the pattern of saturnalian comedy: the social …€¦ · and the alchemist, it is difficult to...

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THE PATTERN OF SATURNALIAN COMEDY: THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF BARTHOLOMEW FAIR YUKO oueHI Over centuries, Bartholomew Fair, the culmination of Ben Jonson's Satiric genius, has both bewitched and troubled critics with its abounding energy and verisimilitude and its seeming lack of coherent message. Using one of the most famous London events - wkich was held annually on August 24th (for three days) - as the background, the dramatist succeeds in vividly depicting the earthly hubbub created by the clamorous Londoners. The fair, as Herford and Simpson point out, "is indeed the true subject of the play, the salient, obsessive, uncircumventable, ubiquitous fact to which all the bewildering multiplicity of persons and interests have relation." 1 This construction of the play along the activities of the Fair, however, renders its overall scheme more difficult to comprehend. In consequence of the fluid setting which permits the visitors of the F air to move around from booth to booth (not to mention their incessant entering and leaving of the stage), it becomes impossible for the audience to find the simple clear story-line to which they can cling to the end. Perhaps it is this seeming lack of one coherent plot that draws a certain kind of criticism on Bartholomew Fair that it is episodic in nature and less structurally organized compared to Jonson's earlier comedies like Volpone and The Alchemist. But as Freda L. Townsend points out, the play does not suffer at all from this lack of well-defined unity of plot, since "Jonson's immense constructive skill is here fully employed - not in the manipulation of plot, but in manipulation without it." 2 What we should look for in the play, then, for the full understanding of its structural organization is not a set of well-connected [27J

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Page 1: THE PATTERN OF SATURNALIAN COMEDY: THE SOCIAL …€¦ · and The Alchemist, it is difficult to comprehend and appreciate its real strategic scheme. Let us discuss for a moment the

THE PATTERN OF SATURNALIAN COMEDY:

THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF BARTHOLOMEW FAIR

YUKO oueHI

Over centuries, Bartholomew Fair, the culmination of Ben Jonson's Satiric

genius, has both bewitched and troubled critics with its abounding energy

and verisimilitude and its seeming lack of coherent message. Using one of the

most famous London events - wkich was held annually on August 24th (for

three days) - as the background, the dramatist succeeds in vividly depicting

the earthly hubbub created by the clamorous Londoners. The fair, as Herford

and Simpson point out, "is indeed the true subject of the play, the salient,

obsessive, uncircumventable, ubiquitous fact to which all the bewildering

multiplicity of persons and interests have relation." 1

This construction of the play along the activities of the Fair, however,

renders its overall scheme more difficult to comprehend. In consequence of

the fluid setting which permits the visitors of the F air to move around from

booth to booth (not to mention their incessant entering and leaving of the

stage), it becomes impossible for the audience to find the simple clear

story-line to which they can cling to the end. Perhaps it is this seeming lack

of one coherent plot that draws a certain kind of criticism on Bartholomew

Fair that it is episodic in nature and less structurally organized compared to

Jonson's earlier comedies like Volpone and The Alchemist. But as Freda L.

Townsend points out, the play does not suffer at all from this lack of

well-defined unity of plot, since "Jonson's immense constructive skill is here

fully employed - not in the manipulation of plot, but in manipulation

without it." 2 What we should look for in the play, then, for the full

understanding of its structural organization is not a set of well-connected

[27J

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events but the overall flow of the synchronized and coordinated movement

and desires of the characters. Only through this kind of detached analysis

and examination of the dynamic social movement in Bartholomew Fair, can

we truly grasp the whole thematic messege from J onson skillfully knitted into

the dramatic structure.

