Justum impedimentum
In most Renaissance comedies (and many tragedies), the audience is able to glean enjoyment out of the plot by being privy to all of the information. The audience sees everything that happens and uses this knowledge to follow the storyline. This is the essence of dramatic irony, and the audience understands the action in reference to specific truths or secrets of which many of the main characters are completely ignorant. In Epicene, however, the biggest secret of them all—that Epicene is really a boy in disguise—is withheld from all of the characters and all of the spectators. Everyone has been fooled by Dauphine. What would Jonson’s audiences have thought of this? The intro in our anthology states that the play had a mixed reaction. Why would Jonson choose to end his play in this almost deus ex machina fashion, calling into question the most essential suspension of disbelief for the early modern spectator (specifically, that when a boy in drag was on stage, audiences viewed him as a woman within the confines of the play)?
Epicene and (Re)masculization
Tim’s question called upon Judith Butler’s definitions about gender and performance, and how gender is “unperformed” in the final scene. In addition to the issues Tim brings up, I was struck by the ways in which Epicene is treated once he is revealed as a boy. Truewit, who finds out the same moment the audience does about Epicene’s true gender, notes to the ladies of the play, “let it not trouble you that you have discovered any mysteries to this young gentleman. He is almost of years, and will make a good visitant within this twelvemonth” (5.4.242-44). After five Acts of acting as a woman and bonding with the other ladies, Truewit re-masculates Epicene by emphasizing his upcoming virility and masculine sexuality, suggesting that as the ladies had previously enjoyed “her” company by forging a homosocial friendship, they might also enjoy “his” company in a more carnal sense. Epicene is still in a dress, albeit without the wig, and thus becomes a transvestitic object of desire for the women, whereas in the earlier acts he was desired by the men. What function does Truewit’s re-masculinization serve? Is the speaker’s (and Jonson’s) way of alleviating the anxiety of homoerotic desire that may be found in transvestism?
1 comment:
Perhaps Jonson was taking this montage of "already done" plots and positing it as a commentary on homosexuality. I wonder if the audience would have been more disturbed by being left out of the plot or by having it shoved in their faces at the end that ALL of the women on stage were men and the spectators were entertained by a multitude of sexual gestures and innuendoes between men and men and drag. Homosexuality, especially among the nobility, was a open (though rarely admitted) way of life. Maybe Jonson wanted to put it in the lime light to force his audience to deal with their hypocrisy.
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