In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE DRAMATIC EXPERIENCE OF MASSINGER'S THE CIIT MADAM AND A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS ROBERT A. FOTHERGILL A dramatist who set himself in the 1620s to write comedy had behind him a period of the greatest sophistication of this art. The sophistication may be seen as twofold, consisting of a developed sense of the comic in human experience, and a highly refined awareness of the peculiarities of the theatrical experience. The first kind of sophistication has nothing necessarily to do with the writing of plays - it is a way of responding to life, of organizing one's understanding of it. The second kind is the especial property of the dramatist, and it stems from a realization that for the duration of its two or three hours in the theatre an audience can be subjected to a variety of ingenious psychological experiments. To distinguish two aspects of this sophistication is of course to introduce a false dichotomy, and in the outstanding comedies of the period the two coalesce into a complex and often disturbing experience. In such plays as The Malcontent, The Gentleman Usher, The Widow's Tears, and Women Beware Women this complexity virtually creates a dramatic sulrgenre. Then, too, by Massinger's time, the sophisticated divertissements of the Fletcherian school are in their prime, if not past it. Finally, some mention should be made of the extreme reaches of comic energy and inventiveness achieved by Ben Jonson in such a work as Bartholomew Fair. Against such a background Massinger's comedies The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts standout rather oddly.' It will be the aim of this paper, bearing in mind the achievements of his predecessors as implicit terms of reference, to consider the nature of the dramatic experience offered by these two plays, and, furthermore, the quality of this experience. It should be stated at the outset that 'dramatic experience' is taken to mean the cumulative organization of our sensibilities effected by the event in the theatre. If the range of comic drama runs from Satire to Saturnalia, these two comedies of Massinger may be seen as satire in almost its purest form. UTQ, Volume XLlU, Number 1, Fall 1973 CITY MADAM, NEw WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS 69 This is particularly true of The City Madam; A New Way has hints of a wider dimension, to be examined in due course. The creative impulse behind the plays strikes one as relentlessly vindictive, the urge to expose, to condemn, and to punish. In each play the major process of the action is the overthrow of a monster, but in the course of these actions a good many minor offenders are also dealt with - exposed in all their folly or nastiness, and subjected to a fitting punishment. In some cases the retribution is efficacious in producing repentance and reform; in others it is merely a closing of the accounts, a rooting-out of cockles from the wheatfield. Supposing that we share the dramatist's moral and social outlook, our chief satisfaction in attending to his plays must be the satisfaction of seeing the vicious and the contemptible getting what is coming to them. Or if, by any chance, we happen to be ourselves afIIicted with any of the personality disorders so unamiably displayed and so vigorously persecuted, we shall feel a fitting shame, and slink away with what the theologians call 'a firm purpose of amendment.' Satire, the urge to drag Caliban to a looking-glass, presents problems to him who would translate it into drama. For the satiric drive is a complex one. It involves, for One thing, a dual attitude to the audience, who may be participants in the dramatist's triumph, or victims of it, e""pected to recognize themselves and shudder. The object of satire, the hated human type, must undergo a process whereby he is first of all recognizably imitated , then treated in absentia to the kind of retribution that can never be inflicted in 'real life.' It is a purgative process for the dramatist, and possibly for the audience. Painting the unflattering portrait is a way to master and expel the rankling image; blacking the...

pdf

Share