This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.
{"title":"“All in a Garden Green”: Shakespeare's Staging of Garden Imagery","authors":"Deborah C. Solomon","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2019.0256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2019.0256","url":null,"abstract":"This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75727311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In The Alchemist, Doll's faerie queen is frequently interpreted by critics as representative of Jonson's scepticism toward folkloric belief and superstition. The supernatural-monarch-come-prostitute who appears before Dapper the clerk is thought to be drawn from contemporary accounts of cozeners who would claim to be in contact with the faerie realm in order to part gullible patrons from their money. Jonson's faerie queen thus fits into wider critical discussions on the nature of faeries in Early Modern drama, in which faeries are frequently defined as deriving from rural and domestic folkloric tradition. However, whilst there is certainly some truth to the significance of folklore in representations of faeries on the early modern stage (see Shakespeare's Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example), such arguments have a tendency to downplay the significance of romance in Early Modern society and the ongoing influence of medieval romance convention in the way that faeries are incorporated into Early Modern literature and drama. This essay focuses on The Alchemist as an example of the continued importance of romance in shaping the themes and motifs that are associated with Early Modern faeries. Doll's faerie queen appears as part of a con enacted by the three cozeners, but her role and appearance still draw on certain romance motifs that equate faeries with wealth, aristocracy, and the testing of human morality. Through recognising a connection to romance in Jonson's work, this essay questions how we might better appreciate the meaning of The Alchemist's faerie queen episodes. Jonson, without relinquishing his sceptical approach to the supernatural, uses these motifs as a way of exploring themes of greed, social mobility, and new wealth, themes that permeate throughout the play and throughout his work as a whole.
{"title":"The Alchemist and Medieval Faerie Romance","authors":"Steve Bull","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2019.0255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2019.0255","url":null,"abstract":"In The Alchemist, Doll's faerie queen is frequently interpreted by critics as representative of Jonson's scepticism toward folkloric belief and superstition. The supernatural-monarch-come-prostitute who appears before Dapper the clerk is thought to be drawn from contemporary accounts of cozeners who would claim to be in contact with the faerie realm in order to part gullible patrons from their money. Jonson's faerie queen thus fits into wider critical discussions on the nature of faeries in Early Modern drama, in which faeries are frequently defined as deriving from rural and domestic folkloric tradition. However, whilst there is certainly some truth to the significance of folklore in representations of faeries on the early modern stage (see Shakespeare's Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example), such arguments have a tendency to downplay the significance of romance in Early Modern society and the ongoing influence of medieval romance convention in the way that faeries are incorporated into Early Modern literature and drama. This essay focuses on The Alchemist as an example of the continued importance of romance in shaping the themes and motifs that are associated with Early Modern faeries. Doll's faerie queen appears as part of a con enacted by the three cozeners, but her role and appearance still draw on certain romance motifs that equate faeries with wealth, aristocracy, and the testing of human morality. Through recognising a connection to romance in Jonson's work, this essay questions how we might better appreciate the meaning of The Alchemist's faerie queen episodes. Jonson, without relinquishing his sceptical approach to the supernatural, uses these motifs as a way of exploring themes of greed, social mobility, and new wealth, themes that permeate throughout the play and throughout his work as a whole.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74192216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Survey of 2018 Scholarship on Jonson","authors":"J. Ahn","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2019.0258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2019.0258","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80603485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Throughout his career Ben Jonson drew variously upon Lucian, whom he encountered in the mythographies as well as in several Greek and Latin editions he owned. Jonson's receptions take the form of glancing reminiscence in the masques, as Lucian supplies mythological decoration and literary conceit. They appear as transformative allusion in Cynthia's Revels, which draws upon several satirical Dialogues of the Gods, and in The Staple of News, which re-appropriates a favorite satirical dialogue, Timon, the Misanthrope, to satirize the greed of the news industry. Jonson practices an extended and creative imitatio of Lucian's fantastic moon voyages (A True Story and Icaromenippus) in his much neglected News from the New World Discovered in the Moon. And, likewise, Jonson reworks Lucian extensively for the action of Poetaster: The Carousal supplies the lascivious banquet of 4.5, and Lexiphanes, the humiliating purge of Crispinus. Jonson's rich engagement with Lucian comes to a climax in Volpone, which borrows directly from The Dream, and several Dialogues of the Dead. Here whimsical ancient satire enables stern moral allegory. Responding to Poetaster in Satiro-mastix, Thomas Dekker has Captain Tucca rebuke Horace (i.e. Ben Jonson) by sarcastically calling him “Lucian.” Jonson, no doubt, took the proffered insult as the highest compliment.
