City Comedy

Question 1

In the years…

Answer 1

1599-1615

Question 2

Key characteristics

Answer 2

Portrayed citizens from a variety of ranks; based in London; often involving merchants; satirising merchants and stock characters such as gossips/cuckolds/the rich

Question 3

Key works

Answer 3

Middleton - chaste maid
Dekker - shoemaker’s holiday
Jonson - epicene, volpone, The Alchemist.

Question 4

Ideas

Answer 4

Significance of names - “yellowhammer”, “lacy”, “Hammond”, “Allwit”; use of asides; caricaturing ‘types’

Question 5

Thomas Dekker

Answer 5

D.1632
Londoner
Dutch ancestry?

Question 6

Dekker key works

Answer 6

The shoemaker’s holiday (earliest record of performance 1600) and the roaring girl (cross dressing)

Question 7

Shoemaker’s holiday critics

Answer 7

Jonathan Gil Harris: (Dekker very interested in street language and good command of Dutch; likes “socially marginal or unconventional characters”; play has an “economic unconscious”; “subtly dramatises the change from an old code of communal fellowship to a new capitalist one”)
Dutton; play “romanticises and celebrates London and its merchant classes” where a chaste maid doesn’t.

Question 8

Key themes - shoemaker’s holiday

Answer 8

Dress/clothing; love; economic wellbeing; social status; fellowship/brotherhood; women as commodities/meat; speech and manners reflecting status, commercial society

Question 9

Thomas Middleton

Answer 9

D.1627.
Prolific writer of masques/pageants
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside; also revenge tragedy The Changeling

Question 10

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside - critics

Answer 10

Dutton - blend of intrigue and popular comedy. A different blend of “urban affairs, a world of unstable money, of social and sexual aspiration, of competitive and individualist psychology”. “More complex and multi-vocal work than any of its immediate models”. Set in Lent but “the characters still pursue the flesh, both literally and metaphorically” (link Moll and Touchwood Jnr’s resurrection; sir W Whorehound’s spiritual awakening)

Question 11

A Chaste Maid - key themes

Answer 11

London life, cuckoldry, economic in/dependence, deception, education/ignorance, women as goods/food, parent/child relationships and gender, elite classes, productivity, religious insincerity, death device. Triple plot, all interconnected by Whorehound.

Question 12

Shoemaker’s holiday - key characters

Answer 12

Simon Eyre (master shoemaker)
Margery (his wife)
Firk, hodge (journeymen)
Lacy/Hans (nobleman in disguise as Dutch shoemaker) 
Rose (daughter of Mayor of London)
Oatley (her father and LM)
Lincoln (lady's uncle)
Ralph (newlywed to)
Jane (courted by)
Hammond

Question 13

Shoemaker’s holiday - key quotes - lacy/Rose plot

Answer 13

Lincoln “I would not have you cast an amorous eye/upon so mean a project as the love/ of a gay, wanton, painted citizen”
Rose bribing Sibyl - commercial nature of life - “Do this, and I will give thee for thy pains/ my cambric apron, and my romish gloves”
Lacy - “How many shapes have Gods and Kings devised” (to see loves)
HAMMON wooing Rose (hunt) “a deer more dear is found within this place” Sybil “what kind of hart is that dear heart you seek?” (punning)
Lacy, to Rose, “thou payest sweet interest to my hopes” “bold-faced debtor”
King: “Shall I divorce them, then?” “Dost thou not know that love respects no blood,/ cares not for difference of birth or state?”

Question 14

Shoemaker’s holiday - key quotes Ralph/jane plot (hammon)

Answer 14

Ralph: “thou knowst our trade makes rings for women’s heels” “stitched by my fellow firk, seamed by myself”
Hammond to Jane: “only one look hath seemed as rich to me/as a king’s crown, such is love’s lunacy.”
Jane, to Hammond “my hands are not to be sold” “though he be dead,/ my love for him shall not be buried”
Ralph: “Hammon, dost thou think a shoemaker’s so base to be a bawd to his own wife for a commodity?”

Question 15

Shoemakers holiday - key quotes Eyre and shoemakers plot.

