend the public stage, Heywood manages to push the argument into absurdity at once, by alleging as his prime instance of the power and the glory of the stage the rape of the Sabines, the signal for which was given by Romulus at the theater. This extraordinary example in effect not only concedes, but actively espouses, the thesis of the opposition. For the adversaries of the stage never doubted its hold over audiences; they simply considered that hold a malignant one. Northbrooke had actually cited the incident of the Sabine women as an instance of the iniquity of the theater. ( p. )

Whether Heywood’s defense is adequate or not, what is striking is the correspondence between defenders of and detractors from the stage in their assessment of the theatre’s effects – precisely their inability, or perhaps unwillingness to separate “the real and the imaginary.” And if both the Puritans and their adversaries were willing to argue publicly that a play could affect reality and the lives of its audience, it seems more 



Jonson, of course, uses the food metaphor in the first prologue to Epicoene (see above, footnote ), and the off-hand manner in which he does so stresses that metaphor’s conventionality. Jonson will later use a similar metaphor in the prologue to The New Inn. While Lodge tends to see more “abuse” in plays than Heywood, he also holds that, were plays as pure as they could be, they would allow audiences to “decypher the abuses of the world” (A Defence of Poetry, p. ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

than safe to assume that this is the kind of assumption playgoers would have brought with them to the playhouse. I should make it clear at this point that I am not arguing one way or the other about whether plays actually had or have an effect on “reality” – that is, whether it is possible not to “befog” the distinction between the two – only that playwrights and play-opposers and playgoers alike seem genuinely to have believed in the possibility. The attempt to present positively the physicality of effect or response suggested by the antitheatrical food metaphors can be seen not only in something like Heywood’s example of the rape of the Sabines, but also in descriptions like the one that follows, from “An Excellent Actor,” which is somewhat less invested in “defending” than simply describing the stage. . . . by a ful and significant action of body, [the actor] charmes our attention: sit in a full Theater, and you will thinke you see so many lines drawen from the circumference of so many eares, while the Actor is the Center. (p. )

An ideal performance is one where there is a sense of physical and emotional connection between audience and actor; the shape of this connection seems to mimic the physical shape of the theatre itself. Thus it is significant that Hamlet’s long speech after the Player is gone (..  –) tends notably toward physical imagery. Three times in the first fifteen lines, he mentions the Player’s weeping. The hypothetical audience is also physically susceptible to the words the Player speaks: these words will “cleave the general ear” (line ). Further on, Hamlet hopes that the play he will give the Players will make “murder, though it have no tongue . . . speak / With most miraculous organ” (lines –). Upbraiding himself for his cowardice, he asks, “Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across, / Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face, / Tweaks me by th’ nose, gives me the lie i’ th’ throat / As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?”, and laments that all he can do is “like a whore unpack my heart with words, / And fall a-cursing” (lines –). The audience is meant to, and I think does, see the logic of this – does feel 



Lest this argument begin to seem too much to be presenting a quaint picture of credulous Elizabethans standing agape with passion at the high astounding terms of their theatre, I should make clear the probably obvious fact that modern audiences and critics and students of all kinds of dramatic literature and performance (Brecht is one prominent example) similarly believe in the possibility that representation can and does affect reality. In The “Conceited Newes” Of Sir Thomas Overbury And His Friends: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Ninth Impression of  of Sir Thomas Overbury His Wife, ed. James E. Savage (Gainesville: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, ), pp. –.

“As it was acted to great applause”



that Hamlet should be able to act because mere plays do move spectators emotionally as well as physically. I am not saying that this connection is logical, only that it seems so; and it seems so, I think, not only because of the correspondence between “world” and “stage” which plays (and thus audiences) are always ready to make, but also because of the fact that plays fundamentally and always seek a specific physical response: applause. I cannot say for certain, but it seems to me that more than any other drama, early modern drama talks about and openly solicits applause. To call attention to this as an example of the belief in a direct, collective physical response as a measure of a play’s value might be merely ingenious if it were not for this passage from Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix: if we believe Tertullian, these Applauses so pollute men’s hands, that they can neither lift them up to God in prayer, nor yet stretch them out to receive the Sacrament in an holy manner. God requires Christians to lift up holy hands to him in prayer: to bring cleaned, washed, pure hands and hearts unto his sacraments, not tainted with the filth of any sinne. Now Stage-applauses defile mens hands and hearts, making them so polluted, that they can neither lift them up in prayers . . . nor yet extend them to embrace Christ’s saved Body and Blood, without defilement. ( p.  [Qq v], emphasis original)

This is the most negative possible expression of the idea we have seen presented glowingly in “An Excellent Actor,” where the actor is the center of a circle whose circumference is the audience, and whose radii are each spectator’s relationship with the actor. In both cases the words and actions of the stage, either pleasurably mutable and transitory, or vain and unholy, have a direct line to the spectator’s body and soul; either infuse or infect it; move it to the greatest affection or the worst defilement. The audience’s response is in the first case a measure of the play’s worth, in the second of the spectator’s; it is therefore worth noting that Claudius’s response to The Murder of Gonzago is a vexed representation of both. The preceding pages have attempted to give a general outline of the possible nature of the receptivity of an Elizabethan and Jacobean playgoing public. I want briefly to review the claims I have made here, in the interest of consolidating the assumptions I am making about audiences which will govern the analysis of the plays that follows. Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences enjoyed the theatre for its variety – the variety of events portrayed on stage, the variety of characters played day to day or even scene to scene by single actors, the variety of emotions it provoked,



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

and the variety it provided in the routine of daily life. These audiences enjoyed the self-reflexivity of the theatre – Hamlet’s discussion of the boy companies, for example – and the feeling of being “in on” all the jokes this self-reflexivity provided. They enjoyed maintaining an ironic distance from the action or words on stage, and also losing that distance, and then being made aware of moments when they had lost it. They enjoyed going to the theatre for reasons other than seeing the play – to see and be seen by others, to loiter about, to meet members of the opposite sex, to show off new clothes. They enjoyed complex, multileveled plays which they could nevertheless easily classify as “tragedies” or “comedies.” They enjoyed thinking of themselves and being thought of as a collective entity, whose collective response quite powerfully determined the value of a play. And above all they enjoyed – and playwrights enjoyed them – responding, visibly, audibly, and physically: the transparent self-reflexivity of the language and the dramaturgy, like the relative bareness of the stage and brightness of the theatre, would have made this both inevitable and essential.

 

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay

A huge, bare, outdoor stage, like the Globe, or a smaller, bare, indoor stage on which audience members were allowed to sit, like the Blackfriars, would have required an actor to be acutely aware of space: of the physical space between actor and audience, and of the more metaphorical theatrical space within which the sense of an illusion would have to be developed. The silence must indeed have been deafening to an actor speaking a soliloquy in Webster’s White Devil before a sparse crowd in the “open and black” Red Bull theatre, especially if the “auditory” was not a sympathetic one; and the antics of a gallant like the one described by Jonson in The Devil is an Ass could certainly be expected to rival the events on the stage, occurring as they would have been at the front of it. Whether too close to or far from the stage, the spectators’ very visibility made quite definite demands on both the physical and metaphorical space of the theatre: a constant sense both of illusion and of awareness of illusion as illusion had to be maintained. Extravagant, stylized, often bloody spectacle was one way of meeting these demands, and it will be discussed at further length in chapter . First, however, I want to look at the smaller, verbal equivalents of such spectacle – the linguistic habits or tics for which Renaissance drama is so well known and which have become virtually dismissible as “conventions.” These are: puns, asides, and expository speeches. I deal with each in turn over the course of this and the following two chapters, attempting to account for the way in which each works to fill the physical and theatrical space with the sound of an audience’s response. Discussions of puns and wordplay in or out of Renaissance drama, by critics as diverse as William Empson, Patricia Parker, Walter Redfern, Debra Fried, and Stephen Booth tend to focus on complex, hidden puns; extended systems of ideational puns; and potential or unmade 



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

puns – puns for which often only the “raw materials” exist. And most good discussions of the language of any Renaissance dramatist or play spend a fair amount of time discovering and illuminating exciting, ambiguously intentional but undeniably pertinent wordplay. What seems always to fascinate are moments of accidental, potentially uncomprehended, often non-signifying connections and echoes: the “weird accidents, amazing flashes, and lucky hits that the one-armed bandit of language dishes up.” Such flashes are always potentially part of an audience’s or reader’s experience, but much of the joy of the criticism, and the joy the criticism finds in the works it studies, has to do with the fact that these puns occur and work whether or not an audience notices them. This kind of analysis is more immediately satisfying than the analysis that will occupy the first two-thirds of this chapter, because the potential for new and surprising connections between thematic and semantic elements is great. I have chosen to go a different direction because I want to talk about what Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights thought, and assumed their audiences thought about puns and similar wordplay; and I want to talk about what kind of experience puns provide that made them such a valuable theatrical commodity. The most efficient way of doing this is to look at obvious, surface-level puns: puns that are not only obviously intentional, but difficult not to notice. Such puns as these are presented casually, in an offhand manner, and with a self-conscious confidence that they are all clever and necessary. Their casualness is studied, such as to imply that everyone will get the jokes. When a play is as full of puns as, say, Marston’s The Insatiate Countess or Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, one has little time to guffaw at each one. Rather, one must adopt an attitude of some sophistication, of seeing punning and wordplay as inevitable and necessary, and of confidence in one’s ability to absorb it all; one can feel privately clever while also feeling one’s cleverness affirmed and sanctioned by the openly 





“Raw materials” is Booth’s term, which he uses in a number of his essays. I cite it from the first page of “Close Readings without Readings” in Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts, ed. Russ McDonald (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –. Debra Fried, “Rhyme Puns,” in On Puns, ed. Jonathan Culler (Oxford: Blackwell, ), p. . Fried does not deal exclusively with Renaissance drama, though she does spend some time discussing the “heir–hair” pun that is frequent in Shakespeare and also discussed by Booth. In her essay “Interpreting through Wordplay” (in Teaching with Shakespeare, ed. Bruce McIver and Ruth Stevenson [ Newark: University of Delaware Press, ], pp. –), Patricia Parker voices a similar, less accident-focused idea to Fried’s. Speculating about the importance of wordplay that occurs between different versions of the same play, or even different plays, she suggests “the possibility that such networks are part of an independent homophonic or metaphorical logic” (p. ).

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



private cleverness of everyone else in the audience. These puns and the apparently unquenchable desire to make them, suggest that theatrical language and situations were seen as transparent enough, as so invested in filling each moment with as much stimulus as possible, to indulge and delight in complexity for its own sake. We must work very hard not to think of such indulgence as a perversion or exaggeration of a more aesthetically sophisticated, obviously preferable subtlety. Rather, it is so prevalent, so all-pervasive in the best and worst drama of the period that it must be seen as one of the cornerstones of the fundamental kind of pleasure Elizabethan and Jacobean drama sought to provide. When, in The Roaring Girl, Moll says that “she that has wit and spirit / May scorn to live beholding to her body for meat” (.. –), there are probably puns on “wit” ( penis/vagina) and “spirit” (semen) in the authors’ minds which enrich the patterns of insinuation in the play concerning Moll’s sexual ambiguity, and the ambiguity of others’ desire for her. This is satisfying critically because it requires a little digging and yields tangibly ephemeral results, but it seems unlikely that such connections are part of the audience’s conscious experience in any but the most potential way. Most of what people enjoy in the theatre in any period is what they experience at a surface, or possibly visceral, level, and this would seem to be especially true of a period when so many different plays were being produced so rapidly. This is why it is important that two playwrights as different as Heywood and Marston, in plays as different as A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Insatiate Countess can resort to virtually the same predictable pun on “instrument” (musical instrument / penis) simply because it is convenient. Constant, unsubtle, 



For puns on “wit,” see Stephen Booth’s note on Sonnet , lines  – in his edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (New Haven: Yale University Press, ). For puns on “spirit,” see his note on Sonnet .. In Heywood’s play, there is this exchange between the adulterous Anne and Frankford’s loyal servant Nick:     [ handing her the lute] There.     I know the lute. Oft have I sang to thee; We are both out of tune, both out of time.     Would that had been the worst instrument that e’er you played on! (. – )

Isabella’s first scorned lover, Roberto, in Marston’s play finds at the end that he can forgive Isabella, though she were “More common than the looser songs of Petrarch, / To every several zany’s instrument ” (.. –). The end of Act  and beginning of Act  in Chapman’s An Humorous Day’s Mirth revolve around an elaborate and hilarious confusion over the phrase “instrument of procreation” and the Queen’s concern over the fact that her husband seems to have lost his. In that play the pun is not entirely musical, but somewhat more strained: the “instrument” turns out to be Martia, whom the King is pursuing to make his lover.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

even strained puns keep the surface very active. When the surface is active, the audience responds. Audiences know how to respond to puns: by acknowledging that they get the joke. Puns beget more puns, and when this is successful, the more puns the audience hears, the more it wants. An audience that has a lot to respond to, and that enjoys responding, is a happy audience, and will probably come back to the theatre: the evidence of that response – the laughter or knowing smile or even groan that puns require – becomes an index of a play’s success. We can see playwrights seeking this evidence in the wide variety of play on simple words in disparate contexts, and also in the somewhat more striking moments of opportunistically inappropriate cleverness. Kyd, hardly an inveterate punner, nevertheless finds the most inappropriate moment possible to make Hieronimo witty, giving him a pun on “discord” and the “cord” that took his son’s life (The Spanish Tragedy, . . –). This anticipates moments like .. – of Titus Andronicus, where Titus calls attention to the punning on “hands” that has been virtually incessant throughout the play. Less jarring are the frequent notentirely-sexual puns on “tale” and “tail,” as in (anon.) The Old Wives Tale, line , Taming of the Shrew ..  –, and Othello .. –. The famous “son” and “sun” puns of Hamlet (.. ) and  Henry IV (.. ) have echoes in The Shrew .. –, Middleton’s Michaelmas Term .. , and Roaring Girl .. . Puns on “change” (the verb) with either “change” (a round of dancing) or “Exchange” occur more frequently than one might expect – see for example (anon.) Warning for Fair Women, line , (anon.) How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, lines –, Machin and Markham’s Dumb Knight, ., and Insatiate Countess ..  and following. And puns involving “angels” (money or heavenly spirits), “heart” and “hart” (or “dear” and “deer”), and “horns” (musical, animal, or otherwise, always insinuating cuckoldry) are so common in so wide a variety of contexts as not to require illustration. One is equally in danger of claiming too much and too little for the aesthetic value of these repeated, obvious puns. Using the complex workings of surface-level puns, critics such as Patricia Parker and Mary Bly have argued persuasively that wordplay in the Renaissance can be vitally political in its self-conscious theatricality: Shakespearean wordplay, says Parker, far from the inconsequentiality to which it has been reduced not only by the influence of neoclassicism but by continuing critical assumptions about the  

This scene occurs only in the Folio. The sexual version also occurs in The Shrew at .. –.

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



transparency (or unimportance) of the language of the plays [involves] a network whose linkages expose (even as the plays themselves may appear simply to iterate or rehearse) the orthodoxies and ideologies of the texts they evoke.

Bly, talking about the plays of the short-lived Whitefriars boys, says that “[s]ubcultures delight in puns, most markedly when subverting the cloying paradigms of a dominant ideology.” Where my argument will differ from these points of view is in its assumption that puns are formal devices first and foremost, and that the form of the theatre does not demand the exposure or subversion of a dominant ideology. Theatre is most successful when it seems to erase distinctions between the members of its audience: the laughter which puns can evoke – be it knowing, embarrassed, shocked, or superior – ultimately has a unified sound. Stephen Booth, on the other hand, would probably say that obvious puns are not much to talk about because their effect is observable and observably finite. One gets the joke and moves on, and since context has very little to do with getting the joke, the mind is not busied with sorting out different levels of pertinence. More important are the halfand unmade puns, the diffuse, complex connections for which the language of the plays provides only the raw materials. These keep the mind in a constant state of unobserved, and therefore undemanding activity, with complex and satisfying, but never entirely tangible results. Booth is right, I think, but it is also important to point out more clearly than he does that overt punning and unintentional, unnoticeable punning are closely related, and that the unignorable presence of the former in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama is the key evidence that allows us to assume the importance of the effects of the latter. Exploring the connection between overt, surface-level puns and submerged systems of wordplay and metaphor will help us begin to understand the way in which almost mechanical verbal conventions ( puns, asides, expository speeches) work to create the sense of illusion that must fill the physical and metaphorical space of the non-naturalistic theatre. More than anything else, puns and verbal jokes in Renaissance drama tend toward the sexual. Sexual wordplay is therefore perhaps the best index we have for understanding the phenomena of punning and wordplay in general. As with non-bawdy puns like those on “discord” or “change” noted above, the very ostentatiousness of many sexual puns makes clear the length to which playwrights are willing to go to make the audience  

Patricia Parker, Shakespeare from the Margins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), p. . Mary Bly, Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

make connections between relatively disparate semantic and ideational elements. Licio in Lyly’s Midas says his mistress’s head is “round as a tennis ball,” which prompts his friend Petulus to create this joke:   I would my bed were a hazard.    Why?   Nothing, but that I would have her head there among other balls. (.. –)

In Haughton’s Englishmen for my Money, Pisaro fires his daughters’ schoolmaster Anthony for wooing the women on behalf of the Englishmen; he believes Anthony has been trying to help the men get back their lands and money, which Pisaro currently holds against their debts. Anthony, however, protests that he acted out of concern for the men’s love, not their finances: “Why sir, I taught them not to keepe a Marchant’s Booke, or cast accompt: yet to a word much like that word Account” (Ar, emphasis added). Pisaro, like Licio, does not react to the obscenity in any way that suggests he has understood it: the obscenity is not for him, but the audience. This is the case too in a moment of surprisingly incongruous impropriety in (anon.) King Leir: Cornwall tells Cambria that with their newly declared engagements to Leir’s daughters, they will have the “whole” of England between them. Cambria replies, “The hole! How mean you that? ‘Zlood, I hope / We shall have two holes between us” (.  –). Cornwall’s response is simply to clarify his meaning: “the whole kingdom.” And Chough and Trimtram, accusing Russell of trying to marry Chough to a whore in Middleton and Rowley’s A Fair Quarrel, embark on an extraordinary discussion of local geography that leaves the issue at hand quite behind:     I could have had a whore at Plymouth.    Aye, or at Pe’ryn.     Aye, or under the Mount.  

The obvious joke about fellatio gets an added level of (im)pertinence from the faint suggestions of maidenhead in head. The “count–cunt” pun is persistent in the period. Elimine in Chapman’s Blind Beggar of Alexandria cannot even bring herself to say the word “Count,” because “it comes so neare a thing that I knowe” (. ). In Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the Exchange the Cripple asks Bowdler if he has been in prison lately, and Bowdler replies that no, he has been with a wench:        Ye filthy dog, I was encountred by a wench, I say.        In a wenches counter ! I thought no lesse: what, sirra, didst thou lie in the Knights ward, or on the maisters side?        Neither, neither yfaith.        Where then, in the Hole? (.. –)

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



   Or as you came, at Evil.     Or at Hockey Hole in Somersetshire.     Or at the hanging-stones in Wiltshire.     Or at Maidenhead in Berkshire; and did I come in by Maidenhead to go out by Staines? (.. –, emphasis added)

The appeal of these moments is in their virtuosic vulgarity, which separates them almost entirely from what is actually going on on-stage. They are like asides spoken by the playwright – indicators of the possibilities his language always holds, and markers for the level one should strive to achieve in seeing those possibilities. Most bawdy wordplay is slightly less ostentatious than this, less the ingenious product of a highly specific semantic situation. Like nonsexual puns on “hart” and “heart,” or “deer” and “dear,” or “horns,” or “angels,” the sexual puns that recur most frequently derive much of their energy and usefulness from a broadly applicable vagueness. Play on the word “meat” and similar words – “dish,” “mutton” – is one of the most common sexual puns, and is particularly convenient because it can be used in reference to either men or women. Thus in Roaring Girl Moll can demand of Laxton, “Am I thought meat for you that never yet / Had angling rod to cast towards me?” ( .. –), and thirty lines later say that she will make her enemies know that “she that has wit and spirit / May scorn to live beholding to her body for meat ” ( lines –). “Meat” is opposed to “rod” in the first case, a synonym for it in the next. “Mutton,” of course, was slang for “prostitute,” and frequently comes up in discussion of meat, either intentionally as in Lechery’s lines in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (“I am one that loves an inch of raw mutton better than an ell of fried stockfish,” .. –); or unintentionally as in Aminadab’s blessing in How a Man May Choose: “I say grace / . . . [for] Mutton and beef . . . / And other meat that’s in the house; / For racks, for breasts, for legs for loins” (lines ,–). “Meat” can be bawdy even when it is not meat, as in Dekker’s If this be not a Good Play, the Devil is In’t, .. –, where Narcisso says that he would love a woman “but as I love a walnut, to crush it, and peel it, eat the meat, and then throw away the shell.” And in perhaps one of the most sustained examples of play on the 

Because I am focusing on recurrent bawdy wordplay I will tend to concentrate on these broadly applicable puns and double meanings. Dictionaries of bawdy language, such as Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy (New York: E. P. Dutton, ), James T. Henke’s Renaissance Dramatic Bawdy (Salzburg: Salzburg Studies in English Literature, ), and Gordon Williams’s A Glossary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Language (London: Athlone, ) are extremely useful in providing indices not only of the recurrent wordplay, but also the most obscure, strained possibilities.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

word, Middleton, Jonson, and Fletcher fill The Widow with references to “meat” – a widow, Ricardo says, brings a man money and meat – and then let Ricardo end the play in this way: [To Francisco as he exits] Stay, Stay, sir, I’m as hungry of my Widdow, As you can be upon your Maid beleeve it, But we must come to our desires in order; There’s duties to be paid e’re we go further; [To the audience] He that without your likings, leaves this place, Is like one falls to meat, and forgets grace. And that’s not hansome, trust me, no, Our rights being paid, and your loves understood, My Widdow, and my meat, then do’s me good; I ha’ no money, Wench, I told thee true, For my report, pray let her hear’t from you.

Sexual, gustatory, and theatrical pleasure come together in a word. “Wit” is similarly versatile and frequent. Booth, following Herbert A. Ellis, notes in his discussion of Shakespeare’s Sonnets  and  that “wit” could mean “penis” as well as “vagina,” and we see examples in (anon.) Arden of Feversham .: “such kind husbands seldom want excuses; / Home is a wild cat to a wand’ring wit ”; in Jonson’s Alchemist .. –: “Is she in no way accessible? No means, / No trick, to give a man a taste of her – wit – / Or so?”; and in The Shrew .. –:      Where did you study all this goodly speech?    It is extempore, from my mother-wit.      A witty mother! Witless else her son.

As “meat” has immediate pertinence to other sensual pleasures besides sex, so “wit” always carries the weight of its primary sense, intelligence or cunning – a sense that is generally pertinent to the issues of adultery, cuckoldry, or other bawdry that are raised around the obscene use of the word. A sense of multiplicity of meaning is achieved more effortlessly than it is in, say, the scene from A Fair Quarrel. The pleasure of being in on a joke shifts slightly to the pleasure of knowing that jokes are everywhere. This occurs with many common gender-specific puns as well. Among the most common of these are “quaint” (cunt) and “prick” (either as noun or verb). Sarpego in Chapman’s The Gentleman Usher promises that from the court masque “this quaint duchess here shall see / The fault of virgin nicety” (.. –); the lusty king in Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy, thinking he is bound for pleasure as Evadne ties him up, 

Shakespeare’s Lusty Punning in Love’s Labour’s Lost (The Hague: Mouton, ).

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



asks “What prettie new device is this Evadne? / . . . By my love / This is a queint one” (.. ). Consumed with lust for Anne, Wendoll in Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness tries to control himself, but then is resigned: “some fury pricks me on” (. ); in The Insatiate Countess, Abigail and Thais pledge confidence in one another in the face of their unfaithful husbands:    . . . why, we two are one another’s grounds, without which would be no music.   Well said, wench; and the prick-song we use shall be our husbands’. (.. –)

Cornelia enters in . of (anon.) The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll singing a fairly racy song in which the lines “What thing is loue? . . . / It is a prick, it is a thing, it is a prettie, prettie thing” (lines –) nicely broaden the implications of “prick” as it is attached to the also-common innuendo of “thing.” Other common sexual puns occur with “die” (orgasm); “hang” (often play on the gallows and being “well hung”); “hole” (often with “whole” or “holy”); almost any word having to do with standing or rising or falling; most weapons and pointed objects; and “coney” or “coney-catching” (punning with “cunt”).   

 







“The count–cunt” quibble occurs constantly in this play as well. “Thing” can mean either “penis” or “vagina,” or, as here, both. See also Othello .. . See anon., Arden . ; Marston, Insatiate Countess ..  –; or, perhaps more interestingly, the sentence passed on Love (“Thou shalt be dying, yet neuer dead, but pining still in endless pain”) at line , of Wilson’s Three Ladies of London. See Porter, Two Angry Women of Abington lines –; anon., How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, lines –; and probably anon., A Warning for Fair Women, line ,. See Jonson, Alchemist ..; Middleton, Michaelmas Term .. ; Webster, White Devil .. ; Fletcher, The Woman’s Prize .. ; and an interestingly chaotic instance in anon., The Weakest Goeth to the Wall when Sir Nicholas says that “the flesh pricks myself holy now and then” (. –). See also the other examples listed above in other passages, and my discussion of “hole” below. See The Shrew, Induction .  – (“stand” and “fall”); Haughton, Grim the Collier of Croyden Hv (“fall” and “mounting”); Chapman,Gentleman Usher ..  (“stand”); Field, Amends for Ladies . (“get up”); and Webster, Duchess of Malfi ..  (“raise”). See Greene, Friar Bacon .  (“sword”); Middleton and Rowley, Roaring Girl ..  (“auger”); Middleton, No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s .. – (“weapon”); Beaumont and Fletcher, Faithful Friends, line  (“long tool”); anon., Second Maiden’s Tragedy ..  (“weapon”); and Duchess of Malfi ..  (“pistol”). One of the most extraordinary and elaborately vulgar puns on cony that I have seen occurs in Porter’s Two Angry Women of Abington, when Mall Barnes waits in a cony-warren for her betrothed, Frank Goursey. Good Lord, what pretty things these conies are; How finely they do feed till they be fat! And then what a sweet meat a coney is, And what smooth skins they have, both black and gray. They say they run more in the night than day:



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

The most important point I want to make about these puns and others like them is that their relationship to context is simultaneously definite and loose. It makes sense that Mall Barnes of Porter’s The Two Angry Women of Abington is in a coney-warren when she puns on “coney” and “cunt,” and that Aminadab is being unintentionally obscene while saying grace, but the jokes are clearly a product of convenience more than design. The playwright capitalizes on the audience’s delight in seeing how far contextually appropriate language can be stretched in an inappropriate direction. There is not much subtlety, but there is also not as much ostentation as we saw in the first group of sexual puns; the presence and potential of the puns is taken for granted. This is not to say that one is meant to laugh leeringly at Wendoll’s use of “prick” in A Woman Killed with Kindness, or the King’s use of “quaint” in The Maid’s Tragedy; all bawdy puns are not absolute jokes. But neither is one being asked to think very complexly about each character’s word choice: it is not as though we do not know Wendoll or the King is inappropriately lascivious before he uses “prick” or “quaint.” Rather, one feels with the puns that one is in a privileged, “inside” position with the play – one understands how the word fits the context even as the context does not demand the word. The audience’s enjoyment of an extra level of meaning is just that – extra. I have tried to give examples of different types of bawdy puns from different types of plays, and plays from all different times in the period in order to suggest that the inevitable superfluity of sexual puns is a vital constant over the course of the period. It will be of further use now to look at some sexual puns that put more of a strain on the context than those I have discussed. By looking at moments where the seams definitely show we can see still more clearly what the processes at work are. In scene  of Greene’s Friar Bacon Margaret, having apparently been spurned by Lacy, has just vowed to become a nun (“To shun the pricks of death, I leave the world / And vow to meditate on heavenly bliss” [ lines  –]). She stands in her nun’s habit, talking to her father, as Lacy, Warren, and What is the reason? Mark, why in the light They see more passengers than in the night; For harmful men many a hay do set, And laugh to see them tumble in the net, And they put ferrets in the holes – fie, fie! – And they go up and down where conies lie, And they lie still, they have so little wit . . . (. –)

Mary Bly discusses this and other sexual puns in “Bawdy Puns and Lustful Virgins: The Legacy of Juliet’s Desire in Comedies of the Early s,” in Shakespeare Survey  (): –.

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



Ermsby approach. Apropos of nothing, Ermsby says of the father to Lacy, “The old lecher hath gotten holy mutton to him. A nun my lord” (lines –). By force of “lecher” and “mutton,” “holy” comes also to mean “with a hole.” Then the men discover that the nun is Margaret, and innuendo is left behind. The pun on “holy” (and the use of “mutton”) is one of many strange moments in the play concerning Margaret’s sexual potential (note, for example, how many times she is referred to as either a “quaint” or a “country” maid), but it is difficult to tell whether it is a moment of Greene elaborating such strangeness or simply pursuing recklessly a joke he has had in mind for some time ( perhaps since he brought on the hostess with the shoulder of mutton in scene , of which more later). The moment is so brief that I do not think one can, or even needs to, separate the two possibilities. At the same time, the sexual joke demands a response, and because the joke is in Friar Bacon presented with the appearance of wittiness, the response is probably laughter. Perhaps the impropriety of the laughter calls attention to the audience’s complicity with the shallowness of male sexual desire in this play, or perhaps it is simply the sound of a bad joke just avoiding falling flat. In either case, the strangeness of the wordplay creates an interpretive gap. Greene makes no attempt to fill the gap: the audience moves on because the play moves on and the very fact of there being a moment where response is problematized might contribute faintly to a general unsettling of our view of Lacy and Margaret. In a somewhat less unsettling moment in How a Man May Choose, we can perhaps see the playwright’s awareness of such a gap and then, anxious to keep the ingenious joke but worried that it might fall flat, his swift move to fill the gap with more jokes. Late in the play, the servant Pipkin quarrels with the bawds Mrs. Mary and Mrs. Splay:    [To Mrs. Mary] Who, me? Turn me out of doors? Is this all the wages I shall have at the year’s end? to be turned out of doors? You mistress! you are a –  A what? Speak, a what? touch her and touch me, taint her and taint me; speak, speak, a what?     Marry, a woman that is kin to the frost. ( lines ,–)

What Pipkin means is “hoar-frost,” but Splay does not get the joke, and I find it difficult to imagine a generally favorable (or comprehending) response from an audience of any era. Whatever subtlety there is



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

in the joke is mostly lost in its ingenuity; if you get it, you get to feel extra-clever, like the author. If you do not get it, the author has moved on quickly to continue proving his intention to milk every word for all it is worth: this passage is followed by a still more labored passage of conventional punning on “cozen” and “cousin.” It is as though the potential gap created by the “hoar” joke is being over-filled with jokes the audience has no choice but to get. Excess seems to be the whole point: the language always over-compensates for the dull thuds its own overcompensation continually creates. The safety in over-compensation is in the wealth of possibility for connection which the variety of attempts allows. Pericles has a few strangely inappropriate moments of sexual punning, most of the excess of which is brought out and controlled in the bawd scenes of . and .. That is, if one feels uneasy about sex in the play (the action, after all, springs from the incestuous relationship between Antiochus and his daughter), it is easy to blame it on those scenes where one is most obviously supposed to feel uneasy. But I think this uneasiness, while obviously created by the bawd scenes, is made more pervasive by the inappropriate puns, the strangest and most overt of which is in Gower’s speech before Act , as he talks about the wedding night of Pericles and Thaisa. Now sleep y-slack`ed hath the rout; No din but snores about the house, Made louder by the o’er-fed breast Of this most pompous marriage-feast. The cat, with eyne of burning coal Now couches from the mouse’s hole; And crickets sing at the oven’s mouth, Are the blither for their drouth. Hymen hath brought the bride to bed, Where by the loss of maidenhead A babe is moulded. ( lines  –, emphasis added)





And . and . are full of puns: on the idea of “meat” (.. , .. –); “hole” and “whole” (.. ); “piece” (.. ); “plough” (.. ); “thing” (..  –); and “sound” (.. , a common joke – especially prevalent in anon., The Revenger’s Tragedy – about the “unsound” bones caused by syphilis). I think “breast,” “burning coal,” “couches,” and “mouth” all work to make the bawdiness of “hole” quite plain. Burning coal is perhaps less well attested-to than the others for its bawdy potential, but Cornelia’s song in anon., The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, ., includes an obviously bawdy use of “coal” (“[love] is a coale, whose flame creeps in at euery hoale ”). This is stronger than but possibly similar to The Duchess of Malfi .. –, where Ferdinand uses the word “coals”

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



This sounds like The Rape of Lucrece in doggerel verse. One can think of it as Gower getting a little carried away with his narrator role; or as a strangely off-kilter epithalamion that is in keeping with the off-kilter romance that is the play’s subject; or one can over-compensate for the silliness of the verse, as some editors do without acknowledging the pun, by seeing the passage as the beginning of Shakespeare’s “incomparably more vivid, vigorous, and accomplished” verse after two acts of Wilkins. But however one explains it, the fact remains that the audience has to react to a dirty joke that is not shocking but is certainly not called for, and is only emphasized by the sing-song quality of the verse. The pun is a very real surfeit, and for the brief moment it is asked to deal with it, the audience is on a level entirely separate from the action, and perhaps even the physical space, of the play – a level where getting the joke is the only thing that matters. In few places does this level more surprisingly impose itself on audiences than in the fourth act of Othello. About eighty lines after Othello’s awful cruelty (“I cry you mercy then. / I took you for the cunning whore of Venice” [.. –]), Desdemona, talking to Emilia and Iago, suddenly sounds like a character out of Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I cannot say ‘whore’: / It does abhor me now I speak the word” (lines –). I do not think that these lines are meant to provoke a cackle of mirth, but I also cannot imagine an interpretation of them or of Desdemona that could make them seem like anything other than the author announcing his ingenious presence. Shakespeare plays with “abhor” in this way elsewhere – for example, Sonnet , lines  –, and with the executioner Abhorson in Measure for Measure ( both of which are noted, with Othello, in Booth’s discussion of the sonnet). And a very similar instance of such a joke occurs in (anon.) Revenger’s Tragedy ., where the Duchess says of Lussurioso, “He called his father villain and me strumpet, /A word that I abhor to ‘file my lips with” (lines –). So play on the word was not unusual, but it is rather extraordinary that Shakespeare introduces it into 



in a way that probably suggests “testicles”: thinking about his sister’s lust, he imagines “some lovely squire / That carries coals up to her privy lodgings.” This description comes from the introduction to the Signet edition (ed. Ernest Schanzer, ), p. xxx. Echoing this sentiment is F. D. Hoeniger, editor of the Arden edition (), in a footnote: “the freer, more varied and syncopated rhythm of this chorus, point to Shakespeare as the author.” Abhorson in Measure for Measure gets almost immediately involved in a fairly subtle joke related to his name when the Provost tells him that Pompey is to aid him in killing Claudio and Bernardine:        . . . he cannot plead his estimation with you: he hath been a bawd.         A bawd, sir? Fie upon him, he will discredit our mystery !

(.. –)



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

this crucially sad moment (in Revenger’s, while the Duchess is probably scared, she is above all invested in having Lussurioso sent to the block, and is certainly laying it on a bit thick). I cannot account for it, and I doubt audiences can or do. If the actor can pull it off – no small feat, because the line sounds witty – one might get the joke without being distracted, feel an extra dimension of meaning without noticing that one is being clever; but the play also does not seem to care whether one is distracted. This kind of moment, where making and getting a joke are of primary, total importance, epitomizes, perhaps not entirely positively, the general function of puns in the drama: they remove an audience to a level where the artificiality of language is self-contained and self-sufficient. In his discussion of the first scene of Twelfth Night  Stephen Booth calls attention to the “real but ordinarily impalpable illogic” of lines –, where Orsino pursues the “heart–hart” pun into confusion – first saying that he hunts the hart and then talking of himself as that hart. Booth notes that the illogic of the lines is rarely noted, and explains that fact this way: the well-known tracks of a traditional conceit and the appropriate and appropriately commonplace mythological filigree work make a listener superior to expository logic. The action of the lines is assumed to be what our generic expectations call for, what the habitual activities of the hart/heart pun and the mythological analogy make them. We do not notice what Orsino says; we hear what he must be saying. We listen to nonsense as if it were sense. ( p. )

This is a more sophisticated version of what goes on with the four more palpably difficult moments I have just discussed, where the audience controls its response in an intelligible way – because it knows how to respond to puns – even as that response does not really suit the context or content of the scene. While those moments put enough strain on context to foreground the potential failure of such balancing acts, they also make a strong case for what Booth is talking about, and for the fact that extended, half-submerged systems of puns, echoes, and semantic connections work because a functional metaphorical way of thinking is always ready at hand to replace the clumsy and cluttered literal. The spaces between words or syllables (“hoar” and “whore” or “-hor” and “whore”) that are related in only the most superficial way are always on the verge of being filled with significance. In . of Chapman’s The Gentleman Usher, Corteze returns from a successful mission of spying on Margaret to find out what other suitor is 

In Precious Nonsense: The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson’s Epitaphs on his Children, and Twelfth Night (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp.  –.

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



threatening the duke Alphonso’s suit. Medice, Alphonso’s favorite, who set Corteze on this mission, praises her, and she gloats: O, these young girls engross up all the love From us poor beldames, but I hold my hand; I’ll ferret all the cunni-holes of their kindness Ere I have done with them. ( lines –)

Chapman’s spelling makes the potential dirtiness of “coney holes” even more obvious than it already is. Understanding the wordplay here is a weird and complex process. “Ferret all the cunni-holes,” as we have also seen in Two Angry Women, obviously suggests sexual intercourse. That is the joke of the pun. But it is also not what Corteze means; she means that she will root out all her young girls’ secrets. Corteze is, however, a lusty character who is constantly making lascivious advances to Medice, and so it is not unlikely that she would speak these lines in such a way as to convey the sexual joke. Of course, the sexual joke does not quite make sense, since Corteze is a woman; but the actor playing her would have been male, and so the joke would have had on some level a faint pertinence (as well as a less faint impertinence, since the actor would have been a boy rather than a man). Each of the various layers of experience involves a simple but important collision of literal and figurative ways of understanding. One hears “ferret” and “cunni-holes” and understands “penis” and “vagina”; one hears a woman telling a sexual joke as though she were a man but (mostly) understands that joke to be the voice of the author, (mostly) independent of the demands of context; one sees a boy in women’s clothes and understands him to be a woman. The literal demands of language (“ferret” and “coney” are animals), context (Corteze is talking about spying, not sex), and the theatre (Corteze is played by a boy, not a woman) give way to the more metaphorical demands of theatrical language and action; and here they converge around the conventional pun. Something similar can occur with virtually any pun. Chapman’s pun is not extraordinary as much as is the fact that Elizabethan and Jacobean drama so constantly puts its audiences through such experiences, to the point that the tendency of the mind to look for the convergence of literal and figurative levels of meaning in any context must have been virtually automatic. It is from this perspective that we can begin to see the important possibility of unmade, potential, even non-signifying puns, which Booth and others find in Shakespeare, in works we might otherwise not have



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

thought to contain them. We can also begin to see more clearly why they are so important in the places we expect to find them. I will now return to an earlier topic of discussion, “meat,” and discuss its prevalence in the language of two early and possibly related plays, Doctor Faustus and Friar Bacon. In Faustus we find Wagner calling Robin one who “would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood-raw” (.. ), and later Robin, having called forth Mephistopheles, asks, “Will it please you to take a shoulder of mutton to supper . . . and go back again?” (.. –). Faustus, who is obviously parodied in Robin, begins the play by dining with Cornelius and Valdes, and announces that “after meat / We’ll canvass every quiddity” of raising demons (.. –). Later, as they are en route to dine invisibly with the Pope, Mephistopheles promises Faustus, “we’ll be bold with his venison” (.. ). And Lechery, as has been noted above, makes an appearance among the Seven Deadly Sins, proclaiming her love for “raw mutton” (.. ). In the connection between Robin’s “mutton” and Lechery’s, one might see the suggestion that Robin’s hunger is not only literal, but sexual, and this might resonate in complex ways with Faustus’s own desires; in the potential connection between the “meat” associated with Robin and that associated with Faustus one might also perceive an extra level of the overt parody. But the connections are faint, and it is not necessary to insist on the importance of the audience’s conscious perception of them; rather, the important thing is that one’s mind is repeatedly put in contexts involving meat and magic, accompanied by the always potential association of meat and sex. This quiet patterning encourages but does not bring to observable resolution the connection that is made consciously when Lechery makes her pun. Friar Bacon presents still more fascinating opportunities for connections between different kinds of “meat” and the effects of magic. The play begins with Edward I “malcontented” (.  s.d.) because, while he has succeeded in “lustily” pulling down the “deer of merry Fressingfield” (. –), he has not won Margaret, “the lovely maid of Fressingfield” (. ). At the end of the play, when the keeper consents to the match of Lacy and Margaret, he says he is as happy “As if the English king had 

The possibility that Greene’s play is a response to Marlowe’s is discussed by Irving Ribner in “Greene’s Attack on Marlowe: Some Light on Alphonsus and Selimus,” Studies in Philology  (): –. Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth Maclean also discuss the possibility, and note that an “anti-necromancy theme runs extensively through the comedies of the Queen’s Men” (The Queen’s Men and their Plays [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ], p. ). It has also been argued, of course, that Faustus was written after Friar Bacon.

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



given / The park and deer of Fressingfield to me” (. –). Earlier (scene ), in celebration of their engagement, Lacy has told Margaret that they will have a feast of “butter, cheese, and venison” (line ); and in scene , after the keeper has given his consent, Margaret says they will have “butter and cheese and humbles of a deer” for breakfast ( line ). Friar Bacon enters in scene  and first illustrates his powers when he humiliates Burden by summoning with a devil a tavern-hostess “with a shoulder of mutton on a spit” (. ) in order to show what kind of “studying” Burden has been doing nightly. Bacon is later involved in a rather awkward moment with the Emperor of Germany, who is offended by the “mess of pottage” Bacon puts out for him to eat (.  s.d.). Bacon recovers by saying that his purpose was only to “let thee see . . . / How little meat refines our English wits” (lines –); he then promises a great feast. The play ends with a similar promise, this time from Henry III, pledging to celebrate his son’s wedding to Elinor of Castile with “viands such as England’s wealth affords” (. ). Meat, magic, love, luxury, country living, monastic austerity, and courtly life momentarily converge in a syncopated way around the repeated, familiar but different contexts involving “meat” and its puns and potential puns. Ermsby’s strange “holy mutton” in scene  has in some ways been seen before, in the actual shoulder of mutton and lusty hostess of scene ; the Keeper talks of Margaret’s marriage as Edward earlier talked of Margaret; Henry speaks to the assembled company as Bacon had to learn to speak to the German Emperor. As in Faustus, things of the physical world – a shoulder of mutton or a mess of pottage or a deer’s humbles, to feed Robin or Burden or Faustus or Bacon or Margaret – have the capacity to metamorphose into the metaphors one might use to discuss the meaning or meanings of either play: “mutton” makes women into consumable objects, and the powerful men of these plays are always seen eating – Faustus can as easily order up a plate of grapes as Helen of Troy; “deer” (or “hart”) makes women into something to be hunted, and  



This series of related lines also activates the potential for a “deer–dear” pun to be made. I realize that “Bacon” was the name of the Friar in Greene’s source (the prose-work, The Famous History of Friar Bacon), and that suggesting a punning relationship between the Friar’s name (and even, perhaps, the first syllable of the word Friar) and the “meat” in the play seems ingenious, if not silly. But such stretches are fundamental to my argument. One can in no way make a good case for Greene’s intention in the matter, or for the value (or, still more, the need) of noting the pun consciously in the theatre, but one also cannot deny that bacon is a meat, and that meat pops up a lot in the play. The combination of these facts emphasizes that the effects I am discussing with these puns are almost wholly potential effects, but also that that potential is potentially quite creative in the ways it encourages in a viewer’s mind the linking of irrelevant elements. This episode is also in Greene’s source. See previous footnote.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

the parallel between the two is made blatantly clear at the beginning of Greene’s play; the venison on which Faustus dines proves both the security and the vulgar worldliness of his power; that on which the Emperor of Germany and Henry III dine is alternately a symbol of decadence and majestic opulence, and stands in opposition, positive and negative, to the more humble repast of the Friar and Margaret. It is doubtful that these metamorphoses are ever so clear or synthetic as I can make them seem here, but it seems undeniable that the energy of this potential is a large part of what makes these plays, which are at heart about magic and metamorphosis, so compelling. Similar thematically pertinent punning phenomena occur in other plays: with the word “servant” (in reference both to the lovers and to the occupation of the mechanicals) in Lyly’s Gallathea; with the words “rape,” “reap,” and “ripe” in The Spanish Tragedy (the central image for which puns is Horatio hanging in the bower); with “rain” and “reign” in Marlowe’s  Tamburlaine (see the transition between . and ., and Tamburlaine’s discussion of his “thirst for reign” at the beginning of the latter); “wood” (forest) and “wood” (mad) in The Old Wives Tale; “meat” again in both Shakespeare’s and the anonymous Shrew plays – particularly after the wedding, where Petrucchio (or Fernando) subdues Kate by depriving her of “meat”; “hair” and “heir” in The Revenger’s Tragedy; “hole” and “whole” in Barry’s extremely bawdy Ram Alley, a play positively obsessed with holes, ditches, slits, and openings of all kinds (most prominent are the Alley of the title and the name of the usurer who lives there – Throat); “head” in Cymbeline (in particular around the scenes where Cloten seeks to take Imogen’s maidenhead and ends up himself decapitated); and elaborate systems of punning and insinuation involving “cutting” and “pricking” built, with others, on the incessant clothing imagery in Michaelmas Term, Your Five Gallants, The Roaring Girl, and many other Middleton plays. Sometimes, as with the woman carrying the shoulder of mutton in Friar Bacon, the play between literal and figurative is closely connected to the action on the stage. An obvious example is in Jonson’s The Alchemist, .. , where Mammon says the word “common” – a word with many functions in this play – and Doll Common herself enters at the same time. A still more graphic example of this process occurring in reverse order is in (anon.) Selimus: in scene , Aga’s eyes are pulled out and his hands are cut off by Acomat, and in scene  Mustaffa and Bajazet see him in this state. In scene , Selimus has received his pardon from the terrified Bajazet, and makes a speech that unquestionably echoes the literal violence we have just seen:

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



Will fortune favor me yet once again? And will she thrust the cards into my hands? Well, if I chance but once to get the deck, To deal about and shuffle as I would; Let Selim never see daylight spring Unless I shuffle out myself a king.

( lines –)

This is a more diffuse version of the cruel joke and overt wordplay Acomat makes in scene  when, after Aga says, “let me never see that day” when Bajazet would be killed, Acomat replies, “Yes, thou shalt live – but never see the day,” and pulls out his eyes. More subtle, and much less noticeable, is the play on “fall” in Marston’s The Insatiate Countess. In ., at the wedding dance, Marston gives the stage direction “Isabella falls in love” (line ), and it seems that some kind of conventional, if not stylized, action or gesture or expression would be required of her here and at each of the other two or three times she fixates on a new man. Forty lines later we have the direction “The third change [of dancing] ended, Ladies fall off ” (line ). Whether or not Marston wrote these stage directions himself (though he probably did) we can assume that “fall in love” and “fall off ” were idiomatic ways of understanding the actions Marston had in mind, and would have been approximately the phrases by means of which the audience would have understood the actions. Eight lines after the end of the dance, Massino, with whom Isabella has fallen in love, “falleth into the bride’s lap” (line ). Thaisa asks Isabella if she is hurt and she replies “O no, an easy fall. / [Aside] Was I not deep enough, thou god of lust, / But I must further wade?” (lines –). The lusty possibilities of “easy fall” are further brought out after the women leave and Rogero teases Massino, saying that the fall was “as common a thing as can be. The stiffest man in Italy may fall between a woman’s legs” (lines  –). Later, having fallen in love with the reluctant Gniaca, Isabella begs him, “Love me, and like Love’s Queen I’ll fall before thee” (.. ): the puns on “queen” (quean – whore) and “fall” (worship, fuck) are barely beneath the surface. And finally, at the end of Act , Don Sago, acting on Isabella’s orders, shoots Massino and boasts, “Fame’s register to future times shall tell / That by Don Sago, Count Guido fell” (.. –). The puns present but do not insist on the possibility of a variety of simultaneously literal and metaphorical readings: Massino’s 

A similar episode occurs in anon., Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany where, on Hr, Saxon dashes out the brains of Hedewick’s child and then, on the verso side of that page, tells Edward, whom he believes to be the father, that “Unprincely thoughts do hammer in thy head.”



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

fall into Isabella’s lap can be a symbol of his downfall, or of his falling in love, or both; or (and) it can be simply a catalyst, the tragic accident, that leads to his downfall. Pursuing either reading can get you to quite a different place in interpretation. You can see the tragedy as symbolic and fatalistic: Massino is doomed from the outset to fall in a variety of increasingly dangerous ways. Or you can see it as an exploration of Isabella’s demonic power of seduction: once Massino falls into her lap he has no chance. But the play does not really ask you to pursue either one; rather, you should feel the manner in which they are always potentially combined. The collision of the literal and figurative modes of thinking, usually resulting in the metamorphosis of the former into the latter, is potentially very creative in that it mirrors and encourages the interpretive process all audiences go through while watching a play: the process of drawing general and metaphorical significance from highly controlled, arbitrarily meaningful represented actions. Puns bring about this kind of collision on both the most minute and the most general levels. The success of punning in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama lies in the playwrights’ ability to do it so casually, with so much more investment in the opportunity for rather than the content of the joke, so that the audience always feels it is getting something extra without having to work for it: “holy mutton” gets the spotlight in Greene’s play while the elaborate network of meatrelated puns remains at work unseen. For every moment like the “hoar frost” joke in How a Man May Choose or Desdemona’s “abhor,” there are hundreds of slightly less forced moments that make those where the seams show little more than faint ripples. Elizabethan playwrights picked up on the value of constant, ostentatious punning fairly early, so that by the early seventeenth century audiences were ready for the most quotidian words, phrases, and actions to turn into elaborate multiple meanings: consider, for example, the double-entendre that fills a backgammon 

A simpler and non-sexual example of the work “fall” can do is in anon., The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England when John orders the hanging of the soothsayer who foretold John’s downfall. The Bastard comes to report the soothsayer’s death and replies to the question, “What newes with thee?” with The newes I heard was Peters prayers, Who wisht like fortune to be fall us all: And with that word, the rope his latest friend, Kept him from falling headlong to the ground. (. –)

This is just after Hubert has announced to John that “Arthur the lovely Prince / Seeking to escape over the castle walles, / Fell headlong downe, and in the cursed fall / He brake his bones” (lines –).

Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay



game and a card game in, respectively, Arden of Feversham and A Woman Killed with Kindness; or the multiple meanings of “backfriend” – “chair,” “backer” or “supporter,” “false friend,” and “sergeant” – all in response to Sir Alexander’s simple request for a chair in Roaring Girl .. . The hyperactivity of the language and the propensity for creative connections it would have encouraged in audiences allowed plays to suggest much more than they said, and to seem to contain connections they only hinted at. It seems significant that as play production and theatregoing increased to their highest levels in the early seventeenth century the plays got more, not less, verbally sophisticated. Perhaps companies built and maintained followings by continually increasing the demands their plays made on their audiences’ attention, thus creating audiences that could handle those demands. As we will see still more clearly in the next two chapters, the first on asides and the second on exposition, when a character or a play has something to convey, no matter how obscure or oblique or laden with double meanings, only the most foolish dupes do not get it. 

Somewhat less intentional card-game wordplay occurs in Machin and Markham, The Dumb Knight . (vol. , Dodsley’s Old English Plays [ London, ], pp. –).

