3. In Defense of the Marketplace: Spontaneous Order in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair

¹T.S. Eliot claimed that the play has “hardly a plot at all.” See his “Ben Jon-son” in Selected Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), p. 134. See also Richard Levin, The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 202. In his Introduction to English Renaissance Comedy (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1999), Alexander Leggatt quotes Terry Hands, who, in connection with his 1969 production of the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company, described it as “an enormous canvas with no particular focus” (p. 138).

²See Levin, Multiple Plot, p. 208 and Eugene M. Waith, ed., Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 2.

³Act IV, scene iv, ll. 24ff. All quotations from Bartholomew Fair are taken from the edition of Gordon Campbell in Ben Jonson, The Alchemist and Other Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

⁴See Campbell, Alchemist, p. xx.

⁵On parallels to Beckett, see Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 136.

⁶Martin Butler says that Jonson manages “to give an illusion of randomness which is carefully and rigorously premeditated.” See his The Selected Plays of Ben Jonson (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989), vol. 2, p. 147.

⁷See Waith, Bartholomew Fair, p. 20.

⁸See Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, pp. 136–37, E.A. Horsman, ed., Bartholomew Fair (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1960), p. xi, and Anne Barton, “Shakespeare and Jonson,” in Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 294: “[Bartholomew Fair] maintains the most delicate balance between order and chaos, between structure and a seemingly undisciplined flow which is like the random, haphazard nature of life itself.”

⁹For information on the actual Bartholomew Fair and Renaissance fairs in general, see Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), especially chapter 1. Stallybrass and White correctly emphasize the modernity of the fair and its role as a harbinger of developing market principles, and they criticize a nostalgic view of the fair as a backward-looking medieval institution. For the role of fairs in the developing market economy of the Renaissance, see Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550–1750 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 17–56, and especially for Bartholomew Fair, p. 47. For more general discussions of the new commercial developments in the Renaissance, see Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800, Miriam Kochan, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1973) and Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996).

¹⁰See Waith, Bartholomew Fair, p. 3 and William W.E. Slights, Ben Jonson and the Art of Secrecy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 149, 152, 211, n. 34.

¹¹Nearly a year and a half after writing the first draft of this essay, I discovered that its central claim had already been advanced by Jean-Christophe Agnew, who writes of Bartholomew Fair in his Worlds Apart, pp. 120–21:

There are plenty of plots in the play but no plot to it; no one, villainous or virtuous, appears to be in charge.... [T]he fair itself is the engine that precipitates the action of the play... Jonson's market operates, in effect, as an “invisible hand,” diverting private vices to the public benefit.... [T]he forms and conventions that Jonson introduced to achieve his dramatic purposes in the play do adumbrate the solutions that Adam Smith would later propose to those who feared the divisive social consequences of unrestricted competition. Like The Wealth of Nations, Bartholomew Fair imagined the market as a power capable of generating its own legitimacy through a negotiated process of mutual authorization. By making the fair itself the occasion of countless private calculations and, at the same time, the vehicle of their ultimate public reconciliation, Jonson was taking a step, however tentative, toward a functionalist legitimation of a free and placeless market.

I thank my colleague Katharine Eisaman Maus for calling my attention to this passage and for other help with this essay. My analysis may be regarded as a working out in detail of Agnew's original insight, although, for what it is worth, I did arrive at the point independently, and my use of Austrian economics, rather than Marxist, to analyze Jonson's view of the market leads me to emphasize different aspects of the play.

¹²See Stallybrass and White, Transgression, p. 66, Jonas Barish, Ben Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 212–13, and Katharine Eisaman Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 132.

¹³For a concise statement of the theory of spontaneous order, see Hayek's essay “The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design” in his Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (New York: Clarion, 1969), pp. 96–105.

¹⁴For examples of government regulation during the Elizabethan period that proved disastrous to the theater companies and to Jonson in particular, see David Riggs, Ben Jonson: A Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 33–34.

