Gallants?

Tim's jump into "performance of" questions leads me to think about how "gentleness" is performed in the play. What does it mean to be a "gentleman" in this play? Dauphine, as Professor Zucker's article suggests, is a "perfect" gentleman because we don't see the labor of his supreme plot, which he must have been constantly revising to keep up with Truewit's interference. Yet, his plot makes everyone look foolish, something for which Truewit's last speech attempts to make amends, and earlier, Dauphine shows himself capable of extreme ungenerosity / violence when he says Truewit should take John Daw's left arm during the kicking scene; Truewit's astonished reply is "How! Maim a man forever for a jest? What a conscience hast though?" (4.5.124). At other times, Epicoene is called by Truewit "a gentlewoman of very absolute behavior" ('absolute' glossed as 'perfect' in the New Mermaids edition) (3.4.37-8), something we come to learn must be untrue. And the term "gentlemen" is tossed around as a general address. What might Jonson's idea of gentleness be? Does the word retain meaning? Does its use here jibe with out own ideas of what a gentleman / gentlewoman should be?

Is Truewit a comic version of Othello's Iago? Obviously, there are major differences, e.g. no one dies because of Truewit. But if he performed his jests in Iago's world, someone might have. Both are arguably the cleverest persons onstage; both are great plot manipulators who draw attention to their plotting and draw the audience in by doing so; and both are ultimately undone by another clever (though perhaps not as clever) character. Does that complicate the idea of wit as something dangerous / Machiavellian? Does it complicate the definition of comedy that we have been working with? Does it shed any light on the fine line we often seem to be crossing into tragicomedy?