Abstract
This chapter explores how Ben Jonson uses the counterfeit-disability tradition as a tool for literary and social critique. Jonson stages dissembled disability twice in Bartholomew Fair (1614), only to send it up—and, by extension, mock playwrights like John Marston who employed it. By transporting the counterfeit-disability trope from tragedy to comedy, Jonson makes audience reaction, rather than theatrical action, the real source of spectacle in Bartholomew Fair. This generic translation insists on counterfeit disability’s flaws as both a stage trope and an instrument of audience instruction. Yet, while Jonson critiques the counterfeit-disability tradition, this chapter also illustrates how he uses it both to criticize the systems of power that sought to define disability in early modern England and, simultaneously, to suggest that disability was difficult to detect, always potentially false, and undeserving of charity.
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Notes
- 1.
Translation mine. Thanks to Anne Bulliung, my colleague at Luther College, for her assistance with the translation.
- 2.
For an extended reading of Antonio’s Revenge, including the play’s prologue, see Chap. 2, “Act the Fool: Antonio’s Revenge and the Conventions of the Counterfeit-Disability Tradition.”
- 3.
Horace, The Epistles of Horace, 1st ed., ed. and trans. David Ferry (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 195–6.
- 4.
Ben Jonson, “BartholomewFair,” in English Renaissance Drama, ed. David Bevington (New York: Norton, 2002), ll. 126–7. All subsequent quotations from this text will appear parenthetically by act, scene, and line number. Many critics interpret Jonson’s reference to “servant-monsters” here as a jab at Shakespeare’sCaliban, which it certainly may be, but Bartholomew Fair’s reputation as a venue for the display of human oddities—as Paul Semonin describes it, “a sort of mecca for monsters”—suggests that audiences would have expected such spectacles because of the play’s setting, rather than simply their popularity in romances. For more on this, see Semonin, “Monsters in the Marketplace: Human Oddities in Early Modern England,” in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 69–81.
- 5.
There are characters in Bartholomew Fair who seem to have implied, if not overt, physical disabilities: Joan Trash, for instance, describes herself as “a little crooked o’ my body” (2.2.25–6); Ursula’s assistant is named Mooncalf, a word that was regularly used to describe monstrous births, and she calls him a “changeling,” another word used to signal early modern disability (2.2.69). Even Ursula herself, the “pig-woman” of the fair, is linked to physical difference: “Pig-women”—meaning woman-pig hybrids, rather than women who sell pork—were famously displayed in the sideshows of Bartholomew Fair; in reality, these “monsters” were shaved, sedated bears. Ursula’s name (meaning “she-bear”) puns at this connection. The fact that these characters are the closest Jonson gets to “monsters” may add to his project of subverting audience expectations.
- 6.
The term “Poetomachia” was first used by Thomas Dekker in his introduction to Satiromastix (1602) to describe the literary conflict that had “lately commenc’d between Horace the second [Jonson], and a band of leane-witted poetasters [Marston and co.].” Satiromastix, in Materialien zur Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas [Materials for the Study of Old English Drama], vol. 20, ed. Hans Scherer (Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1907), ll. 8–9.
- 7.
For a discussion of the dating of these plays, see James P. Bednarz, “Marston’s Subversion of Shakespeare and Jonson: Histriomastix and the War of the Theaters,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 6 (1993): 103–28.
- 8.
In Poetaster, Horace, a barely disguised version of the author himself, forces Crispinus, Marston’s stand-in, to disgorge a series of words and phrases, over half of which are taken directly from Antonio’s Revenge, which Jonson/Horace criticizes for being pretentious and overwrought. See James P. Bednarz, “Writing and Revenge: John Marston’s Histriomastix,” Comparative Drama 36, no. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 21–51.
- 9.
John Marston, “The Malcontent,” in English Renaissance Drama, ed. David Bevington (New York: Norton, 2002), 550.
- 10.
E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 254–6.
- 11.
Joshua Scodel, The English Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict from Jonson to Wordsworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 57.
- 12.
Rebecca Kate Yearling differs, arguing that Marston actually won the Poetomachia because Jonson eventually came to adopt many of Marston’s attitudes and approaches to theater and could not have accomplished his own artistic feats without Marston. Ben Jonson, John Marston, and Early Modern Drama: Satire and Audience (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 159–60.
- 13.
Gregory Chaplin, “‘Divided Amongst Themselves’: Collaboration and Anxiety in Jonson’s Volpone,” English Literary History 69, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 57–81. The Poetomachia itself, although not so formal in its construction as their co-authored plays, is nevertheless a cooperative creation between Marston and Jonson that bears many of the same marks as their stage-bound collaborations.
