1716 text is inexplicable. In the matter of capitalization Whalley forsakes his model, and he makes emendations of his own with considerable freedom. He still further modernizes the spelling; he spells out elided words: e. g., I. 3. 15 H' has] he has; makes new elisions: e. g., I. 6. 143 Yo' are] You're; 1. 6. 211 I am] I'm; grammatical changes, sometimes of doubtful correctness: e. g., I. 3. 21 I'le] I'd; morphological changes: e. g., 1. 6. 121 To scape] T'escape; metrical changes by insertions: e. g., I. I. 48 'to;' 4. 7. 38 'but now;' changes of wording: e. g., 1. 6. 195 sad] said; in the order of words: e. g., 3. 4. 59 is hee] he is; and in the assignment of speeches: e. g., 3. 6. 61. Several printer's errors occur: e. g., 2. 6. 21 and 24. 1816. William Gifford's edition is more carefully printed than that of Whalley, whom he criticizes freely. In many indefensible changes, however, he follows his predecessor, even to the insertion of words in I. 1. 48 and 4. 7. 38, 39 (see above). He makes further morphological changes, even when involving a change of metre: e. g., I. I. II Totnam] Tottenham; 1. 4. 88 phantsie] phantasie; makes new elisions: e. g., 1. 6. 226 I ha'] I've; changes in wording: e. g., 2. 1. 97 O'] O!; and in assignment of speeches: e. g., 4. 4. 17. He usually omits parentheses, and the following changes in contracted words occur, only exceptions being noted in the variants: fro'] from; gi'] give; h'] he; ha'] have; 'hem] them (but often 'em); i'] in; o'] on, of; t'] to; th'] the; upo'] upon; wi'] with, will; yo'] you. Gifford's greatest changes are in the stage directions and side notes of the 1631 edition. The latter he considered as of 'the most trite and trifling nature', and 'a worthless incumbrance.' He accordingly cut or omitted with the utmost freedom, introducing new and elaborate stage directions of his own. He reduced the number of scenes from thirty-six to seventeen. In this, as Hathaway points out, he followed the regular English usage, dividing the scenes according to actual changes of place. Jonson adhered to classical tradition, and looked upon a scene as a situation. Gifford made his alterations by combining whole scenes, except in the case of Act 2. 3, which begins at Folio Act 2. 7. 23 (middle of line); of Act 3. 2, which begins at Folio Act 3. 5. 65 and of Act 3. 3, which begins at Folio Act 3. 5. 78 (middle of line). He considered himself justified in his mutilation of the side notes on the ground that they were not from the hand of Jonson. Evidence has already been adduced to show that they were at any rate printed with his sanction. I am, however, inclined to believe with Gifford that they were written by another hand. Gifford's criticism of them is to a large extent just. The note on 'Niaise,' 1. 6. 18, is of especially doubtful value (see note). 1875. 'Cunningham's reissue, 1875, reprints Gifford's text without change. Cunningham, however, frequently expresses his disapproval of Gifford's licence in changing the text' (Winter). B. DATE AND PRESENTATION We learn from the title-page that this comedy was acted in 1616 by the King's Majesty's Servants. This is further confirmed by a passage in I. I. 80-81: Now? As Vice stands this present yeere? Remember, Another passage (1. 6. 31) tells us that the performance took place in the Blackfriars Theatre: Today, I goe to the Black-fryers Play-house. That Fitzdottrel is to see The Devil is an Ass we learn later (3.5. 38). The performance was to take place after dinner (3.5. 34). At this time the King's Men were in possession of two theatres, the Globe and the Blackfriars. The former was used in the summer, so that The Devil is an Ass was evidently not performed during that season. These are all the facts that we can determine with certainty. Jonson's masque, The Golden Age Restored, was presented, according to Fleay, on January 1 and 6. His next 1 Collier, Annals 3. 275, 302; Fleay, Hist. 190. masque was Christmas, his Masque, December 25, 1616. Between these dates he must have been busy on The Devil is an Ass. Fleay, who identifies Fitzdottrel with Coke, conjectures that the date of the play is probably late in 1616, after Coke's discharge in November. If Coke is satirized either in the person of Fitzdottrel or in that of Justice Eitherside (see Introduction, pp. lxx, lxxii), the conjecture may be allowed to have some weight. In 1. 2. I Fitzdottrel speaks of Bretnor as occupying the position once held by the conspirators in the Overbury case. Franklin, who is mentioned, was not brought to trial until November 18, 1615. Jonson does not speak of the trial as of a contemporary or nearly contemporary event. Act 4 is largely devoted to a satire of Spanish fashions. In 4. 2. 