Title: Haunted purgatory : Boccaccio's Decameron 3.8 as an eighteenth-century afterpiece
Source document: Theory and Practice in English Studies. 2021, vol. 10, iss. 1, pp. 49-62
Extent
49-62
-
ISSN1805-0859
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/143985
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The present article addresses the issue of intertextuality of the English theatre of the long Restoration period (1660–1737), using Benjamin Griffin's farce The Humours of Purgatory (1716) as a case study. Although The Humours of Purgatory clearly employs a then popular tale from Boccaccio's Decameron, the study argues that, especially during the play's production, a number of other factors (some of which were beyond the realm of the text) entered the referential framework of the piece, making it virtually impossible to talk about a single source and its straightforward adaptation or a clear-cut genealogy of the work. Employing Marvin Carlson's concept of ghosting (or "haunting"), the study shows how elements of various works from both literary and theatre cultures of the time participated in complex and shifting intertextual networks, with multiple links and relations between their individual members. From the analysis it also transpires that the early eighteenth-century farce was an integral and valuable part of English theatre culture of the time, one that – along with other "lesser" or "popular" theatre forms that helped to shape the performance tradition of the period – deserves more systematic academic attention.
Note
This article was supported by the Czech Science Foundation project GA19–07494S, "English Theatre Culture 1660–1737"
References
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[2] Betterton, Thomas. 1741. The History of the English Stage, from the Restoration to the Present Time. London: printed for E. Curll.
[3] Boccaccio, Giovanni. 1702. Il Decamerone: One Hundred Ingenious Novels. 2 vols. London: printed for John Nicholson, James Knapton and Benj. Tooke.
[4] Boyce, Benjamin. 1943. "News from Hell: Satiritic Communications with the Nether World in English Writing of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." PMLA 58, no. 2: 402–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/459052 | DOI 10.2307/459052
[5] Burling, William J. 1993. A Checklist of New Plays and Entertainments on the London Stage, 1700–1737. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
[6] Carlson, Marvin. 2001. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as a Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
[7] Clegg, Roger and Lucie Skeaping. 2014. Singing Simpkin and Other Bawdy Jigs. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
[8] Clubb, Louise George. 1998. "Intertextualities: Some Questions." In The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama: Cultural Exchange and Intertextuality, edited by Michele Marrapodi, 179–89. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
[9] The Cobler of Caunterburie and Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie, edited by Geoffrey Creigh and Jane Belfield. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987.
[10] D'Urfey, Thomas. 1694. The Comical History of Don Quixote . . . Part I. London: printed for Samuel Briscoe.
[11] Fletcher, John and James Shirley. 1989. The Night Walker, or The Little Thief. In Vol. 7 of The Dramatic Works of the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, general editor Fredson Bowers, 513–637. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[12] "Griffin, Benjamin." In Vol. 4 of A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1600–1800, edited by Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, 364–68. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.
[13] Griffin, Benjamin. 1716. The Humours of Purgatory. London: printed for A. Bettesworth.
[14] Griffin, Benjamin. 1720. Whig and Tory. London: printed for N. Mist.
[15] Holland, Peter. 2000. "Farce." In The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, edited by Deborah Payne Fisk, 107–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[16] Howe, Tanya. 2011. "Abject, Delude, Create: The Aesthetic Self-Consciousness of Early Eighteenth-Century Farce." Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 25, no. 1: 25–45.
[17] Howe, Tanya. 2013. "The Pomp and Farce of Death: Funeral Humor on the Popular 18th Century English Stage." Paper presented at the 43rd Annual PCA-ACA National Conference, Washington Marriott Wardman Park, Washington, D.C., March 27–30, 2013. Abstract available at https://commons.marymount.edu/slasher/2012/12/04/the-pomp-and-farce-of-death-pca-2013-abstract/.
[18] Hughes, Leo. 1956. A Century of English Farce. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[19] Jones, Florence Nightingale. 1910. Boccaccio and His Imitators in German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian literature, "The Decameron." Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[20] Krajník, Filip. 2019. "Romeo and Juliet in the Midst of Early 18th-Century English Party Politics." Hradec Králové Journal of Anglophone Studies 6, no. 1: 80–90.
[21] The London Stage, 1660–1800, edited by William van Lennep, Emmett L. Avery, Arthur H. Scouten, George Winchester Stone, Jr., and Charles Beecher Hogan. 11 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968.
[22] Mikyšková, Anna. 2019. "Virgin or Wife? St Dorothy's Legend on the Late Restoration Stage." American and British Studies Annual 12: 32–43.
[23] "Robertson, Mrs." In Vol. 13 of A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1600–1800, edited by Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, 15. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.
[24] Sharpham, Edward. 1607. The Fleire. London: printed and are to be solde by F. B.
[25] Smarr, Janet Levarie. 2019. "Boccaccio's Decameron and Theatricality." In The Routledge Research Companion to Anglo-Italian Renaissance Literature and Culture, edited by Michele Marrapodi, 75–100. London and New York: Routledge.