- 14.
C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, ed., Ben Jonson, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), 140, 138.
- 15.
Jay Simons also reads BartholomewFair as a vestige of the Poetomachia in its characterization of the emblems of satire and satirists; see “Stinging, Barking, Biting, Purging: Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair and the Debate on Satire in the Poetomachia,” Ben Jonson Journal 20, no. 1 (2013): 20–37. Charles Cathcart argues that the conflicts of the Marston/Jonson rivalry are evident throughout Marston’s later plays, including those not usually identified as part of the Poetomachia, suggesting that the War of the Theaters also endured for Marston longer than has previously been asserted. See Marston, Rivalry, Rapprochement, and Jonson (New York: Ashgate, 2008).
- 16.
For more on Overdo’s connection to early modern figures of authority, see Debora K. Shuger, “Hypocrites and Puppets in Bartholomew Fair,” Modern Philology 82, no. 1 (August 1984): 70–3. For a reading of Overdo as a parody of Renaissance Humanism, see Ian McAdam, “The Puritan Dialectic of Law and Grace in Bartholomew Fair,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 46, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 415–33, and Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, “‘I Do Not Know My Selfe’: The Topography and Politics of Self-Knowledge in Ben Jonson’sBartholomew Fair,” in Textures of Renaissance Knowledge, ed. Philippa Berry and Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 177–98.
- 17.
Enid Welsford discusses fools’ keepers in The Fool: His Social and Literary History (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1996), 120.
- 18.
Peter Rushton, “Lunatics and Idiots: Mental Disability, the Community, and the Poor Law in North-East England,” Medical History 32, no. 1 (February 1988): 38–9.
- 19.
See H. F. Lippincott, “King Lear and the Fools of Robert Armin,” Shakespeare Quarterly 26, no. 3 (Summer 1975): 245.
- 20.
However, as Paul L. Faber suggests, this traditionally humble garb might be “comically splendid”; see “Overdo’s Mad Moniker: ‘Arthur of Bradley’ in Jonson’sBartholomewFair,” Ben Jonson Journal 20, no. 1 (May 2013): 131.
- 21.
Contrasting the confusion of costumes here confirms Cokes’s identification as a natural fool, since if Overdo ought to be dressed as a gentleman, then Cokes ought to be dressed in the “idiot’s robe.” At the same time, however, this contrast facilitates the play’s unique (and subtle) rehabilitation of the Cokes character, since, if Overdo’s disguise reveals something inherently genuine about him, then, conversely, the play seems to suggest that Cokes’s gentleman’s dress reveals something genuine about him. Although the play relishes his misapprehensions and discomfortingly mocks him because of his mental limitations, it also reserves for Cokes a certain measure of respect; he is, after all, one of the only characters in the play not morally corrupt or compromised in some way, and his inappropriate dress paradoxically recalls that distinction.
- 22.
Lorna Hutson, “Imagining Justice: Kantorowicz and Shakespeare,” Representations 160, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 134.
- 23.
For the legal statue that affirmed the centrality of local Overseers under Elizabeth, see An Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds, and for the Relief of the Poor and Impotent (14 Eliz. I c. 5). Handbooks were published to assist such magistrates in their processes of discernment, providing fascinating insight into how local officials evaluated and assisted persons with disabilities. See, for example, An Ease for Oversseersof the Poore (London, 1601); Michael Dalton, The Countrey Justice (London, 1618). While previous critics have discussed the ironic significance of Overdo’s judicial role—significantly, Andrew Brown, who considers his position as Justice of the Peace, Hristomir A. Stanev, who identifies him as an Overseer of the Poor, and Linda Woodbridge, who reads Overdo as a parody of rogue literature’s undercover authorial figures—none have identified the way disability creates an ironic connection between his disguise and his position. See Andrew Brown, “Theatre of Judgment: Space, Spectators, and the Epistemology of Law in BartholomewFair,” Early Theatre 15, no. 2 (July 2012): 154–67;, Sensory Experience and the Metropolis on the Jacobean Stage (1603–1625) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 112; and Linda Woodbridge, “Imposters, Monsters, and Spies: What Rogue Literature Can Tell us about Early Modern Subjectivity,” Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 9 (January 2002): 4.1–11.
- 24.
See, for example, G. K. Hunter, “English Folly and Italian Vice: The Moral Landscape of John Marston,” in Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies, No. 1, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris (London: Arnold, 1960), 85–111; and David J. Houser, “Purging the Commonwealth: Marston’s Disguised Dukes and A Knack to Know a Knave,” PMLA 89, no. 5 (October 1974): 993–1006.
- 25.
