MAE603-eL9

IDOL Institute of Distance and Online Learning ENHANCE YOUR QUALIFICATION, ADVANCE YOUR CAREER.

IDOL Institute of Distance and Online Learning M.A 2 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL English Course Code: MAE 603 Semester: First Book ID: ………… Unit: 9-10 www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603

IDOL ENGLISH Institute of Distance and Online Learning 33 OBJECTIVES INTRODUCTION Student will be introduced to Ben Jonson as a In this unit we are going to learn about the dramatist greatness of as a Renaissance dramatist Dramatist Student will be able to understand the greatness of Ben Jonson as a great dramatist of satire The student will be able to understand Ben Jonson’s great art in Drama Genre Student will be able to understand Ben Jonson’s play, The Alchemist Student will be introduced to Ben Jonson’s Comic Satire www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAEQ610031) INASlTl ITriUgThEt OarFeDrIeSsTeArNvCeEd AwNitDh OCNUL-IIDNOE LLEARNING

IDOL TOPICS TO BE COVERED Institute of Distance and Online Learning 4 > Student will be introduced to Ben Jonson as a dramatist > Student will be able to understand the greatness of Ben Jonson as a playwright of satire > Student will be able to understand Ben Jonson’s play, The Alchemist www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 Ben Jonhson—1572-1629 Ben Jonson - Wikipedia All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson Institute of Distance and Online Learning 5 • About nine years after the birth of Shakespeare his greatest successor in the English drama was born in London. • Jonson outlived Shakespeare twenty-one years and helped to usher in the decline of the drama. Ben Jonson’s training was unfortunate for a poet. He was taught to write prose exercises first and then to turn them into poetry www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 https://www.google.com/search?q=ben+j All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson Institute of Distance and Online Learning 6 Jonson was known as the most learned poet of the age because his plays demanded some special knowledge to master this art it. Jonson's personal characteristics partly explain why he placed himself in opposition to the spirit of the age. He was extremely combative. It was almost a necessity for him to quarrel with some person or with some opinion. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL 7 Ben Jonson—The Renaissance PlaywrightInstitute ofDistance andOnlineLearning Ben Jonson 1572-1637) was an early modern playwright whose popularity rivaled that of Shakespeare or Marlowe. He spent multiple stints in prison, wrote masques in which the Queen of England and Prince of Wales performed, and was crowned England's first poet laureate. Yet for all this in 1572 he was born into relative poverty. His father died shortly before his birth, and his mother remarried a bricklayer. Luckily for the clever young boy, an unidentified friend paid for Jonson to attend Westminster School. After leaving school Jonson attempted to join his stepfather as a bricklayer, but the profession didn't take; legend has it young Ben recited Homer while building the walls of Lincoln Inn. In the 1590s Jonson served in the armed forces in the Low Countries, and in November 1594 Jonson married a woman he described as \"a shrew, yet honest.\" www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL 8 Ben Jonson—The Renaissance PlaywrightInstitute ofDistance andOnlineLearning It's not certain when Jonson entered the theatre, but by 1597 he was an actor for the Admiral's Men. It was also in this year that his earliest surviving play, The Case is Altered, was performed by Pembroke's Company. Too Witty for his Own Good:- Jonson's sharp tongue got him into no end of trouble: In summer of 1597 the satirical comedy The Isle of Dogs, which Jonson co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, was performed, and the play upset the powers that be. Jonson was arrested along with two other actors, and the play may have prompted the Privy Council's order to close the London theatres because of \"lewd matters that are handled on the stages, and by resorte and confluence of bad people.“ www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—The Renaissance Playwright Institute of Distance and Online Learning 9 Jonson was released within a few months, and apparently hadn't learned his lesson. In the summer of 1604 the Children of her Majesty's Revels performed Jonson's Eastward Ho!, a collaboration with George Chapman and John Marston. Eastward Ho! was a response to John Webster's and Thomas Dekker's Northward Ho!, and a salacious one at that. The play mocked King James, the Scots, knights of the realm, and courtiers, and all three playwrights were imprisoned until October. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL 10 Ben Jonson—The Renaissance PlaywrightInstitute ofDistance andOnlineLearning Jonson was released within a few months, and apparently hadn't learned his lesson. In the summer of 1604 the Children of her Majesty's Revels performed Jonson's Eastward Ho!, a collaboration with George Chapman and John Marston. Eastward Ho! was a response to John Webster's and Thomas Dekker's Northward Ho!, and a salacious one at that. The play mocked King James, the Scots, knights of the realm, and courtiers, and all three playwrights were imprisoned until October. