The Themes and Staging of Bartholomew Fair

THE THEMES AND STAGING OF BARTHOLOMEW FAIR R.B. PARKER We know rather more about the original production of Bartholomew Fair on 31 October 1614, than we do about most productions of the time. The play was written after the failure of Jonson's painstakingly classical tragedy Catiline (Kings Men, 1611 ), and is a deliberate, but highly ambivalent, adaptation of 'popular' forms. It was put on, not at the fashionable Globe or Blackfriars, but at a new theatre called the Hope, two facts about which are very important: it was modelled On the Swan, which is the one Elizabethan theatre of which we possess a contemporary sketch;' and it was designed to be used as a bear-baiting pit at least once every fortnight? Jonson refers to the stage-keeper 'gathering up the broken apples for the bears within' (Induction, 46) and his disdainfully pragmatic attitude to the situation appears at the end of the Induction: though the Fair be not kept in the same region that some here, perhaps, would have it, yet think therein the author hath observed a special decorum, the place being as dirty as Smithfield [where the actual fair was held], and as stinking every whit. [138-42]' The company was an eccentric and, as it proved, unstable amalgam of the adult Lady Elizabeth's Men and the Children of the Queen's Revels, who had joined forces in March 1613 under the management of Philip Henslowe.' The Children had produced Jonson's earlier comedy Epieoene in 1609, and their leading actor, Nathan Field, was a protege of his. Field is actually referred to by name in Bartholomew Fair (v.iii.81), and it was perhaps friendship with him, as much as pique about Catiline, which led to Jonson's collaboration with the new company. On I November, its second night of performance, the play was taken to Court, where there is an interesting payment recorded for 'Canvas for Boothes and other necessaries for a play called Bartholomewe Fair." This has led Eugene Waith to argue very persuasively that the fair scenes at least must have been staged with simultaneous loci in the medieval fashion.· The frequent internal references to 'booths,' 'tents,' and 'mansions' suggest the use of several light canvas-covered booths Vol1llne XXXIX, Nmnher 4. July 1970 294 R.B. PARKER to represent shops of the fair; while the 'arras: behind which Jonson's man, Master Brome, is said to be hiding (Induction, 7-8), was probably hung across the front of the tiring-house from the 'jutty' of the stage balcony,' with slits for entrances in front of the doors on either side and possibly another entrance slit in the middle - though, if the Hope resembled the Swan, it would have no 'inner stage.' Besides simultaneity and fluidity, however, the staging may also have been 'medieval' because it was emblematic; Jonson was writing allegorical masques at this time. There are three main locales in the fair scenes: Ursula's pig booth; the stocks, in which Wasp, Zeal-of-the-land Busy, and Justice Overdo are imprisoned; and the puppet-booth of Lantern Leatherhead, to which all the characters gravitate in Act v. Of these, the pig booth is pretty clearly associated with hell. 'Hell's a kind of cold cellar to 't' (rr.ii.41-2), says Ursula on entering, and later she complains that she is 'Tormented within, i' the fire' (rr.v.6l). She herself is all 'fire and fat' (rr.ii.48) and the 'mother of furies' (rr.v.70-3), while Busy describes her as the epitome of the world, the flesh, and the devil- 'as being in the fire' (m.vi.34). Her attendant, Mooncalf, is called an 'incubee' (rr.ii.80); and the devil references expand to cover the rest of the fair of which her booth is the heart (I.V.l42-3). After her scalding, for example, she herself calls Winwife and Quarlous 'fiends' and wishes down on them the 'Curse of hell' (u.v.l50); Cokes calls cutpurses 'devils' and 'demons' and dares Nightingale, the ballad singer, to 'raise' them up (m.v.31-5); the Watch call Troubleall a 'devil' after he...