"Things like truths, well feigned": mimesis and secrecy in Jonson's Epicoene.

Sanchez, Reuben

I

In The Light in Troy, Thomas M. Greene takes as his subject "the literary uses of imitatio during the Renaissance, but emphasizes as well that these "uses" extended beyond the literary to many other areas of educational, aesthetic, artistic, and political expression. (1) We do not know why imitatio, known as mimesis to the Greeks, became so pervasive, nor do we know why it eventually faded in significance, but we do know that it remained in Ben Jonson's time a central concern for theorists and artists alike. (2) For example, the significance of imitatio may be seen most clearly in a play like Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman (first performed December 1609 or January 1610); from start to finish it is, after all, a play about imitation, and it is difficult to believe Jonson does not intend to offer a critique of imitatio via this problem play. On the one hand, he is in keeping with the dominant precept of his age. On the other hand, he intentionally and paradoxically uses that precept as avenue and obstacle to understanding. Jonson's critique of imitatio is given its vitality by means of his understanding of the Renaissance concept of secrecy. By combining imitatio and secrecy, Jonson at once acknowledges his debt to Aristotle and Sidney and yet, as artist and theorist, avoids relying too heavily upon them. (3)

Jonson, of course, recognizes and appreciates what Aristotle and Sidney meant by imitation, but the manner in which he practices that art exhibits his independence from both, and therefore his interest in originality. After all, in Discoveries he contends that one must remain vigilant regarding the dangers of imitation: Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, as the Schools have done Aristotle. The damage is infinite knowledge receives by it; for to many things a man should owe but a temporary belief, and a suspension of his own judgement, not an absolute resignation of himself, or a perpetual captivity. Let Aristotle and others have their dues, but if we can make farther discoveries of truth and fitness than they, why are we envied? Let us beware, while we strive to add, we do not diminish, or deface; we may improve, but not augment. (4)

Jonson strikes a balance between a recognized poetics and one's own attempt at "discoveries" strikes a balance, that is, between what Greene calls the "opposition originality/imitation" (5) While Jonson acknowledges that one might learn from, add to, or improve upon Aristotle, he departs from Aristotle where he practices the art of imitation in Epicoene by presenting a patently false "speaking picture."

Though the Latin term imitatio was dominant during the Renaissance, Jonson prefers the Greek mimesis; further, Jonson is not as interested in relying upon Juan Luis Vives or Roger Ascham, two of the better- known theorists regarding imitation, as he is in relying upon Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle defines mimesis as the imitation of three different types of human action, or praxis: the imitation of thinking (as in dialogue and soliloquy), the imitation of physical actions leading to a specific result, and the imitation of genre and form. The first two types constitute the formal causes of poetry. But Renaissance humanists also believed that because it imitates rhetorical models, the third type of imitation could be considered rhetorical imitatio, the final cause of poetry. In The Defense of Poesy, Sidney alludes to both the formal and the final causes of poetry: "Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis--that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth--to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture--with this end, to teach and delight" (6) Like Sidney, Jonson believes that mimesis can be an aid to, or adjunct of, rhetoric, and therefore that the causes of poetry can be both formal and final. Although he differentiates between "poesy." "poem," and "poet" he seems to validate Aristotle's definition of mimesis as well as Sidney's reading of Aristotle. "Poetry and picture are arts of like nature," Jonson argues in Discoveries, "and both are busy about imitation" (561). In his list of the "requisites" of a poet, Jonson describes the third as rhetorical imitatio, or the imitation of forms used by other poets: "The third requisite in our poet or maker is imitation, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use" (585).

Traditionally, then, mimesis was understood as the (selective) representation of nature. With the historical subject as its central focus, the most expansive critical elaboration of mimesis is Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. (7) One of the most significant distinctions of Auerbach's study, it should be noted, is that he subordinates the reader to the author and the text: the reader must learn, through imitation, the proper reading method in order to understand the representation of reality. However, Terence Cave rightly argues that during the Renaissance, the emphasis on author and text is especially evident in the tendency to imitate the Ciceronian style, and that this writing activity necessarily implies the importance of different reading methods, and therefore the reader's participation: [R]eading, for the Ciceronian, is the repetition of a perfect or near-perfect discourse; the reader should, as it were, disappear or efface himself in favor of the paradigm text. By contrast, the anti-Ciceronian position, which one might as well call in this period the Erasmian position ... extends virtually ad infinitum the range of texts to be read and stresses, not universal nature, but the individual nature of the reader as the agent by which this assemblage of materials is gathered, selected, and given meaning. (8)

