Jonson's and Shakespeare's "Comedy of Affliction"

280 Pages·2011·0.69 MB·English

by  Jonathan Theodore Goossen

JONSON’S AND SHAKESPEARE’S “COMEDY OF AFFLICTION”

by

Jonathan Theodore Goossen

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

at

Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia
August 2011

© Copyright by Jonathan Theodore Goossen, 2011
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DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

The undersigned hereby certify that they have read and recommend to the Faculty of
Graduate Studies for acceptance a thesis entitled “Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s ‘Comedy
of Affliction’” by Jonathan Theodore Goossen in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dated: August 23, 2011

External Examiner: _________________________________
Research Supervisor: _________________________________
Examining Committee: _________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________

Departmental Representative: _________________________________

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DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

DATE: August 23, 2011
AUTHOR: Jonathan Theodore Goossen
TITLE: Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Affliction”
DEPARTMENT OR SCHOOL: Department of English
DEGREE: PhD CONVOCATION: October YEAR: 2011
Permission is herewith granted to Dalhousie University to circulate and to have copied
for non-commercial purposes, at its discretion, the above title upon the request of
individuals or institutions. I understand that my thesis will be electronically available to
the public.

The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts
from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author’s written permission.

The author attests that permission has been obtained for the use of any copyrighted
material appearing in the thesis (other than the brief excerpts requiring only proper
acknowledgement in scholarly writing), and that all such use is clearly acknowledged.

________________________
Signature of Author

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To John Baxter, my teacher:

“O give thyself the praise, if aught in me
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight.”
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TABLE(cid:3)OF(cid:3)CONTENTS(cid:3)

ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................vii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................1
CHAPTER 2: ARISTOTLE’S POETICS AND COMEDY................................................................14
CHAPTER 3: COMIC ERROR AND THE HOAX.........................................................................35
3.1 “Laid flat” in the “flame and height of their humours”...................................45
3.2 “’Twere sin to reform them”................................................................................61
3.3 “Fashion”ing the match.........................................................................................72
3.4 “Seeming! Seeming!”..............................................................................................89
CHAPTER 4: INDIGNATION.....................................................................................................102
4.1 The “right furor poeticus”.......................................................................................112
4.2 Leaving “stoicity” alone.......................................................................................125
4.3 “Kill Claudio.”......................................................................................................138
4.4 “Justice! Justice! Justice! Justice!”.......................................................................150
CHAPTER 5: COMIC CATHARSIS.............................................................................................163
5.1 “Checked by strength and clearness”................................................................182
5.2 “We mock ourselves”..........................................................................................196
5.3 “This strange course”..........................................................................................213
5.4 “As if my brother lived”......................................................................................227
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION......................................................................................................244
BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................................262
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ABSTRACT(cid:3)

This dissertation explores the relevance of recent studies of Aristotle’s comic theory to
the central dramatists of early modern England, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.
Applications of the Poetics to Renaissance English drama tend to treat Aristotle’s theory
historically, as a set of concepts mediated to England by continental redactions. But
these often conflated the Poetics’ focus on literary form with the Renaissance’s
predominant interest in literature’s rhetorical effect, reducing Aristotle’s genuinely
speculative theory to a series of often pedantic literary prescriptions. Recent scholarship
has both undone these misinterpretations and developed the comic theory latent in the
Poetics. Ironically, these studies make Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s comedy look much
more Aristotelian than do Renaissance ones. So rather than taking the Poetics simply as a
possible source for each dramatist, I read it primarily as a literary theory that, when
reinvigorated by modern scholarship, can explain structures and effects arrived at
practically by these dramatists.

Three recent hypotheses are especially pertinent to Jonson and Shakespeare: that comic
hoaxes aim to expose comic error, which is for Aristotle a deviation from the mean of
virtue; that “righteous indignation” is the comic emotion equivalent to the “pity and
fear” of tragedy; and that catharsis is a clarification, rather than purgation, of reason and
emotion. In light of these, I offer detailed readings of four plays that demonstrate these
authors’ comic range: from Jonson’s satirical Every Man Out of His Humour to the almost
farcical Epicoene, and from Shakespeare’s romantic Much Ado About Nothing to the
tragicomic Measure for Measure. These plays demonstrate a variety of ways in which
catharsis, the end of drama, results directly from the comic hoax and involves both the
audience’s and characters’ experience of indignation and their comprehension of its
relationship to the emotions of envy and pity. In each case, Aristotle’s incisive but
flexible theoretical framework enables an explanation of the emotional pain present in
the these “comedies of affliction” and reveals remarkable similarities between dramatists
usually described as direct opposites.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS(cid:3)

One is able to complete a project like this only with the help of many people and
institutions. The Department of English at Dalhousie University has been a collegial and
eminently supportive place in which to work. Of its faculty, I am particularly grateful to
my committee members, Professors Bruce Greenfield, Ronald Huebert and Christina
Luckyj, for agreeing to read a doctoral thesis during their summer holidays. Emeritus
Professor Joel Altman from the University of California, Berkeley graciously agreed to
serve as my external examiner. Their careful reports and insightful comments have
significantly strengthened this thesis and will continue to guide me as I look toward its
publication.

Professor John Baxter has been, simply and profoundly, my teacher. From this work’s
earliest stages, he has been as excited about it as I have, and it could not have been
completed without his seasoned knowledge, keen perception, and warm friendship.

My research and writing have been financially supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate
Scholarship, a Killam Pre-doctoral Fellowship, and Dalhousie University Faculty of
Graduate Studies Research and Conference Travel Grants. Their funding has enabled me
to give this project my full attention, for which I am very thankful.