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL 11 Ben jonson—The Renaissance playwrightInstitute ofDistance andOnlineLearning On a less political note, Jonson was engaged in the \"War of the Theatres\", or \"Poetomachia\" between 1599 and 1602, in which Ben Jonson battled John Marston and Thomas Dekker by satirizing one another in their plays and poetry. In the early to mid 17th century Jonson really hit his stride, writing such classic plays as Volpone (1605), The Alchemist (1610), Bartholomew Fair (1614), and The Devil is an Ass (1616). Even when he didn't cast thinly veiled aspersions on political figures, Jonson specialised in depicting witty banter, confidence tricksters, and devils in disguise of all sorts. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL 12 Ben Jonson—The Renaissance PlaywrightInstitute ofDistance andOnlineLearning Jonson was a man who liked his luxuries. Having been raised in poverty, he appreciated good food and creature comforts. He was a portly man apt to praise the finer things in his countless poems, and sought recognition from the court of King James I. He wrote more than twenty masques for the court, including The Masque of Blackness, in which Queen Anne herself performed. In 1616 Jonson was named England's first ever Poet Laureate. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL 13 Ben Jonson—The Renaissance PlaywrightInstitute ofDistance andOnlineLearning Jonson was aware of his legacy to a degree unprecedented among early modern playwrights. He was the first playwright to ensure his own works were published as a formal folio, treating his plays as works of literary note rather than as frivolous stage plays. The 1616 folio divided his works into plays, poetry, masques, and entertainments. The engraving on the title page went to great pains to associate Jonson with Greek scholars of old www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—Comic Satire Institute of Distance and Online Learning 14 In order to estimate the influence of Jonson's didactic theory on his comedy, I shall consider th e problem from two points of view. First, by choosing a number of evils treated in the plays of J onson and of his contemporaries, I shall seek to determine the emphasis which they placed on these vices and follies, the conventionality of their treatment, and the manner in which they us ed these evils in their characters and plots, and to show by contrast the significant differences i n handling of the same social evils. Second, I shall analyze Jonson's early work to discover, wh enever possible, what is responsible for the various changes in the technique of his comedies as his work progressed, and by comparing some of his early comedies with his later, to determi ne the underlying motives behind his changes in technique. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—Comic Satire Institute of Distance and Online Learning 15 The considerable range of Jonson's writing makes it imperative in such a study as this to c hoose, for detailed analysis, only a few objects of his satire. Obviously in order to have a g ood basis of judgment and a fair cross section, however, one must select for discussion th emes which Jonson and his fellow- dramatists frequently utilized either for dramatic or didactic purposes. Such a choice is nec essarily arbitrary, but the topics here chosen represent a fair sampling of the satiric materi al in the comedies of Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, and Heywood. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—comic Satire Institute of Distance and Online Learning 16 In this examination of the satiric material in Jacobean comedy, I have tried to estimate the accurac y of Jonson's didactic aim when it is compared with that of other dramatists, and the consistency with which Jonson attacks the different vices. The writer who treats the same vice or social evil at one time with www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—Comic Satire Institute of Distance and Online Learning 17 IT IS necessary to insist at the outset that Jonson's didactic theory is more philosophical than moral, more literary than monitory. As a critic and dramatist Jonson accepts the responsibilit y of a poet for perceiving and stating values; he does not restrict the poet to the narrow role of writing merely to inculcate a certain idea or body of ideas. In his critical comments, he indi cates the comprehensiveness of his theory in many ways, but one of the most obvious is that like others in his age he uses the word \"poet\" interchangeably with \"comic poet\" and \"playwr ight.\" He refers to one of his comedies as \"this Poeme,\"1 and to inferior dramatists as poetast ers;2 and the dedication of Volpone, which contains one of his strongest statements with reg ard to the purpose of comedy, is a defense of the art of poetry quite as much as of the come dy it prefaces. