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Sir John Falstaff vs. Lean Macilente

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A Movable Feast: The Liturgical Symbolism and Design of The Tempest

by Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky

Shakespeare Yearbook, Vol. XVII, 2010

So much depends on an impossible-to-answer question: When was The Tempest written?  Oxfordian scholars Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky have just posted what they believe to be “the most important” in their series of published articles challenging the assumption that Shakespeare wrote The Tempest not long before Hallowmas night, 1611, when The King’s Men performed a play by that name for James and his court at Whitehall.

I agree.  This is the most important of the six pieces that Stritmatter and Kositsky have so far published, for the delightful reason that it’s the first in which they’ve allowed Ben Jonson his place within The Tempest’s rarefied circle of “measured harmonies”.  As a specialist who “understands [the paradoxical merging of pleasure and virtue]”, Jonson even earns a spot in their concluding paragraph:

Evidence adduced in the present essay shows that both the symbolism and design of The Tempest are explicable on the premise that the play was written for a Shrovetide performance.  Indeed, so rich and detailed are the associations between Shrovetide and Lenten practices and the design of Shakespeare’s play that it may safely be concluded that it was in fact written, as R. Christopher Hassel has said of Jonson’s epiphany masques and Twelfth Night, “with the major outlines of the festival season firmly in mind”.

Once again, I agree, but this time with a few reservations.  For all we know, The Tempest may not have been written specifically for an upcoming Shrovetide performance, such as that on “Shrovmonday” of 1604/5, when The Spanish Maze appeared and then disappeared.  And the play’s undercurrent of Lenten imagery doesn’t necessarily rule out its necromantic relevance to a Hallowmas night performance. This seems to me the weakest portion of their essay, with insufficient quotations from the scholars whose theories they dismiss as “incorrect”, and no mention of John B. Bender’s essay, “The Day of the Tempest” (ELH, 1980).  Nevertheless, I do think that the authors have tapped into an aspect of the play’s allegoric design that now seems incredibly obvious, after they’ve pointed out the clues.  Here’s one vivid example:

Among the most popular emblems of the season was Jack-a-Lent, a puppet made from a Leek and a Herring and set up on Ash Wednesday as a scapegoat for the deprivations experienced at Lent.  Decorated with herrings, and pelted with missiles he became “both a manifest and a ubiquitous symbol of the long period of austerity and at the same [time?] operated as a kind of safety valve.”  Caliban’s likeness to this “ubiquitous” Lenten scapegoat, half man and half fish, hardly requires emphasis.

If, indeed, the author saturated his scenes with Shrovetide and Lenten imagery and philosophy, how does this fresh insight affect our view of The Tempest from the Oxfordian perspective?

The answer isn’t immediately apparent in “A Moveable Feast”, since Stritmatter and Kositsky’s arguments for a Shrovetide-Tempest never require a mention of Edward de Vere.  “Shakespeare’s” great rival, however, just happens to come in for a lion’s share of their Shrovetide references.  When collected in one place, Ben Jonson’s résumé in the field of Shrovetide and Lenten entertainment and commentary is quite impressive, as witnessed by these quotes from “A Moveable Feast”:

On p. 338:

“In Time Vindicated (1622) Ben Jonson has Fame denounce “lawless Prentices, on Shrove Tuesday” who “compel the Time to serve their riot:/ for drunken Wakes and strutting Beare-baitings, that savour only of their own abuses.”

On p. 346, a reference to The Haddington Masque:

…the title page of Ben Jonson’s 1608 Shrovetide production celebrating the wedding of Viscount Haddington to Lady Elizabeth Ratcliffe, illustrates the traditional association” [of Shrovetide and marriage masques].

In footnote 41, p. 366:

Jonson’s Chloridia, a 1630 Shrovetide masque [which, like The Tempest] also features Juno and Iris as prominent characters.

In footnote 63, p. 368:

The prologue to Staple of News, a play thought to have been written for Shrovetide, emphasizes the connection between the festival and “merrymaking”: “I am Mirth, the daughter of Christmas, and Spirit of Shrovetide.  They say, It’s merry when Gossips meet; I hope your Play will be a merry one!

