''Bartholomew Fair'' is a Jacobean comedy in five acts by
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
. It was first staged on 31 October
1614
Events
January–June
* February – King James I of England condemns duels, in his proclamation ''Against Private Challenges and Combats''.
* April 5 – Pocahontas is forced into child marriage with English colonist John Rolfe in Ja ...
at the
Hope Theatre
The Hope Theatre was one of the theatres built in and around London for the presentation of plays in English Renaissance theatre, comparable to the Globe, the Curtain, the Swan, and other famous theatres of the era.
The Hope was built in 1613 ...
by the
Lady Elizabeth's Men
The Lady Elizabeth's Men, or Princess Elizabeth's Men, was a company of actors in Jacobean London, formed under the patronage of King James I's daughter Princess Elizabeth. From 1618 on, the company was called The Queen of Bohemia's Men, afte ...
company. Written four years after ''
The Alchemist
An alchemist is a person who practices alchemy.
Alchemist or Alchemyst may also refer to:
Books and stories
* ''The Alchemist'' (novel), the translated title of a 1988 allegorical novel by Paulo Coelho
* ''The Alchemist'' (play), a play by Be ...
'', five after ''
Epicœne, or the Silent Woman'', and nine after ''
Volpone
''Volpone'' (, Italian for "sly fox") is a comedy play by English playwright Ben Jonson first produced in 1605–1606, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-perfor ...
'', it is in some respects the most experimental of these plays.
The play was first printed in
1631
Events
January–March
* January 23 – Thirty Years' War: Sweden and France sign the Treaty of Bärwalde, a military alliance in which France provides funds for the Swedish army invading northern Germany.
* February 5 &ndash ...
, as part of a planned second volume of the first 1616 folio collection of Jonson's works, to be published by the bookseller
Robert Allot
Robert Allot (died 1635) was a London bookseller and publisher of the early Caroline era; his shop was at the sign of the black bear in St. Paul's Churchyard. Though he was in business for a relatively short time – the decade from 1625 to 16 ...
; however, Jonson abandoned the plan when he became dissatisfied with the quality of the typesetting. Copies of the 1631 typecast were circulated, though whether they were sold publicly or distributed privately by Jonson is unclear. The play was published in the
second folio
The Second Folio is the 1632 edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare. It follows the First Folio of 1623. Much language was updated in the Second Folio and there are almost 1,700 changes.
The major partners in the First Folio had ...
of Jonson's works in 1640–41, published by
Richard Meighen
Richard Meighen (died 1641) was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He is noted for his publications of plays of English Renaissance drama; he published the second Ben Jonson folio of 1640/41, and was a member of the syndicat ...
.
Background
The play is set at
Bartholomew Fair
The Bartholomew Fair was one of London's pre-eminent summer charter fairs. A charter for the fair was granted to Rahere by Henry I to fund the Priory of St Bartholomew; and from 1133 to 1855 it took place each year on 24 August within the preci ...
, which from 1133 to 1855 was one of London's preeminent summer fairs. It opened on 24 August each year at
Smithfield, in the northwestern part of the city. Smithfield, a site of slaughterhouses and public executions, was a fitting place for a fair that was part commerce and part spectacle. At once a trading event for cloth and other goods and a pleasure fair, the four-day event drew crowds from all classes of English society.
Jonson's play uses this fair as the setting for an unusually detailed and diverse panorama of early seventeenth-century London life. The one day of fair life represented in the play allows Jonson ample opportunity to not just conduct his plot, but also to depict the vivid life of the fair, from pickpockets and bullies to justices and slumming gallants. Jonson also uses the characters that he creates as a way to comment on the social, religious and political conflicts of London society in Jacobean England.
Synopsis
The play begins with an extended bit of
metadrama; the company's stage-keeper enters, criticising the play about to be performed because it lacks romantic and fabulous elements. He is then pushed from the stage by the book-keeper, who (serving as prologue) announces a contract between author and audience. The contract appears to itemise Jonson's discontentment with his audiences: Members are not to find political satire where none is intended; they are not to take as oaths such innocuous phrases as "God quit you"; they are not to "censure by contagion", but must exercise their own judgment; moreover, they are allowed to judge only in proportion to the price of their ticket. Perhaps most important, they agree not to expect a throwback to the sword-and-buckler age of Smithfield, for Jonson has given them a picture of the present and unromantic state of the fair.
The play proper begins with a proctor and amateur dramatist Littlewit and his friends, Quarlous and Winwife; they are plotting how to win Dame Purecraft (a widow, and Littlewit's mother-in-law) from Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, a canting, hypocritical Puritan.
