「바르톨로뮤 페어」의 엔딩에 관한 연구

Abstract

At the ending of Bartholomew Fair, Quarlous, the character who, at this moment, is functioning as the voice of Ben Jonson, reminds Justice of the Peace Adam Overdo of the fact that he is “but Adam”, only a frail human, made of “blood and flesh”, and demands him not to “overdo” and just to invite the people “to his supper.”(5.6.99-102) With this, he stops Overdo’s legal judgments to punish “the enormities”, such as theft, pick-pocketing, sex trade, drunkenness, commotions and disturbances in Bartholomew Fair, and turns the play back to the bright comic world of reconciliation and tolerance. This ending, however, raises some doubts that it may spoil the poetic justice, for it permits the foolish people, including well-intentioned Justice Overdo, his brother-in-law Cokes, Dame Overdo, Cokes’ tutor Wasp, pretty young Win Littlewit, Puritan Rabbi Busy, etc., to be punished for their follies and indiscretion, by getting beaten and put in stocks, having their money and items, even a wedding license stolen, being deceived and sexually used, or falling down from the places of authority, whereas it leaves the greedy people in and outside the Fair, such as the pickpockets and thieves, the bawdy and pimps, the liars, the gluttons, the ravenous suitors, and etc., who steal, deceive and exploit the foolish, totally unpunished for their crimes or greed. Moreover, this Quarlous, reprimanding Overdo for his human frailty and fallibility, is the very man who promptly seized the chance and took the greatest profit in the play, and he appeared on the stage as a flirt to Littlewit’s wife, forced the cutpurse Edgworth to steal the marriage license from Wasp, married a rich widow for her money, and disguised with a madman’s robes to get a blank warrant from the deceived Overdo and to use it for selfish purposes. Therefore, it’s difficult to see him as a character who is fit for the spokesman of the playwright, neither morally proper nor wise. Jonson has presented the various types of foolish people and the punishment they suffer, revealing the process of how they were tempted and deceived by the greedy people in the Fair. His aim was to warn his own spectators and to give some instructions. Through the Induction and the Epilogue, we can guess that he had a clear consciousness of his “spectators” (Induction 74) and considered the middle and upper classes as his own to whom he wanted to give lessons. Jonson casts them as the blind, foolish and easily deceived, like Overdo and Cokes in his play, and he reprimands them for allowing the situations where avaricious people can take advantage of their foolishness. He understands the covetous people as a kind of “status quo” from which nobody escapes, and uses them as the tools to correct the follies of the foolish people. That’s the reason why this comedy ends with the unpunished minor criminals and money-pursuing suitors. On the other hand, it seems to be able to find out an answer on the question of the justification of making Quarlous as a “deus ex machina” who resolves all the entanglements at the end of the play, in his “madness.” From the beginning of the play, it has been emphasized that he is “the more madcap of the two” (1.2.36) and, in the latter part, he changes into madman’s clothes. Thus he is not only a covetous man after money, but also he becomes a comic madman who bears some resemblance to the “Vice” who was found in medieval Morality plays and who acted as a deceiving Devil, a mocking Clown, and the messenger Death at the same time. In this view, it is considered acceptable for him to pop out, wearing the robe of playwright’s authority, and to deliver his voice when Overdo is just about to commit another error, his usual “overdo-ness.” Therefore, the ending can be defined as the farcical that makes a little bit easier to embrace the reality Jonson has satirized rather than the comic that returns to the atmosphere of reconciliation and tolerance.