The Devil is an Ass
Encyclopedia
The Devil is an Ass is a Jacobean comedy
by Ben Jonson
, first performed in 1616
and first published in 1631
.
The Devil is an Ass followed Bartholomew Fair (1614
), one of the author's greatest works, and marks the start of the final phase of his dramatic career. However just or unjust may be the characterization of Jonson's later plays as his "dotages," there would be no more great works after Bartholomew Fair, and a full decade would elapse between The Devil is an Ass and Jonson's next play, The Staple of News.
; the play most likely premiered at the Blackfriars Theatre
in October or November of the year. Robert Johnson composed music for the play.
The initial publication of the play was somewhat irregular, in that Jonson intended to include it in a second folio collection of his works in 1631, but scrapped the plan when he was dissatisfied with the printing. Copies of the 1631 printed text were released, though whether they were sold publicly or circulated privately by Jonson is unclear. The play was included in the eventual second folio of Jonson's works (1640-1), published after his death in 1637, and also was issued in a separate "variant reprint edition" in 1641
.
In 2007, it was revived by the American Shakespeare Center in a production at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia
. The Spartan Dogs company produced the play at the White Bear Theatre
in London in 2010. Set in 1829, the production had of the circus about it, emphasising the fantastical nature of the play.
, with Satan and an inferior devil called Pug. Pug wants to be sent to Earth to do the Devil's work of tempting men to evil — but Satan thinks he isn't up to the job; the world has grown so sophisticated in its vices, especially in the moral cesspool of London, that a simple devil like Pug will be severely out of his depth. Pug pleads his case, however, and Satan sends him into the world, specifically to plague an eccentric and foolish gentleman named Fabian Fitzdottrel.
Fitzdottrel is obsessed with the idea of meeting a devil; he has consorted with magicians and conjurers (Simon Forman
among others) in hopes of encountering an imp who will aid him in the discovery of buried treasure. In addition to his main mania, Fitzdottrel has subsidiary obsessions: he dresses his beautiful young wife sumptuously, but clothes himself in second-hand garments, which he wheels and deals over with enthusiasm. In the play's first Act he is enthusiastic about a fancy cloak that he plans to wear to the Blackfriars Theatre to see a play. Pug comes to him in the body of a thief who'd been hanged earlier in the morning; Fitzdottrel refuses to believe that Pug is a devil, since the corpse's feet are not cloven hooves—but Pug's claim that his name is "Devil" (or "Deville") is enough to earn him a place as a servant in Fitzdottrel's household.
His reputation for eccentric foolishness has made Fitzdottrel the target of a host of confidence men, who fall out into two groups: on the one hand, the young gallant Wittipol and his friend Manly, and on the other the "projector" Meercraft and his henchmen, Ingine the broker, Lady Tailbush, Guilthead the goldsmith, Everill and Train and others. Meercraft is after Fitzdottrel's money, while Wittipol in more interested in the man's wife. In exchange for a sumptuous cloak, Wittipol actually negotiates fifteen minutes of conversation with Mistress Frances Fitzdottrel, in her husband's presence. Fitzdottrel tries to outwit the gallant by ordering his wife to remain silent; but when Wittipol finds that the young woman will not answer him, he answers for her, so aptly that the virtuous Mistress Fitzdottrel is impressed, almost against her will, with his "brain and spirit."
Meanwhile, Meercraft is making progress with his intended mark by tempting Fitzdottrel with various get-rich-quick schemes, like raising "drowned land," harvesting dogs' skins, or making wine from raisins. Fitzdottrel is most enthusiastic about the first, and Meercraft convinces his dupe that he will soon be elevated to the peerage as the Duke of the Drowned Lands. (Reclaiming swamps and fens for agricultural use, via dykes and windmill-driven pumps, was a real and lucrative development of the time.) To train Mistress Fitzdottrel in the manners of the upper class, Meercraft persuades his victim to solicit, with a present of a diamond ring, the aid of an Englishwoman who has lived in Spain and is fluent in courtly manners. The "Spanish woman" will actually be a Meercraft henchman in disguise.