在他的整个职业生涯中,本·琼森在他所拥有的神话以及几个希腊文和拉丁文版本中遇到了各种各样的卢西恩。琼森的接待在假面中采取了一瞥回忆的形式,而卢西恩则提供了神话般的装饰和文学上的幻想。它们在《辛西娅的狂欢》(Cynthia’s Revels)和《新闻的主要内容》(the Staple of News)中作为变革性的典故出现,《辛西娅的狂欢》(Cynthia’s Revels)借鉴了几段与众神的讽刺对话,《新闻的主要内容》(the Staple of News)重新挪用了一个最受欢迎的讽刺对话——愤世嫉俗者丁满(Timon)——来讽刺新闻业的贪婪。约翰逊在他那本被忽视的《在月球上发现的新世界的新闻》中,对卢西恩奇妙的月球航行(《一个真实的故事》和《伊卡洛梅尼普斯》)进行了扩展和创造性的模仿。同样地,琼森在《诗人》中对卢西恩进行了大量的改编:《狂欢》提供了《4.5》中淫荡的宴会,《莱西芬尼》提供了对克里斯皮纳斯的羞辱性清洗。琼森与卢西安的丰富交往在《狐坡涅》中达到高潮,《狐坡涅》直接借用了《梦》和几部《死者对话》。在这里,异想天开的古代讽刺使严厉的道德寓言成为可能。托马斯·德克尔让图卡船长讽刺地称霍勒斯(即本·约翰逊)为“卢西恩”,以此回应《萨提罗-马斯提克斯》中的诗人。毫无疑问,约翰逊把这种侮辱看作是最高的恭维。
{"title":"Ben Jonson's Reception of Lucian","authors":"R. Miola","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2019.0253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2019.0253","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout his career Ben Jonson drew variously upon Lucian, whom he encountered in the mythographies as well as in several Greek and Latin editions he owned. Jonson's receptions take the form of glancing reminiscence in the masques, as Lucian supplies mythological decoration and literary conceit. They appear as transformative allusion in Cynthia's Revels, which draws upon several satirical Dialogues of the Gods, and in The Staple of News, which re-appropriates a favorite satirical dialogue, Timon, the Misanthrope, to satirize the greed of the news industry. Jonson practices an extended and creative imitatio of Lucian's fantastic moon voyages (A True Story and Icaromenippus) in his much neglected News from the New World Discovered in the Moon. And, likewise, Jonson reworks Lucian extensively for the action of Poetaster: The Carousal supplies the lascivious banquet of 4.5, and Lexiphanes, the humiliating purge of Crispinus. Jonson's rich engagement with Lucian comes to a climax in Volpone, which borrows directly from The Dream, and several Dialogues of the Dead. Here whimsical ancient satire enables stern moral allegory. Responding to Poetaster in Satiro-mastix, Thomas Dekker has Captain Tucca rebuke Horace (i.e. Ben Jonson) by sarcastically calling him “Lucian.” Jonson, no doubt, took the proffered insult as the highest compliment.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74546844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theatrical Performances of Ben Jonson's Volpone from 2005–2017","authors":"Julianna Crame","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2019.0260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2019.0260","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86256122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jonson's “On My First Son” in Constellation","authors":"Katherine M. Cowles","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2019.0259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2019.0259","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89835733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Obituary Richard Harp 1945–2019","authors":"","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2019.0247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2019.0247","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75055726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}