¹⁵For the structural pattern of Bartholomew Fair, see Levin, Multiple Plot, pp. 211–12.

¹⁶Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 90, 91, 93. For similar thoughts on how the new market economy was imaged in terms of sorcery, see Agnew, Worlds Apart, pp. 57–59, 70–72.

¹⁷I do not have the space to deal with the vexed question of exactly when capitalism “began.” Arguments have been made that certain basic principles of the market economy can already be observed in the medieval period. See, for example, Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, Frank D. Halsey, trans. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952) and Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1976). See also Agnew, Worlds Apart, pp. 27–28, 44. But however “proto-capitalist” the Middle Ages may have been, England was clearly entering upon a new phase of economic life in Jonson's day and he and his contemporaries had trouble coming to terms with these radical changes.

¹⁸This is one of the main themes of David Riggs's biography of Jonson; see especially Jonson, pp. 4–5.

¹⁹On Jonson's ambition, see Riggs, Jonson, pp. 2–3.

²⁰See Riggs, Jonson, pp. 24–25.

²¹On Jonson's motives for bringing out the 1616 Folio, see Barish, Antitheatrical Prejudice, p. 138, Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 135, and Stallybras and White, Transgression, p. 75.

²²For the tension running throughout Jonson's theatrical career, see Riggs, Jonson, pp. 63–64, 69, 234, Stallybrass and White, Transgression, pp. 66–79, Barish, Antitheatrical Prejudice, pp. 132–54, and Kate McLuskie, “Making and Buying: Ben Jonson and the Commercial Theater Audience,” in Julie Sanders, Kate Chedgzoy, and Susan Wiseman, eds., Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics and the Jonsonian Canon (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 134–54.

²³See Waith, Bartholomew Fair, p. 205, Butler, Selected Plays, p. 148, Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 136, and Campbell, Alchemist, p. 503. As these editors point out, a measure of the “popularity” of the Hope Theater is the fact that it was still being used for the “sport” of bear-baiting. In The Politics of Mirth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 43–44, Leah Marcus offers an interesting discussion of bear-baiting in connection with Bartholomew Fair; she points out that Ursula (the “little bear”) is baited several times in the course of the action.

²⁴See Horsman, Bartholomew Fair, pp. xii–xiv, Butler, Selected Plays, p. 149, and Julie Sanders, Ben Jonson's Theatrical Republics (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 92–93.

²⁵See McLuskie, “Making and Buying,” pp. 144–45.

²⁶This was L.C. Knights's view of Jonson and his “fellows” in his famous book, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (London: Chatto & Windus, 1937). See especially p. 7: “The standards of judgement that they brought to bear were not formed in that new world of industrial enterprise. They belonged to an older world which was still ‘normal,’ a world of small communities.” Knights's view of Jonson is effectively countered by Don E. Wayne in his essay “Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson: An Alternative View,” Renaissance Drama 13 (1982): 103–29. Wayne points out that Knights's view of Jonson as reactionary depends crucially on the fact that he omits Bartholomew Fair from his discussion (p. 104). Wayne goes on to show how Knights's interpretation itself rests on a kind of academic nostalgia (pp. 127–29). Wayne concludes: “despite his classicism and traditionalism, Jon-son looked ahead as much as he did backward in time” (p. 129).

²⁷See Jonathan Haynes, The Social Relations of Jonson's Theater (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 135; he calls Bartholomew Fair “this most Brechtian of Renaissance plays.”

²⁸Bartholomew Fair, IV.ii.61–63.

²⁹See Haynes, Social Relations, p. 123, and for a discussion of adulteration as the central theme in Bartholomew Fair, see Douglas Bruster, Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 90–95.

³⁰Bartholomew Fair, II.ii.3–5.

³¹Ibid., II.ii.6–9.

³²Ibid., II.ii.86–99.

³³On the stimulation of desire in Renaissance fairs, see Stallybrass and White, Transgression, pp. 38–40. For Jonson's negative attitude toward consumer desires, see Bruster, Drama and the Market, p. 41.