One of the most orthodox views of Bartholomew Fair appears in Michael

Jamieson's Introduction for Three Comedies: Ben Jonson:

Bartholomew Fair is a 'panoramic' structure, looser and more compre­hensive than Jonson's other great comedies ... The appeal of [the play] is in the rich and vivid execution rather than in any moral content ... Jonson, in an almost pedantic way, crammed a great mass of Jacobean life, idiom, and local colour, into Bartholomew Fair 3

As the above passage reveals, this fixed view of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair

- rich in language, vivid in scenes, and essentially lively and realistic, but

loose in structure and morality - has often been the predominant one among

the critics. This kind of view would partly stem from the fact that in

Bartholomew Fair, Jonson deals with a new subject and setting which he

never dealt with before so that for the readers who try to observe the play in

the same manner they did in Jonson's earlier comic masterpieces like Volpone

and The Alchemist, it is difficult to comprehend and appreciate its real

strategic scheme.

Let us discuss for a moment the structure of The Alchemist. The play starts

with the quarrel scene in which the two main characters, Face and Subtle,

defy each other's ability as an impostor. Meanwhile, the first gull Dapper

appears, and through the conversation between the cozeners and the gull, the

audience soon learns what kind of fraudulence is going on. Thus, before the

end of the Act I, the core pattern of the comedy becomes clear. It is a story

about the interaction between the cozeners' inflammatory illusions and the

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gulls' driving obsessions. Although the gulls' pilgrimage to the cozeners'

house continues after Act II adding new varieties to the impostor-dupe

relationship, the basic pattern we perceive in Act I remains as the core

structure of the comedy. And it becomes pretty predictable for the audience

that at the end of the multiplication and the expansion of this pattern, the

play is destined to end with the deceivers' failure and the deflation of the

dupes' delusions.

If we looked for the same kind of structural pattern in Bartholomew Fair,

the result would be an unsatisfuctory one. First of all, it is not the fixed

relation between the impostors and the gulls that the play is dealing with.

Though some naive visitors like Cokes and Win Littlewit are tricked by the

pickpockets and pimps of Smithfield, having no other ambition than to see

the Fair and eat Bartholomew pork, these pigeons essentially remain as the

part of the innocent sightseers. This fair-goers' passivity, combined with

their mobile nature as the crowd, naturally reduces the dramatic tension of

the impostor-dupe contention which is so enjoyable in ] onson's earlier

works. In The Alchemist, we see the inevitability of the dupes being hooked by

the swindlers' tricks - it is the greed and obsession in themselves that draw

them so forcefully toward the deceivers' illusions - but not in Bartholomew

Fair. The mentality of the sightseers has nothing to do with driving lust or

obsession of the hyena-like dupes of Volpone or The Alchemist, and

consequently, the Bartholomew rogues must rely much on their moment's

agility and the circumstantial opportunity in playing their tricks. There is no

other way, since the arbitrary actions and movement of the roaming piqeons

does not permit any room for well-calculated fraudulence. This rogues'

reliance on accidental opportunity should be noticed, for as long as the

cozener-dupe relationship is established on arbitrary chance, the audience

cannot possibly use it in defining the core pattern of the play.

If the dramatic structure of Bartholomew Fair cannot wholly be determined

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by the repetitive fusion of lust and delusion, then, with what kind of

framework can we bind its varied human activities together? Is the play

really a'loosely organized episodic work as J amieson suggests? Thomas

Cartelli in his "Bartholomew Fair as Urban Arcadia" certainly disagrees with

such an opposition, After clarifying the distinction between satiric comedy

and saturnalian comedy - that the former deals with relations between

social classes and the aberrant movements between them, while the latter

seeks its dramatic clarification of conflicts in "the movement through

release,,4

- Cartelli proceeds to argue that Bartholomew Fair is the very instance of

Jonson's acceptance of the pattern of saturnalian comedy into his satiric

subject, and that "the method employed by J onson to effect this breakthrough

into saturnalian clarification owes much to the methods employed ,by

Shakespeare in his pastoral comedies, , ,and romances,,,5

According to him, the common pattern Shakespeare often employed in his

pastoral comedies (e,g., A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It) and

romances (e.g., The Tempest) is "the pattern of withdrawal and return.,,6 It

basically involves the movement of a group of characters away from the

original society filled with conflicts and injustice into another world in

which the refugees are allowed to work out their problems free of oppressive

restrictions of the real world. (In A Midsummer Night's Dream or As You Like

it, this temporal sanctuary is a forest, while in The Tempest, it becomes an

island.) But once the conflicts are resolved to their satisfaction, there is no

reason for the visitors to stay, and the group, somewhat changed, returns to

the world they came from.