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—His Dramatic theory Institute of Distance and Online Learning 18 Our understanding of the didactic theory adhered to by a Jacobean dramatist is weakene d by the differences in the interpretation of the theory among Renaissance critics, poets, philosophers, and dramatists. Nor do we understand very clearly how much pressure was exerted on the dramatist by Church and State, or by his popular audience. The main forc es tending to thrust the Jacobean dramatist toward the didactic theory were the attacks o n the theatre, the earlier critical pronouncements of literary men on the subject of heroic p oetry, drama, and satire, and the allegorical tendencies in the Mediaeval and Renaissanc e periods. Two factors argued for a liberal interpretation of the theory: the freedom with w hich heroic poets treated their allegory, and the demands of the audiences in the public th eatres who came there to be amused. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—His Dramatic theory Institute of Distance and Online Learning 19 The didactic theory was, moreover, not so much a moral as a literary theory, and the bricks in its foundation were the broad and general didactic statements of such men as Cicero, Quintilian, and Horac e. The Elizabethan and the Jacobean dramatists were confronted from the beginning with the attack agains t plays and players. The opposition to drama was fostered by the Church, and its roots went deep in the early centuries of the Christian era.1 Through the Church, from century to century, from the www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—The Alchemist Institute of Distance and Online Learning 20 The Alchemist, comedy in five acts by Ben Jonson, performed in 1610 and published in 1612. The play concerns the turmoil of deception that ensues when Lovewit leaves his London house in the care of his scheming servant, Face. With the aid of a fraudulent alchemist named Subtle and his companion, Dol Common, Face sets about dispensing spurious charms and services to a steady stream of dupes. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—The Alchemist Institute of Distance and Online Learning 21 The prologue begins by addressing “Fortune,” wishing away the two hours that the play will take to perform and hoping to do justice to its author. It announces the play’s scene, London, with “no country’s mirth is better than our own.” It also is the best place to find whores and lowlifes. Many sorts of people, of many different humors, are to grace the stage. The writer, apparently, wishes not to attack these characters and the real people they represent, but to “better” them—the traditional aim of satire. He also hopes that no one will be displeased with the “fair correctives” the play is about to offer. He alerts us that no one who can “apply” lessons has anything to fear. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—The Alchemist Institute of Distance and Online Learning 22 The prologue finishes with an ambiguous metaphor: there are people who can sit near to “the stream” to find things “they think or wish were done.” Yet these involve such “natural follies” that even the people who “do” them might see them and not “own” them—not recognize the follies as their own. Most interesting perhaps is the warning that people watching the play will have to “apply” to understand it: The play is going to be a symbol, a metaphor; its characters must be applied to the real world www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Ben Jonson—The Alchemist Institute of Distance and Online Learning 23 These include the intemperate knight Sir Epicure Mammon, the pretentious Puritans Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome, the ambitious tobacconist Abel Drugger, the gamester law clerk Dapper, and the parvenu Kastril with his widowed sister, Pliant. The shrewd gambler Surly nearly exposes the sham by posing as a Spanish don seeking the hand of Pliant, but the gullible parties reject his accusations. When Lovewit reappears without warning, Subtle and Dol flee the scene, leaving Face to make peace by arranging the marriage of his master to the beautiful and wealthy Dame Pliant. www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL References Institute of Distance and Online Learning 24 1. Leech, C. (1978). Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays (Twentieth Century Views Series). New Delhi: Prentice Hall India 2. O’Neill, J. (1969). Critics on Marlowe. London: Allen & Unwin 3. Sharma, G. ed. (1984). Reinterpretations of Marlowe’s Faustus: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Delhi: Doaba House 4. Bradley, A.C. (2009). Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. New Delhi: Dodo Press 5. Kaufmann, R.J. (1970). Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press 6. Harbage, A. (2005). Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Delhi: Pearson 7. Adelman, .t ed. (1980). Twentieth Century Interpretations of King Lear. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall India 8. Morwood, J. & Crane, D. , Ed. (1996). Sheridan Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 9. Chaudhary, A.D. (2010). Contemporary British Drama. India : Penguin Books. 10. en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Drama 11. study.com › academy › lesson › history-of-drama-dramatic-movements 12. en.wikipedia.org › wiki › History_of_theatre 13. englishhistory.net › shakespeare › elizabethan-theatre www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

IDOL Institute of Distance and Online Learning 25 THANK YOU For queries Email: [email protected] www.cuidol.in Unit-9 MAE 603 All right are reserved with CU-IDOL