³⁴Bartholomew Fair, II.ii.28–32.

³⁵Ibid., I.iv.102–06.

³⁶Ibid., I.v.100–06.

³⁷Ibid., III.iv.67–71.

³⁸Ibid., III.iv.72–73.

³⁹Ibid., III.iv.129–30.

⁴⁰Ibid., III.iv.131–32.

⁴¹Ibid., IV.ii.20–22, 25.

⁴²Ibid., IV.ii.71.

⁴³Ibid., I.iv.53.

⁴⁴Ibid., I.iv.54–55.

⁴⁵Ibid., I.v.12.

⁴⁶Ibid., I.v.21.

⁴⁷Ibid., IV.iv.101.

⁴⁸Ibid., IV.iv.128–29.

⁴⁹Ibid., V.iv.88.

⁵⁰Ibid., V.iv.90–91.

⁵¹This point is reinforced by the fact that the Wasp-Cokes story in Bartholomew Fair may reflect events that actually happened when Jonson accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh's son Wat as his tutor on a trip to Paris. See Riggs, Jonson, pp. 206–7, Barish, Prose Comedy, p. 213, and Butler, Selected Plays, p. 137: “during this trip the pupil triumphantly exposed his mentor to public view in a cart while he was prostrated in a bout of drunkenness.” See also Luke Wilson, Theaters of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 226, 314, n. 25.

⁵²On the parallels between Wasp and Busy, see Levin, Multiple Plot, pp. 204–5.

⁵³Riggs (Jonson, p. 195) suggests that in creating the character of Zeal-ofthe-Land Busy, Jonson may have had a personal score to settle with a particular Puritan preacher named Robert Milles. Marcus (Politics of Mirth, p. 28) points out that Bartholomew Fair appeared during a period of “a fierce concentration of anti-Puritan rhetoric in performances at court, including the revival of works like Ben Jonson's Alchemist.”

⁵⁴Bartholomew Fair, III.vi.27–35.

⁵⁵Ibid., III.vi.79–80.

⁵⁶Ibid., III.vi.104–06.

⁵⁷See Slights, Art of Secrecy, p. 158.

⁵⁸Bartholomew Fair, V.ii.46.

⁵⁹See Slights, Art of Secrecy, p. 159.

⁶⁰Bartholomew Fair, V.ii.48–57.

⁶¹Ibid., V.ii.59–63.

⁶²Ibid., I.iii.107–12.

⁶³Ibid., V.v.75–84. See Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 139.

⁶⁴See Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 157–58.

⁶⁵Bartholomew Fair, I.vi.27–28.

⁶⁶Ibid., I.vi.43–49.

⁶⁷Ibid., I.vi.54–55.

⁶⁸Ibid., I.vi.63–67.

⁶⁹Ibid., I.vi.83–87.

⁷⁰Ibid., V.v.49–50, 52–55.

⁷¹See Marcus, Politics of Mirth, pp. 40, 50–51.

⁷²Bartholomew Fair, I.iii.129–33.

⁷³See Marcus, Politics of Mirth, pp. 51–52; she argues that Busy “has, in effect, undertaken the disestablishment of history.”

⁷⁴Bartholomew Fair, IV.vi.78–80.

⁷⁵Ibid., I.iii.116–19.

⁷⁶Ibid., V.ii.38–41.

⁷⁷See Brian Gibbons, Jacobean City Comedy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 186.

⁷⁸See Barish, Prose Comedy, p. 236. Marcus (Politics of Mirth, p. 47) says of both Busy and Overdo that they “are not just petulant but genuinely seditious.”

⁷⁹See Levin, Multiple Plot, pp. 206–07.

⁸⁰Bartholomew Fair, V.ii.3–5.

⁸¹Ibid., II.i.9.

⁸²Ibid., IV.iv.141–43.

⁸³See Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 149, Marcus, Politics of Mirth, p. 56, and Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 154, 169.