[26] Southerne, Thomas. 1988. The Fatal Marriage. In Vol. 2 of The Works of Thomas Southerne, edited by Robert Jordan and Harold Love, 1–84. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[27] Stelling, Lieke. 2018. "'Leaving their humours to the word mongers of mallice': Mocking Polemic in Tarltons Newes Out of Purgatorie (1590) and Two Contemporary Responses." Shakespeare Jahrbuch 154: 140–54.
[28] Tales, and Quicke Answers Very Mery, and Pleasant to Rede. London: in the house of Thomas Berthelet, [1532?].
[29] Walter, Melissa Emerson. 2019. The Italian Novella and Shakespeare's Comic Heroines. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.
[30] Wright, Herbert G. 1957. Boccaccio in England from Chaucer to Tennyson. London: Athlone Press.
[2] Betterton, Thomas. 1741. The History of the English Stage, from the Restoration to the Present Time. London: printed for E. Curll.
[3] Boccaccio, Giovanni. 1702. Il Decamerone: One Hundred Ingenious Novels. 2 vols. London: printed for John Nicholson, James Knapton and Benj. Tooke.
[4] Boyce, Benjamin. 1943. "News from Hell: Satiritic Communications with the Nether World in English Writing of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." PMLA 58, no. 2: 402–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/459052 | DOI 10.2307/459052
[5] Burling, William J. 1993. A Checklist of New Plays and Entertainments on the London Stage, 1700–1737. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
[6] Carlson, Marvin. 2001. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as a Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
[7] Clegg, Roger and Lucie Skeaping. 2014. Singing Simpkin and Other Bawdy Jigs. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
[8] Clubb, Louise George. 1998. "Intertextualities: Some Questions." In The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama: Cultural Exchange and Intertextuality, edited by Michele Marrapodi, 179–89. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
[9] The Cobler of Caunterburie and Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie, edited by Geoffrey Creigh and Jane Belfield. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987.
[10] D'Urfey, Thomas. 1694. The Comical History of Don Quixote . . . Part I. London: printed for Samuel Briscoe.
[11] Fletcher, John and James Shirley. 1989. The Night Walker, or The Little Thief. In Vol. 7 of The Dramatic Works of the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, general editor Fredson Bowers, 513–637. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[12] "Griffin, Benjamin." In Vol. 4 of A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1600–1800, edited by Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, 364–68. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.
[13] Griffin, Benjamin. 1716. The Humours of Purgatory. London: printed for A. Bettesworth.
[14] Griffin, Benjamin. 1720. Whig and Tory. London: printed for N. Mist.
[15] Holland, Peter. 2000. "Farce." In The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, edited by Deborah Payne Fisk, 107–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[16] Howe, Tanya. 2011. "Abject, Delude, Create: The Aesthetic Self-Consciousness of Early Eighteenth-Century Farce." Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 25, no. 1: 25–45.
[17] Howe, Tanya. 2013. "The Pomp and Farce of Death: Funeral Humor on the Popular 18th Century English Stage." Paper presented at the 43rd Annual PCA-ACA National Conference, Washington Marriott Wardman Park, Washington, D.C., March 27–30, 2013. Abstract available at https://commons.marymount.edu/slasher/2012/12/04/the-pomp-and-farce-of-death-pca-2013-abstract/.
[18] Hughes, Leo. 1956. A Century of English Farce. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[19] Jones, Florence Nightingale. 1910. Boccaccio and His Imitators in German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian literature, "The Decameron." Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[20] Krajník, Filip. 2019. "Romeo and Juliet in the Midst of Early 18th-Century English Party Politics." Hradec Králové Journal of Anglophone Studies 6, no. 1: 80–90.
[21] The London Stage, 1660–1800, edited by William van Lennep, Emmett L. Avery, Arthur H. Scouten, George Winchester Stone, Jr., and Charles Beecher Hogan. 11 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968.
[22] Mikyšková, Anna. 2019. "Virgin or Wife? St Dorothy's Legend on the Late Restoration Stage." American and British Studies Annual 12: 32–43.
[23] "Robertson, Mrs." In Vol. 13 of A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1600–1800, edited by Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, 15. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.
[24] Sharpham, Edward. 1607. The Fleire. London: printed and are to be solde by F. B.
[25] Smarr, Janet Levarie. 2019. "Boccaccio's Decameron and Theatricality." In The Routledge Research Companion to Anglo-Italian Renaissance Literature and Culture, edited by Michele Marrapodi, 75–100. London and New York: Routledge.
[26] Southerne, Thomas. 1988. The Fatal Marriage. In Vol. 2 of The Works of Thomas Southerne, edited by Robert Jordan and Harold Love, 1–84. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[27] Stelling, Lieke. 2018. "'Leaving their humours to the word mongers of mallice': Mocking Polemic in Tarltons Newes Out of Purgatorie (1590) and Two Contemporary Responses." Shakespeare Jahrbuch 154: 140–54.
[28] Tales, and Quicke Answers Very Mery, and Pleasant to Rede. London: in the house of Thomas Berthelet, [1532?].
[29] Walter, Melissa Emerson. 2019. The Italian Novella and Shakespeare's Comic Heroines. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.
[30] Wright, Herbert G. 1957. Boccaccio in England from Chaucer to Tennyson. London: Athlone Press.