Epicene, Day 1

In Mary Bly’s article for Tuesday, she quotes J. Grieg’s theory of humor:

Nothing is laughable in itself … the laughable borrows its special quality from some person or group of persons who happen to laugh at it, and, unless you happen also to know a good deal about this person or group of persons, you cannot by any means guarantee the laugh before hand. (139)

Laughter, by both Grieg and Bly’s measure, is both social and in many ways constructive; for there to be laughter, there must be people to get the joke, who are capable of comprehending whatever sociocultural touchpoints the joke sounds or exploits. Bly in particular is interested how homoerotic puns in boys’ plays were “read” by those who knew to look for them – in other words, how these comedies allowed for a sense of (homo)erotic community.

Jonson’s prologue to Epicene telegraphs to the audience an expectation of a rather expansive play in this regard: the poet’s “cates” will be diverse, some “fit for ladies: some for lords, knights squires; / Some for waiting-wench, and city-wires; / Some for your men and daughters of Whitefriars” (22-23).

For class, I’d like to use this notion of the socio-comic to put Jonson’s Prologue to the test, for while laughter may help us build communities, we can’t help but laugh at someone or something. So a simple question: in Epicene, who/what do we laugh at, and why? In the play’s social laughter, who is excluded, and what sort of community is thereby birthed?

Speaking of birth, another thing I’d like to pay close attention to is another kind of community-building: actual human reproduction. Morose, for instance, plots to sire an heir to push Dauphine out of his estate, thus instigating the action of the play. Another particularly pregnant passage (sorry) to think about might be this exchange from (in my edition) II.iii.109-124:

DAW. Silence in a woman is like speech in a man,

Deny ’t who can.

DAUPHINE. Not I, believe it; your reason, sir.

DAW. Nor is’t a tale,

That female vice should be a virtue male,

Or masculine vice a female virtue be.

You shall it see

Proved with increase;

I know to speak, and she to hold her peace.

Do you conceive me, gentlemen?

DAUPHINE. No, faith; how mean you with increase, Sir John?

DAW. Why, with increase is when I court her for the common cause of mankind, and she says nothing, but consentire videtur, and in time is gravida.

DAUPHINE. Then this is a ballad of procreation?

CLERIMONT. A madrigal of procreation, you mistake.

Here we have a nice convergence of what I think is Epicene’s relationship to laughter and the community it builds, along with the play’s apparent ideas on the messier, more biological parts of community-building. But what exactly I’m drawing from it I’ll save for class, and allow you all to formulate your own ideas given the lines of thought I’ve laid out, or your own inclinations.

Other things I won’t touch on as explicitly but which I’d really like to discuss are the nature and implications of the play’s apparent misogyny, the ways in which the staging of this play might affect its tone (would child actors make it seem less meanspirited, for instance, and in this regard we might want to think of Michael Witmore’s thesis on Jonson), and the rather unusual and complex relationship between Clerimont, Truewit, and Dauphine.

Until tomorrow, happy reading, and see you all in class!