⁸⁴Bartholomew Fair, II.iv.30.

⁸⁵Ibid., IV.i.23–24.

⁸⁶Ibid., V.vi.72–75.

⁸⁷Ibid., II.vi.11–14.

⁸⁸Ibid., II.vi.21–26.

⁸⁹Ibid., II.vi.77–78.

⁹⁰Ibid., II.vi.39–41.

⁹¹Ibid., II.i.11–12.

⁹²Gordon Campbell's note in his edition (Alchemist, p. 507, line 12). See also Butler, Selected Plays, pp. 137, 530. The claim that the mayor referred to was Thomas Hayes can be found in Horsman, Bartholomew Fair, pp. xviii–xix and Michael Jamieson, ed., Ben Jonson: Three Comedies (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 481, 483. Slights (Art of Secrecy, pp. 153, 209, n. 14) settles the identification in favor of Middleton. For more on the relevance of the Lord Mayor's activities to Bartholomew Fair, see Marcus, Politics of Mirth, pp. 39, 272, n. 27.

⁹³Ibid., II.i.16–24.

⁹⁴For an example of how specific government regulation and supervision of economic activity could be under the mercantilist principles of the Old Regime in Europe, see Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), especially this description of how the French government under the minister Colbert regulated the printing industry in the 1660s (p. 186):

Condemning capitalist “hunger for profit,” it stressed the importance of maintaining quality standards, which it defined in great detail. The typeface of three “i”s must be exactly the same in width as one “m,” and the “m” must conform precisely to a model “m” deposited with the syndics and deputies of the guild, who were to inspect the thirty-six printing shops once every three months in order to make sure that each contained the requisite minimum of four presses and nine fonts of type, both roman and italic, in good condition.

⁹⁵Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 150, speaks of the “principle of dispersed attention” in Bartholomew Fair. In a very different context, Stallybrass and White make an argument similar to Hayek's: the traditional view of the fair “consigns the subordinate classes to contesting state and class power within a problematic which has positioned them as ignorant, vulgar, uninitiated—as low. In fact ‘low’ knowledge frequently foregrounds not only the actual conditions of production but also the conditions of bodily pleasure” (Transgression, p. 43). If I am reading them correctly, Stallybrass and White are in effect making the point that Austrian economists insist on—that consumers are in a better position than government officials to know what their desires are and how best to satisfy them.

⁹⁶The socialist calculation debate began with Mises's essay “Die Wirtschaftsrechnung in sozialistischen Gemeinwesen,” published in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften 47 (1920). For an English translation by S. Adler of this essay, see Ludwig von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Auburn, Ala.: Praxeology Press, 1990). For Hayek's key contribution on the problem of knowledge, see his “The Use of Knowledge in Society” in his Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). This volume also contains several other chapters on the socialist calculation debate (chap. 7–9). For further contributions to the debate from the free market side, see Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1951) and vol. 10 in The Collected Works of Friedrich Hayek, Socialism and War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). For overviews of the socialist calculation debate, see Trygve J.B. Hoff, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1981) and David Ramsay Steele, From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1992).

⁹⁷See Maltsev's foreword to Mises, Economic Calculation, p. vi.

⁹⁸Bartholomew Fair, II.i.24–34.

⁹⁹Ibid., III.v.203.

¹⁰⁰Ibid., IV.iv.147–48.

¹⁰¹Ibid., IV.iv.149–52.

¹⁰²Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, describes Trouble-All as a “citizen of an authoritarian state” and “a figure Kafka might have invented” (pp. 150–51). See also Marcus, Politics of Mirth, p. 56. For a contrary view of Trouble-All and his obsession with warrants, see Wilson, Theaters of Intention, p. 119.

¹⁰³Bartholomew Fair, IV.i.51–54. See also IV.ii.4–5, 86–87, 98–99; IV.vi.4, 114–15.

¹⁰⁴Ibid., IV.i.55.