Though Cave addresses primarily the works of Erasmus, Montaigne, and Pascal as evidencing an anti-Ciceronian mimesis concerning writer and reader, the distinction between Ciceronian versus anti-Ciceronian models of writing became an especially prominent subject of debate in seventeenth-century England, particularly because the seventeenth century was marked by the literary emergence of modern notions of selfhood, and therefore modes of expression that do not depend so strictly on imitation. Students would have been formally trained to recognize and imitate the Ciceronian style, but they also would have learned the so-called "curt" or "loose" anti-Ciceronian style and, more importantly, they would have understood the significance of decorum when determining which style is best suited to self-presentation and to effective communication. Hence the Renaissance reader becomes crucial to the process Cave refers to as "displacement": "The displacement mimed by the text is so mimed in order that the reader will operate a further displacement beyond its margins." (9) Insofar as it applies to the reader, "displacement" requires active participation; meaning thereby depends upon the reader's interpretation and understanding. In Epicoene, "displacement" may be seen in Jonson's attempt to involve the audience in regard to the secret of Epicoene's sex as well as the meaning of the word epicene.

II

Ever since Dryden's paean to Epicoene in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, many critics have held that the theater audience does not know the secret of Epicoene's sex until the end of the play, and that, in fact, part of the play's success depends upon the theater audience not knowing the secret. "For the contrivance of the plot," declares Dryden, "'tis extreme elaborate and yet withal easy; for the ... untying of it, 'tis so admirable that when it is done no one of the audience would think the poet could have miss'd it; and yet it was conceal'd so much before the last scene that any other way would sooner have enter'd into your thoughts." (10) Though scholarship has since generally followed Dryden's lead, there have been interesting qualifications. Charles A. Carpenter, for example, argues that the audience, if it is fooled, will be so only on the first viewing; subsequent viewings or readings, however, would not be dependent upon surprise and would therefore be even more effective as they fulfill expectations, what Carpenter calls "surprise in Epicoene as an expectation." (11) G. R. Hibbard contends that there is no doubt the audience is fooled, and that deception, as it pertains to both the onstage and the theater audiences, is a major theme in the play: The idea of deception is present from the beginning of the first scene ... deception follows deception right up to the most concise denouement that even Jonsonian comedy has to offer--the gesture with which Dauphine "takes off Epicoenes perruke" just fifty lines before the last word of the play is spoken. It is a complete surprise to everyone on the stage. Dauphine has deceived friend and foe alike. But, as we all know, it comes as an even greater surprise to the audience. They have been deceived by Ben Jonson. (12)

While also describing deception in the play, other critics use words like dupe and fool to describe Jonson's effect on the audience. (13) For Barry B. Adams, the audience is indeed deceived, but the deception is functionally theatrical in that peripeteia and anagnorisis in this play depend upon the assumption that the theater audience does not know the secret. (14) Adams argues that, according to Aristotle, "reversal" and "discovery" must occur together for a plot to be "complex," with "discovery" being the most important. When these two criteria are met, a work qualifies as a "recognition play," that is, "the object that comes to be known is a human person rather than a fact or an intention, and ... the knowing subject and the known object are related to one another by blood." (15) However, Epicoene does not strictly qualify as a recognition play in that while there is "an important coming-to-know by the audience as well as the characters ... the object that comes to be known is more a fact than a person and to the extent that it is a person, not one genuinely related by blood or marriage to any of the discovering agents:" (16) Epicoene thereby serves as an "adaptation" of Aristotelian reversal and recognition, an adaptation, therefore, of a recognition play. (The Case is Altered and The New Inn serve as examples of clearer and more successful recognition plays, contends Adams). Kate D. Levin accounts for the plot twists, such as that which leads to the unmasking of Epicoene, not as the manifestation of peripeteia or anagnorisis, nor even as deception or duping, but as Jonson's "hostility" toward the theater audience (as well as the onstage audience and the readers) for its inability to comprehend and appreciate Jonson's work generally, the manipulation thereby being intentional and vindictive: "The disorientation produced by the near-impossibility of following key plot developments contributes to Epicoene's relentless thematic and dramaturgical preoccupation with humiliation--of characters in the play by other characters, and of the play's audience (of readers as well as, although perhaps more acutely, of theatergoers)." (17) Of the final unmasking itself, Levin concludes, "The play's audience of readers and viewers must necessarily be as stunned as any of the onstage characters at this final development. Jonson's plot resolution, depending as it does on exploding the male-only performance conventions of the Renaissance commercial stage, would be impossible to anticipate. By defying the playwriting tradition stipulating a privileged position of knowledge for a theater audience, Jonson in Epicoene asserts his absolute authority over the response of that audience." (18) As a result, Jonson establishes the audience's "intellectual inferiority to the master poet." (19)