It is this pattern Ben J onson chose to adopt in composing his new satire.

Like Shakespeare's pastoral comedies and romances, Bartholomew Fair is

structured in the framework of the characters' movement from the boundaries

of London everyday life into a space artificially made for the Fair. Of course,

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this Bartholomew wonderland is not an ideal or peaceful place by any

account. On the contrary, the audience sees enough of thievery, obscenity

and corruption before the curtain falls. Even so, the world of the Fair fulfills

an important function in the play, for only there, the characters can evade the

yokes of everyday restrictions and make themselves relatively free from the

first world's custom, pretensions, pretensions, and prejudices. A passage by

Cartelli may be helpful in clarifying this point further:

J onson chooses ... to move his version of Arcadia even farther away from Paradise than Shakespeare's Arden, into a plainly "fallen" urban setting ... Whereas Shakespeare takes his characters on a kind of therapeutic vacation halfway out of this world in order to make them whole, J onson rubs the faces of his characters in the dirt of this-worldly experience in order to relieve them of their pretensions and unnatural­ness, to make them, if not whole, at least a bit more acclimated to "things as they are."?

At this point, one question arises. When Cartelli talks about rubbing "the

faces of his characters in the dirt" to make them "acclimated to 'things as they

are. ", there is no doubt about that he has characters like justice Overdo and

Busy in mind. But what about other fair-goers? If the dramatist's intention is

only to humiliate those hypocrite moralizers and make them recognize their

own frailty as human beings, there is certainly no need to drag the rest of the

characters around the Fair. And indeed, though Cartelli's interest seems to

focus on the part of the disintegration of hierarchy through the fall of

authoritative figures in Bartholomew Fair, we must not forget that the

levelling of classes is only half of the whole process of saturnalian comedy.

Just as the expatriates in Shakespeare's pastoral comedies and romances had

to reorganize themselves and leave their Arcadia to be reconciled to the

world they deserted, the social group of fair-goers must redefine their

relationship with one another in the festive chaos of Bartholomew Fair, and

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once the temporary suspension of the social order in the festivity is lifted, 8

they must go back to their original but reconstituted world. Let us, then,

examine what kind of potential problems and conflicts .are there in the

original social group before their visit to Smithfield.

The play starts from the household of the Littlewits in which we hear the

couple's conversation:

Littlewit: Good Win, go a little; I would fain see thee pace, pretty Win! By this fine cap, I could never leave kissing on't. Mistress Littlewit : Come, indeed la, you are such a fool, still' (I. i. 337)

The conversation sounds to us much like that of a simple care-free young

couple. But is it so? We soon come to learn something strange about this

couple when Littlewit addresses himself to Winwife on his arrival: "Win and

I both wish you well; by this licence here, would your had her [Dame

Purecraft], that your two names were as fast in it, as here are a couple" (I, ii.

339). Unmistakably, the Littlewits are supporting (or rather cheering)

Winwife's courtship to Dame Purecraft, their widowed mother. .What can

their motive be? After all, Winwife is an utter fortune-hunter as Quarlous'

cynical comment on his friend's courtship reveals: "And all this [tribulation

of marriage life), for the hope of two apostle-spoons, to suffer' And a cup to

eat a caudle in' For that will be thy legacy" (I, iii. 344). From the financial

perspective at least, to receive such a fortune-hunter as the Mother's suitor

must be unwelcome for any young couple - if the sittuation is normal.