 

Managing the aside

Puns fill the space between stage and audience by transforming all-too literal words and syllables into a matrix of virtually endless figurative and interpretive possibilities; asides, on the other hand, demarcate theatrical space, isolating but insisting on the simultaneity of several different and very specific interpretive possibilities for the on-stage action. The aside is one of the most pervasive conventions of English Renaissance drama, and one of the most potentially disruptive. It calls attention to the power of the stage to represent a multiplicity of actions, dialogues, points of view – that is, it helps create a convincing theatrical space; but as a consequence it opens up a variety of problems with respect to the negotiation of physical space on the stage itself. Even as playwrights ask their audiences to focus on the intricacies of poetic dialogue, they also break up that focus by giving characters moments of (frequently intricate) direct address that comment on, misinterpret, break into, or sound over that dialogue. Like expository speeches (the subject of the next chapter), asides can stand in for action – can clarify motivation and background information even as the main action and dialogue are moving forward. But, as we will see too with expository speeches, the potential surfeit of information asides provide – requiring the audience to focus its attention on several points at once – can be more distracting than illuminating. Unlike expository speeches, which tend to be an explicit product of the relationship between playwright and audience, asides develop a relationship between single characters and the audience, and thus have a more immediate interpretive effect. Early on in the Italian plot of Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies, Fallerio reveals himself in a series of asides to be interested only in Pedrino’s will, even as he pretends to weep over his dying brother. The fact that the information comes in the form of asides makes Fallerio’s duplicity all the more evident and important. Dion in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, Arruntius in Jonson’s Sejanus, 

Managing the aside



Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, and any number of other, similarly malcontented characters keep a running commentary on the hypocrisy of the politicians, generals, and courtiers of the main action. Their separateness in speaking aside and offering interpretations of events emphasizes to the audience that it is good, and ultimately more illuminating, to exist outside the world the rest of the characters inhabit. But asides are also used to draw the audience further into the action of the play than most characters can be. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Scornful Lady, the Elder Loveless, having been sent away by the eponymous Lady, pretends to have died at sea and returns in disguise. He enters in . to announce his own death to Young Loveless and does not discover himself to the other characters until .. . Without seeing Loveless put on or plan to put on his disguise, an audience used to seeing actors double roles might not be certain that the character is Loveless; or a particularly good disguise might keep the fact hidden in any case and make the revelation scene similar in effect to, say, the end of Epicoene. But the playwrights give out the secret almost immediately with an aside by the Elder Loveless (.. ), and continue to give him asides that emphasize the irony throughout. Surprise is to a certain extent beside the point: the desired effect seems to be to make you aware of what everyone else is missing, and to make you feel as a result that you are getting everything. All asides impinge on an audience’s focus to a certain degree, and all asides create and rely on for their effects a simple dramatic irony: the audience and some characters know more than some other characters. Audiences enjoy this kind of irony and are therefore willing to accept disruptions in action that facilitate it. The danger, of course, is that the action will be too disrupted, that the information provided will not be of great enough importance or necessity to balance the intrusion of overt theatrical artifice. Critical attention to asides has tended to fall less on their disruptive force. The expansive formalist studies of Muriel Bradbrook and Madeline Doran identify the convention as such, and allow the fact of the convention to explain the effect. Bradbrook says that the “recognition of direct speech as a legitimate convention is necessary to the rehabilitation of Elizabethan methods of construction . . . It was easy to 



Robert Weimann, distinguishing between upstage and downstage acting, says that “downstage, somewhere in between the socially and spatially elevated Claudius and Timon and the audience, stood characters less inclined to accept the assumptions – social, ideological, dramatic – of the localized action.” In Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater, p. . Of course, as the end of Epicoene shows, this is not always the desired effect. The end of Epicoene and similar moments (such as the end of The Widow) are discussed in the final section of chapter .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

come out of character when neither action nor speech was realistic.” She goes on to call the aside “the bridge between dialogue and soliloquy,” but does not elaborate on her subsequent point that “[s]ome asides are so lengthy that they are practically soliloquies” (Themes and Conventions, p. ). Doran notes that the aside, like the soliloquy, is used to exhibit motivation “rather baldly in ways not familiar to us, or at least, not customary in modern dramatic usage.” More performance-centered studies, like B. L. Joseph’s Elizabethan Acting, attempt to reconceive the “baldness” Doran finds in the aside as an easily understood part of theatrical performance. “Departures from realism such as monologue and aside did not make the actor communicate thought, emotion, and desire any less naturally. . . [ The actor behaved] just as if he were the actual person represented when he spoke asides. Others on stage continued to behave as if they had not heard him” (Elizabethan Acting, p. ). Robert Weimann’s discussion of Figurenposition and the “extra-dramatic moment” in Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater does some work toward bridging the two points of view noted above, and moves discussion of asides toward something more than simply the identification of a convention and its types. Concentrating in particular on Hamlet and on Apemantus in Timon of Athens, downstage characters who break out of the representational mode to call attention to the hypocrisy of the actions of the upstage characters,  Weimann argues that when a character turns aside, “spatial position assumes a moral function: the actor’s rejection of illusion is turned into the character’s honesty ‘which passes show’ ” (Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition, p. ). The perspective Apemantus allows brings about a kind of balance: the “dual perspective that results acknowledges the sensuous attraction of a dazzling theatrical occasion, but also penetrates the showy surface” (p. ). What Weimann’s argument does not consider is the imbalance that must be created in moments like .. – of Timon, where Timon’s short speech is followed by Apemantus’s thirteen-line aside. In moments such as these, the illusion-breaking of the downstage character necessitates the heightening of the illusion by the upstage characters: the    

In Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. In Endeavors of Art (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, ), p. . New York: Octagon, . The terms “upstage” and “downstage” might be somewhat inaccurate in this context, since the audience in most early modern theatres would have been on three sides of the stage. But Weimann’s convenient terms do convey a sense of the relative proximity (even if it is not necessarily physical proximity) of actors to audience and will, I hope, serve in the argument that follows.

Managing the aside



upstage actors must insist all the more urgently on their roles as banqueters in order that the downstage character’s extra-dramatic moment is convincingly (rather than arbitrarily) remote. Apemantus does not provide a privileged perspective if his fellow actors give the audience time to remember that there are other actors on stage not speaking. The collision between literal and figurative thinking that we have seen with puns, as for example in Corteze’s speech in The Gentleman Usher, is recapitulated with asides on a slightly larger scale and in a way that is more directly connected to the physical facts of the stage. Wordplay must capitalize on the energy created by the difference between context (a speech about secrets) and content (a speech that sounds like it is about sex): it converts this energy into the excitement of combining unlike elements that is present in the experience of any pun. Asides have the more difficult task of converting a tangible, visible problem (a character implausibly stands or speaks apart from the action) into a visible necessity (a character’s apartness is interpretable as a vital “moral” and/or theatrical function). For the aside to work, we have to change the way we see what we see. In this chapter I will look at some different kinds of aside in Renaissance drama, and do so with the assumption that they frequently, if not always, had the potential to irritate or confuse their original audiences, and that this potential cannot have been something of which playwrights were unaware, even as they used asides again and again. It is important to note at the outset that most “asides” as we know them in these plays are at least partly modern editorial constructs. While there are many examples of stage directions specifically ordering characters to “turn aside and speak” or to “speak to the people,” their number is disproportionately small compared to the vast number of unmarked but evident asides. Most of the asides I will discuss here are just such unmarked asides. And while I generally assume that modern editors are correct in their labeling of asides, I will keep in mind throughout that in   

See above, pp. –. See Alan Dessen and Leslie Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . Throughout Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies, asides are marked with the direction “To the people.” An important difference between the audience’s perception of Kate in Taming of A Shrew and Kate in Taming of the Shrew can perhaps be seen in the former play when Kate is directed to “turn aside and speak” the line “I methinks have lived too long a maid” (. ). The Maid’s Metamorphosis (anon.) makes an interesting distinction between asides and soliloquies: before Joculo leaves Ascanius to go find Eurymine he “speakes to the people” and tells them to “look to my master” while he ( Joculo) is out of the action for a while. Ascanius is then left alone on-stage and begins to speak, but without any direction to address the audience.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

each instance of labeling there is room for ambiguity; and I will assume that this ambiguity is potentially a vital part of the aside’s effect. The fact that playwrights did not generally take the time to mark asides as separate seems to suggest that to a certain extent they did not see them as separate: that their assumptions about an audience’s range of focus were somewhat different from what the clear marks of modern editions – dashes, brackets, and the italic “aside” – would seem to imply. In Titus Andronicus ., the scene which follows the scene where Lavinia reveals the names of her rapists, Young Lucius brings Chiron and Demetrius a “bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them” (s.d.) from Titus.       Gramercy, lovely Lucius. What’s the news?   [Aside] That you are both deciphered, that’s the news, For villains marked with rape. [to them] – May it please you, My grandsire, well-advised, hath sent by me The goodliest weapons of his armoury To gratify your honourable youth, The hope of Rome, for so he bid me say, And so I do, and with his gifts present Your lordships, that whenever you have need You may be arm`ed and appointed well. And so I leave you both [Aside] like bloody villains. Exit       What’s here? A scroll, and written round about? Let’s see: Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, Non eget Mauri iaculis, nec arcu.     O, ’tis a verse in Horace; I know it well, I read it in the grammar long ago.   Ay, just, a verse in Horace, right, you have it. [Aside] Now what a thing it is to be an ass. Here’s no sound jest! The old man hath found their guilt, And sends them weapons wrapped about with lines That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick. But were our witty empress well afoot She would applaud Andronicus’ conceit. But let her rest in her unrest awhile. – And now, young lords, was’t not a happy star Led us to Rome, strangers and more than so, Captives, to be advanc`ed to this height? It did me good before the palace gate To brave the tribune in his brother’s hearing.      But me more good to see so great a lord Basely insinuate and send us gifts. (.. –)

Managing the aside



Jonathan Bate’s Arden edition, which presents essentially the same text quoted here, provides two aside-related footnotes for this scene. The first is on line , “And so I leave you both [aside] like bloody villains”: Bate quotes J. C. Maxwell’s note on the line, “Q indicates the aside by a capital for Like, preceded by a rather long space and a colon after both,” and then remarks that in the  Deborah Warner production at the Swan, “the line was thrown back as the Boy ran off.” Bate’s second footnote is on the first line of Aaron’s aside: “T. W. Craik conjectures that only ‘an ass’ is spoken aside . . . But since this is a long aside continuing to  it would be awkward to begin it with a line that is initially addressed to others.” The sense of awkwardness these footnotes indicate is wellfounded. Both of Young Lucius’s asides are awkwardly positioned – his first coming before he replies to a direct question and his last coming in the middle of a line. Aaron’s aside is quite long, hence the Bate–Craik debate, and seems to break away from a conversation he is just beginning with the Goth boys. What is interesting about the disagreement between Craik and Bate is that it is based on a stage direction given not by any of the early quartos, but by Samuel Johnson. And what is interesting about Johnson’s stage direction (and editorial acceptance of it) is that it is in such an unnecessarily awkward place. There is no reason that Aaron’s first line, “Ay, just, – a verse in Horace, right, you have it” should be directed to anyone. Chiron and Demetrius seem to be talking to each other, and having Aaron join their conversation and then break off makes the flow of the dialogue less smooth. If the dialogue were smoother, however, Aaron’s lines would be less of an aside. Johnson’s stage direction is plausible because this kind of awkward aside is what seems to be important to this scene as it opens: Young Lucius has already had two of them.  



Titus Audronicus, ed. Jonathan Bate (London: Routledge, ). In The Jacobean Drama Una Ellis-Fermor discusses a clumsy moment in The Spanish Tragedy in a way that might be appropriate to the moment in question from Titus Andronicus. Villuppo’s speech at the end of . (“Thus have I with an envious, forged tale / Deceived the king, betrayed mine enemy, /And hope for guerdon of my villainy”) she says, was “necessary for an audience untrained in the twists and turns of a plotter’s mind” (p. ). Once the conventions of revenge tragedy were more firmly established, more complex information could be conveyed less awkwardly by means of “dramatic shorthand, a technical convention, tacitly agreed upon by dramatist and audience” (p. ). This is certainly true to a degree, and the earliness of Titus Andronicus might be seen as a partial justification for awkward moments like these asides. However, as chapter  will show, expository moments, while perhaps ever more complex, do not necessarily get more efficient in later plays. As well, as I will argue throughout, the practical function of a device or convention does not preclude a thematic one. These are also editorially constructed asides, but their content makes their positioning more obviously appropriate.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

The scene seems to want to insist on Chiron and Demetrius’s complete unawareness of what others are saying, even if others are saying these things at times that would seem to require the boys’ attention. This is suggested in other ways as well. First, there is the fact that the audience already knows that Titus knows who the rapists are, and has just seen Titus, upon learning of this, send Young Lucius on his current errand. The recent events of . are nothing Chiron and Demetrius can actually know, but their very arrogance makes it seem as though they should know, and the fact that they do not makes them seem both stupid and worthy of punishment. Second, there is Young Lucius’s affected, overwrought speech, laden with ironic subordinate clauses (see, for example, lines –) and framed by stage whispers to the audience, which, nevertheless, does not raise the Goths’ suspicions. And finally, there is the Latin written on the bundle of weapons. Not only does Chiron know the verse “well,” but so would much of the Elizabethan audience, for whom Lily’s Brevissima Institutio, in which the verse occurs twice, was a standard school textbook. Chiron and Demetrius, however, just do not seem to be listening to what is being said. Rather than a reaction on their part showing a simultaneous awareness of and lack of concern about some plot by Titus, the brothers quickly forget the scroll entirely, not even joking with Aaron about the pertinence of “Mauri.” There is an excess of evidence for the fact that Chiron and Demetrius are stupid, and this risks drawing more attention to that excess itself than to the facts the evidence supports. That is, in the scene immediately preceding this one, we have seen Lavinia reveal her rapists’ names, and Titus explain with devious obliquity that he has a special message for them. In . the message is delivered and Young Lucius emphasizes the transparent duplicity of his errand (which the audience already knows) through his asides. Demetrius reads aloud the Latin message which he, like the audience, understands; but he ignores its substance entirely. Aaron then reiterates, in an aside, the import of the message which, again, the audience already knows. Part of the pleasure of this scene, of course, should come from seeing a sassy youth getting the rhetorical better of the older, simultaneously vicious and stupid brothers. For the same reason, the scene might strain the play’s credibility a little more than it should. Since the boy’s asides occur at dramatically awkward moments he will have to speak them with a particular glee that defuses the awkwardness by drawing attention to it. The scene can become less a cunning step toward Titus’s perfectly crafted revenge and more a moment of levity, an opportunity for the actor playing Young Lucius to show off a little. Rather than concentrating on the artifice of Titus’s revenge,

Managing the aside



as the play clearly intends, the audience may begin to concentrate on the artifice of the theatre, may begin to think too literally about what is theatrically conventional – that two characters are spending a lot of time on stage not hearing what other characters on stage are saying. The play deals with a representational problem – how to heap as much scorn and ridicule as possible on Chiron and Demetrius – spatially – by asking the audience to imagine the characters to be unable to hear one another, and doing so perhaps by manipulating conventional perceptions of upstage and downstage positioning. In doing this, however, the play potentially creates both a spatial problem – the audience’s focus might become unbalanced – and an interpretive one – the audience might wonder, “Why don’t Chiron and Demetrius notice these asides?” Literal, practical ways of seeing the stage threaten to impinge on more figurative, theatrical ones. What helps to give Titus Andronicus some balance at this moment is the fact that the play’s continually escalating series of horrifying events has brought the issue of response to the fore: think, for example, of the puzzlement, on-stage and off, at Titus’s laugh in .. The difficulty of determining what the proper response should be, or how it should be interpreted, would often seem to make the need for the kind of stepping-away that an aside is all the more urgent. Thus in ., when Tamora and her sons come to Titus disguised as Revenge, Rapine, and Murder, it is for a time unclear whether Titus sees through them or whether he believes them to be who they say they are. His behavior up to that point makes either option equally plausible. At the same time, Tamora’s device is unexpectedly elaborate – more foolish than foolproof – and believing that Titus believes it might mean giving the theatre too much credit. Titus seems to be on the brink of responding in an unsophisticated way, like Chiron and Demetrius in ., or like Titus himself in . when, after not noticing Tamora’s fourteen-line aside to Saturninus (lines –), he accepts at face value her announcement that she is “a Roman now adopted happily” (line ). But the audience can ultimately come to feel reassured in . that Titus has learned from his mistakes, when he is able to prove Tamora at the mercy of the same power borne of the distance between characters on stage: Titus turns to the audience and says, “I knew them all, though they supposed me mad, /And will o’erreach them in their own devices” (lines –). 

The past tense “knew” makes it sound like Titus is the only one on-stage, but Tamora and her sons are still there and have three more lines after Titus’s aside. The past tense, which is from Q, is one way in which the play draws attention to the absolute separateness of the aside. The potential implausibility of such separateness seems to have been felt even by earlier editors: Q, Q, and F all read “know.”



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

Whether or not you believe that Titus is nevertheless to a certain extent mad, his aside gives you the necessary information to interpret Tamora’s bewildering plan: her own over-confidence in her plot for revenge will bring vengeance down on her. The information gap shifts, as it did in ., from the victims to their tormentors as the tragedy moves into full-scale revenge mode. Asides, especially when they place as much strain on context as do these from Titus Andronicus, suspend an audience between thinking about what it is seeing too literally and accepting the hyberbolically metaphorical way of thinking the play seems to be offering. If and when such asides are successful, their unruly energy allows the audience to see hyperbole as a theatrical and interpretive necessity. In Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy characters tend to use asides to say exactly the opposite of what they have said or of what is being said by others in the main dialogue. The more clear-cut the distinction is between what Tamora says to Saturninus and what she says to Titus, the more precipitous the unknowing character’s fall will inevitably be. Comedy, more interested in temporary confusion and surprising resolution, tends to use asides more to underscore the advantages and perils of equivocation. There, the whole point is frequently about simply getting the joke. Comic asides are closely bound up with puns and the gaps in information the audience is asked to notice are more subtle than in tragedy; but the audience is very seldom allowed not to notice these gaps. In Middleton’s A Mad World My Masters ., Penitent Brothel disguises himself as a physician and the Courtesan pretends to be ill. The purpose of this deception is to provide Mistress Harebrain with an opportunity to meet and have sex with Penitent Brothel – Master Harebrain believes the Courtesan to be an honest woman, and thus permits his wife to visit her by herself. The scene involves several levels of deception. Before Mrs. Harebrain arrives, the Courtesan’s “keeper,” Sir Bounteous Progress, arrives, believing the Courtesan actually to be ill; he must be got rid of. After he leaves, two rich brothers, Inesse and Possibility, stop by to check on the Courtesan, and they also must be got rid of. When Mrs. Harebrain arrives, her husband waits outside the door, listening for any potential exchange of sinful secrets. Mrs. Harebrain knows that her husband will be doing this and tells the Courtesan so, and the Courtesan holds a virtuous conversation with herself for the benefit of Mr. Harebrain while Penitent Brothel and Mrs. Harebrain frolic off-stage. The scene is full of equivocation, of characters taking each other’s words at face value. Old Sir Bounteous, seeing the Courtesan sick, boasts, “I am afraid I have got thee with child, i’ faith” (line ), and becomes

Managing the aside



convinced of the possibility when the Courtesan replies “I fear that much, sir” (line ). Possibility and Inesse are slightly more clever: when the Courtesan tells them to “stay not above an hour from my sight,” Inesse replies, “’Sfoot, we are not going lady” (lines –). Harebrain hears the Courtesan’s phony sobs, and takes them to be his wife’s sobs of penitence for not appreciating her husband enough. As chief plotter and beneficiary of the scene, Penitent Brothel calls attention to the dangers of naive interpretation through his running commentary on the misperceptions of the duped characters.       How now, my wench? How dost?     [coughing] Huh – weak, knight – huh.     [aside] She says true: he’s a weak knight indeed.        Where does it hold thee most, wench?      All parts alike, sir.     [aside] She says true still, for it holds her in none. (.. –)

Penitent Brothel shows a strange concern for “truth” in the Courtesan’s words – strange because it implies that an outright lie somehow would not do, even though the occasion for these half-truths is blatantly duplicitous. The desired effect is to heighten the audience’s delight in that duplicity; following along with Penitent’s asides, it is more fun to watch Sir Bounteous be given a piece of “truth” that he cannot know to be false (or that he understands to be “true” in the wrong way) than to see him simply lied to. Penitent Brothel’s interjections slow down the audience’s experience of the scene’s language; they allow the audience to perceive equivocation both where there might otherwise be none (“weak knight”) and where it might not have been immediately obvious (“All parts alike”). The audience benefits, in a way that Sir Bounteous does not, from a privileged awareness of language’s multiple possibilities, and does so by means of the guidance of Penitent Brothel. The audience does not need such guidance, however – or would not if the equivocations Penitent Brothel points out here were not so strained. The privileged perspective the audience enjoys is also somewhat unprivileged in that it must be shared with Penitent Brothel. Anyone clever enough to pick up on the equivocal possibilities of the Courtesan’s lines will be to some extent robbed of his pleasure when Penitent Brothel points them out himself. At the same time, one cannot be certain of one’s cleverness until Penitent Brothel has made the joke obvious. For this moment in the play, the doubleness of language is not so much something one



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

is privileged to see as it is something one is expected to see – not a ludicrous superfluity, but a necessity. Standing aside, Penitent Brothel is still physically near to Sir Bounteous, but speaking aside in puns and equivocations puts him in the same theatrical space as the audience – absolutely distant from the gulled character. About thirty lines later, Penitent Brothel has been listing for Sir Bounteous the various medicines he is prescribing for the Courtesan. This takes up some eight or ten lines. Then, at a somewhat inappropriate moment, as Penitent begins to say how he will mix these ingredients, Sir Bounteous interrupts and says “Nay, pray be patient sir” (line ). This provides a set-up for Penitent’s joke, “That’s impossible; I cannot be patient and a physician too, sir” (line ). Sir Bounteous Progress’s, “Oh, cry you mercy, that’s true sir” (line ), allows the moment to become a punchline more than anything else. The joke is so contrived that it can only come across as a joke, in which both actors (rather than one or the other of the characters) are complicit. The audience, however, does not at this point really need any justification for the incongruity of the lines. The patient–physician joke, while not really a great joke, will inevitably be funnier than it otherwise might because it is a play on words that the audience can get without anyone pointing its cleverness out, and because it follows the previous lines where Penitent Brothel did guide us through his jokes. After seeing in lines – that a keen ear is necessary to enjoy the gulling, these lines, which do not require a keen ear, make the audience feel, like Penitent Brothel, entirely in control of language. This moment is similar to but more successful than the moment of Desdemona’s “abhor” in Othello: the play virtually stands aside from itself, reveling in its cleverness and in the way in which it has created a context and a perspective that has allowed the audience to share in that cleverness. For the rest of the scene Sir Bounteous Progress seems to be playing into verbal traps which we expect in advance, and which seem obvious – because they are – to the audience, but which he actually has no reason to suspect. 



As we see here this is rarely left to chance. Such deceitful sickbed scenes are fairly common, especially in the Jacobean period when playwrights start writing a lot of plays with doctor characters. A good parallel example is in Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize. In ., Livia pretends to be sick in order to trick one suitor, Morose, into relinquishing any interest in her to the other suitor, Rowland, whom she truly loves. Livia and her cousin Byancha take the last fifteen lines of . to plot this trick, and Byancha begins to pretend to be sick right then. In ., Byancha brings Rowland and Morose to her cousin’s chamber, laying it on pretty thick, and keeping the audience in an ironic frame of mind with jokes like “She is sick sir, / But you may kisse her whole” (..  –). In spite of all this preparation, Fletcher still gives Byancha an aside, “Well done, wench,” after Livia appears and says she is “very sick, very sick” (lines  –). See above, pp. –.

Managing the aside



A similar effect can also be achieved in tragedy: in Othello, every time Othello says “Honest Iago” or “Iago is most honest,” it is an invitation for the audience to laugh knowingly at Othello’s blindness. With extraordinary cruelty Shakespeare gives Othello absolutely no reason to suspect Iago and then asks the audience to laugh at him for being trusting. The very qualities Iago would seem to make us want to value – honesty and trust – are the qualities one cannot help but mock in Othello. The effect depends on the audience being made to believe in the need to question everything and to feel, as we see in Mad World as well, that those who do not look for equivocation or who are not privy to asides are fools. The superfluity of Penitent Brothel’s asides in lines – works out for the best in lines  – and in the rest of the scene, in that the audience now wholly accepts the rules of the scene’s game. Thus when the Courtesan holds a lengthy conversation with herself (lines  –) and fools Harebrain (to whom she would probably be entirely visible, though unseen, on the Elizabethan stage), there is no need to worry over whether or not the action is plausible. This is simply what happens to fools. In a moment such as the “weak, knight–weak knight” joke, the audience must simultaneously focus rather minutely and avoid doing so in order to keep up with the dialogue and the scene’s rapid movement forward. I think it would be hard to determine whether the audience laughs at the equivocal possibilities of the Courtesan’s lines because it sees them when Penitent Brothel points them out, or simply because the rhythm of the aside and the tone of voice required imply a joke, which is only really understood a few lines later. It would also be difficult to determine whether people laugh more because Penitent Brothel’s jokes are funny, or because the Courtesan is putting on a good show, or because Sir Bounteous Progress is so in the dark. While potentially distracting or confusing or even annoying, this surfeit of comic stimulus is nevertheless important to the effect this play and Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy generally seeks: to make one feel like laughter is absolutely irrepressible, bursting out of every word and action. If one is uncertain why one is laughing, or when one was supposed to start laughing, it is simply because everything is funny. 

In Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, C. L. Barber describes a similar effect occurring in Love’s Labors Lost .. –, where “the extension of the pigeon and pedlar metaphors” combined with “a complex pattern of alliteration” make it seem “as though language had conspired with Berowne to mock Boyet” ( p. ). Asides, I would suggest peripherally, inserted as frequently as they are in most Renaissance drama, have a rhythmic, conspiratorial effect similar to what Barber finds in alliteration, or to the effect Debra Fried sees in rhymed puns.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

The audience’s focus is frequently spread much more thinly than in this small passage, especially once the element of disguise is added, and when the characters speaking aside are also holding real conversations. A good example of such a situation is the third act of The Family of Love. Maria has been forbidden by her guardian, Glister, to see Gerardine, the man she loves. Glister believes Gerardine to be at sea, and is keeping safe for him a trunk full of his belongings. This trunk is in Maria’s room, and turns out to contain Gerardine himself. As Gerardine and Maria prepare to enjoy a surreptitious consummation, Lipsalve, Gerardine’s rival, appears below Maria’s window, accompanied by his servant Shrimp. Lipsalve is disguised as Gerardine. The dialogue that follows involves Lipsalve’s transparent lies, Maria’s ironic replies to them, Shrimp’s comments, aside, on the fact that Maria does not seem deceived, and conversation between Gerardine and Maria about Lipsalve’s foolishness. As with the weapons-delivery scene in Titus Andronicus, this scene has troubled the play’s few editors because it is difficult to see how the asides might plausibly be managed. Bullen’s edition of the play provides Dyce’s stage direction for Maria coming to her window after Gerardine has spotted Lipsalve below: “Maria appears above; Gerardine concealing himself behind her” (.. ). Dyce’s footnote to this stage direction says this: “The stage direction in the old ed. [Q ] is ‘Enter Gerardine and Maria above.’ I may observe, that as curtains were suspended before the upper-stage, to conceal, if necessary, those who occupied it, they were probably used here for that purpose by Gerardine.” Dyce’s reassurance, that appropriate stage business would have made the scene more plausible, implies the belief 



Gary Taylor, Paul Mulholland, and MacDonald P. Jackson have convincingly demonstrated that Family of Love was probably written by Lording Barry around –. See Taylor, et al., “Thomas Middleton, Lording Barry, and The Family of Love,”     : (): –. Because Middleton’s authorship c.  has been widely accepted (see Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, Gair, Children of Paul’s, and David Lake, The Canon of Thomas Middleton’s Plays [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) and because the best available edited text of the play (Dillon, New York University dissertation, ) attributes it to Middleton, the play is listed under both Barry and Middleton in my list of plays cited. In the argument that follows, I briefly discuss Dyce and Bullen’s respective interpretations of the staging of Family of Love . – interpretations based on the assumption that the play was performed at Paul’s rather than, as Taylor et al. argue, at Whitefriars. Since Paul’s and Whitefriars were similarly tiny theatres (for a description of the physical characteristics of Whitefriars see Jean MacIntyre, “Production Resources at the Whitefriars Playhouse, –,” Early Modern Literary Studies : []:  –) and since both were equipped with an “above” space, I feel that Dyce and Bullen’s remarks are resonant even if one does not accept Middleton’s authorship. Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. A. H. Bullen (London: John C. Nimmo, ). In the edition I am using (see Plays cited) this scene is . and the stage direction occurs at line . The remaining citations to Family of Love will be from the edition noted in Plays cited.

Managing the aside



that if the audience could see a character (in this case Gerardine) it would have difficulty assuming that other characters (in this case Lipsalve) could not see him as well. This seems reasonable – the potential for failure is there – but it is also fairly clear in the scene that Gerardine is visible to the audience: he has several asides which, if nothing else, would be acoustically less practical if spoken from a place where he could not be seen. These asides are largely in the form of direct conversation with Maria: “Th’art in the right, sweet wench, more of that vayne!” he tells her (.. –) after she addresses Lipsalve as though she believes he is Gerardine. In lines –, he congratulates Maria on her plan to make a fool of Lipsalve by asking him for a “favour” she supposedly gave to Gerardine: “Now dost thou put him too’t: / More Tenters for his wit; hee’s Nonplus quite.” And in the middle of the dialogue, Maria and Gerardine work together to develop a cloth-based conceit that mocks the oblivious suitor:   Ha! Let me see: my loue so soone returnd?       I never trauell’d farther then thine eyes; My bruted iourney was a happy proiect To cast a myst before thy iealous guardyan, Who now suspectles, gives some hope t’ attaine My wisht delight, before pursu’d in vaine.      [Aside] Ask if he straynd not hard for that same proiect.   Has not that proiect ouerrackt thy braine, And spent more wit then thou hast left behind?     [Aside] By this light, she flowts him.       No wit is infinite; I spent some brayne; Thy loue did stretch my wit vpon the Tenters.      [Aside] Then is’t like to shrinke in the wetting.   It cottens well. (lines  –) 

Dyce refers to a curtained “discovery space,” for which there is ambiguous evidence. In The Children of Paul’s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Reavely Gair describes the Paul’s playhouse as having at the back of the main acting area a “central double door, which was provided with a curtain and could be left open to be used as a discovery space” ( p. ). In “Production Resources at the Whitefriars Playhouse,” Jean MacIntyre also finds evidence in Whitefriars play-texts for a discovery space. But there is nothing to suggest that this scene makes use of the discovery space. Q’s direction, “above” can be taken literally: Gerardine and Maria, who leave the stage at the end of . and return at the beginning of ., probably go to the balcony area, thus both distancing themselves from the action and making the relationship between the two scenes more intelligible. One might argue that Gerardine and Maria retire to some kind of upstage structure with a “window” (see .. ) – that way the trunk could be plausibly left on-stage (i.e. it would not be suggested in Lipsalve’s entrance that he was now in the bedroom). In any case there is no mention of curtains, and nothing in the scene, as my argument will attempt to show, suggests Gerardine should be actually hidden.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

The concerted effort and self-congratulation of the two lovers depends on their proximity to one another: something quite different – more a sense of Gerardine as intriguer and Maria his instrument – would be conveyed by Gerardine whispering out his lines from a hiding place. But the end of the scene, when Glister arrives unexpectedly, does not support this interpretation. Maria is quite clearly Gerardine’s equal in intrigue: “Now must we be abrupt; retire sweet friend/To thy smallease,” she says. “[W]hat more remaines to do/Wee’l consumate at our next enteruiew” (lines –). The audience probably would have had to make the initial adjustment, as Dyce does, from thinking “Will Lipsalve see Gerardine and realize the idiocy of his plan?” to “Lipsalve does not see Gerardine, and will only continue in the idiocy of his plan,” and this adjustment, once made, allows the improbability of Gerardine’s visibility to emphasize Lipsalve’s distance from what is actually going on. Causing the audience to make adjustments in what it perceives, and in what it perceives the characters to perceive, is what the scene, and in fact the play, is all about. When Gerardine rises out of the trunk – which had formerly been easily interpretable as an object of Glister’s greed (he had been planning to keep its contents for himself if Gerardine died at sea) – it is as much of a surprise to the audience as it is to Maria. When Lipsalve enters in his disguise, he must briefly insist upon it in order to ensure that the audience knows what is going on: “I am so like Gerardine, ha, is’t not so boy?” Shrimp’s response is at this point ambiguous: “As if you were spit out on’s mouth sir; you must needs be like him, for you are both cut out of a peece” (lines –). Is this to be taken as mockery of the adequacy of the disguise or simply a servant’s impudence? Are we to interpret the non-resemblance of Lipsalve and Gerardine as a function of the practicalities of casting or of Lipsalve’s ineptitude? Does Maria recognize Lipsalve for who he really is only because Gerardine is already in her room, or would she have seen through the disguise in any case? These questions potentially bear upon the scene in important ways, but since Gerardine is in Maria’s room and can be seen by the audience, they probably do not bear very strongly. Since he is the visible evidence of Lipsalve’s blunder, questions about the adequacy of the disguise simply will not come up. Because Gerardine’s asides work in concert with Maria’s out-loud words, the single adjustment the audience must make to organize and accept the relationships of the characters on the stage draws attention away from the less obviously relevant kinds of artifice that are a result of the disguise. As with Penitent Brothel’s asides in Mad World, it is as if we hear the jokes in the scene before they literally occur.

Managing the aside



That is, we first see Gerardine suggest a play on words, which is funny in itself because the identically dressed Lipsalve can neither hear nor see it, and then we see Maria make the joke, or take it in a new direction, which is also funny because Lipsalve does not get it. As though not content with this success, however, the playwright adds another level to the scene, and one which threatens to detract from rather than enhance the effects the scene achieves. Shrimp’s asides are uniformly useless. His remark about Lipsalve’s disguise establishes him early on as a saucy knave, and all his lines thereafter work to develop his character in that direction. Lest we forget that Lipsalve is on a fool’s quest, Shrimp reminds us that we are to look irreverently at the wooing. So when Lipsalve says “Boy, I haue spyd my saint,” Shrimp responds “Then downe on your knees” (lines –). Once Maria has warmed to the task of gulling Lipsalve, Shrimp remarks, “By this light, she flowts him” (line ). Later, as Lipsalve fumbles for an excuse why he does not have Maria’s “favour” (“Tis in my t’other hose”), Shrimp makes some rather extended remarks, which make the codpiece/penis joke that is always potential, and predictable, when someone mentions his hose. In your t’other hose? – She talkt of a ladder of Ropes; if she would let it downe; for my life, he would hang himselfe in’t. – In your t’other hose? Why, those hose are in Lauender, besides, they haue neuer a codpeece: but indeed there needs no Iuy where the wine is good. In your t’other hose? (lines –)

While Shrimp’s lines probably do not make the scene less funny, they certainly do not make it more funny. One is reminded of Fabian’s incessantly unnecessary asides in Twelfth Night, ., as Malvolio discovers the forged letter. Of course, the playwright might have intended the audience to have a negative view of Shrimp – Lipsalve does tell him to go away at the beginning of the scene, lest Maria see him, and he hangs around anyway, with the apparent sole purpose of mocking his master. What is interesting about Shrimp is the way in which his superfluity and annoyingness make him both a character we do not want to pay attention to and a character we must pay attention to. Shrimp introduces the motif of clothing (“you are both cut out of a peece”) that is taken up more effectively by Gerardine and Maria, and returns to it with his joke about the “t’other hose.” He also anticipates Maria’s “Has not that proiect ouerrackt thy braine?” with “But, lord, sir, how you hunt the chase of loue, are you not weary?” (lines  –). Shrimp is largely redundant. His constant and openly ironic position in relation to the action – “By this light, she flouts him” – simply



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

insists on what the audience has long perceived. And the attention that his overt sarcasm requires, especially in the lengthy aside of lines –, both shifts the audience’s focus away from the central action and almost forces laughter. For, to ignore Shrimp’s remarks or not to laugh at them is to become willfully unaware of another level of the scene; and awareness, as Lipsalve is in the process of illustrating, is what separates the wits from the fools. If we imagine this scene on stage, Weimann’s upstage / downstage distinction becomes somewhat too simple. Shrimp is certainly a downstage character after the fashion of Apemantus, and he will be physically downstage; but Lipsalve will also have to be downstage, because Maria and Gerardine are either upstage or up- and above-stage; and these latter two, whose entire success depends on their being physically upstage, create a theatrically downstage relationship with the audience. If we further imagine Shrimp and Lipsalve on different sides of the stage (Lipsalve does not seem party to Shrimp’s cracks), we can see the playwright projecting a different voice from virtually every part of the stage. There is no space in the theatre (and this includes the audience) that is not, by virtue of its intricate overlap with the other spaces, part of the theatrical space which gives energy to and derives energy from the masterful farce. What is perhaps most remarkable, and speaks most powerfully to the fact that distinctions between public and private theatre dramaturgy are provisional at best, is the fact that Family of Love was performed on a tiny indoor stage, not on a huge platform stage where the need to attend to different parts of the house would seem more pressing. The effect of a scene like this in a small theatre would have been overwhelming; but the fact that such scenes abound in private as well as public theatre plays makes it clear that their effects were necessary. Perhaps one of the most overwhelming such scenes in a public theatre play is Othello .. Here, questions of awareness become still more urgent as there is more distance between the main action and the aside-speaking character and one character has the privilege of standing wholly apart from the on-stage action. This kind of scene does not have the same plausibility problems as the other kinds of asides. That is, there is no difficulty establishing that one character can speak, even at length, out of hearing of the others. What is difficult is establishing how much the character standing apart can or cannot hear while remaining in a believably remote place. In Troilus and Cressida ., Troilus hears every word spoken by Diomedes and Cressida, and reacts so strongly as to prompt Ulysses to quiet him down lest they be

Managing the aside



discovered. Ulysses’s awareness of the potential for discovery complements and validates the audience’s similar worry: it gives the scene a sense of verisimilitude (Ulysses and Troilus are standing close enough to hear or be heard) and, like the asides in Titus Andronicus, makes the issue of response central. The action will now proceed by means of the standing-aside character overhearing and/or misconstruing important information. In Othello ., Iago prepares Othello for what he should expect to see Cassio do and then prepares the audience for what it should look for as misconstruable evidence. Do but encave yourself, And mark the f leers, the gibes, and notable scorns That dwell in every region of his face; For I will make him tell the tale anew, Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when He hath and is again to cope your wife. I say but mark his gesture . . . ... [Aside] As he [Cassio] shall smile, Othello shall go mad; And his unbookish jealousy must construe Poor Cassio’s smiles, gestures, and light behaviours Quite in the wrong. (lines –)

Iago encourages Othello to look at non-verbal things – facial expressions, gesture, laughter – and the audience to watch how he misinterprets them. The audience, however, must also be focused on the verbal aspects of the scene because it, unlike Othello, cannot choose but hear what is being said. The discrepancy between our focus and Othello’s creates a tension – we are helplessly worried about his mistake – that is mirrored in the discrepancy between the level at which Othello reacts (“So, so, so, so; they laugh that wins,” etc.) and the fact that he cannot hear what is being said. He already seems to be misinterpreting Cassio’s words, even though we are the only ones who can hear them. This is a tragic version 

The Revenger’s Tragedy . possibly gets itself into trouble by defying this convention. Vindice and Hippolito stand aside as Spurio discusses with his attendants his plan to kill Lussurioso, but they do not hear what is said. That is why Vindice immediately tells Lussurioso that Spurio has gone to sleep with the Duchess, and why Lussurioso then finds himself in the particularly awkward position of bursting in on his sleeping father and stepmother. One might argue that Vindice’s mistake is thematically important, as it is just one more example of a largely accidental series of events resulting in perfect or near-perfect revenge; and one would be right. However, it is also true that an audience that has heard Spurio’s real plans and seen Vindice – usually a keen observer – apparently listening to them will be at least briefly confused when Vindice announces a course of action that depends on his not hearing.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

of what happens to Sir Bounteous Progress’s experience of language and the audience’s experience of Sir Penitent Brothel in Mad World .. A further discrepancy develops at line , where Iago “beckons” Othello to approach and listen to the story Cassio is about to tell. A primary effect of Iago’s beckoning is to show that Cassio is an equally unknowing party in the scene. The importance of body language as an object of scrutiny has been built up to a point that Cassio’s not noticing Iago’s movement will require of the audience a certain amount of adjustment – a moment where it asks, “Could Cassio have seen that?” Cassio’s involvement in telling his own story, like Othello commenting on laughter when he could be saved by attention to something more minute, words, probably ends up emphasizing the obvious – that Iago is in complete control. Everyone else on stage is focused on the wrong thing. This continues to be the case for the next few lines when Othello, who has come closer with the express purpose of listening to Cassio’s words suddenly becomes quite intent on his gestures, and actually does not hear what Cassio is saying and does not correctly interpret his movements. Thus:    So hangs and lolls and weeps upon me, so hales and pulls me. Ha, ha, ha!     [Aside] Now he tells how she plucked him to my chamber. O, I see that nose of yours, but not that dog I shall throw it to! (lines –)

What the audience expects to see and, I imagine, thinks it sees in this scene is Othello misinterpreting evidence that he cannot but misinterpret because of his physical and contextual distance from what is being said by Cassio and Iago. And Iago, we think, keeps him off or brings him closer at exactly the right times, increasing the potential for Othello to be fooled. The audience thinks this because this makes sense, because it creates an easily intelligible dramatic irony wherein the asides make Othello’s wrongness more tragic because the audience knows how he is wrong. What the audience actually, literally sees, however, especially in lines –, is Othello misinterpreting things he does not actually hear. It would not matter what Iago said to Cassio, or when he beckoned Othello closer: the substantively relevant Bianca material is for the sake of the audience’s sense of irony. Thus it is difficult to notice the complete implausibility of Bianca’s entrance at line , where she merely repeats the reservations about the handkerchief which she just expressed at the end of . (lines –). Her entrance seems logical rather than

Managing the aside



contrived because the handkerchief is a tangible piece of misinterpretable evidence and because the complex system of asides in the preceding lines has made the audience think that something tangible, a point of absolute convergence between the variously remote characters on stage, is all that is necessary now to bring on the catastrophic action. In this way the show Iago puts on is similar (and similarly successful) to the show we are treated to in Family of Love .. In The Family of Love, the real Gerardine is like the handkerchief Bianca brings in at the end of Othello ., and both are similar, to return to chapter , to Ermsby’s “holy mutton” joke at the end of Friar Bacon: superfluous but vital. The excess of information, of evidence, of significance insists that the smallest movement – Shakespeare’s, Shrimp’s, Greene’s, Iago’s – is worth looking at. The Duchess of Malfi has two children between Acts  and . This is revealed at the beginning of ., in a conversation between Antonio and Delio: “since you last saw her,” says Antonio, “She hath had two children more, a son and daughter” (Duchess of Malfi ..–). The footnote to these lines in Elizabeth Brennan’s edition alludes to the  RSC production of Duchess, which put the intermission after the end of Act , and then says that “Productions which do not follow this example do Webster a disservice by rendering these lines unintentionally farcical. The  NT production omitted these children.” It is strange that Brennan would find the lack of an intermission to be a “disservice” to Webster, since the original venues of the play, the Globe and the Blackfriars, would have allowed the play, respectively, no intermission and possibly a brief candle trimming interval (Brennan herself brings these facts to light on page xxxiii of her introduction). The fault would seem to lie with Webster, not with modern directors if the lack of intermission between the two acts results in unintentional farce. Brennan is naturally resistant to blaming Webster and more willing to put the burden on modern directors to smooth over the experience of a twentieth-century audience that she imagines to be less credulous than a Jacobean audience. But her discomfort with the problem of elapsed time seems likely to be more a function of Webster’s awareness of the problem than her footnote admits. This is the expository passage in its entirety (Brennan’s footnote is attached only to lines –).     Our noble friend, my most beloved Delio, Oh, you have been a stranger long at court, Came you along with the Lord Ferdinand?      I did, sir, and how fares your noble Duchess?



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response    Right fortunately well. She’s an excellent Feeder of pedigrees: since you last saw her, She hath had two children more, a son and daughter.      Methinks ’twas yesterday. Let me but wink, And not behold your face, which to mine eye Is somewhat leaner: verily I should dream It were within this half hour.     You have not been in law, friend Delio, Nor in prison, nor a suitor at the court, Nor begg’d the reversion of some great man’s place, Nor troubled with an old wife, which doth make Your time insensibly hasten.  Pray sir tell me, Hath not this news arriv’d yet to the ear (..  –) Of the Cardinal?

While not necessarily intentional farce, these lines do joke about the very problem that worries Brennan. Delio’s “Methinks ’twas yesterday” and then “verily I should dream/It were within this half hour” are quite clearly jokes between the actors and the audience about the fact that Antonio and Delio have literally seen each other “within the half hour” – in the second scene of Act . Antonio’s rather hyperbolical meditation on the subjective experience of time is a parody of more solemn such meditations in the interest of acknowledging to the audience the telescoping of time that the theatre requires. That it is no more than this is made clear by Delio’s immediate transition into the events at hand which now we must, the play seems to say, accept and get on with it. This short exchange is similar to an aside by a knowing character to the audience: largely unnecessary but somehow irresistible. The unknowing character is in this case the audience member who does not want to accept that two children can be born in thirty minutes. That such audience members were potentially present in  as much as they are today seems amply indicated by Webster’s decision to make the exchange humorous. Of course, with this humor Webster inevitably denies the knowing part of his audience some of the pleasure of being knowing, and risks making them feel – as perhaps Brennan does – somewhat cheated 

And by the fact that similar scenes abound in the drama of the period, later as well as earlier. Chapter  will briefly take up one that occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Captain. A good earlier example on a different topic occurs in King Leir. After Gallia and Mumford have disguised themselves, Gallia suggests that they call each other, in their disguises, “Trossilus” and “Denapoll”, and Mumford says “Might I be made the monarch of the world, / I could not hit upon these names, I swear.” So they go with “Will” and “Jack” (. –). Playwrights, like Byancha in The Woman’s Prize (see above, footnote ), cannot resist the temptation to wink slyly at the already quite accommodating audience.

Managing the aside



out of enjoying the artifice of the theatre without having to be reminded that they are doing so. Similarly, constant interrupting asides risk taking away some of the audience’s pleasure in recognizing, without having to be shown, the doubleness or slipperiness of language, or the aptness and subtlety of revenge. What seems most to be at stake for playwrights in these moments is controlling the audience’s relationship to theatrical and linguistic artifice. And it would seem that audiences enjoyed being controlled in this way – enjoyed the awareness that they were, or had the capacity to be, paying attention to all the right things.

 

Exposition, redundancy, action

With asides, paying attention to all the right things frequently means simply getting all the jokes. In serious plays or situations it means seeing through pretense or seeing what should be but, tragically, is not obvious to other characters. In both serious and comic situations, the tone of asides as well as their formal structure – direct engagement with the audience – generally suggest that we are not being told anything we do not already know. The stakes are somewhat different with the convention of expository speeches or dialogue: here, the information we must pay attention to is implicitly essential, and not something we are expected to know until the moment we hear it. Once we hear it, it is assumed we will remember it. Whereas puns and asides work to create the theatrical space required for the non-naturalistic stage, exposition fills the spaces where that stage cannot, or seems that it cannot, represent action. Muriel Bradbrook argues that exposition of plot, like the convention of characters describing their feelings “with scientific detachment,” is due to the “Elizabethan habit of making everything explicit and of stating everything in the verse itself ” (p. ). These conventions “show that the awareness of the audience was acknowledged, and that there was no question of the characters stepping ‘out of the picture,’ for they were never in it” (p. ). This “graduation between frank appeal ad spectatores and the subtlest nuances of Shakespearean dramaturgy, make the dead-level of modern dialogue seem a very primitive affair” (p. ). For Bradbrook, the effect of exposition is to engage the audience actively in the theatrical process of setting a scene or creating a character. She goes on to argue that “[e]xpository soliloquy is usually preferable to expository dialogue . . . The use of dialogue implies an attempt to hide the exposition, to make it naturalistic, and if the disguise is not efficient 

In Themes and Conventions.



Exposition, redundancy, action



there is a definite sense of failure” (p. ). She cites as examples of such failure the opening scenes of As You Like It, Hamlet, and Richard III. This last point would seem difficult to argue with: expository dialogue does seem to tend toward a too-artificial sound: one character tends to speak much more than the others and the audience, even though it is the sole reason for the conversation, is put strangely at a distance from the expository information by the mostly silent on-stage listeners. But the fact is that most expository scenes – in particular, scenes at the beginning of plays, which serve to set plots in motion – are in dialogue rather than soliloquy. Openings like that of The Winter’s Tale, where the main action of the play is discussed in the first scene and then re-revealed in more active form in the next, are far more common than openings like that of Marston’s Antonio and Mellida, where the hero delivers a soliloquy about what has just happened, why he is disguised, and what he intends to do. At the same time, it seems a mistake to say that the Elizabethan “habit” of making everything explicit in the verse itself allows exposition simply to stand in for action itself. Plays frequently spend large amounts of onstage time developing lines of action that have little or no effect on the main plot: consider, for example, the Villuppo plot in The Spanish Tragedy, or the Junior Brother plot in The Revenger’s Tragedy. Even travel scenes, for which exposition is frequently used, are not so theatrically cumbersome that they cannot be represented: the first scene of The Tempest provides a fine case in point. The Tempest also contains a travel narrative that is not represented on stage: the tediously presented story Prospero tells Miranda in . of how they arrived on the island. The contrast between these two scenes makes quite clear that exposition is more often a choice than a necessity. This chapter will discuss a number of different kinds of exposition and the value of frequent expository scenes, and especially expository dialogue, in a drama that actively seeks to stage spectacular, complex, virtually impossible-to-stage events. I will begin by discussing some forms of exposition that are more closely related to the aside: expository speeches, spoken by a chorus or a choric figure, which foretell the action or advance it temporally or geographically; and dumbshows that serve a similar purpose. Because these kinds of scenes involve direct address more or less uncomplicated by 

David Bevington, in From Mankind to Marlowe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), notes that the opposite might originally have been the case: in morality plays, soliloquy “repeatedly occupies the interval required for brief costume changes” ( p. ). While “the need for costume interval does not always require soliloquy . . . the function of soliloquy in these plays of limited cast reinforces its value to the plot. The result is an ever-increasing use of this dramatic technique which was so much a part of the later Elizabethan stage” ( p. ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

other, more urgent business on stage, and because they involve a single, usually somehow-omniscient character talking directly to the audience, an audience’s focus is not subject to the same strain as with asides or fastpaced expository dialogue. Just a few examples of choric, travel-related exposition are: the narrative of Edward’s return to England from France in Heywood’s  Edward IV; the narrative of Bess’s adventures at sea at the end of Act  in Heywood’s  The Fair Maid of the West; Fortunatus’s trip to Babylon at the beginning of Act  in Dekker’s Old Fortunatus; the many international voyages in Pericles, (anon.) Thomas Lord Cromwell, and Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk; and the chorus of Time in The Winter’s Tale. Some examples of dumbshow exposition are: the beginning of (anon.) The Weakest Goeth to the Wall; the inter-act pauses in (anon.) A Warning for Fair Women; during the latter part of the choric speech in  Fair Maid of the West; during some of Gower’s speeches in Pericles; and early on in Heywood’s Four Prentices of London, when a “Presenter” comes on to narrate dumbshows that show the travels of the four prentices. The choric parts here are characterized by long speeches (usually no fewer than twenty-five lines), a sense of great sweep in distance or time, and the use of words like “imagine,” “suppose,” and “allow.” These words call attention to the limits of the theatre, but also allow one to revel in the fact that the theatre is the place where thousands of miles, or dozens of years, can be traversed by means of a relatively brief speech. In expository dumbshows, action is foretold (or retold) either literally – as at the beginning of Weakest Goeth to the Wall, where we see the abandonment and rescue of baby Frederick, later a crucial event to remember; or metaphorically – as throughout Warning for Fair Women, where Tragedy, Lust, and Chastity create weird extra-temporal moments where they interact with the characters of the main action and either perform actions on them (rubbing Anne and Browne’s fingers with blood) or make them perform actions (Anne and Browne cut down a tree that represents Anne’s husband, the impediment to their lust) that represent what they will do in the scenes to follow. This use of dumbshows, especially when coupled with exposition by a chorus, presenter, or prologue of some kind, calls attention to the amplitude of resources – verbal as well as    

See  Edward IV P v. ;  Fair Maid .. ; Cromwell B r. ; Pericles , induction, . The most famous example of “imagine” in this context is probably the opening of Henry V. See Dekker, Old Fortunatus , prelude, ; Daborue, Christian Turned Turk . . See Winter’s Tale .. . Another type of dumbshow can be found in anon., Locrine, where Ate presents an allegorical show, usually involving animals, before each act and then interprets its significance in terms of the past and coming action.