The conclusions of these various critics rely on the assumption that the audience does not know the secret of Epicoene's sex until play's end. It is safe to assume that at least some of the audience members would not know the secret until it is revealed, and therefore might somehow be victims of authorial manipulation. But the often harsh tone of satire notwithstanding, it is difficult to imagine the entire audience as an intended target, or victim, or even as the object of the satire it watches (or reads). Difficult to imagine, that is, that Jonson would mock or attack the very audience with whom he wishes to communicate as satirist. Difficult, especially, that this would be so when Jonson was still at the height of his artistic powers and his theater and literary audiences were still receptive to his works: Epicoene was composed close in time to Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, and to the publication of the Works. It may be possible, rather, that Jonson intended, even expected, the theater audience to get it, to understand the secret of Epicoene's sex well before the onstage audience does, and that the secret, further, is not all that significant compared to everything else going on in this play. We might thereby return to Cave's terminology for the moment to suggest that Jonson subverts the methodology of displacement by expecting the audience, or at least some members of the audience, to know what the word epicene means.

In the folio, the title page of Epicoene states that the play was originally performed by the Children of Her Majesty's Revels; the first Prologue refers to the Whitefriars. The first performance of the play, therefore, was probably presented by the well-known children's repertory company in the well-known private theater. In his introduction to the play, R. V. Holdsworth points out, "Epicoene was plainly written for the type of company and playhouse which presented it.... Epicoene has the marks of a children's company piece. A concern with upper-class manners, embodied in a sophisticated blend of satire, philosophizing, sexual wit, and literary allusions, was very much the preference in comedy of the largely aristocratic or socially ambitious private-theatre audiences, and this the play supplies in good measure." (20) The Whitefriars theater, located north of the Thames, in the Whitefriars district, was founded by Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford in 1606, following the success of the Blackfriars Theatre. Drayton and Woodford converted the refectory of the Whitefriars Carmelite monastery into a private theater. Enclosed and smaller than a public theater, the price of admission to the Whitefriars would have been higher than for admission to a public theater, and everyone would have a seat; the cost would have therefore been generally prohibitive to the lower classes. Plays staged in private theaters would be suited to indoor productions, which usually meant that the acoustics and the lighting would be of a finer quality than in open-air, public theaters, and the intimacy of a private theater would allow for an emphasis on words rather than action. Jonson could reasonably have had different expectations for a Whitefriars audience than for an audience in a large, open-air, public theater south of the Thames. When we consider the audience that initially viewed the play, therefore, and probably for whom the play was initially intended, the "secret" of Epicoene's sex may not have been much of a secret after all. For such an audience as that of the Whitefriars, the word epicene may not have been so foreign.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th edition), the etymology of epicene can be traced to Middle English, where it was understood linguistically as "having only one form of the noun for either gender, from the Latin epicoenus, from Greek epikoinos, in common: epe-, epi-+ koinos, common" According to the OED, in Jonson's time the word would have had at least two different meanings, one of them grammatical: in Latin or Greek grammar, the word epicene would have been "said of nouns which, without changing their grammatical gender, may denote either sex" The other meaning of the word would have been applied to individuals: "partaking of the characteristics of both sexes." It would not be unreasonable to believe that at least some members of an audience at the Whitefriars would understand what the word epicene meant before having seen the play, and would therefore have some sense of the title character's name.

It should also be emphasized that the effectiveness of the play is not necessarily dependent upon the audience being deceived until the end of the play. In fact, it may be important for the audience not only to know what the word epicene may mean but also to know, therefore, that the word may apply to other characters within the play, that is, other than the one named "Epicoene" Cristy Campbell-Furtick acknowledges that the word may have satiric connotations when applied to female characters, but she also considers the word as having more general implications in that "epicene behavior" is that which is unnatural in the play: "The idea of epicene behavior, in that it is an unnatural, abnormal behavior that might perhaps be deemed acceptable in members of the opposite sex ... can be applied to nearly everyone in the play." (21) Because there are various ways the word epicene may describe the behavior of various characters, conflict and instability characterize the play and drive the plot: "The radical disharmony resulting from deviations from an unstated ideal is the central focus of Jonson's fast-paced farce." (22) Even if the audience as a whole does not know the precise meaning of the word epicene, some would surely have a sense of the duality, conflict, or tension the name "Epicoene" implies.