The reason for the Littlewits' bizarre response to their mother's possible

marriage becomes gradually plain as their con'versation turns on to Busy,

their mother's religious counseller (and the couple's inspector, so to speak)

and Win makes a comment on the nature of his governance: "We have such a

tedious life with him for his diet, and his clothes too" (I. ii. 340). Putting the

above statement and John's later comment together - "Our mother is a most

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elect hypocrite, and has maintained us all this seven years with it, like

gentlefolks" (1. v. 354) - it is not difficult to detect the Littlewits' hidden

discontent. Apparently, they are growing weary of Busy and their mother's

"straitlaced" (1. v. 353) way of life. And of course, if they wish to get rid of

their mother's scrutinizing supervision decently, there is no better way than

to let her marry to somebody: other than their mother's present joint

governor, Busy. Undoubtedly, this tragicomical situation of the young

couple is one of the hidden discontent that is on the verge of coming to the

surface. Regarding the matter in this way, the couple's expedition to

Smithfield comes to have much broader significance than mere pleasure

seeking: for them, "longing" for the Bartholomew pigs and the Fair is a part

of their attempt to loosen their old authorities' iron hands (if not to break out

from them).

Meanwhile, another potential conflict appears with the arrival of Cokes

and his party - Dame Overdo and Grace Well born - When he starts arguing

with his governor Wasp about Whether he (Cokes) can see his marriage

licence. The argument ends in agreement that Wasp should keep the licence

and Cokes can have the box of the licence. This current contention between

Cokes and Wasp for leadership, norsensical as it is, is also a disquieting

issue in the Bartholomew's small social group.

But more than any other covert or overt conflicts, Grace Wellborn's

unpleasant situation should be counted as the most problematic one. Early as

Act 1, scene v, Winwife already notices something unusual about Grace:

"what a restrained scorn she casts upon all his [Cokes'] behaviour and

speeches!" (1. v. 350) The discontent he perceived in Cokes' future wife soon

gets confirmed verbally 'when she utters an aside in response to Cokes'

frivolous joke that he would marry Win: "So would I [Grace], or anybody

else, so I might 'scape you [Cokes]" (1. v. 351).

At this stage, the audience does not understand why Grace has to be

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engaged to Cokes while her disinclination is so obvious. But in any rate, we

definitely learn three things about this play by the end of Act I after which

the setting moves into Smithfield. Firstly, there are two social units: 1) the

household of the Littlewits which is under the supervision of Dame

Purecraft and Busy, and 2) the household of the Overdos in whose custody

Grace and Cokes (under Wasp's supervision) is. Secondly the youngers of

the two household apparently are discontented with their elders. In the case

of the Littlewits, this feeling finds expression in their "longing" for pig,

whereas Grace limits her expression to "a restrained scorn." As for Cokes, he

simply quarrels with Wasp. This rather confused picture of the society gets

framed at last by the presence of the two aristocratic gentlemen - with sense

and education, but no money or position - who are deeply interested in the

affairs of these families. The comprehension of the original social structure

of the Fair-visitors and their inner conflicts is very important, for it later

becomes the significant key to the understanding of the whole organization

of the play.

Act I ends with' the scene in which Busy, one of the authorities of the

original world before the fair, toils to "make [the eating of the Bartholomew

pig] as lawful as [he] can" (1. vi. 356) in compliance with Win's "carnal

disease" (Ill. ii .. 355);

It [pig] may be eaten, and in the Fair, I take it, in a booth, the tents of the wicked. The place is not much, not very much; we may be religious in midst of the profane, so it be eaten with a reformed mouth, with sobriety, and humbleness; not gorged in with gluttony or greediness. (1. vi. 356-57)