¹⁰⁵Ibid., IV.i.73–75.

¹⁰⁶Ibid., III.iii.12–13. On the importance of the “unintended result” in the play, see Levin, Multiple Plot, p. 211.

¹⁰⁷See Horsman, Bartholomew Fair, p. xii.

¹⁰⁸Bartholomew Fair, V.vi.93–97.

¹⁰⁹See Barish, Prose Comedy, p. 236 and Maus, Roman Frame, p. 134. For a classic study of the festive spirit of comedy, see C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959).

¹¹⁰For the importance of carnival elements in Bartholomew Fair, and an application of M.M. Bakhtin's influential theory of the carnivalesque to the play, see Stallybrass and White, Transgression, pp. 59–79.

¹¹¹For a synoptic analysis of comic form, see Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (New York: Atheneum, 1966), pp. 163–86.

¹¹²For this understanding of the relation of comedy to tragedy, see José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1961), pp. 156–59.

¹¹³The principle that unites comedy and the market may appear to be paradoxical—the principle that one should have no principles. To formulate this idea more accurately: one should always be willing to bend one's principles if they stand in the way of the proper enjoyment of life.

¹¹⁴Bartholomew Fair, I.i.3–5.

¹¹⁵On the importance of the marriage license in the play, see Sanders, Theatrical Republics, pp. 90–91 and Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 161–62. On the importance of the word license in the play, and its ambiguity, see Ian McAdam, “The Puritan Dialectic of Law and Grace in Bartholomew Fair,” Studies in English Literature 46 (2006): 425.

¹¹⁶On the issue of legal wards in the play, see Wilson, Theaters of Intention, pp. 131–34.

¹¹⁷Bartholomew Fair, III.v.260–62.

¹¹⁸Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 145.

¹¹⁹Bartholomew Fair, IV.v.26–27.

¹²⁰Ibid., IV.v.29–30.

¹²¹Ibid., V.iv.53–54.

¹²²See Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 147, Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 160, 163, 166, Bruster, Drama and the Market, pp. 42–43, 57, and Agnew, Worlds Apart, p. 129.

¹²³Bartholomew Fair, V.ii.69–75.

¹²⁴For good discussions of the dubious status of legal documents in the play, see Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 154, 170, and Marcus, Politics of Mirth, p. 40.

¹²⁵See Leggatt, English Renaissance Comedy, p. 140.

¹²⁶Bartholomew Fair, V.ii.112–13.

¹²⁷See McAdam, “Puritan Dialectic,” especially p. 415: “The play suggests the need, in human social life, for a balance between too much law and too little law.”

¹²⁸See Haynes, Social Relations, p. 124: “all the crimes are committed by a team.”

¹²⁹See Barish, Prose Comedy, pp. 189, 231. Horsman (Bartholomew Fair, p. 189) quotes a near contemporary description of the fair (1641):

Hither resort people of all sorts, High and Low, Rich and Poore, from cities, townes, and countrys; of all sects, Papists, Atheists, Anabaptists, and Brownists: and of all conditions, good and bad, vertuous and vitious, Knaves and fooles, Cuckolds and Cuckoldmakers, Bauds, and Whores, Pimpes and Panders, Rogues and Rascalls, the little Loud-one and the witty wanton.

¹³⁰Bartholomew Fair, II.v.10–12.

¹³¹Ibid., II.v.13–15.

¹³²Slights (Art of Secrecy, pp. 160–61) makes a similar point and in support of it quotes the Table-Talk of Jonson's friend John Selden:

Disputes in Religion will never be ended, because there wants a Measure by which the Business would be decided: The Puritan would be judged by the Word of God: If he would speak clearly, he means himself.... Ben Johnson Satyrically express'd the vain Disputes of Divines by Inigo Lanthorne, disputing with his puppet in a Bartholomew Fair. It is so; It is not so: It is so, It is not so, crying thus one to another a quarter of an Hour together.