Pug, looking for opportunities for villainy, tries to tempt Mistress Fitzdottrel into cheating on her husband with Wittipol; but his effort is inept, and she thinks he is a spy planted by her husband. She denounces Pug to Fitzdottrel, who beats the imp with a cudgel. Wittipol manages to obtain a window-to-window conversation with her—but her husband finds out about it and seeks to guard her even more closely than usual. He is still entranced by Meercraft's con-game, however, and the central scenes in the play spin out a complex web of manipulation that includes rounds of Who's got the cloak? and Who's got the ring?, and a wealth of satirical commentary on various aspects of London life, such as the booming business of women's cosmetics. Wittipol wins the role of the Spanish woman, and in this disguise he penetrates Fitzdottrel's watch to reach his wife.
Mistress Fitzdottrel, however, surprises Wittipol and Manly with an effective plea to their nobler natures (Act IV, scene vi). Appealing to Wittipol to put his "noble parts" that have impressed her "To a right use," she seeks his aid in resolving her dilemma:
Influenced by Manly and his own better nature, Wittipol puts aside his lustful quest to help Mistress Fitzdottrel out of her difficulties. To this point, Wittipol and Manly have been co-operating with Meercraft and company, but now, in effect, they change sides. Meercraft has by this time tricked Fitzdottrel into signing over all his fortune to his wife, with Meercraft himself as the intended guardian; Wittipol and Manly manage to switch the guardianship to Manly at the last moment. Once she has legal control of their estate, Mistress Fitzdottrel can prevent her husband's follies from bankrupting them.
Meercraft, now realizing that he's been fooled, strikes back: he persuades Fitzdottrel (who is outraged at his wife's usurpation of authority) to pretend to be bewitched by his wife and her confederates. In the sympathetic court of Sir Paul Eitherside, Meercraft plans to get the legal documents dismissed and restore Fitzdottrel to the control of his own estate, so the cheating can continue.
Pug has not done well through all these developments: beaten, manipulated, and generally abused, he ends up confined to Newgate Prison
at the end of the day. (Jonson, true to the Aristotelian unities of time and place, stages all this action in a single day.) Pug appeals to Satan to take him back to Hell with whatever punishment the lord of the underworld chooses—for nothing in hell compares "to a lady of fashion." Satan, triumphant in his prediction that 1616 London was more than Pug could handle, arrives to spirit Pug away, blasting a wall out of Newgate in the process, and leaving the thief's body behind. And the jailers realize, belatedly, that the man they'd arrested in the afternoon was the same man they'd hanged in the morning.
Meercraft's trial before Sir Paul is warming up, with Fitzdottrel giving a bravura performance as a bewitched victim. But word arrives of the satanic doings at Newgate; and Fitzdottrel, realizing that Pug, "Deville," had been a devil after all, is so beside himself that he abandons the pretense of bewitchment and spills the beans. In the end, the con men are themselves conned, the witty enjoy the fruits of their wit, and virtue is preserved.
Metatheatre
When Fitzdottrel intends to see a play in Act I, the play in question is The Devil is an Ass. When Meercraft and Ingine are looking for someone to play the "Spanish woman," they mention Richard Robinson
, a real actor with the King's Men; Robinson played female parts as a boy, and had acted in the company's production of Jonson's Catiline in 1611. Wittipol, the character in the play who does masquerade as the "Spanish woman," was most likely played by Robinson, creating another of the loops of self-reference that Jonson liked to generate in his plays.
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
by Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, first performed in 1616
1616 in literature
The year 1616 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus is placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Roman Catholic Church....
and first published in 1631
1631 in literature
The year 1631 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 9 - Love's Triumph Through Callipolis, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is staged at Whitehall Palace....
.
The Devil is an Ass followed Bartholomew Fair (1614
1614 in literature
The year 1614 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Sir Francis Bacon's dual role as MP and attorney-general is objected to by Parliament.*Izaak Walton owns an ironmonger's shop in Fleet Street, London.*Lope de Vega becomes a priest....
), one of the author's greatest works, and marks the start of the final phase of his dramatic career. However just or unjust may be the characterization of Jonson's later plays as his "dotages," there would be no more great works after Bartholomew Fair, and a full decade would elapse between The Devil is an Ass and Jonson's next play, The Staple of News.
Performance and publication
The 1616 production was by the King's MenKing's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...
; the play most likely premiered at the Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...
in October or November of the year. Robert Johnson composed music for the play.
