Jonson's Sick Society

JONSONS SICK SOCIETY Leona Dale Because Ben Jonson was a Renaissance man trained in the eloquent manipulation of language and thoroughly attuned to his times, he spoke to his audiences in a language which communicated not only through the ideas expressed but through the particular phrasing of those ideas. He consciously made use of rhetorical devices to achieve specific ends because he lived among and wrote for men schooled in a complex system of rhetoric. And perhaps none of the devices which he used was more tellingly handled than that dealing widi man's physical and mental well-being; for through a complex method of equating social and cultural diseases with physiological ills, Jonson created a medical imagery which is inextricably a part of the development of character, the working out of plot, and the maintenance of an underlying theme which is basically the theme of all of his comedies— the deviation of man from the accepted norm. Renaissance man, as Jonson saw him, was often a hypocrite and a fraud; he engaged in chicanery and deceit; he cheated and lied and dissembled. And he was many times a prejudiced and unreasonable fool. Because he fell far short of the reasonable well-balanced creature that his place in the hierarchical scheme of the universe demanded that he be, he was sick; an attempt to cure him was necessary. Jonson's efforts to return him to health took the traditional satiric form of ridicule. The dramatist would hold a mirror up to his deviate and by allowing him to see how he appeared to others, laugh him out of his sickness. That mirror was subsequendy to reflect unhealthy practices and attitudes in die individual, die family, the coterie, the economic group, even society as a whole. Jonson's major comedies are, therefore, permeated with medical and health imagery showing the analogy of man's moral and spiritual deviations to physical ilk, and the cures to be used for such sufferings. That Jonson was in complete command of his satiric tool is clearly evidenced in his delineation of every segment of each of the little worlds that he created in his comedies; however, perhaps in no circumstance was the dramatist's use of medical and health terminology more significant than in the instances in which it related to the impact of the spiritual and moral biases of one member of a family upon the other members of that group. For example, in Every Man in his Humour, Kitely's humor is his jealousy, He sees the different members of his household and the various characters who visit his family as diseased and carriers of disease. His brother-in-law, Well-bred, "makes . . . [Kitely's] house here common as a mart/A Theater, a publike receptacle/For giddie humour, and diseased riot. . . Z'1 But 1BeD Jonson, "Every Man in his Humour," Ben Jonson, OT, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (Oxford, 1927), 11.1.61-64. Quotes from all the plays are from this edition. Jonson's Sick Society67 Kitely is reluctant to play the master in his own household. He is fearful that if he complains to Well-bred of the young gallants who visit him, the latter will tell tales out of the family; for, as Kitely sees him, Well-bred is sick and He would be readie for his heate of humor, And ouer-flowing of the vapour, in him, To blow the eares of his familiars, With the false breath, of telling, what disgraces And low dispardgments, . . . [Kitely] had put vpon him. (11.1.102-106) Because of his faulty judgment, the basic weakness from which all of his biases stem, Kitely turns for help to Downe-Right, a character who is as much in need of aid as is Jonson's jealous husband. The irony of Kitely's calling upon Downe-Right to do the job that the head of the house is obligated to do is quite apparent when Downe-Right becomes so overwrought over a slight affront done him by one of Well-bred's would-be visitors that Downe-Right has to be restrained by Kitely. In this instance, Jonson makes effective use...