In footnote 91, p. 370:

The association between Shrovetide and the labyrinth is conventional in early modern drama and would have been readily recognized by Shakespeare’s audience.  Daedalus even appears as the narrative voice of Jonson’s Shrovetide masque, For the Honour of Wales, constructing a knot so cunningly interwoven that “ev’n th’observer scarce may know/Which lines are pleasure’s and which are not” (225-27)  and R. Chris Hassel calls him the “most important interpreter of the Shrovetide festivities” (132) , one who “understands [the paradoxical merging of pleasure and virtue] better than any …subsequent interpreters of this Shrovetide tradition” (129).

One play NOT mentioned by the authors, but with immense relevance to any study of Edward de Vere and/or The Tempest, is Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humor. Not only do we find Jonson building his plot within a merry Shrovetide context, but in the 1601 Quarto of the play, the rascal slyly hitches his play to the turnip-cart of Shakespeare’s Gargantuan hero:

Marry, I will not do as Plautus, in his Amphitryo, for all this: Summi Iovis causa, plaudite:  beg a plaudit for god’s sake.  But if you (out of the bounty of your good liking) will bestow it, why, you may (in time) make lean Macilente as fat as Sir John Falstaff.

The evidence offered in “A Moveable Feast” puts a new spin on this passage.  What does Shakespeare’s fat Falstaff represent for Ben Jonson, and his lean and mean Macilente?   The excess of Carnival vs. the sobriety of Lent?  Purses swollen by the hilarious misrule of London’s infamous “Vice” vs. the empty pockets and hungry rumblings of a Virtuous Poet?  Sir Epicure Mammon vs. Surly Caliban?  Subtle the Alchemist vs. Prospero?  Once again, whether we want him or not, Ben Jonson offers himself as the savviest guide to the mysteries of The Tempest.

~*~*~

NOTE: Two small errors that the authors may wish to correct in their online text:  “6 Nov. 1611” as the date for the first recorded performance of The Tempest (p. 341) and the attribution to Sebastian of Antonio’s very strange and final words of the play: “A plain fish, and no doubt marketable.” (p. 345-6)

  1. September 19th, 2013 at 20:27 | #1

    Hi Marie,

    I definitely agree with you that Bender as well as Hall deserve further consideration regarding their Hallowmas arguments. Perhaps Dr. Stritmatter and Ms. Kositsky will consider a new essay addressing *The Book of Common Prayer* and its relationship to *The Tempest*.

    I think we agree this is an interesting (and important!) part of their overall thesis. Certainly, part of the research process is to try to dispute one’s own arguments to ascertain it holds on all points and that such an essay would either bolster or force S&K to re-access their arguments.

    Thanks very much for your great essays!!

    Best wishes,
    Libby

    • Marie Merkel
      October 25th, 2013 at 12:15 | #2

      Hi Libby,

      Maybe you will consider writing such an essay? I suspect you could show The Tempest as a play for all seasons!

      Marie

  2. February 8th, 2011 at 18:04 | #3

    Hi Marie,

    I saw your review of our Shrovetide paper. Thank you for writing it. I would say that although we refer to Jonson several times in the article, the evidence–vocabulary, style, design, etc–points unequivocally to Shakespeare as author of Tempest–and author of a Shrovetide Tempest, at that.

    One of the problems that you pointed out was that “the play’s undercurrent of Lenten imagery doesn’t necessarily rule out its necromantic relevance to a Hallowmas night performance. This seems to me the weakest portion of their essay, with insufficient quotations from the scholars whose theories they dismiss as “incorrect”, and no mention of John B. Bender’s essay, ‘The Day of the Tempest.’”

    It is interesting to note, with regard to your comment that the Shrovetide/Lenten imagery doesn’t rule out its relevance to Hallowmas, that we spent months researching this topic, and concluded that the Hallowmas references were decidedly weak, certainly no stronger than than those that could fit into any occasional play; The Tempest, on the other hand, is saturated with Shrove/Lent/Easter material that has long been overlooked, perhaps in an attempt to retain the date of the first recorded performance as the actual first performance. Also, as you probably know, the number of words one is allowed in an article is limited; many journals ask for an upper limit of 7,000 words or so. in fact we’ve written much more in our book ms. on this subject–three chapters. Very little has been published re Tempest as a Hallowmas play, simply because there’s not much to publish.