The initial publication of the play was somewhat irregular, in that Jonson intended to include it in a second folio collection of his works in 1631, but scrapped the plan when he was dissatisfied with the printing. Copies of the 1631 printed text were released, though whether they were sold publicly or circulated privately by Jonson is unclear. The play was included in the eventual second folio of Jonson's works (1640-1), published after his death in 1637, and also was issued in a separate "variant reprint edition" in 1641
1641 in literature
The year 1641 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Pierre Corneille marries Marie de Lampérière.*Sir William Davenant is convicted of high treason.*Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon becomes an advisor to King Charles I of England....
.
In 2007, it was revived by the American Shakespeare Center in a production at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia
Staunton, Virginia
Staunton is an independent city within the confines of Augusta County in the commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 23,746 as of 2010. It is the county seat of Augusta County....
. The Spartan Dogs company produced the play at the White Bear Theatre
The White Bear Theatre
The White Bear Theatre Club is a fringe theatre venue, established in 1988 in the White Bear pub in Kennington, London Borough of Lambeth. It is run by Artistic Director Michael Kingsbury...
in London in 2010. Set in 1829, the production had of the circus about it, emphasising the fantastical nature of the play.
Synopsis
The play opens in HellHell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
, with Satan and an inferior devil called Pug. Pug wants to be sent to Earth to do the Devil's work of tempting men to evil — but Satan thinks he isn't up to the job; the world has grown so sophisticated in its vices, especially in the moral cesspool of London, that a simple devil like Pug will be severely out of his depth. Pug pleads his case, however, and Satan sends him into the world, specifically to plague an eccentric and foolish gentleman named Fabian Fitzdottrel.
Fitzdottrel is obsessed with the idea of meeting a devil; he has consorted with magicians and conjurers (Simon Forman
Simon Forman
Simon Forman was arguably the most popular Elizabethan astrologer, occultist and herbalist active in London during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I of England. His reputation, however, was severely tarnished after his death when he was implicated in the plot to kill Sir Thomas Overbury...
among others) in hopes of encountering an imp who will aid him in the discovery of buried treasure. In addition to his main mania, Fitzdottrel has subsidiary obsessions: he dresses his beautiful young wife sumptuously, but clothes himself in second-hand garments, which he wheels and deals over with enthusiasm. In the play's first Act he is enthusiastic about a fancy cloak that he plans to wear to the Blackfriars Theatre to see a play. Pug comes to him in the body of a thief who'd been hanged earlier in the morning; Fitzdottrel refuses to believe that Pug is a devil, since the corpse's feet are not cloven hooves—but Pug's claim that his name is "Devil" (or "Deville") is enough to earn him a place as a servant in Fitzdottrel's household.
His reputation for eccentric foolishness has made Fitzdottrel the target of a host of confidence men, who fall out into two groups: on the one hand, the young gallant Wittipol and his friend Manly, and on the other the "projector" Meercraft and his henchmen, Ingine the broker, Lady Tailbush, Guilthead the goldsmith, Everill and Train and others. Meercraft is after Fitzdottrel's money, while Wittipol in more interested in the man's wife. In exchange for a sumptuous cloak, Wittipol actually negotiates fifteen minutes of conversation with Mistress Frances Fitzdottrel, in her husband's presence. Fitzdottrel tries to outwit the gallant by ordering his wife to remain silent; but when Wittipol finds that the young woman will not answer him, he answers for her, so aptly that the virtuous Mistress Fitzdottrel is impressed, almost against her will, with his "brain and spirit."
Meanwhile, Meercraft is making progress with his intended mark by tempting Fitzdottrel with various get-rich-quick schemes, like raising "drowned land," harvesting dogs' skins, or making wine from raisins. Fitzdottrel is most enthusiastic about the first, and Meercraft convinces his dupe that he will soon be elevated to the peerage as the Duke of the Drowned Lands. (Reclaiming swamps and fens for agricultural use, via dykes and windmill-driven pumps, was a real and lucrative development of the time.) To train Mistress Fitzdottrel in the manners of the upper class, Meercraft persuades his victim to solicit, with a present of a diamond ring, the aid of an Englishwoman who has lived in Spain and is fluent in courtly manners. The "Spanish woman" will actually be a Meercraft henchman in disguise.
