Week 5 notes - The Alchemist- Ben Jonson PDF

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The Alchemist- Ben Jonson
City Culture and Comedy
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Early Modern Literature Week 5 The Alchemist- Ben Jonson City Culture and Comedy -

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City comedies are fast paced, not like typical Shakespearean plays. Introducing early modern London Theatre and the London Liberties Sex in the City Privacy/public life The Jacobean City Comedy o Conventions and feature o Example: The Alchemist by Ben Jonson Metonymy- substituting one word for something else James I (1603) Jacobean came afterwards Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

London divided into three The City - The ancient city, mostly bounded by the city walls - Economic centre - Trade - Schools - St Pauls cathedral, Tower of London Westminster - Government - Fashion - Patronage Southwark (Bankside) - Outside the city walls - Theatres by the late 16th century - Brothels- legal stews - Popular entertainments “That city maps were understood as representational artefacts capable of promoting certain readings of the city is suggested by the investments in particular conceptions of the city which close study can reveal.” - Maps are knowledge of power - We see a map as a means of finding our way - When you map somewhere, you are declaring your dominion over it. - James I was very interested in maps and ‘town planning.’ Population and Space By 1610, maps were presenting London as far more urban and denser. Showing the building up of the space.

Huge growth in early modern population: 1530- 50,000 people 1550- 120,000 1600- 200,000 1660- 300,000 Extremely fast growth in population, which means fast building upwards, creating a claustrophobic space. All trade is coming up the Thames and creating a wealth that people want to come and get a piece of. Big surge from that creates the flooding of people. London - Highly (over?) populated - Buildings in close proximity - Thin walls - Holes and gaps - Houses and rooms obscured from the street - Loud- these plays tend to reflect this with a lot of noise In urban settings onstage, frequent use is made of eavesdropping, spying. Dramatic irony of proximity (e.g. back room in the Alchemist) Claustrophobia of small space “Now at London the houses of Citizens are very narrow in the front towards the street, but are built five or six roofs high, commonly of timber and clay with plaster, and are very neat and commodious within.” Fynes Moryson 1616 - This is good for comedy because you have all these hidden spaces that become fantasy for the con artists. “London regarded plays with suspicion, players as ‘double-dealing ambodexters’ and their audience as imminent and unruly threat.” Theatres are very much part of a peripheral, marginal entertainment that is outside the general accepted norms. The court doesn’t want to contain them, they want to have fun. The theatres were near other forms of entertainment such as bear baiting and gambling. As theatres come into the city and start to show instead of Shakespeare comedies, the Jacobean comedies are set in London. Very clear that they may be making fun of real people. Could be describing the very streets you are in- makes it right for satire and comedies that play on the realities outside. “Popular drama in England emerged as a cultural institution only by materially embodying that contradiction, dislocating itself from the strict confines of the existing social order and taking up a place on the margins of society, in the liberties located outside the city walls.” Sex and the City- London Prostitution Jacobean city comedy- whore plot. Generally, has a prostitute or some reference to prostitution. Jean E Howard (2007) “Rather than being confided to one or two areas, places of prostitution permeated the urban landscape. Nonetheless, suburban regions and liberties

became especially associated with prostitution, vice and vagrancy in the popular imagination.” - There was quite a lot of power in the flesh trade - There were women with power and influence; women not only judged by their reputational currency but in London there is a whole kind of different commerce around trade in that women can have quite a lot of power. - Common whores- lived and worked in licensed and regulated brothels or ‘stews’ - Private whores- worked independently of licensed brothers and in a variety of places and circumstances. - Courtesan- highly paid, often only with one or two clients. They had some power and influence and could be quite wealthy. 1603 James I ascend to the throne - One of his first actions was to order the demolition of suburban tenements - Ostensibly, this was to stop the spread of the Plague - However, this action as much or more to do with a ‘cleaning up’ of the city - 1603-06: Many city comedies feature prostitutes and ‘whore plots.’ - 1604: James I’s action is referenced in Shakespeare’s first play as ‘King’s Man’: Measure for Measure Jacobean City Comedy Gibbons (1980) defined the name of Jacobean City Comedy. - By 1610 Jonson could probably feel some paternal pride at the establishment of a new dramatic genre, city comedy. The playwrights had self-consciously, sometimes aggressively, forged the new form. - Distinguished from other kids of Jacobean comedy by their critical and satiric design in their urban settings, their exclusion of material appropriate or romance. Defining Jacobean city comedy: some common features - Urban setting (usually London) - Satirical humour - Bawdy subject matter and humour including whore plots - Commerce, exchange and finance - Intricate plots based on misdirection and disguise - Social/political comment - Realism Realism- what can we mean by this? As critical realists, Jonson and Middleton seek to shape their character and incident in order to bring alive the underlying social and moral issues through the specific and local experience. (Gibbon) Real in terms of specific locations, contemporary references, lack of magical/fantastic plots/characters. - A reality that was recognisable to the audience. Jonson: ‘the first English dramatist to discover the structural power of claustrophobia, his art was unlocked by the physical conditions for which he wrote.’ (Martin Butler, 2000)

Seminar Notes - Dramatists that wrote for the early modern stage came from different social backgrounds to say the poets of the time. Very much working class. - Regarded in court, wrote Courtly entertainments for James I and his wife. Plugged into the courtly extravagance of James I’s court, whereas Shakespeare never was. - Jonson believed that comedy is there of reform people, it had a moral value. Close Reading of the Prologue Fortune, that favours fools, these two short hours, We wish away, both for your sakes and ours, Judging spectators; and desire, in place, To the author justice, to ourselves but grace. Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known, No country's mirth is better than our own: No clime breeds better matter for your whore, Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more, Whose manners, now call'd humours, feed the stage; And which have still been subject for the rage Or spleen of comic writers. Though this pen Did never aim to grieve, but better men; Howe'er the age he lives in doth endure The vices that she breeds, above their cure. But when the wholesome remedies are sweet, And in their working gain and profit meet, He hopes to find no spirit so much diseased, But will with such fair correctives be pleased: For here he doth not fear who can apply. If there be any that will sit so nigh Unto the stream, to look what it doth run, They shall find things, they'd think or wish were done; They are so natural follies, but so shewn, As even the doers may see, and yet not own.

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Makes reference to how long the play is (two short hours) The idea a play only takes two hours to perform. Real evidence that the plays as performed in the early modern period were only two hours. Directly referencing London, and the audience of London. Notion of complicity with the audience. Fellow feeling for the audience that what you see on the stage is about the now. Notion of the judging spectator equalises the audience’s response with the writer and the actors and the content of the paly. Gives the audience authority. ‘no country’s mirth is better than our own’ using it as a pun to show that we can laugh at people. Objects of satire in the city. ‘now called humours,’ notion relating to how people are made up of humours e.g moist, dry etc. Make a caricature of a kind of person. ‘whore, bawd, squite, impostor.’ Noting the social change that is happening in these more urban areas of the city....