III

Epicoene may indeed delight and teach, but Sidney would be hard pressed to explain how, for it delights and teaches not through the clarification of forms and ideas but through the obfuscation of those forms and ideas, which seems contradictory to what Northrop Frye describes as the Renaissance affinity for the classical ideals of "order and clarity": [O]rder because of the sense of the importance of grasping a central form, and clarity because of the feeling that this form must not dissolve or withdraw into ambiguity, but must preserve a continuous relationship to the nature which is its own content. It is the attitude characteristic of "humanism" in the historical sense, an attitude marked on the one hand by a devotion to rhetoric and verbal craftsmanship, and on the other by a strong attachment to historical and ethical affairs.... In formal imitation, or Aristotelian mimesis, the work of art does not reflect external events and ideas, but exists between the example and the precept. (23)

It is ironic, that is, that obfuscation could itself become the rhetorical device through which clarification, in the context of satire, is achieved. Of course, the unique form in which that order and clarity are achieved seems to interest Jonson most. It is not that the praxis imitated should present an accurate depiction of reality, then, but that it should be "exemplary." As Frye adds, "One could hardly find a more elementary critical principle than the fact that the events of a literary fiction are not real but hypothetical events. For some reason it has never been consistently understood that the ideas of literature are not real propositions, but verbal formulas which imitate real propositions." (24) Epicoene thereby subverts Aristotle in that nothing is what it appears to be in this play, and by play's end, we are perhaps more concerned with how extensively Jonson has presented an onstage audience unaware of the "secret" of Epicoene's identity. In terms of plot and character everything turns out to have been false, to have been imitation--there is no balance between "originality" and "imitation" for example, within the play itself--and this is clarified, or formalized, for those who do not yet grasp it, when the play is all but over. A secret has either been kept or unraveled, and when it is made public, we suspect that much of the play has been concerned with imitating something that was false to begin with. Hence, the play itself becomes mimesis praxeos.

Hiding or disguising the truth is a form of secrecy accomplished through imitation in Epicoene. Indeed, the effectiveness of the play depends upon secrecy, though not in terms of deceiving the theater audience about the secret. Locating the play in larger artistic, social, and political contexts, for example, Slights argues that "secrecy" is a germane topic because it characterizes the plots of Jonson's plays between 1603 and 1614, because it characterizes the politics of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and because "secrecy is frequently an issue in acts of literary interpretation, in our own day as in Jonson's." (25) The secrecy, though, affects not only the theater audience but the onstage audience as well in that, with the exceptions of Dauphine and the boy portraying Epicoene, everyone is fooled.

In Jonson's subversion of Aristotle, the purpose of imitation is not to imitate nature or truth but to imitate "like truths"--that is, to imitate lies--for which Jonson prepares the audience via the second prologue's declaration: think nothing true, Lest so you make the maker to judge you. For he knows, poet never credit gained By writing truths, but things like truths well feigned. (26)

In Discoveries, Jonson also equates feigning with like truths when he explains that, according to the Greeks, a poet is a maker or a feigner; his art, an art of imitation or feigning, expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony, according to Aristotle ... Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For the fable and fiction is (as it were) the form and soul of any poetical work or poem. (582)

While Jonson does claim adherence to Aristotle's definition of mimesis as the imitation of three types of human actions, he adds that we must distinguish between the poet, the poem, and poesy: A poem, as I have told you, is the work of the poet, the end and fruit of his labour and study. Poesy is his skill or craft of making; the very fiction itself, the reason or form of the work. And these three voices differ, as the thing done, the doing, and the doer; the thing feigned, the feigning, and the feigner; so the poem, the poesy, and the poet. (583)

What "these three voices" have in common, then, is Aristotelian mimesis. In Epicoene, the second prologues concern is not with an ethical distinction between "truths" and "like truths," but with the practical importance of feigning--the "representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth," to use Sidney's terms--of like truths. Long before the play's end, however, we realize that Jonson may have attempted to alert us about "the thing feigned" and "the feigning"--we realize, that is, that "the feigner" has feigned the feigning throughout the play. (Of course, the onstage audience is successfully deceived.) For Jonson, therefore, feigning is an imitation of an imitation: the imitation of the imitation of truth or nature. The play is not about "truth" per se, but about the rhetorical devices by which truth is kept a secret, about imitating truth at (at least) two removes, with one of those "truths" (seemingly) kept secret until the end of the play.