Pug, looking for opportunities for villainy, tries to tempt Mistress Fitzdottrel into cheating on her husband with Wittipol; but his effort is inept, and she thinks he is a spy planted by her husband. She denounces Pug to Fitzdottrel, who beats the imp with a cudgel. Wittipol manages to obtain a window-to-window conversation with her—but her husband finds out about it and seeks to guard her even more closely than usual. He is still entranced by Meercraft's con-game, however, and the central scenes in the play spin out a complex web of manipulation that includes rounds of Who's got the cloak? and Who's got the ring?, and a wealth of satirical commentary on various aspects of London life, such as the booming business of women's cosmetics. Wittipol wins the role of the Spanish woman, and in this disguise he penetrates Fitzdottrel's watch to reach his wife.
Mistress Fitzdottrel, however, surprises Wittipol and Manly with an effective plea to their nobler natures (Act IV, scene vi). Appealing to Wittipol to put his "noble parts" that have impressed her "To a right use," she seeks his aid in resolving her dilemma:
-
-
-
-
-
-
- ...I am a Woman
-
-
- That cannot speak more wretchedness of myself,
- Than you can read: match'd to a mass of folly,
- That every day makes haste to his own ruin;
- The wealthy portion that I brought him, spent:
- And (through my friends' neglect) no jointure made me.
- My fortunes standing in this precipice,
- 'Tis counsel that I want, and honest aids;
- And in this name I need you for a friend,
- Never in any other; for his ill
- Must not make me, Sir, worse.
-
-
-
Influenced by Manly and his own better nature, Wittipol puts aside his lustful quest to help Mistress Fitzdottrel out of her difficulties. To this point, Wittipol and Manly have been co-operating with Meercraft and company, but now, in effect, they change sides. Meercraft has by this time tricked Fitzdottrel into signing over all his fortune to his wife, with Meercraft himself as the intended guardian; Wittipol and Manly manage to switch the guardianship to Manly at the last moment. Once she has legal control of their estate, Mistress Fitzdottrel can prevent her husband's follies from bankrupting them.
Meercraft, now realizing that he's been fooled, strikes back: he persuades Fitzdottrel (who is outraged at his wife's usurpation of authority) to pretend to be bewitched by his wife and her confederates. In the sympathetic court of Sir Paul Eitherside, Meercraft plans to get the legal documents dismissed and restore Fitzdottrel to the control of his own estate, so the cheating can continue.
Pug has not done well through all these developments: beaten, manipulated, and generally abused, he ends up confined to Newgate Prison
Newgate Prison
Newgate Prison was a prison in London, at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey just inside the City of London. It was originally located at the site of a gate in the Roman London Wall. The gate/prison was rebuilt in the 12th century, and demolished in 1777...
at the end of the day. (Jonson, true to the Aristotelian unities of time and place, stages all this action in a single day.) Pug appeals to Satan to take him back to Hell with whatever punishment the lord of the underworld chooses—for nothing in hell compares "to a lady of fashion." Satan, triumphant in his prediction that 1616 London was more than Pug could handle, arrives to spirit Pug away, blasting a wall out of Newgate in the process, and leaving the thief's body behind. And the jailers realize, belatedly, that the man they'd arrested in the afternoon was the same man they'd hanged in the morning.
Meercraft's trial before Sir Paul is warming up, with Fitzdottrel giving a bravura performance as a bewitched victim. But word arrives of the satanic doings at Newgate; and Fitzdottrel, realizing that Pug, "Deville," had been a devil after all, is so beside himself that he abandons the pretense of bewitchment and spills the beans. In the end, the con men are themselves conned, the witty enjoy the fruits of their wit, and virtue is preserved.
MetatheatreMetatheatreThe term "metatheatre", coined by Lionel Abel, has entered into common critical usage; however, there is still much uncertainty over its proper definition and what dramatic techniques might be included in its scope...
When Fitzdottrel intends to see a play in Act I, the play in question is The Devil is an Ass. When Meercraft and Ingine are looking for someone to play the "Spanish woman," they mention Richard RobinsonRichard Robinson (17th-century actor)
Richard Robinson was an actor in English Renaissance theatre and a member of Shakespeare's company the King's Men.Robinson started out as a boy player with the company; in 1611 he played the Lady in their production of The Second Maiden's Tragedy. He was cast in their production of Ben Jonson's...
, a real actor with the King's Men; Robinson played female parts as a boy, and had acted in the company's production of Jonson's Catiline in 1611. Wittipol, the character in the play who does masquerade as the "Spanish woman," was most likely played by Robinson, creating another of the loops of self-reference that Jonson liked to generate in his plays.