Exposition, redundancy, action



visual – available to the theatre, and emphasizes through repetition the interpretive importance of various acts the audience will see. Moments like the dumbshows of Warning for Fair Women fill the stage space with all manner of characters and props, and the theatrical space with a variety of kinds of meaning (iconographic, allegorical, moral); the theatre seems veritably to be bursting with the plenitude of its own means of signifying. Moments like the beginning of Act  of The Duchess of Malfi show that you do not need an elaborate Chorus (as in Winter’s Tale) to convey the passage of time, and plays like Antony and Cleopatra and Greene’s Alphonsus, King of Aragon show that you do not need expository speeches to cover a wide geographical range. The economy of Renaissance dramaturgy with respect to setting (“This is Ilyria, lady”) is well known and cannot be discounted. But the plays that use elaborate exposition to establish temporal or geographical setting seem to be counting on an audience’s pleasure in simply hearing the details of a journey that perhaps could not be represented in as much detail on stage; in the epic, stylized feel created by the slightly archaic chorus or dumbshow calling on the audience to “imagine” what it cannot see, and calling attention to what it should find meaningful; and in the play’s proudly self-conscious implication that it is taking on as successfully as possible far more material than could ever really be put into the confines of a theatre. The deliberate excess of stimulus and significance provided by Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, which we have seen in puns, in asides, and now in the spectacular redundancies of exposition by dumbshow and chorus, makes the issue of response of paramount importance. Something is always overtly demanding a definite reaction or interpretive response, and the drama puts its audience in the habit of judging characters in terms of the way they react to the information the audience is given, whether or not the characters have access to it. One is constantly in the process of evaluating and validating one’s own response. While irrelevant puns and distracting asides both complicate and bolster one’s sense of control over the events and dialogue of the main action, exposition works on some level to extend one’s feeling of mastery to the realm of things that occur off-stage: the theatrical space includes even physical space that we cannot see. At the same time, the frequency of scenes where crucial events are reported rather than seen, and the frequency with which such scenes end up surprising us with an inaccuracy 

It seems likely that even in the s and s the conventions of the dumbshow and chorus, which had already been used quite extensively in Gorboduc of some twenty or thirty years earlier, would have seemed familiar and slightly outmoded.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

or an outright lie in the reporting keeps us from becoming complacent in our reactions and makes the play seem always one step ahead: always capable of providing us with more than we bargained for. The most common occasion for surprising turns in apparently straightforward exposition is in the reporting of death or battle scenes. The bleeding captain’s speech in Macbeth . sends a message – don’t believe everything you hear – particularly appropriate to that play, but also applicable to tragedy in general. When the invading Humber seems about to conquer England in the anonymous Locrine, Albanact gives up hope too soon, and kills himself. Thrasimachus reports to Locrine that Albanact “Yielded his life and honor to the dust;” Locrine, assuming this means Humber killed him, vows revenge in high astounding terms (.. –) and transforms the play from a military history into a revenge tragedy. The shift in register precipitated by the discrepancy between the expository information and the actual information has consequences that the play is very interested to explore: in the search for revenge, no one gets what he or she wants. Virtually all the characters who die in this play – including Locrine, who in the end becomes himself an object of revenge – die by committing suicide. Taking even the minute details of an expository speech too much at face value is like taking the equivocations of a Middletonian comic character too much at face value: one has to pay for being out of the loop. In the case of Locrine the audience is or is supposed to be privy to this kind of irony: the slip between intentions and outcome is made pathetic but also funny when the ghost of Albanact, throughout the play desperate to drive Humber to his grave, arrives at the end of Act  just-too-late to see his enemy’s suicide. The audience can also be put out of the loop, as at the end of Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany. When Alexander comes back from the battle to report that Alphonsus has lost his kingdom to Richard, Duke of Cornwall, neither we nor Alphonsus have any reason to disbelieve him. Here, perhaps similar to the moment when Andrea’s tale causes Proserpine to smile at the beginning of The Spanish Tragedy, exposition becomes a weapon. When Alphonsus becomes repentant and confesses that he, not Isabella or Edward, killed Alexander’s father, the function of Alexander’s lie – formerly to prevent Alphonsus from prolonging Isabella’s and Edward’s lives – changes to serve a different vengeful end. He has forced Alphonsus to go into rather graphic detail about how and when he killed Lorenzo. Alexander essentially turns this weapon on himself when, after killing Alphonsus, he is asked by Saxon to explain himself, and more or less

Exposition, redundancy, action



repeats once again the heinous deeds he did for Alphonsus and for revenge. Saxon gives Edward the power to sentence Alexander and Alexander is sent “to be hang’d / As here the Jewes are hang’d” (Kr) while Richard is given the German empery. The threefold exposition of the murderous acts of the play seems to have purged the kingdom of the thoughts and deeds that were that exposition’s subject. At the same time, the repetition serves to bludgeon the audience with the details of what it has seen – both to emphasize the extent of the horror, and make it still more terrible in its very comprehensibility. The numbness fostered by lists and repeated lists of atrocities stands in vital tension with the imaginative scope they provide the audience. One is torn between reacting like Sylla, who is moved to the point of giving up his dictatorship when, at the end of Lodge and Greene’s The Wounds of Civil War, he hears of the suicide of Marius and his men; or like Terentius who, at the end of Sejanus, makes a remarkably brief and bland moral of the  or so lines he and the Nuntius have taken up describing the mutilation, rape, and death of Sejanus and his children. When this tension is effective – as stage history seems to show it was not in Sejanus (though it certainly might have been in other plays, since the convention of reported deaths was certainly prevalent through the period) – the effect is important, perhaps essential to tragedy: one feels that judgment, or even response itself, is inadequate in the face of events whose horror is both magnified and surprisingly contained in the act of narration, in the space of the theatre. Reported deaths in comedy tend to be inaccurate: the Elder Loveless’s announcement, in disguise, of his own death in The Scornful Lady (discussed in the previous chapter) is a typical example of the kind of irony this exposition creates in comedy. Quite the opposite of tragedy, comedy tends to use exposition to clarify the audience’s sense of judgment. A classic example is Solanio and Salerio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. For minor characters, these two hold an extraordinary amount of authority. They appear at or know of all the play’s crucial events; they have and express an opinion about everyone in the play; and, perhaps most importantly, they seem to know of everyone’s comings and goings at all times. At .. –, Solanio tells Antonio, “Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman, / Gratiano, and Lorenzo.” In ., waiting with Gratiano for Lorenzo, Salerio sees him first: “Here comes Lorenzo; more 

This bludgeoning effect might partially account for the effect of the bizarre double exposition at the end of The Spanish Tragedy.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

of this hereafter” (line ). The plot thickens in .. with this expository conversation:      Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail, With him is Gratiano gone along; And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not.      The villain Jew with outcries raised the Duke, Who went with him to search Bassanio’s ship.      He came too late, the ship was under sail. But there the Duke was given to understand That in a gondola were seen together Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica. Besides, Antonio certified the Duke They were not with Bassanio in his ship (lines  –)

Solanio and Salerio talk of “news on the Rialto” at the beginning of . and then shift their energies to mockery as Shylock appears: “here [the devil] comes in the likeness of a Jew” ( line ). Even Tubal’s entrance is preceded by an introduction from Solanio: “Here comes another of the tribe” (line ). Later, Salerio will bring Bassanio Antonio’s letter from prison and tell him of Shylock’s cruelty. In ., as the trial begins, Salerio is the one to respond to the Duke’s order, “call the Jew into the court,” with “He is ready at the door; he comes my, lord” (lines –); and he also announces the arrival of “A messenger with letters from the doctor, / New come from Padua” ( lines –). The quiet but persistent omniscience of these characters makes it difficult not to accept their version of events as truth; they have no reason to lie to one another, and they are right about the identities, whereabouts, and actions of all the other characters, so why would one question the “My daughter! O my ducats!” story in .? One might well question their motivations and veracity nevertheless, especially when their petty mockery comes up against Shylock’s famous speech in . (to this, Solanio and Salerio are given no lines of reaction, thus probably leaving the audience at somewhat of a loss as well); but their aloofness from and ordering presence in the action provides the semblance of an external, infallible perspective that makes sympathy for Shylock difficult even as one recognizes his mistreatment. Characters like Solanio and Salerio – of which there are countless examples in both comedy and tragedy – provide facts. Their status as obviously minor characters makes it seem as if they have no other reason to be on stage except to provide vital information, and it is in light of the facts they present that we judge the actions of other characters.

Exposition, redundancy, action



Thomas Lord Cromwell, while it has a Chorus to move the action from one place to another, nevertheless follows Cromwell’s arrest and precedes his appearance in prison with a scene where two citizens talk of his arrest and say that “Tis pittie that this noble man should fall, / He did so many charitable deeds” (Fv). Citizen  concludes the scene by saying that “Some will speak hardly, some will speake in pitie,” and this perspective emphasizes that only one of these is the obvious right choice. The King’s botched meeting with Wat Tyler and his men in Act  of (anon.) The Life and Death of Jack Straw is not seen, but is discussed first by the irate Tyler and Straw, then by the fleeing and frightened King (“These people are not to be talkt withall / . . . / That so vnorderly with shrikes and cries, / Make shew as though they would invade vs all” [Cv]), and then by the sympathetic but awed Sir John Newton and a Bargeman. The cowardice of the King and the might of the rebels are given equal weight in a way they could not be if the King were shown on-stage running from eight or ten men who were supposed to represent twenty thousand. In Jack Straw the interpretive function of reported action is very closely linked to the practical function: the ridiculousness of the King cannot be such that it makes the rebels, who are the focus of the play, seem trivial. Asking the audience to imagine twenty thousand men is thus more effective when the men can be wholly imagined: it is not that the physical space cannot represent twenty thousand men, only that the theatrical space is more effective if the physical space does not make the attempt. This is perhaps frequently the reason for reported death or battle scenes in tragedy, though there are enough scenes of on-stage battle, dismemberment, or death involving elaborate special effects to suggest that the effects could be effective and not simply laughable. But even as they can work to counter unwanted laughter or implausibility, expository scenes must frequently deal with their own cumbersomeness. A typical example of a play being aware of the clumsy way in which it is about to provide information, but proceeding anyway, is in scene  of Munday, Hathaway, Drayton, and Wilson’s  Sir John Oldcastle 



A similar scene involving two merchants (quite possibly the same actors who play the two citizens) occurs earlier, on Ev: the merchants joke about the antagonism between Cromwell and the Bishop of Winchester, and reinforce our perception of Winchester as arrogant and unsympathetic. Consider, for example the siege scenes in the Tamburlaine plays; or the attack on Thomas Winchester in Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies, when “Merrie striketh six blowes on his head & with the seauenth leaues the hammer sticking in his head” (Cr); or the scene in anon., Edmund Ironside (.) where Canutus cuts off the noses of Leofrick and Turkillus. These and other such moments are discussed at more length in chapter .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

where, through Lord Scroop, we first learn of Cambridge’s claim to the throne: Once more, my Lord of Cambridge, make rehearsal How you do stand entitled to the crown. The deeper shall we print it in our minds, And every man the better be resolved When he perceives his quarrel to be just.

( lines  –)

In response Cambridge launches into a complicated thirty-line genealogical explanation which Scroop interrupts once (lines –) for further clarification. On one level, this is all for the audience: it lays out the most minute specifics of the conflict. At the same time, such minutiae are probably unnecessary to an understanding of the plot, and are expressed in a complicated enough way to be difficult to follow. Scroop’s pat response, “I am resolved our enterprise is just” ( line ), can however be a moment of valuable laughter whether he speaks it like he has grasped all of Cambridge’s reasons or not. If he has, he has bought into elaborately specious logic that will do little to persuade a sympathetic audience against Henry V; if he has not but says he is satisfied out of stubborn loyalty and a desire for Cambridge to stop talking, Cambridge looks still more the pompous ass, and Scroop and the other followers still more the yes-men that the play proves them to be. The problem of needing artificially to turn aside and simply give the audience information is incorporated into the play to potentially good dramatic and thematic effect. But if the information we get, as in Oldcastle, is not entirely necessary or, if it is, is presented in a way too difficult to follow, what is the point of creating a scene where such information seems necessary to present and then creating an ironic framework which justifies that scene’s existence? What are the advantages, or at least the effects, of self-conscious inefficiency? To answer this question I will turn now to probably the most common type of exposition, and the most difficult to follow – exposition that occurs in the first scene or first act of a play, and which bombards the audience with a lot of information about something that happened off-stage and/or in the dramatic past even as the audience is trying to take in what is happening on-stage and in the dramatic present. Una Ellis-Fermor says that expository scenes “are concerned . . . to put us in tune with certain emotions, to set us thinking along certain lines; invariably they take the most direct way to present this

Exposition, redundancy, action



reality . . . without undue concern about maintaining at the same time a strict correspondence with the surface of life.” While the discussion that follows will agree with the first and last parts of this argument, it will take lengthy exception to the phrase “most direct way.” Expository scenes, especially at the beginnings of plays, are, I think, inefficient and indirect in important ways – ways that perhaps ultimately give a sense of directness or efficiency that is more important than the thing itself. I want to focus now on three very complicated plays with very complicated opening scenes in order to demonstrate the way in which the minutiae of expository scenes do affect our experience of a play in a way importantly particular to these kinds of scenes. The three plays are: Cymbeline, Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, and Middleton’s No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s. The first scene in each play tells of the disappearance and/or return of an important relative: in Antonio’s Revenge it is the wife of the now-dead Andrugio; in No Wit it is Philip Twilight’s mother and sister; and in Cymbeline it is Belarius and the king’s two sons. In two of the plays we also learn of important people who are absent because dead or banished: Posthumus is banished before Cymbeline begins; Piero enters in Antonio’s Revenge smeared with the blood of Felice, whom he has just stabbed to death, and gloating over the death of Andrugio, whom he has just poisoned. Two of the plays set up schemes that will structure much of the ensuing action: Savorwit in No Wit concocts the marry-and-switch plot for Philip and Sandfield, and Piero plans to kill Antonio and marry Maria. Finally, each first scene sets in motion events whose outcome seems fairly predictable: the king’s daughter will probably marry the banished Posthumus, and his two lost sons will probably be found; Philip Twilight’s falsified report of his own mother’s death will probably backfire on him; and Piero’s plan to marry Maria after killing both her husband and son will probably not go entirely as planned. In each of these three plays there is a rapid condensation of the past, the most obvious effect of which is to give the action a rapidity and immediacy: we are being told that we are beginning in the middle. At the same time, it is important to remember that in relation to what audiences expect from the theatre – action – exposition slows things down, no matter how quickly the actors speak. That is why it feels necessary to begin discussions of Cymbeline . as editors frequently do: by pointing  

In The Jacobean Drama, p. . Middleton’s play makes this quite explicit with a metatheatrical joke: the frantic Savorwit says to his frantic master, “How can there be any / Hope i’ th’ middle when we’re both at our / Wits’ end in the beginning?” (.. –).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

out that such first scenes are conventional. If the play began with the second scene rather than the first (and it certainly could – in . we see dramatized the wrath of the king at his daughter and Posthumus which we have already heard about), it would not invite explanatory comment. The result of this slowing down is a different kind of condensation: wary playwrights work to create a rapid-fire dialogue that will not try an audience’s patience. Consequently the exposition, trying to convey as much information as possible as quickly as possible, and putting into narrative form events that could be (and often are later) more clearly presented on stage, also tends to be confusing. Piero explains his murder of Andrugio this way: We were both rivals in our May of blood Unto Maria, fair Ferrara’s heir. He won the Lady, to my honour’s death, And from her sweets cropped this Antonio; For which I burned in inward swelt’ring hate . . .

(Antonio’s Revenge .. –)

I want to dwell at some length on this short passage in order to illustrate that what might – in many ways justly – be taken by standard views of exposition as Marston’s over-labored writing is in fact representative of the kinds of confusion that occur in comparable passages in the other two plays. The words “rivals in” create the expectation of a stock phrase like “rivals in love” or “rivals in arms.” What the line delivers instead is the awkward “May of blood,” presumably meaning “youth.” We are given a designation of time where we expect one of condition, and what we are given is unidiomatic. The first lines of Piero’s story about why he has done what he has done give us what we want not once, but twice. We should, of course, be fairly certain of what Piero is talking about, but the syntactic awkwardness, the nonidiomatic sound, and the fact that “blood” is pertinent to the events of the moment should all work to make the sense at least somewhat cloudy. A sonic version of this cloudiness is then provided by the proliferation of f ’s and r’s in the next line, and this line is made murkier still by the introduction of two characters about whom we know nothing. The speech presses ahead to the pronoun “He” in line , which 

It seems reasonable to make this claim not only because I cannot find any other use of “blood” comparable to this, but also because Gair’s edition provides no gloss on the phrase. “May,” of course, does most of the work. “May of my years” occurs in Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet , and “May of youth” occurs in Much Ado .. . “May of blood” is a rather over-strained variation on these.

Exposition, redundancy, action



refers to Andrugio, who was last mentioned by name in line , just before Strotzo interrupted Piero and was himself cut off. Thus “He” for a moment seems to refer to its nearest antecedent, “Ferrara.” This ambiguity passes quickly, but is followed by a similar one at the end of line , where Piero mentions “this Antonio” in a way specific enough to suggest that he has mentioned Antonio before. He has not. On the way to this point, we muddle through the difficult dative of “to my honour’s death,” and through the straightforward-sounding but chaotic “cropped” – which means “begot,” hints of “rape,” and, similar to the labors of “May of blood,” possibly suggests a combined idea of both. What we have then is a proliferation of ambiguously specific names and pronouns, set against a backdrop of unidiomatic figures (“May of blood”) and strained idiomatic phrases (“to my honour’s death,” “from her sweets cropped”). Further, while Antonio is the titular hero of this play and its predecessor, Maria does not appear in Antonio and Mellida – is not, in fact, even mentioned in that play. Her sudden importance at line  of this play will itself be rather surprising. The surprise might be compounded into a momentary confusion at line , when the woman who has been labeled as “Ferrara’s heir” is now called “Genoa’s duchess.” There should not be much confusion, but it is important to recognize that the less-efficient mode of expression is being used at virtually every turn in the course of the exposition concerning Maria. Not only must we fight against Piero’s syntax just to understand what is motivating his actions, but neither Piero nor Strotzo refers to her by the title that would connect her clearly to the action, namely “Andrugio’s wife” or “Antonio’s mother.” Similar patterns of ambiguous pronouns, multiple names or name words, and confusing clauses occur in No Wit and Cymbeline. In No Wit, Savorwit describes Philip Twilight’s mother this way: My mistress, his good mother, with a daughter About the age of six, crossing to Guernsey, Was taken by the Dunkirks . . . (..  –)

The First Gentleman in Cymbeline responds to the question “What’s the matter?” this way: His [Cymbeline’s] daughter, and the heir of ’s kingdom (whom He purpos’d to his wife’s sole son – a widow That late he married) hath referr’d herself Unto a poor but worthy gentleman. . . . (.. –)



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

In identifying the main character in his story, Savorwit, similar to Piero and Strotzo, puts the less-important term first – “my mistress” – and the crucial relationship – “his good mother” second. (Compounding this potential confusion is the fact that Savorwit, and not Philip himself, is telling the story.) The First Gentleman, in a slightly different way, clutters his speech with potentially ambiguous nominations, the important one here being “His daughter, and the heir of ’s kingdom,” where it is potentially unclear whether the daughter and the heir are different people or the same. In Middleton’s play this is how Savorwit explains his plan for Philip and Sandfield to marry one another’s girlfriends and then switch later: This brought about And wittily dissembled on both parts, You to affect his love, he to love yours, I’ll so beguile the father at the marriage That each shall have his own, and both being welcom’d And chamber’d in one house, as ’tis his pride To have his children’s children got successively On his forefathers’ feather beds, in the day times, To please the old man’s eyesight, you may dally And set a kiss on the wrong lip; no sin in’t, Brothers and sisters do’t, cousins do more, But pray take heed you be not kin to them. So in the night time, nothing can deceive you, Let each to his own work, and there I leave you.

(No Wit .. –)

On a small scale, it is potentially not clear whether “in the day times” ( line ) is when “his children’s children” should be “got,” or when the men should “set a kiss on the wrong lip.” I imagine that, by the time one hears line , the function of line  is clear, but at the time one hears line , the syntax is rushing forward too quickly to allow for an easy separation and comprehension of its various parts. This has a larger-scale parallel in the relationship between lines – and –. The latter two lines, of course, foreshadow the incestuous difficulties to come, but neither Savorwit nor the audience has any way of knowing that at this point; Savorwit seems, rather, to get carried away with the motion of his own speech (much as he does with the unnecessary and sonically clunky “feather beds” in line ), and we remain in a kind of syntactic limbo until he recovers with a weak but logical-sounding finale, a rhymed couplet introduced by “So.”

Exposition, redundancy, action



In Piero’s description of his murder of Andrugio, we again have the difficulty of ambiguous modification due to convoluted subordination. Say, faith didst thou e’er hear, or read, or see Such happy vengeance, unsuspected death? That I should drop strong poison in the bowl Which I myself caroused unto his health And future fortune of our unity; That it should work even in the hush of night, And strangle him on sudden, that fair show Of death for the excessive joy of his fate Might choke the murder! Ha, Strotzo, is’t not rare?

(Antonio’s Revenge .. –)

The function of the third “that” (line ) is briefly – or perhaps not so briefly – unclear (is it a demonstrative pronoun modifying “fair show” or the introduction of a third parallel noun clause dependent on “hear, or read, or see”?), and the idea it introduces – death choking murder – is virtually incomprehensible. Adding to the potential confusion is the fact that this speech entirely revises the end of Antonio and Mellida, where Piero and Andrugio drink a toast of apparent unproblematic reconciliation – and does so without mentioning Andrugio by name. What should be fairly clear from these examples is that exposition, which we tend to think of as a making-clear, tends to be confusing. The language does not put out information, but instead almost requires us to dig into it to extract information. Editors and critics tend to go about explaining away this confusion by making it mimetic. The First 



Gair notes in his introduction to Antonio’s Revenge that there is some “discrepancy between original intent and execution” that suggests “a reasonable interval” between Antonio and Mellida and Antonio’s Revenge. The discrepancy arises from the fact that there is nothing in the final scene of Antonio and Mellida to suggest the kind of menacing lack of resolution with which it would have to end in order to justify the turn of events with which the sequel begins. Piero does not even pour the wine himself in the first play’s last scene (“Fill us fresh wine,” .. ). Obviously, modern productions might perform the plays in sequence and end the first with a secret poisoning, but it seems that such preparation would not have been provided for the plays’ original audiences. In his Arden edition, J. M. Nosworthy provides this footnote to the opening scene of Cymbeline: “This short opening scene is characteristically Shakespearean . . . The First Gentleman’s speeches are, at times tantalizing elliptical, and have undergone much emendation. To emend is to miss Shakespeare’s point completely. The Second Gentleman is a stranger to the Court: his companion has a strange tale to tell, and tells it breathlessly, excitedly, and, at times, rather incoherently.” Nosworthy is charitable, as are most editors of Shakespeare (though there is, of course, a long tradition of wry criticism about the inadequacy of Cymbeline’s plot). Non-Shakespearean authors are commonly subject to editorial attack. One default mode of Marston criticism is simply to call him a bad writer. For Middleton there is the charge of excessive ingenuity. Lowell Johnson’s introduction to No Wit says that “To judge the value of any Middleton comedy by its plot is to dismiss them all” ( p. xvi).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

Gentleman’s syntax is tangled because he is speaking so excitedly, because great things are taking place at the court of Cymbeline. It would be no stretch to say basically the same thing about Piero and Savorwit. But taking the mimetic route only explains why confusion exists; it does not make the confusion any less confusing as we experience it. We might be willing to accept the fact that Piero or Savorwit or the First Gentleman is speaking too quickly to be understood, but we will still wonder what he is saying. And while the syntactic difficulties of these first scenes will not – cannot – trouble us for more than a moment or two at a time, there is the larger difficulty of the potential for the exposition itself simply to seem unnecessary. Indeed, as I have noted, Marston’s play seems particularly aware of this potential, and uses Strotzo to work against it: most of Strotzo’s lines in the scene are failed attempts to get a word in edgewise, to tell Piero something he does not know, as Piero revels in his own just-performed evil deeds. It is important to notice now that exposition gets itself into some trouble by the very act of trying to solve its inherent problems. That is, there must be an excuse for a character to run on for some time about events that the audience can have no clear connection to and/or events that everyone on stage is clearly familiar with. The excuse tends to be one character’s excitement or another’s ignorance, or both. The effect of speaking lines “excitedly,” or with the goal of filling in a character on all he does not know is, however, often simply to confuse the audience – to fill the space of the stage with something that might be replaced by something the audience can more easily hold onto: action. Even if one moves beyond the syntactic difficulties of the scenes, it is unlikely that one will be able to keep straight all the lost relatives, returning relatives, and evil step-relatives introduced until they become a physical part of the action. So many plays begin this way, or have comparable moments within them, and are comparably confusing at one moment or another, that it seems worthwhile to consider confusion to be a vital part of exposition’s effect. The multiplication of identity words and the hyperactive syntax in the three plays considered thus far create the sense of events unfathomably complex about which the exposition says only the smallest part. When First Gentleman says that Posthumous “is a creature such / As, to seek through the regions of the earth / For one his like; there would be something failing / In him that should compare” (Cymbeline .. –), we have no more idea what he is like than we did before, but the sheer

Exposition, redundancy, action



activity of the language suggests that knowing is important. I use the word “activity” quite literally. The grammatical construction of this short passage changes a number of times. If we accept Nosworthy’s semicolon in line , lines – sound like a modifier for line : Posthumus is a creature such as – that is to say who – would “seek through the regions of the earth . . . ” Even if we do not accept the semicolon, this construction will likely make itself heard. The sudden shift to the impersonal “there would be” is abrupt – testimony to which is the semicolon question itself. The “him” of “In him that should compare” is also ambiguous. Glosses on the line argue that “him” is the one doing the comparing, but since the only “him” we know of so far in these lines is the “creature such,” it seems more than likely that we will hear the two as being the same, even if the next four lines, in slightly more explicit praise of Posthumus, cause us unconsciously to revise that understanding. Something similar but less complicated happens with the “that” clauses in Antonio’s Revenge discussed above; and in lines  – of No Wit, the subject, “My mistress,” once it is “taken by the Dunkirks” suddenly becomes the Dunkirks themselves, and then both the mistress and daughter: “My mistress . . . with a daughter / . . . / Was taken by the Dunkirks, sold both, and separated.” The language of expository scenes is patently unrealistic. It is a language “for whose likeness to the language not only of everyday life but of life in heightened terms,” says Ellis-Fermor, “no case can be made out” (The Jacobean Drama, p. ). The syntax and grammar of expository speeches is restlessly disjointed, never allowing the listener’s mind to become comfortable with its semantic surroundings. One strains to see through, behind, or ahead of the language, always in expectation of seeing the development of the events everyone is talking about because once the consequences of past events are manifested on stage, there is no need to expend energy trying to sort the past events out. Thus on one important level, exposition is useless. Its language is inherently confusing, inherently more demanding of a listener’s attention and memory than it has a right to be; and the audience’s desire to plumb that language’s mysteries does not extend much further than the expository moment itself. Of this last point the plays under discussion here are certainly aware. The ten self-consciously cryptic lines about the disappearance of 



We are almost not even sure who the Gentleman is talking about. At the beginning of his speech, he refers to Cloten as “He that missed” Imogen, and Posthumus as “He that hath” her, and each of these phrases could quite easily apply to either man before the Gentleman clarifies at line . This remark is made in particular reference to the opening speech of The Revenger’s Tragedy.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

Cymbeline’s sons (.. –) are recapitulated, elaborated, and doubled in size by Belarius himself in the final scene (.. –). When Lady Twilight arrives in . of No Wit, her repentant and surprised son repeats the tale of how he deceived his father, which we heard from Sandfield in .. And at the beginning of Act  of Antonio’s Revenge, Piero, now having imprisoned his daughter Mellida for adultery she did not commit, gives almost the same “this is who I have killed and who I am going to marry” speech that he gave at the beginning of the previous act (and this time he refers to Maria as “Antonio’s mother”). I do not mean to suggest that these speeches do not point up dramatic ironies, or make bolder the brushstrokes of a character’s loyalty or silliness or villainy. Rather, I want to suggest that they are also simply, perhaps inefficiently, repetitive, and that they are so because one of their primary functions is to remind audiences of what they have forgotten. Moments that repeat information that was given at some length in dialogue in the opening scene indicate that that dialogue was not the most efficient means of conveying the information. Exposition once again causes the play to create one problem – redundancy – as it tries to solve another – too much information presented too quickly too early on. Exposition, especially expository dialogue, frequently fails – fails due to the artificiality Bradbrook notes and fails because once we realize we cannot hold onto all of the information it is putting before us, we decide simply to stop listening too carefully and simply wait to see what happens. Then, when Mellida is in prison or Lady Twilight returns or Cymbeline meets his children again, we are happy to be told what we should have remembered, because we now have the benefit of significant intervening events by which to judge the information we have been given in narrative form, and by which to judge what our reaction should be to that information’s plausibility and irony and potential for surprise. In failing, then, in being artificial and obscure, exposition achieves a valuable, vital effect: it makes us want to see action, and gives that action a sense of vital and intricate connection to everything else in the play when it occurs. Some objections might be made here to some apparent contradictions. I have accused exposition of bringing about redundancy, but I have insisted that redundancy is necessary since the audience has forgotten the thing that is being repeated. I have accused exposition of syntactic obscurity, but I have also suggested that the audience tolerates such obscurity because it looks forward to the action that will clarify it. Thus I have created a straw man out of exposition which, in being knocked down, allows a clever and useful reversal: by being bad,

Exposition, redundancy, action



exposition is in fact good. The last of these objections troubles me most, for I do not want to suggest that the playwrights I am discussing were self-indulgent enough to write a bad scene in order to put the audience through a mimetically irritating experience; nor do I believe the playwrights to be bad enough simply to write something unnecessary that turns out to have a useful effect. Corroborating this is, I think, the fact that so many plays begin with such scenes and contain such repetitions. What I would offer as a counter to the too-clever argument is the argument that, while expository speeches are inherently difficult to make clear, plays frequently begin with exposition because exposition gives a play a definite sense of a beginning. Listening to characters discuss things that have happened and things that will happen situates the audience at a turning point, and turning points are worth caring about because action follows from them: this is the way in which the theatrical space is initially, essentially opened up for the audience. The sense of a beginning which an expository scene can give a play is frequently justified by the play’s end: the aesthetic satisfaction that must come, for the playwright if not necessarily the audience, from tying together all the threads rapidly introduced at the beginning seems to make the risk of confusing the audience worthwhile. The confusion, after all, ultimately comes from a surfeit of coherence. Exposition pertains directly to the important spatial problems of the early modern theatre – problems of physical space (too much or not enough) and of theatrical, representational space (the importance of its emptiness or the need to fill it): exposition more or less overtly implies that there are certain things that do not need to be represented onstage, that can be summed up in a rapid (apparently direct) forty or fifty lines, and this whets an audience’s appetite for the “real action” to follow. Paradoxically, exposition also conveys a definite sense that there is much more to the play than can be put on stage, much more to a single speech than we can comprehend in the time it takes to hear that speech, and this encourages what is sometimes called “willing suspension of disbelief,” but what might more accurately be called a willingness to think of the play as though it were not a representation, as though it, like “real life,” did not have a carefully constructed beginning, middle, and end, only a series of ever more baffling turns of events. Of course, one might also argue that the super-complexity of events described in exposition draws attention to the artificiality of the play, not its likeness to life, and this would be true too. The tensions between



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

artificial and life-like complexity, between action reported and an audience’s desire for action seen, between the implicit importance of that reported action and the almost studied refusal of the play to report it clearly, create the vital energy that makes expository scenes effective beginnings, and allows them literally to act in the place of on-stage action elsewhere.

 

Disorder and convention

I suggest that conventions occur first as anticonventions or antisigns . . . that is, to the extent that something is a convention it is also a sign, meaning that it has taken its place as one of the efficient and invisible chips in the informational circuitry. But how did it get there in the first place if not as an attempt to break into the circuit, to pester the circuit with nuance, to wound it with the resistance of its presence? In other words, it began as an image in which the known world was, in some sense, being recreated or revised out of its primal linguistic matter. In some such way all images, to one degree or other, erupt delightfully and claim their presence as a site of disclosure, putting us “somewhere else than we usually tend to be.” Without this character as site, there is no delight, only the passage of information.

To this point I have dealt primarily with potentially inefficient or intrusive verbal phenomena. My explicit assumption has been from the beginning that the potential clumsiness of these phenomena is a vital and valuable part of their effect. The repetition of extra-dramatic or partially extra-dramatic verbal moments, moments where the artifice of the language is greater or almost greater than context can bear, creates a powerful conventional system wherein audiences are given a sense of knowingness and perception that supersedes – even outrightly disguises – excess, incoherence, and discontinuity. In early modern drama the passage of information is rapid, complicated, and frequently disruptive in itself; the goal is to present as much experience as possible as quickly as possible. The delight lies in the way in which disruption is continually converted into functional hyperbole – the way in which the “primal linguistic matter” of a jumble of lines, events, scenes, becomes a framework wherein the audience is given a sense of control over experience which is, nevertheless, likely to be disrupted at any moment. 

Bert States, Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), p. , emphasis original.





Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

In this chapter I will look at a series of complex conventions of the drama, and I will attempt to describe their relationship to the pleasures afforded by Elizabethan and Jacobean dramaturgy. These conventions are: scenes involving one or more characters conversing with an echo; scenes that take place in the dark or a thick fog; scenes involving graphic on-stage violence; the use of incest as a plot device; and moments in disguise plots where one character immediately and unexpectedly sees through the disguise of another. On the surface these different kinds of scenes do not seem to have much to do with each other, and a case need not be made for their manifold similarities on a deeper level. I have chosen these particular conventions for a few reasons. First, and most importantly, each is potentially intrusive or inefficient – both in a manner similar to the moments I have described in the previous three chapters, and in a manner that is more particularly relevant either to the use and management of physical space on the stage or to the creation of a certain kind of theatrical space at a crucial moment. The first three conventions are devices that are largely incidental to plot and which put significant strain on the audience’s experience of the plot at the moment in which they occur; the other two conventions tend to be integral and inherent to the plot and affect the audience’s experience of the structure and meaning of the play as a whole. The second reason I have chosen to look at these particular conventions is the hope that the range of my examples within different categories will convey a sense of the bizarre variety of Renaissance drama, and of the way in which that variety characterizes the dramaturgy of the period. And finally, I am interested to come up with a new and useful way of talking about the bizarreness and roughness of Renaissance drama, and particularly (though by no means exclusively) non-Shakespearean drama, which does not involve the limiting use of the word “convention” – does not involve allowing the word “conventional” to stand in for the actual effect of the convention. I label the moments I discuss in this chapter “conventions” because each occurs in similar circumstances and accompanied with informational and ideational baggage similar to those other moments of its kind; some moments seem to or obviously do allude to one another; each of these moments would have been recognizable to its original audience as a certain type of moment. But it is important to keep in mind States’s idea of conventions as originally eruptions in an established circuitry and to imagine, at least in the case of Renaissance drama, that the residual power of this eruption always lies, only halfdormant, beneath the surface, ready to turn a familiar convention into a

Disorder and convention



new one, to turn a comic scene tragic or a tragic scene comic, to turn an astonishing scene into an infuriating one. It is the energy resulting from the continuing tension between efficiency and disruption that primarily fuels Elizabethan and Jacobean plays as they negotiate the turbulent space between the bare stage and the imagination, between literal and figurative modes of experience.   It is difficult not to dislike scenes where a character converses with an echo, of which there are many examples in this period of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Because the meanings that an echo’s contorted and selective repetitions create almost inevitably take on a significance that is difficult to credit, and because the character conversing with the echo is generally on stage alone, the scenes have great potential simply to look silly. Thomas Dekker seems pretty well aware of this, even as he allows the scene to drag on for some time, when he introduces Fortunatus as a fool by having him argue inanely with an echo (Old Fortunatus ..  –). This argument is a version of the kind of stupidity or vanity – hearing only what he wants to hear – that Fortunatus will demonstrate when, at the end of the scene, he chooses from Fortune’s bounty the gift of infinite wealth, in spite of Fortune’s explicit warnings. The thematic function as we see it in Fortunatus helps an actor, director, or reader in that it gives the device a reason to be there, but it does not make the device any less potentially ridiculous. Aristophanes’s parody of the echo scene from Euripides’s Andromeda (Women at the Thesmophoria ,–) and the scorn Butler heaps on such devices in Hudibras (.. ff.) show that the potential for ridicule was probably always there. This potential is perhaps most effectively expressed and controlled in the English Renaissance by Jonson in Cynthia’s Revels . and .. Jonson brings Echo on-stage as a character (in all other plays 



F. L. Lucas, in The Complete Works of John Webster (London: Chatto and Windus, ), traces the device as far back as fragments of Euripides’s lost Andromeda and up through Thomas Hardy’s Human Shows; Far Phantasies ( pp. – n. ). Wilson’s The Cobbler’s Prophecy, lines  –, contains a particularly incomprehensible instance of an echo whose primary function is to make someone look like a fool. It is useful to think about scenes like Dekker’s and Wilson’s in terms of Stephen Booth’s distinction between “characters whom audiences recognize as somehow pleasant or unpleasant and characters who are actually pleasing or displeasing to an audience.” See “Syntax as Rhetoric in Richard II,” Mosaic .  (): –. The quotation is from p. . The cumbersomeness of the echo device as it is handled in each play makes Fortunatus shift between being the former to being the latter kind of character; and Wilson’s Raphe, Soldier, and the Echo that haunts them purely the latter.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

the echo is a voice off-stage) and even gives her speeches – the first word or two of which always echo the last word or two of her interlocutor. Echo’s function is to christen and curse the Fountain of Self Love (where Narcissus died) in .. She disappears after ., when she flees from Amorphous, who, amorously pursuing her, pauses to cool himself in this fountain. This begins the series of similar coolings in or drinkings from the fountain that motivate the satire. Each character who comes in contact with the water becomes an exaggeratedly significant version of him- or herself – something like what echoes in the drama generally do to the ends of characters’ sentences. Jonson’s embodiment of the device in a character, and his satirical deflation of the characters who suffer the consequences of coming to Echo’s fountain, recapitulates and parodies the use of echoes elsewhere as a means to wish fulfillment. Banished and wandering in the woods in The Wounds of Civil War, Marius hears his echo tell him first that his only comfort will be “griefes” and then that better fortune is “at hand” (.. –). Thereupon he sits down to await “the end that fate alloteth me” ( line ), and almost immediately his son and loyal followers pass by, rescue him, and take him as their leader in the battle against Scilla. Carracus in Tailor’s Hog Hath Lost His Pearl also wanders in the woods and learns from the echo that Maria was false “against her wil,” and that she is “not dead” (p. ). The sound of the echo in that play leads Albert, disguised as a hermit, to his friend, and he begins setting right the wrongs he began when he tricked Maria into sleeping with him before she was to elope with Carracus. Antonio’s is a more melancholy revelation when, in The Duchess of Malfi, the echo tells him that he will “Never see [the Duchess] more,” and “on the sudden, a clear light / Presented me a face folded in sorrow” (..  –). F. L. Lucas finds the Duchess of Malfi echo scene to rise far above the norm, and sees Webster “remoulding the commonplace and making beautiful what most of his contemporaries made banal” (in Webster, Complete Works, p.  n. ). But I think that the most skillfully handled echo scene in the period, and the one that best captures the nature of the pleasure playwrights sought to provide with such scenes is in Act  of the anonymous Maid’s Metamorphosis. Here echoes of his own dialogue reveal to Ascanio that his lost love Eurymine “Liues,” and that she is somewhere “Neere” and in “Disguise” (Er). Shortly thereafter, Ascanio and his companion Joculo come upon Aramanthus, the “aged Hermit” whom Ascanio was told in a dream that he would meet – told this in this dream by Morpheus in the shape of Eurymine. This Hermit is to

Disorder and convention



bring the lovers “both together at last,” and so in the logic of the dream doubling and the casting, Eurymine leads Ascanio to Eurymine. Joculo initially accuses Aramanthus of being the voice of the echo, and while there is no evidence that Aramanthus would have done the voice onstage, the actor certainly might have off-stage. The Hermit is of less help than Ascanio might wish, revealing Eurymine’s situation (she is fleeing the court disguised as a boy) by means of a riddle: he tells Ascanio that “Whom you affect so much, is but a boy” (F r). Almost immediately, Eurymine in her disguise walks past singing and, not seeing the men, reveals her identity: I cannot chuse But blush for shame, that any one should see Eurymine in this disguise to bee. (F r)

Ascanio is astonished: “It is, it is not my love, Eurymine” (F v). With an exquisite subtlety characteristic of the play a range of doubles coalesces around the doubleness of “It is, it is not my love”: the doubleness of the characters in the dream and the actor playing them; the potential doubleness of the echo and the actor playing the hermit; the doubleness of Eurymine in her disguise; of Aramanthus’s riddle; and of the echo itself which, by virtue of its very superfluity, seems somehow the cause of the reunion. Like the dream that turns Eurymine into Morpheusbecome-Eurymine, the convention of the echo transforms one thing into another without changing its shape. Like puns that are obvious but in   

That Morpheus-as-Eurymine was simply played by the actor who played Eurymine is probably shown by the stage direction, “Enter Eurymine, to be supposed Morpheus” (Cv). I should note that the reunion is not actually complete until the beginning of Act  (Fr); Eurymine flees when she is recognized because she is afraid of bringing down Ascanio’s father’s wrath on him. John Mason’s later, extremely bizarre The Turk, involves the use of an echo in a way that seems almost to be a parody of the comic efficacy we see in Maid’s Metamorphosis. Mason’s device of choice throughout his play is to have characters fake their deaths and then appear disguised as ghosts – of themselves or others – in order to torment the characters who think they are dead. The culmination of these scenes is in . when Borgias, believed by his wife Timoclea to be dead at her own hand, acts first as an echo and then as his own ghost in a scene that begins with Timoclea crying Hell and ye furies wheresoere you be, Show me your tortures, and present your selues Or let the burning monarch clad in flame, Make an infernall eccho to my name. (.. –) Borgias ends up strangling his wife “with her owne haire” (..  s.d.), which seems to be a particularly hideous metaphor for the kind of self-inflicted entanglements with which all the characters, through their devious doublings, destroy themselves. “Despair,” Timoclea says, “thou art a false glasse to the soule” ( line ), but the real false glass of the scene is Borgias’s echoes that bring forth his wife’s terrible confessions.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

some way contextually absurd (think of Moll in Two Angry Women or Corteze in The Gentleman Usher), the echo is a product of a disembodied and utterly theatrical voice – one that fills the physical space of the stage in a way that frequently makes too great demands, because of its starkly blatant significance, on the interpretive space it creates. Involving logistical problems of acoustics, timing, and motivation that would probably produce diminishing returns in any theatre, the echo is frequently a crude kind of theatrical magic, but one whose core elements are fundamental. “    ”

Discussing Elizabethan staging conventions, Andrew Gurr says of Hamlet that “we don’t know how the audience in the daylight of [the] London afternoon received the news, delivered in the play’s opening lines, that it was supposed to be shortly after midnight and bitterly cold.” But the high number of scenes that occur in outdoor as well as indoor theatres in an imagined pitch black, or thick fog, is evidence that the simple theatrical pleasure of imagining darkness in daylight was one audiences did not tire of. The actor playing Puck in . of Midsummer Night’s Dream is given the chance for a virtuosic physical and verbal performance – impersonating Lysander and Demetrius as he leads all the lovers to the same place – by Oberon’s typically straightforward but astonishingly powerful command: Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night; The starry welkin cover thou anon With drooping fog as black as Acheron.

( lines –)

This recalls and is ultimately a reversal of the consequences of the similar imperative of .. , “I am invisible,” which Oberon speaks before overhearing Demetrius and Helena’s conversation and deciding to interfere with their loves. Both moments allow an audience to experience with joy what the characters experience as pain through most of the play: staring directly at something (literally or figuratively), but only seeing it for what it is not.  

Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . Harold Brooks notes in his Arden edition (London: Methuen, ) that Oberon might have become “invisible” by means of a cloak, like the “cote for to goo invisibell” listed among Henslowe’s props. Nevertheless the audience would, of course, still see the actor.

Disorder and convention



On-stage darkness is often, as here, achieved through supernatural agency. The morning on which Catiline’s conspiracy is planned in Jonson’s Catiline is “not rosy-fingered, but swollen black” (.. ), and when the conspirators gather, Jonson gives a further stage direction: “A darkness comes over the place” ( line ). Whether Catiline was performed at Blackfriars or the Globe, it is hard to imagine that a noticeable instantaneous darkening could be achieved, but Fulvius’s “Darkness grows more and more!” ( line ) amply compensates for this. Nature seems from the beginning ill-disposed toward Catiline, as she might be toward the hapless hired guns Shakebag and Will in Arden of Feversham, who have one of their many attempts to murder Arden foiled by a thick mist (scenes  –). In Arden the physical mist (which we do not actually see) drifts into the language, becoming all too visible figuratively: the Ferryman who takes Arden from the launch at which Shakebag and Will arrive too late, and who can know nothing of Arden’s situation, compares the mist to “a curst wife . . . that never leaves her husband till she have driven him out at doors with a wet pair of eyes.” Arden then says that he feels “stifled with this fog” (scene , lines –). In the next scene Will marvels, “See how the sun hath cleared the foggy mist, / Now we have missed the mark of our intent” ( lines –). The pun in line  insists on the imaginative leap one must make between thinking of the mist literally and thinking of it as figurative or magical; such a leap is of a piece with those required by choruses that help along the passing of sixteen years, or scene changes that move us between Egypt and Rome. More frequently, however, transitions to darkness are made by means of a simple action or simple dialogue: a thick morning mist is announced, as in Heywood’s  If You Know Not Me, ; nightfall is announced, as in Two Angry Women , (anon.) Merry Devil of Edmonton ., and Englishmen for My Money F r; or a candle is extinguished, as in Middleton’s The Phoenix ., Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter line ,, Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Night Walker ., Tourneur’s Atheist’s Tragedy ., and the first act of Hog Hath Lost His Pearl. The second scene of Beaumont and Fletcher’s Love’s Pilgrimage begins in a dark bedroom and reaches its climax when Philippo calls for a candle to show his face to the disguised sister who has unwittingly discovered herself to him. Similarly, the darkness of the palace in Duchess of Malfi . is revealed by Bosola’s decision 

This stage direction at line  was probably written for the play’s readers, of whom Jonson is mindful in two short prologues.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

not to light a candle (“So it must be done i’ th’ dark,” [line ]) and to strike at Antonio (whom he believes to be the Cardinal) before the servant can “fetch . . . a dark lanthorn” ( line ). The simple ironic effect of such broad-daylight darkness is made most clear in tragedy: Bosola kills the wrong man and we see his mistake before he does; in The Atheist’s Tragedy, D’Amville thrusts his brother Montferrers into the “gravel pit” and protests that it was some “villains,” all the while wondering passionately if “Heaven, / [Has shut its] eye to wink at murders, or / [Has] put the sable garment on to mourn / At’s death?” (.. –). We see a tragic irony in events which other characters cannot. The irony can be a little more complex in comic scenes – as when in The Phoenix, Phoenix, as well as the audience, realizes that the Jeweler’s Wife has mistaken him for her lover the Knight, and he draws out as much of her bawdry as possible. But what is most significantly common to almost all dark scenes or thick-fog scenes is the extensive and exuberant use of the resources of the stage. The Two Angry Women contains a night scene that, at over , lines, makes up about half of the play (it extends from the beginning of scene  through scene ). As Mall attempts to elope with Frank, and the two angry women embark on a search for the lovers that involves all the other characters in the play, we see, besides all the expected mistaken identities and comic impersonations: a balcony or 



A similar scene, but one involving off-stage darkness, is in Middleton’s The Witch ., where Francesca, having told Antonio that his wife Isabella is sleeping with Abberzanes, sends the servant Gaspero to Isabella’s dark bedroom. Antonio, in a blind fury, kills both (off-stage) and only afterwards discovers that his wife is innocent (Abberzanes slept with and impregnated Francesca), and that he has killed the wrong man. The comic equivalent of such off-stage misunderstandings is the very common bed-trick, where one person, usually a woman, is substituted for another without the second party’s knowledge. For other discussions of the bed-trick see William R. Bowden, “The Bed Trick, –: Its Mechanics, Ethics, and Effects,” Shakespeare Studies  (): –; and Marliss C. Desens, The Bed Trick in English Renaissance Drama (Newark: University of Delaware Press, ). Desens’s study is particularly thorough and frequently illuminating as she works to eliminate the view of the convention as merely conventional, and to discuss it both in terms of the efficacy of its theatricality and the uneasiness this theatricality can provoke in an audience. In “Night and Darkness on the Elizabethan Stage” (Renaissance Papers []: –) Alan Dessen discusses some scenes that are discussed in this chapter and many that are not. Dessen says that imaginary “stage darkness can . . . set up . . . audience superiority in seeing and awareness basic to many different comic effects” ( p. ). His example for this point is Haughton’s Englishmen for My Money (see my discussion below). He goes on to discuss the implications of the Elizabethan convention for understanding (and perhaps bridging the gaps between) the differences between Elizabethan and modern dramaturgy: “For us, one figure fails to see another because the stage is dark; for them, one figure failed to see another and therefore the stage was assumed to be dark” ( p. , emphasis original).

Disorder and convention



window scene (. –); Mall hiding “behind a tree” as her mother searches for her (. ); Dick Coomes bumping into a post (. ); and Coomes entering wet after falling, off-stage, into a pond (. –). Haughton’s Englishmen for my Money uses an extended dark scene to facilitate its denouement, and here we see the stage transformed into a virtual map of London, as well as the Dutchman Vandal lured into a basket which is lifted high above the stage. Under cover of darkness the Greeks prepare to sack Troy in Heywood’s  Iron Age, Menelaus pointing out that “the black darkness couers vs, / And we without suspition easily can / Disperse our selues about these high built wals” ( line ). In A Woman Killed With Kindness, scene , as Frankford enters his house to see his wife sleeping with Wendoll, much emphasis is laid on the different parts of the house he must pass through or look into – first the “gate” ( line ), then the “last door” ( line ), and finally the inside of the bedchamber ( line ). Banks the Miller enters in the long night scene of Merry Devil of Edmonton (. –.) “wet on his legs,” having “bin in fifteene ditches betweene this and the forrest” (..  –). We also find ditches in Atheist’s Tragedy . and Arden ; and in Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess ., the Sullen Shepherd “flinges” Amoret “into the well,” where she is almost immediately rescued by the God of the River, who “Riseth with Amoret in his armes” ( lines –).  

For a discussion of this scene as an echo of Romeo and Juliet see Mary Bly, “Bawdy Puns and Lustful Virgins.” Romeo comes to Juliet “bescreen’d in night” (.. ). The foreigners, looking for Pisaro’s house, get lost because, as Vandal says, “tis so Darke ey can neit see” (Fr). The Englishmen, working in concert with Pisaro’s daughters, work to mislead the foreigners, their own identities disguised by the darkness. The following exchange between Delion the Frenchman and Heigham the Englishman (the latter pretending to be a glass merchant) is typical of the scene.       I be deceeu dis darke neight; here be no Wenshe, I be no in de right plashe: I pray, Monsieur, wat be name dis Streete, and wishe be de way to Croche-friers?        Marry, this is Fanchurch-streete, And the best way to Crotched-friers, is to follow your nose.       Vanshe, street, How shaunce me come to Vanshe streete? (Fr) vell monsieur, me must alle to Croche-friers.



Later, Alvaro the Italian, Delion, and Pisaro’s clown Frisco will all meet and argue over whether they are in Fenchurch Street, Leadenhall, or Tower Street. Putting further pressure on the illusion of darkness is the fact that the “well” here might have been a prop that was moved on- and off-stage solely for the purposes of the scene. While it is possible that the well was represented by a trap-door, Reynolds shows in Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theater evidence from as early as  that a “well was a real setting and not merely a trapdoor in an innyard playing place,” and that at the Red Bull it might have even been placed sometimes on the front stage. (A Woman Killed with Kindness was probably initially staged at the Curtain, but Reynolds, p. , notes that “the play’s popularity suggests its presentation also at the Red Bull.”)



