Beth’s poster: “Effeminacy,” Prynne thought that when men dressed as women it made them less mannish, as did too much devotion to a woman. “The Womanish Man” pamphlets – men holding female symbols, and women holding male symbols. Effeminacy tied to nationalism – English men are very masculine and French men (kings) are feminized, England as a masculine identity, Elizabeth as a manish woman. Fine line between how much to care about appearance. Deuteronomy passage against cross-dressing (used by a lot of anti-theatricals).
Ellen: See the image of the Roaring Girl and tracts about her as a woman who dresses up in male clothing, Levine’s book, Gosson, Henry VI plays as counter effeminacy movement
Michael’s poster: “Laughter,” reader/audience affect. 4 discourses on meaning of laughter: 1. Laughter as derision goes back to classical period. 2. Laughter as social glue, more modern. 3. Misappropriation, theologically tinged theory of laughter. 4. Perversion, Bakhtin. Women are frequently the subject of laughter but not allowed to laugh. Laughter as natural process made unnatural by theatrical space. Laughter is so unreadable, easily faked.
Ellen: What to do with virginity tests? Epicoene will be a useful play.
Max’s poster: “Ravish,” Prynne – ok to be ravished by God, but not by a theatrical spectacle. Spectacle of theater as invasive. Benjamin – “Distraction.” Usages of “ravish” get more complicated over time, less of a good/bad binary. Spectacle – seen, invasive, indecent – obscenity, what is transgressive? Is being ravished a visceral sensibility? Obscene body is an assemblage - Snapshots from Brass Eye. How body beneath and the clothing of representation make an (obscene) assemblage.
Ellen: Breakdown of good/bad – ravished by God is good, masturbating in front of a sexy Madonna is bad. Ocularism bad, audism is good (Jonson “listen to verse, don’t look at the scene”).
Michael’s Presentation:
Recap of blog posting: for comic laughter to be tool of social derision, people need to get the joke and get the socio-cultural touch points of the joke.
Bly – Shakespeare is at odds with time because he takes away derisive quality of classical laughter and overlays it with laughter that creates a sense of community.
Theater undermined laughter’s power as corrective, anti-theatricals hated this, see Prynne quote on handout.
Anxiety over issue of representation – we don’t laugh at follies, but at people pretending to have follies
Jonson would disagree, unique among playwrights we’ve looked at so far, has his own idea of purpose of laughter – by laughing at absurdities of characters in the play you purge yourself of those same faults, some instruction embedded in pleasure, Jonson says you’re red with laughter, Burning pestle says you’re red with embarrassment (blush)
Epicoene – the corrective offered is one of inclusiveness, likened to a public feast, snobs will be surprised to like what they see (and then stop being snobs)
Epicoene – something for everyone! yet some characters are solely objects of scorn, play invites us to be part of an “in crowd” (title is latin grammar pun, a little snobbish to begin with)
-La Foole and Daw are both targets of derision
-Daw/Dauphine exchange: we laugh at Daw because he’s a pedant, but not a smart one, and he writes terrible poetry
What’s the degree of Epicoene’s misogyny? (No doubt that it’s misogynist)
-procreation and those who wish to do it are made to be objects of ridicule
How might staging have affected tone?
-Whitmore article, doesn’t talk much about Epicoene, yet beausec children embody a formless space, they’re not people but mimcs – Jonson makes children mimic adults so accurately and therefore undermines ridiculousness of their actions, makes adults in audience realize they sometimes act like children, embodying an unthinking ideology that’s open to derision.
Clerimont, Truewit, and Dauphine – what do we make of their weird social dynamic?
Was this play actually funny???????
Class Discussion:
Truewit’s misogynist rant – how does it relate to Michael’s argument and charges related to women and procreation? Association between marriage, heterosexuality and death. Getting pregnant would compound all the other issues of being a woman.
Truewit’s stuff is adapted from Juvenal’s misogynistic satires. Interesting that Truewit is the one saying these things. Truewit’s pretty malleable – so how can we know he means this?
Hard to decide whether Truewit is mocking pedantry or being a pedant. He’s not a malopropistic pseudo-pedant, yet there are reasons to mistrust his genius. Not open to as much mockery as Daw or La Foole, but still open to some.
Top of page 38, Jonson puts himself in the play, does this inclusion lend legitimacy to what Truewit is saying?
Jonson calls himself a latter day Horace – the idea of drama that teaches and pleases is taken from Horace. Yet that belies the evidence that so much of Jonson’s comedy is humoural and concerned with manners. Jonson’s own idea of his comic method is not quite what it actually is.
Jonson is desperate to have an insider wit community – very similar to Restoration Comedy. No teaching, no learning, sucks to be a woman. Jonson inaugurates that form, but can’t quite join it because people think he’s such a pontificating pain. Very prickly about his own reputation.
Epicoene – difficult to get through, plot lines don’t make sense on a regular basis. There is punning going on that would make this funny but it’s pretty opaque for us (insiderism).
-Disturbing Morose’s life is fun(ny). Safe comedy. Jonson does a good job of making that work (Comedia)
Stylistically it’s tough. All those prose paragraphs.
What’s theatrically interesting about Epicoene is that the wife (Epicoene) turns out to be a man (precedes M. Butterfly). Yet, in the dramatis personae, Jonson gives away the big reveal and – along with the title – Jonson lets people in on the play’s joke right away.
Morose coded by Whitefriars world, maybe that made it easier to catch the joke. Bly’s work is helpful in this regard. Overlapping conceits keep the joke running, extra-textual cues that ground auditors in the play that we don’t see in the play itself. Must’ve been a way to enter into the laughter community of the play that we can’t get now without the boys’ bodies and the way they’re referencing plays we haven’t seen.
Bly – lead actor would’ve been influential and recognizable, as would the clown who would be involved in partially scripting the plays he performed in. The extra-dramatic stuff that isn’t in the text of Epicoene clearly appealed to people.
RSC production of Epicoene, ’88 or ’89, made it work by messing with genders. New person brought in to play Epicoene (so no one was familiar with him), a man, but credited at a woman, looked beautiful like a woman but had a man’s voice. The play keeps you guessing about gender and so does this production.
No comments:
Post a Comment