¹³³See Maus, Roman Frame, p. 155: “he argues that since theatricality is everywhere it is pointless to object to the stage as if it presented a unique moral threat.” See also Marcus, Politics of Mirth, p. 43, Wilson, Theaters of Intention, p. 140, and Wayne, “Drama and Society,” pp. 105–08. The connection between the theater and the marketplace is the central theme of Agnew's Worlds Apart; see especially pp. ix–x, 12, 60.

¹³⁴Bartholomew Fair, II.ii.28–40, II.iv.3–19.

¹³⁵Ibid., II.iv.35–38.

¹³⁶Ibid., III.ii.1–3.

¹³⁷Ibid., IV.iii.98–99.

¹³⁸Ibid., V.i.1–3.

¹³⁹Ibid., V.i.19–21.

¹⁴⁰Ibid., V.iii.37. See Sanders, Theatrical Republics, p. 102 and Wilson, The aters of Intention, pp. 145–46.

¹⁴¹Ibid., V.iv.49.

¹⁴²Ibid., V.iii.56–58.

¹⁴³Ibid., V.i.3–5.

¹⁴⁴Ibid., V.i.10–15.

¹⁴⁵Ibid., V.iii.97–100. On Jonson's use of Marlowe, see James Shapiro, Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 68–70.

¹⁴⁶Ibid., V.iii.102–03.

¹⁴⁷Ibid., V.iii.106–111.

¹⁴⁸See Butler, Selected Plays, pp. 530–31, Marcus, Politics of Mirth, p. 46, Agnew, Worlds Apart, p. 118, and Sanders, Theatrical Republics, pp. 102–03.

¹⁴⁹Bartholomew Fair, V.iv.275–76.

¹⁵⁰See Horsman, Bartholomew Fair, p. xvii and Barish, Prose Comedy, p. 230.

¹⁵¹See Waith, Bartholomew Fair, p. 17, Barish, Prose Comedy, pp. 234–36, 238–39, and Gibbons, City Comedy, p. 190: “it is this whole tradition, from the great Morality play to the crudest Popular farce... that Jonson sets out to defend: and if the ballads are banned, it will be only a matter of time before The Alchemist is banned too.”

¹⁵²For the possibility that Jonson was using the puppet show to make fun specifically of his masque collaborator Inigo Jones, see Riggs, Jonson, pp. 193–95.

¹⁵³See Sanders, Theatrical Republics, p. 103.

¹⁵⁴Bartholomew Fair, V.iii.84.

¹⁵⁵Ibid., V.v.4–5, 18–19.

¹⁵⁶Ibid., V.v. 43–44. Other editions, including Waith, Butler, and Jamieson, attribute this line to Grace, but that would make no difference to the point I am making.

¹⁵⁷Ibid., V.v.86–88.

¹⁵⁸Ibid., V.v.90–92.

¹⁵⁹See Slights, Art of Secrecy, p. 161.

¹⁶⁰See Barish, Prose Comedy, p. 237 and Maus, Roman Frame, p. 154.

¹⁶¹Bartholomew Fair, V.iv.260.

¹⁶²Ibid., V.v.104–05.

¹⁶³See Barish, Prose Comedy, pp. 209–10.

¹⁶⁴Bartholomew Fair, V.v.112.

¹⁶⁵See Butler, Selected Plays, p. 531, and Sanders, Theatrical Republics, pp. 97–98.

¹⁶⁶Bartholomew Fair, III.v.4–7.

¹⁶⁷See Slights, Art of Secrecy, p. 150.

¹⁶⁸Bartholomew Fair, III.v.110–11. Ironically, although Overdo thinks that Nightingale's ballad is a genuine warning against cutpurses, it is in fact part of Edgworth's plan to distract Cokes while his purse is stolen. Even more ironically, earlier in the play it is Overdo's own moralistic sermon against alcohol and tobacco that provides the diversion Edgworth needs to steal Cokes's purse. See Gibbons, City Comedy, p. 183 and Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 164–65.