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

In Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter Caesar and Frescobaldi lie in wait for Candy, and after “Caesar trips up Candies heels” and the men stab him ( line ,– s.d.), they throw his body into the Tiber (“come to the bridge with him” [line ,]). To leave no rubs nor botches in the work, Caesar then “casteth Frescobaldi after” ( line , s.d.). Tawnicoat does not fall into a ditch, but appears on stage digging one in the thick mist of  If You Know Not Me. Wet characters are fairly common, as are ladders and windows: Romeo and Juliet, Hog Hath Lost His Pearl, and Englishmen for my Money contain ladder and window scenes in the dark. In Dekker’s Blurt, Master-Constable ., Curvetto, standing below Imperia’s window with a lantern, pulls a cord hanging from a window and is “duck’d over head and ears” with a chamber pot ( lines –). And Marston’s Insatiate Countess ., where Mendosa comes beneath Lady Lentulus’s window and tries to ascend (but falls) with a rope ladder, begins with the line “Night like a sudden mourner frowns on earth.” Other big effects occur in Fletcher’s Night Walker ., where the darkness allows Lurcher and his Boy to mistakenly steal the coffin containing Maria’s not-dead body; and in Catiline . where the onset of darkness is accompanied by “a groan of many people . . . heard underground” ( line  s.d.). It is not that spectacular effects on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage occur only in dark scenes, but that dark scenes tend to be crowded with spectacular effects. When the language of the play most insists on the invisibility of characters, objects, and locations, the action works most vigorously to call our attention to these things: dark scenes tend to fill the stage with characters, to use all of its levels, to underscore the importance of props, to maximize the potential of visible, physical space. The dark scene is a convention that, like the aside, changes the way we see the stage. Such scenes, like many scenes full of asides, deliberately strain the imaginative resources of the audience as well. Over the , lines of the dark scene in Two Angry Women, one is bound to forget occasionally that it is supposed to be dark; reminders come in the form of sudden, unexpectedly silly (for the moment it takes us to remember that it is supposed to be dark) use of the physical space of the stage. Emphasizing, even flaunting, the visible in scenes whose actions and consequences are predicated on invisibility is an amusingly dangerous game; and to succeed at this game, as these plays seem to effortlessly, is to triumph over the limitations of perhaps the most difficult kind of stage

Disorder and convention



to act on, to suit the stage to the illusion rather than the illusion to the stage.    The number and variety of on-stage mutilation scenes, or scenes involving the on-stage display of severed body parts, is truly extraordinary. A somewhat lengthy but, admittedly, only partial list will serve to give some idea of this. The bodies are whole in the dead-princes scene of Heywood’s  Edward IV and the dead-children scene of (anon.) A Yorkshire Tragedy, but they are presented in much the same way as the severed limbs of other plays. Heywood, taking a somewhat different approach from Shakespeare, has the bodies of the young princes killed off-stage, brought out, one under each arm, by Dighton and Forrest. It is a disturbing answer to the question Shakespeare’s Richard III asks Tyrell: “But didst thou see them dead?” (.. ). Their lifeless bodies provide a moment of shock for the audience and vexed penitence for the murderers, similar to the “two bleeding boyes laid forth vpon the thresholde” at the end of A Yorkshire Tragedy. The trophy head of a recent conquered enemy is brandished aloft at the end of Marlowe’s Edward II (Mortimer), Dekker’s Sir Thomas Wyatt ( Jane Shore), Macbeth (Macbeth), and (anon.) Thomas Lord Cromwell (Cromwell); and in earlier scenes of Fletcher’s Bonduca (a Roman soldier killed by Caratach in .), Heywood’s Silver Age and  Iron Age (an “armed king” in . of the former, and Penthesilea toward the end of the first act in the latter), Cymbeline (Cloten in .), and The Revenger’s Tragedy ( Junior Brother in .). Faustus is beheaded on-stage in the B-text (.), and Marston’s insatiate countess, resignedly telling the headsman to “strike,” suffers a more permanent version of the same fate (.. ). 

The shock in Heywood’s play is maximized by the fascinating inefficiency of the murder plan and the scene. The princes appear on-stage on C v and say their prayers before exiting, “to bedde.” Tyrrel then comes on, saying “Go lay yee downe, but neuer more to rise” (Cr. ), which suggests that he is on his way to do the deed. We then hear a noise off-stage and shortly after this Dighton and Forrest appear, each with a dead prince under his arm. Tyrrel expresses some regret and then says “The priest here in the Tower will bury them” as the murderers “lay [the bodies] downe” (Cv.  s.d). The next scene, involving a completely different location, must therefore begin after the bodies of the princes are removed, presumably by someone other than the killers. The fitful way the action in this scene progresses, and the extremely inconvenient way in which it ends, emphasize the physicality of the princes in a way similar to, for example, the end of Macbeth, where Macduff leaves Macbeth’s body on stage after killing him and it must somehow be removed so that it can be beheaded before the final scene.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

Beech’s boy is struck “six blowes on his head & with the seauenth [ Merrie] leaues the hammer sticking in his head” in Yarrington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies (Cr). Alphonsus of Germany dashes out the brains of Hedewick’s child (Hr). Mucedorus and Hercules make short offstage work of, respectively, a bear ([anon.] Mucedorus .) and a lion (Heywood, Silver Age Act ), the head of which each brings on-stage almost immediately. Gloucester’s eyes are pulled out by Cornwall in . of Lear, a scene probably only half as gruesome as (anon.) Edmund Ironside ., where Canutus cuts off the hands and noses of two sons of disloyal men. Hieronimo famously bites out his tongue at the end of The Spanish Tragedy; less famously but with perhaps even more fury, Antonio and his revengers “pluck out” Piero’s tongue at the end of Antonio’s Revenge. Piero is shortly thereafter served a dish on which are arranged the limbs of his son Julio (.. ), a scene that echoes the final scene of Titus Andronicus and is echoed in Heywood’s Golden Age when Jupiter celebrates his victory over Melliseus with a banquet “with the limbes of a Man in the seruice” (.). Aaron cuts off Titus’s hand (.), Lavinia is discovered in . of the same play with neither hands nor tongue, the Horse-courser of Faustus B (.) pulls off the sleeping Faustus’s leg (which he promptly grows back), Orlando Furioso takes an innocent shepherd for Medor and tears off his leg (.. –), Ferdinand presents his sister the Duchess of Malfi with a dead man’s hand in the dark (.), Faustus’s limbs are spit out from Hell after the devils take him, and Beech, his limbs having been severed by Merrie off-stage early in Yarington’s play, is reassembled on-stage when his various parts wash ashore from the river at the end (G). Of a similarly spectacular nature and equally difficult to stage are the very numerous scenes of execution by hanging, and scenes like the slitting of Chiron and Demetrius’s throats as they hang upside down in Titus Andronicus ., Tullia’s treading on her father’s dead body in Heywood’s Rape of Lucrece ( line , s.d.), Bajazeth and Zabina braining themselves against the cage in  Tamburlaine ., and the discovery of Remilia “stroken with Thunder, blacke” after she and her brother Rasni decide, in Lodge and Greene’s Looking Glass for London and England, to carry on an openly incestuous relationship (Cv). We know very little about the technology that was used to create false limbs, or to effect such spectacular scenes as the bludgeoning of Beech’s boy, on-stage beheadings, or Remilia’s charred body. What can be 

Andrew Gurr, in The Shakespearean Stage, pp. ff., gives some known examples of special effects techniques (mostly bladders full of vinegar or animal blood), including a drawing from

Disorder and convention



inferred from the large number of such scenes throughout the period (there is not, I think, a convincing case to be made for a real decline in the number after ) is that the technology was simple enough to be used widely and as needed, but sophisticated enough in its effects to be worth whatever trouble it was. What is unfortunate about studies that talk about a stage technology like this one largely in terms of “spectacle” is that they present a reductive view of the technology as dramaturgy – they do not give due attention to the way in which playwrights take these body parts (or even bodies) very seriously for what they fundamentally are: props. The transition from pastoral to tragedy in Greene’s Orlando Furioso is complete after Orlando has run mad and ripped off the Shepherd’s leg in .. The transition involves a detour into broad comedy. Orlando, quickly going mad as he reads on trees of the love of Medor and Angelica, first accuses Orgalio of being Medor ( lines –). Terrified of his master’s fury, Orgalio points to the helpless Shepherd.     Art thou Orgalio? Tell me where Medor is.      My lorde, looke where he sits.     What, sits he there, and braves me too?





Reginald Scott’s Discoverie of Witchcraft () that demonstrates how to behead a man. Books in the Theatre Production Studies Series (London: Routledge, John Russell Brown general editor) such as Michael Hattaway’s Elizabethan Popular Theatre (), Alexander Leggatt’s Jacobean Public Theatre (), and Sturgess’s Jacobean Private Theatre () include excellent surveys of Elizabethan and Jacobean production values, but nevertheless have a dearth of information regarding on-stage dismemberment or similar violence. By far the best and most thorough discussion of staging and stage effects is still Reynolds’s Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theater. Gurr says that “Realism of this kind . . . appears usually as a special effect designed to intensify the inherent comedy or tragedy of its occasion. ‘When the bad bleedes,’ Vindice says in The Revenger’s Tragedy, ‘then is the Tragedie good’ ” (The Shakespearean Stage, p. ). The general slant of studies such as Gurr’s or those in the Theatre Production Series seems to be to emphasize, in opposition to modern theatre, the non-naturalistic quality of Renaissance stage violence. More often than not, however, this approach takes the tone of excusing, from a modern perspective, early modern drama’s bewildering habits on the basis of the supposed na¨ıvet´e of its playwrights and audiences. This is why Reynolds’s study is so important, insisting as it does throughout that “Elizabethans did at least in some particulars delight in realism to an extraordinary degree” (Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theater, p. ), and concluding that their chief “difficulty was that having accepted a certain distance from reality they could not stick to it. Whenever a sensational effect could be secured by realistic business, or a plot required a situation no matter how unsuited to theatrical conditions, the playwrights, at least most of those at the Red Bull, let no considerations of artistic consistency or of taste deter them from attempting it” ( p. ). While he does not focus specifically on moments of dismemberment, Alan Dessen does offer an excellent discussion of the way in which early modern stage violence can be seen as following “a logic based upon patterned action that at times can supersede our sense of verisimilitude or psychological realism,” in chapter , “The logic of stage violence,” in Elizabethan Stage Conventions ( pp. –).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response         No truly, sir. I am not he.     Yes villaine. He drawes him in by the leg. ( lines –)

This is perhaps an allusion to and echo of Faustus A .. ff., where the Horse-courser pulls Faustus’s leg in order to try to wake him and ends up pulling it clean off. Both scenes are comic, Marlowe’s especially so in that Mephistopheles arrests the Horse-courser and Faustus “has his leg again” ( line ) almost immediately. The scene in Orlando Furioso, especially when Orlando returns with the leg and uses it as a club to beat those who try to calm him, is also perhaps a particularly vivid example of what Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth Maclean call the “anti-necromancy theme” in the Queen’s Men’s plays and in their relationship to the plays of Marlowe. There is no magic healing here, only surprisingly savage violence. It is a particularly horrifying transition out of comedy which requires the actor playing Orlando to use the physical hyperbole of the leg in order to insist that the moment of comedy is past. This is of course very difficult, and it is the tension between ridiculous laughter and simple shock that must provide the energy for the scene. The hyperbole of severed limbs sets in motion a series of complex interpretive processes with respect to the physical and psychological “realism” of any scene. Mortimer’s head at the end of Edward II, or Macbeth’s at the end of Macbeth, are necessary or at least unambiguous signs of one kind of closure, but they do not do much to make Edward III’s protestations of innocence or Malcolm’s promises of peace more compelling. While Caratach fights the Roman soldiers in Bonduca ., Judas tries to avoid fighting little Hengo: The boy speaks sword and buckler! Pr’ythee, yield, boy; Come, here’s an apple, yield. ( lines –)

Once the Romans are gone, Caratach praises Hengo for his bravery and offers him a reward: 

The Queen’s Men and their Plays, p. . Whether Orlando can be considered a Queen’s play is of course open to some debate. It was performed by the Admiral’s Men at the Rose in , as an old play. The title pages of both Q  and Q  note that it was “plaid before the Queenes Maiestie,” and Tetsumaro Hayashi, in his Textual Study of the play (Muncie, IN: Ball State University Press, ) argues, based on allusions to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, that it would have been performed by the Queen’s Men between  and . This dating makes an allusion or response to Faustus (if we accept a date of c.  for that play) just possible. McMillin and Maclean say that “[e]ventually, Orlando Furioso should be studied with a view to the Queen’s Men and/or the Admiral’s Men” ( p. ), and the few sentences that provoked this footnote can be seen as a small step in the direction of the former.



Disorder and convention   That’s my boy, my sweet boy! Here, here’s a Roman head for thee.     Good provision! Before I starve, my sweet-faced gentleman, I’ll try your favour.

( lines –)

The offering of the head is comic and ridiculous, but because of its figurative connection with the apple and with the talk of food, hunger, and courage that saturates the scene ( Judas is a cowardly “hungry courtier”), and because of its status as a prop – a physical object designed to get a theatrical point across – Caratach’s gesture comes to seem like the natural or at least appropriate thing to do. The case is similar with the banquets of limbs in Titus Andronicus, Antonio’s Revenge, and Golden Age – scenes which have the added ideational support of the story of Thyestes and the curse of the house of Atreus. The phenomenon whereby hyperbole is assimilated is similar to what I have said above in the chapter on puns about the relationship between figurative language and literal violence. And it is an inverted version of what happens when Beech’s body is assembled on-stage at the end of Two Lamentable Tragedies: there a grim sense of the reality of death is precariously balanced with an indulgence in spectacle for its own sake, where it is neither clear nor clearly desirable that one should exist without the other. Neighbor ’s “satisfied” and “they” capture the ambiguity: . . . let the eyes of euery passenger Be satisfied, which may example be, How they commit so dreadful wickedness. (Gr)

Before we can sort out who is meant by “they” ( passengers? the Merries? the bodies of Beech and his boy? murderers in general?), or how we are to take “satisfied,” the citizens are focused on a new and more crucial prop: the salt bag that contained the limbs, the mark on which will lead them to the man who sold the bag and the killer he sold it to. The limbs remain on the stage, silent and useless. In The Revenger’s Tragedy the Junior Brother’s head, to which Ambitioso promises vengeance at the end of ., is a parody of the skull Vindice  

See pp. –. As with the bodies of the princes in  Edward IV, it is unclear when or how Beech’s limbs and the body of his boy are removed from the stage after their purpose has been served. In Elizabethan Popular Theatre, Hattaway makes a similar point about the numbing theatricality of the limbs at the end of Faustus: “As these are so obviously property limbs the sight of these relics rouses neither of the Aristotelian emotions of horror and pity: rather it reinforces the sense of the quickness of Faustus’ end, the sudden extinction of life” ( p. ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

carries and talks to through much of the play – and that skull is itself a humorously macabre echo of Yorick’s skull in Hamlet. Each of the latter two heads has one or two fairly easy to discern symbolic or thematic meanings: in Revenger the skull is a symbol of revenge and a reminder of the hollow bone beneath the finery of the court; in Hamlet it represents the transience of the body in life and even in death (the gravedigger is, after all, throwing out Yorick’s bones to make room for someone else’s). But the ridiculousness of talking to a severed head is only really apparent in a scene like Revenger ., when the physicality of that head oozes insistently, in the form of blood, from a bag. Prop, symbol, and, simply, head, the round object in the bag that the bad brothers peer into, stunned, is like the rings the Duke, brothers, and officers exchange on the way to bringing the unwitting Junior Brother closer and closer to death: something evasively, dangerously meaningful that you can hold in your hand. “     ”

No extant play in the period covered by this study uses as its central plot an incestuous relationship. Lyly’s Mother Bombie and Middleton’s No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s, come closest to representing the hideousness of incest in the theatrical way Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore will in the s. Between  and , however, the subject is generally treated with a uniform and unsettling casualness: even as incest seems essentially unrepresentable, presumably because of its hideousness, it is constantly joked about, leered at, half-represented, as though it were not hideous at all. Further, playwrights go to striking lengths in creating plot contortions and obtuseness of character in order to raise the specter of incest that is inevitably to be suppressed again. Ultimately the problem is, and is worked out as, a structural one. As Lois E. Beuler says, however incest figures in the plays, its moral point is made primarily by its structural point, which is this: since it prevents absolutely the reconciliation of individual social desires toward which Renaissance drama always moves at last, incest for so long as it exists literally prevents a play from coming to an end . . . This is why unwitting lovers can be stopped in their tracks and the  

Scott McMillin has pointed out to me that, because the two plays were performed by the same company, the skull property probably would have been the same in each. Usually the incontrovertible evidence of death, the severed head gets interesting treatment in scene  of The Travels of Three English Brothers by Day, Wilkins, and William Rowley. There the Sophy pretends to have Sherley killed – in order to “test” his niece’s love for the Englishman – and a “counterfeit head” ( line  s.d.) is brought out, which the niece weeps over and kisses before Sherley himself is produced.

Disorder and convention



whole fabric of a play’s relationships can be reknit at a word of revelation. (“The Structural Uses of Incest,” p. )

Because of the need for unknitting, incest is frequently tied very closely to the convention of exposition (No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s being perhaps the most obvious case), and thus to an audience’s expectations about developing events. The strain exerted on the credibility of developing events by the ongoing imminence of the “word of revelation” is, as we see most clearly in plays like Heywood’s Four Prentices of London, considerable and, as we see in the drama’s continual returns to incest, vital. At least partial exceptions to the casual presentation of incest are Lodge and Green’s A Looking Glass for London and Peele’s David and Bethsabe. In the former, Remilia and her brother Rasni’s pride and impudence are speedily rewarded with divine vengeance when, just before their proposed wedding night, Remilia is struck by lightning and discovered on-stage charred and black. In the latter, Absalon kills Ammon shortly after he learns that Ammon forced himself on and then discarded their sister Thamar. These scenes are quite striking in contrast to, for example, the end of Heywood’s Golden Age Act , where Jupiter, meeting his sister Juno for the first time, asks if he can “exchange the name of sister with you / And stile you by a neerer name of wife,” and Saturn agrees to the match without comment; or Middleton’s The Phoenix ., where Falso attempts at some length to persuade his niece to sleep with him and, when she refuses, gets out of the scene with a laugh: “Very good! O’ my troth my niece is valiant; she’s made me richer by five thousand crowns, the price of her dowry. Are you so honest? I do not fear but I shall have the conscience to keep you poor enough” ( lines – ). Falso is punished in the end, but it is ultimately more a comic humiliation for his general lechery than retribution for this specific sin. Even in Hamlet, where Hamlet early on expresses dismay at his mother’s hasty flight to Claudius’s “incestuous sheets” (.. ), incest (or perceived incest) is almost always mentioned as simply one more thing Claudius is guilty of (see .. –, .. –, and .. ). This view of incest is taken to its most insistent and ironic extreme inThe Revenger’s Tragedy, where Vindice’s “O hour of incest” speech (.. –) and other diatribes on the sinfulness of the court, have the effect of making lechery and excess of any kind seem all the same. The philosophy behind this leveling effect is shared by most of the characters in the play: Ambitioso finds that there’s “nothing sure in mortality but mortality” (.. –); Lussurioso sees his 

“The Structural Uses of Incest,” Renaissance Drama  (): –.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

various thugs and bawds as “but nails to drive out one another” (.. ); and Spurio will “call foul incest but a venial sin” (.. ). In comedy or tragicomedy, incest is almost always only potential rather than actual. In Lyly’s Gallathea, Tityrus accuses Melebeus of having “affection more than fatherly” for his daughter (.. –), and Melebeus responds in a way that does little to convincingly counter the claim: “it was my wife. And if . . . [you] imagined it to be my child, not my spouse, you must know that silver hairs delight in golden looks . . . and frosty years must be thawed with youthful fires” ( lines  –). The argument is dismissed by an on-looker (“You both are too fond or too froward”) and the scene ends, the incestuous implications hanging irrelevantly in the air. Beaumont and Fletcher’s A King and No King, a typically strange tragicomedy, puts incest in a tragic context initially – consumed with sudden and inexplicable lust, Arbaces imprisons his sister and forbids her to marry Tigranes – but deals with it comically in the end: Arbaces turns out not to be Panthaea’s brother, or even stepbrother. The kind of undoing we see at the end of King and No King is similar to what happens in Lyly’s Mother Bombie and No Wit, No Help. In Lyly’s play, Maestius and Serena, apparent siblings who feel “passions more than brotherly” (.. –), are discovered to be unrelated, and the near-incestuous marriage of Accius and Silena is stopped just in time by Vicina’s story of switching her own children (Accius and Silena) with those of Memphio (Maestius) and Stellio (Serena). Middleton’s play uses almost this exact trick – Lady Goldenfleece tells of how the late Mistress Sunset switched her child with Lady Twilight’s in order to give Grace a better chance in life – but gives the audience more titillation before the revelation. For all of Act  Philip Twilight and his mother and the audience actually believe that Philip has married and slept with his sister and that there is nothing to do now but pretend that it never happened. This creating and undoing of an impossibly complex problem is a flagrant use (or abuse) of drama’s privilege of expedience, but a very satisfying one with respect to the dramatic narrative. Panthaea does not want to marry – was in fact only being forced to marry – Tigranes in the first place; Maestius and Serena are juxtaposed in their confused affection to the rather ugly plot wherein Memphio and Stellio try surreptitiously to marry their half-witted children to one another; and Philip has done such a good job of tricking his father into thinking that Grace is his sister that it seems a shame she should actually turn out to be so. The abrupt introduction of incest causes 

For a more detailed discussion of this moment in context, and of a similar moment in Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Captain, see chapter  pp. – and –.

Disorder and convention



the audience to imagine a complication of events that is incompatible with most of the other signals the play is sending; to potentially come near to seeing the incestuous relationship as favorable in order to offset this incompatibility; and to get caught up enough in imagining the potential problems that the inevitably arbitrary denouement is surprising and pleasing. The form of the drama, one based on carefully self-conscious excess, effortlessly flaunts as well as assimilates the taboo of incest. Of course, this flaunting and assimilating is not always entirely effortless. All four of Heywood’s prentices of London attempt to woo their disguised sister, and all fail because of her love for Tancred. In the end Guy is able to dismiss the disturbing fact that none of them recognized her, and the animosity that their love stirred up between the brothers, with extreme ease: “Make love unto my sister! tis most strange” ( line ,). The confusion that was the basis for all the conflict of the preceding acts is effaced. When that conflict is going on, lines like Eustace’s as he and Charles begin to compete for their disguised sister are typical and frequent: So blusht my sister: and this Out-lawe Thiefe Hath a resemblance to my brother Charles: But she in London lives a Virgine pure: Hes in some huge Whales belly too too sure.

( lines –)







No Wit, No Help is astonishingly flagrant in making the audience imagine this complication: Grace Twilight is pregnant. Savorwit says at ..  that Sir Oliver has not noticed that “your girl has a round belly,” so the fact must be evident enough to the audience to make the old man look all the more a fool. Thus we still have a lot to think about even after the returned Lady Twilight tells Philip and Grace to “Go to thy chamber, pray, leave off, and win; / One hour’s repentance cures a twelve-month’s sin” (.. –). Of this phenomenon Richard A. McCabe says, “All too often, nominalist scepticism finds a populist echo in cynical humor or emotional insecurity as the malleability of the tragicomic form transmits itself to dramatic content. Prejudices rather than principles determine the outcome of any given situation, and all comic resolutions are seen to be contrived” (Incest, Drama and Nature’s Law – [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ], p. ). McCabe also discusses the similarities of Mother Bombie and No Wit, No Help, arguing that in Middleton’s play “foundling romance enters the cynical world of city comedy where kindness and cozenage go hand in hand . . . Lyly presumes moral ideals, Middleton presumes moral compromises” ( p. ). Bruce Boehrer argues that the highly contrived plot of A King and No King “symbolically defends [the new Jacobean gentry] against the combined threats of female sovereignty, misdirected inheritance, and endogamous sexual union.” Alluding to Philip Finkelpearl’s complaint that the play’s resolution is “incredible and outrageous . . . for nothing has been changed,” Boehrer says, “That, in fact, would seem to be the whole point.” Boehrer’s book, Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), while of an entirely different focus from the argument I am making here, provides excellent and pertinent discussions of incest in The Atheist’s Tragedy, The Revenger’s Tragedy, A King and No King, and Middleton’s Women Beware Women. The cited passages in this footnote are from pages  and .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

The dramatic irony here is heightened to an absurd degree, so that one’s experience of it almost cannot be grounded in any interpretation: there is no reason for these men to love or to not recognize this woman except to keep the plot moving in a particular way. It is as though the play attempts to channel the energy from the absurdity of the disguise plot into the incest plot in order to give the disguise plot substance. I do not think it quite works in this play, largely because the language tends to be so bad, but the fact of the process demonstrates the way in which incest plots reflect and manipulate some of the dramatists’ and the audiences’ own anxieties about the more benign devices of the drama – devices such as occur in disguise plots or plots involving twins. One way of thinking about incest is as a refusal to acknowledge difference – between, say, one’s sister and an unrelated woman. It can also be seen as a refusal to recognize crucial sameness – of blood or of parentage. The kinds of confusions that ensue when Olivia cannot tell Viola from Sebastian, or when Antonio and Bassanio do not recognize their disguised wives, are grotesquely distorted, exaggerated, turned inside out by the incest plot. After Remilia is struck by lightning in Looking Glass, Radagon tells Rasni to cheer up: “What maketh Rasni moodie? Losse of one? / As if no more were left so fair as she?” (Cr). He then counsels the king to take the daughter of the king of Paphlagonia for his wife and, against all objections, says, “wife or not wife, what [Rasni] so likes is his.” The leveling effect of kingly power is evident too in the disconcerting shift in Arbaces’s thinking from I have lost The only difference betwixt man, and beast, My reason. (King and No King .. –)

to everie Beast is free: What is there that acknowledges a kindred But wretched Man? (.. –)

Of course such logic is not limited to kings. Falso asks his niece whether “if your uncle be part of your own flesh and blood, is it not then fit your own flesh and blood should come nearest you?” (The Phoenix .. –). Serena in Mother Bombie finds it “strange . . . in sense that because thou art mine, therefore thou must not be mine” (.. –). In Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Captain, Lelia, trying to recover after realizing that she has been seducing her father, asks whether “if you have / An arrow

Disorder and convention



of the same tree with your bow, / Is’t more unnaturall to shoot it there / Then in another?” ( lines –). Such an argument for the virtues of sameness is obviously specious, but the seductiveness of its efficacy (Ford’s Giovanni and Annabella will later find it quite compelling) is reflected in the enthusiasm playwrights show for exploring the possibilities of incest without exploring or needing to explore its consequences. Thus we might see incest as both the darker side of and a powerful undercurrent pulling against the efficiency of theatrical device in a drama where being an identical twin, or assuming the identity of someone else, generally means being able to get whatever you want.     On stage, twins and disguises allow the achievement of the impossible. Sir William Vergir in Armin’s The Two Maids of More-Clacke does not reject Filbon’s suit for his daughter Tabitha’s hand, but makes its realization difficult:         You loue my yongest daughter     And will euer.         Pray ye doe: but when you are from yourselfe a woman, she is yours in marriage.      Woman to woman ioyned twere wonderfull, But in more maze of wonder I should be, What I doe challenge to participate, And for my selfe liue to deuide in other.        Faith not till such a wonder.

(scene , lines –)

Filbon’s father, Sir Rafe, is indignant at being “slighted thus with fantasies / Impossibilities” ( lines –), but by the end of the play Filbon, having disguised himself as a nurse, has found the theatrically logical way around Vergir’s strictures. Of course, the ludicrous thing about this plot trajectory is that Vergir cannot actually be, but at some metadramatic level is, aware of the disguise Filbon’s plot will ultimately concoct. The 

Charles R. Forker, in “ ‘A Little More Than Kin, and Less Than Kind’: Incest, Intimacy, Narcissism, and Identity in Elizabethan and Stuart Drama,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England (): –, argues that in Renaissance poetry and drama, incest “could contain the double, even mutual possibility of self-immolation and self-renewal” ( p. ). See also Boehrer’s discussion of incest plots as one manifestation of anxiety about “the Stuart monarchy, which under James is so heavily committed to the dispersal of crown wealth, knighthoods, and titles that the dynasty impoverishes itself and makes a laughingstock of the peerage . . . [ This dispersal threatens to cause] the collapse of distinctions between family and strangers, heirs and interlopers, the foreign and the familiar” (Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England, p. ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

hyperbolic inherence of the device to the plot is what makes this and other disguise plots similar to the incest examples I have just discussed. Fitting two identities, even two sexes, in one character, as Filbon does, is still somewhat less dazzling than splitting one character into two discrete but indistinguishable identities. Toward the end of (anon.) Look About You, the baffled Redcap finally meets on stage the two “Hermits” (Gloucester and Skinke, disguised) who have been interacting with him separately and at cross purposes. The exuberance of the moment carries over into the stage business as a fight ensues and a trap-door is employed. In Field’s A Woman is a Weathercock, Neville, disguised as a parson as he was at the beginning of the play, meets the real Parson before the assembled court at the end, and reveals the sham of the original marriage of Bellafront to Frederick. The shock of the moment is intensified by Neville’s revealing beneath his parson’s robes the robes of a devil, and only beneath those robes his own clothes. The Family of Love, as discussed in chapter , allows us to watch Lipsalve, disguised as Gerardine, woo Maria while the real Gerardine is in Maria’s room. This trick is a variation on the structure of common scenes like Look About You, scene , where Skinke, disguised as John, talks with Faukenbridge, whose exit is followed immediately by the entrance of Gloucester disguised as Faukenbridge. And when Skinkeas-John leaves, baffled by Faukenbridge’s inexplicable return, the real Prince John enters. Marston’s What You Will takes such scenes a step further, leaving even the audience potentially in the dark: in . Andrea and Randolfo disguise the perfumer Francisco as the presumed-dead Albano and send him off to give the widow Celia a good scare for her too hasty engagement to a Frenchman. The next scene brings on the real Albano – miraculously not dead, and railing, of course, about his wife’s amorousness. As Shakespeare does in Comedy of Errors Marston capitalizes on the delightful absurdity that ensues when identical characters meet. In all of the situations described here, the audience’s pleasure in the surfeit of stimulus and complexity is akin to the barely suppressed sexual excitement Olivia expresses when Viola and Sebastian at last appear in the same place: “Most wonderful!” (Twelfth Night .. ). Disguises, twins, and the plots they tend to be involved in, probably the most prevalent device in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, perhaps best epitomize the pleasures and perils of all the conventions I have discussed to this point. The pleasure afforded by the complex situations precipitated by disguise plots is such that playwrights are comfortable 

See pp. –.

Disorder and convention



sacrificing clarity or plausibility of motivation in order to create them: the ends justify the means. In Chettle, Dekker, and Haughton’s Patient Grissil, Patient Grissil’s husband the Marquess decides at the beginning of the play to try his wife’s patience by being as bad to her as possible; and this obsession with observing another’s loyalty – a preoccupation of the drama in general – is recapitulated in his ordering his attendant Furio to take Grissil’s children away and then, unbeknownst to Furio, accompanying him in disguise to “try thy faith, and Grissils constancy” (.. ). This leads to yet another horrible scene exemplifying Grissil’s patience in the face of the most extreme demands, just as Constantia’s decision to disguise herself in the first scene (and first speech) of Ram Alley leads to one scene after another in which she must witness, and we must watch her witness, her love Boutcher’s caddish behavior. The disguise, for characters and audience, creates a space where there is a vast amount of things to see and a space from which to see them; and for the audience as well as the characters, this is not always entirely desirable. The Marquess uses his wife’s patience as Shakespeare uses Desdemona’s “abhor” or Haughton uses the device of the disguise plot itself: as a conduit for further signification of a particularly theatrical kind. Knowing that Grissil and the Marquess, or Boutcher and Constantia, will be reconciled in the end does not necessarily make watching the process any more pleasurable, but there is a way in which the sheer volume of significance and effect that comes out of the theatrical situation, the levels of perception, makes the process compelling to watch. More common than plays like Ram Alley, Patient Grissil, Marston’s The Malcontent, or The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, where the central disguised character is simply disguised, are plays where a disguised character is able to use his or her disguise to witness and control crucial events because he or she is presumed dead. The apparent deaths of Antonio in Antonio and Mellida, Petrucchio in The Woman’s Prize, James Humil in Two Maids of More-Clacke, and Quomodo in Michaelmas Term allow the men opportunities to see the true feelings of their wives and/or children. And the similarly apparent deaths of Mrs. Arthur in How a Man May Choose, Maria in The Night Walker, and even Hermione in Winter’s Tale (who ends up “disguised” as a statue) give these women further opportunities to demonstrate their constancy to their men. The anonymous A Knack to Know an Honest Man, (anon.) The Trial of Chivalry, The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, and Chettle and Day’s The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green all involve a similar situation where one or more characters, wounded in a fight, is left for dead and then rescued by a hermit or hermit-like character



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

(see Knack A-A, Trial E-Er, Doctor Dodypoll ., and Blind Beggar E). The complicity of the hermit characters and the identities the presumeddead characters take on allow for the creation of a series of ever more complicated situations that are based on the “dead” character’s absence and resolved by his or her surprising return. The kind of information the disguised character is given access to must act cumulatively to justify the convolution of the complications as well as the neatness of their resolution: James’s double disguise in Two Maids of More-Clacke, first as a servant to Vergir and then as an apothecary hired to poison that servant and also Lady Humil, allows him to make the discovery that Vergir is a would-be murderer, a discovery that balances the absurdity of James allowing Lady Humil to believe him dead in the first place, simply so that he could break up her over-hasty marriage to Vergir. The problem with the plot of Two Maids of More-Clacke is pointed out early on by Lady Humil herself after she recognizes her disguised former husband and upbraids him for being Baude to your owne misdeede, Three quarters guiltie of this accident, That might & would not stop the hazard.

(. –)

It is a problem inherent in plays like Knack to Know an Honest Man or Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, plays which are wholly motivated by an elaborately unnecessary disguise; and a problem potential in all disguise-centered plays. At some point, as is most evident in scenes like the child-taking scene in Patient Grissil but also present in, for example, the later and potentially tedious scenes of As You Like It or Merchant of Venice, the degradation of a character or situation by means of revelation brought forth by or for a disguised character can outweigh the functionality of the device. Plays that simultaneously most run this risk and most attempt to avoid it are those in which a disguised character is not known to the audience until the end. Examples of such plays are Epicoene, Chapman’s May Day, The Night Walker, and Middleton, Jonson, and Fletcher’s The Widow. In each case the disguised character is closely involved in the threat of or actual humiliation of another. The plot of Epicoene and the systematic humiliation of Morose are quite familiar; Lucretio/Lucretia in Chapman’s play is sleeping when Lodovico comes to fondle “her” and “meaning to lay my fiue finger vpon her Ace of hearts, vp start a quite contrary card” (.. –). The fight that ensues is all we see of the

Disorder and convention



incident and is the first time we know of Lucretio’s true identity. Later, Leonoro tells his page Lionello to dress up like a woman in order to make a fool of Quintilliano, and in the final scene it is revealed that Lionello is a woman – Lucretio’s true love Theagine. The explanation Lucretio offers for his disguise is brief, vague, and garbled enough to make it clear that it does not matter (.. –), and Theagine offers no explanation for her disguise. The symmetry created by the discovered couple acts as the necessary structural counterpart to the asymmetry created by their earlier potential matches with partners of the wrong sex. The dangers of sexual ambiguity inherent in disguise plots have been brought to the surface and controlled by means of the fight at the end of Act  and the gulling of the fool Quintilliano. The end of The Widow is similar as Martia, disguised as a boy page, as she has been throughout the play, is then disguised as a girl by Philippa in order to protect her from Brandino, whose clothes she has stolen in an earlier part of the play. Francisco meets and falls in love with the “disguised” Martia and proposes marriage; Philippa suggests that as a joke Martia accept the proposal. The couple exits and Violetta enters excitedly and laughing, telling everyone that they are now going to see a marriage, marriage, I cannot tel’t for laughing: ha, ha!    A marriage, doe you make that a laughing matter?       Ha: I, and you’l make it so when you know all, Here they come, here they come, one man married to an other.     How? man to man?       I, man to man y’faith; There’l be good sport at night to bring ’em both to bed; (.. –) Doe you see ’em now? ha, ha, ha.

Violetta’s extremely irritating laughter is a representation of the appropriate response to the situation she is describing, but because it is so irritating it can create an anxiety about whether the appropriate response is appropriate. The uncertainty whether a joke is going too far, an uncertainty that Violetta herself seems to be attempting to suppress with her laughter, is smoothed over by the surprise ending: Martia is 

At .. –, the disguised Lucretio, having been asked about someone named “Theagines” s/he always talks about, turns aside briefly and says “O my Theagine, not Theagines, / Thy loue hath turn’d me woman like thy selfe; / Shall thy sight neuer turne me man againe?” The fact that this is the first we have heard of any Theagines, that gender is not clear from either “Theagines” or “Theagine,” that this scene has entirely consisted of a conversation with Temperance about the men who love Lucretia, and that Lucretio/a must continue talking to Temperance after the brief aside, make these lines much more a puzzle than a clue.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

revealed to be a girl. Francisco has avoided the humiliation Morose in Epicoene could not and the audience, in the meantime, has been played for the fool, its anxieties brought to the surface and tweaked for a moment, mocked by Violetta’s galling laughter. The potential humiliation involved in The Night Walker is not quite as sexual, but the burden on the audience is still heavier: Algripe, it is noted early on, jilted Lurcher’s sister, who disappeared as a consequence. Midway through the play Lurcher and his Boy give Algripe a sleeping potion (.) and then come to him as Furies (.) and torment him into promising to marry Lurcher’s sister and “spend / My dayes to come religiously” (.. –). At the end of the play the Boy is revealed to have been Lurcher’s sister all along – not even, it would seem, known to Lurcher. Though it is never clear in the play why anyone would want to marry Algripe, the trouble taken in the disguise plot, and the humiliation Algripe must suffer, makes the marital resolution seem, if not plausible, then at least necessary. Such last minute revelations, even in Epicoene, are difficult to assimilate at best and clumsy at worst. They provide a certain restoration of order to the dramatic world which gives shape to the excessive or even sadistic piling on of plot twists and turns that would otherwise have none; but they do little to mediate its self-indulgence. That the potential theatrical self-indulgence of disguise-driven plots was evident to playwrights of the period, and something they expected to be evident to their audiences, can be seen in the many moments where clever-seeming disguise plots simply fail. In . of Beaumont and Fletcher’s Love’s Pilgrimage, Theodosia (disguised as a man) and her brother Philippo meet a traveling party, amongst which is Leocadia (daughter to Don Sanchio). Leocadia, like Theodosia, is a victim of MarkAntonio’s capricious lust and is also disguised as a man. The audience knows of Theodosia’s disguise (as does Philippo), but not of Leocadia’s. The exchange that follows once Leocadia attempts to introduce herself is worth quoting at length.         Ye have said enough: may I be bold to ask ye, What Province you were bred in? and of what parents?       Ye may Sir: I was born in Andoluzia, My name Francisco, son to Don Henriques De Cardinas.          Our noble neighbour.  Son to Don Henriques: I know the gentleman: and by your leave Sir, I know he has no son.

Disorder and convention



      None of his own Sir, Which makes him put that right upon his brother Don Sanchio’s children: one of which I am, And therefore do not much err.  Still ye do Sir, For neither has Don Sanchio any son; A daughter, and a rare one is his heire, Which though I never was so blest to see, Yet I have heard great good of.         Urge no further; He is ashamed, and blushes.  Sir, If it might import you to conceal your self, I ask your mercy, I have been so curious.       Alas! I must ask yours Sir: for these lies, Yet they were usefull ones; for by the claiming Such noble parents, I beleev’d your bounties Would shew more gracious: The plain truth is gentlemen, I am Don Sanchios stewards son, a wild boy, That for the fruits of his unhappinesse, Is faigne to seek the wars.         This is a lie too, If I have any ears.  Why?         Mark his language, And ye shall find it of too sweet a relish For one of such a breed: ile pawn my hand, This is no boy. ( lines –)

The cheerful excess of contradiction with which Fletcher causes Leocadia to be confronted seems almost to be the dramatist’s wish-fulfillment: the kind of reasonable interrogation anyone might wish would be given, just once, to characters like Portia-as-lawyer in Merchant, or the Merchant-asVincentio in The Shrew .. Similar to Lady Humil in Two Maids of MoreClacke, Fletcher’s siblings cause the disguise convention to collapse, at least partly, under its own weight. Fletcher, however, is more skillful in rebuilding on the foundation of the ruins. While Armin ends up making Vergir a villain and thus retroactively undermining the credibility of Lady Humil’s marriage to him in the first place, Fletcher turns the ironies of . against Theodosia. Since Theodosia gets Leocadia to confess her disguise while keeping her own a secret, she ends up hearing Leocadia’s thoughts about her – Theodosia – as a rival for Mark-Antonio (.). Having seen through Leocadia’s disguise by seeing herself in Leocadia (that is, Theodosia



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

recognizes the habits of a woman disguised as a man), Theodosia is forced in . to see herself as another would see her. Here, disguise is impotent, much as it is for Leocadia later when she, still disguised as a man, tells the wounded Mark-Antonio that he is going to die, hoping to prompt him to confess his love for her. Mark-Antonio does make a confession, but it is that he loved and married Theodosia first, and that his loyalty is to her. One cannot schematize the play’s thinking about disguise – it is impossible to say that being in disguise is always good or always bad; and it is this highly efficient unsettling of the efficiency of disguise that makes Love’s Pilgrimage a particularly good embodiment of the tenuous feasibility and efficaciousness of disguise that haunts all of the drama. The tenuous feasibility of disguise, when it is exposed, sometimes points to the incompetence of a character, or the wrongness of what he or she is trying to achieve. Antonio in Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Coxcomb is recognized three different times in two different disguises (.. –, .. –, .. ) as he works ardently to cuckold himself – a goal his wife ultimately decides to let him achieve. Lactantio arrives at his uncle the Cardinal’s house in Middleton’s More Dissemblers Besides Women with his pregnant mistress disguised as a boy page and his new lover Aurelia disguised as a visitor from Rome. While the Cardinal, who cannot abide even the presence of women in his house, is fooled, Aurelia’s father, visiting the Cardinal, immediately recognizes his daughter and takes her away. Only after Aurelia has, later in the play, successfully disguised herself as a gypsy, does she forget about Lactantio and marry her true love, Andrugio. Lactantio, of course, marries the page. The end of (anon.) A Knack to Know a Knave, after Ethanwald has married Alfrida, the woman King Edgar also loves, seems like it is heading by means of a disguise plot toward a fairy-tale ending. Edgar is on his way to Ethanwald’s home for dinner and Ethanwald, fearing that the king will try to take his wife, tells Alfrida to switch clothes with the kitchen-maid. All the elements of a comically symmetrical ending, where the king falls in love with a kitchen-maid, are in place. The maid does not disappoint in her rustic bungling of the role of lady: Now Jesus blesse your honourable Grace. Come I pray, sit down, you are welcome by my troth, As God save me here’s neuer a napkin, fie, fie. Come on, I pray eat some plums, they be sugar, Heres good drinke by Ladie, why do you not eate?

( lines ,–)



Disorder and convention

But the king and his adviser Perin see through the disguise and jolt the play back into the kind of play it began as – the kind of play where fathers demand the execution of their own sons for disobedience; and the kind of play it will end as – the kind of play where Honesty punishes cozeners like Coneycatcher with sentences like this: to stand at the Market crosse, And haue thy cursed tongue pind to thy breast, And there to stand for men to wonder at, Til owles and night Rauens picke out thy cursed eies.

( lines ,–)

Ethanwald is sentenced to death for his deceit, but is spared this fate by means of a convoluted plot involving a diabolical doppelg¨anger, summoned for the purpose by his uncle. Ethanwald gets his fairy-tale ending after all, but only after a moment where disguise becomes mere ingenuity and unsettles the relationship between wish fulfillment and dramatic artifice. There is very little dramatically satisfying, simply because it is so confusing and contrived, about the Devil who stands in for Ethanwald and then disappears when Ethanwald is forgiven. The causal relationship between the Devil–Ethanwald’s appearance and Ethanwald’s forgiveness is suggested (why else would the episode occur?) but not actual (Edgar believes himself simply to be acting mercifully); and this is perhaps why the play must end somewhat uncomically, with Honesty mercilessly and logically meting out consequences. Something similar and more disturbing happens in the second act of The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, when Lassingbergh’s painter disguise is easily seen through and he is forced to exchange his covert sexual relationship with Lucilia for an open, married one.          My Lord, it greeues me to be thus vnmaskt, And made ridiculous in the stealth of loue: But (for Lucilia’s honour) I protest, (Not for the desperate vowe that Flores made) She was my wife before she knew my loue By secret promise, made in sight of heauen. The marriage which he vrgeth, I accept, But this compulsion and vnkinde disgrace, Hath altered the condition of my loue, And filde my heart with yrksome discontent. ( lines –)



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

As in Knack to Know a Knave it takes another kind of theatrical expediency – a magical sleep in Act , from which Lassingbergh awakes with a changed mind – to balance the failure of the first one. The difference in Dodypoll is that the playwright seems more acutely aware of the power of disguise to feed illusions, or delusions – even, or perhaps especially, those of the disguised character. While it is a generic marker of Renaissance comedy that it is able to end happily and with conviction in spite of virtually any pressure applied to something as fundamental as the disguise plot, a distinguishing mark of tragedy is its willingness simply to apply pressure. Matthew Shore recognizes the disguised Edward IV almost immediately when the king comes to his shop to seduce Jane in Heywood’s  Edward IV. The loyalty that is implicit in Shore’s recognition – his ability simply to know the king – makes Edward’s earlier double entendres on “jewel” ( Jane and her husband keep a jewelry shop) seem lewd and ugly, and his disguised toying with Hobs throughout the play childish. The king’s world is one where it is fun not to see things as they are – a world Jane Shore is devastatingly shown to have become a part of later when she mistakes her husband for just another suitor to the king (Kv-Kr). In the play that bears his name, Edmund Ironside sees through Edricus’s disguise immediately when the ambidexter comes to him on a mission of espionage from Canutus in . ( lines , –). But when Edricus “talketh with Edmund secretly” ( line  s.d.) he is able to convince him of his honesty – a mistake on Edmund’s part that leads to another betrayal in . and another misguided pardon. The ridiculous artificiality of Edricus’s subterfuge in both cases – a “veluet patch” on his face in ., a sling whose falseness even Stitch the clown cannot abide in . – and the ability to see through it are something only fools put their trust in. Edricus’s real power, like so many ambidexter villains to come, is in his words, and that is what makes tragedy so terrifying: it does not need the convoluted mechanics of comedy to achieve situations of absurd complexity. It is perhaps for this reason that Richard Duke of Cornwall gets caught up in such an inane disguise plot in Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany. Dressed as a wood carrier for the night of courtly revels, Richard is sent off by the Machiavel Alexander to collect some wood, accompanied by some similarly dressed Dutch assassins. Richard catches on to their plot to kill him, kills them, and then enlists Saxon and Palsgrave to dress themselves as the Dutchmen and return with him to court in hopes of luring to them the man who ordered the assassination. But even before Richard and his friends come back on-stage, we see Alexander whispering to Alphonsus that



Disorder and convention He lives and secretly hath brought with him, The Palsgraue and the Duke of Saxonie, Clad like two Bowrs, even in the same apparel That Hans and Jerrick wore when they went out to murder him . . . (Ev)

In the dinner scene that follows where the King of Bohemia is poisoned and Alphonsus tries to make the disguised Palsgrave drink from the same cup, the discovery of the disguises casts suspicion on the innocent men. Even Bohemia is suspicious: “Saxon and Palsgrave, this cannot be good” (F v); and Alphonsus’s claim that “This hath Prince Richard done t’ entrap our lives” is for the time being the final word. Richard’s earlier talk of his skill in policy (“with strength and policy together, /. . . I escap’d out of [the Boers’] treacherous snare”; “I make no doubt if we deal cunningly, / But we shall find the writer of this scrowl [ordering the killing]” [Ev]) seems na¨ıve in the face of the brutal, less inefficiently theatrical commitment to expediency that Alexander, like his later counterpart Iago, espouses throughout the play. Lelio, who is from the beginning of A Knack to Know an Honest Man considerably less lucky than his presumed-dead friend Sempronio, returns from his banishment disguised as a collier. He manages to make it all the way through town to his home only, at that point, to be seen and recognized by the one person he should not be seen by – Sempronio’s greedy uncle Servio, who has Lelio arrested so that he, Servio, can collect the reward. Servio does not initially recognize Lelio, but rather the fact that the collier is someone in disguise: “How now, who walkes heere in this disguise? / Let’s see thy face?” (Gr). This suggests that Lelio is clumsily disguised, that he could have been recognized by anyone; and this in turn emphasizes the transparent utilitarianism of the disguise: it gets Lelio through the town so that he can be recognized by Servio so that Servio can be punished when Sempronio, undisguised, returns. Like Ermsby’s joke about “holy mutton” in Friar Bacon, like young Lucius’s aside in Titus Andronicus, like the choruses of Four Prentices or Winter’s Tale, Lelio’s foiled disguise moves us, perhaps superfluously or imperfectly, but inevitably and necessarily, between literal and figurative, practical and theatrical ways of processing information. It is hard to define the nature of the line between superfluity and necessity, imperfection and inevitability, in cases like this. The blurriness of this line is wonderfully illustrated by the courtier Balurdo in Marston’s Antonio and Mellida. Balurdo is an almost unmitigated fool, for whom



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

lines such as “I never wore socks since I sucked pap” (..–) are typical. He is the character who is always talking but can never find the right word, who relishes bawdry and his own wit with the self-indulgent theatricality of the most foolish gallants in Dekker, Middleton, or Jonson. And yet it is Balurdo who in . immediately recognizes the disguised Mellida – recognizes her after a long scene in which Antonio almost did not recognize her (.. –), and recognizes her after her father looks directly at her and asks, “Boy, didst thou see a young lady pass this way?” (.. ). Marston, harsher than Fletcher in Love’s Pilgrimage, seems happy to agree with the sneerers that you would have to be an idiot not to recognize your own lover or your own child. It is perhaps because Balurdo is more a denizen of the world of city comedy than tragicomic romance that Marston even makes him think to check whether the page is really a boy; and this is perhaps a version of what we see happening in Alphonsus or Edmund Ironside, when conventions of pastoral comedy are put to work in tragedy; or when the unmaskings in Two Maids of More-Clacke or Doctor Dodypoll move us away from comedy and dangerously close to domestic tragedy. The element of disguise, theatre’s most fundamental component, can be seen in Renaissance drama to be working overtime: theatricality is brought in to solve the problems that theatricality creates. The constant pressure on the convention of disguise frequently results, especially at moments where the convention does not work as we expect it to, in weird shifts of genre or mode. These shifts are the distinguishing marks of the kind of drama Renaissance drama is: a drama where conventions and the narratives they order strain and crack under the weight of plots that make utterly free use of these conventions as they move with relentless energy toward a state where everything is merely theatrical; where language, character, action become, rather than the subject of representation, sites for admiring the act of representation itself. Playwrights are so successful in casually acknowledging to their audiences the potential absurdities of their favorite devices, even as they use these devices to more and more hyperbolic ends, because to a tremendous degree they share the audience’s position: inside and outside the theatrical space.

