Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:58:08.296Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Jonsonian Comedy and the Discovery of the Social Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Lawrence Danson
Lawrence Danson*
Affiliation:
Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The self in Jonson's comedies, like the self described by modern sociologists, is a reflection of other reflections, created by the society it creates. As Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority seems to show, the social self is radically contingent. Therefore the anagnorisis in Jonson's comedies is a catastrophe in more than the technical sense; it is the discovery of a self that cannot bear its own exposure. By contrast, the heroes and heroines of Shakespeare's romantic comedies discover themselves in relation to a nurturing family and a mature sexual family. Theirs is a psychological self. In the “comical satires,” Jonson encounters the problem of finding appropriate endings for plays whose characters can achieve no satisfying self-discovery. In Volpone the protagonist acts like an experimental social psychologist, exposing the pliability of the social self. The catastrophe shows that Volpone's own “substance” is only a reflection of his world's insubstantiality.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 99 , Issue 2 , March 1984 , pp. 179 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abse, Dannie. The Dogs of Pavlov. London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1973.Google Scholar
Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Golden, Leon. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968.Google Scholar
Barish, Jonas A. “The Double Plot in Volpone.” Modern Philology 51 (1953): 83–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barton, Anne. “As You Like It and Twelfth Night: Shakespeare's Sense of an Ending.” In Shakespearian Comedy. Ed. Bradbury, Malcolm and Palmer, D. J. Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 14. London: Arnold, 1972, 160–80.Google Scholar
Beaurline, L. A. Jonson and Elizabethan Comedy. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1978.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L., and Luckmann, Thomas. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday, 1967.Google Scholar
Bevington, David. “Shakespeare vs. Jonson on Satire.” In Shakespeare 1971: Proceedings of the World Shakespeare Congress. Ed. Leech, Clifford and Margeon, J. M. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1972, 107–22.Google Scholar
Cooley, Charles Horton. Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. New York: Scribners, 1909.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cope, Jackson I. The Theater and the Dream. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Danson, Lawrence. “Henry V: King, Chorus, and Critics.” Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983): 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erikson, Erik H. Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton, 1968.Google Scholar
Ewbank, Inga-Stina. “‘My Name Is Marina’: The Language of Recognition.” In Shakespeare's Styles: Essays in Honour of Kenneth Muir. Ed. Edwards, Philip, Ewbank, Inga-Stina, and Hunter, G. K. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980, 111–30.Google Scholar
Golden, M. Patricia, ed. The Research Experience. Itasca, Ill.: Peacock, 1976.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. “The False Ending in Volpone.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 75 (1976): 90–104.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas. “Ben Jonson and the Centered Self.” SEL 10 (1970): 325–48.Google Scholar
Haney, Craig, Banks, W. Curtis, and Zimbardo, Philip G. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.” In Golden 157–77.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman N. Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.Google Scholar
Holland, Ray. Self and Social Context. New York: St. Martin's, 1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ickes, William, and Knowles, Eric S., eds. Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, John. On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy. London: Chatto & Windus, 1962.Google Scholar
Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson. Ed. Herford, C. H., Simpson, Percy, and Simpson, Evelyn. 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1925–52.Google Scholar
Kahn, Coppélia. Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Kernan, Alvin B. “Alchemy and Acting: The Major Plays of Ben Jonson.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 6 (1973): 1–22.Google Scholar
Kernan, Alvin B. The Cankered Muse: Satire in the English Renaissance. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1959.Google Scholar
Klein, George S. Perception, Motives, and Personality. New York: Knopf, 1970.Google Scholar
Knowles, Eric S. “From Individuals to Group Members: A Dialectic for the Social Sciences.” In Ickes and Knowles 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leggatt, Alexander. Ben Jonson: His Vision and His Art. London: Methuen, 1981.Google Scholar
Leggatt, Alexander. “The Suicide of Volpone.” University of Toronto Quarterly 39 (1969): 19–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard, Nancy S. “Shakespeare and Jonson Again: The Comic Form.” Renaissance Drama 10 (1979): 45–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mead, George Herbert. George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology. Ed. Strauss, Anselm. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milgram, Stanley. The Individual in a Social World. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1977.Google Scholar
Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper, 1974.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur G., ed. The Social Psychology of Psychological Research. New York: Free Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Nugent, S. Georgia. “Ancient Theories of Comedy: The Treatises of Evanthius and Donatus.” In Shakespearean Comedy. Ed. Charney, Maurice. New York: New York Literary Forum, 1980, 259–80.Google Scholar
Palmer, D. J. “As You Like It and the Idea of Play.” Critical Quarterly 13 (1971): 234–45.Google Scholar
Partridge, Edward B. The Broken Compass: A Study of the Major Comedies of Ben Jonson. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paster, Gail Kern. “Ben Jonson's Comedy of Limitation.” Studies in Philology (1975): 51–71.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Murray, and Kahn, Coppélia, eds. Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Skura, Meredith Anne. The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Sweeney, John. “Volpone and the Theater of Self-Interest.” English Literary Renaissance 11 (1982): 220–41.Google Scholar
Waith, Eugene. “‘Give Me Your Hands’: Reflections on the Author's Agents in Comedy.” In The Author in His Work. Ed. Martz, Louis L. and Williams, Aubrey. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978, 197–211.Google Scholar
Waith, Eugene. The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Weimann, Robert. “Society and the Individual in Shakespeare's Conception of Character.” Shakespeare Survey 34 (1981): 23–32.Google Scholar
Winnicott, D. W. Playing and Reality. New York: Basic, 1971.Google Scholar