This colloquy is interrupted by the entrance of Wasp, the irascible servant of Cokes, a country simpleton who is in town to marry Grace Wellborn. Grace is the ward of Adam Overdo, a Justice of the Peace; Overdo's wife is Cokes's sister. All of these characters are at Littlewit's to get a marriage license; having obtained it, they indulge Cokes's wish to visit the fair.
Littlewit and his friends also plan to go to the fair to see a puppet-show Littlewit wrote. To overcome Busy's likely objections, they pretend that Win (Littlewit's wife) has a pregnant craving for roast pork. The Renaissance audience, familiar with stage satire of
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
s, would not have been surprised that Busy, far from abhorring the fair and its debauchery, is ready to rationalise his presence there as allowable and even godly. The first act ends with both groups, the genteel Overdos and the raffish Littlewits, headed for the fair.
The fair propels these characters through experiences that put their social identities under extreme strain. Justice Overdo, well-read in the "disguised prince" tradition, assumes a disguise to ferret out wrongdoing at the fair; he is beaten by Wasp, falsely accused by Edgeworth, a cut-purse, and put in the
stocks. Quarlous and Winwife engage Edgeworth to steal the marriage license from Wasp; he does so when Wasp is arrested after starting a fight. Wasp, too, is put in the stocks. Winwife has abandoned his plan to marry Dame Purecraft; instead, he and Quarlous fight for Grace's hand. Win Littlewit and Mistress Overdo are enlisted as prostitutes by the pimp Whit; Zeal-of-the-land Busy is arrested for preaching without license and put into the stocks. Cokes is robbed several times by Edgeworth and other denizens of the fair. All the imprisoned characters escape when Trouble-All, a seeming madman for whom Dame Purecraft has conceived a sudden passion, fights with the guards.
The climax of the play occurs at the puppet show. Madame Overdo and Win are brought in, masked, as prostitutes; Madame Overdo is drunk. Overdo is still in disguise, and Quarlous has disguised himself as Trouble-All; in this guise, he stole the marriage license from Winwife and made it into a license for himself and Purecraft. The puppet show, a burlesque of ''
Hero and Leander
Hero and Leander is the Greek myth relating the story of Hero ( grc, Ἡρώ, ''Hērṓ''; ), a priestess of Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology) who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont, and Leander ( grc, Λέ ...
'' and ''
Damon and Pythias
The story of Damon (; grc-gre, Δάμων, gen. Δάμωνος) and Pythias (;
or
; or Phintias, ) is a legend in Greek historic writings illustrating the Pythagorean ideal of friendship. Pythias is accused of and charged with plotting against ...
'', proceeds until Busy interrupts, claiming that the play is an abomination because the actors are cross-dressed. The puppets refute him decisively by raising their clothes, revealing that they have no sex. Busy announces himself converted into a "beholder" of plays.
At this point, Justice Overdo reveals himself, intent on uncovering the "enormities" he has witnessed at the fair. He is in the process of punishing all of the various schemers and malefactors when his wife (still veiled) throws up and begins to call for him. Abashed, Overdo takes the advice of Quarlous and forgives all parties; Winwife marries Grace, Quarlous marries Purecraft, and all the characters are invited to Overdo's house for supper.
Puritans
Zeal-of-the-land Busy is Jonson's second foray, after ''
The Alchemist
An alchemist is a person who practices alchemy.
Alchemist or Alchemyst may also refer to:
Books and stories
* ''The Alchemist'' (novel), the translated title of a 1988 allegorical novel by Paulo Coelho
* ''The Alchemist'' (play), a play by Be ...
''s Tribulation and Ananais, into a field of satire common in Jacobean drama: satire against Puritans. Various factors combined to make the godly or "precisians" obvious targets of ridicule. Though religious violence was comparatively uncommon in Jacobean England, the memory of such violence was fresh enough to make marginal believers or outsiders potential sources of anxiety or threat. This element of threat was especially notable in the second decade of James's reign, when the tenuous
Calvinist
Calvinism (also called the Reformed Tradition, Reformed Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, or simply Reformed) is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Ca ...
consensus in the English Church began to disintegrate. In this context, stage attacks on the godly may have served to channel and release broader anxieties about social trends.
Playwrights also had a more immediate reason for this animosity; Puritans had opposed the public theatre almost from its inception. Hostility to drama was not, of course, limited to separatists or Puritans; preachers of all shades of belief denounced the plays as profane and the theatres as sites of theft, drunkenness, and licentiousness. Correctly or not, playwrights treated Puritans as the main source of these attacks. On stage, the Puritan is a hypocritical, judgmental, and long-winded figure, masking his lusts behind a vocal obsession with trivialities; Busy, for example, announces his intention to eat pork at the fair merely to refute the charges of "Judaism" he claims are levelled at Puritans, and he ends up consuming two whole pigs.
