APPENDIX
EXTRACTS
FROM THE CRITICS
GIFFORD: There is much good writing in this comedy.
GIFFORD: There is much good writing in this comedy.
Ben Jonson - The Devil's Association
1 the bargain is carried out
in much the same way as in Boccaccio and in Jonson. Miranda remaining
dumb and Sir George answering for her.
In Act 3. Sc. 4 (2d ed. , p. 38) Miranda in the presence of her
guardian sends a message by Marplot not to saunter at the garden gate
about eight o'clock as he has been accustomed to do, thus making an
assignation with him (compare _DA. _ 2. 2. 52).
Other motives which seem to show some influence of _The Devil is an
Ass_ are Miranda's trick to have the estate settled upon her, Charles'
disguise as a Spaniard, and Traffick's jealous care of Isabinda. The
character of Marplot as comic butt resembles that of Pug.
The song in _The Devil is an Ass_ 2. 6. 94 (see note) was imitated by
Sir John Suckling.
APPENDIX EXTRACTS FROM THE CRITICS
GIFFORD: There is much good writing in this comedy. All the speeches
of Satan are replete with the most biting satire, delivered with an
appropriate degree of spirit. Fitzdottrel is one of those characters
which Jonson delighted to draw, and in which he stood unrivalled, a
_gull_, i. e. , a confident coxcomb, selfish, cunning, and conceited.
Mrs. Fitzdottrel possesses somewhat more interest than the generality
of our author's females, and is indeed a well sustained character. In
action the principal amusement of the scene (exclusive of the admirable
burlesque of witchery in the conclusion) was probably derived from the
mortification of poor Pug, whose stupid stare of amazement at finding
himself made an _ass_ of on every possible occasion must, if portrayed
as some then on the stage were well able to portray it, have been
exquisitely comic.
This play is strictly moral in its conception and conduct. Knavery and
folly are shamed and corrected, virtue is strengthened and rewarded,
and the ends of dramatic justice are sufficiently answered by the
simple exposure of those whose errors are merely subservient to the
minor interests of the piece.
HERFORD (_Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany_,
pp. 318-20): Jonson had in fact so far the Aristophanic quality of
genius, that he was at once a most elaborate and minute student of the
actual world, and a poet of the airiest and boldest fancy, and that he
loved to bring the two roles into the closest possible combination. No
one so capable of holding up the mirror to contemporary society without
distorting the slenderest thread of its complex tissue of usages; no
one, on the other hand, who so keenly delighted in startling away
the illusion or carefully undermining it by some palpably fantastic
invention. His most elaborate reproductions of the everyday world are
hardly ever without an infusion of equally elaborate caprice,--a leaven
of recondite and fantastic legend and grotesque myth, redolent of old
libraries and antique scholarship, furtively planted, as it were, in
the heart of that everyday world of London life, and so subtly blending
with it that the whole motley throng of merchants and apprentices,
gulls and gallants, discover nothing unusual in it, and engage with the
most perfectly matter of fact air in the business of working it out.
The purging of Crispinus in the _Poetaster_, the Aristophanic motive
of the _Magnetic Lady_, even the farcical horror of noise which is the
mainspring of the _Epicoene_, are only less elaborate and sustained
examples of this fantastic realism than the adventure of a Stupid
Devil in the play before us. Nothing more anomalous in the London of
Jonson's day could be conceived; yet it is so managed that it loses
all its strangeness.
in much the same way as in Boccaccio and in Jonson. Miranda remaining
dumb and Sir George answering for her.
In Act 3. Sc. 4 (2d ed. , p. 38) Miranda in the presence of her
guardian sends a message by Marplot not to saunter at the garden gate
about eight o'clock as he has been accustomed to do, thus making an
assignation with him (compare _DA. _ 2. 2. 52).
Other motives which seem to show some influence of _The Devil is an
Ass_ are Miranda's trick to have the estate settled upon her, Charles'
disguise as a Spaniard, and Traffick's jealous care of Isabinda. The
character of Marplot as comic butt resembles that of Pug.
The song in _The Devil is an Ass_ 2. 6. 94 (see note) was imitated by
Sir John Suckling.
APPENDIX EXTRACTS FROM THE CRITICS
GIFFORD: There is much good writing in this comedy. All the speeches
of Satan are replete with the most biting satire, delivered with an
appropriate degree of spirit. Fitzdottrel is one of those characters
which Jonson delighted to draw, and in which he stood unrivalled, a
_gull_, i. e. , a confident coxcomb, selfish, cunning, and conceited.
Mrs. Fitzdottrel possesses somewhat more interest than the generality
of our author's females, and is indeed a well sustained character. In
action the principal amusement of the scene (exclusive of the admirable
burlesque of witchery in the conclusion) was probably derived from the
mortification of poor Pug, whose stupid stare of amazement at finding
himself made an _ass_ of on every possible occasion must, if portrayed
as some then on the stage were well able to portray it, have been
exquisitely comic.
This play is strictly moral in its conception and conduct. Knavery and
folly are shamed and corrected, virtue is strengthened and rewarded,
and the ends of dramatic justice are sufficiently answered by the
simple exposure of those whose errors are merely subservient to the
minor interests of the piece.
HERFORD (_Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany_,
pp. 318-20): Jonson had in fact so far the Aristophanic quality of
genius, that he was at once a most elaborate and minute student of the
actual world, and a poet of the airiest and boldest fancy, and that he
loved to bring the two roles into the closest possible combination. No
one so capable of holding up the mirror to contemporary society without
distorting the slenderest thread of its complex tissue of usages; no
one, on the other hand, who so keenly delighted in startling away
the illusion or carefully undermining it by some palpably fantastic
invention. His most elaborate reproductions of the everyday world are
hardly ever without an infusion of equally elaborate caprice,--a leaven
of recondite and fantastic legend and grotesque myth, redolent of old
libraries and antique scholarship, furtively planted, as it were, in
the heart of that everyday world of London life, and so subtly blending
with it that the whole motley throng of merchants and apprentices,
gulls and gallants, discover nothing unusual in it, and engage with the
most perfectly matter of fact air in the business of working it out.
The purging of Crispinus in the _Poetaster_, the Aristophanic motive
of the _Magnetic Lady_, even the farcical horror of noise which is the
mainspring of the _Epicoene_, are only less elaborate and sustained
examples of this fantastic realism than the adventure of a Stupid
Devil in the play before us. Nothing more anomalous in the London of
Jonson's day could be conceived; yet it is so managed that it loses
all its strangeness.