IV

Secrecy is, along with mimesis, a central theme in Epicoene. "The idea of secrecy runs right through the play." observes Ian Donaldson. "It is the secrecy of so many of the characters of the play which results in the profusion of 'plots.'" (27) As noted above, Slights also explores Jonsons fascination with secrecy, which, while it is not necessarily the same as a fascination for power, often takes the form of hostility to those who would misuse secrets as an avenue to illegitimate control." (28) It is fitting, then, that the first word in Epicoene is "Truth": "Truth says, of the old art of making plays / Was to content the people ..." (Prologue, 1-2). By "art," Jonson, like Aristotle and Sidney, means imitation, though for Jonson secrecy is also a form of imitation.

Jonson establishes the theme of secrecy early, in Clerimont's song in which he complains that women feign beauty through the use of cosmetics: Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. (1.1.90-92)

Clerimont would dispense with makeup because it hides truth and feigns beauty. Aside from disagreeing with the second prologue, Clerimont's declaration contradicts his own practice in that the play begins with him "making himself ready" for the day's events, adjusting his wardrobe as a woman would her cosmetics.

Truewit represents the position opposite Clerimont in regard to feigning--that is, he represents the overemphasis on feigning. John Gordon Sweeney III argues that Truewit "is one of Jonson's great satirists," and "is Jonson's second attempt [Poetaster being the first] to come to terms with the values of Ovid and his libertine society." (29) Yet, it should be noted that the libertine Truewit believes it necessary for women to use makeup in order to feign beauty: I love a good dressing before any beauty o' the world. Oh, a woman is then like a delicate garden; nor is there one kind of it: she may vary every hour, take often counsel of her glass and choose the best. If she have good ears, show 'em; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, discover it often; practice any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, repair eyebrows, paint, and profess it. (1.1.99-106)

Though Truewit seems to believe that like truth exists behind the feigning, he considers feigning a form of "art": "A lady should indeed study her face when we think she sleeps; nor when the doors are shut should men be inquiring; all is sacred within, then.... They must not discover how little serves with the help of art to adorn a great deal" (1.1.109-12, 115-16). The inexorable process of nature must be kept in check, which means certain things must remain hidden. This is not the art versus nature theme, so common in Jonson's time; nor is it the Aristotelian argument that art must imitate nature. Rather, Truewit argues that art must hide nature--nature must remain secret, if you will. Like Clerimont, Truewit is at odds with the second prologue's assertion that feigning and like truth are equally important. For Truewit, like truth should remain hidden, should remain secret, which means he either does not want to know the like truth or simply cannot keep a secret; evidence of the latter may be found in Dauphine's assessment of Truewit: "[T]his frank nature of his is not for secrets" (1.3.3-4). Though Truewit himself argues for secrecy, others consider him "frank" in that he cannot keep a secret, and perhaps that is Jonson's point: the manipulator who cannot keep a secret inevitably fails as a manipulator and, therefore, as a practitioner of mimesis.

Truewit therefore concerns himself entirely with outward show and intentionally neglects like truth. His attempt to feign is thereby doomed to failure. Disguised as a messenger, for example, he attempts to dissuade Morose from marriage by building negative expectations. He initially seems to succeed, but it turns out that he has in fact driven Morose into embracing marriage. Truewit's inability to feign is, at least initially, kept secret from the audience and from Dauphine, who thinks Truewit has succeeded in persuading Morose not to marry and has therefore ruined Dauphine's plan: "That which I have plotted for, and been maturing now these four months, you have blasted in a minute" (2.4.34-36). But the secret is not kept long, as Cutbeard enters and reveals Morose's intentions to marry immediately.

Jonas Barish emphasizes Truewit's lack of concern, his lack of "motivation," about whether he achieves anything through his manipulations: "Unlike other Jonsonian characters of comparable linguistic talent who improvise with equal zest, Truewit does so disinterestedly, unmotivated by the itch for gain or by moral fervor." (30) However, Truewit does seem to have a goal in mind: he wants others to admire his ability to manipulate.