I am also grateful to Rev. Dr. Roman Bonnel, who, by teaching me how to order my
soul, has equally enabled me to complete this work.

Thanks are most especially due to my family. Long ago, my parents, Ted and Mary
Goossen, taught me how to work and how to put my heart into my work. This project, I
think, shows me to be their son.

My four children, Jacob, Luke, Madeleine, and Mark have given me the strongest
motivation to work with discipline day in and day out. Their presence in the evening
provided me first-hand experience of the laughter, love, and indignation about which I
wrote during the day.

Finally, my wife Cindy Goossen has sacrificed much for my studies. Her indignation
toward me would be righteous, but she has felt only compassion. In Donne’s metaphor
of the twinned compass, “thy firmness draws my circle just.”

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CHAPTER(cid:3)1(cid:3)
Introduction(cid:3)
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Ben Jonson called Aristotle “the first accurate critic, and truest judge; nay, the
greatest philosopher, the world ever had.”1 Subsequent literary critics have generally
agreed with the first of Jonson’s claims, and, if the superlatives are reduced to simple
adjectives, perhaps even the latter two as well. But while we might acknowledge
Aristotle’s achievement, it is only natural that the work of accurate criticism and true
judging should develop and continue after him – an enterprise in which Jonson himself
participated vigorously. What is less obvious is that understanding of Aristotle’s criticism
itself has also grown. For various reasons, his difficult and laconic Poetics had very little
circulation in the ancient world, all but disappeared during the middle ages, and, when it
was finally recovered during the Renaissance, suffered a range of significant
misinterpretations that continued well into the twentieth century. The last thirty years,
though, have witnessed an unprecedented scholarly effort to explain and correct past
interpretive errors. A particularly important aspect of this work has been speculation on
the treatise’s relevance to comedy. The aim of this present study is to apply this newly
refined understanding of Aristotle to the comedy of Ben Jonson and his greatest rival,
Shakespeare.
“Sheer anachronism!”, may well be the cry that greets this declaration. While
Jonson knew the Poetics, there is little proof that Shakespeare had of it anything more

1 Jonson, Discoveries, 449. All subsequent quotations will be cited parenthetically in the text.
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than second-hand knowledge. Regardless, the objection might continue, both dramatists
could only have read the Poetics as mediated by the Cinquecento commentators who
brought it to light for the rest of Europe, not as it has been reinterpreted by modern
scholarship. Let me begin my defence of the project by pointing out that the Jonson
passage just quoted was one he extracted from the 1611 Poetics commentary, De tragodiae
constitutione, of the Dutchman Daniel Heinsius. While he was very much indebted to the
great flowering of Poetics scholarship in the sixteenth century, Heinsius departed from
what classicists have today identified as several of the Cinquecento’s most significant errors
of interpretation. Stephen Halliwell asserts that “Heinsius’ essay presented probably the
purest and most illuminating statement yet achieved of some of the chief ideas of
Aristotle’s work” – especially those of unity of action, mimesis, and catharsis, which had
been most frequently distorted.2 As I shall argue, Jonson’s theoretical writings follow
Heinsius in anticipating several important conclusions of modern scholarship on these
topics.
But even beyond this, and particularly relevant to the study of Shakespeare, is
Jonson’s assertion (again extracted from Heinsius) that before “either the grammarians,
or philosophers…found out those laws [of poetry and drama], there were many excellent
poets, that fulfilled them” (Discoveries 450). While great poets often agree with the
theorists, in Jonson’s estimation, they do not so much follow the rules laid down by
perceptive critics or theorists as they arrive at them by other, practical means. I will work,
then, from three premises: that Jonson and Shakespeare were masterful dramatists; that
Aristotle was a masterful critic and theorist; and that modern scholarship has made sense

2 Halliwell, Aristotle’s “Poetics,” 303.
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of several crucial difficulties and lacunae in Aristotle’s writing. If these things, along with
Jonson’s maxim, are true, it should at least be possible that in the process of writing
comedy, Jonson and Shakespeare could have realized tenets similar to those of Aristotle,
regardless of whether the former two ever read the philosopher, never mind his
subsequent scholarly expositors. Indeed, Jonson could only have come to Heinsius’ work
on Aristotle after he had written much of his greatest drama, including the plays I will
look at here. That what he found in Heinsius both illuminates and confirms central
features of his drama is an example of the larger possibilities I aim to explore. As James
Redwine argues, “Jonson seems to have found in Heinsius’ redaction of Aristotle a
succinct statement of what he had been suggesting about the dramatic fable all along.”3
This will not be a historical source study, looking to reconstruct Jonson’s
knowledge of Aristotle and how he came by it, or to determine the degree of
Shakespeare’s acquaintance with the Poetics, though profitable work remains to be done
on both fronts. By the same token, it is not primarily a survey of Renaissance
interpretations of the Poetics’ central ideas, though I will consider these in passing. Finally,
it is not a study of classical comedy’s relationship to that of Jonson and Shakespeare,
which has most recently been done admirably by Robert Miola.4 As I alluded to,
Aristotle’s literary theory had surprisingly little circulation in the ancient world, and thus
little evident influence on its comedy; indeed, much less than it came to have on the
European continent by the neo-classical seventeenth century. Rather, this study remains
primarily literary theoretical. Its primary theorist just happens to have written before the
literature to which his ideas are applied. It seems to me that in the same way that theories

3 Redwine, Ben Jonson’s Literary Criticism, xxxii.
4 See Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy.
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