Performance history
The induction allows for a more specific date of performance than is usual for Renaissance plays; the première took place on 31 October 1614 at the
Hope Theatre
The Hope Theatre was one of the theatres built in and around London for the presentation of plays in English Renaissance theatre, comparable to the Globe, the Curtain, the Swan, and other famous theatres of the era.
The Hope was built in 1613 ...
in
Bankside
Bankside is an area of London, England, within the London Borough of Southwark. Bankside is located on the southern bank of the River Thames, east of Charing Cross, running from a little west of Blackfriars Bridge to just a short distance befo ...
. Entries in the
Revels
''Revels'' is a contemporary series of American seasonal stage performances, incorporating singing, dancing, recitals, and theatrics loosely organized around a central theme or narrative. The folk-tradition-based performances started in 1957, we ...
accounts indicate that the performance was repeated at
Whitehall
Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea. It is the main thoroughfare running south from Trafalgar Square towards Parliament Sq ...
for
James I James I may refer to:
People
*James I of Aragon (1208–1276)
*James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327)
*James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu
*James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347)
*James I of Cyprus (1334–13 ...
the next day. The royal account also lists ten
pounds paid to
Nathan Field
Nathan Field (also spelled Feild occasionally; 17 October 1587 – 1620) was an English dramatist and actor.
Life
His father was the Puritan preacher John Field, and his brother Theophilus Field became the Bishop of Llandaff. One of his brother ...
for acting in the play; in the fifth act, Jonson causes Cokes to ask the puppetmaster, "Which is your best actor now...your
Burbage...your Field?"
There is no further record of performance until 1661, although it was likely to have remained in repertory to some degree until its anti-Puritan sentiments made it unwise to revive it. (
William Oldys
William Oldys (14 July 1696 – 15 April 1761) was an English antiquarian and bibliographer.
Life
He was probably born in London, the illegitimate son of Dr William Oldys (1636–1708), chancellor of Lincoln diocese. His father had held the ...
reports a traditional view that the inscription on Jonson's tomb ("O rare Ben Jonson") refers to the applause this play received, after the failure of ''
Catiline
Lucius Sergius Catilina ( 108 BC – January 62 BC), known in English as Catiline (), was a Roman politician and soldier. He is best known for instigating the Catilinarian conspiracy, a failed attempt to violently seize control of the ...
'', indicating some degree of popularity.
Samuel Pepys records seeing it four times in 1661, twice with the puppet show and twice without (8 June, 27 June, 31 August and 7 September 1661). The play appears to have been revived intermittently through the earlier part of the eighteenth century; after that, in keeping with the waning taste for non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama in general and for Jonson in particular, the play fell into obscurity. It retained a degree of esteem in the study even as it disappeared from the boards; both
Isaac Reed and
Horace Walpole praised its wealth of invention in their accounts of Renaissance drama.
John Brown revised the play and offered it to
David Garrick; Garrick refused it, however, and Brown's text is lost.
As with many long-ignored plays, ''Bartholomew Fair'' returned to the stage in a production by the Phoenix Society—this one, in 1921 at
the New Oxford Theatre. Its first professional revival came in 1949, when
George Devine
George Alexander Cassady Devine (20 November 1910 – 20 January 1966) was an English theatrical manager, director, teacher, and actor based in London from the early 1930s until his death. He also worked in TV and film.
Early life and education
...
directed it at the
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is an annual arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, spread over the final three weeks in August. Notable figures from the international world of music (especially european classical music, classical music) and ...
; the next year, the same production appeared at the
Old Vic
Old or OLD may refer to:
Places
*Old, Baranya, Hungary
*Old, Northamptonshire, England
* Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD)
*OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Ma ...
. The puppets in this production were performed by
George Speaight. The
Bristol Old Vic
Bristol Old Vic is a British theatre company based at the Theatre Royal, Bristol. The present company was established in 1946 as an offshoot of the Old Vic in London. It is associated with the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which became a f ...
produced the play in 1966.
Terry Hands
Terence David Hands (9 January 1941 – 4 February 2020) was an English theatre director. He founded the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for thirteen years during one of the company's most successful periods; h ...
directed the play for the
Royal Shakespeare Company in 1969; this production included
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji; 31 December 1943) is an English actor. He has received various accolades throughout his career spanning five decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Grammy Award, and tw ...
as Winwife and
Helen Mirren as Win Littlewit. The production, which cut the long text and freely mixed period and modern properties, received generally negative reviews. The play was also performed (some time in the 1960s) at the University of California, Berkeley, with Stacey Keach playing Overdo.