 

Introduction to Part II

In Part  I have deliberately avoided putting very much emphasis on how the function of conventions might be determined differently according to genre. Instead, I have attempted to show that conventions tend to work the same way irrespective of genre, and that what is strained when the conventions of one genre enter the world of another is the audience’s understanding of the genre, not the convention. Genre presents an interpretive framework that defines the physical space of the stage; the conventions I have discussed in Part  make use of the physical elements of the stage in order to complement as well as to unsettle the interpretive, theatrical space created by the genre. Puns and asides and disguise are basically comic conventions, but they occur frequently and with their comic nature intact in tragedy. The convention of complicating a romantic plot with the possibility of incest is fundamentally tragic, but is just as frequently found as an important element of comic plots. Even the convention of graphic mutilation or dismemberment, which would seem to be obviously and exclusively tragic, can have, as we see in Faustus, Orlando, Cymbeline, and Revenger’s Tragedy, an importantly dual function. The broad cross-genre use of the expository speech or scene, the echo, and the dark scene illustrate above all the flexibility of these conventions. At virtually all points the conventions of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama are employed to facilitate the passage of theatrical information essential to particular moments in plays that are happy to change entirely what is essential from one moment to the next. While Part  has of necessity presented a picture of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as consisting almost entirely of discrete moments, Part  will examine the larger structures into which these discrete moments fit. At the slight risk of over-simplification I will call these larger structures “comedy” and “tragedy.” While the generic classification of “history” was common on title pages of the Elizabethan era, and “tragicomedy” 



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

on those of the Jacobean (the latter even being defined by Fletcher in his Address to the Reader of The Faithful Shepherdess), for the sake of this study I refer to those genres only in terms of the expectations they generate at any given moment with respect to the more general categories of comedy and tragedy. As I argued in chapter , Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences enjoyed complex, multileveled plays that could nevertheless be easily classified as belonging to one genre or another. The tendency of title pages or – especially in tragedies – titles themselves, to classify the play is not simply a marketing tool, but indicative of a way of thinking about genre. Comedy and tragedy are defined in the period by their final actions: tragedies end in death, comedies in marriage and/or reunion. (Too, the outcome of history plays is, by definition, certain, and the comedy part of “tragicomedy” generally defines the trajectory of those plays.) As with the smaller elements of the plays, in the case of plots the ends frequently justify the means. An audience’s experience of a disjointed, episodic narrative is, if not smoothed over, at least governed by a knowledge of how the play is going to end. Delight in the dramatic process, in the variety of episodes and the convoluted way they relate to each other, and delight in the completion of the process, in seeing the play end, are two quite separate things. One allows freedom from, while the other requires adherence to, absolute and absolutely predictable generic prerequisites. Occasionally, as we will see in the case of Lyly’s Gallathea and Tourneur’s Atheist’s Tragedy, the positions of such freedom and adherence overlap or shift and reveal quite explicitly the generic fluidity that is present in every moment, if not in the larger narrative structures, of Renaissance drama. The two chapters of Part  focus at length on six rather obscure plays: the anonymous Soliman and Perseda, Marston’s Sophonisba, and Tourneur’s Atheist’s Tragedy in the chapter on tragedy; Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Captain, the anonymous How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, and Lyly’s Gallathea in the chapter on comedy. Each of these plays illustrates particularly well one or two of the crucial issues at stake or problems involved in defining genre and generic conventions in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The basic rules for how plays work, in particular the rules of how plays end, are well established long before Lyly or Kyd; the defining characteristics of Elizabethan or Jacobean comedy or tragedy are, like the defining characteristics of any Elizabethan or Jacobean play, peculiarly of the moment. To speak of “Elizabethan” or

Introduction to Part II



“Jacobean” comedy or tragedy is mostly to speak of different kinds of plots or episodes, different imagined physical spaces: the former deals more with African and Asian locales, or with the English countryside, with battles waged and betrayals wrought on a grand scale, comic reversals and resolutions achieved through a pastoral magic; the latter turns more to the Italian court and the English city, the insidious intriguer replacing the besieging general, sex and money flaunted as the magical powers that break and repair comic relationships. But in spite of the shift in social sensibility indicated by this shift in dramatic content, because the actual physical nature of the stage does not really change, the fundamental theatrical sensibility remains constant: this is the drive to make an audience comfortable, even smug in its mastery of dramatic signals and information, and then casually to go to the most extreme lengths to shock it out of its complacency; it is the equal willingness to embrace, to insist upon the importance of, and to utterly discard, the incongruous.

 

Drama of disappointment: character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy

An idea I have repeatedly returned to in Part  is the potential for failure: the potential for conventions not to work efficiently, for dramaturgy not to be plausible, for theatrical information not to be conveyed clearly or coherently. The success of Renaissance drama, I have suggested, especially in its most spectacular, hyperbolic, theatrical moments, is fueled by this potential for failure. Dramatists and playing companies, writing and performing under conditions of the most exacting and even limiting kind, were unafraid to undertake any task of dramatic representation, no matter how difficult. The awareness dramatists and their plays show of their audiences, and the concessions they make to them, suggest that the potential for failure could as often as not have been a reality; the joy of the drama lies in the space for negotiation between success and failure, a space made most wonderfully vivid in the anecdote of Fowler and his “dead men” with which this book began. In The Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull, G. F. Reynolds says of the final scene of Heywood’s  Iron Age, in which nine people die, two after having feigned death and risen to fight some more, the first impression of all this slaughter is distinctly ludicrous; one feigned dead body may be tragic, but a whole stage full, with two conveniently coming to life only to die again seems a little too much. Yet since there is no hint that such scenes were in the least amusing to the Elizabethans, these successive deaths not only at the Red Bull but also at the Globe and the Blackfriars were, I suspect, high spots of tragical effectiveness. ( p. )

I think Reynolds is right, that such moments were “high spots of tragical effectiveness,” but I also think that audiences used to plays like Titus Andronicus and The Revenger’s Tragedy would have been perfectly willing to find something amusing in scenes of mass and rapid death. Such scenes could be tragically effective precisely because the ludicrous element would have been inescapable. Heywood’s play might be clumsier 

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



than Titus Andronius or The Revenger’s Tragedy, but the effect it seeks is the same: you might laugh as the bodies pile up, but there inevitably follows a moment of stillness – in the case of  Iron Age it is Helen’s long speech before she strangles herself – where the laughter dies and is replaced by an empty and breathless wonder, a kind of shock, at the number of bodies or limbs, the amount of blood on the stage. Renaissance tragedy asks audiences to bask in their own inability to rise to the demands it makes. The most successful tragedies of the period convey a sense of loss greater than we can comprehend, and make us feel that that loss is never truly compensated for by the noises of closure and resolution that are inevitably made in their final scenes. In tragedy, characters and audience alike are put in a position of constantly feeling this inadequacy by having constantly to revise and adapt modes of response to series of events which, while perhaps unpredictable, always seem to be logical and inexorable. This is very much a function of the particular form, characterized by compression, of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy. Marlowe’s difficulty in Edward II, as David Bevington says, is “to compress the events of thirty-three years into the framework of a single drama, and in doing so to motivate the changes of character indicated in his source.” The case is similar in non-historical tragedies: a series of extremely complicated events must be set in motion to bring about the death or deaths of one or more characters, and the trick is to squeeze this series into the space of a couple of hours. The result for the dramaturgy of tragic plays is that the audience’s experience of character tends to be much more unstable than its experience of the developing action. In this chapter I will look at the ways in which discontinuity of character affects and informs an audience’s experience of Renaissance tragedy, and how different kinds of failure and disappointment are central to this experience. I have chosen to focus on Soliman and Perseda, Sophonisba, and The Atheist’s Tragedy in part because they themselves have, in recent critical estimation, fallen short: each lies in the shadow of a greater tragedy – The Spanish Tragedy, The Malcontent, Hamlet – and each seems at crucial points to stubbornly resist what we would expect of its author, its period, or its genre. The arguments of this chapter will I hope show that the potential failures of these plays are at least absolutely essential to the projects the plays undertake, and at most characteristic of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy as a whole. 

From Mankind to Marlowe, p. .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response SOLIMAN AND PERSEDA ,

c . 

Because Soliman and Perseda is an early play, the allegorical figures Love, Fortune, and Death, who play a fairly major role, have generally been written off, implicitly or explicitly, as simply derivative of morality drama. In Themes and Conventions Muriel Bradbrook lumps together the anonymous plays Soliman, A Warning for Fair Women, and The True Tragedy of Richard III, and Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies in a footnote to the observation that the “debates between several allegorical personages was a clear survival from the morality” (p. ). In his Works of Thomas Kyd  Boas says that “the introduction of a chorus consisting of the allegorical figures, Fortune, Love, and Death, is not in itself very significant; but it is noteworthy that the two argue at the end of each Act, like the Ghost of Andrea and Revenge in The Spanish Tragedy . . . ” (p. lvii). And Arthur Freeman, whose Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems contains an entire chapter on Soliman, mentions the characters in a different chapter and only to point out that Soliman belongs to a class of plays that have “split-level action established by the speakers in prologues and inductions.” He goes on to say that in Soliman “three abstract deities discuss the action on the stage, and quarrel about its control” (p. ). The limited scope of these remarks implies a few things: first, that the use of allegorical figures on stage was an antiquated practice by the s and thus simply notable as a curiosity (except in the case of the innovative Spanish Tragedy); second, that allegorical figures are not actually important to the main action of the play in which they appear; and finally, that the allegorical figures, as “abstract deities,” are not even really dramatic characters. While it is clear that allegorical figures would have been recognized by playwrights and audiences as part of an older dramatic tradition, it is also clear from the number of plays in the period that include allegorical figures (besides those Bradbrook mentions there are Wilson’s Lords and Ladies plays of c. –, the anonymous Knack to Know a Knave of c. , and Dekker’s Old Fortunatus, , to name a few) that the older tradition was not simply drawn upon but put to varied and novel use well into the s. In all of these plays the allegorical figures, while often occupying a choric role, do much more than simply “discuss”   

Oxford: Clarendon, . All citations of the play are from this edition. Arthur Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon, ), p. . Bevington’s From Mankind to Marlowe has of course done much to eliminate the “[c]ritical bias against the medieval heritage in Elizabethan drama” ( p. ), and his discussions of Marlowe’s plays lay heavy and valuable emphasis on the “interplay between moral structure and secular content that . . . defines in all of them the fascination and yet the ambiguity of the message” ( p. ).

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



and “quarrel about” the action on stage. They are actively involved not only in shaping events but also in shaping the audience’s interpretation of these events. Still more important, they are seldom much differentiated in speech from the characters of the main action: they sound like the other characters and are frequently caught up in the main action to the same degree, if not in the same manner, as the other characters. At the same time, however, audiences probably would have seen the allegorical figures simultaneously as part of the main action and also as separate from it in the way modern critics clearly do. The tension created by the play between the allegorical figures as “abstract” and as real dramatic personalities, as separate from and deeply involved in the action, as archaic figures and as part of a contemporary tradition is, I will argue, a vital, fundamental part of the experience Soliman seeks to create for its audiences. And they are the tensions that get played out again and again in Renaissance tragedy, even as it largely leaves explicit allegorical figures behind. Love, Fortune, and Death make it clear from the outset that they know how the play ends. This foreknowledge establishes them as separate from the main action and puts them in the expected position of interpreters of that action. The main interpretive question is quite explicitly stated: which figure was most responsible for the death of the play’s protagonists? [  ] Had I not beene, they had not dyed so soone.     Had I not beene, they had not dyed so soone.     Nay then, it seemes, you both doo misse the marke. Did not I change long loue to sudden hate; And then rechange their hatred into loue; (.. –) And then from loue deliuer them to death?

It is worth noting that the question raised here should – but does not – seem nonsensical. Of course Death is responsible for death: Love and Fortune are helpers at best, less of a final fact than Death. The fact that Death is involved in this argument at all causes the audience on some level to have to think of him as something more like “Hate” or “Revenge” – something less than Death. Because a dramatic narrative must unfold from here, the audience must willingly imagine that Death is not death, that the process of interpretation opened up by the argument between these three will somehow effectively alter the outcome of events which has already been foretold. 

Even in The Spanish Tragedy, which is somewhat remarkable in that its sole allegorical figure, Revenge, interacts only with the quasi-mortal Andrea, the speeches of Revenge are hardly more elaborate or stylized than most of the language of the rest of the play.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

I must stress that the effect of this choric debate, and of making Death seem to be separate from death, is to make the audience imagine that the actual outcome of events, not simply the interpretation of the outcome of events, can be changed. Not that audiences are na¨ıve and do not know that the “tragedy” of the title, and the foreknowledge of the chorus promises the death of the protagonists, only that the peculiar use of Death in this chorus facilitates and enhances the phenomenon that occurs in any narrative of suspense: one reacts to developing events as though one were unsure of where they were going. This way of thinking is helped along by the fact that the choric characters begin to seem to share it with the audience. Almost immediately, Love and Fortune, like Death, begin to become something different from the separate, foreknowing beings their allegorical names and physical position on stage would suggest they are: their attention, like the audience’s, turns to the development of the narrative. At the end of Act , Love and Fortune have very little to say about death, not even the deaths of Amurath and Haleb which occur in the scene immediately preceding the chorus’s entrance. Instead, they discuss the tournament for Perseda’s hand and argue over who most helped Erastus to win Perseda. They completely ignore Death’s remark about how Erastus will lose his life because he lost Perseda’s carcanet during the tournament, going on to argue about something entirely irrelevant to the action: who caused Basilisco to fight and to lose in the tournament (.. –). Even Death gets somewhat distracted by this irrelevance, chiming in that Basilisco “by Death / Had been surprisd, if Fates had giuen me leaue” (lines –) – as though Basilisco were now free of death forever. The audience of course is not distracted by the irrelevance or the tautology, because it will not see the exchange as such: the interpretive function of the chorus has now come to involve encouraging general thought on the role of Fortune and Love in all of the events we see. Death now seems to occupy the role of something like “Fate” (though in line  he remains obviously and importantly separate from it), but also remains marginal for most of this scene, insisting that we “Let the sequele prooue / Who is [the] greatest, Fortune, Death, or Loue” (lines –) – dropping his direct promises of triumph to encourage further attention to the developing events and not simply their inevitable end. By the end of Act  verb tenses begin to shift a bit and the audience begins to find itself thinking of Fortune and Love as though these characters did not know the fate of Erastus, Soliman, and Perseda.

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



Death claims responsibility, logically, for the death of Ferdinando and the consequent banishment of Erastus, “Parting him from his loue, in spight of Loue” (.. ). Such goading prompts Love and Fortune to respond this way:    But with my golden wings ile follow him, And giue him aide and succour in distresse.      And doubt not to, but Fortune will be there, And crosse him too, and sometimes flatter him, And lift him vp, and throw him downe again.

(.. –)

The future tense in Fortune and Love’s lines (“ile follow,” “will be there”) shows them seeing the action as the audience sees it – as unfolding rather than already complete – and the sense of urgency is one the audience will share or is supposed to share in the face of Death’s own calm and more logical use of the future tense: And heere and there in ambush Death will stand, To mar what Loue and Fortune takes in hand.

(lines –)

At the end of Act , Love and Fortune will almost exclusively focus on the things they have done for Erastus, while Death taunts them for being unable to “save Philippo nor his sonne, / Nor Guelpio, nor signior Iulio, / Nor rescue Rhodes from out the hands of Death” (.. –). As the plot thickens and the audience’s interest in the characters increases, Death becomes more like himself while Love and Fortune become more like the audience. The choric interludes become moments for Love, Fortune, and us to salvage some kind of redemption or hope from the ever more disastrous march of events toward the end we were told from the outset we would always be approaching: death. The sympathy between Love and Fortune and the audience increases as the play goes on, as one is able to read the traits characteristic of the figures’ allegorical status as actual character traits. As the play’s catastrophe becomes more imminent we see Love as willfully hopeful, simultaneously confident and insecure, and wrapped up in the joys of the moment (note in particular her positive spin, at .. –, on the Erastus–Soliman–Brusor relationship and on Basilisco’s conversion to Islam). Fortune, impetuous and haphazard, is willing to take credit for virtually anything, even for filling Erastus’s sails with wind to bring him back to Rhodes between Acts  and  (.. –). Despite, or perhaps because of the fact that they know the outcome of the events beforehand,



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

they are engaged in the same kinds of frustration and bravado and murderous self-confidence we see in characters like Erastus and Basilisco and Soliman. Thus even while, as allegorical figures, Love and Fortune necessarily stand apart from the action, providing a predictable interpretive framework, the play presents the audience with a series of characters and scenes that weaken that framework. More and more one gets the sense that Death is the only chorus, and that Love and Fortune are just two more actors. This is achieved in part by means of the abundant pairs in the play that echo and are echoed by Love and Fortune: Amurath and Haleb, Julio and Guelpio, Philippo and Cyprus, and the two Witnesses at Erastus’s execution. Each of these pairs dies, directly or indirectly, at the hands of Soliman and after making some kind of stand. Amurath and Haleb quarrel over their respective loyalties to Soliman, and Amurath kills Haleb for accusing him of being a flatterer; Soliman then kills him. Philippo and Cyprus and then Julio and Guelpio refuse to “turn Turk” and are, respectively, killed in battle and executed for their refusal. And the two Witnesses make and swear to a false statement against Erastus, and then invoke their loyalty to Soliman before he kills them himself. All of these characters share a powerful, tragic sense of duty as they face their deaths. Thus in .:   Your Highnesse knowes I speake in dutious loue.     Your Highnesse knowes I spake at your command, And to the purpose, far from flattery.   Thinks thou I flatter? Now I flatter not. Then he kills Haleb.      What dismall Planets guides this fatall hower. Villaine, thy brothers grones do call for thee, Then Soliman kils Amurath. (lines –)

and .:   Your Lord vsurps in all that he possesseth: And that great God, which we do truly worship, Shall strengthen vs against your insolence.     Now if thou plead for mercie, tis to late: Come, fellow Souldiers; let vs to the breach That’s made already on the other side. Exeunt to the battel. Phylippo and Cipris are both slaine. (lines –)

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



and .:     What say these prisoners? will they turne Turke or no?     First Iulio will die ten thousand deaths.       And Guelpio, rather than denie his Christ.    Then stab the slaues, and send their soules to hell.

( lines –)

and .:      Foule death betide me, if I sweare not true.       And mischiefe light on me, if I sweare false. ... [    ] So, let their treasons with their liues haue end.      Your selfe procured us.     Is this our hier? ( lines –)

By no means are the four scenes the same, and certainly we are meant to look upon the deaths of Philippo, Cyprus, Julio, and Guelpio as the most noble and tragic of all. But in each scene we are presented with irreconcilable absolutes: these characters stick to what they have said, and then are killed for it. In each case death comes suddenly and arbitrarily, with an apparent ease (“Phylippo and Cipris are both slaine” seems a striking stage direction for a battle, especially since neither is given a death speech) that makes the conviction of the dead characters’ last words seem all the more ineffectual and hopelessly optimistic. It is in this that I think we are to sense, if not necessarily see all at once, the parallel to Love and Fortune. These two are always paired – always speak first and for several lines before Death, always seem to be grasping at straws as they voice familiar ideas about love and fortune, always seem somewhat too loud in their protestations after Death has pointed out something (Ferdinando’s death, for example) that the audience knows to be a fact rather than an interpretation. The frustration of speaking without being heard or without any effect is at the heart of the play. We see this early on when Erastus compliments Perseda after she has seen Lucina with the carcanet, and he must suffer uncomprehendingly her indignant tirade. He pleads with her to no avail:    Ah, stay, my sweete Perseda; heare me speake.       What are thy words but Syrens guilefull songs, That please the eare but seeke to spoile the heart? 

Except, perhaps, in their first entrance.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response ...     If words, nor teares, nor lookes may win remorse, What then remaines? for my perplexed heart Hath no interpreters but wordes, or teares, or lookes.       And they are all as false as thou thy selfe.

(.. –)

At the end of the play, unable to understand the reason for his false trial and execution, Erastus cries against his accusers, “Heauens, heer you this, and drops not vengeance on them?” (.. ). And his final lines show the feeling that speech itself is futile. I see this traine was plotted ere I came: What bootes complaining wheres no remedy? ... Alas how can he but be short, whose tongue Is fast tide with galling sorrow. Farewell, Perseda; no more but that for her: Inconstant Soliman; no more but that for him. Vnfortunate Erastus; no more but that for me: Loe, this is all; and thus I leaue to speake. Then they strangle him (.. –)

Erastus’s death (it is appropriate that he is strangled) is the tragic culmination of the pattern of characters unable to control the actions that their words bring about, or to use words to control what is happening to them. When this occurs with Philippo and Cyprus, or Julio and Guelpio, or Erastus, it conveys a sense of great nobility; with Amurath and Haleb or the Witnesses, of great waste. The frustration of these characters is paralleled in the frustration of Love and Fortune, and in the audience’s perception of Love and Fortune with respect to events these characters should be able to control: it is the frustration created by the slippage between the characters’ identity as allegorical, “abstract” figures and their behavior as real theatrical, mortal personalities. Even as we are able to think of them as the abstract forces at work within the main action – even forces that can or should conquer death – we literally see them as something much less powerful. Thus we are able to see the events that happen on-stage as things that both could be avoided and absolutely cannot. Fortune and Love seem like they are outside of or above tragedy, because that is where the stage puts them; but action and characterization clearly make them subject to tragedy’s laws. In each of their scenes, Love attempts to suggest a constancy, Fortune a fickleness, to the structure of events which Death is

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



able simply to laugh at. Love and Fortune exit the stage before Death at the end of the play, each protesting her identity in a single line: “I go, yet Loue shall neuer yeeld to Death,” says Love, and Fortune follows shortly, promising to “gouerne as she may” (.. , ). As with their final lines, Fortune and Love’s first lines in . have a ring of hollow truth about them.    I gaue Erastus woe and miserie Amidst his greatest ioy and iollitie.    But I, that haue power in earth and heauen aboue, Stung them both with neuer failing loue. ( lines  –)

Fortune simply rehearses a truism about Fortune, something that was as true in Act  as it is now. The ambiguity of “them both” in Love’s line – Erastus and Perseda? Erastus and Soliman? Soliman and Perseda? – like the unconvincing claim that love has not failed, suggests that what Love can or cannot do no longer matters. But the case is somewhat different for Death, who remains very much more an “abstract deity” than the other two. Perhaps even more than Love and Fortune’s invocations of traditional ideas of love and fortune, Death’s convincing power helps keep the allegorical part of the play familiar, and thus useful as something the playwright can manipulate and distort. As the allegorical embodiment of the fact of death, Death acts as a foil to the involvement the audience is meant to feel in the narrative. He is a reminder, at the most heightened moments of that involvement, that worldly wealth, fortune, and affection are relatively meaningless. However, because this kind of allegorical embodiment is part of a somewhat archaic (which is not to say primitive or exhausted) dramatic tradition, transplanted into a newer one whose concerns are decidedly more with earthly rather than spiritual narrative, the audience is free to get caught up in Love and Fortune’s frustrations and to interpret Death himself more like it would interpret Aaron the Moor or Iago or Vindice – as a plotter who, even while his nefarious ends are all realized, ultimately gets his comeuppance. We can forget the omniscience of these framing characters for the sake of the narrative and its suspense because they act like they are a part of that narrative. The fact of death’s inevitability is always before one, but the tragic force of events gains power because the narrative frequently allows one to forget about this inevitability. The instability of the allegorical characters’ identities in the face of the developing action and of the audience’s desire to interpret that



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

action in some other way than simply a march toward death comes most powerfully into play with Death himself, and through the one character who seems to slip, at least partly, through Death’s triumphant grip: the braggart and coward and fool Basilisco. Arthur Freeman sees Basilisco as a precursor to Falstaff, and the accuracy of this comparison is best seen in ., after Perseda has ordered Basilisco to kill Lucina, and then done it for him when he could not. Basilisco, now alone, “ruminates.” . . . Death, which the poets Faine to be pale and meager, Hath depriued Erastus trunke from breathing vitalitie, A braue Cauelere, but my aprooued foeman. Let me see: where is Alcides, surnamed Hercules, The onely Club man of his time? dead. Where is the eldest sonne of Pryam, That abraham-coloured Troian? dead. Where is the leader of the Mirmidons, That well knit Achilles? dead. Where is that furious Aiax, the sonne of Telamon, Or that fraudfull squire of Ithaca, iclipt Vlisses? dead. Where is tipsie Alexander, that great cup conqueror, Or Pompey that braue warrior? dead. I am my selfe strong, but I confesse death to be stronger: ... I loue Perseda, as one worthie; But I loue Basilisco, as one I hould more worthy, My fathers sonne, my mothers solace, my proper selfe. Faith, he can doe little that cannot speake, And he can doe lesse that cannot runne away: Then sith mans life is as a glasse, and a phillip may cracke it, Mine is no more, and a bullet may pearce it: Therefore I will play least in sight. ( lines –)

This speech, one of the longest in the play (Basilisco, like death, has none of the problems other characters have with words), chiefly provides a balance to the rather surprising murder of Lucina by Perseda. Basilisco presents an inversion of Perseda’s vengeful vow to kill Soliman and herself so that she will “live in infamie” (line ): those who live in infamy, Basilisco says, are still merely dead. Perseda’s act of desperation is made more intelligible as such, as something of the moment, in contrast to Basilisco’s ability to take the long view and simply look out for himself because he has no great stake in the action. The effect of Basilisco’s speech, as with Falstaff ’s “honor” speech in  Henry IV, is to make one

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



feel that the foolish character is ultimately right, but that his perspective is only available to those – like the audience – who stand outside the events that make others die gloriously. One can feel that death itself has been trumped, that when Basilisco dies (as he does shortly) it will not be tragic because he has already come to terms with death’s true finality; but also that the deaths of more “important” people, like Achilles or Alexander or Perseda, have a permanent resonance that makes these deaths the beginning rather than the end of significance. Death seems for the space of this speech simultaneously to be a finality that should not concern us much (Basilisco is willing to die because everyone dies, and he will just put it off as long as possible); a finality to which resignation is the most noble response (Basilisco is noteworthy for dying without fanfare); and a finality of great proportions and enduring significance when it concerns those who, ironically, cannot have the perspective Basilisco has (we can never fully believe what Basilisco says if we are to experience the deaths of Erastus, Soliman, and Perseda as tragic). This picture of death is so complex because Basilisco is a comic character who has gained centrality in the plot largely by being one of the last men standing. Thus it becomes still more complex when Death actually echoes him. This is Death’s second to last speech: And now to end our difference at last, In this last act note but the deedes of Death. Where is Erastus now, but in my triumph? Where are the murtherers, but in my triumph? Where Iudge and witnesses, but in my triumph? Where’s falce Lucina, but in my triumph? Where’s faire Perseda, but in my triumph? Where’s Basilisco, but in my triumph? Where’s faithfull Piston, but in my triumph? Where’s valiant Brusor, but in my triumph? And where’s great Soliman, but in my triumph? Their loues and fortunes ended with their liues, And they must wait vpon the Carre of Death. Packe, Loue and Fortune, play in Commedies; For powerfull Death best fitteth Tragedies.

(.. –)

An audience hearing the echoes might have begun to feel an undercurrent of parody beneath the anaphoric vaunting of Death, might have begun to feel that this was a little much, that Death the character was being abstracted into a mockery of such abstractions. At the same time,



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

what Death says is true: everyone is dead. Here we have the same kind of tension between mockery and awe of death that Basilisco’s speech created, but now it is occurring in the “abstract” realm of the play. This collapsing together of a rigid conventional, largely moral structure – where Death is triumphant and terrible and final – with the parody of it – where Death is merely theatrical and even somewhat ridiculous in that he has to chase down his victims – seems to me to prefigure the aesthetic that will grow gradually more predominant in tragedies, especially by the middle of the Jacobean period. And I think this collapsing might have originally been suggested even more powerfully than by the verbal echoes I have noted here. Perhaps – though it is purely speculative – Death was played by the same actor who played Basilisco. Death’s late entrances into the conversation of each choric scene that follows a scene with Basilisco might indicate a late entrance on stage as well, giving the actor just enough time – usually about fifteen lines – to change costume. This might be the perfect realization of what Freeman calls the play’s ability to bring about, through Basilisco, a “true confrontation of comic and tragic themes” (Thomas Kyd, pp. –). A skilled actor might have brought just enough of Basilisco to the character of Death, just enough of his early cowardice, his constant braggadocio, and his final self-satisfaction, just enough of a sardonic touch to the line “Where’s Basilisco, but in my triumph?” to make the parody less than obvious but more than hidden. Basilisco has mocked death and now Death mocks itself, triumphant nevertheless. It is an ending Vindice would have greatly admired. Soliman and Perseda is an obvious choice for beginning a discussion of Renaissance tragedy because its early date, its combination of two different dramatic traditions, and the overt concerns of three of its main characters with the generic components of tragedy itself make it in many ways fundamental for all the plays that follow. The things at work in Soliman and Perseda are also very much pertinent to, simply, the phenomenon of acting and the experience of watching people act. An audience’s relationship to Love, Fortune, and Death is no different from an audience’s relationship to, say, Desdemona, Othello, and Iago except the names of the principles represented by the characters in the earlier play are clearly given and defined. The characters of a play are always carefully constructed, arbitrary and dramatic representations of certain principles (or ideas about principles) of human behavior or existence; and even when an audience has a clear idea of what these principles are – with Iago they

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



are, say, envy and vengeance – the complexity of dramatic action and of the interpretive processes an audience brings to bear on it allow room for these principles to change, to contradict themselves, to give way to others. Because of the way Love and Fortune and Death are positioned on the stage, it is easy to see the way in which they are simultaneously detached from and invested in the action there; and it is somewhat easy to see, at least analytically, how our relationship to them makes the tragic on-stage action seem simultaneously avoidable and inevitable. But again, the fact of their allegorical roles simply gives unusual clarity to what is always happening in the theatre: an actor is both inside and outside of the play he or she acts in; the audience is always invested in the action but only to a point; a play is always both an earnest representation of a certain view of reality and a great manipulation. The illusion of reality a play must achieve in order to give its audience the illusion that it (the audience) is seriously invested in what is happening on-stage depends on removing the sense of calculation and manipulation that is always potential in any representation. The way Renaissance tragedy achieves this, when it achieves it, is by allowing the relationship between the sharply defined characters and the swiftly moving action to be as complex, as idiosyncratic as possible: tragic characters must be made to seem at the mercy of the action even when, as in the case of Death, they also seem to be absolutely certain of its direction. SOPHONISBA ,

c . 

It is essential for Renaissance tragedy, and Renaissance drama in general, to maintain and convey an awareness of the tension between investment in and detachment from dramatic action – between the interpretive space and the physical space of the theatre. This is done in Soliman in large part through the use of the allegorical figures. Allegorical figures more or less disappear from plays of the Jacobean and Caroline periods, but the means of producing the tension is continued, somewhat metamorphosed and to be found in both comedy and tragedy, in the tradition of characters with names like Vindice, Subtle, Falselight, and Levidulcia. Characters like these simultaneously convey an extra-dramatic, interpretive idea of how one ought to see them, and help to create the theatrical energy that arises from the impossibility of dramatic action ever conforming exactly to the ideas the characters represent. Like Elizabethan tragedy, Jacobean tragedy also draws on an older dramatic tradition – something whose signals the audience will easily and immediately recognize and



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

which will give to the action both a feeling of inevitability and, because of the variations, a feeling of being out of control. In Marston’s Sophonisba, a fascinating example because of how very un-Marstonian it is, the older tradition is Elizabethan military tragedy. Here the author of The Malcontent and Antonio’s Revenge does the inverse of the author of Soliman and Perseda: he uses as his foundation a relatively archaic structure – the linear, tragic military play – and bizarrely punctuates it with overt signals of the more contemporary style of revenge tragedy. The result is an astonishing example of the way in which the most powerful tragedies put the audience as well as the characters at the mercy of the action. It should be noted before I begin that Sophonisba is the only tragedy of the three discussed in this chapter to be performed by boys. The performance by boys would seem to be a factor of some urgency in an argument that will deal heavily with generic and conventional strangeness and the mixture of tragic traditions, especially given Marston’s note appended to the  quarto asking that “my Reader not . . . taxe me, for the fashion of the Entrances and Musique of this Tragidy, for know it is printed onely as it was presented by youths & after the fashion of the private stage” (emphasis added). Marston’s “onely” would seem to indicate some anxiety about the nature of private-stage performance (as opposed, possibly, to public) – would seem to suggest a way that the overtly artificial dramaturgy of boy companies (music, dumbshows, children playing adult characters) might not befit the content of the tragedy. As a career writer for the boy companies, however, Marston would presumably not be so worried about their inability to perform what he wrote for them; as well, the fact that Marston’s 

Editors and critics agree, and note almost immediately that “Sophonisba betrays none of the parodic, burlesque, even melodramatic effects that all of Marston’s earlier plays contain” ( John Scott Colley, in John Marston’s Theatrical Drama [Salzburg: Salzburg Studies in English Literature, ], p. ). Consequently it seems only to invite parody itself, as the seriousness seems uncharacteristic of Marston. Keith Sturgess is perhaps the most emphatic, calling the play “powerfully vulnerable to parody and ridicule” (The Malcontent and Other Plays [Oxford: Oxford University Press, ], p. xi). What replaces the distinctive Marston tone in Sophonisba is a distinctive dramatic structure, one of vividly drawn, conflicting absolutes, and chiefly the absolute good of Sophonisba and the absolute evil of Syphax. John Colley likens this to “English tragedies of some quarter century earlier . . . [with] long, heroic declamations, highly pitched emotional statements, and grand sounding Senecan tags . . . It seems as if his tragedy represents a return to his earlier ‘theatrical’ dramaturgy” ( John Marston’s Theatrical Drama, pp. –). Michael Scott finds that Sophonisba is more like Tamburlaine than early Marston (which seems more to the point of what Colley wants to say), and says that both plays exemplify the “linear” tradition of dramatic construction ( John Marston’s Plays: Theme, Structure, and Performance [ London: Macmillan, ], p. ). T. F. Wharton sees Marston’s shift back to “theatrical dramaturgy” as a final freeing step away from the bullying literary influence of Ben Jonson. “Cowed and intimidated by Jonson, he was frightened away from his true bent, but with Sophonisba the true John Marston reemerges in all his excess” (The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston [Columbia, SC: Camden House, ], p. ).

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



earlier play The Malcontent was performed by children at the Blackfriars in – and then either stolen by or transferred to the King’s Men at the Globe in  would seem to indicate that the difference between private and public theatre dramaturgy need not be over-emphasized. While I do think that any strange artificiality in the play would support the argument I am making – an argument about the discrepancy between the actions we see and the actions we expect to see or think we see – I also think, as Genevieve Love has argued, that Marston’s anxiety is more about the translation from stage to print than from print to stage. Marston was as concerned about signals being crossed between stage and page as he was to cross the signals that moved from stage to audience. The opening scene of Sophonisba is scrupulous about sending quite specific conventional and generic signals, but they are specific to two different kinds of tragedy and sent almost simultaneously. On one hand we receive the signals of an Elizabethan military tragedy along the lines of Tamburlaine or (anon.) The Wars of Cyrus or Soliman, complete with long Asian names, African henchmen, and copious reference to “Jove.” Syphax, in a rage about having lost Sophonisba to his rival Massinissa, sounds alternately like Cosroe and Tamburlaine in Marlowe’s play. He is made almost inarticulate by his frustration with the perils of greatness (“Syphax, Syphax, why wast thou cursd a King? / What angry God made thee so great, so vile?” [.. –]), but becomes eloquent in his promises of retribution (“O fall like thunder shaft / The winged vengeance of incensed Jove / Upon this Carthage,” [ lines –]). The expedience and also the perils of shifting military alliances that we see in  and especially  Tamburlaine are brought out here in Syphax’s decision to join forces with his former enemy Scipio: “It had beene better they had changd their faith, / Denide their Gods, then sleighted Syphax love / . . . / I’le interleague with Scipio” (lines –). At the same time, Syphax seems concerned not with power or dominion so much as Reputation! Wert not for thee Syphax could beare this skorne Not spouting up his gall among his bloud In blacke vexations . . . ( lines –) 



In her essay, “ ‘As from the waste of Sophonisba’, or What’s Sexy about Stage Directions” (forthcoming in Renaissance Drama), Love argues that “Marston seems to aspire to record the performed play in printed text rather than taking advantage of the radical discontinuity between these sites,” and that “the text transcribes its performance as closely as possible, yet the transcription doesn’t work, making the possible continuity of presenting and printing into a liability.” That Syphax’s servant Vangue is African seems important for the play to establish, as Syphax refers to him as both “Dear Ethiopian negro” and “gentle negro” within ten lines (lines , ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

He is also not concerned with right:     To our deere wishes Haste gentle Negro, that this heape may knowe Me, and their wronge.   Wronge?     I, tho twere not, yet know while Kings are stronge What thei’le but thinke and not what is, is wrong. I am disgrac’d in, and by that which hath No reason, Love, and Woman. My revenge Shall therefore beare no argument of right; Passion is reason when it speaks from Might. ( lines –)

Vangue’s question, “Wrong?”, and Syphax’s willingness to respond to it are the main signals, not incompatible but certainly at odds with what we expect of a military tragedy. The focus is less on the agency of Syphax’s might and more on the agency of his state of mind, which he will take the trouble to explain every chance he gets; the play promises to show us how Syphax’s obsession will drag down everything in its path.  Tamburlaine, like this play, opens with the “villains,” but they are portrayed as incompetent and squabbling, and the narrative that play prepares us for is one where Tamburlaine has as many chances as possible to prove his strength. Here, tests of might are promised, but the scale is different: there is as much potential for victory by Machiavellian treachery as by battlefield prowess. And indeed the scale of conflict is further reduced in the next scene which, in contrast to the battlefield scene of  Tamburlaine ., occurs in Massinissa’s bedroom, and brings yet another disparate tragic convention into the mix. Massinissa is about to get into bed with Sophonisba when the messenger Carthalon enters, “his sword drawne, his body wounded, his shield strucke full of darts” (.. s.d.). Not only does Carthalon interrupt Massinissa’s wedding night, but he remains in the bedroom to tell his lengthy story, and Massinissa remains there listening to him. The potential absurdity of the tableau created by Carthalon’s entrance is obvious. As well, his opening line is virtually incomprehensible and certainly somewhat amusing: “To bold harts Fortune, be not you amazd. / Carthage O Carthage: be not you amazed!” (lines –). Amazement is really the only possible reaction, and it is what the audience feels. The moment of half-laughter, half-incomprehension is then channeled by 

“To bold harts Fortune” means “May bold hearts be fortunate,” but context – namely, Carthalon’s drawn sword and the dart-stuck shield – probably makes the syntactically strained sentence sound like it should mean “To arms” or something similar.

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



Massinissa into an appropriate response: “Jove made us not to feare; resolve, speake out; / The highest misery of man is doubt. / Speak, Carthalon!” (lines –, italics original). This allows the focus of the scene to shift completely from marital bliss to martial heroics. Carthalon, his wounded body and long narrative presenting a stark contrast to the curtained wedding bed into which Massinissa was on the verge of entering, makes the scene quite powerfully static – that is, static in a way that emphasizes both arrested and imminent action. As this happens Carthalon becomes the Nuntius character of classical drama, and we begin to hear the voices of Seneca and Kyd in the background. It is a moment parallel to the entry of Love, Fortune, and Death in Soliman and Perseda, both in the fact that it insists on the dramatic importance of a relatively archaic convention, and in the fact that our reactions to the character who embodies this convention must shift in a way that becomes an index of how the play asks us to respond throughout. Carthalon’s speech pushes the signals of tragedy in the classical style to the same intensity that Syphax’s final speech in . pushes the signals of tragedy of intrigue and revenge. It seems to me that Marston is able to pull this off, or think he can pull it off, because he knows his audience is quite familiar with both dramatic traditions. The fact that Marston had formerly parodied the older tradition would, I think, only make his job easier in making the kind of rapid shift he makes between scenes one and two. Carthalon’s arrival (and the compromising situation that it interrupts) invites laughter, as do his first words, and it seems likely that Marston’s audience would have laughed; that audience might have thought that it was about to see the “true,” satirical Marston, and that this was an appropriate moment for irony: having just seen the villain Syphax gearing up for battle, we now see our warrior hero caught with his pants down. But Marston clearly had faith in the actor’s ability: Carthalon’s speech is very long (some fifty lines, with a few interruptions from the others present), and his only other appearance is for a similar expository purpose at .. –. The skill of this actor, like the skill of the actor playing the messenger who narrates the final events of Medea or Antigone, must create through the speech a point at which the situation is no longer absurd, but captivating. And part of the pleasure of being captivated is tied up with the fact that one knows that what one is seeing 

The physical limitations of the early modern stage play an important part in the argument I am making about this scene. Once on stage, the bed is there until the end of the scene and, especially in the tiny Paul’s theatre, there would be nowhere for the characters to go on the stage that would plausibly place them “outside” of the bedroom.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

was or is slightly absurd. Laughter at a speech like Carthalon’s comes from an awareness of the artifice of the theatre – information about the attack must be conveyed somehow – but audiences are willing to forgive and even enjoy this if what follows the initial moment of laughter is good enough, for it allows them two simultaneous and contradictory responses – both ironic and credulous. Further, that Marston would have wanted an at least partially ironic attitude associated with sex and the bedroom seems clear from the two other, more overtly funny bed scenes in the play: when Sophonisba escapes from Syphax and leaves Vangue in her place (.), and when Erichtho tricks Syphax into sleeping with her and mocks him afterwards (. –.). One of the great tricks of the play is to push the ironic attitude toward the audience before it entirely knows what to think of Massinissa – so that one might see him as Syphax would – and then to redirect the unused ironic energy (unused because after . Massinissa is a hero) toward Syphax as he comes closer to his downfall. But the downfall of Syphax is itself somewhat problematic because the ironic energy never fully manifests itself in the kind of reversal we expect for him. This is similar to the process in Soliman wherein we see Love and Fortune for much of the play as Death sees them and Death as something less than he is, but never fully realize the feeling of expectation that Death will somehow not triumph. From fairly early on, the audience will believe that Syphax is doomed to die; this is a logical consequence of the play’s juxtaposition of contrary absolutes. (Obviously, from the title, Sophonisba herself will be seen as doomed to die as well, and audiences probably expect something like the end of Hamlet, where good and bad alike die.) In . the signals of revenge tragedy, classical tragedy, and military tragedy converge to build the expectation of Syphax’s death. A character called only “Nuntius” enters to tell Syphax that “Full ten thousand horse / Fresh and well rid strong Massinissa leades / As wings to Roman legions that march swift, / Led by that man of conquest, Scipio” (lines –). Everything that Syphax has set up – the murder of Massinissa, an alliance with Scipio, a rebellion against Carthage – is now turning against him. In the battle Syphax and Massinissa meet in a moment that resembles the end of Macbeth.  

A good parallel example in a better-known play is the Player King’s speech in Hamlet. This is significant as a signal of “classical” tragedy only insofar as the speech heading shows that a classical model was in Marston’s mind; and the character – who could easily be played by the same actor who plays Carthalon – performs what is recognizable as the function of a Nuntius. Obviously, however, no one on stage calls him “Nuntius.”

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



       Syphax.     Massinissa.        Be twixt us too Let single fight try all.     Well urgd.        Well graunted. Of you my stars as I am worthy you, I implore aide; and O, if angels waite Upon good harts my Genius bee as strong As I am just.     Kinges glory is their wrong. He that may onely do just act’s a slave. My god’s my arme, my life, my heaven, my grave To me all end. (.. –)

Massinissa gets Syphax down and it looks as though the obsessed revenger character is now going to suffer the vengeance of another: “Massinissa unclasps Syphax caske and as reddy to kill him, speakes” ( s.d.). But at this moment, Syphax begs for mercy and Massinissa grants it. This interruption, while of a piece with the other interruptions that form a major pattern in the play (Massinissa’s wedding night, Gisco’s thwarted poisoning of Massinissa, Syphax’s two interrupted attempts to rape Sophonisba), is nevertheless rather frustrating, simply because it robs the narrative (and the audience) of a climax. Of course, Syphax does not die in the play’s sources (Livy, among others), but I doubt that even audience members who knew the source would be very much concerned about this, given the many indications that the tide has turned against Syphax, and the excitement of the single combat scene. The conflict between historical accuracy and the demands of dramatic narrative is another tension that adds to the bizarre energy that erupts unpredictably in the play’s final scenes. Massinissa takes the moral high road, which he feels at liberty to do since Sophonisba is still alive: “Rise, rise, cease strife / Heare a most deepe revenge, from us take life” (lines –). This kind of gesture makes sense in terms of the “linear,” Tamburlaine-like structure of the play, the structure that makes us assume that Massinissa’s military victory and power strengthens his moral victory, and makes us believe that he is capable of dispensing life or death as he pleases. In plays like Tamburlaine, when the conquering hero gives life, the conquered either become willing subjects or human trophies. But this attitude is made to look rather silly almost immediately as the conventions of revenge and intrigue tragedy reassert themselves. Massinissa turns Syphax over to Scipio and leaves



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

to find Sophonisba. Syphax starts working on Scipio, telling him that Sophonisba’s unshakeable fidelity to Carthage “’tic’d mee breake / All faith with men” (lines –) and that “Massinissas breast / Hir handes shall arme, and . . . / Shee can force him your foe as well as I” (lines –). In the face of this cunning, Scipio’s Romanness seems a foolish relic, something out of an old play, as he sends a man to charge Massinissa with no lesse waight than his dear vow, Our love, all faith, that hee resigne her thee. As hee shall aunswere Rome, will him give up A Roman prisoner to the Senate’s doome. She is a Carthaginian, now our lawes. Wise men prevent not actions, but ever cause.

(lines –)

The awkward parallelism of “dear vow, / Our love, all faith,” the strained syntax of “will him,” the archaic “doome,” and the ridiculously forced final couplet complement the fact that Scipio is trying to present as natural and easy what the audience already perceives, with Syphax, to be impossible. Syphax’s own couplet to end the scene confirms this – unnecessarily of course, but the superfluity is typical of the self-indulgent, selfaggrandizing revenger who derives much of his energy from developing a relationship with the audience. Good malice, so, as liberty so deere Prove my revenge: what I cannot possesse Another shall not: thats some happines.

(lines –)

And now a very strange thing happens. The signals and conventions of Jacobean revenge tragedy seem to have asserted themselves so strongly – perhaps as a means of showing the foolishness of the attitudes of the older tradition – that they continue to manifest themselves in a predictable fashion even though Syphax’s imprisonment makes the predictable ending (where he would kill Massinissa or Sophonisba or both) impossible. The intense debate about fidelity and honoring vows that Massinissa must 

This couplet has had a difficult history. Kemp, whose edition I cite, follows Q. Bullen (Works of John Marston, ed. A. H. Bullen, vol.  [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ]) emends to “She is a Carthaginian. Now our law’s – / Wise men . . . ” and thus makes the second line a kind of quotation: what “our law is.” He conjectures that the reading might be, “She is a Carthaginian, ’neath our laws.” Sturgess emends to “now our law’s” and glosses the meaning as, “now within the jurisdiction of Roman law,” which Kemp would seem to agree with (though he provides no note). In either case, the diction is hardly idiomatic.

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



have with himself after receiving Scipio’s order works to keep the play on the level Scipio put it at the end of ., and the kind of ending we begin to anticipate is one where Sophonisba makes the ultimate sacrifice: “My death / Giv’s helpe to all” she says (.. –). She does die of course, but in a quite unexpected way. Enter a Page with a bole of wine.        Thou darst not die, some wine, thou darst not die. So. How neere was I unto the curse of man, Joye, How like was I yet once to have been glad: He that neere laught may with a constant face, Contemne Jove’s frowne. Happinesse makes us base. She takes a bole into which Massinissa puts poison         Behold me, Massinissa, like thy selfe, A king and souldier; and I pree thee keepe My last command.        Speake sweet.         Deere, doe not weepe. ... With even disdainefull vigour I give up An abhord life. She drinks You have been good to me, And I doe thanke thee, heaven. (lines –)

I can find no commentary anywhere on the fact that Massinissa and not Sophonisba puts the poison in the bowl, which is unfortunate because this act seems very surprising, especially after the line “Thou darst not die,” but fortunate because it suggests that the conventional signals I am about to discuss are so strong that the moment does not announce itself as the strange moment that it is. I am not suggesting that Sophonisba does not know she is being poisoned, but I am suggesting that if you have a scene where Massinissa slips into a bowl of wine some poison he just happens to have with him despite the cheerful nature of his visit (he does not expect the messenger, and is simply there to reunite with his love) – which is the kind of scene the text suggests – you have a scene that looks like the end or even the middle of a revenge tragedy, a scene like ., where Sophonisba drugs Vangue’s wine. If you want to try to avoid a scene like this, you have to do a lot of difficult-to-understand work that is not indicated by the text – having Sophonisba give Massinissa a vial of poison for him to put in the wine, for example. And even this might not work. One possible justification for the surreptitiousness would be that Massinissa and Sophonisba are trying to conceal their act from



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

Laelius, the messenger from Scipio. The two modernized editions of the play insert a stage direction for him to exit before Sophonisba and Massinissa have their final conversation, but there is no such direction in the Quarto, so he might still be there. However, having a reason to be sneaky about the poisoning does not make the scene look any less like the surreptitious poisoning scenes of revenge tragedies, and I am concerned with how the scene looks more than anything else. Suddenly the audience is “bombarded” with the signals of a tragic ending entirely different from the tragic ending that is occurring on stage. The effect is similar to but more exaggerated than the effect recognizing or hearing echoes of Basilisco in Death would have had in Soliman and Perseda. In the earlier play, all the overt signals, especially at the end, insist on Death’s allegorical significance, both in terms of the morality tradition and in the somewhat different world of Elizabethan tragedy; but the presence of Basilisco or his words would undercut both kinds of significance somewhat, so that an audience might feel complicit with Death, or not subject to the effects of death as it occurs in tragedy. In Marston’s play, it is almost as though the conflict between Syphax and Massinissa is worked out through Massinissa and Sophonisba. One wants Sophonisba to die heroically, because that is where the play is heading, but one gets this only by means of some potentially inexplicable furtiveness on Massinissa’s part. As with the unused potential irony that gets redirected toward Syphax after ., there is the potential to feel here that because Massinissa did not kill Syphax, he had to kill someone, and this makes Sophonisba almost the opposite kind of symbol she would be in the heroic interpretation. She does not sacrifice herself; she is merely sacrificed. As in Soliman, there is probably some mockery of death going on here. We are not meant to feel that Massinissa is triumphant – or if we are meant to I doubt we do. He has indeed kept all his vows, a virtue with which the play is obsessively concerned, but he has gained nothing. Rather, he has lost his lover and left his enemy alive; the irony could not have been lost on Marston or his audience. Sophonisba’s death is certainly supposed to be seen as a kind of triumph for her, but this will be mitigated somewhat both by the strangeness of the poisoning scene and by the fact that in a very real way, Syphax is responsible for her death. Nothing turns out as anyone expects – there is almost no satisfying way to 

“Theatrical bombardment” is the term Wharton uses for Marston’s dramaturgy in Sophonisba and his early plays – for his “immersion in his medium and his tendency to saturate his plays with its effects” (The Critical Rise and Fall of John Marston, p. ).

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



end the play, and this is undoubtedly a large part of its non-performance in the last  years. But it seems to me that if you were to perform it you would have to be aware of Marston’s equal willingness to employ the conventions of melodramatic, classically inflected tragedy where a woman dies to bring about a new political order as well as those of Jacobean revenge drama where men devise more and more elaborate ways to attack one another for the sake of a woman. Each is made at different times to look both plausible and ridiculous, and a successful performance would have to be equally committed to each of these moods as each one took precedence over and then yielded it to the other. This probably does not sound very satisfactory – something like saying “a good performance has to be good” – and so I will end this section by trying to explain how I think the play can be successful with an analogy to something in the play which I have not talked about. This analogy may not be any more convincing, but it might be usefully suggestive. In ., Sophonisba has escaped from Syphax’s bedroom through an implausible tunnel, leaving the drugged Vangue in her place. “Offering to leape into bed, [Syphax]discovers Vangue” ( s.d.) and cries “Hah! Can any woman turne to such a Divell?” This is a funny moment, which almost immediately turns brutal and unpleasant when Syphax summarily kills his loyal servant. The bitterly ironic humor of the line, however, carries through the play and resonates faintly, its structure now somewhat inverted, when Erichtho, a devil, turns herself into Sophonisba and seduces Syphax in .. When Syphax speaks the line in ., it provides the humor of a bed trick (“Divell” means “ugly man, not the woman I expected to rape”) and then proves to be the antecedent to sudden murder (“Divell” is a term of genuine hatred). When the events of . come to pass, the line has moved from its original rhetorical level (Syphax’s humiliation is expressed through surprise and anger) to a literal one (Syphax is actually duped by a devil and the blindness of his lust). These shifts seem to me to epitomize the kinds of shifts Marston demands of his audience’s experience of his play as it thrusts characters into whatever genre or mode best suits the dramatic needs of the moment. One does not experience Massinissa’s inept transition into revenger mode as discontinuous, just as one does not see Vangue’s murder as entirely unexpected. Each is surprising, but each occurs as a result of the demands of the moment, and has a vital wrongness about it: Syphax is out of control; Massinissa, having failed as a powerful but merciful military hero, turns to the only other option tragedy leaves open to him, the role of revenger, and fails at that as well. Massinissa’s final identity – a



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

conquering hero without a victory – and Sophonisba’s final identity – a willing sacrifice who is actually murdered – are as vexed as the identity of the veiled “Erichtho in the shape of Sophonisba” – probably played by the actor who played Sophonisba herself – who “hasteth in the bed of Syphax” (..  s.d.) and undoubtedly momentarily unsettles the audience’s view of Sophonisba’s virtue. The morning after, when we and Syphax learn Erichtho’s identity, we also learn that the matter was out of Syphax’s control: Know we Erichtho, with a thirsty womb Have coveted full threescore Suns for bloud of kings, We that can make inraged Neptune tosse His huge curld lockes without one breath of wind: We that can make Heaven slide from Atlas shoulder: We in the pride and haight of covetous lust Have wisht with womans grediness to fill Our longing armes with Syphax well strong lims: And dost thou think if Philters or Hels charmes Could have inforc’d thy use, we would hav’ dain’d Braine sleights? No, no, now we are full Of our deare wishes: thy proud heal well wasted Hath made our lims grow young: our love farewell. Know he that would force love, thus seekes his hell. (.. –)

Erictho is like the force of tragic events itself. In the face of something so deep, so entangled, so unseen, Syphax, like Massinissa, like Sophonisba, responds to the demands of the moment, sees only too late the irrevocable forces that have made him act and react only in the way he should not, stands both inside and outside the movement of the action. Only the audience, with few exceptions actually aware of the forces at work but susceptible nonetheless, is more powerless. T H E A T H E I S T ’ S T R A GE D Y ,

c . 