When it becomes apparent that his attempt to dissuade Morose from marriage has failed, he tries to hide his failure. But Cutbeard's news inspires Dauphine--"Excellent! Beyond our expectation!"--to which Truewit responds, "Beyond your expectation? By this light, I knew it would be thus" (2.4.64-65). Jonson here echoes Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV, another play strongly concerned with imitation. When Hal reveals that he and Poins robbed Falstaff, Bardolph, and Peto, Falstaff, who has been caught in a lie, declares: By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear you, my masters, was it for me to kill the heir-apparent? Should I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules; but beware instinct--the lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter; I was now a coward on instinct. (31)

Falstaff, of course, feigns the knowledge of the manipulator, and the audience accepts it and enjoys it because, after all, it is Falstaff. But the audience feels no such sympathy for Truewit, also a liar, though no Falstaff. Barish notes an "extravagance" about Truewit's speech patterns in that while his sentences seem logically constructed, "the real interest and the real progress of the period lies largely in the details themselves, in their comic extravagance or their imaginative vividness, and not in their logical working out." (32) In contrast, when Falstaff plays the role of Hal's father--imitating the father, that is--his speech is both extravagant and logical in its Ciceronian style: Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied; for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, [yet] youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye, and foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point: why being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries? a question not to be ask'd. Shall the son of England prove a thief and take purses? a question to be ask'd. (2.4.398-410)

The "logic" of Falstaff's periods of course lies in his suspicion that Hal might someday discard him. In his role as "father" Falstaff seeks not only to know Hal's mind, to discover a secret, but also to defend and promote himself in the prince's eyes. Falstaff is certainly smarter than he seems, and the speech is anything but illogical. Note for example the preponderance Of euphuisms in a speech supposed to be "extempore."

By contrast, Truewit's speeches are usually illogical, though often overly dramatic and redundant, symptomatic of his concern with appearances. Truewit cares only for the finished product. He enjoys the effects of cosmetics but does not care to see the working out of that process: The doing of it, not the manner: that must be private. Many things that seem foul i' the doing, do please, done. A lady should indeed study her face when we think she sleeps; nor when the doors are shut should men be inquiring; all is sacred within, then. Is it for us to see their perukes put on, their false teeth, their complexion, their eyebrows, their nails? You see gilders will not work but enclosed. They must not discover how little serves with the help of art to adorn a great deal. How long did the canvas hang afore Aldgate? Were the people suffered to see the city's Love and Charity while they were rude stone, before they were painted and burnished? No. No more should servants approach their mistresses but when they are complete and finished. (1.1.108-21)

The emphasis on products "painted and burnished" reveals an obsession with surfaces--suggestive of the combination of the artificial and the commercial--in which Truewit does not see past the surface to the like truth, a tendency that causes him to generalize. He assumes he knows what all women want, for example, what they expect, and that men must feign meeting those expectations: "If you appear learned to an ignorant wench, or jocund to a sad, or witty to a foolish, why, she presently begins to mistrust herself. You must approach them i' their own height, their own line" (4.1.85-89). His advice to Dauphine about women amounts to "like what she likes, praise whom she praises" (4.1.114). Each woman may thereby be understood simply by her appearance. Once one has discovered what a woman expects, one only need behave in accordance with that discovery. For Truewit, therefore, it becomes a matter of adhering to the principles of rhetorical imitatio.

Morose's understanding of the perfect woman is as narrow as Truewit's. Clerimont points out that Morose "has employed a fellow this half year all over England to hearken him out a dumb woman, be she of any form or any quality, so she be able to bear children. Her silence is dowry enough, he says" (1.2.22-25). Unlike Truewit, Morose does not care about appearances, but about silence. "Morose is a parody" concludes Sweeney, "the ridiculous extreme of the impulse to remake the world in one's own image and to use language and theater exclusively to articulate one's own vision.... [Morose] reduces the power and beauty of language to the solipsistic appreciation of his own voice." (33) Morose's obsession with silence hinders his ability to understand others, to the extent that he will not allow others to speak. An isolated individual, Morose is, like Truewit, a would-be manipulator who considers those around him little more than props. He demands center stage and most, if not all, the dialogue, thereby resembling another Shakespearean character, the clown Bottom, who would play all the roles and appropriate all the words and sounds: "And I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too. I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.... Let me play the lion too. I will roar, that I will do any man's heart good to hear me" (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1.2.51-52, 70-71). Unlike Falstaff, Bottom is not very bright, and Quince must flatter, and therefore deceive, Bottom into playing only the role of Pyramus: Quince: You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-fac'd man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus. Bottom: Well; I will undertake it. (1.2.85-90)

Once committed to that role, he of course bungles it, and is transformed into an object of mockery by Puck. So, too, Morose is deceived into marrying Epicoene and then transformed into an object of mockery by Dauphine and the boy portraying Epicoene.