Answer 15

Repeated phrases - Eyre: “By the lord of Ludgate” and Margery “but let that pass”
Eyre - “fat midriff-swag-belly whores” TO “lady Madgy”
Lacy in disguise: “Yaw, yaw, ick bin den skomaker” (phonetic spelling significant)
hierarchy - Firk “I being the elder journeyman”
Firk “no point. Shall I betray my brother?” (to Oatley/Lincoln) Oatley “base crafty varlet” (firk) “no crafty neither, but of the gentle craft”
“Sim Eyre knows how to speak to a Pope… to Tamberlaine an’ he were here”

Question 16

A Chaste Maid - key characters

Answer 16

Moll Yellowhammer (daughter of Mr and Maudline Yellowhammer, in love with)
Touchwood Jnr (younger brother of)
Touchwood Snr (married, fertile, and aid to)
Lord and Lady Kix (infertile, money to pass to)
Sir Walter Whorehound (seeing the Welsh Lady, and cuckolding)
Allwit (married to Mrs Allwit and satisfied with life)

Question 17

A Chaste Maid - key quotes Moll plot

Answer 17

Maudline to Moll “a husband./ Had not such a piece of flesh been ordained,/ what would us wives be good for? - to make salads”
Ring engravement: “Love that’s wise/ blinds parents eyes”
YellowH “I will lock up this baggage/as carefully as my gold” (women as commodities/marriage market)
“Oh! She’s gone forever!/ That letter broke her heart!”
“hands join now, but hearts forever,/ which no parent’s mood will sever”
“if your logic cannot prove me honest,/ there’s a thing called marriage, and that makes me honest” (welshwoman)

Question 18

A Chaste Maid - key quotes Allwit plot

Answer 18

Allwit - pun on “Wittol” (knowing cuckold) - “I am like a man/finding a table furnished to his hand” “pray, am I not your master? O, you are but/ our mistress’s husband”
“These women have no consciences at sweetmeats” (hypocritical puritan gossips)
Whorehound repenting after duelling with T. jnr. and almost dying: “if ever eyes were open, these are they:/ Gamesters, farewell, I have nothing left to play.”

Question 19

A Chaste Maid - key quotes Touch. snr/Kixes plot

Answer 19

T snr. on illegitimate child “piece of flesh/in this strict time of lent” (Promoters) “You know he bought the whole Lent together” (corruption) “thou art nothing of a woman” (for barrenness) T snr. “yours must be taken lying”

Question 20

Ben Jonson - about

Answer 20

d.1637, well educated, contemporary of Shakespeare, varied life with much debauchery/excitement (killed a man in a duel)

Question 21

Ben Jonson - critics

Answer 21

Greenblatt: c16 England “increasing self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process”. Expressions of social ideas/rules. Texts are part of the larger social world of self-fashioning.
Campbell: morals insisted on in prefaces “are not always readily apparent in the plays themselves”
Greene: Mosca = Jonson’s most flexible character. The home is an “inadequate fortress open to invasion and adultery” in his work.

Question 22

Jonson - city comedies

Answer 22

Volpone (1606)
Epicene (1609, printed 1616)
The Alchemist (1610)

Question 23

Volpone - key themes

Answer 23

1606. COMEDY! Deception - powerful rhetoric; changeablility of character (physical and mental); middleman; greed; lust; morals. Beast fable style. Set in Venice.

Question 24

Volpone - key characters

Answer 24

Volpone (rich old man, waited on by)
Mosca (his parasite)
Nano, Androgino, Castrone (Volpone’s entertainers)
Voltore (Lawyer, seeking Volpone’s wealth, as is)
Corbaccio (avaricious old miser, father to)
Bonario (who rescues Celia from rape, but is accused of falsehood in trial)
Corvino (merchant, married to)
Celia (Volpone desires)
Sir Politic Would-Be (and Lady)

Question 25

Volpone - key quotes

Answer 25

‘Argument’ is an acrostic poem. “Lies languishing; his parasite receives/ Presents of all…”
Volpone: “I glory more in the cunning purchase of my wealth/ then in the glad possession; since I gain/ no common way” - “now, my feigned cough” (pretending death)
Corbaccio: “sure I shall outlast him:/ this makes me young again” - Mosca - “put it in his hand… he has his feeling yet”
Mosca - “I could slip out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake”
Volpone on Celia “She’s in again./ Before I feigned my disease; now I have one” - wooing Celia “we, in changed shapes, act Ovid’s tales”

Question 26

The Alchemist - themes

Answer 26

(1610) London, deception, changeable characters, supernatural, persuasive/false rhetoric, nationality.

Question 27

Epicene - themes

Answer 27

(1609) the household and domestic tyranny, sound, gossips/deception of women, male players/female characters/suspension of disbelief/crossdressing. Family, inheritance. Marriage (as transformative state?)