Although we already know something about Busy's hypocritical nature

through some previous comments like that of Quarlous - "a notable

hypocritical vermin" (1. ii. 345) - nothing is more effective than the above

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illogical rationalization in illuminating the true personality of the Banbury

man, In laughter, the audience learns that this "vermin" is a complete fool

who even lacks enough wit to disguise his own hypocrisy,

Another authoritative figure, Adam Overdo, appears on the stage for the

first time at the beginning of Act 11. Disguised as a madman, the Judge'

declares to the audience his intention of detecting the "enormities" of the

Fair without being noticed by the people, His disguise somewhat reminds us

of the Duke of Vienna in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, But is Overdo

such a creditable character as the Duke? Let us listen to Adam's idea of of

what a "worthy worshipful man" should do:

what would he do in all these shapes? Marry, go you into every ale-house, and down into every cellar; measure the length of puddings, take the gauge of black pots and cans, ay, and custards, with a stick; and their circumference, with a thread, (11. i, 358-59)

The absurdity of the Justice's declaration of enormity-finding clearly

suggests that far from being the English version of the Duke Vincencio, the

man is completely out of touch with the reality of the everyday life, This

indication of the lack of insight and balanced sense on the part of Overdo

rapidly gains substantiation as he repeatedly misinterprets every incident in

Smithfield, but without waiting for such confirmation, the audience already

knows that there is another fool in the Fair.

As soon as the Fair begins, Overdo takes himself to minute fault-finding,

In the Justice's eyes, the place must be full of corruptions, for he soon

gathers a ~ouple of "enormities" to put into his black book. And as time goes

on, his initial plan to simply collect the evidences of "enormities" expands,

and the man even starts preaching on the "venom" of tobacco and ale, As

Mistress Overdo's comment on the disguised preacher indicates - "He

[disguised Adam] has something of Master Overdo, methinks" (11. vi, 376)-

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to make this kind of bombastic speech must have been the Justice's

customary habit while he was at his home. But Smithfield apparently does

not belong to his domain, and such a pompous attitude of a faultfinder cannot

be tolerated for long . Adam receives blows from Wasp on the charge of

causing the stealing of Cokes' purse with his ridiculous speech, and is later

led to the stocks on the suspicion of stealing his purse (Ill. v. 399).

Almost immediately after the humiliation of Adam, the audience receives

new information about the characther of the man who has just disappeared.

The source is Grace Well born, and she discloses to Quarlous that she has

been sold to Justice Overdo in the notorious Court of Wards and that unless

she be married to his wife's brother, Cokes, she "must pay value 0' [her] land"

(Ill. v. 400). Grace testifies most bitterly - "they that cannot work their

fetters off must wear' em" (Ill. v. 400) - perhaps because she sees the

situation she is trapped in with undisguised clarity. As her later words

indicates - "I must have a husband I must love, or I cannot live with him"

(IV. iii. 413) - Grace clearly perceives that if she "be yoked with" her

appointed bridegroom, there will be no acceptable or even bearable future for

her, and yet she also knows that if she refuses to wear the "fetters" before her,

she will probably loose her position in the class of gentry in consequence of

being left destitute. As the audience's sympathy for her increases with their

understanding of the roots of her cynicism and frustration, the last fragment

of credit that has been left in Overdo shatters. Now, he is not only a "serious

ass" (Ill. v. 400) as Quarlous calls him but also a pimp; for in faith, from the

ethical perspective, there is not much difference between pimping a

prostitute and forcing marriage to one's reluctant ward. Thus, Overdo's grand

espionage in Bartholomew Fair ends in the ironical exposure of his own

"enormity."

Thinking of the matter in this way, the scene in which Mistress Overdo

accuses her disguised husband of being a cutpurse is somewhat prophetic:

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"now I see he is a lewd and pernicious enormity" (Ill. v. 398). But for the

matter of forcing Grace to marry Cokes, Mistress Overdo herself cannot

escape the responsibility. Being Adam's spouse, she is also guilty of taking

the part of her husband's pimping. The punishment comes from Punk Alice

- the quarter that has certain link with the Overdos in one sense - when she

beats the Justice's wife crying, "The poor common whores can ha' no traffic

for the privy rich ones; your caps and hootls of velvet call away our

customers" (IV. v. 425). Alice's treatment of Mistress Overdo as a sheer bawd

gives an ironical illumination to the ethical status of the socially reputable

couple.