¹⁶⁹Bartholomew Fair, V.vi.39.

¹⁷⁰Ibid., V.vi.106–08.

¹⁷¹Ibid., I.i.35.

¹⁷²See Riggs, Jonson, p. 207 and Barish, Prose Comedy, pp. 212–13.

¹⁷³See, for example, Bartholomew Fair, II.i.5, V.vi.106–07.

¹⁷⁴Ibid., V.vi.106–07.

¹⁷⁵Ibid., Ind., ll. 34–35.

¹⁷⁶Ibid., Ind., ll. 58–64.

¹⁷⁷See Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (1861; rpt. Buffalo: William S. Hein, 1983), p. 174.

¹⁷⁸I develop this point at length in “The Contract from Hell: Corruption in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus,” Private and Public Corruption, William C. Heffernan and John Kleinig, eds. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), especially pp. 85–88.

¹⁷⁹On the importance of the issue of contract in Jonson's day, see Wayne, “Drama and Society,” pp. 118–20 and the detailed discussion in Wilson, Theaters of Intention, pp. 68–113. As Wayne and Wilson show, many of the fundamental legal issues regarding the status of contracts were being adjudicated in the English courts during Jonson's lifetime.

¹⁸⁰For the importance of this contract in the context of contemporary legal developments, see Wilson, Theaters of Intention, pp. 106–13, Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), pp. 315–18, and Bruster, Drama and the Market, pp. 7–8. For different and more negative interpretations of this contract, see Riggs, Jonson, pp. 209–10, Marcus, Politics of Mirth, p. 61, Wayne, “Drama and Society,” pp. 115–16, McLuskie, “Making and Buying,” pp. 137–38, and especially Stallybrass and White, Transgression, pp. 69–70. The problem with the Stallybrass and White interpretation is revealed on p. 70, where they confuse the realm of private contracts, freely entered into, with the realm of government warrants, imposed on people from above. For a positive interpretation of the “contract” between Renaissance playwrights and their audience, with regard to Bartholomew Fair in particular and Renaissance theater in general, see Agnew, Worlds Apart, pp. 110–11, 119–21, and especially p. 11:

The theater not only mimed new social relations within the visible framework of the old: it improvised—as a matter of its own constitutive conventions—a new social contract between itself and its audience, a new set of conditions for the suspension of disbelief that became over time the preconditions of most modern drama.

¹⁸¹Bartholomew Fair, Ind., ll. 65–75.

¹⁸²See Haynes, Social Relations, pp. 131–35 and Paul Yachnin, Stage-Wrights: Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and the Making of Theatrical Values (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), p. 88.

¹⁸³Bartholomew Fair, Ind., ll. 76–83.

¹⁸⁴Ibid., Ind., ll. 94–100.

¹⁸⁵For the references to Shakespeare here, see Shapiro, Rival Playwrights, pp. 154–56.

¹⁸⁶Bartholomew Fair, Ind., ll. 114–19.

¹⁸⁷Ibid., Ind., ll. 135–38.

¹⁸⁸See Campbell's note to ll. 34–35 on p. 509 of his edition.

¹⁸⁹Campbell, Alchemist, p. 515.