Question 28

The Alchemist - critics

Answer 28

Campbell - Jonson uses “metaphors of alchemical transformation to delineate the mutability and instability of his characters and their social relationships”

Question 29

The Alchemist - key figures

Answer 29

Face (aka Jeremy, housekeeper for Lovewit, collaborating with)
Subtle (and also)
Doll (both in love with her at points)
Epicure Mammon (being deceived into thinking by paying them he will learn to turn metal to gold)
Surly (accompanies Mammon, unconvinced by methods but fancies Doll)
Kestrel
Ananias and Tribulation (Anabaptists seeking riches from money gained at orphanage)
Dapper (shopkeeper seeking advice, believes he has a fairy aunt)

Question 30

The Alchemist - key quotes

Answer 30

Prologue “our scene is London” “no clime breeds better matter for your whore,/ bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more,/ whose manners, now called humours, feed the stage”
Drugger is “allied to the Queen of Faery” (allusions to E 1?) - mocking - “the petticoat of fortune” and blocks mouth with gingerbread. (“projection”)
Mammon on Face - “that’s his fire-drake,/ his lungs”“this night I’ll change/all that is metal in my house to gold”
eg. of false alchemy language “infuse vinegar”, “tincture” “sanguis agni”
Surly - to Face “What a brave language here is, next to canting!” (as face turns to jeremy) “This’s a new face?” (Surly himself partakes, dressing as a Spanish Don to woo Doll)
Doll’s role as seductress - “Sweet Doll,/ you must go tune your virginall” - has a “fit of talking”
Ananias “the exiled saints that hope/ to raise their discipline by it” (discrediting religion)

Question 31

Epicene - Key characters

Answer 31

Morose (hates sound, to be married to)
Epicene, The Silent Woman (who has been set up by)
Dauphine (nephew of Morose, and friend of)
Truewit and Clerimont
Barber (central enabling figure)
Sir La Foole (local busybody)
John Daw (pretends to be educated. Is persuaded that La Foole is after him and vice versa)
Mistress Otter (tyrannous wife to)
Master Otter (sea-captain, always carrying “my bull, my bear, my horse”)
The Collegiates, led by Lady Haughty - in a society intent on educating women and airing voices.

Question 32

Epicene - key quotes pre-marriage (acts 1-3)

Answer 32

Collegiates “cry up and down what they like or dislike” with “hermaphroditical authority”
Song on women/love (Dauphine and friends) “such sweet neglect more taketh me/ than all the adulteries of art:/ they strike mine eyes, but not my heart”
Morose: “her silence is dowry enough” - “answer me no but with your leg”.
Truewit, trying to put Morose off marriage (has the opposite effect) “if learned, there never was such a parrot”
Morose, interviewing Epicene: “speak out, I beseech you” (tests on desire for female companions etc…)
John Daw described as “a fellow so utterly nothing, as he knows not what he would be”
Clerimont, on Master Otter “alas, what a tyranny is this poor fellow married to”

Question 33

Epicene - key quotes post-marriage (acts 3-end)

Answer 33

Epicene: “why, did you think you had married a statue?” “I’ll have none of this coacted, unnatural dumbness in my house, in a family where I govern”
Centaure: “she has found her tongue since she was married” other collegiates - “let him allow you” (power balance)
Morose - “tumult and strife are the dowry that comes with a wife”
Dauphine has Barber Cutbeard and Otter dress as a lawyer and divine - nature of playing: “clap but a civil gown with a welt o’ the one” “give ‘em a few terms i’ their mouths”
In order to escape, Daw and La Foole say they were “familiar” with Epicene before marriage - “marry a whore! and so much noise!”; Morose says he is “utterly unable” to consummate marriage… revelation: “you have married a boy”

Question 34

Comedy of Humours - about

Answer 34

Genre initiated by Jonson, between 1588/9. Plays where the focus is on characters of specific humours that override their personalities. Became satirical character studies and were combined with the Comedies of Manners, to create the City Comedy.

Question 35

Comedy of Humours - key text

Answer 35

Jonson’s Every Man In/Out of his Humour (1598/9)

Question 36

Every Man Out - key characters

Answer 36

Puntarvolo - outdated knight errant
Carlo Buffone - “jester” who tries to educate country farmers on how to become gentlemen
Sogliardo (brother of)
Sordido (rough farmer, father of)
Fungoso (educated, aspirational young man)

Question 37

Every Man Out - key quotes

Answer 37

Asper: humours = “metaphor” for men - “as when some one peculiar quality/doth so possess a man”
Sogliardo: “I will be a gentleman whatsoever it cost me” - Carlo: to be a gentleman “you must give over housekeeping in the country”, must “sit on the stage and flout, provided you have a good suit”
formulaic nature of courtly love: “I will step forward three paces, of the which, I will barely retire one” speaks -
“how! in verse?” (of Puntarvolo)
Fungoso, seing Fastidious in a new suit: “well, I’ll have my suit changed.”

Question 38

Epicene - SOUND quotes

Answer 38

“one winds a horn without” “drum and trumpets sound” “he hath chosen a street to lie in so narrow… it will receive no coaches” “he cannot endure a costermonger”

Question 39

A Chaste Maid - language quotes

Answer 39

“Patri et Matri. Pay the porter or it makes no matter” (mocking Latin)
Tim/WelshG “cog foggini? I scorn to cog with her… ego non cogo” - “in Hebrew, fool? ‘Tis Welsh!”
Timothy (on welsh wife) “one may discover her country by her kissing”