Later, similar kind of exposure made on Adam also assaults Busy. After

filling his belly with pig, the comical decryer starts taunting at his

surrounding sight as usual - "Thou art the seat of the Beast, 0 Smithfield"

(Ill. vi. 402) - and soon gets caught for public disturbance and disappears to

the stocks. And while the clamorous man is out, Dame Purecraft, mysterious­

ly falling in love with Quarlous disguised as Trouble-all, the Madman,

notifies him of Busy's past fraudulent activities along with her own: "I know

him [Busy] to be the capital knave of the land, making himself rich by being

made feoffee in trust to deceased Brethren, and coz'ning their heirs by

swearing the absolute gift of their inheritance" (V. ii. 435).

Through these exposition scenes, the audience sees that the two groups of

people - the inhabitants of Smithfield and the two authorities who accuse

them for various enormities - are essentially equal. And when one is asked

which of the two is more palatable, the answer is self-evident. Although

Smithfield is a clamorous quarter filled with unrest, nudging, and "vapours,"

and its inhabitants noisy and aggressive, the place and its people does not at

least give a malicious impression. The Bartholomew rogues taunt each other

when they have nothing to tend, but conspire together when the opportunity

of trick arrives. And if the occasion should arrive, the unmistakable sense of

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solidarity emerges in the community. When Ursula, the pig-woman, scalds

her own leg in consequence of the fight against Quarlous, the neighbours

immediately rush to her rescue and show extra attentiveness; nursing her,

dressing her wound, taking care of her business while she rests. Though the

community may somewhat be steeped in. cheap offences like snatching and

pimping, still it apparently retains a strong sense of humanity and

cooperation.

When we juxtapose this frankness and humanity of the clamorous

underworld with the self-righteous absurdity of the two professed moral

leaders of the London society, the necessity of dragging down their

pretension on the stocks becomes clear. As Thomas Cartelli suggested in his

argument on J onson's comic form, the levelling of the moral stands of

different classes is an important process of saturnalian comedy, and

therefore, the advocation of tolerance through the aggressive attack on the

intolerant snobocracy is indispensable. The following passage may expli­

cate the point more clearly:

What has not been noted is that the play's comparative benevolence is closely bound up with J onson's ongoing attempt to "break through" and move beyond the "aberrations" that conventionally characterize the relations between social classes in purely satiric comedy. 9

But what Cartelli fails to mention in his statement above is that this process

of breaking the restraint of fixed social order is only one half of the whole

movementt of saturnalian pattern. That is to say, if there is the movement

toward release through the disintegration or original society, then, there also

must be the movement toward restraint for the reconstruction of new society.

Considering the matter in this way, a couple of questions arise: who would

replace the authorities of the old world, and in what aspect are they superior

to their predecessors? The former question is easier to answer, since we all

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know that Quarlous and Win wife are the only people who had any substantial

gain after the Fair. And of the two gentlemen, Quarlous, of course, is the

more potent one, acting as the central figure in the scene of denouement,

while Winwife seldom speaks except for his declaration of intended

matrimony with Grace. The reason for the difference in their attitude soon

becomes clear as we continue to listen to Quarlous' flowing account of what

has truly happened and what he has gained in the Fair: dowry of 6,000

pounds with an old wife and the wardship of a young woman (Grace) with

substantial fortune to extract. No wonder the man is so talkative and his

friend, Win wife, who has found out that his only gain was a handsome wife

with no fortune) is kept in such sour silence. The brief scene gives us a full

illumination of the moral status of the new leaders: they are no better than

their predecessors.

If there is any difference between them and the fallen preachers, it is that

the former has enough discretion and sense, while the latter has none of them.

But this possession or lack of sense has a vital meaning in the Fair, where

the Festive suspension of social order creates a resulting effect of chaos.