The Atheist’s Tragedy is one of the truly innovative plays of the period, and it seems to seek much more deliberately than Marston’s play to render its audience powerless. Like Soliman and Sophonisba it positions itself in relation to and against a particular and readily identifiable theatrical tradition, but that tradition, revenge tragedy, is ongoing when the play is first performed. Further, it draws on a tradition that actually lies outside its stated genre – namely, the increasingly popular city comedy.

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



The Atheist’s Tragedy contains many elements of revenge tragedy and many elements of satirical city comedy or Fletcherian tragicomedy, but it does not in the end feel very much like any of these. It defies classification on many levels and for this reason, among others, criticism of the play is often openly baffled. A passage like the following from Brian Morris and Roma Gill’s New Mermaids edition is a good example of the extremes to which this bafflement can go, but also of the kind of no-man’s land of response the play seems to create. The Atheist’s Tragedy is tragic only in a loose sense. At the end there is no sense of the sadness of great waste, nor is there regret at the inevitability of it all. We have not watched a noble man fall from happiness to disaster, nor have we traced the working-out of “some vicious mole of nature” in an otherwise heroic protagonist. We have not seen a great act visited with disproportionate suffering which issues in an ultimate wisdom. The play is not conceived on this scale. In form it is a “thesis play” more commonly found in French drama than in English. It presents the audience with a monstrous proposition (the denial of God’s providence) in quite matter-of-fact terms, and works out the consequences of misbelief with clear and ruthless logic. In content, it is a study of power, and the limits of power. The blunt truth which the play proclaims is that no man can defy the power of God, and live. Yet D’Amville is neither Faustus nor Icarus, and we can view his fall (and Charlemont’s vindication) with a strangely academic detachment. The abiding impression which The Atheist’s Tragedy leaves is of a bold and important experiment – which didn’t quite come off.

Elsewhere the editors say that the play’s opening is “undramatic and antitheatrical” and “makes no concessions to the art of the theatre” (p. xi); that one of the “weakest” parts of the play is that “Charlemont is not presented as a character torn by indecision and a prey to doubt” (p. xxii); that Tourneur “does not attempt to explore the inner recesses of any character’s soul” (p. xxiii); and that “Tourneur’s habitual style . . . is not given to adjectival excess, nor does he strive after verbal paradox or aphorism . . . [ His images] are not obtrusive; the reader is not conscious, as he is when reading Webster, of a rich profusion which almost causes the imagination to surfeit” (p. xxxiv). One might well find oneself wondering at the end of this introduction why the editors have not spent their time on other, more compelling plays. One difficulty of which this negative criticism is symptomatic is that the play itself is about negation – about not believing in God, not seeking revenge, and choosing not to kill. The play sends many of the signals of a 

The Atheist’s Tragedy, ed. Gill and Morris (London: Benn, ), pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. All citations of the text of the play are from this edition.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

typical revenge tragedy but refuses to deliver on them, and it seems worth supposing that its original audience might have felt as much frustration as modern critics do, for audiences as much as critics tend to evaluate one theatrical experience in terms of others. It also seems worth supposing that Tourneur knew what he was doing, and that the play’s departure from the traditional expectations of the revenge tragedy whose shape it partially assumes also has the potential to achieve valuable theatrical effects along the lines of those we have seen in the generically vexed moments of the other two plays – effects that involve grappling with surprising discontinuity within a familiar framework. The problem of whether the play is a revenge tragedy, a tragedy, a melodrama, or a tragicomedy is well attested to, again, by the introductions to the modern editions. Early on in the introduction to the Revels edition, Irving Ribner says that “the structure and meaning of The Atheist’s Tragedy are very clear,” and the first sentence of his section on “Theme and Structure” reaffirms this sense of clarity: “The Atheist’s Tragedy is built upon a conflict between two diametrically opposed conceptions of man’s position in the universe and between the ethical systems entailed by these conceptions” (p. xxxvii). These statements seem somewhat incompatible with (though not mutually exclusive of ) what he later says about the play being “a work of tremendous variety, probably unique in its age for its manner of combining seemingly incongruous elements” (p. lvi). A similar contradiction occurs even more strikingly in Gill and Morris’s edition. At the beginning of a section called “The Mixture of Styles,” the editors discuss the strange blend of tragic and farcical scenes, and conclude that this “mixture of comedy and tragedy, complicated by various forms of irony . . . creates a major problem of tone” (p. xxx). Toward the end of this same section, they argue that “Tourneur uses language always to mediate meaning, never to decorate it. The coolness, the intellectualism, the sense of detachment one senses in the conduct of the plot, informs the language as well. The play is all of a piece throughout” (p. xxxv). These editions talk about the sense of a clear, logical, “coolly” managed structure and plot, as well as an unevenness of tone and a variety of construction, implying in each case that the play is either all one or all the other. As we see in Morris and Gill’s edition, the play is both tonally problematic and “all of a piece” within the space of five pages. Ribner goes a little further to work this problem out, arguing that “none of the diverse elements of [the] play seem out of place . . . for all contribute to a 

The Atheist’s Tragedy, ed. Ribner (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), p. xxxv.

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



remarkable unity of tone, constituting a dramatic world, at once real and unreal, which is always credible” (p. lvii). This seems true to a certain extent, but it suggests a kind of coherence that Ribner himself almost does not seem to believe, as when he says on the previous page that the play is “full of ludicrous and impossible incident,” or in the lines just preceding the passage quoted above, that the play ends with “a stage execution as bizarre and unusual as any performed upon the Jacobean stage.” I think the reason for this critical ambivalence chiefly lies not in Tourneur’s flair for variety, or his stylistic unevenness (though both probably play an important part as well), but rather within the play itself and the response it solicits from its audience, particularly in the “farcical” scenes involving Levidulcia. That is, in a manner parallel to Soliman’s use of the chorus, it is thematically, generically, and theatrically useful to the play that one does not know how to feel about the farcical episodes – that one both wants to and cannot treat the seemingly comic plot involving Levidulcia as though it is part of and important to the quasi-revenge tragedy of the main action. A somewhat extreme manifestation of just this frustrated desire is in Richard Levin’s discussion of the play, where he works to show how both the Levidulcia–Sebastian plot and the Snuffe–Soquette plot “contribute to the formulation of the ‘doctrine’ of the main plot, as a necessary consequence of their integration into the hierarchic structure of the work” (The Multiple Plot, p. ). Levin’s structural analysis is quite illuminating, but it also has an unfortunate leveling effect, where the dominant notion of “hierarchic structure” – each subplot is both a reflection and a degraded version of the main plot – distorts the nature of the audience’s probably more disjointed experience. While I think that an audience would pick up on the parallels Levin sees between the Levidulcia–Sebastian plot and the main plot (for example, that Sebastian’s good nature and Levidulcia’s lust “are attenuated forms of the absolute virtue and vice portrayed in the main action,” p. ), it seems to me that the play also frequently encourages the opposite response – encourages us to think of Levidulcia as entirely external and unimportant to the moral and dramatic structure of the play. The resulting imbalance is similar to that achieved in Soliman by the way in which the choric characters seem both in control of and subject to the vicissitudes of events; and to that in Sophonisba by Massinissa’s distance from but key involvement in the events that lead to the death of Sophonisba. 

In The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

Levidulcia’s first entrance is in ., as Charlemont takes leave of Castabella. Languebeau Snuffe has been encouraging these two to kiss (“I salute you both with the spirit of copulation” [line ]) and just as they do, Levidulcia enters with Belforest.        O here’s your daughter under her servant’s lips.       Madam, there is no cause you should mistrust The kiss I gave; ’twas but a parting one.        A lusty blood! Now, by the lip of Love, Were I to choose, your joining one for me. (lines –)

Levidulcia’s “your daughter” (she is the stepmother) to Belforest makes it difficult even to know her relationship to Castabella. Her immediate focus on sex and her insinuating remarks to Charlemont make her seem like a typical, minor, licentious character, a humorous foil for the overtly chaste love of the other two. As soon as Levidulcia has fulfilled this function, she leaves. That she is outside the causal structure of the action is clearly shown when Snuffe stays behind until Charlemont leaves, after which he meets with D’Amville and Borachio and is enlisted to persuade Castabella to marry Rousard. Rousard begins his suit in the next scene (.), and . opens with Belforest telling Snuffe that he is intent on marrying Castabella to Rousard. Levidulcia’s opinion is not mentioned one way or the other. Further, when Castabella interrupts the conference of Snuffe and her father she uses Levidulcia as the excuse to get Belforest out of the room so that she may reprimand Snuffe for his change of allegiance.    Please it your lordship, my mother attends I’ th’ gallery and desires your conference. Exit Belforest This means I used to bring me to your ear. Time cuts off circumstance; I must be brief. ... . . . if your grave advice assist me not, I shall be forced to violate my faith. (lines –)

Obviously, Castabella’s use of Levidulcia in this way does not preclude Levidulcia’s involvement in or approval of the match (as we shall soon see), but it does literally place her outside of the current action, and we have no reason to think that Belforest has gone outside to plot something with her. As soon as the play has made it seem like everyone but Levidulcia has some stake in Castabella’s marriage, Levidulcia herself enters and

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



assumes a surprisingly, but only temporarily, important role. Initially she is full of sexual innuendo, telling Snuffe “you mistake the way into a woman” at line , and at lines – reminding Castabella that she has been “raised with cost and tenderness / To full ability of body and means.” But then she breaks into a long and rather surprising discourse about women’s need for sex and the reasons Castabella should marry Rousard instead of the absent Charlemont. Preferest th’ affection of an absent love Before the sweet possession of a man, The barren mind before the fruitful body, Where our creation has no reference To man but in his body, being made Only for generation which (unless Our children can be gotten by conceit) Must from the body come. If reason were Our counselor, we would neglect the work Of generation for the prodigal Expense it draws us to of that which is The wealth of life. Wise Nature, therefore, hath Reserved for an inducement to our sense Our greatest pleasure in that greatest work, Which being offered thee, thy ignorance Refuses for th’ imaginary joy Of an unsatisfied affection to (.. –) An absent man . . .

Both Richard Levin and Muriel Bradbrook have called attention to this passage as an example of the similarity and difference between Levidulcia and D’Amville. Bradbrook says that both characters have a “doctrine of Nature,” but Levidulcia is different in that she “acts wholly upon instinct and identifies herself completely with the beasts” (Themes and Conventions, p. ). Levin agrees: D’Amville believes that “while man does not differ in kind from the beasts, he excels them by virtue of his natural reason” (The Multiple Plot, p. ). This interpretation of Levidulcia seems correct, but much more should be made of Bradbrook’s other point that Levidulcia’s “reasons are stated a little abstractly for one who believed ‘the passage lies not through her reason but her blood”’ (Themes and Conventions, p. ): Levidulcia sounds like D’Amville. Particularly striking is the echo in the sentence that spans lines – (“If reason . . . ”) of the three consecutive “if . . . then” arguments for increasing earthly wealth 

Themes and Conventions, p. .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

and pleasure that occur in Borachio and D’Amville’s conversation at .. –. The play has established from its first moments that it has a strong didactic element, and that action proceeds from rational argument. D’Amville is quite explicit about this: “in my reason dwells the providence / To add to life as much of happiness. / Let all men lose, so I increase my gain” (.. –). These lines are also the lines of an intriguer or revenger: the kind of action we expect to follow from “reason” is the intricate kind we are used to seeing in plays like Othello or The Revenger’s Tragedy. Thus, because Levidulcia sounds didactic in ., I think we are meant to feel that her speech, and she herself, has some effect on the plot, that she has assumed the role of an intriguer. The speech does not actually have any effect, but the illusion is convincing. A mere five lines after Levidulcia speaks it, Rousard enters with D’Amville and Belforest and calls Castabella “Sweet wife!” (line ). Shortly thereafter, Belforest tells Castabella that her choice of mate has been made for her. The licentiousness which formerly placed Levidulcia in the world of city comedy or a satirical subplot has now been converted into the pervasive and insidious energy of a sex-and-revenge intrigue tragedy – something along the lines of (anon.) The Second Maiden’s Tragedy. Then, for the next act, Levidulcia takes a prominent place in the action. She and Cataplasma begin the wedding night revelry in ., and at the end of that scene Levidulcia encourages her son to have faith in his sexual abilities. In ., she encourages both Rousard and Castabella on their way to the bedroom and then arranges a meeting for herself with Sebastian. In ., we see her exploits first with Fresco, then with Sebastian, and then with her husband. Levidulcia’s lust is not, in this act, a mere undercurrent; it is where our attention is constantly directed. That her reveling is placed next to the scenes where two drunken servants unwittingly help bring about the murder of Monteferrers, and that she is able to arrange an encounter with Sebastian, the one male character who has seemed at all concerned about sexual virtue, makes Levidulcia seem like the reason, or a symbol of the reason, for all that is happening. At the same time, it is important that all of her appearances are funny – especially the boudoir hijinks of . – and that her bawdy humor and the difficulties it creates for her provide a pleasurable contrast to the fairly slow development of the rest of the action. The Levidulcia plot has all the twists and turns, all the sexual irony, all the exuberant manipulation that a Jacobean audience would expect from a play whose first act ends with a statement like “Let all men lose so I increase my gain. / I have no feeling of another’s pain.” The strange thing is that this plot is not the

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



plot indicated in those lines. And that plot, D’Amville’s, is perplexingly clumsy: even the need for novelty cannot fully explain why Tourneur decides to have Monteferrers killed in such an unstageworthy way – by being pushed into a ditch. As he will on a larger scale, by having Charlemont get revenge without killing, Tourneur seems here to be deliberately playing against the structure of revenge tragedies: he lets the audience enjoy the farce that Levidulcia brings onto the stage, lets it ignore for a time the main action because it feels secure in the knowledge that Levidulcia is a symbol of “what’s wrong” with D’Amville’s motivations in that action. Then, just as suddenly as she attained prominence, Levidulcia disappears for a good chunk of the play, resurfacing finally at the end of Act , when she dies. In the intervening scenes, there is a series of failures: Charlemont fails to kill Sebastian; Borachio fails to kill Charlemont; D’Amville fails to rape Castabella. While these scenes heighten suspense, they also stand in sharp contrast to the successes of Act , when Levidulcia was center-stage: there, Monteferrers was killed, Castabella married to Rousard, Levidulcia successful in dealing with three men in her bedroom at once without suffering any repercussions. And when, at the end of ., Fresco tells Belforest about Levidulcia and Sebastian, a feeling of both urgency and efficiency returns: Belforest brings the watch to where Levidulcia and Sebastian are, the men fight, and both are killed, all in the space of about fifty lines. Now we have revenge, but for something quite separate from the main action. Then, quite suddenly and in a way similar to her entrance in ., Levidulcia becomes a different character, lamenting the deaths of her men and then killing herself. O God! My husband! My Sebastian! Husband! Neither can speak; yet both report my shame. Is this the saving of my honour, when Their blood runs out in rivers, and my lust The fountain whence it flows? Dear husband, let Not thy departed spirit be displeased If with adulterate lips I kiss thy cheek. Here I behold the hatefulness of lust, Which brings me kneeling to embrace him dead, Whose body living I did loathe to touch. ... . . . O, in their wounds I feel my honour wounded to the death. Shall I outlive my honour? Must my life Be made the world’s example? Since it must, Then thus in detestation of my deed,



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response To make th’ example move more forcibly To virtue, thus I seal it with death As full of horror as my life of sin. Stabs herself

(.. –)

William Gruber argues that the boy actor playing Levidulcia would have, throughout the play, used the difference between his own sex and the character’s to free the character of “the need to respond ‘in character’ to other characters on stage.” Levidulcia’s presentation would take the form of “a histrionic mode of behavior that combines aggression and self-aggrandizement with a generous measure of crowd-pleasing” (“Building a Scene,” p. ). This seems absolutely right, and powerful support for the argument that Gruber makes (and that I am making) that an audience is not meant to see “Levidulcia’s identity as logically consistent” (p. ). As with the beginning of Carthalon’s speech in Sophonisba ., there is nothing to stop an audience from thinking it should not be taking Levidulcia seriously. The Watch, having accompanied Belforest in his pursuit of Fresco, is either on-stage or nearby, and Levidulcia might simply be putting on a performance, equivocating to clear herself of guilt. (She might also be performing for Belforest, who is still “staggering” [ line  s.d.] as she enters, and who does not have a specific stage direction to die, though he obviously must at some point.) Even if the Watch is entirely absent and we are not thinking of him, the histrionic aspect of Levidulcia can easily make it seem as though she is performing for us. Indeed, in lines – and – she seems more concerned about the effect of the men’s death on her honor than the fact that they are dead. And there is something quite perverse about the continued sexual slanders in lines –. For at least the first half of the speech, I imagine the audience expects it to end in such a way that suggests in no uncertain terms that Levidulcia will move on with her life, or even that it will end with Belforest not dying. Whatever is in the audience’s mind, the view it has had of Levidulcia throughout, and the  

William Gruber, “Building a Scene: The Text and its Representation in The Atheist’s Tragedy,” Comparative Drama . (): –. The quotation is from page . The ironic effect of watching a sinful character go through an unnecessary repentance, which she or he is then in a position to recant, seems to become more and more attractive to playwrights in the Jacobean period. Consider, for example, the end of Middleton’s The Witch, written several years after Tourneur’s play, in which a sinful wife has her husband killed, laments loudly over his dead body, and then learns, as he rises, that he was not actually dead. He forgives her, but it seems likely that a performance would leave open to question whether or not the wife’s change of heart will be permanent now that she can actually be held to it.

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



fact that she seems non-essential enough to the main action to disappear for long stretches, should make some kind of light resolution seem likely; and the ever-present ironic undercurrent in her words and manner should suggest that we will never have to believe her repentance is sincere, but that other characters will be able to. Levidulcia can triumph again. But as the speech continues, and as Levidulcia kills herself, the potential for laughter simply vanishes and is replaced by a kind of weird horror, expressed on-stage by the Watch’s “Hold, madam! Lord what a strange night is this!” (line ). It takes no more than the time of Snuffe’s single intervening line for the audience to interpret the horror and agree with the Watch’s final couplet, “O with what virtue lust should be withstood, / Since ‘tis a fire quenched seldom without blood” (lines –). When I say “agree with,” I do not mean to suggest that the audience finds this an adequate summation of its experience of Levidulcia and her life, but that it is the only thing that makes sense if one is to accept the new Levidulcia that emerges at the end of her speech as “real,” and not simply a failure on Tourneur’s part. And to accept this one has to think in the way that, I believe, the ambivalent criticism of the play demonstrates that people do think of her: as simultaneously hugely important and only a trivial element of a larger structure. You have to feel she is worthy of blame, that she would have brought her death upon herself indirectly if she had not committed suicide, that her actions are directly responsible for Sebastian’s – and thus in part for D’Amville’s – downfall; but also that her repentance and death is something of a prank, a “send up” in Gruber’s words – something to make the moral types feel better but not anything to think about for very long since she was only a small part of the play: the funny, bawdy part. And if the play can harness an audience’s potential laughter and incredulity and make it think about Levidulcia in this way, it should have no trouble presenting the tragic ridiculousness of the mad D’Amville knocking out his own brains with the axe he means to use on Charlemont and Castabella. His final lines are, much like Levidulcia’s, a boast and also a repentance: 

Gruber discusses the Watch’s entrance and crucial cry, “Hold, madam!” – a cry that would be difficult to stage because it interrupts the ritualized suicide “at the very moment of spectators’ deepest involvement” (“Building a Scene,” p. ). Gruber’s point is about the importance of this moment for providing the audience with “[c]hecked expectation – not pathos or enthrallment” ( p. ). I agree with this, and would argue, in a somewhat different register, that the checked expectation at this moment makes the audience think that Levidulcia might drop her knife and allow the comic side of the play to guide her toward “repentance.”



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response Thou didst want discretion for The sentence, but yond power that struck me knew The judgment I deserved, and gave it. O, The lust of death commits a rape upon me, (.. –) As I would ha’ done Castabella.

This is both very ugly and very beautiful. At the moment you most need to hate or to forgive D’Amville, the play does not let you feel very secure in doing either, and so Charlemont’s “Now I see / That patience is the honest man’s revenge” (lines –, italics original) is not so much “stupid” as necessarily flat. It is, like the Watch’s line after Levidulcia’s suicide, anticlimactic and inadequate, but it feels true, and its flatness conveys the sense of waste the play wants to get across. As with Levidulcia’s death, and not unlike the end of Sophonisba, a character who should die has died, but the relationship between the ostensible causes of death (lust, patience) and the death itself is not satisfying. In Tourneur’s play this parallels the gap between the expectations of an audience of a revenge tragedy (revenge by murder) and what actually happens in the play (revenge by refusing to murder), and the gap between Levidulcia’s apparent effect on the plot and her actual effect on it. We are constantly put in dramatic situations where our expectations are both fully satisfied and not satisfied at all, and this is essential in the world of tragedy, where characters like Massinissa, or like Othello or even Vindice, demand our admiration yet at the same time stumble through a series of more and more obviously poor decisions; where, as we have seen in Soliman and Perseda, not even omniscient characters can be what we expect them to be. Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy is by no means Aristotelian, but it contains Aristotelian elements in that its dramatic imperative is to move logically and inexorably toward catastrophe. The single-mindedness of this action is represented by different characters throughout the period: we see it first in Tamburlaine, then Hamlet or Vindice, and finally, bizarrely enough, Charlemont and D’Amville. This list is representative, not definitive – any play could add a character to it; the need for a unity  

The Atheist’s Tragedy, ed. Gill and Morris, p. xxiv. Ellis-Fermor says that another difficult, flat line, “In lifting up the axe, I think h’ has knocked / His brains out” (.. –), is “necessary for an audience that could not otherwise realize what it was required to imagine” (The Jacobean Drama, p.  n. ). She compares this to Malcolm’s notoriously difficult line “O, by whom?” in Macbeth, a line that deflates our expectations of Malcolm’s character in ways similar to the deflation and disappointment I have discussed here. For more extensive discussion of Malcolm and Macbeth see Stephen Booth, King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), pp. –.

Character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy



of action that draws all other actions into it is fundamental to tragedy. Working against the urge for unity is the Elizabethan and Jacobean desire to fill the stage with as many different kinds of incidents as possible and as rapidly as possible: even the allegedly expurgated  Tamburlaine contains a clowning scene (.), and Tamburlaine is the clown. The clash between these two fundamental impulses results in the tensions I have discussed in this chapter: the tension between allegory and theatrical realism; between ostensible causes and actual causes; between conflicting generic signals; between investment and detachment – on the part of the playwright, the play, the actors, the characters, the audience. These tensions are augmented by those already fundamental to the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, which I have discussed in Part : most generally, the tension between the non-naturalistic physical space of the stage and the extremely ambitious representational goals of the plays. The constant activity of these tensions results in a buildup of energy which is in part released by tragedy’s final catastrophe, but also periodically and partially over the course of any tragedy through its characters. We understand these characters to be at the mercy of the developing action, but in order to allow that action to develop, we must allow it to seem that they are not; we must see them act as we would want them to act in order that we can be terrified, sad, disappointed, when they fail. Experiencing the full effects of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, the audience takes on the role of Love and Fortune: we willfully forget how the play must end.

 

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy

Characters in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy are almost always what we expect them to be. While the events of Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy, the outcome of its scenes and plots, are frequently unpredictable, the behavior of comic characters usually is not. Nominally unproblematic resolution is inevitable to the point that narrative is virtually free of the demands of probability. No event is so consequential that its consequences cannot be undone; no loose end cannot be tied up. Acting as a kind of foundation for this narrative freedom is the overt and widespread reliance on stock, conventional, typical characters; the predictability of their behavior provides an order and a system of rules that act as a kind of balance to the disorderly, even lawless manner in which comic narratives develop. Whereas tragedy assimilates the problem of failure into its narrative structures, comedy pushes it away: to fail in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy is to not get the joke, to be ostracized, to be outside a world where anything is possible and where consequences are inconsequential. The tension that gives Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy much of its vital energy is the tension that exists in the potential for the audience to reject the implausible means by which comedy must move toward its resolution – and thus to be rejected from the world of comedy itself. This kind of comedy, this kind of theatre, is terrifically complicated, aggressively expedient, and frequently not altogether pleasant; and I think it is most representative of the kind of theatre Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre in general is.

 , c.  I begin with Beaumont and Fletcher because I think they are more important for understanding Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy than anyone has yet given them credit for. Mysteriously, infuriatingly, Alexander 

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



Leggatt’s  An Introduction to English Renaissance Comedy mentions these playwrights exactly twice ( pp. , ); does not include one of their plays in its survey of “different periods, styles, and authors” ( p. ) – thus leaving a huge gap between Bartholomew Fair (chapter ) and The Lady of Pleasure and A Jovial Crew (chapter ); and gives no explanation for the omission. Beaumont and Fletcher have of course had a difficult time critically in the twentieth century. Keith Sturgess notes that “[e]ven now a prevailing view maintains that [Fletcher] was a mere entertainer to a bored, sensation-seeking audience.” He goes on to discuss the dominance Fletcher held in the Jacobean and Caroline theatre, but also concludes that “[s]eriousness . . . is a feature not generally associated with Fletcher: the romance elements of his plays locate them often in a nevernever-land where the laws of probability are suspended” ( Jacobean Private Theatre, p. ). The criterion of seriousness, which is of course closely associated with the works of Shakespeare, is the perennial sticking point for Beaumont and Fletcher criticism. Una Ellis-Fermor, while heaping praise on the craftsmanship of the plays, manages to confer on them at the same time the damning label of mere theatricality. ever and again the characters fall into a striking, often an unexpected grouping; the group dissolves and, as suddenly, another takes its place, pauses for the length of a scene or half-scene and melts away again. A series of brilliant tableaux or episodes remains; the interim, confusion and it may even be inconsequence. There is no attempt at the presentation of a continuous growth of circumstance or event like the inevitable growth of one of Shakespeare’s tragedies to its inevitable end, nor at the solid, articulated architecture of Ben Jonson’s plots. At its best it is more like the sequence of groupings in a ballet; even when the workmanship falters a little the splendid episodes emerge and impress themselves on the memory.

This view, usually less positively phrased, has prevailed. We see it presented as an interpretation of the evolution (or devolution) of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in Madeline Doran’s Endeavors of Art. In her chapter on tragicomedy ( pp. –) Doran repeatedly refers to the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher as “smooth,” of great technical facility, but  



Manchester: Manchester University Press. One rather cynical explanation might be found in the book’s opening sentence: “Though anyone else is welcome to eavesdrop, this book is primarily for students.” Students requiring an introduction to Renaissance comedy are perhaps less likely to notice the omission of the latter Jacobean period’s dominant playwrights, and to accept that the “gentrification of comedy” which they effected ( p. ) was but a small step in the development of a genre largely developed by others.  The Jacobean Drama, pp. –. Jacobean Private Theatre, p. .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

somehow “less interesting” ( p. ) than earlier mixed-mode plays like Antonio and Mellida, The Gentleman Usher, or Measure for Measure. Fletcherian tragicomedy is both a “puzzle” and a “game,” where the “completeness of the reversal and the ingenuity with which it is brought about become ends in themselves” ( p. ). With this very last point, this chapter will not take issue. What it will dispute is the pejorative twist given to terms like “smooth,” “puzzle,” and “game,” especially as those terms are used to convey a downward spiral in the quality and vitality of the drama as it moved into the middle Jacobean period. That there was a change in the character of the drama between  and  is unquestionable; what I hope to show is that the kind of theatricality we see in Beaumont and Fletcher epitomizes, and is often a startlingly perfect realization of what comic playwrights as early as Lyly tried to achieve. I have chosen to focus on The Captain because it usefully emphasizes the problems of resolution and motivation I will discuss with respect to the other two plays and Renaissance comedy in general. It does so in particular by making problematic an issue at the heart of all comedy: laughter. Like applause, laughter in the theatre is a physical response to what is happening on the stage; and because laughter is at least partially involuntary, it is more powerful, more desirable evidence even than applause of an audience’s pleasure. What audiences tend most basically to laugh at in comedy is the stubborn insistence of characters on acting predictably in unpredictable, constantly changing situations. Thus, while tragedy develops by introducing types of situations that require characters to behave in a certain way, comedy tends more to introduce types of characters that make certain types of situations imminent. Jacamo in The Captain is a readily identifiable, gruff miles gloriosus figure who has no liking for women and who must be cajoled, taught, and humiliated by his friends into realizing that he should. The action of the play takes place in peacetime, and now that there are no wars, Jacamo says, I have no vertue, But downe right buffeting: what can my face That is no better than a ragged Map now Of where I have marcht and traveled profit me? 

Lyly’s court audience has also been criticized for self-indulgence and boredom. In her essay, “John Lyly and the Language of Play” (in Elizabethan Theatre [ New York: St. Martin’s, ]), Jocelyn Powell argues that Lyly’s plays are “games for the sense, and games for the mind” ( pp. ), and finds this to be an important part of their value and effects: “Lyly . . . is a prime example of those authors who have to be approached from without the pale of utilitarianism which bounds so much literary criticism” ( p. ). This useful assumption, while it will not be one that I argue explicitly, informs my readings of plays in this chapter, and in fact throughout the book.

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



Unless it be for Ladyes to abuse, and say ’Twas spoil’d for want of a Bongrace when I was young, And now ’twill make a true prognostication ( .. –) Of what man must be?

The story the play prepares us for is one where the soldier will learn to trade the sword for the bed. The question is not whether this will happen, but when, and our endurance of the episodic narrative in which Jacamo is mocked and humiliated depends on our awareness of this. While the episodes of this plot and its subplots proceed in a jerky, often implausible fashion, they do so with the implicit assurance that each character will ultimately fall neatly into the role – sympathetic, unsympathetic, humiliated, redeemed – which we recognize he or she is bound for from the beginning. Scenes involving Jacamo tend to insist on making the audience selfconscious about laughter. The first time he meets Frank, his entrance is preceded by a great deal of laughter from the amusing but not very likable Clora.    Ha, ha, ha, pray let me laugh extreamly.  Why? prethee why? hast thou such cause?    Yes faith, my brother wil be here straightway, And –  What?    The other party: ha, ha, ha.  What party? Wench thou art not drunke?    No, faith.  Faith thou hast been among the bottles Clora.    Faith but I have not, Franke: Prethee be handsom, The Captaine comes along too, wench. ( ..  –)

Clora’s mockery works Jacamo into anger over the course of the scene, and he ends up leaving in this way:   Well; I shall live to see your husbands beate you, And hisse ’em on like ban-dogs.    Ha, ha, ha.   Green sicknesses and serving-men light on ye With greasy Codpieces, and woollen stockings, The Devill (if he dare deal with two women) Be of your counsels: Farewell Plaisterers – Exit Jacamo. ( lines –)

In ., when Fabritio takes Jacamo’s sword, his laughter begins to sound like his sister’s:



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response   O God, for any thing that had an edge?     Ha, ha, ha.   Fye, what a shame it is, To have a lubber shew his teeth?     Ha, ha.   Why dost thou laugh at me, thou wretched fellow? ···     I shall dye with laughing.

( lines –)

Again, the result of this taunting is an explosion on Jacomo’s part, though because Fabritio is his friend this outburst is tinged with sadness: Faith this is somewhat Too much Fabritio, to your friend that loves you; Me thinkes your goodness, rather should invent A way to make my follies lesse, than breed ’em; I should have been more moderate to you, But I see ye despise me. ( lines –)

And in ., the drunk scene, Jacamo’s kissing of Frederick precipitates many more “ha ha has.”   Pray be not coy sweet woman, for I’le kiss ye; I am blunt but you must pardon me.    O God, my sides.   Ha, ha, ha, ha.   Why ha, ha, ha? why laugh? Why all this noyse sweet Ladyes? ···      Where were thine eyes To take me for a woman, ha, ha, ha. ( lines –)

Only a few lines later, Jacamo has a violent outburst, and the scene takes an unexpected (though only momentary) tragic turn – of which more in a moment. The writing out of “ha ha ha” is a relatively rare occurrence in Renaissance drama, and seems generally to be reserved for extraordinary situations that emphasize the inappropriateness of laughter: think of Titus Andronicus’s laugh after he has been delivered the heads of his two sons. While laughter must certainly occur frequently on-stage in comedy, comedy’s assumption must be that the most important kind of laughter will originate in the audience; such laughter bridges the distance between the stage and the audience, shows the audience to be happily complicit with whatever is going on on-stage. But the “ha ha ha” of

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



The Captain, laughter that pointedly originates on the stage, demands rather than allows complicity, and is always juxtaposed to an outburst by Jacamo, such as to suggest that at a certain point we are meant to stop laughing. At that point the physical space of the stage – a site for laughter – becomes more obviously an interpretive space – a site for seeing something real and deeper in the characters and their relationships. It seems to me that audiences of comedies most trust their reactions to things they know they are not meant to laugh at, because moving beyond the genre’s default response involves being aware of its potential cruelty, seeming to see more deeply into the meaning of the events on stage. In The Captain we come to trust our responses around Jacamo because, while he is from the outset a figure of fun, he is constantly put in positions where he is the focus of laughter, and where laughter itself becomes a dramatic focus, and something that seems tedious and difficult to respond to. Yet, paradoxically, the response Jacamo ultimately leads us toward is one of laughter and forgetting: no matter how passionate his outbursts his friends stop humiliating him when and only when he changes his ways. This is why it is essential that Jacamo delivers the final reactions to the events of the play, and that his plot, though only about one third of the action, gives the play its name. We are encouraged to react to the rest of the play in a way analogous to our reactions to Jacamo, and from him we learn that it is just as important to forget about things once they have happened as it is to react to them while they are happening. Thus the audience must be humiliated as well, and this happens in the play’s crucial scene of humiliation, the drunk scene of .. In . Piso talks to a tavern host about making Jacamo particularly drunk, for he “thinks there’s no man can give him drink enough” ( lines –). In . Jacamo does get “monstrous drunk.” His entrance to Clora, Frank, and Frederick is preceded by Clora mocking Frank for her love, and then this exchange:    Heer’s Raw-head come againe; Lord how he lookes? Pray God we scape with broken pates.  Were I hee, Thou shoulds’t not want thy wish, he has been drinking Has he not Fredrick?     Yes but do not finde it. ( lines –)

Clora’s shrill and incessant mockery makes it impossible to forget that what we are about to see is supposed to be funny. Jacamo does not



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

disappoint, stumbling in and, after kissing Frank and Clora, moving on to kiss Frederick, whom he takes in his drunkenness to be a woman. The audience’s laughter is nuanced by Frank’s sympathy for the captain, so that it stands in opposition to, or on a different register from, Clora’s laughter. It is Frank we are laughing with through the next exchange, and it is an affectionate laughter, as though Jacamo’s inevitable conversion had already occurred.   [to Fredrick] Sweete Lady now to you.    For loves sake kisse him.     I shall not keep my countenance.   Trye, pre’thee.   Pray be not coy sweet woman, for I’le kisse ye; I am blunt but you must pardon me. [Kisses him.]    O God my sides.   Ha, ha, ha, ha. ( lines –)

Jacamo, however, grows angry at Frederick and the laughter; Frank attempts to calm him; Jacamo thrusts her aside (“I despise thee woman, / And Fredrick shall be beaten”) and attacks Frederick, who seems to fall dead. As with all scenes in which a character seems to be dead but is not, the most pressing question is whether the audience is supposed to know that the character is alive. And as with most such scenes it seems to me that the text here suggests that the audience is not. Everyone else on stage believes Frederick to be dead. Clora might be thought to exaggerate deliberately, but Frank has no reason to lie, and she is probably holding Frederick’s body as she says, O my unhappy Brother, Fredrick, Looke but upon me, do not part so from me; Set him a little higher, he is dead.

( lines –)

Fabritio’s entrance, and his extremely sharp speech with Jacamo when the latter seems to entreat for help, makes the reality of Frederick’s death still more convincing. Never entreat me, for I will not know thee, Nor utter one word for thee, unlesse it be To have thee hang’d; for God sake bee more temperate.

( lines –)

The two characters who are most sympathetic to Jacamo are just as stunned and furious as Clora. Jacamo is taken off by servants and we

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



now seem to be in a very different kind of play – the kind of play where characters have the potential to behave in a way we cannot predict or fully understand, and where actions have irrevocable consequences; a tragedy. Then, of course, Frederick springs up – literally the moment after Jacamo has gone. Ne’re wonder, I am living yet, and well, I thanke you sister for your grief, pray keepe it Till I am fitter for it. ( lines –)

Though Frank is obviously shaken the conversation quickly turns to how funny it will be to see how much of this Jacamo will remember in the morning. Clora returns to mocking the captain’s manner and Frank to defending him. We are back in the world of comedy. One might argue that the extremely swift transition from apparent tragedy to simple comedy at this point would necessitate a less serious “death scene” than I have argued for – that one would have to be aware of Frederick’s trick as he played it in order genuinely to believe in its efficacy. That is, the audience might have a point of view privileged above even Clora and Frank and Fabritio: Frederick’s trick would seem plausible because the audience was not fooled by it. This is certainly at least partly true – audiences might very well feel cheated if they are fooled by so ostentatious a stage trick. But Fletcher and Beaumont seem to be aiming, here as elsewhere, for the positive potential of such cheats: namely, that the truly comic effect of Frederick’s trick will be enhanced by its contrast to the sudden, quite apparently somber turn of events. The moment Frederick rises, essentially, from the dead, the audience, having taken that death seriously, is reminded of the kind of comedy it is watching: the kind of comedy where emotions and words and even actions matter only for the space of time in which they occur; and the kind of comedy whose exhilarating effect depends on the cumulative force of such discrete spaces of time, moving us between the extremes of our capacity to respond. In this way the audience, like Jacamo, is mocked: mocked for failing to keep up (this is exactly the kind of stunt Frederick would pull), and for failing to remember that character in this kind of comedy cannot change nearly as rapidly as events ( Jacamo could never kill an innocent man). In order to move on as the play wishes us to, we have to adopt the good humor Jacamo commits to after this episode – the willingness to forget which we see most clearly in him in the final scene when, covered in the contents of a piss-pot, he calms his rage at those who have once again gulled him and promises to love and be good to Frank. The trick for this



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

kind of comedy is to make a virtue of humiliation – of a character or of the audience – and The Captain bolsters its success in this project with Jacamo by means of a parallel, but less difficult to respond to situation in the subplot – the episodes involving Lelia. There is nothing good about Lelia, a notoriously wanton widow as we learn in the first scene of the play when the foolish gallants Lodowick and Piso mistake her virtuous Father for her bawd. Lelia’s badness is further driven home in . when she kicks her Father out of her house after he tells her to reform her life. “I fear thy end / Will be a strange example” the Father says as he leaves (lines –), and we know it at that moment to be inevitable. This inevitability is in part signaled by Lelia’s unrepentant claim that “my desires and ends /Are all the kindred I have, all the friends” (.. –), but more strongly by the abruptness of the plot device her Father gets involved in. In ., the Father stumbles upon Jacamo and Fabritio and, for reasons that are difficult to discern, pretends to be an old soldier. The story of wars which he tells prompts Jacamo to love him and to take him to buy new clothing. In this new attire the Father is, of course, unrecognizable to those who know him, and uses his disguise to get revenge on Piso and Lodowick and also his daughter. The disguise is largely a matter of convenience, and it comes about in language vague enough to suggest motivation without actually needing to supply it. They [ Jacamo and Fabritio] are strangers both To me, as I to them I hope: I would not have Me and my shame together known by any, I’le rather lye my selfe unto another. ( .. –)

By means of this expedience he is able both to pretend to be the bawd that Piso and Lodowick took him for in ., and to be seen as a rich sexual target by his own daughter. The moment of near-incest that this precipitates is central to the play. The events leading up to it are episodic and somewhat arbitrary. In . Julio makes a suit to Lelia, and his intentions seem primarily sexual: when she, after initially rejecting him, suggests that they get married, he leaves. We see Julio again in ., filled with self-loathing about his lust for a wanton woman, talking with Angelo and convincing himself that he must go back to see her again in order to affirm his hatred. In . the friends go to Lelia, and Julio is almost conquered again by his lust. Angelo persuades him that “she’s a witch” (line ) and must be forsaken, but only because he has fallen in love

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



with her himself. This gives him a reason to come back in ., where he bribes a maid to let him stand somewhere unseen in Lelia’s chamber, and then is witness to Lelia trying to seduce her disguised Father. The complications of the plot are to a great extent merely complications, and Fletcher does not seem concerned to present them as anything more. The scenes with Julio and Lelia are self-consciously tortuous, and each time build to a point where Lelia is left in the worst position possible. Her power to make men simultaneously crave and loathe sex is her defining quality. At the same time, Julio and Angelo, much like Frederick and Fabritio in the Jacamo plot, are not exactly exemplary in their behavior. Julio’s lines at the beginning of . bespeak a certain fatuousness: I will but see her once more Angilo That I may hate her more, and then I am My self again.

And Angelo’s protestations that his friend should not “tempt lust” ring hollow as soon as he himself sees Lelia’s face. Because most of the tension and suspense is generated simply by the various reversals of all lovers involved, and because . and . end so abruptly as to make Lelia’s disappointment slightly funny and the men’s fickleness somewhat infuriating, we cannot be certain whether the point of this subplot is to make Lelia a parallel to Jacamo – that is, capable of a conversion – or his antithesis. The scene where this becomes clear, where the tensions underlying our perception of Lelia and her men and our experience of comic complexity without a clear direction is . – a scene that is an obvious structural parallel to the drunk scene that comes immediately before it. As Frederick in . pretends to be dead long enough to make Jacamo feel that what he has done is irrevocable and thus forsake his drunken ways, so in ., Lelia’s Father gives Lelia every possible opportunity to reveal the ugliness of her schemes and then to prove the audience’s ambivalent response to Julio and Angelo well-founded; that is, to prove that she has, somehow, been virtuous all along. But Lelia, once caught, attempts to recover not, as we expect, by saying that she did not recognize her father, or that she did and was only testing his virtue, but rather by saying that she knew him all along, and that she had been moved to lust for him because of his infinitely patient bearing of her abuse earlier in the play when he had tried to correct her wanton ways. Lelia proceeds to justify her lust in a quite bizarre way. You are deceiv’d Sir, ’tis not against nature For us to lye together; if you have



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response An arrow of the same tree with your bow, Is’t more unnaturall to shoot it there Then in another? ’Tis our general nature To procreate, as fires is to consume, And it will trouble you to find a sticke The fire will turne from. If ’t be nature’s will We should not mixe, she will discover to us Some most apparant crossness, as our organs Will not be fit; which, if we do perceive, Wee’l leave, and thinke it is her pleasure That we should deale with others.

( lines –)

Instead of becoming the wanton character who creates and capitalizes on comic reversals, Lelia proves herself merely to be the character we have been told she is – the wanton character who is merely, thoroughly wanton. While the humiliation of Jacamo gives the audience a sense of seeing through one layer – the miles gloriosus exterior – in order to see another we always knew to be there – the gruff but tamable gentleman – the humiliation of Lelia reveals that there are no layers: she is as depraved as the play and its characters have implied throughout. The implausibility of the Father’s disguise and of Angelo and Julio’s reversals of affection has resulted in a scene where Lelia acts in an utterly implausible way which nevertheless must immediately be seen as fundamental to her identity. As it does when we forget that Frederick is a prankster, the play here chastises us for attempting to forget, based on an idea of comic action and reversals, that Lelia is wanton. While an actor might make an audience feel sorry for Lelia, the play refuses to, and anyone who pauses to consider how circumstance might have forced Lelia into this position is left behind by the action: the interpretive space opened up by Lelia’s speech is severely limited by the filling of the physical space with activity. The Father draws his sword. Angelo discovers himself. The Father, and probably the audience as well, assumes that Angelo is there to rescue Lelia, and the two men fight. But even the avenue of sympathy opened up by Angelo’s discovery is closed off when both men turn on Lelia, berating her for her lust and dragging her off in order to force repentance upon her. The uniting of the Father and Angelo, and thus the convergence of two subplots, gives to the scene a feeling of narrative coherence and drive. This drive will ultimately help it make sense – though not necessarily any less uncomfortable – that the Father simply uses Lelia as a pawn in his game of revenge against Piso

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



and Lodowick: he promises Lodowick the hand in marriage of a woman who looks exactly like Lelia; he then tricks Lodowick out of this marriage and gives the woman to Piso. This enrages Lodowick, until the woman is revealed to be Lelia herself and Piso is shamed for marrying a reputed whore. This series of events is the darker side of the process by which Jacamo is redeemed through Frederick’s faked death. The ease with which the specter of incest facilitates a denouement undercuts the seriousness of that specter itself. We are certainly not meant to think much about . by the time we see Lelia, married, in .. Her equivocal penultimate lines, “I have a heart / As pure as any womans and I meane / To keep it so for ever” (.. –) demonstrate that, like Jacamo, she has not been changed, only contained. To whatever extent her potentially sardonic, still-wanton tone might empower her at this point, it also is another way in which she proves herself to be wanton. Jacamo, however, has benefited in that he has become like Fabritio and Frederick in his attitude toward events and consequences – he will no longer act in a way that precipitates moments of strained laughter. In the final scene, when Piso and Lodowick quickly become bitter enemies over the Lelia matter, Julio asks, “Shall we not make Piso, and Lodwick friends?” and Jacamo says, “Hang ’em they dare not be Enemies, or if they be, / The danger is not greate” (.. –). The very next moment, Frederick enters with the lines, “First joy unto you all; and next I think / We shall have warres” (lines –). To this Jacamo says, “Give me some wine, I’le drink to that” (line ). Jacamo is, perhaps, a likable enough character that his function of persuading the audience once and for all to the point of view that there is no action, once done, that cannot be undone will balance out the way in which the play beats the point of view into the audience just as Angelo and the Father have tried to beat it into Lelia. It is as though the very terribleness of ., like the potential terribleness of Frederick’s death, requires that one trivialize it: it is a moment of such depravity, real and imagined, on the part of all characters, that it cannot but be followed by a pat reconciliation, or else it could move our experience outside the realm of comedy. Comedy triumphs by forcing us, through consistency of character and absurdity of action, to push a concern with depravity and seriousness outside ourselves. The fact that . provides some narrative justification for that pat reconciliation – that is, it brings characters from different levels of the play together in the way typical of logically determined action – helps keep the comedy plausible



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

in the way that Elizabethan and Jacobean comedies are: that is, just plausible enough.           , c .   As logical inexorability is a generic marker of tragic action, so is sudden implausibility of comic action. The energy created by the excitement and possibly frustration of an audience as a series of events turns in an entirely different direction is frequently channeled into elaborate scenes of comic humiliation: the difficulty of scenes like the incest scene or the drunk scene is given release by scenes like the piss-pot scene in The Captain – scenes where the stage is filled with activity and the characters most subject to the vicissitudes of implausible action learn to take them in stride. Whereas the ostensibly tightly regulated action on the tragic stage gives rise, through eruptions in it, to complexly reverberating interpretive possibilities, the frenetic nature of comic action serves to open up and then deny the possibility of complex interpretation. Tragedies end with hollow notes of resolution sounded over a pile of dead bodies; comedies bring all of their characters onto the stage at the end, alive and smiling. It is the still submerged energy of the possibility of dissonance in comedy that gives those smiles a vehemence that is as ephemeral as it is triumphant. Because their effects are so intricately bound up with bringing an audience around to an impossible point of view, comedies, as we have seen in The Captain and will now in the anonymous How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, tend to be built on narratives of conversion. In How a Man May Choose, Young Master Arthur, who from the beginning 



There has been no edition of this play since , in which year were published both a modern edition (ed. A. E. H. Swaen [ London: David Nutt]) and a Tudor Facsimile text. All citations in this essay are from Swaen’s text, which is an old-spelling reprint of Q  and is not divided into acts and scenes. There has not been, as far as I can tell, any critical work done on the play at all since Swaen. “Thomas Heywood and How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad,” by J. Q. Adams appeared in Englische Studien,  ( pp. –). This article argues for Heywood’s authorship based on stylistic similarities between his known works and this play. Three years before this, C. R. Baskervill published “Sources and Analogues of How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad ” in PMLA  ( pp.  –), which traces the play’s possible influence on subsequent plays such as The Fair Maid of Bristow and Blurt, Master-Constable. Other than these articles, an undergraduate thesis from the University of Oregon, written in , is the only work I could find on the play. This thesis, written by Norman Anderson, is part of a collection of theses titled “Studies in the Elizabethan Domestic Tragedies, –.” Other essays in this collection discuss Elizabethan domestic tragedy: Arden of Feversham, Warning for Fair Women, and A Woman Killed with Kindness. It is attributed on the Q title page to “Ioshua Cooke,” who has been equated with John Cooke, author of Greene’s Tu Quoque. This attribution is generally questioned, and the most popular conjecture is that the author was Heywood.

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



hates and mistreats his virtuous and faithful wife, learns to love her and to be a good husband. Still more than The Captain the earlier play is full of problems of motivation and, in typical Elizabethan fashion, the play draws attention to the fact almost immediately.    But on what reason ground you this hate?   My reason is my mind, my ground my wil; I will not loue her: If you ask me why, I cannot loue her, let that answere you.

( lines –)

Self-consciousness allows the playwright and audience a way out of a difficulty necessitated by the plot. One might argue, of course, that since this is the beginning of the play, no such difficulty has yet been created: it would not be much of a stretch for the playwright to supply Arthur with two or three lines of concrete motivation. The effect of his not doing so is generically important: it signals to the audience that this is a comedy in which motivation should not be of very much concern, that the audience must be prepared to take certain things as they are simply because they are that way, and that this must be so because the point of the comedy is the complexity of the situation, not its beginnings. What little modern criticism there is of this play is much concerned with the problem of motivation. Swaen finds it to be a “weak point . . . that Arthur’s behaviour towards his wife is altogether unmotivated” (How a Man May Choose, p. xlii), and Norman Anderson says that Arthur’s “coolness and lack of emotion” renders his lack of motivation “not convincing” 

A good example of a similarly self-conscious moment can be found in Munday’s The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, a play that, like its first part, The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, is often all too willing to acknowledge the artificiality of theatre. Early on in Death, the villains Doncaster and the Prior have this discussion:          . . . But tell mee Prior, Wherefore so deadly dost thou hate thy cosin?      Shall I be plaine? Because if he were deade, I should be made the Earle of Huntington.          A prettie cause: but thou a churchman art.      Tut man, if that would fall, Ile haue a dispensation, and turne temporall. But tell mee Doncaster, why dost thou hate him?          By the Masse, I cannot tel. O yes, now I ha’t. ( B-Bv, lines –)

It seems not unlikely that at line  Doncaster, like Skelton / Friar Tuck elsewhere, breaks out of character and then remembers he is supposed to be giving the audience vital information; the twenty or so lines of carefully crafted invective that follow then make the forgetting look rather silly. This kind of play with the audience’s need for, and the simultaneous superfluity of, “real motivation” occurs constantly in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

(“Studies in the Elizabethan Domestic Tragedies,” p. ). Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, however, were expected to be acutely aware of problems of motivation: Hamlet’s speech about the player king, and such theatrical and metatheatrical tricks as we see at the beginning of How a Man May Choose, the end of The Captain, and elsewhere provide ample evidence of this. What seems most to provide balance to the potential problems an audience will have with the lack of motivation is the elaborate system of miniature narratives, parallels, and symmetries that the central narrative, once it has been set in motion, allows to be created. It is crucial that these miniature narratives, parallels, and symmetries be well executed and obviously comic because, as with many central moments in The Captain, the main plot of How a Man May Choose is not actually very funny and involves two characters who are either unlikable or implausible. Arthur is almost impossibly insensitive and his wife is hardly more compelling in her reasons for loving her husband than he is in his for hating her. For example: Wil you diuorce whom God hath tied together? Or breake that knot the sacred hand of heauen Made fast betwixt vs? Haue you neuer read, What a great curse was laid vpon his head That breakes the holy band of mariage, Diuorsing husbands from their chosen wiues? Father, I will not leave my Arther so; Not all my friends can make me proue his foe. ( lines –)

As the play progresses, Mistress Arthur’s justifications get more strained: she responds to Anselm’s story about Arthur frequenting a bawdy house by saying that he “doth it but in zeale to bring the house / By his good counsell from that course of sinne” (lines ,–). Finding out that Arthur is already married to Mistress Mary, she says, “Pray God, she may 

In the final scene, Julio enters married to Clora – quite a surprise, considering the Lelia situation. Angelo has this to say: If a marriage should be thus slubberd up in a play, er’e almost any body had taken notice you were in love, the Spectators ( lines  –) would take it to be but ridiculous.