David McPherson provides a detailed reading of Overdo as a parody of the disguised-magistrate motif in “The Origins of Overdo: A Study in Jonsonian Invention,” Modern Language Quarterly 37, no. 3 (September 1976): 221–33. This is confirmed by Kevin A. Quarmby, who reads Overdo’s disguised-magistrate parody as facilitating Jonson’s critique of a specific historical figure, namely Sir Thomas Myddleton, Lord Mayor of London, 1613–14. See The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 206–13.
- 26.
“enormity, n.” OED Online. December 2016. Oxford University Press, accessed March 17, 2017, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/62536?redirectedFrom=enormity#eid.
- 27.
For more on Jonson’s politics and a thoughtful reading of them in BartholomewFair, see Jeanette Ferreira-Ross, “Religion and the Law in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 18, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 45–66.
- 28.
Critics regularly read Bartholomew Fair as a (limited) celebration of disorder and excess. For one indicative example, see W. David Kay, “Bartholomew Fair: Ben Jonson in Praise of Folly,” English Literary Renaissance 6, no. 2 (Spring 1976): 299–316. This possibility is seemingly affirmed by the fair’s origins in foolish revelry: St. Bartholomew’s Priory and Hospital—as well as the fair held on their grounds—were founded through the bequest of Rahere, the fool employed by Henry I in the twelfth century.
- 29.
George E. Rowe states, “Of all the major writers of the English Renaissance, Jonson was the most explicitly concerned with the accurate interpretation of his works, a concern which led him, inevitably, to a concern (almost an obsession) with audience.” “Ben Jonson’s Quarrel with Audience and its Renaissance Context,” Studies in Philology 81, no. 4 (Autumn 1984): 447.
- 30.
Umphrey Lee has suggested that Bartholomew Fair is a parody of another play within the counterfeit-disability tradition, Henry Chettle and John Day’s The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green. Although his character-specific connections are not fully convincing, Lee is correct in his identification of Jonson’s awareness of—and disdain for—the use of dissembling disability. See “Bartholomew Fair and the Popular Dramatic Tradition,” Louisburg College Journal of Arts and Sciences 1 (June 1967): 6–16.
- 31.
Translation from Bevington edition.
- 32.
The punishment of Overdo ironically maintains the criminal associations of early modern disability; Overdo is automatically suspected because of his “disability,” and, indeed, he is guilty, but of counterfeiting, not thievery.
- 33.
This ballad is included in N. D.’s An Antidote against Melancholy Made Up in Pills, Compounded of Witty Ballads, Jovial Songs and Merry Catches (London, 1661).
- 34.
Both Ursula (2.5.50) and Wasp (2.6.18) mention Overdo’s guarded coat.
- 35.
This reference affirms Linda Woodbridge’s reading of Overdo as a parody of rogue literature’s authorial figures (see Woodbridge, “Imposters, Monsters, and Spies,” 4.3). She also perceptively points out that Harman himself was guilty of (literary) counterfeit disability. He begins A Caveat by stating that his observation of rogues and vagrants was occasioned by a long-term illness that confined him to his country estate, but, throughout the text, Harman describes himself participating in all kinds of taxing activities that could have only been the result of good health. Read more on this in Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 59.
- 36.
For more on visual acuity and (mis)judgment inBartholomew Fair, see Brown, “Theatre of Judgment,” 154–67.
- 37.
Benjamin Heller’s study of historic fair-going suggests that Quarlous’s willingness to fully engage with his social inferiors might have been seen as inevitable, rather than intentional, since early modern people seem to have regarded fairs (especially Bartholomew Fair) as a gathering where “social distinctions [were] impossible to maintain.” “The ‘Mene Peuple’ and the Polite Spectator: The Individual in the Crowd at Eighteenth-Century London Fairs,” Past & Present 208, no. 1 (August 2010): 131–57.
- 38.
Geoffery Aggeler identifies these connections to Hall and Seneca, but reads them very differently, interpreting Justice Overdo as demonstrating the impossibility of Seneca and Hall’s ideal passionless magistrate. I agree inasmuch as I see the play as critical of rigid categorization, but I interpret it as simultaneously relentlessly anti-charity. See “Ben Jonson’s Justice Overdo and Joseph Hall’s Good Magistrate,” English Studies 76, no. 5 (September 1995): 434–42.
- 39.
Leo Salingar, “Jacobean Playwrights and ‘Judicious’ Spectators,” Renaissance Drama 22 (1991): 209–34, 226.
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Row-Heyveld, L. (2018). Double Dissimulation: Counterfeit Disability in Bartholomew Fair. In: Dissembling Disability in Early Modern English Drama. Literary Disability Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92135-8_3
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