And in such a lawless place where the Darwinian style of struggle for

survival prevails, cunning and mercenariness is much more important than

any moral restraints. 10 It is an ironical fact to know that when this movement

of chaotic release is over, a new society will be constructed under the

supervision of the champions of the urban wilderness. The play ends with

Quarlous recommending Overdo to remember that he is "but Adam, flesh and

blood!" (V. vi. 459), and it is still unknown what kind of social structure will

actually be constructed by this somewhat likable but audacious man. Yet one

thing is clear that whatever direction this saturnalian pattern leads him in his

drama, this born satirist will never leave "his view of man as a weak urban

creature with innate vice."ll

As we have discussed, using shakespearean pattern of "withdrawal and

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return," Ben J onson dexteriously constructs a framework for his comedy.

The play starts from the domestic scene in the Littlewits' house, and with the

arrival of Cokes and his party, the audience catches the basic social structure

of the party and the existence of discontent among them under the surface of

comical conversation. The act ends with the scene of the Littlewits'

"longing," in which they succeed to tempt Busy to let them go to the "tents of

the wicked" under the condition of his special "supervision." Then, act II

begins with the disguised Justice's harsh criticism on the "enormities" of the

Smithfield c<.?mmunity.

Why these authorities show such extreme dislike for Smithfield seems

rather incomprehensible, but perhaps it is because they instinctively know

that the free open atmosphere of the Fair would weaken their established

power over the social group they preside. And indeed, as the two authorities

try to practice their usual domineering habits in the Fair, they face the utter

rejection from the surrounding people. Followed by the humiliation in the

stocks, the exposure of their own enormities to the audience symbolically

announces the final fall of the former power.

In this light, the marriages of Quarlous to Dame Purecraft and Winwife to

Grace are significant, for the establishment of the new households by these

younger generations - 1) the household of Quarlous and Dame Purecraft

(the Littlewits under their supervision), and 2) the household of Winwife and

Grace (yoked to Quarlous but freed from Cokes) - clearly means that there

will be the rise of a new independent power that will eventually replace the

influence of the old authorities.

Of course, it is clear that J onson does not expect any coming of the ideal

world from this new cycle. Whatever the result is, the initial motivation of

the marriage of the two men, Quarlous and Winwife, is money. And it is

undeniable that these future fathers will make authorities as calculating as

the former generation. But in the benign atmosphere of the ending in which

Page 15: THE PATTERN OF SATURNALIAN COMEDY: THE SOCIAL …€¦ · and The Alchemist, it is difficult to comprehend and appreciate its real strategic scheme. Let us discuss for a moment the

41

all the characters of the play are invited to Overdo's house, Jonson does not

peck at their "enormities" any farther. After all, what John Littlewit says may

be quite right: "Win; you are the tother half: man and wife make one fool,

Win" (1. i. 338).

NOTES

C.H. Herford, and Percy Simpson, Ben Jonson: The Man and His Work. (Oxford:

The Clarendon Press, 1925)(11. 137)

2 F reda L. T owns end, Apologie for Bartholmew Fayre: The Art of Jonson's

Comedies.(London: Oxford University Press, 1974)73.

3 Ben Jonson, Three Comedies: Ben Jonson. (ed.) Michael Jamieson. (London:

Penguin Books Ltd., 1985) 23-26.

4 Thomas Cartelli, "Bartholomew Fair as Urban Arcadia: Jonson Responds to

Shakespeare." Renaissance Drama. 14 (1983): 153.

5 Thomas Cartelli, 155.

6 loco cit.

7 Thomas Cartelli, 157.

8 see Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (trans.) Helene Iswolsky.

(Cambridge: M.LT.Press, 1968) 155.

9 Thomas Cartelli, 155.

10 see Jonathan Haynes, "Festivity and the Dramatic Economy of Jonson's

Bartholomew Fair." ELH. 51 (1984).

11 Frances Teague, The Curious History of Bartholomew Fair. (Lewisburg:

Bucknell University Press, 1985)135.