    In the article we chose whom we considered the two most important scholars in that particular field, Hall and Hassel, and went with them–or rather against them re their theory, though we have great respect for both. We didn’t have room for Bender, or inclination to add him. Reading him again last night, I still didn’t feel he had anything new to offer. His descriptions of Hallowmas were terrific, and he spent much time on them, but he couldn’t specifically link Tempest to the holiday in any other than general term, though he strained to find connections. Besides, we had already cut our article in half, the second half speaking more to the issue of dating. We had no need of yet another Hallowmas enthusiast.

    Re the small errors: Thank you. I knew very well the November 1 date re Tempest, but at some point it appears to have been changed. It is correct in our book manuscript. Neither of us caught the Sebastian/Antonio error, but
    I did mention to you that we were publishing a draft of the article on our Tempest blog because we weren’t given copies of Shakespeare Yearbook.

    • February 19th, 2011 at 14:59 | #4

      Hi Lynne,
      Thank you for posting this thoughtful comment. I apologize for my delay in responding – I’ve been away from home for ten days, with no spare time to write, and am just now sorting email and catching up with phone messages.

      You wrote:

      I would say that although we refer to Jonson several times in the article, the evidence–vocabulary, style, design, etc–points unequivocally to Shakespeare as author of Tempest–and author of a Shrovetide Tempest, at that.

      Even though your references are scattered, the important fact that Jonson was an accomplished provider of Shrovetide entertainment still comes through. As my title on this essay implies, Honest Ben readily identified himself with the “Lean Macilente” side of the festival year, while “Sir John Falstaff” embodied the Lord of Misrule, traditionally inaugurated on Hallowmas.

      If you read (or re-read) my essay, “Ben Jonson & The Tempest: the Copie may be Mistaken for the Principall”, you’ll see that Jonson prided himself on imitation, describing the process in cannibalistic terms. With this unique “Art”, he gave posterity a copy of “Shakespeare” so cunningly derived from the master that it’s been “mistaken for the principal” right up until J. T. Looney identified Shakespeare as Edward de Vere in 1920.

      Nevertheless, he left his fingerprints all over the piece, no doubt intentionally – the vocabulary, style and design, etc. all correspond with work that Jonson had already completed and work he would do in the future, from The Case is Altered to The Magnetic Lady, with The Alchemist being a near perfect inversion of The Tempest. (see “Carrying Tempest in his Hand and Voice”)

      I didn’t include these mirror-image passages in my essay, since it was already too long, at 4,000 words, for a newsletter, but have them all in the footnotes of my personal edition of the play. Every time I revisit Jonson’s works, I find new ones to add to the pile of evidence, which is overwhelming: Ben Jonson knew The Tempest inside out and backwards.

      You wrote:

      We didn’t have room for Bender, or inclination to add him. Reading him again last night, I still didn’t feel he had anything new to offer. His descriptions of Hallowmas were terrific, and he spent much time on them, but he couldn’t specifically link Tempest to the holiday in any other than general term, though he strained to find connections. Besides, we had already cut our article in half, the second half speaking more to the issue of dating. We had no need of yet another Hallowmas enthusiast.

      In your summation of the arguments presented in “A Moveable Feast”, you and Roger unequivocally claim that “efforts to associate the play with other festival occasions, such as Hallowmas, have failed.” After reading Hassel, the portions from Grace Hall that you quote, Bender’s essay, and as much of Laroque as I could assess online, I’d say that you and Roger have failed to show that the play has no significant Hallowmas associations.

      Since you and Roger chose to frame your Shrovetide discoveries in an “either/or” framework, this remains a decided weakness in your article, casting a shadow on your effort to dislodge Nov. 1, 1611 as a relevant date in Tempest studies. Apart from this slight imperfection, much of your Shrovetide material should, I believe, hold up under close scrutiny.

      However, I don’t see where the second half of your article speaks “more to the issue of dating”, unless you simply mean, more on the Shrovetide imagery and potential relevance of the play for that festival occasion. In both the first and second parts of “A Moveable Feast”, you and Roger supply no evidence that The Tempest was ever performed for Shrovetide, and no evidence that the author had ever been commissioned to supply Shrovetide entertainment – yet your premise is “that the play was written for Shrovetide performance”.

      Given the documentary evidence that someone chose the play as appropriate for Hallowmas on Nov. 1, 1611, I think it well worth the time to reconsider those “Hallowmas enthusiasts”, with Bender’s essay given the close reading and careful citing that it deserves. Too late to do so for your article, of course, but not for your book!

      Marie

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