Swapping Robes and Transcending Servants: Contesting Class in Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or the Fox
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Early modern drama both challenges and affirms the culture out of which it comes. Central to the profound cultural shift that comes out of class is the idea of what a person might or could be. Early modern discussions of nobility, a discussion that begins in Italy and then makes its way into England, include a new term―“sprezzatura”―introduced by Castiglione, and then translated by Hoby. “Sprezzatura,” as the quality of doing something without appearing to make an effort, suggests the nobility of a being, at the same time that it depends upon the labor of such a process being hidden. On the stage, particularly in city comedies whose subject matter includes the regulation of class, poets like Ben Jonson write plays that dazzle with lower class figures that outshine their masters, at the same time that they punish and rebuke said trangressors for having crossed the line. In Volpone, Jonson topples the man, only to punish the top (and the bottom), calling into question both the idea of class as a fixed state, and (for noble and servant) sexuality.
Abstract
Early modern drama both challenges and affirms the culture out of which it comes. Central to the profound cultural shift that comes out of class is the idea of what a person might or could be. Early modern discussions of nobility, a discussion that begins in Italy and then makes its way into England, include a new term―“sprezzatura”―introduced by Castiglione, and then translated by Hoby. “Sprezzatura,” as the quality of doing something without appearing to make an effort, suggests the nobility of a being, at the same time that it depends upon the labor of such a process being hidden. On the stage, particularly in city comedies whose subject matter includes the regulation of class, poets like Ben Jonson write plays that dazzle with lower class figures that outshine their masters, at the same time that they punish and rebuke said trangressors for having crossed the line. In Volpone, Jonson topples the man, only to punish the top (and the bottom), calling into question both the idea of class as a fixed state, and (for noble and servant) sexuality.
참고문헌 (11)
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