The implausibility of Mistress Arthur would be partly balanced by her resonance with a familiar, conventional character of the drama: the long-suffering and infuriatingly optimistic wife we see in (anon.) A Warning for Fair Women, the Queen who forgives both her husband and Jane Shore in . of Heywood’s  Edward IV, or the infinitely patient Grissil in Dekker, Haughton, and Chettle’s Patient Grissil.

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



content him better farre / Then I haue done” ( lines ,–). Anselm’s cry at line ,, “Was euer woman guld so palpably!” is in danger of becoming a very real and too-pressing concern for an audience that should want to see Mistress Arthur as someone actually worthy of the love she is not receiving. Much of the energy for caring, for seeing that the play is a comedy that should end like comedies do, comes from the fact that the play is overtly, insistently balanced. Most characters come in pairs: Old Arthur and Old Lusam are always together, as are Anselm and Fuller, and Mistress Mary and Mistress Splay. Young Arthur and Young Lusam are usually together. Mistress Arthur and her servant Pipkin are mirrored by Mistress Mary and her servant Brabo as well as Justice Reason and his servant Hugh. Two women, Mistress Mary and Mistress Arthur, attract different kinds of love from the different men in the play. Both Arthur and Aminadab love Mistress Mary. For the most part, each character is given a specific, immediately notable, permanent trait which is brought out either in the character him- or herself, or in relation to his or her counterpart. Young Arthur is hot-headed and impulsive, and provides a foil for Young Lusam, who constantly tries to make his friend see reason. Old Lusam is a yesman, agreeing with literally anything anyone says ever, even when, as in his conversations with Old Arthur, others openly contradict themselves in order to mock him. Mistress Arthur is, of course, long-suffering, and her servant Pipkin is loyal, meek, and sweet. Mistress Mary is a ferocious bawd, and her servant Brabo is an ill-tempered, brawling henchman. Anselm is a self-involved, incompetent lover; Fuller is world-weary and experienced, and attempts to coach his friend in the ways of love largely by telling lengthy, bawdy, rhymed jests. Justice Reason is a phenomenal dolt, entirely lacking, of course, in reason. Aminadab is a typically highstrung pedant, full of Latin and melancholy. This is a drama of types, the appeal of which is certainly similar to the morality drama or the drama of humors: one is meant to enjoy the sharply individualized characters and their more or less predictable actions. The most spectacular and rewarding results of such drama come about when as many of the different types as possible are put on stage at the same time – when, as we have seen in The Captain, the stage can be 

I should also note briefly here the fact that Young Lusam is not the son of Old Lusam or the sister of Mistress Arthur. The playwright probably intended there to be a familial connection, and when this became inconvenient or he forgot about it, kept the name because it had some of the symmetry the two father–son pairs would have. As well, it seems not unlikely, and not particularly problematic in terms of the plot, that audiences did and would see Young Lusam as Old Lusam’s son regardless.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

filled with comic activity to give the action a sense of purpose and drive; and playwrights will understandably go out of their way to make this happen even when, as in the banquet scene of How a Man May Choose (lines ,–,), the plot does not require it. In this scene Mistress Mary has been invited to dinner at Arthur’s house on the night when Arthur plans to poison his wife with a potion (actually just a sleeping potion) he got from Aminadab. (Aminadab got it from Anselm and Fuller who, for a joke, gave it to him after overhearing him talk of suicide.) All the characters in the play except Splay and Brabo are present. The banquet is, of course, not necessary to Arthur’s poison plot. In fact, it makes it somewhat more ridiculous, since the fear of getting caught should but never does enter his mind, and this is probably part of the point. But the playwright does not seem interested in the poison nearly so much as in everything that comes before it. Most of the characters are given a brilliantly theatrical moment or two to show off. Mistress Arthur is more sympathetic and poignantly funny than at any other time in the play:  .      . . . Mayd, take this Apron, And bring me one of Linnen: quickly, Mayd.   I goe, forsooth. (Exit Mayd )  .      There was a curtsie, let me see’t again; I, that was well. I fear my guests will come Ere we be ready. ( lines ,–)

Pipkin and Hugh are given fifteen or so lines to themselves, to give some impression of their closeness:      M. Hue as welcome as heart can tell, or tongue can think   I thank you, M. Pipkin, I have got many a good dish of broth by your meanes. ( lines ,–)

Aminadab gives a verbose and unintentionally bawdy blessing ( lines ,–,) and then quizzes Pipkin on his Latin. And the main event 

A common way of thinking about typical drama is that it reflected the practice of type-casting, a detailed argument for which was perhaps most influentially made by T. W. Baldwin in The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ). Chapters  and  of Bevington’s From Mankind to Marlowe do a good job of refuting this view, stressing instead the versatility of actors (see esp. pp. –) and noting that the “assumption of type-casting remains unproved even in the s and s” when the heavy doubling characteristic of Elizabethan drama was out of fashion. Gurr’s discussion of the repertory system in The Shakespearean Stage ( pp. –) takes a moderate view: “Consistent type-casting of the major roles is the easiest way to cope with the demands of any repertory system, but it could not have been an invariable practice” ( p. ). A vital tension, parallel to the tension I am discussing between the continuity of stock characters and the discontinuity of comic action, might be created by this drama absolutely bound to typical characters but performed by actors who were for the most part bound to none of the types.

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



of the banquet is Fuller’s long, rhyming dirty joke about a Puritan woman, the capper for which is the fact that Old Arthur and Old Lusam miss the punchline entirely and then laugh hysterically when it is explained to them, and Justice Reason either does not get it or does not like it but “must, for fashions sake / Say as they say” (lines ,–). After this lengthy preamble, the poisoning scene is the anticlimax it cannot choose but be. Arthur makes a toast, promising reconciliation with his wife, she says something unintentionally ironic (“Were this wine poyson . . . / The honey sweet condition of your draught, / Would make it drinke like Nectar,” [ lines , –]), and the guests almost immediately leave. Mistress Arthur does not seem to sicken on-stage, and she dies off-stage, her death announced by Pipkin. Pipkin’s reaction is intense (“O Hue, o Mistris, o Mistris, o Hue!”), and I think we are meant to feel that he feels her death very deeply. At the same time, unlike with the faked death in The Captain, there can be little tension in the moment for the audience. We have known that this was going to happen, and, while this would normally heighten rather than diminish suspense, we also know that the poison is not poison. We are already looking ahead to the moment where Pipkin’s sorrow will turn to disbelieving joy. This is a less fraught version of the aftermath of Frederick’s “death” in The Captain. The various pieces of the plot have fallen into place just as the various comic possibilities of each character’s behavior had earlier fallen into place around the dinner table and the punchline to Fuller’s joke. The difference is that Fuller’s joke, like Frederick’s resurrection, is more unexpected and more theatrically satisfying. What the plot would have us focus on in the poisoning scene is the petty irony of Arthur’s toast and his wife’s response, and the fact that Arthur is only further setting himself up for a fall. But this is rather limited fare compared to the colorful interaction of the others before and during the banquet. Those are moments of comic excitement, where inconsequential matters are falling into place in the most elegant way; the poisoning is artificial and necessary, a demand of the narrative which has little value as a plot action since we know it is soon to be undone. I do not want to seem to suggest that narrative is unpleasant – quite the contrary. Rather, the strange relationship between narrative and 

Surprisingly, we never do see this. Pipkin does not seem to appear on stage in the final scene – perhaps because he is needed to play the part of one of the officers who brings Arthur in to the trial. His absence in any case is another example of something – his sorrow – being a matter purely of the moment in which it occurs rather than a narrative necessity.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

audience as it develops in How a Man May Choose illuminates, I think, the way in which narrative is in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy often merely a convenient foundation on which to build more enigmatic structures. Frederick’s “death” in The Captain is similar in its arbitrary placement to Mistress Arthur’s in How a Man May Choose. The difference between the two is in where the dramatic irony lies, but the effects are largely similar. In both plays one’s focus is thrown backward and forward onto individual episodes that advance the narrative simply by occurring and being completed. One might argue that I am simply valorizing sloppy dramatic construction, and this might be true by some standards, but such “sloppiness” seems to be the rule more than the exception in Renaissance drama, and it is emphasized or exploited by dramatists of considerable skill for the sake of creating a theatrical experience that audiences perceive to be valuably, pleasurably complex. Consider, for example, the play’s title, How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, and the narrative expectations it generates. It suggests that the play involves a situation in which the difference between a good wife and a bad is in some doubt. This is the impression the play seems to assume one has had by the time one hears Arthur’s final speech, which begins, “he that will chuse / A good wife from a bad, come learne of me” (lines ,–). But the only person, on-stage or off, for whom the difference ever even might be unclear is Arthur himself. The play actually assumes that the qualities of a good wife are self-evident to the audience. The audience’s pleasure is bound up in watching what Arthur must go through to see what the audience already knows. This is similar to accepting the need for Jacamo’s repeated humiliations because we know he will ultimately see how he has deserved them. What is most pleasurable about this process in How a Man May Choose is the variety of characterization it allows, the way it provides a structure for comic activity. The latent energy of an apparently unresolvable conflict (Arthur simply cannot, even by the end, reconcile with his wife without it seeming or potentially seeming contrived) is funneled off into subplots involving a colorful array of characters, each of whom works somewhat at crosspurposes to others with respect to a common or similar problem. Here, Aminadab acts as a kind of pivotal figure, unintentionally instrumental in providing the means for Mistress Arthur’s “death” and, in doing so, becoming a parody of the various kinds of obsessive love in the play. For those who do not pick up on the parallel, Fuller makes it quite explicit to Anselm as they overhear the pedant threatening suicide: “That mishapt

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



loue thou wouldst condemne in him, / I see in thee” (lines ,–). This makes still more active the potential for us to see Aminadab as a grotesque parody of Mistress Arthur herself, and also of Arthur (with respect to Mistress Mary). The result is a feeling of complexity and convergence, where the plot – advanced at this point with the sale of the poison – gives the various levels of parody purpose and direction; this is similar to the way in which the actual poisoning will later provide an occasion for everyone to gather round and listen to Fuller’s dirty joke. What happens in How a Man May Choose perhaps sheds some light on why the action of The Captain is almost equally divided among three discrete but intertwined plots: no single plot could alone achieve the sense of purpose it is given by its relationship to the other two. The final trial scene in How a Man May Choose, like the banquet scene, works toward two different kinds of punchline – one that is theatrically effective and somewhat unpredictable (the return of Mistress Arthur) and one that is anticlimactic but essential in terms of the narrative (the reunion of Mistress Arthur and her husband). In this scene we see all the characters again; we know there will have to be a reconciliation, but again most of the playwright’s energy is focused on bringing together the ensemble cast around the revelation of the various plot twists. Old Lusam demands the death of Young Arthur, which leads to a quarrel with Old Arthur, who calls Old Lusam a dotard, only to have Old Lusam completely agree with him. Mistress Mary, Mistress Splay, Brabo, and officers bring Arthur in, and he counters accusations of murder by telling Justice Reason that Aminadab gave him the poison. Aminadab is brought in, and reveals Fuller as his supplier. All three are on the verge of being tried for the same murder when Mistress Arthur enters at last. As always with comedy the surprise of the scene revolves not around a question of interpretation (will Mistress Arthur come?), but of appropriate action (when will Mistress Arthur come?). When Mistress Arthur enters, the confusion exhibited by Mary and Splay (“How can it be the poyson tooke no force? / She liues with that which wold have kild a horse!”, [ lines ,–]) completes the structural echo of this scene with the jest-scene at the banquet. Like Justice Reason, Mistress Splay most obviously remains outside of what the audience more fully understands, and gives the cue so that the full comic effect of convergence can be felt. This convergence, based on the logically predictable behavior of the ensemble characters, makes the necessarily strained reunion of Arthur and his wife



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

seem less artificial, or at least plausibly artificial in the way that comic reunions are. Arthur now delivers the moral of the play. My first wife, stand you here: my second there, And in the midst my selfe; he that will chuse A good wife from a bad, come learne of me, That haue tried both, in wealth and misery. A good wife will be carefull of her fame, Her husbands credit, and her own good name; And such art thou. A bad wife will respect Her pride, her lust, and her good name neglect; And such art thou. ( lines ,–)

This goes on for several more lines. Of course, the moral is somewhat nonsensical. Arthur only knows the difference between good wives and bad after marrying one of each; the issue of choosing would seem to have more to do with desiring to marry. But the audience expects to hear a moral, or a summing-up and, above all, to hear Arthur give voice to what has been clear all along: that his wife is good. Arthur’s moral gives the audience a way to think of Arthur’s hateful myopia as an educative process. The final scene makes it sound as though the play’s project has been to make us compare Mistress Arthur and Mistress Mary, not Mistress Arthur and her husband. The on-stage presence of Mary, Brabo, and Splay, lamenting just about forty lines before that neither Arthur nor his wife is dead, casts them as the villains. Arthur’s arbitrary hatred is left behind; it is not something we can forget, but something we know we are supposed to forget. And it is easy to go along with the play’s demand that we do forget it because one has been able to experience the pleasures that spring from the arbitrary hatred at its center – the intricacies of plot which have allowed it to be obscured. , c .  The work of Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy is to push undesirable elements out of itself. A resolution involving reconciliation and inclusion is inevitable at the end of a comedy, but the inclusion is never complete: it is the presence of characters who stand outside of the resolution – Lelia, Mistress Mary, Shylock (of whom more later) – that makes that resolution meaningful. This is of course not a phenomenon limited to comedy: the final scenes of tragedies expel the villains, and

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



the work of all the conventions discussed in Part , whether in comedy or tragedy, might be said very generally to be to set the standards for determining who – in the plays, in their audiences – is up to the demands the plays make and who is not. But comedy, whose exclusion takes the form of humiliation, and where there is little opportunity for the terrifying but also desirable individualism of an Iago or a Vindice, makes most clear the lines that the drama draws to indicate what it can contain and what it must reject. Instinctively one might think Beaumont and Fletcher to be most challenging in this regard: more explicitly than most other playwrights they tend simultaneously to insist upon and to trivialize the unacceptable. But while plays like The Captain may be more spectacularly successful in forcing audiences to rise, illogically, even unwillingly, to their demands, their deliberate lack of subtlety is in many ways less astonishing than the radical experiment Lyly undertakes in Gallathea, where he demands that his audience discard one of the most fundamental desires of any audience of any play: the desire for an ending. Lyly’s play is perhaps the ultimate conversion narrative, in that the romance that is its central plot changes the sex of one of the lovers. And in that it does not show this transformation or its aftermath on-stage, and in that we do not see which of the lovers undergoes it, Lyly’s play is even more audacious in its use of theatrical expedience to solve a narrative complication than almost any Beaumont and Fletcher play. But what makes Gallathea seem so much more controlled than Fletcher’s, or other later plays, is that, even more than How a Man May Choose, it is overtly, insistently balanced. Gallathea’s sense of balance goes still deeper than paired characters and parallel situations, manifesting itself persistently in the very language – in Lyly’s famous “euphuistic” style. The balanced clarity of the language, coupled with the simplicity of the action, seems to permit, as Lyly criticism demonstrates, elegant and simple interpretation. Taking off from the euphuistic predilection for antithesis, critics 

For an argument similar to mine but in a slightly different register, see Kent Cartwright, “The Confusions of Gallathea: John Lyly as Popular Dramatist,” Comparative Drama . (): –. Cartwright wants to break down the “prevailing paradigm of [criticism of ] sixteenth-century drama: that humanist plays differ from popular ones in that the former are intellectual, arid, and aristocratic while the latter are visceral, imaginatively arousing, and plebeian” ( p. ). Cartwright concludes that Lyly’s dramatic structure in Gallathea is based on “deferring certainty,” and that the pervading uncertainty makes “deferrals into a spectatorial pleasure” ( p. ). The play “causes a desire or longing in spectators for what seems just to elude one’s grasp,” and this reflects the developing market economy of the theatre in that “Lyly’s achievement is to convince the audience to embrace objects as if they were different when they are essentially the same” ( p. ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

discuss how Lyly continually sets up and see-saws between opposing ideas. For Anne Lancashire, the “extraordinary toughness and depth of Lyly’s plays, beneath their artificial surfaces, lies in [their] ironic complexity, [the] tension of balanced opposites, which is Lyly’s view of human reality” (Gallathea, p. xxvii). G. K. Hunter finds that in Gallathea, “the tension [ between mortals and gods] is conveyed by means of a whole series of interrelated episodes which illustrate and make general their points by their very variousness and not by their capacity to be brought to bear on a single situation.” Of the same play, Leah Scragg says that “antithetical balancing and insistent ambivalence . . . are characteristic of the drama as a whole.” And Carter Daniel accounts for the artificiality of euphuistic prose by pointing out that “euphuism serves throughout Lyly’s works as a built-in protection against ridicule: we cannot ridicule what we were never permitted to take seriously from the start.” The kind of critical move Daniel makes, recuperating artificiality to a thematic, anti-artificial end, is a typical and useful way of dealing with high stylism of the kind we find in Lyly. Thus Scragg analyzes a passage in Campaspe (.. –) and comes to the conclusion that “the see-saw motion of the syntax is now enacted between speakers, while the exchange destabilizes the meaning of the terms that the two parties employ” (Campaspe, pp. xiv–xv). Similarly, Lancashire is able to arrive at her assessment of Lyly’s subtle irony in spite of her earlier claim that in his plays “characters are important not as human individuals but as fixed representations of different moral points of view . . . and plots are artificially designed to place these points of view in a balanced tension, one against another” (Gallathea, p. xxiv). The largeness and flexibility of Lyly’s style makes critics and audiences feel like all bases are covered: seriousness and ridicule, artifice and reality, fixed representations and irony all exist in a vital tension whose ambivalent nature is a reflection of life itself. It is Lyly’s ability to convey this kind of comprehensive vision, perhaps, that has caused critics more or less to gloss over the fact that Gallathea is quite surprising in its lack of resolution, in the way that its complicated plot builds and builds to a strangely unsatisfying close. Editors and critics give the appearance of seeing nothing strange in the fact that no judgment is given on which maid is the fairest in the land, the fact that the monster Agar is never seen, the fact that we do not know whether Gallathea or Phyllida will   

John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), p. . In John Lyly: Selected Prose and Dramatic Work, ed. Scragg (Manchester: Carcanet, ), p. xvii. The Plays of John Lyly (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, ), p. .

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



be changed into a boy, and the fact that we do not witness the marriage ceremony. G. K. Hunter responds to the charge that Lyly’s choice of ending “may be seen as marking a decline in Lyly’s dramatic art” by arguing that “this mode of denouement coincides with this adoption of the whole mode of play construction [which Hunter calls] ‘harmonious variety’ . . . [ T]he cast is grouped in such a way that there is a state of permanent unbalance, keeping the action in movement; balance can be restored at the end only by some fiat from outside” ( John Lyly, p. ). Carter Daniel holds that the “articulation of the plots, the control of tone, and the blend of laughter with lyricism” are so effective that “they make one overlook the deus ex machina ending. In a lesser play it would seem a blemish to have an unresolvable and potentially serious problem suddenly and happily solved by the gods, especially when the audience isn’t ever allowed to know the solution” (The Plays of John Lyly, p. ). These sentences provide more than enough negative evidence for the possibility that someone – even Daniel himself – might find Lyly’s denouement a “blemish,” however fine the play. Michael Pincombe simply construes the ending as conventional, saying that the play “ends . . . with the typically ‘comical’ wedding ceremonies about to take place ‘presently.’” Only glancing at the play’s final scene, Leah Scragg finds it to invite “the audience to delight with the dramatist in the endless possibilities of an unstable world” (Campaspe, p. xxii). Scragg’s interpretive move, based on assumptions about the value of mimesis is made by Anne Lancashire as well, and she also introduces implicitly the notion of convention we see in Daniel and Pincombe: [The] arbitrary happy ending is Lyly’s final ironic comment on love, selfdeception, and reality . . . The synthesis of reason and passion, head and heart, reality and dream, represented in . iii by the coming together of all plot strands, is elusive indeed, and to be achieved only by luck, and only momentarily, in life as in the play’s wedding feast (which we do not see). (Gallathea, p. xxvi)

We are not dissatisfied by an elusive synthesis because life itself is full of them, and because the conventional signals of a comic ending are strong enough that we can imagine a final resolution off-stage. As Kent Cartwright says, the “friction between immediate emotional effects and cumulative contemplative effects gives Gallathea an afterlife, a stimulus to rumination after the spectator departs the event.”  

In The Plays of John Lyly: Eros and Eliza (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ), p. . Cartwright, “The Confusions of Gallathea,” p. . It is difficult to find any Lyly criticism that is not satisfied with the ending of Gallathea. Susan C. Kemper’s “Dramaturgical Design in Lyly’s



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

Such resounding agreement that the ending is not so strange seems good evidence that audiences familiar with the conventions in which the play works could be happy with its ending. But the success of the ending is a kind of shell game: the potential for theatrical and interpretive dissatisfaction is, as at the end of The Captain and How a Man May Choose, great; but it also, as in those other plays, remains only a potential by virtue of the pleasurable symmetry and rigid control of the preceding action. And it is this suppressed potential for dissatisfaction at the end that makes the play so alive with comic energy, and which is a final manifestation of similar potential dissatisfaction that, as we will now see, exists throughout the play. Until Act , Gallathea is openly, efficiently conventional. Lyly draws, as is well-noted in Lancashire’s edition and Pincombe’s essay, on Ovid’s story of Iphis and Ianthe (Metamorphoses ix. –), and on classical and Italian pastoral literature and drama. The conventions of crossdressed lovers, a forest in which they wander, and the closely parallel plots are so efficiently deployed that they become fundamental for most subsequent comedy. The influence of Lyly’s play on, for example, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has been well noted. The complications that occur by the end of Act  are also conventional: Neptune, by standing behind and unobserved, knows of Cupid’s plot to make Diana’s maids into lovers; Gallathea and Phyllida, by means of a series of asides, make it clear that each knows the other is a girl disguised as a boy; and Diana catches Cupid in his schemes, preparing us for the inevitable confrontation with Venus (chastity and eros will finally collide literally, as they have metaphorically throughout the play). All of these complications are resolved at the end of the play, and this is why an assessment of the final scene as a conventional, tied-off ending is correct and important. The first three-fifths of the play are so organized and logical that we can almost predict which way the final two-fifths will Gallathea” (Thoth . []: –) says that the simultaneous resolution and continued suspense of the play’s end both “reveals the futility of attempts to deceive destiny” and “points up the fact that the events of destiny operate on quite another level than do those of human concerns” ( pp. –). Peter Berek, in “Artifice and Realism in Lyly, Nashe, and Love’s Labor’s Lost” (Studies in English Literature . []: –) says that Lylys’s play is heavy on pattern and weak on character, and that this is why the ending is acceptable: “were we emotionally involved with Gallathea or Phillida we could hardly bear with equanimity the prospect that one of them will undergo a sexual alteration” ( p. ). Phyllis Rackin says that Gallathea, written to be performed at Court, “addressed an audience for whom, as for the gods within the play, all things were possible, and for whom life, like the play itself, was a kind of elaborate, artificial spectacle.” In “Androgyny, Mimesis, and the Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the English Renaissance Stage,” PMLA . (): –. The quotation is from p. . She also argues that “neither we nor the characters know or care which of Lyly’s girls will be transformed” ( p. ).

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



go: one can be led to hear and see what one expects rather than what is actually there. But the experience en route to the final scene is not all smooth, and I doubt anyone expects the conversation between Melebeus and Tityrus at the beginning of Act . Augur announces that the fairest maid in the land must now be sacrificed, and then goes to make preparations. Melebeus and Tityrus each accuse the other of having and hiding the fairest daughter. Melebeus says his daughter is dead, and Tityrus makes this reply: O Melebeus, dissemble you may with men, deceive the gods you cannot. Did not I see, and very lately see, your daughter in your arms, whenas you gave her infinite kisses with affection I fear me more than fatherly? You have conveyed her away that you might cast us all away, bereaving her of her beauty and us the benefit, preferring a common inconvenience before a private mischief. (.. –)

Tityrus’s remark about incest might be taken as a joke at first – as a sign that the argument is degenerating into something that will ultimately make both angry men look foolish. But the way Melebeus refutes Tityrus is strange. Did you ever see me kiss my daughter? You are deceived, it was my wife. And if you thought so young a piece unfit for so old a person, and therefore imagined it to be my child, not my spouse, you must know that silver hairs delight in golden locks, and frosty years must be thawed by youthful fires. But this matter set aside, you have a fair daughter, Tityrus, and it is pity you are so fond a father. (lines –)

Context probably demands that we understand Melebeus to be lying – that we think he was kissing his daughter rather than his wife; his justifications in the long, subordinate clause-laden second sentence seem comically drawn out to indicate as much. So too does his turning the accusation of incest against Tityrus. In this case, his discussion of silver hairs and golden locks seems bizarre. The play all but forces us to think about an incestuous or near-incestuous relationship between Melebeus and Phyllida, but does so only to refuse to let us think about it much: Populus  and Populus  bring the scene to a rather rapid close, and incest is never brought up again. This moment is, of course, similar to the incestrelated moment in The Captain; but it is also importantly different in that it confirms no suspicions we might have had about Melebeus, and brings about no decisive judgment that opposes one protagonist to the other. The function of this moment might be to make us think that Phyllida



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

will be sacrificed, as a kind of punishment for her lascivious father. It also might be to resonate in some way with what Michael Pincombe calls “the unstaged tragedy of rape” that is at the center of the play’s plot: with a character named “Augur” on stage and some discussion of the potential violation of a fair young woman, this scene, with the later Hebe scene, may be the closest thing we get to the appearance of the dread monster “Agar.” A performance might use these lines to inform Melebeus’s conduct with his daughter when they are on stage together, but while this would make the lines in . make sense, it would not itself make a lot of sense in terms of the play. The play has no room for an incest plot, and it does not pursue one. And it is always possible, even necessary, to see Melebeus and Tityrus simply as blustering old men, versions of the conventional senex character. Barreling along on the tracks of a plot involving fatherly love, sexual violation, and the loss of innocence, the play derails momentarily, taking us into a thorny world of unspoken lust and incest; and then, almost as quickly, conventional and generic signals set us back in the right direction. Comic activity fills an ambiguous interpretive space. Thus, similar to the final moments of . in The Captain, Gallathea after . redoubles its sense of imminent conclusion in the next three scenes. Cupid is brought before Diana, and the song the nymphs sing at the beginning of . possibly resonates with what is supposed to happen to Gallathea and Phyllida: “if any maid / Whom lering cupid has betray’d / . . . / . . . would in madness now see torn – / The boy in pieces, let her come /Hither, and lay on him her doom” (..  –, emphasis added). The next scene shows us Neptune promising to “show as great cruelty as [the fathers and daughters] have done craft, and well shall they know that Neptune should have been entreated, not cozened” (.. –). Driving home the point, . shows Gallathea and Phyllida desperately trying to maintain their disguises, and moving into the woods to await the outcome of the sacrifice. I agree with the claim of most critics that Lyly’s light-hearted tone persists throughout, but I also think the play is sending signals somewhat incompatible with light comedy. What seems to me most likely is that we are being led to expect either Gallathea or Phyllida to be prepared to the sacrifice, and for the “deus ex machina ending” to be centered around her rescue.  

Pincombe finds a connection between the unstaged, or deferred rape with the “phallus” that Venus will give one of the girls (The Plays of John Lyly, p. ). Pleasantly ingenious as this punning connection is, it is also important to note that Augur’s name is never spoken aloud on stage – it is merely a speech heading.

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



What we get instead, in ., is the appearance of Hebe, a completely new character, who is put into the position we are expecting for Gallathea or Phyllida. Lyly seems deliberately to manipulate the audience’s expectations as he brings on Augur first to say “Bring forth the virgin, the fairest virgin, if you mean to appease Neptune and preserve your country” (..  –). Now we will see whether Gallathea or Phyllida is the fairest. The scene is parallel to ., with the capture of Cupid, only here an irrelevant character is introduced into the crucial situation. Hebe, like Shakespeare’s Thane of Cawdor, seems to have spent her entire life preparing for the leaving of it, and the excess of her death speech, culminating most hilariously in “I am fair, I am a virgin, I am ready” ( .. –) is clearly intended for an actor to relish. Like the specter of incest in ., Hebe appears at a crucial moment and then is gone, not to be heard from again. The overt theatricality of her death speech and the comedy involved in waiting for a monster that does not appear makes Agar too seem like one of these phantoms – something serious that can nevertheless be joked about because it will never really assert its power over the events of the play. In this scene Lyly is like the author of How a Man May Choose in the banquet scene: he is more interested in creating a set piece than in dealing with the logical progression of events. Hebe is created to fill the scene which, if it contained Gallathea or Phyllida, would end the play. The anticlimactic end of the scene, like the end of the banquet scene in How a Man May Choose, allows the playwright to continue pursuing the seemingly infinite dramatic possibilities at his disposal. The problem with Gallathea, in contrast to How a Man May Choose, is that, while in the later play we know Mistress Arthur is not dead and thus have a sense of where the infinite possibilities are leading, in Lyly’s play we do not know to what extent Augur’s claim that Neptune’s rage will now be “both infinite and intolerable” (lines –) is true, or indeed what will happen to Gallathea and Phyllida. Neptune steps in to fill this gap: in ., Phyllida and Gallathea talk about having just seen the virgin to be offered for sacrifice, and then run off again into the woods. Neptune appears, still more indignant: And do men begin to be equal with gods, seeing by craft to overreach them that by power oversee them? Do they dote so much on their daughters that they  

See also Cartwright’s discussion of the comic pauses in Hebe’s farewell speech: “The Confusions of Gallathea,” pp. –. The stylized, possibly campy way in which a boy actor might deal with the character of Hebe makes this scene an interesting parallel to Levidulcia’s death scene in The Atheist’s Tragedy (see above, pp. –).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

stick not to dally with our deities? Well shall the inhabitants see that destiny cannot be prevented by craft, nor my anger be appeased by submission. I will make havoc of Diana’s nymphs, my temple shall be dyed with maidens’ blood, and there shall be nothing more vile than to be a virgin. To be young and fair shall be accounted shame and punishment, insomuch as it shall be thought as dishonorable to be honest as fortunate to be deformed. (lines –)

This is the third such speech Neptune makes. The first is in ., after he overhears Cupid’s plans and promises he will go “into these woods and mark all, and in the end will mar all” ( lines –); the second is in ., discussed above. The actor playing Neptune will have to convey the importance of this pattern to an audience, and the most likely way of doing so would seem to be to make Neptune a blustering character who is all talk and no action. Constantly asserting that “Neptune cannot be overreached by swains” (.. –); that Gallathea and Phyllida’s “sleights may blear men, deceive me they cannot” (.. –); and that “destiny cannot be prevented by craft, nor my anger be appeased by submission,” Neptune is nevertheless thwarted at every turn. Immediately after his promises of bloodshed and sorrow in ., he must mediate the conflict between Diana and Venus, and in doing so he gives up the yearly virgin sacrifice with little argument: he seems more interested simply in not being in the middle of the fight between Diana and the sex goddess who “shall at all times be at [his] command” ( line ). When Melebeus and Tityrus return with their daughters to beg forgiveness of the god, he tries only half-heartedly to maintain the illusion of his power as he gives anticlimactic doom: “Well, your deserts have not gotten pardon, but these goddesses’ jars” (lines –). When he hears that Gallathea and Phyllida love each other, he sees it as a joke, and expects that Venus will as well. An idle choice, strange and foolish, for one virgin to dote on another, and to imagine a constant faith where there can be no cause for affection. How like you this, Venus? (lines  –)

Venus, of course, takes the contrary position, and makes the quite unexpected promise that “both [shall] be possessed of their wishes” (lines –). Except for one line, Neptune is silent for the remainder of the play. 

For a contrary and, it seems to me, quite inaccurate view of Neptune as an image of “patriarchal and monarchical authority” which the play works to “legitimate,” see Christopher Wixson, “Cross-Dressing and John Lyly’s Gallathea,” Studies in English Literature . ():  –. The quotation is from page .

Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy



     How say you, Tityrus, shall we refer it to Venus?     I am content, because she is a goddess.   Neptune, you will not dislike it? ( lines –)    Not I.

Clearly, it does not matter what Neptune thinks, and the audience knows this as well as Venus, and Neptune himself. The not-entirely-resolved ending works, and feels to a certain extent resolved, in part because the second half of the play has accustomed us to dealing with unresolved events: as with the incest jokes, and the strangely comic non-sacrifice of Hebe, we are limited in what we can take away from the promise of marriage, and attempting to go beyond the limits feels superfluous and over-serious because the play seems to have moved on without any trouble. More importantly, the clear defeat of Neptune works to make the end something we can be happy with. While it seems to me an exaggeration to say that the unresolved final scene is a general celebration of ambiguity and infinite possibility (the outcome is hardly ambiguous – there will be a marriage – and the possibilities are clearly limited to one or the other of the girls becoming a boy) it is certainly a celebration of freedom from the rigid adherence to laws – of nature, fate, and courtship – espoused by Neptune. And this, as we see from the treatment of later characters like Malvolio or Shylock, is commonly the kind of freedom Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy finds worth celebrating. At the same time, we cannot forget the potential for disappointment and dissatisfaction in a lack of resolution, and it seems to me that the way these moments make audiences think like Neptune (or Malvolio or Shylock) is equally important to the comic experience. The faint but definite residual desire simply to see which maid becomes a man and to have the visible closure of a wedding ceremony is Neptunelike in its need for logical conclusion, for seeing things through; for similar reasons we feel that Shylock has been ill-treated or that Malvolio should be revenged on the whole pack; that Mistress Arthur could do better, or that Frank and Jacamo would be more happily married if there were not new wars. These desires must be, and are, easily suppressed if one is to be satisfied with what one expects comedy to expect one to expect: laughter. And this is when comedy is most successful: when it makes us believe we have seen the necessity and the good in expelling that part of 

Something like what I am describing is discussed by Hunter in his essay on this play: the development of the action, he says, is a process of “agglomeration, by which similar experiences are continually being added to produce new and piquant situations” ( John Lyly, p. ).



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

ourselves which does not conform to its demands. No one wants to be like Neptune. It might be useful at this point, by way of brief summation, to return explicitly to the spatial metaphors that I have used throughout this book. Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy makes audiences feel that they are at last on the inside, aware of and superior to those who are not. Tragedy makes audiences feel that they are struggling to remain on the outside and, generally, failing. The conventions that structure, order, and punctuate the messy experiences of these plays constantly manipulate and play upon the distinction, and the lack of distinction, between investment in and detachment from dramatic events. The aim of this manipulation and play is to provoke a response, and throughout this study the response I have found myself returning to repeatedly in one way or another, irrespective of genre or the nature of the convention, is laughter: puns solicit laughter, asides direct laughter, exposition can be so frustratingly complex or long-winded as to cause laughter, echo scenes and on-stage violence can be ridiculous, dark scenes are frequently elaborately comic, incest can be dismissed with a laugh, disguise conventions can laugh at themselves, tragedies must harness the power of laughter to move beyond it, and comedies must problematize the very response they depend on in order to remain comic. Involuntary and contagious, laughter can kill a tragedy or make a comedy, and in an audience it cannot be ignored; a sign of both approval and dismissal, mirth and scorn, laughter lurks just inside the space between the bare stage and the imagination, ready to burst forth with equal willingness when the one fails to connect with the other, and when it succeeds.

 

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare

Whether or not Jonson and Shakespeare deserve a chapter of their own is, I hope, a question this book has at least raised. I do not want by any means at this point to put Shakespeare and Jonson above the rest of their contemporaries, but it is true that thinking about these two playwrights has governed and does govern most of our thought about the drama of the English Renaissance. It is in the interest of explicitly putting some of that thinking within the context of this study, and thereby making some gestures toward new directions in Shakespeare and Jonson criticism, that I undertake the following discussion. Insofar as Ben Jonson’s comedies are, as Alan Dessen argues, “moral comedies,” in which Jonson “has . . . involved his audience in the moral and ethical issues of the play in such a way that their laughter now turns back upon themselves”; and insofar as they are “acts of theatrical imperialism,” in which Jonson “systematically subsumes the more conventional plays of his competitors, forcing them to work for his exaltation,” they are perhaps the clearest example – because they are so deliberate – of how Renaissance comedy in general, like its individual plots, works by a process of exclusion. Jonson’s comedies are highly selfcontained, and the audience is taught to laugh to scorn anything that exists outside of them. The events of these comedies frequently would seem to demand a response that would put the audience outside of them, and that response must be effaced if the audience is to avoid being the subject of its own – and the playwright’s – scornful laughter. Jonson facilitates this effacement by means of an extremely efficient manipulation of conventional devices. The applause that follows Face’s epilogue to The Alchemist involves the manipulation of one convention – the  

Jonson’s Moral Comedy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, ), p. . Robert N. Watson, Ben Jonson’s Parodic Strategy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), p. .





Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

epilogue – combined with the transformation of another – the Vice from the morality – in order to make the audience condone, in Dessen’s words, the “blindness of the truth, the absence of absolute standards, and the failure of social conscience” ( Jonson’s Moral Comedy, p. ) that have allowed Face to succeed. The predictability of form both forces and allows a confrontation with the unpredictable: the audience is coerced into accepting a way of thinking it normally would not accept, and for the moment instinctively expels from itself the possibility of rejecting that way of thinking. As we have seen in Gallathea, How a Man May Choose, and The Captain, this process of expulsion is characteristic of the formal qualities of early modern comedy at virtually every level. Early modern comedy moves rapidly and with a highly arbitrary unpredictability. The arbitrariness comes, paradoxically, from the very predictability of the complete resolution with which the play must end. The movement toward this resolution is structured around moments of humiliation and expulsion. In Jonson this expulsion repeatedly takes a physical form, and does so in a way that is importantly related to the theatrical pleasures early modern comedy provides and expects its audiences to seek. It is not necessary to detail the extent to which Jonson criticism is preoccupied with physical and theatrical metaphors and modes of expression: corporeality and theatrical self-consciousness are the obsessive concerns of Jonson’s plays. They are also, as I have argued from the beginning, vital concerns of early modern playwrights, and crucial to understanding the relationship of the drama to its audience. With this parallel in mind, I want to look briefly at the way in which the experience of the potential inefficiency of one of Jonson’s plots – the Sir Politic Would-be plot of Volpone – is one manifestation of the superfluous but vital theatrical and physical pleasures that early modern comedy embodies. Given the multileveled, frequently jumbled nature of the plots of the vast majority of early modern comedies, it is remarkable how much critical energy has been expended on explaining the relevance, function, and value of the Would-be subplot in Volpone. In  Jonas Barish wrote that, “For more than two centuries literary critics have been satisfied to discuss the subplot of Volpone as irrelevant and discordant.” Barish cites a number of examples of this, including the influential editors Hereford and Simpson who, in Volume  of their edition of Jonson, say that the subplot would be funny if its “absurd contortions had any bearing 

“The Double Plot in Volpone,” Modern Philology  (): –.

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



upon, or inner relation to, the main theme.” Barish goes on to argue that the “relative harmlessness of Sir Pol’s downfall serves to differentiate his folly from the viciousness of the Venetians, but the many parallels between his catastrophe and theirs warn us that his kind of folly is sufficiently virulent after all . . . and . . . must ultimately fall under the same condemnation” (“The Double Plot in Volpone,” p. ). This article produced a kind of critical revolution: it was followed by Judd Arnold’s “The Double Plot in Volpone: A Note on Jonsonian Dramatic Structure”; by Dorothy E. Litt’s “Unity of Theme in Volpone”; and by a host of modern editions in which it has become conventional to devote a section in the introduction to the subplot. It seems surprising that the relationship between the two plots was not elaborated until the middle of the twentieth century, but I think this bespeaks not merely the critical bias of the previous centuries (the subplot is not “serious” enough) so much as the standard of efficiency and coherence that Jonson’s plays maintain with respect to his contemporaries, and the very real way in which the Would-be plot can potentially seem (and could have seemed to its original audience) to violate this standard. The effect of the subplot is certainly, as Bevington and Parker say, “rhythmic . . . as well as thematic,” but its action is nevertheless in no way necessary to the plot: the play can work on-stage without it. The thematic function does not necessarily justify the excess of action. Discussing Volpone’s loquacious attempted seduction of Celia (.. –), Stephen Greenblatt says that “instead of the emotion of multitude we have precisely the avoidance of depth in a vertiginous swirl of words. Volpone’s speech, like the actions he generates, must flow on without pause, for in the silence lurks the hidden meaning of [and anxiety in] his words.” The superfluity of the subplot works in a similar way to counter potential anxiety about the excess of the play’s action as a whole. If one notices the thematic connection – sees a comic parallel between Sir Pol and Volpone’s gulls, and between Peregrine and Volpone – it    



Works of Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Hereford and Percy Simpson, vol.  (Oxford: Clarendon, ), p. . Seventeenth-Century News  (): –. Bulletin of the New York Public Library  (): –. See, for example, Philip Brockbank’s New Mermaids edition (London: Benn, ), pp. xvii–xix; R. B. Parker’s Revels edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ), pp. –; and Brian Parker and David Bevington’s Revels Student Edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ), pp. – (which is a condensed version of Parker’s earlier discussion in the Revels edition). Stephen Greenblatt, “The False Ending of Volpone,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology . (): –. The quotation is from p. .



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

might mitigate the intensity of the satire: such malicious scheming as Volpone’s occurs at every level of social life, and so the play is not so much a view of one man’s hideous obsession as a general satire of greed and folly. But if one does not see the thematic connection – and most of the critical tradition suggests that one might not – the subplot must either seem like an excessive variation on the theme of Volpone’s sadism or it must act as an almost extra-dramatic manifestation of the pleasures involved in that sadism. As is probably predictable by this point, I think the subplot performs the latter function and picks up vital energy in doing so from the ever-present possibility of the former. The pleasure the Sir Politic Would-be plot provides lies in its allowing the audience to imagine its own active, physical participation in the cruelest and most delightful kind of mere theatricality. Sir Pol’s first entrance is marked by a moment of metatheatre. Sir Peregrine says of him: Oh, the knight (Were he well known) would be a precious thing To fit our stage; he that should write But such a fellow, should be thought to feign Extremely, if not maliciously. (.. –)

John Sweeney says of this moment that Jonson causes us to see Sir Pol “in the evolution of both Jonson’s career and the history of the English stage. Peregrine’s aside is not just a joke about the fact that Sir Pol is a character in someone’s play, but a joke about Sir Pol being an anachronism in this Jonson play.” Thus the pleasure involved in laughing at Peregrine’s aside is not only the pleasure of being a sophisticated English person recognizing English folly, but also the pleasure of putting oneself in the position of an actor in one kind of play mocking the action of an actor in another kind of play. The conventions of which Peregrine is not a part are again called attention to when Lady Would-be mistakes Peregrine for a woman disguised as a man, or, as it would occur on the early modern stage, a boy playing a woman disguised as a man. The entirely superfluous and entirely unexpected revenge plot that comes out of this mistake involves the replacement of one kind of self-consciously theatrical acting (the kind we see in Twelfth Night) with another (the kind we see in Volpone’s schemes): Peregrine disguises himself as a merchant, is careful that the 

John Sweeney, “Volpone and the Theatre of Self-Interest,” English Literary Renaissance . (): –. The quotation is from p. .

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



audience knows he is disguised (“Am I enough disguised?” .. ), and employs a small band of actors to help him humiliate Sir Pol. Similar to the moments where Mosca applies ointment to Volpone’s eyes, or where Volpone tells Mosca to “open that chest, and reach / Forth one of those [wills] that has the blanks” (..  –), the action of the Sir Pol plot presents and asks the audience to participate in a splendid show. Sir Pol provides a delirious prop for this show: the entirely superfluous and unexpected tortoise shell, an object which has undoubtedly been serving on-stage throughout the play as an example of Volpone’s extensive and eclectic wealth. Employing the most fantastic resources available on the stage, Sir Pol becomes a symbol of his own absurdity and is now at the physical mercy of the more expert actors in the scene. Ordered to “creep,” threatened with pricking in his “guts” (line ), anatomized (“We’ll see his legs,” [line ]), and possibly jumped on (line ), his perfectly staged humiliation gives direction and purpose, a kind of tangibility, to what seemed unnecessary and vaguely motivated at the end of .. The superfluity of the action coupled with Sir Pol’s benign nature relative to the other gulls (and Peregrine’s relative to Volpone), makes the experience of this scene more theatrical than thematic or moral. Sir Pol may or may not be getting punished appropriately or excessively, but the audience’s delight chiefly lies in being put in a position to imagine itself performing something so ridiculous, so well staged, and so physically satisfying as the action the actors playing Peregrine and Sir Pol get to perform. Greenblatt says that Jonson’s plays direct “the audience . . . to reject the theatrical principles of displacement, mask, and metamorphosis” (“The False Ending of Volpone,” p. ). Howard Marchitell notes that Jonson’s plays are “replete with an over-determined, multivalent sadistic pleasure” and says that in the case of Volpone such pleasures become “hopelessly self-reflexive. Volpone’s is the will to dominate . . . even if such control can last only for an instant, and even if it must lead to his punishment.” Richmond Barbour argues that the commercial stage for which Jonson wrote “affords no rite of bodily coupling between fictive and actual worlds. Instead, as the characters regress to players, they offer to repeat themselves: ‘And we’ll strive to please you every day.’” The implication of this kind of criticism is that audiences are meant to find  

Howard Marchitell, “Desire and Domination in Volpone,” Studies in English Literature . (): –. The quotations are from pp. , . Richmond Barbour, “ ‘When I Acted Young Antinous’: Boy Actors and the Erotics of Jonsonian Theatre,” PMLA . (): ,–. The quotation is from p. ,.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

acting dangerous and, at some level undesirable: characters “regress” to players when the theatre becomes too self-reflexive, or when the play’s artificiality is emphasized by its ending; Volpone’s histrionics may be “enormously vital and attractive, but as this play bitterly insists, you cannot stay in the theatre forever.” While the dangers of acting are evident and exploited in virtually all live theatre, the idea that Jonson’s plays ask the audience to reject acting, and the audience might desire to do so seems, simply, wrong. The Sir Pol subplot is in the play because it lets actors act and because audiences enjoy for its own sake the movement of bodies and properties around a stage. From the point of view of the audience, the actor need not leave the theatre at the end of the play. The audience wants to be the actor. The value of implausibility in early modern comedy lies in the way in which it allows the audience to enjoy imagining itself participating in actions that do not have any moral consequences – or even, as in the case of the Sir Pol subplot, any theatrical consequences that extend beyond the moment in which they occur. Elizabethan and Jacobean comic dramatists are always striving for moments like the banquet scene in How a Man May Choose or the foiled incest scene of The Captain: moments where the movement of the action is so powerful that any illusion of plausibility – of character or motivation – can be forsaken, allowing the characters to become simply components in a dramatic machine. This is also the nature of the experience the final scenes of most comedies seek to provide: Lelia equivocate and smiles, Mistress Arthur smiles and shuts up, Jupiter shrugs and goes along with Venus’s plan. Playwrights take no pains to make these characters plausible in these moments, because to do so would be incompatible with the movement, or the conclusion, of the action. Does this apply to Shakespeare as well? I am tempted to say that it does, but I also think it might be more interesting to think of Shakespeare, if only in the realm of comedy, as failing to achieve what other playwrights achieve so well. Whether or not this is a happy failure, I will not attempt to say, but I have always in my perhaps peculiar way found the comedies of Middleton, Jonson, and Beaumont and  

Greenblatt, “False Ending,” p. . Even the end of Volpone, oddly enough, can be seen to be working this way. I think the chief response of an audience to that play’s final scene is surprise – surprise that neither Volpone nor Mosca gets away with all the goods. Rather than following the signals it has been sending throughout and conveying the theatrically plausible and satisfying idea that the wily and selfinterested will remain above moral consequences (if not judgment), Jonson follows his own implausible logic to its most extreme conclusion: everyone is punished according to his sin.

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



Fletcher much more satisfying than those of Shakespeare. Perhaps it is Shakespeare’s willingness at crucial moments to allow his audiences to think of comic characters as existing independently of the improbable and implausible demands of the genre that deprives his comedies of some of the raw energy we see in Jonson, Middleton, Beaumont and Fletcher, and others. In this light it will be useful to look briefly at the end of The Merchant of Venice, a play which Shakespeare seems uncertain how to end, and which he does end partly by emphasizing the plausibility of the one character, Shylock, who has always been on the verge of moving beyond his control and simply, implausibly, serving the movement of the action. Like Lelia or Hebe, or like Young Arthur’s arbitrary hatred of his wife, Shylock is the part of his play that juts out and is potentially irreconcilable with its other elements. He first appears in . after we have been introduced to both halves of the love plot – Bassanio in . and Portia in .. Structurally he is an interruption in the conventional development of the love story, a function he will serve, albeit more conventionally, in Act , when he begins to come between his daughter and Lorenzo. Shylock talks differently from the other characters: he freely alternates between prose and verse, he tends to repeat the words of his interlocutors, and he is able to break the rhythm of a scene – as we see best in ., with his prolonged aside upon Antonio’s entrance (“How like a fawning publican he looks” [lines –]), which must be interrupted by Bassanio: “Shylock, do you hear?” (line ). Shylock’s speech is heavy with proverbs, riddles, and enigmatic anecdotes: his discussion of ships and rats at .. –; the story of Jacob and Laban’s sheep in .; his “dream of money-bags” (.. ); and his bizarre list of madmen in the trial scene (.. –). In the trial scene he shifts from being a proud and mocking victor (“By my soul I swear / There is no power in the tongue of man / To alter me. I stay here on my bond,” –) to a sick, weak old man (“I am not well. Send the deed after me / And I will sign it,” –). The uneasiness of this shift is accentuated by the vacuum of motivation around which it must turn: “So can I give no reason, nor I will not, / More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing / I bear Antonio, that I follow thus / A losing suit against him” (lines –). But the abruptness of the shift in . is driven by the narrative and is therefore more intelligible than the series of changes Shylock undergoes in ., where his short, clipped lines (“She is damn’d for it” [line ]; “What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck?” [line ]) stand in stark contrast to his two long and passionate speeches (each of which is passionate in a very different way); where he rapidly shifts between acting the part of the



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

resentful father, the martyr-like anti-hero, the gloating usurer, and the sentimental widower; and where he succeeds in being, as I have discussed above, the only character in the play who is able to silence Solanio and Salerio. In ., as C. L. Barber says in Festive Comedy, Shylock is a puppet in whom motives have become the mechanisms that usurp life’s selfdetermining prerogative. Some critics have left the rhythm of the scene behind to dwell on the pathos of the ring he had from Leah when he was a bachelor. It is like Shakespeare once to show Shylock putting a gently sentimental value on something, to match the savage sentimental value he puts on revenge. There is pathos; but it is being fed into the comic mill and makes the laughter all the more hilarious. ( pp. –)

The bizarre shifts in tone and mode that characterize . are given a sort of coherence by the fact that Shylock is a stage Jew and as such can be interpreted, even in moments of unsettling passion, as hyperbolical or ridiculous. Shylock’s puppet-like behavior persists somewhat through ., but Shakespeare abandons it once Portia figures out how to defeat the Jew: Shylock’s tone becomes more and more despondent as the scene draws to a close. Beaumont and Fletcher seem happy to put Lelia on-stage with the more unproblematically reconciled characters at the end of The Captain; Mistress Mary stands next to Arthur so that he can point her out as the bad wife at the end of How a Man May Choose; and Neptune accompanies the rest of the characters off-stage to see the metamorphosis and wedding feast that will make everything right. The very completeness of the resolutions of these plays is emphasized by their making visible the fact that the contrary characters have been subdued. Shakespeare seems less comfortable with this. Malvolio, like Shylock, leaves the stage before the real resolution takes place; similarly Jaques at the end of As You Like It goes to live in his “abandoned cave” before the Duke speaks the play’s final two lines and gives way to Rosalind’s epilogue; and Caliban is sent off-stage before Prospero invites Alonso and the rest in for dinner. These characters do not remain as evidence of the successful resolution on the stage. Their absence is a reminder of the fact that the comedy has not entirely neatly tied up its loose ends. Shakespeare seems to emphasize  

Chapter , pp. –. Lyly’s play also presents a weird inversion of this kind of all-inclusive resolution: though all the characters are happily on-stage together at the end, the most powerful sense of closure might come from the faith the play demands of the audience that everything will be fully taken care of off-stage. Also emphasizing, on-stage, the inevitable drive toward resolution is the sudden (within twenty lines of the end) appearance and incorporation into the wedding party of the subplot characters Rafe, Robin, and Dick.