¹⁹⁰On the matter of the connection between Overdo and James I, Barish, Prose Comedy, pp. 319–20, n. 23, details a number of parallels between James's Counterblast and Overdo's anti-tobacco speech, but Barish “wonders... what Jonson's royal patron thought of this scene.” Horsman, Bartholomew Fair, p. xxi, is even more skeptical: “It is tempting to suspect that the attack on tobacco was added to please James I, whose views were known, at the court performance; but this seems ruled out by the uncomplimentary resemblance between James and the Justice.” Sanders, Theatrical Republics, pp. 94–95 and Bruster, Drama and the Market, pp. 93–94 also discuss the complexities of the parallels between Overdo and James I. See also Wilson, Theaters of Intention, p. 133. For an extensive attempt to trace the presence of James I in Bartholomew Fair, see Marcus, Politics of Mirth, pp. 38–63. Viewing Jonson as hoping to create an alliance with the king against civic authorities in London who were trying to shut down the theaters, Marcus argues that Bartholomew Fair is a “lucid and elegant defense of royal prerogative” (p. 40). Although Marcus's interpretation is ingenious, and she is able to offer a good deal of historical evidence for it, it ultimately strikes me as unconvincing. She is too prone to judge James by his words rather than his deeds, and I find it hard to believe that Jonson would have agreed with Marcus that James “is the only man in England who is not merely a man, who is able to see from a more than human perspective” (p. 60). Even Marcus is puzzled by the parallels Jonson appears to create between Overdo and James, and her attempt to turn the point in her favor seems forced: “If James did see himself in Jonson's portrayal of Overdo, however, that recognition would help to mitigate the force of the resemblance” (p. 55). I suspect that if “James did see himself in Jonson's portrayal of Overdo,” Jonson might have made another one of his periodic trips to jail.

¹⁹¹See Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 145–46.

¹⁹²Bartholomew Fair, Ind., ll. 120–29.

¹⁹³See Riggs, Jonson, pp. 34, 41 and Slights, Art of Secrecy, p. 146.

¹⁹⁴See Slights, Art of Secrecy, pp. 169–70.

¹⁹⁵For a contrary view, see Marcus, Politics of Mirth, who, in her unquestioning support for the royal authority of James I, looks at the world of Jonson's play and concludes that it is under-regulated: “Bartholomew Fair has suffered from a vacuum of authority” (p. 59).

¹⁹⁶Bartholomew Fair, III.ii.31–34.

¹⁹⁷Even when Jonson was pointedly criticizing commercial society in Volpone and The Alchemist, he could not help betraying a secret sympathy for the marketplace. Jonson creates vivid portraits of his comic villains in these plays and pallid portraits of the good characters. The reason is that villains such as Volpone and Mosca or Face and Subtle embody all the comic energy in these plays, whereas the morally good characters, such as Celia and Bonario in Volpone, lack the force of desire and become boring by comparison. On this point, see Haynes, Social Relations, p. 128 and Charisse Gendron, “The Expanding License of Jonson's Comedies: Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair,” Jacobean Miscellany 95, no. 3 (1983): 20–21. In these earlier plays the villains are far more interesting as dramatic conceptions than the good characters, and the plays would fall flat without them. On this point, see Barish, Antitheatrical Prejudice, pp. 146, 153–54. In The Alchemist, Jonson is already moving in the direction of Bartholomew Fair; at the end, the ostensibly good character Lovewit is willing to appropriate the ill-gotten gains of Face and Subtle, as if the playwright were already recognizing that the morally questionable energies of the commercial world must somehow be incorporated into polite society. See Riggs, Jonson, p. 174 for the controversy over Jonson's attitude toward Lovewit. Gendron in “Expanding License” (pp. 5–31) does a good job of tracing the movement from The Alchemist to Bartholomew Fair. See also Wayne, “Drama and Society,” pp. 111–14. In sum, I am not claiming in this essay to settle the complicated issue of the place of Bartholomew Fair within Jonson's whole career. There are signs that Jonson's sympathy for the free market began to surface in his earlier plays; by the same token, I would not claim that Bartholomew Fair permanently altered Jonson's attitude toward the marketplace. His doubts resurface in later plays, such as The Devil Is An Ass. All I am arguing here is that Bartholomew Fair is Jonson's most cogent and thoroughgoing defense of the marketplace.

¹⁹⁸See Wayne, “Drama and Society,” p. 104: “in Bartholomew Fair there is an unmistakeable tension between, on the one hand, the traditional moral doctrine of social obligation according to status, and, on the other, the more modern principles of rational self-interest and voluntary contractual obligation.” See also pp. 122–23, 126.

¹⁹⁹Bartholomew Fair, II.ii.62–64.