JANE AUSTEN AND THE COMIC TRADITION

1 8 Y J A N E A U S T E N A N D T H E C O M I C T R A D I T I O N K E N L U D W I G This is the text of a speech delivered on 19 October 2016 in Washington , D.C., to open the Annual Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America, which was celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Emma, Austen’s fifth novel. We are here on a very happy occasion, because what could be better than taking a few days out of our lives to honor an author who has given everyone at this convention so much joy. I was at the Edinburgh Festival in August of this year, and one of the improvisational groups called themselves ‘‘Austentatious.’’ The performance began when a handsome young man in Regency attire came out onstage and explained to the audience that he was there to talk about Jane Austen, the author of six screenplays and the long, tedious novels they were based on. A similar story involves a topic that we have all been thinking about lately, Jane Austen and Brexit. On 24 June 2016, the day after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Alexandra Petri wrote an op-ed in The New York Times saying, ‘‘Dang it, Britain, we thought you had things under control. . . . In the Jane Austen novel of international life, we were supposed to be 1 9 R Marianne, the one with all the feelings. You were supposed to be Elinor, the sensible one.’’ Soon after, I heard a rerun on BBC Radio of Desert Island Discs, on which the new prime minister, Theresa May, was asked what single novel she wanted to take to an island as a castaway and she answered Pride and Prejudice. (She also said that her single luxury item would be a lifetime subscription to Vogue.) I mention these stories to remind us of what a phenomenon Jane Austen has become. As demonstrated by the wonderful exhibition now at the Folger Shakespeare Library – Will and Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity, curated by Janine Barchas and Kristina Straub – Jane Austen is currently going through a massive revival of interest equivalent to the Shakespeare revival of the late eighteenth century, which was fueled by David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769. Shakespeare became, in Garrick’s words, the Bard of our Idolatry . Later, George Bernard Shaw scorned this kind of adulation and called it ‘‘Bardolatry.’’ I wonder what the equivalent for Jane Austen would be? ‘‘Austeneration?’’ Are Austen’s novels ‘‘Janerific?’’ Before leaving Shakespeare, I want to relate the most unusual Shakespeare sighting I’ve noticed in years. In connection with a new play I’m writing, I was watching the 1939 cowboy movie Dodge City, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, and towards the beginning, Flynn hands the reins of his horse to a young boy in front of a saloon and says, ‘‘Wasn’t it Shakespeare who began by holding horses?’’ (And indeed, some scholars believe that Shakespeare began his working life in London as an hostler, holding horses for theater patrons.) Later in the film, Flynn’s sidekick ‘‘Tex’’ says to Flynn, ‘‘We fought the war together, built a railroad together; we ate, drank, slept, lived and died together,’’ echoing the words spoken by Celia to Rosalind in As You Like It. Who knew that gunslingers talked like that in the Old West? Jane Austen was born in 1775, which is easy to remember because it was the year that the American Revolution started. Think three explosions: Lexington, Concord, and Jane Austen. Her father was a clergyman in the village of Steventon, about sixty miles southwest of London. They lived a simple life in a small town but with a high level of sophistication. Her mother came from an intellectual family with close ties to Oxford, where 2 0 L U D W I G Y Austen’s uncle had been the president of Trinity College. Austen had six brothers, two of whom became admirals. Another was a clergyman, and...