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



the anticlimactic nature of expelling the undesirable force; and while this may result in more complex dissonances than we see at the end of, say, The Captain, it also results in a certain amount of comic failure: it makes the play less funny. So wrapped up in the Shylock plot is The Merchant of Venice that, were it not for the disguises of Portia and Nerissa, the play would seem content to end in Act . The revelation of identities in a trial scene was certainly commonplace, and the persistence Portia shows in pursuing the ring plot for some  lines after the exit of Shylock and the Duke is weirdly excessive. That one of Shakespeare’s probable sources, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s Il Pecorone () contains both the bond and ring plots is but small justification – Shakespeare was happy to discard and alter source material as it suited him. What seems to be happening in the final act of Merchant is that Shakespeare is piling on after the fact the trappings of comic resolution that one would generally expect to have occurred in the trial scene. The result, in ., is a long and insistently comic scene which, in contrast to the finales of the three plays discussed in chapter , is strangely joyless. Interrupting the bizarrely mean-spirited love banter of Jessica and Lorenzo in . is a new character, Stephano (the play is careful to name him, insisting on an importance he does not actually have), announcing the arrival of Portia; immediately following Stephano is the hollering Launcelot (“Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola!”), announcing the imminent arrival of Antonio. A convergence, notably comic in contrast to the already achieved convergence of ., is set in motion. Lorenzo now calls in some musicians, and the play is full of music as Portia arrives at line  and Antonio at line . Portia’s puns on “light” (lines –) give way to a series of potential puns on “ring,” and the escalating quarrel over the rings gives way to the virtuosic verse performances of lines –, the tedious ironies of which are mostly disguised by their unmistakably comic sound – the sound that insists they, and the play, are driving toward a punchline. Some fifty lines later the disguise plot is at last revealed and the play ends leeringly with a joke about Nerissa’s “ring.” Along the way, Nerissa mentions that Jessica and Lorenzo will receive after Shylock’s death “all he dies possess’d of ” (line ), but the fact that Nerissa and not Portia says this seems to indicate that Shakespeare assumed the judgment was by now a foregone conclusion. With surprising celerity the play has moved from a moment of potential ambivalence and anticlimax – the punishment of Shylock – to a scene replete with the markers of triumphant comic resolution. That these markers are merely markers seems to be indicated by the fact that what audiences and critics have



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

ultimately found worth focusing on in the play is Shylock, and this is why the play has probably failed as a comedy in the long run; but the hollow urgency of the comedy in . makes fairly clear that what the play wants (but perhaps does not quite allow) one to experience in its final moments is comic detachment of the purest kind – detachment that, while often arbitrary, shallow, and cruel, is utterly pleasurable. Shylock is, like the comic characters described in chapter , a stock character who reacts more or less consistently and predictably to the twists of the comic plot. This is most clearly seen in his fervent pursuit of the fulfillment of the bond in ., even when he is offered three times the principal. Where Merchant might be said to fail as a comedy is in its tacit acknowledgment, by banishing him from the stage at the end, that Shylock cannot be dealt with by the world of comedy, that the possibility of his restricting its freedom remains, even after the trial scene, very real. Citing again the final moments of Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and The Tempest, I would make the generalization that the interest these plays show in the extra-comic possibilities of characters like Jaques or Malvolio or Caliban is what makes Shakespeare’s comedies feel heavier, less comic than the plays of his contemporaries. When Sir Pol leaves the stage at the end of his final scene inVolpone, he is still the highly theatrical embodiment of his own ridiculousness: And I, to shun this place and clime for ever; Creeping, with house, on back: and think it well To shrink my poor head in my politic shell. (.. –)

Shylock, a predictable character put in a similar situation, brings to the trial scene a note of exhaustion and defeat: “I am not well; send the deed after me, / And I will sign it.” At this moment the play asks us to think of Shylock as (at the risk of sounding facile) a “real person” – asks us to see that comic acting cannot represent the nature of his humiliation. In Merchant there is no relationship between the experience of Shylock’s 

Compare also the defeat and final lines of Marlowe’s Barabas in The Jew of Malta: And had I but escaped this stratagem, I would have brought confusion on you all, Damned Christians, dogs, and Turkish infidels; But now begins the extremity of heat To pinch me with intolerable pangs: Die life, fly soul, tongue curse thy fill and die! (.. –)

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



defeat and that provided by the comic machinery that actually ends the play. If my argument is doing what I want it to be doing, the picture I have drawn of Shylock should resemble, in reverse, the picture I drew of Levidulcia in The Atheist’s Tragedy at the end of chapter . That is, Shylock should seem to an audience symbolic of the ugly covetousness which we see to a certain extent in all of Portia’s comic, conventional suitors; but it should also seem that his unsettling power or passion is merely the blustering of a comic, conventional villain, and can therefore easily be dismissed. Like Levidulcia, Shylock brings a certain impropriety to the world of his play, and the dissonances that this creates, left to hang in the air longer than Fletcher, Lyly, or others allow them to, are less at home in comedy as it seems to exist in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. That said, if I am to be true to the project I have set out to accomplish in this book, which is to discuss the plays of the period for what they are rather than for what they are not, it seems correct to say that Shakespeare excels at creating characters like Levidulcia and Shylock, characters whose bizarrely wrong energy is allowed to pervade the play to the point where they have an interpretive effect disproportionate to what the genre would seem to require of them. Shakespeare puts such characters into both comedy and tragedy with equal vigor: that is why his tragedies are so good and his comedies so odd. With this in mind I would like to talk briefly about Shakespearean tragedy and end where I began, with Hamlet. One of the best discussions of the character of Polonius is in Bert O. States’s Hamlet and the Concept of Character. Here, States argues that Polonius is both a double of Claudius and a shadow of Hamlet, on one hand allowing in Hamlet the release of “energy that cannot be directed toward Claudius” (p. ), and on the other releasing, by means of his “compulsive sleuthing” (which mirrors Hamlet’s “compulsive malice”), the “mayhem that unblocks the plot and allows everyone to die the deaths they have coming” (p. ). Polonius is a figure, like Levidulcia, like Massinissa, like the allegorical characters in Soliman, who seems simultaneously to unleash and to be at the mercy of the uncontrollable forces that are at the heart of the tragedy. Much more so than Massinissa’s conveniently produced vial of poison, Polonius’s actions define the bizarre experience of the tragedy by presenting the audience with the opportunity to blame him for something for which it literally does not make sense to blame him: his own death. Polonius’s 

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, , pp. –.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

death is the key to the play’s counter-narrative, the narrative wherein Hamlet is seen from Laertes’s point of view – seen as, in the words of David Lucking, the killer of an innocent old man and the destroyer of a young girl’s sanity. Because this counter-narrative is entirely incompatible with the play’s desired effect, the play, and the audience, must trivialize Polonius. Because Polonius is conventional in so many ways – the foolish senex character, the busy politician, the impediment to the love plot – and because he dies halfway through the play, the task of trivializing him is not a difficult one. The miracle of the play’s success lies in what happens to the energy that results when the trivial view of Polonius collides with the brief but extremely significant symbolic view we have of him in the scene where he is killed. Sch¨ucking’s discussion of the discontinuity of Polonius’s character has been fundamental for subsequent approaches to Hamlet. Critics, editors, and directors who take seriously the “And these few precepts” speech of ., nevertheless find it uncharacteristic of Polonius’s “usual style,” his “leisurely and self-complacent manner.” Sch¨ucking uses Polonius to demonstrate Shakespeare’s willingness to break “the unity of character” (Character Problems in Shakespeare’s Plays, p. ) for the sake of specific effects in specific episodes: “the single passage no longer has an absolute, but only a relative value for the characteristics of any particular person” (p. , emphasis original). This seems correct, and it is in line with the arguments I have made throughout this book. Elsewhere Sch¨ucking cautions that Polonius is not to be seen simply as an immoral fool: he is the representative of the Court in the play and we are meant to take seriously the King’s remark that he is “faithful and humble,” and the fact that the people are clamoring over “good Polonius’s death” (see pp. –). But what is difficult for Sch¨ucking is giving a satisfactory explanation of the function of the speech in .. He argues that Shakespeare, satisfying the “demand of the time that tragedy should be sententious,” simply “puts words and ideas into Polonius’ mouth which proceed immediately from the poet’s own personality” (p. ). Less intent on (or overt in) bringing in Shakespeare’s “personality,” Philip Edwards in his Cambridge edition of Hamlet  nevertheless takes   



David Lucking, “ ‘Each word made true and good’: Narrativity in Hamlet,” Dalhousie Review . (): –. Levin L. Sch¨ucking, Character Problems in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: George G. Harrap, ), p. . The technical term Sch¨ucking gives for this is “episodic intensification.” Generally he finds this to be characteristic of “the general methods of dramatic composition at the time,” but only a “tendency” on Shakespeare’s part. See ibid., pp. –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



a similar approach, providing a footnote to the line “to thine own self be true” that reads as follows: Such an injunction, of dubious value for Polonius and Laertes, touches the centre of Hamlet’s predicament. “To thine own self be true”! But to which self ? He cannot reach the self to which he must be true.

For Edwards, the speech is meaningless in Polonius’s mouth because Polonius is not even really a character – he is simply an amalgamation of windy proverbs, some of which happen to pertain to Hamlet’s plight. Neither Sch¨ucking nor Edwards gives enough attention to the importance of this speech as an initial interpretation of Polonius with respect to how that interpretation will change. We first hear from Polonius at .. –, where he is expressing briefly and in a proud fatherly manner his reluctance to let Laertes go to France. It is the proud but slightly wistful father of those lines that we see in .. –, where the length of the speech is balanced by the genuineness of its sentiment, and seems more a product of not wanting to let Laertes go just yet than of self-indulgent pleasure in his own words. This genuineness, I think, is to govern our experience of the conversation with Ophelia after Laertes leaves. Ophelia is young and confused (“I do not know my lord what I should think” [line ]) and Polonius, already in the fatherly advice-giving vein, is eager to give her guidance as he has Laertes. An actor could of course (and usually does) bring to this scene some of the officiousness and tediousness we later come to see in Polonius, but this is precisely the wrong approach. Like most characters of early modern tragedy, Polonius must simply behave according to the constantly changing demands of the action. Here it is necessary for him to underscore Ophelia’s youth and confusion; later it will be necessary for him to be a fool. The mistake is to assume that early modern tragic dramaturgy, even Shakespeare’s, is based on a notion of character that demands the kind of interpretation – by audience or actor – wherein earlier actions can be explained by later ones. Plays and playwrights are as willing as audiences must be to forget from one moment to the next what a character “is like.” The movement of the action absolutely requires it. What happens after . is that Polonius becomes more and more involved in the affairs of Hamlet rather than those of his children, and neither Hamlet, nor the play, nor the audience can forgive him for it. Polonius’s paying Reynaldo to spy on Laertes in . is a significant departure from the fatherly advice of ., and this will affect our view of the advice given to Ophelia later in .. Polonius’s desire to know everything and his tendency to jump to conclusions are quickly and definitely



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

established so that when Ophelia describes Hamlet’s bizarre and certainly alarming actions (and Ophelia has no reason to lie) at lines –, we focus more on the inadequacy of Polonius’s response, “This is the very ecstasy of love” (line ). We know that Hamlet has more disturbing things on his mind than a bad crush; we have seen him see a ghost and heard him hear of his father’s murder. Once Polonius has decided that Ophelia’s returning Hamlet’s letters and denying him access has made Hamlet “mad” (line ), his own language turns against him: the contorted verbosity of .. –, –, and – is inconsistent with what we know of Polonius from . and ., but because the dramatic irony insists on his obtuseness, we understand the new way he talks to be a constant of his character. Now Polonius becomes the character we remember him to be: the character, as States says, “known principally for two things, spying and long-windedness, and in his practice they are aspects of a single addiction. For spying, in his own definition, is a way of finding directions out by indirection” (Hamlet and the Concept of Character, p. ). Now Polonius becomes the minion of Claudius, the blundering wit who is no match for Hamlet’s opaque irony, and the kind of person who, outmatched by such opacity, resorts to hiding behind arrases. While one might fault Polonius for not entering sooner in the “Get thee to a nunnery” scene, he seems to hope to make amends for this in ., calling out “What ho! Help!” when he (and Gertrude) thinks that Gertrude is going to be murdered. And it is at this point, of course, that Polonius is unexpectedly and unceremoniously killed. Critical discussion of this moment is strange: while critics tend to see Polonius’s death (correctly) as a catalyst for the final action of the play, they also tend to put the blame for the death on Polonius himself. Edwards’s introduction says that “Polonius’s proclivity for spying – which leads to his own violent death – is shown in the grotesque commission to Reynaldo to keep an eye on Laertes in Paris and then in his schemes to find out what’s wrong with Hamlet” (Hamlet, ed. Edwards, p. ). G. R. Hibbard’s introduction to the Oxford edition is remarkably terse about the scene: “Early in . Hamlet inadvertently kills the eavesdropping Polonius” ( p. ), and he leaves the scene “a saner and more mature man than he was when he entered it” (p. ). Harold Jenkins, in his Arden edition, does not mention the scene (which omission itself indicates a certain indifference to Polonius), but provides this footnote to Hamlet’s “How now? A rat!” at .. : “Rats proverbially cause their own deaths by drawing attention 

Oxford: Clarendon Press, .



London: Routledge, .

Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare



to themselves.” States, in a passage already quoted above, finds Polonius responsible for releasing the “mayhem” that causes the deaths at the end of the play. Hibbard’s “inadvertently,” Edwards’s parenthetical “which leads to his own . . . death,” or States’s “spying and long-windedness” seem true to what an audience thinks of Hamlet’s killing Polonius and of the kind of character Polonius is. I think that audiences do not remember that Polonius was killed so much as they remember that he got himself into a position to be killed and that on some level he deserved it. We, like Hamlet, are all too happy that Hamlet should not be held responsible for Hamlet’s actions – we are in fact convinced that he cannot act: consider Bert States’s claim that Hamlet directs toward Polonius the “energy that cannot be directed toward Claudius.” The way the play allows us to continue thinking of Hamlet this way at the first moment he does act is by suddenly making Polonius more important to us than we have yet allowed him to be. For the one moment Polonius absolutely demands our attention – when his heaving, bloody body must be dragged off-stage, he must come to seem like a symbol of what is wrong with Claudius – insofar as he is a bad father – and with the Court in which Hamlet lives – because he is duplicitous – rather than a victim, like his daughter, of Hamlet’s thoughtless, self-absorbed behavior. This symbolic function exhausted, he returns to just being a rat. In Hamlet . the audience avoids feeling one kind of disappointment – in the fact that the signals of revenge tragedy that have been glaringly obvious from the play’s first scene have still not been delivered on – by delighting in the consequences of another – the fact that Polonius does not, as every audience member believes he or she does, understand Hamlet. It feels good to kill Polonius. Hamlet is a character we believe we know, mostly because we see and hear everything he sees and hears; his insistently introspective approach to things makes him the representative of the “deeper truths” in the play, to which Polonius’s “inadequate worldly wisdom stands in contrast.” We are much less willing to be disappointed by Hamlet, especially if the choice is between him and Polonius, and so we construe Hamlet’s (self-) destructive impulse as a result of Polonius’s calculation and subterfuge. Hamlet is an astonishing play because it takes the figure 



In “On the Value of Hamlet,” Stephen Booth notes that “Except for brief periods near the end of the play, the audience never has insight or knowledge superior to Hamlet’s or, indeed, different from Hamlet’s.” In Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama, ed. Norman Rabkin (New York: Columbia University Press, ), pp. –. The quotation is from page . Edward Hubler, in his introduction to the Signet edition (New York: Signet, ), p. xx.



Theatrical Convention and Audience Response

of the tragic hero to an almost parodic extreme – it is unforgiving in its portrayal of Hamlet, but puts him within a conventional framework so familiar and inevitable-seeming that we can do nothing but forgive him. Polonius, like Shylock, threatens the generically predictable movement of the play. In order for either play to succeed, it must incorporate the “wrong” energy of these characters into its resolution. Hamlet succeeds because it makes the audience see a largely illusory causal link between Polonius’s actions and the play’s catastrophe; Merchant of Venice fails, at least on one level, because the machinery which ends the play functions as though Shylock were never there in the first place. Something like seeing the deception scene in Othello, or the end of Sophonisba or of How a Man May Choose, something like seeing a scene that takes place in the dark, something like hearing a pun, in Hamlet . we see what we want to see, or what the play wants us to see, and it is different from what we are actually seeing. Like all spectacular effects of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, what Shakespeare does with Hamlet and Polonius involves a vital tension and the potential for failure: the tension between Hamlet seen as hero and Hamlet seen as monster, the potential for the audience to dislike the character it above all needs to like, the potential for the theatre to be seen as merely a stage. And like all such effects, what Shakespeare does with Hamlet and Polonius is a trick, a sleight of hand, performed with a casual deftness that is breathtaking and magnificent.

Plays and editions cited

Note: Plays are arranged by author, and chronologically by earliest probable performance date under each author heading. Plays written collaboratively are listed under each author’s heading. Anonymous                

A Warning for Fair Women, ed. Charles Dale Cannon ( The Hague: Mouton), . King Leir, ed. Donald M. Michie (New York: Garland), . Selimus, ed. Daniel Vitkus, in Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (Columbia: Columbia University Press), . The Wars of Cyrus, Tudor Facsimile Texts, . Arden of Feversham, ed. M. L. Wine (London: Methuen), . Edmund Ironside, ed. E. B. Everitt, in Six Early Plays Related to the Shakespeare Canon (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger), . The Life and Death of Jack Straw, Tudor Facsimile Texts, . Soliman and Perseda, ed. Frederick S. Boas, in The Works of Thomas Kyd (Oxford: Clarendon), . Locrine, ed. Jane Lytton Gooch (New York: Garland), . The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, ed. J. W. Sider (New York: Garland), . A Knack to Know a Knave, Malone Society Reprints (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . The Taming of a Shrew, ed. Stephen Roy Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany, facsimile prepared by Herbert F. Schwarz (New York: Putnam), . A Knack to Know an Honest Man, Tudor Facsimile Texts, . Mucedorus, ed. Arvin H. Jupin (New York: Garland), . Look About You, ed. Richard M. Hirsch (New York: Garland), . 

          

Plays and editions cited The Maid’s Metamorphosis, Tudor Reprinted Texts, . The Merry Devil of Edmonton, ed. William Amos Abrams (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), . Thomas Lord Cromwell, Tudor Facsimile Texts, . The Trial of Chivalry, Tudor Facsimile Texts, . The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, ed. Jill Levinson (New York: Garland), . The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, ed. M. N. Matson (New York: Garland), . How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, ed. A. E. H. Swaen (London: David Nutt), . A Yorkshire Tragedy, ed. A. C. Cawley and Barry Gaines (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . The Revenger’s Tragedy, ed. Brian Gibbons (London: A.&C. Black), . The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, ed. Anne Lancashire (Manchester: Manchester University Press), .

Armin 

The Two Maids of More-Clacke, ed. Alexander S. Liddie (New York: Garland), .

Barnes 

The Devil’s Charter, ed. Jim C. Pogue (New York: Garland), .

Barry  

The Family of Love, ed. Andrew Dillon, New York University Dissertation, . Ram Alley, Tutor Facsimile Texts, .

Beaumont and Fletcher  

The Woman Hater, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Coxcomb, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), .

Plays and editions cited       



Philaster, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . A King and No King, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Maid’s Tragedy, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Captain, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Faithful Friends, Malone Society Reprints (Oxford: Oxford University Press ), . The Scornful Lady, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Love’s Pilgrimage, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), .

Chapman    

The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, ed. Lloyd E. Berry, in The Plays of George Chapman: The Comedies, general editor Allan Holaday (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), . An Humorous Day’s Mirth, ed. Allan Holaday, in The Plays of George Chapman: The Comedies, general editor Allan Holaday (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), . May Day, ed. Robert F. Welsh, in The Plays of George Chapman: The Comedies, general editor Allan Holaday (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), . The Gentleman Usher, ed. John Hazel Smith (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), .

Chettle 

The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, ed. John Carney Meagher (New York: Garland), .

  

Plays and editions cited The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, Old English Drama, Students’ Facsimile Edition, . Patient Grissil, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), .

Daborne 

A Christian Turned Turk, ed. Daniel Vitkus, in Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press), .

Day  

The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, Old English Drama, Students’ Facsimile Edition, . The Travels of Three English Brothers, ed. Anthony Parr, in Three Renaissance Travel Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press), .

Dekker      

Old Fortunatus, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Patient Grissil, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Blurt, Master-Constable, ed. Thomas Leland Berger (Salzburg: University of Salzburg), . Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Roaring Girl, ed. Paul A. Mulholland (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . If this be not a Good Play the Devil is In It, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), .

Plays and editions cited



Drayton 

 Sir John Oldcastle, ed. Jonathan Rittenhouse ( New York: Garland), .

Field  

A Woman is a Weathercock, in Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. , . Amends for Ladies, in Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. , .

Fletcher     

The Woman’s Prize, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Faithful Shepherdess, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) . Bonduca, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Night Walker, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Widow, ed. Robert Trager Levine (Salzburg: University of Salzburg), .

Greene     

Alphonsus, King of Aragon, Malone Society Reprints (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . A Looking Glass for London and England, ed. George Alan Clugston (New York: Garland), . The Wounds of Civil War, ed. Joseph W. Houppert (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), . Orlando Furioso, ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi (Muncie, IN: Ball State University Monographs), . Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, ed. J. A. Lavin (London: Benn), .



Plays and editions cited

Hathaway 

 Sir John Oldcastle, ed. Jonathan Rittenhouse (New York: Garland), .

Haughton   

Englishmen for my Money, Tudor Facsimile Texts, . Patient Grissil, ed. Fredson Bowers, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Grim the Collier of Croyden, Tudor Facsimile Texts, .

Heywood          

 and  Edward IV, Facsimile (Philadelphia: The Rosenbach Co.), . The Four Prentices of London, ed. Mary Ann Weber Gasior (New York: Garland), . The Fair Maid of the Exchange, ed. Karl E. Snyder (New York: Garland), . A Woman Killed with Kindness, ed. R. W. Van Fossen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), .  If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, vol.  (London: John Pearson), . The Rape of Lucrece, ed. Allan Holaday, in Illinois Studies in Language and Literature . (). The Golden Age, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, vol.  (London: John Pearson), .  Fair Maid of the West, ed. Brownell Salomon (Salzburg: University of Salzburg), . The Silver Age, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, vol.  (London: John Pearson), .  The Iron Age, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, vol.  (London: John Pearson), .

Jonson 

Cynthia’s Revels, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), .

Plays and editions cited          



Poetaster, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . Sejanus, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . Volpone, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . Epicoene, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . The Alchemist, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . Catiline, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . Bartholomew Fair, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . The Devil is an Ass, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . The Widow, ed. Robert Trager Levine (Salzburg: University of Salzburg), . The New Inn, ed. G. A. Wilkes, in The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, vol.  (Oxford: Oxford University Press), .

Lodge  

A Looking Glass for London and England, ed. George Alan Clugston (New York: Garland), . The Wounds of Civil War, ed. Joseph W. Houppert (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), .

Lyly    

Campaspe, ed. Leah Scragg, in John Lyly: Selected Prose and Dramatic Work ( Manchester: Carcanet), . Gallathea, ed. Anne Begor Lancashire (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . Mother Bombie, ed. A. Harriette Andreadis (Salzburg: University of Salzburg), . Midas, ed. Anne Begor Lancashire (Manchester: Manchester University Press), .



Plays and editions cited

Kyd 

The Spanish Tragedy, ed. J. R. Mulryne (London: A.&C. Black), .

Machin 

The Dumb Knight, in A Select Collection of Old English Plays, vol. , ed. Robert Dodsley, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt (London: Reeves and Turner), .

Markham 

The Dumb Knight, in A Select Collection of Old English Plays, vol. , ed. Robert Dodsley, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt (London: Reeves and Turner), .

Marlowe    

Tamburlaine the Great, ed. J. W. Harper (London: A.&C. Black), . Doctor Faustus, ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . Edward II, ed. Charles R. Forker (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . The Jew of Malta, ed. James R. Siemon (London: A.&C. Black), .

Marston      

Antonio and Mellida, ed. W. Reavely Gair (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . Antonio’s Revenge, ed. W. Reavely Gair (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . What You Will, ed. M. R. Woodhead (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press), . The Malcontent, ed. M. L. Wine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), . Sophonisba, ed. William Kemp (New York: Garland), . The Insatiate Countess, ed. Giorgio Melchiori (Manchester: Manchester University Press), .

Plays and editions cited



Mason 

The Turk, ed. Fernand Lagarde (Salzburg: University of Salzburg), .

Middleton          

The Phoenix, ed. John Bradbury Brooks (New York: Garland), . A Mad World, My Masters, ed. Standish Henning (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), . Michaelmas Term, ed. Richard Levin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), . The Family of Love, ed. Andrew Dillon, New York University Dissertation, . Your Five Gallants, ed. C. Lee Colegrove (New York: Garland), . No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s, ed. Lowell E. Johnson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), . The Roaring Girl, ed. Paul A. Mulholland ( Manchester: Manchester University Press), . A Fair Quarrel, ed. George R. Price (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), . The Witch, ed. Elizabeth Schafer (London: A.&C. Black), . The Widow, ed. Robert Trager Levine (Salzburg: University of Salzburg), .

Munday  

The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, ed. John Carney Meagher (New York: Garland), .  Sir John Oldcastle, ed. Jonathan Rittenhouse (New York: Garland), .

Peele  

The Old Wives Tale, ed. Frank S. Hook, in The Dramatic Works of George Peele, vol.  (New Haven: Yale University Press), . David and Bethsabe, ed. Elmer Blistein, in The Dramatic Works of George Peele, vol.  (New Haven: Yale University Press), .



Plays and editions cited

Porter 

The Two Angry Women of Abington, ed. Marianne Brish Evett (New York: Garland), .

Rowley (William)  

The Travels of Three English Brothers, ed. Anthony Parr, in Three Renaissance Travel Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . A Fair Quarrel, ed. George R. Price (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), .

Shakespeare              

The Comedy of Errors, ed. T. S. Dorsch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Ann Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Richard III, ed. Janis Lull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. Richard David (London: Methuen), . Titus Andronicus, ed. Alan Hughs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. R. A. Foakes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Merchant of Venice, ed. M. M. Mahood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Romeo and Juliet, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), .  Henry IV, ed. Herbert Weil and Judith Weil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Much Ado about Nothing, ed. F. H. Mares (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . As You Like It, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Henry V, ed. Andrew Gurr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins (London: Methuen), . Twelfth Night, ed. Elizabeth Story Donno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),.

Plays and editions cited         



Othello, ed. Norman Sanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Measure for Measure, ed. Brian Gibbons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Macbeth, ed. A. R. Braunmuller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Antony and Cleopatra, ed. David Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Pericles, ed. Doreen DelVelcchio and Antony Hammond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Timon of Athens, ed. Karl Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Cymbeline, ed. J. M. Nosworthy (London: Methuen), . The Winter’s Tale, ed. J. H. P. Pafford (London: Methuen), . The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode (London: Methuen), .

Tailor 

Hog Hath Lost His Pearl, in Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. , .

Tourneur 

The Atheist’s Tragedy, ed. Roma Gill and Brian Morris (London: Benn), .

Webster  

The White Devil, ed. Christina Luckyj (London: Benn), . The Duchess of Malfi, ed. Elizabeth M. Brennan (London: Benn), .

Wilkins  

The Travels of Three English Brothers, ed. Anthony Parr, in Three Renaissance Travel Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . Pericles, ed. F. D. Hoeniger ( London: Routledge), .



Plays and editions cited

Wilson   

The Three Ladies of London, ed. H. S. D. Mithal (New York: Garland), . The Cobbler’s Prophecy, Tudor Facsimile Texts, .  Sir John Oldcastle, ed. Jonathan Rittenhouse (New York: Garland), .

Yarington 

Two Lamentable Tragedies, Tudor Facsimile Texts, .

Works cited

Anon., Daiphantus, ed. Alexander B. Grossart (Manchester: Charles Simms), . Anon., “An Excellent Actor,” in The “Conceited Newes” Of Sir Thomas Overbury And His Friends: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Ninth Impression of  of Sir Thomas Overbury His Wife, ed. James E. Savage (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, . Anon., A Short Treatise of Stage Plays, London, . Anon., A Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge, ed. Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, . Adams, J. Q., “Thomas Heywood and How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad,” Englische Studien  (): –. Anderson, Norman, “Studies in the Elizabethan Domestic Tragedies, –,” University of Oregon, . Arnold, Judd, “The Double Plot in Volpone: A Note on Jonsonian Dramatic Structure,” Seventeenth-Century News  (): –. Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, trans. Jeffrey Henderson, in Three Plays by Aristophanes (New York: Routledge), . Baldwin, T. W., The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton: Princeton University Press), . Barber, C. L., Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press), . Barbour, Richmond, “ ‘When I Acted Young Antinous’: Boy Actors and the Erotics of Jonsonian Theater,” PMLA . (): ,–. Barish, Jonas, “The Double Plot in Volpone,” Modern Philology  (): –. The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press), . Baskervill, C. R., “Sources and Analogues of How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad,” PMLA  ():  –. Bednarz, Shakespeare and the Poets’ War (New York: Columbia University Press), . Bentley, G. E., The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (Oxford: Clarendon), . Berek, Peter, “Artifice and Realism in Lyly, Nashe, and Love’s Labor’s Lost,” Studies in English Literature . (): –. 



Works cited

Berger, Harry, Jr., Imaginary Audition: Shakespeare on Stage and Page (Berkeley: University of California Press), . Bevington, David, From Mankind to Marlowe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), . Bly, Mary, “Bawdy Puns and Lustful Virgins: The Legacy of Juliet’s Desire in Comedies of the Early s,” Shakespeare Survey  (): –. Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . Boehrer, Bruce, Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), . Booth, Stephen, “On the Value of Hamlet,” in Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama, ed. Norman Rabkin (New York: Columbia University Press), . King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy (New Haven: Yale University Press), . “Close Readings Without Readings,” in Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts, ed. Russ McDonald (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), . “Syntax as Rhetoric in Richard II,” Mosaic .  (): –. Precious Nonsense: The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson’s Epitaphs on his Children, and Twelfth Night (Berkeley: University of California Press), . Bowden, William R., “The Bed Trick, –: Its Mechanics, Ethics, and Effects,” Shakespeare Studies  (): –. Bradbrook, Muriel, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Bueler, Lois E., “The Structural Uses of Incest,” in Renaissance Drama  (): –. Butler, Samuel, Hudibras, ed. John Wilders (Oxford, Clarendon), . Cartwright, Kent, “The Confusions of Gallathea: John Lyly as Popular Dramatist,” Comparative Drama . (): –. Colley, John Scott, John Marston’s Theatrical Drama (Salzburg: Salzburg Studies in English Literature), . Cook, Ann Jennalie, The Privileged Playgoer in Shakespeare’s London (Princeton: Princeton University Press), . Desens, Marliss C., The Bed Trick in English Renaissance Drama (Newark: University of Delaware Press), . Dessen, Alan, “Night and Darkness on the Elizabethan Stage,” in Renaissance Papers (): –. Jonson’s Moral Comedy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), . Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Early Modern Interpreters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Dessen, Alan and Leslie Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Dollimore, Jonathan, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), .

Works cited



Doran, Madeline, Endeavors of Art (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), . Ellis, Herbert A., Shakespeare’s Lusty Punning in Love’s Labour’s Lost (The Hague: Mouton), . Ellis-Fermor, Una, The Jacobean Drama (London: Methuen), . Forker, Charles R., “ ‘A Little More Than Kin, and Less Than Kind’: Incest, Intimacy, Narcissism, and Identity in Elizabethan and Stuart Drama,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England  (): –. Freeburg, Victor, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama (New York: Columbia), . Freeman, Arthur, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon), . Fried, Debra, “Rhyme Puns,” in On Puns, ed. Jonathan Culler (Oxford: Blackwell), . Gair, Reavely, The Children of Paul’s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Gosson, Stephen, The School of Abuse, ed. Edward Arber (London: Alex Murray), . Greenblatt, Stephen, “The False Ending of Volpone,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology . (): –. Gruber, William, “Building a Scene: The Text and its Representation in The Atheist’s Tragedy,” Comparative Drama . (): –. Gurr, Andrew, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . The Shakespearean Stage – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Harbage, Alfred, Shakespeare’s Audience (New York: Columbia University Press), . Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York: Macmillan), . Hattaway, Michael, Elizabethan Popular Theatre (London: Routledge), . Hayashi, Tetsumaro, A Textual Study of Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso, with an Elizabethan Text (Muncie, IN: Ball State University Press), . Henke, James T., Renaissance Dramatic Bawdy (Salzburg: Salzburg Studies in English Literature), . Henslowe, Philip, Diary, ed. R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Heywood, Thomas, Apologie for Actors (London,). Hunter, G. K., John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), . I. G., A Refutation of the Apologie for Actors, ed. Richard H. Perkinson (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints), . Joseph, B. L., Elizabethan Acting (New York: Octagon), . Kemper, Susan C., “Dramaturgical Design in Lyly’s Gallathea,” Thoth . (): –. Lake, David, The Canon of Thomas Middleton’s Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), .



Works cited

Leggatt, Alexander, Jacobean Public Theatre (London: Routledge), . An Introduction to Renaissance Comedy (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . Levin, Richard, The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), . Litt, Dorothy E., “Unity of Theme in Volpone,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library  (): –. Lodge, Thomas, A Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays, ed. David Laing (London: Shakespeare Society), . Love, Genevieve, “ ‘As from the waste of Sophonisba’, or What’s Sexy about Stage Directions,” forthcoming in Renaissance Drama. Lucking, David, “ ‘Each word made true and good’: Narrativity in Hamlet,” Dalhousie Review . (): –. Maclutyre, Jean, “Production Resources at the Whitefriars Playhouse, –,” Early Modern Literary Studies : ():  –. Marchitell, Howard, “Desire and Domination in Volpone,” Studies in English Literature . (): –. McCabe, Richard A., Incest, Drama and Nature’s Law – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . McMillin, Scott and Sally-Beth MacLean, The Queen’s Men and their Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), . Milton, John, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler (London: Longman), . Northbrook, John, A Treatise against Dicing, Dauncing, Plays, and Interludes, with Other idle Pastimes, ed. J. P. Collier (London: Shakespeare Society), . Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), . Parker, Patricia, “Interpreting through Wordplay,” in Teaching with Shakespeare, ed. Bruce McIver and Ruth Stevenson (Newark: University of Delaware Press), . Shakespeare from the Margins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), . Partridge, Eric, Shakespeare’s Bawdy (New York: E. P. Dutton), . Pincombe, Michael, The Plays of John Lyly: Eros and Eliza (Manchester: Manchester University Press), . Powell, Jocelyn, “John Lyly and the Language of Play,” in Elizabethan Theatre (New York: St. Martin’s), . Prynne, Wlliam, Histrio-Mastix, London, . Rackin, Phyllis, “Androgyny, Mimesis, and the Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the English Renaissance Stage,” PMLA . (): –. Reynolds, George Fullmer, The Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theater (New York: Modern Language Association), . Ribner, Irving, “Greene’s Attack on Marlowe: Some Light on Alphonsus and Selimus,” Studies in Philology  (): –. Roberts, Josephine A., “Daiphantus (): a Jacobean Perspective on Hamlet’s Madness,” Library Chronicle . (): –.

Works cited



Sch¨ucking, Levin L., Character Problems in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: George G. Harrap, ). Scott, Michael, John Marston’s Plays: Theme, Structure, and Performance (London: Macmillan), . Shakespeare, William, Sonnets, ed. Stephen Booth (New Haven: Yale University Press), . Shapiro, Michael, Children of the Revels (New York: Columbia University Press), . Sidney, Philip, Astrophil and Stella, ed. William A. Ringler, Jr, in The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon), . A Defence of Poetry, ed. J. A. Van Dorsten (Oxford: Oxford University Press), . States, Bert, Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater (Berkeley: University of California Press), . Hamlet and the Concept of Character (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), . Stubbes, Philip, The Anatomie of Abuses, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall. (London: N. Trubner & Co.), –. Sturgess, Keith, Jacobean Private Theatre (London: Routledge), . Sweeney, John, “Volpone and the Theater of Self-Interest,” English Literary Renaissance . (): –. Taylor, Gary, Moment by Moment in Shakespeare (London: Macmillan), . Taylor, Gary, Paul Mulholland, and Macdonald P. Jackson, “Thomas Middleton, Lording Barry, and The Family of Love,” PBSA : (): –. Thompson, Elbert N. S., The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage (New York: Henry Holt), . Watson, Robert N., Ben Jonson’s Parodic Strategy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), . Weimann, Richard, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), . Wharton, T. F., The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston (Columbia, SC: Camden House), . Williams, Gordon, A Glossary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Language (London: Athlone), . Wixson, Christopher, “Cross-Dressing and John Lyly’s Gallathea,” Studies in English Literature . ():  –.

Index

Adams, J. Q. n Admiral’s Men n Alchemist, The , n, ,  –,  Alley, William  Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany n, –, , , ,  Alphonsus, King of Aragon ,  Amends for Ladies n,  Anderson, Norman n “An Excellent Actor”  antitheatrical tracts definitions of genre in – dialogue or dramatic form of – food metaphors in – lists in – repetition in – rhetorical methods of  – view of playgoers in –, – Antonio and Mellida , , , , –, ,  Antonio’s Revenge –, –, , , ,  Antony and Cleopatra ,  applause – Arden of Feversham , , , , n,  Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria  Armin, Robert –, –, , ,  Arnold, Judd  asides – and audience response –, , – comic vs. tragic ,  and editors –, –, – and equivocation – and genre  As You Like It , , , , ,  Atheist’s Tragedy, The , , , , n, , , –, n, ,  and editors – audiences, early modern – dual consciousness of , –, , – different kinds 

modern audiences, compared to – as playgoing public  study of, traditions in –, – Baldwin, T. W. n Barber, C. L. , n,  Barbour, Richmond – Barish, Jonas , –, – Barnes, Barnabe , ,  Barry, Lording , ,  Bartholomew Fair , ,  Baskerville, C. R. n Bate, Jonathan  Beaumont, Francis , , n, –, , , n, , , , n, –, –, , –, , , –, –, , –, , –, –, , –, –, – bed-trick n Berek, Peter n Berger, Harry, Jr.  Beuler, Lois E. – Bevington, David n, , ,  Blackfriars playhouse , , ,  Blind Beggar of Alexandria, The n,  Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, The –,  Blurt, Master-Constable , n,  Bly, Mary –, n, n Boas, Frederick S.  Boehrer, Bruce n, n Bonduca , –,  Booth, Stephen , n, n, , , , , , n, n, n Bowden, William R. n boy actors  in The Atheist’s Tragedy – dramaturgy of boy companies – in Sophonisba – Bradbrook, Muriel –, –, , – Brennan, Elizabeth – Brome, Richard 



Index Brooks, Harold n Bullen, A. H. edition of The Family of Love – edition of Sophonisba n Butler, Samuel Hudibras  Campaspe –,  Captain, The , n, n, –, , –, , –, –, –, –, –, , –, –,  Cartwright, Kent n, , n Catiline , ,  Chapman, George n, n, , n, –, , , –, ,  Chettle, Henry –, n, – Christian Turned Turk, A ,  Cobbler’s Prophecy, The n,  Colley, John Scott n comedy – conversion narratives in –,  humiliation in –,  motivation in – resolution in –, –, , – typical characters in – Comedy of Errors, The ,  Cook, Ann Jennalie , – Cooke, John n Coxcomb, The ,  Craik, T. W.  Curtain theatre n Cymbeline , –, –, , ,  Cynthia’s Revels –,  Daborne, Robert ,  Daiphantus  Daniel, Carter – darkness on stage – in tragedy vs. comedy ,  and use of stage – David and Bethsabe ,  Day, John n, –,  Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, The n,  Dekker, Thomas , , , , , , –, , , n,  Desens, Marliss C. n Dessen, Alan , n, n, n,  – Devil is an Ass, The , ,  Devil’s Charter, The , ,  disguise – and asides  and genre  potential ridiculousness of  Doctor Faustus , , –, , , 



A-text  B-text ,  date of n Dollimore, Jonathan  Doran, Madeline –,  Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, The n, ,  dramaturgy, early modern – character in  differences from modern n doubling –, ,  public vs. private theatres  self-reflexivity of ,  Drayton, Michael –,  Duchess of Malfi, The , n, n, –, , , –,  Dumb Knight, The , n,  Dyce, Alexander edition of The Family of Love – echo scenes – and genre  potential clumsiness of – as wish-fulfillment in plays  Edmund Ironside , , ,  Edward II , ,  Edward IV, Part One ,  Edward IV, Part Two , , n, n,  Edwards, Philip –, – Ellis, Herbert A.  Ellis-Fermor, Una , n, n, –, , n,  Englishmen for My Money , , n, –,  Epicoene n, n, , , ,  Euripides Andromeda  Medea  exposition – and audience response  – as beginning – choric – in death of battle scenes – dialogue vs. soliloquy – and editors  –,  and genre  and minor characters – failure, potential for –,  and asides –, –,  –, – in comedy , , –, – and disguise plots – and exposition –,  – and theatrical success – in tragedy –



Index

Fair Maid of Bristow, The n Fair Maid of the Exchange, The n,  Fair Maid of the West, The, Part One ,  Fair Quarrel, A –, , ,  Faithful Friends, The n,  Faithful Shepherdess, The , ,  Family of Love, The –, , , ,  authorship n Famous History of Friar Bacon, The (prose source for Greene) n Field, Nathaniel ,  Finkelpearl, Philip n Fiorentino, Ser Giovanni Il Pecorone (source for Merchant of Venice)  Fletcher, John , , –, n, , , n, n, , , , , , –, , n, –, , –, –, , , , –, , , –, –, , –, , –, –, , –, –, , –,  Ford, John ,  Forker, Charles R. n Fortune theatre n Four Prentices of London, The , , –, ,  Fowler, Richard  Freeman, Arthur, , ,  Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay n, –, –, , , ,  Fried, Debra , ,  Gair, W. Reavely n, n, n Gallathea , , , , –, ,  and editors – Game at Chess, A  genre ,  audience experience of ,  – city comedy –, , – and convention  – history  – tragicomedy  – Gentleman Usher, The , n, –, , ,  Gill, Roma – Globe theatre , , ,  Golden Age, The , , ,  Gorboduc  Gosson, Stephen ,  Plays Confuted in Five Actions  Schoole of Abuse, The , , , ,  Greenblatt, Stephen , – Greene, Robert n, –, –, , , , , , , –, , , , ,  Greene’s Tu Quoque n

Grim, the Collier of Croyden n,  Gruber, William – Gurr, Andrew , , –, n, , n, n, n Hamlet , , –, –, , –, , , , , , , ,  –,  Harbage, Alfred –, , – Hardy, Thomas Human Shows; Far Phantasies n Hathaway, Richard –,  Hattaway, Michael n, n Haughton, William , n, , n, –, –, n,  Hayashi, Tetsumaro n Henke, James T. n Henry IV, Part One , –,  Henry V n,  Henslowe, Philip Diary , n, n Hereford, C. H. – Heywood, Thomas , , n, , , , , , , , , , –, , , –, n,  Apologie for Actors ,  – Hibbard, G. R. – Hoeniger, F. D. n Hog Hath Lost His Pearl , , ,  How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad , , , n, –, , , , –, , , –, , , , ,  authorship n Hubler, Edward n Humorous Day’s Mirth, An ,  Hunter, G. K. –,  If this be not a Good Play, the Devil is In’t ,  If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part Two , ,  I. G. Refutation of the Apologie for Actors –, , ,  incest – in The Captain – in comedy or tragicomedy  and disguise plots – and exposition  function in dramatic narratives – in Gallathea , – and genre  as structural problem – Insatiate Countess, The  , , , n, –, , ,  Iron Age, The, Part Two , , –, 

Index Jackson, MacDonald P. n Jenkins, Harold – Jew of Malta, The n,  Johnson, Lowell n Johnson, Samuel  Jonson, Ben , , n, , , , , –, , , –, , ,  –, –, – food metaphors in n hostility toward audiences  influence on Marston n Joseph, B. L.  Jovial Crew, A  Kemp, William n Kemper, Susan C. n King and No King, A , n, ,  King Lear ,  King Leir , n,  King’s Men  Knack to Know an Honest Man, A –, ,  Knack to Know a Knave, A –, , ,  Kyd, Thomas , , , –, , , , n, ,  Lady of Pleasure, The  Lake, David n Lancashire, Anne –,  laughter  and asides  and audience response –,  – in The Captain – in Jonson  – and puns – Leggatt, Alexander n, – Levin, Richard , – Life and Death of Jack Straw, The ,  Lily, William Brevissima Institutio  Litt, Dorothy E.  Livy source for Sophonisba  Locrine n, ,  Lodge, Thomas , , , , , ,  Reply to Stephen Gosson’s Schoole of Abuse  –,  Look About You ,  Looking Glass for London and England, A , , , ,  Love, Genevieve  Love’s Labour’s Lost , n,  Love’s Pilgrimage , –, ,  Lucas, F. L. n,  Lucking, David 



Lyly, John , , , –, , , –, –, n, ,  Macbeth , , , , n, ,  Machin, Lewis , n,  MacIntyre, Jean n, n Maclean, Sally-Beth n,  Mad World, My Masters, A –, –,  Maid’s Metamorphosis, The n, –,  Maid’s Tragedy, The –, ,  Malcontent, The , , , ,  Marchitell, Howard – Markham, Gervase , n,  Marlowe, Christopher , –, n, ,  , , , , –, , –, ,  Marston, John , , , , n, –, , –, , , , , , –, , , –, , , ,  anxiety about print  and boy actors – Mason, John n,  Maxwell, J. C.  May Day –,  McCabe, Richard A. n McMillin, Scott n, , n Measure for Measure , ,  Merchant of Venice, The –, , , , –, –, –,  Meres, Francis Palladis Tamia  Merry Devil of Edmonton, The , ,  Michaelmas Term , n, ,  Midas ,  Middleton, Thomas , , , –, , n, , –, , , , , –, –, n, –, –, , –, , , n, –,  Midsummer Night’s Dream, A , , , ,  More Dissemblers Besides Women  Morris, Brian – Mother Bombie , –,  Mucedorus , ,  Much Ado about Nothing n,  Mulholland, Paul n Munday, Anthony –, n,  New Inn, The n, n,  Night Walker, The , , , , ,  Northbrooke, John Treatise against Dicing, dauncing, Plays, and Interludes , , , , , ,  Nosworthy, J. M. n,  No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s –, , n, , –, –, –, 

 Old Fortunatus , , ,  Old Wives Tale, The , ,  Orlando Furioso –, ,  Othello , –, , , , –, , , , –, ,  Ovid Metamorphoses (source for Gallathea)  Parker, Patricia , n, – Parker, R. B.  Partridge, Eric n Patient Grissil –, n, ,  Paul’s playhouse n, n, n Peele, George , , ,  Pericles –, ,  Philaster ,  Phoenix, The –, , ,  physical space defined, – and asides , –,  and comedy  and echo scenes  and exposition ,  imagined, different kinds  and tragedy –, – Pincombe, Michael , ,  Poetaster ,  Porter, Henry n, , , , –,  Powell, Jocelyn  Prince Charles’s Men n Prynne, William  Histrio-Mastix , , , , , ,  puns and wordplay – and audience response –, – and genre  hidden or potential –, – sexual – surface-level or overt – Queen’s Men  Rackin, Phyllis n Ram Alley , ,  Rape of Lucrece (Heywood) ,  Red Bull theatre ,  Redfern, Walter  repertory system  Revenger’s Tragedy, The n, –, , , , n, , ,  –, –, n, , –, , , , –,  Reynolds, George Fullmer n, n, n, n, – Ribner, Irving n, – Richard III , 

Index Roaring Girl, The , , , n, , , ,  Roberts, Josephine A. n Romeo and Juliet n, ,  Rowley, William –, n, n,  Schucking, Levin L. – Scornful Lady, The , ,  Scott, Michael n Scott, Reginald Discoverie of Witchcraft n Scragg, Leah – Second Maiden’s Tragedy, The n, ,  Sejanus , , ,  Selimus –,  Seneca  Shakespeare, William , , , –, , , , –, n, –, , , , –, , , , , –, –, n, –, , n , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , –, , , , , , –, , , –, , , –, – Sonnets  Shirley, James  Short Treatise of Stage Plays, A ,  Sidney, Sir Philip Defence of Poetry n,  Astrophil and Stella n Silver Age, The , ,  Simpson, Percy – Sir John Oldcastle, Part One –, , , ,  Sir Thomas Wyatt ,  Soliman and Perseda , , , –, , , , , , , , , ,  Sophocles Antigone  Sophonisba , , , –, , , , , ,  Spanish Tragedy, The , , , , , –, , , , n,  stage violence – hyperbole of – logic of n and stage technology – in tragedy – and use of props – States, Bert , , ,  Stubbes, Philip  Anatomie of Abuses , , , ,  Sturgess, Keith , n, n,  Sweeney, John 

Index Tailor, Robert , , ,  Tamburlaine the Great, Part One , , , –, , –,  in Henslowe’s Diary n Tamburlaine the Great, Part Two ,  Taming of A Shrew, The , n,  Taming of the Shrew, The , , n, n, ,  Tatham, John Knavery in all Trades n Taylor, Gary , n Tempest, The , , ,  theatrical space defined  and asides , –,  and comedy  and echo scenes  and exposition ,  and puns ,  and tragedy  Thomas Lord Cromwell , , ,  Thompson, Elbert N. S. –,  Thomson, Leslie n Three Ladies of London, The n, ,  Three Lords of London, The  Timon of Athens –,  ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore ,  Titus Andronicus , –, , , , , –, , ,  Tourneur, Cyril , , , , n, , , –, n, ,  tragedy and acting – allegorical figures in – and audience response , , , – and morality drama –,  Travels of Three English Brothers, The n, , ,  Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge, A ,  Trial of Chivalry, The –,  Troilus and Cressida , – Troublesome Reign of John, King of England, The n,  True Tragedy of Richard III, The  Turk, The n,  Twelfth Night , , , , , –, , , 



Two Angry Women of Abington, The n, , , , , –, ,  Two Lamentable Tragedies , , , ,  Two Maids of More-Clacke, The –, –, , ,  ur-Hamlet  Volpone –, ,  Warner, Deborah production of Titus Andronicus  Warning for Fair Women, A , n, –, , , ,  Wars of Cyrus, The ,  Watson, Robert N. n Weakest Goeth to the Wall, The n, ,  Webster, John , n, –, , , –, ,  hostility toward audiences  Weimann, Robert , n, –,  Wharton, T. F. n, n What You Will ,  White Devil, The , , n,  Whitefriars playhouse , n, n Widow, The , , –, , ,  Wilkins, George –, n,  Williams, Gordon n Wilson, Robert n, –, n, ,  Winter’s Tale, The , , , , , ,  Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, The , n, –, –, ,  Witch, The n, n,  Wixson, Christopher n Woman Hater, The ,  Woman is a Weathercock, A ,  Woman Killed with Kindness, A , , , , , n,  Woman’s Prize, The n, n, n, ,  Women Beware Women n Wounds of Civil War, The , , ,  Yarington, Robert , n, n, , , ,  Yorkshire Tragedy, A ,  Your Five Gallants , 