Richard Eyre
Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre (born 28 March 1943) is an English film, theatre, television and opera director.
Biography
Eyre was born in Barnstaple, Devon, England, the son of Richard Galfridus Hastings Giles Eyre and his wife, Minna Mar ...
produced the play for the
National Theatre; his first production as head of the theatre, it was performed on the Olivier Stage in mid-
Victorian costume.
David Bamber
David James Bamber (born 19 September 1954) is an English actor. He has worked in television and theatre. He is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Early years
Bamber was born in Walkden, Lancashire. By September 1973, he was ...
,
David Burke, and
Stephen Moore were among the cast. Of this production, Eyre himself writes, "What felt as though it might have been a true popular success … shows itself to be dismal and unachieved.
In 1998, Laurence Boswell directed the play for the RSC at the
Swan Theatre. Featuring
Zubin Varla
Zubin Varla (born 1970) is a British actor and singer. He played the role of Judas in the 1996 West End revival of ''Jesus Christ Superstar'', alongside Steve Balsamo (Jesus), Joanna Ampil (Mary Magdalene), and David Burt (Pilate). This produc ...
and
Poppy Miller
A poppy is a flowering plant in the subfamily Papaveroideae of the family Papaveraceae. Poppies are herbaceous plants, often grown for their colourful flowers. One species of poppy, ''Papaver somniferum'', is the source of the narcotic drug opi ...
, the production attempted to update Jonson's cheerfully downscale milieu with "Newcastle United shirts, garish yellow tweed and plenty of atmospheric sleaze" according to
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
; this review was mildly favourable, as were the others. The production was later revived at the
Young Vic.
The
Stratford Shakespeare Festival mounted the
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...
's first professional production of the play in 2009, directed by
Antoni Cimolino with original music composed by
Steven Page
Steven Jay Page (born June 22, 1970) is a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was a founding member, lead singer, guitarist, and a primary songwriter of the music group Barenaked Ladies. Page left the band in Februar ...
. The cast featured
,
Lucy Peacock, and
Juan Chioran
Juan Chioran (born June 18, 1963) is an Argentine-born Canadian actor primarily associated with stage roles at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada. He is based in Stratford, Ontario.
Chioran is also known for his voice acting roles, suc ...
.
The play was performed in 2019 at the Sam Wannamaker Theatre (part of Shakespeare's Globe) in London.
Notes
References
*Barish, Jonas. ''Ben Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960.
*Cantor, Paul A
"Ch. 3: In defense of the marketplace: Spontaneous order in Jonson's ''Bartholomew Fair''."In: Paul A. Cantor and Stephen Cox, eds. ''Literature and the economics of liberty: On spontaneous order in culture.'' Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama, 2009, pp. 167–224.
*Fincham, Kenneth, editor. ''The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642''. Palo Alto, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1992.
*
Gurr, Andrew. 1992. ''The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642''. Third ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
*Goldberg, Jonathan. ''Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities''. Palo Alto, Cal: Stanford University Press, 199
*Herford, C.H. and Percy Simpson. ''Works of Ben Jonson''. Eleven Volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–52.
*Jonson, Ben. ''Bartholomew Fair''.
G.R. Hibbard, editor. London: A.C. Black, 1977.
*Keenan, Siobhan. ''Acting Companies and Their Plays in Shakespeare's London''. London: Arden, 2014. 120-8.
*Lake, Peter. ''The Anti-Christ's Lewd Hat''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
*Montrose, Louis. ''The Purpose of Playing''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
*Waith, Eugene. "The Staging of Bartholomew Fair." ''SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900'', 2 (1962).
*Watson, R.N. ''Ben Jonson's Parodic Strategy''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.
External links
''Bartholomew Fair'' online..
''Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair'' by Henry Morley (chapter 10: In Ben Jonson's Day)Costume design sketchesby
Motley Theatre Design Group
Motley was the name of the theatre design firm made up of three English designers: sisters Margaret (known as "Percy," 1904–2000) and Sophie Harris (1900–1966) and Elizabeth Montgomery (1902–1993).
Career
The name ''Motley'', according t ...
for the 1950 production at
The Old Vic
The Old Vic is a 1,000-seat, not-for-profit producing theatre in Waterloo, London, England. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, and renamed in 1833 the Royal Victoria Theatre. In 1871 it was rebuilt and reopened as the Royal ...
Motley Collection of Theatre & Costume Design
{{Ben Jonson
Plays by Ben Jonson
English Renaissance plays
1614 plays
Pigs in literature