The Isle of Dogs (play)

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Isle of Dogs is a 16th century satirical playwritten by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson . It was immediately banned because of its scandalous content and no record has survived.

The play

The play premiered at London's Swan Theater in July or August 1597 , presumably by the Pembroke's Men theater company . A satirical comedy that once the authorities as "lewd plaie" ( "lewd play") full of seditious and defamatory been reported ( "slanderous") issues. While the traditions do not state which offenses were objected to in detail, an allusion in the Parnassus pieces indicates that the queen herself was targeted. Other evidence suggests that Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham may have been the target of ridicule.

The Isle of Dogs (German dog island ) is a peninsula on the south-east side of London, surrounded by the Thames . It is now part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and forms part of the Docklands . The peninsula is across from Greenwich , the site of the former royal Palace of Placentia , where the court's advisory board met ( Privy Council ). It is also believed that the Queen walked her dogs on the peninsula, which may explain the name of the location. Harvard University professor emeritus David Riggs speculates that the satire described the Queen's advisers as lap dogs. However, the title of the piece alone does not give any indication of its content, as the location was also known as the marshland where the waste thrown into the Thames collected. The peninsula was also mentioned in Jonson's Eastward Hoe of 1605, another piece for which the author was imprisoned. But Nashe also later referred to the location in his Summer's Last Will and Testament : “Here's a coyle about dogges without wit. If I had thought the ship of fooles would have stayed to take in fresh water at the Ile of dogges I would have furnished it with a whole kennel of collections to the purpose. ”(“ Here's a joke about dogs without a punchline. When I would have thought the ship of fools would have stayed to take fresh water on the Ile of Dogges [island of the dogs], I would have equipped it with a whole kennel full of collections [orig .: collections] for this purpose. ")

The punishments

However, Richard Topcliffe informed Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury , as soon as it became known that such a play was to be performed , who had brought the matter to the Privy Council . Three of the actors ( Gabriel Spenser , Robert Shaa and Ben Jonson) were arrested and taken to Marshalsea Prison . Nose's house was stormed and his records confiscated, but he escaped arrest by escaping to Great Yarmouth , where he hid for two years before returning to London. He wrote from his exile that he had given birth to a monster - "it was no sooner borne but I was glad to runne from it." He later called the piece "an imperfit Embrion of my idle hours" (about "an imperfect figment of my free hours") and claimed that he only wrote the introduction and the first act. Jonson, on the other hand, only remembers simply saying “yes and no”. Authorities placed two informants near him ( Robert Poley and someone surnamed Parrot ); this was mentioned in Jonson's epigram 59, Of Spies .

After this briefly repressive action, the royal authorities appear to have not pursued the matter further. The first arrest order states that "the rest of the actors or actors should be arrested on the matter," but it never happened. Shaa and Spenser were released quickly and Jonson was released from prison at the beginning of October. The Pembroke's Men, like other companies, resumed their gaming operations in the winter season. The only party that sustained serious damage was the impresario of the Swan Theater, Francis Langley , who was no longer licensed to operate his theater, which also marked the end of that theater house. Especially since he was involved in an unspecified matter before the Privy Council, in which a large, stolen Portuguese diamond played a role.

Significance for the London theater industry

The Isle of Dogs ban has long been understood as a significant episode in the complex relationship in which the city, the court and the theater world moved together. However, the exact meaning is difficult to determine. The literary critic Chambers considered while describing Langley's involvement in the diamond affair, the play in connection with the order of the Privy Council of July 28, 1597 to prohibit the drama altogether and to demolish the theaters. According to this view, the indulgence granted to the ensembles in the further course of the year reflects the short-lived nature of this seemingly decisive advance.

Other scholars, including William Ingram, questioned the timing. The July 28 decree made no mention of the play; this was only designed in response to the regular requests by the authorities to end the theater business. The council did not issue a separate order for the play until the following month. In addition, the Pembroke's Men made matters worse when they performed the play again (knowingly or not knowingly) shortly after the ban. Even more: Robert Cecil's anger over the stolen diamond leads to the conclusion that Langley was the actual target of the July 28 orders. Andrew Gurr complements this picture by noting the courtly tendency, as can be seen in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart period, to prefer two larger companies more oriented towards them ( Admiral's Men and Lord Chamberlain's Men ).

Later references

The plot in The Isle of Dogs drew a society that would soon be ruined by envy and Nashe also refers to the dog star and its appearance in July and August (see also dog days ) in his play "Summer's Last Will and Testament". The Bader Richard Lichfield († 1630) took in his 1597 pamphlet published " The Trimming of Thomas Nash gentleman " Nashe on it.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Riggs, Ben Jonson: A Life , Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 32.
  2. ↑ "An imperfit Embriõ I may well call it, for I hauing begun but the induction and first act of it, the other foure acts without my confent, or the leaft gueffe of my drift or scope, by the players were supplied, which bred both their trouble and mine to “in Englische Studien edited by Johannes Hoops , 1910
  3. ↑ Epigram No. 59. LIX. - TO FOOL, OR KNAVE. - SPIES, you are lights in state, but of base stuff, Who, when you've burnt yourselves down to the snuff, stink, and are thrown away. End fair enough.
  4. ↑ The Commercial Theater in England online: online ( Memento from March 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Recruited American Professor of Literature from the University of Michigan

literature

  • Edmund Kerchever Chambers The Elizabethan Stage . 4 volumes, Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1923.
  • Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642 . 2nd ed .; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1992.
  • William Ingram The Closing of the Theaters in 1597: A Dissenting View. , Modern Philology 69 (1971), pp. 105-115.
  • Alice Scoufos, Nashe, Jonson, and the Oldcastle Problem. , Modern Philology 65 (1968), pp. 307-324.
  • Misha Teramura Richard Topcliffe's Informant: New Light on The Isle of Dogs . The Review of English Studies 68, 2017, pages 44-59.