71 there is a possible allusion to the Infanta Maria, for whose marriage with Prince Charles secret negotiations were being carried on at this time. We learn that Commissioners were sent to Spain on November 9 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser.), and from a letter of January 1, 1617, that the Spanish tongue, dress, etc. are all in fashion' (ibid.). These indications are all of slight importance, but from their united evidence we may feel reasonably secure in assigning the date of presentation to late November or early December, 1616. The play was not printed until 1631. It seems never to have been popular, but was revived after the Restoration, and is given by Downes1 in the list of old plays acted in the New Theatre in Drury Lane after April 8, 1663. He continues: 'These being Old Plays, were Acted but now and then; yet being well Perform'd were very Satisfactory to the Town.' The other plays of Jonson revived by this company were The Fox, The Alchemist, Epicoene, Catiline, Every Man out of his Humor, Every Man in his Humor, and Sejanus. Genest gives us no information of any later revival. C. THE DEVIL IS AN ASS Jonson's characteristic conception of comedy as a vehicle for the study of 'humors' passed in Every Man out of his Humor into caricature, and in Cynthia's Revels and Poetaster into allegory. The process was perfectly natural. In the humor study each character is represented as absorbed by a single vice or folly. In the allegorical treatment_the abstraction is the starting-point, and the human element the means of interpretation. Either type of drama, by a shifting of emphasis, may readily pass over into the other. The failure of Cynthia's Revels, in spite of the poet's arrogant boast at its close, had an important effect upon his development, and the plays of Jonson's middle period, from Sejanus to The Devil is an Ass, show more restraint in the handling of character, as well as far greater care in construction. The figures are typical rather than allegorical, and the plot in general centres about certain definite objects of satire. Both plot and characterization are more closely unified. The Devil is an Ass marks a return to the supernatural and allegorical. The main action, however, belongs strictly to the type of the later drama, especially as exemplified by The Alchemist. The fanciful motive of the infernal visitant to earth was found to be of too slight texture for Jonson's sternly moral and satirical purpose. In the development of the drama it breaks down completely, and is crowded out by the realistic plot. Thus what promised at first to be the chief, and remains in some respects the happiest, motive of the play comes in the final execution to be little better than an inartistic and inharmonious excrescence. Yet Jonson's words to Drummond seem to indicate that he still looked upon it as the real kernel of the play.1 "A play of his, upon which he was accused, The Divell is ane Ass; according to Comedia Vetus, in England the Divell was brought in either with one Vice or other: the play done the Divel caried away the Vice, he brings in the Divel so overcome with the wickedness of this age that thought himself ane Ass. Παρέργους [incidentally] is discoursed of the Duke of Drounland: the King desired him to conceal it.'-Conversations with William Drummond, Jonson's Wks. 9. 400–1. The action is thus easily divisible into two main lines; the devil-plot, involving the fortunes of Satan, Pug and Iniquity, and the satirical or main plot. This division is the more satisfactory, since Satan and Iniquity are not once brought into contact with the chief actors, while Pug's connection with them is wholly external, and affects only his own fortunes. He is, as Herford has already pointed out, merely the fly upon the engine-wheel, fortunate to escape with a bruising' (Studies, p. 320). He forms, however, the connecting link between the two plots, and his function in the drama must be regarded from two different points of view, according as it shares in the realistic or the supernatural element. I. THE DEVIL-PLOT Jonson's title, The Devil is an Ass, expresses with perfect. adequacy the familiarity and contempt with which this once terrible personage had come to be regarded in the later Elizabethan period. The poet, of course, is deliberately archaizing, and the figures of devil and Vice are made largely conformable to the purposes of satire. Several years before, in the Dedication to The Fox,1 Jonson had expressed his contempt for the introduction of 'fools and devils and those antique relics of barbarism,' characterizing them as 'ridiculous and exploded follies.' He treats the same subject with biting satire in The Staple of News.2 Yet with all his devotion to realism in matters of petty detail, of local color, and of contemporary allusion, he was, as we have seen, not without an inclination toward allegory. Thus in Every Man out of his Humor the figure of Macilente is very close to a purely allegorical expression of envy. In Cynthia's Revels the process was perfectly conscious, for in the Induction to that play the characters are spoken of as Virtues and Vices. In Poetaster again we have the purging of Demetrius and Crispinus. Jonson's return to 1 1 Wks. 3. 158. Wks. 5. 105 f. Cf. also Shirley, Prologue to The Doubtful Heir. |