Since others are not given a voice, and therefore have nothing to say that he would care to hear, Morose believes his expectations will be met: As I conceive, Cutbeard, this gentlewoman is she you have provided and brought, in hope she will fit me in the place and person of a wife? Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise.--Very well done, Cutbeard. I conceive besides, Cutbeard, you have been pre-acquainted with her birth, education, and qualities, or else you would not prefer her to my acceptance, in the weighty consequence of marriage.--This I conceive, Cutbeard. Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise.--Very well done, Cutbeard. (2.5.5-15)

Aside from the ironic, sexual implications of the thrice-repeated word "conceive" this speech emphasizes the importance of imagination for Morose. He imagines his expectations will be met because he hears what he wants to hear, which is nothing. Nor does he need help imagining. Even when among others, then, Morose is alone; like Truewit, he uses others only insofar as they suit his purposes. For example, he expects to hear a specific kind of praise from Epicoene: I beseech you, say, lady; out of the first fire of meeting eyes, they say, love is stricken: do you feel any such emotion suddenly shot into you from any part you see in me? Ha, lady? (Curtsy.) Alas, lady, these answers by silent curtsies from you are too courtless and simple. I have ever had my breeding in court, and she that shall be my wife must be accomplished with courtly and audacious ornaments. Can you speak, lady? (2.5.26-33)

Of course, Epicoene can speak but waits for the right moment to do so, and once that moment arrives, Morose's inability to communicate, like Truewit's inability to keep a secret, becomes a liability. As Karen Newman observes of this play, "Talk in women ... is dangerous because it is perceived as usurpation of multiple forms of authority, a threat to order and male sovereignty, to masculine control of commodity exchange, to a desired hegemonic male sexuality." (34) The ability to use words and, in Morose's case, the ability to prevent others from using words, is a source of power--domestic, social, economic. The seizing of such power by women, as far as Morose is concerned, is a violation of nature. "Jonson's Epicoene is peopled with talkative women whom he portrays as monstrous precisely because they gallivant about the city streets spending breath as well as money,' adds Newman. "His talking women are not merely the butts of satire, but represented as monstrously unnatural because they threaten masculine authority." (35) Morose does not wish to play the role of husband under such circumstances; he exults over his wife's "infidelities" because they may enable him to cease imitating the role of husband to a wife who is not silent after all. When he hears Daw and La Foole boast of having had "carnaliter" with Epicoene, Morose rejoices: "Oh, let me worship and adore you, gentlemen!" (5.4.110). The truth and the like truth do not matter. It is the correct word Morose worships, though it turns out to be an equivocal word. When the disguised Cutbeard and Otter remark upon the technicality that prevents divorce in this case--before the marriage, Morose neglected to ask Epicoene if she was a virgin--Morose wails: "Oh my heart! Wilt thou break? Wilt thou break? This is worst of all worst worsts! that hell could have devised! Marry a whore! and so much noise!" (5.4.137-39). Morose now redefines carnaliter because it no longer serves his purposes.

V

Truewit and Morose represent different ways in which language and imagination fail to convey like truth. Dauphine's use of language and imagination succeeds, ironically, precisely because he does not make much use of language and because he is able to keep a secret. He lacks the verbosity of Truewit and Morose, who attempt to manipulate others through language. Rather, Dauphine shifts attention away from himself, and his plan is simply to allow everyone else to do the acting while he reaps the rewards. For example, he is revenged upon Daw and La Foole, but Truewit arranges the revenge. Dauphine merely puts on a "carpet" and "scarf"--an unimpressive disguise--and kicks Daw; since La Foole is blindfolded, furthermore, Dauphine needs no disguise to tweak his nose. Nor does Dauphine need to exert himself to attract the sexual interest of the Collegiates because Truewit arranges that as well.

Though earlier in the play Dauphine and Clerimont convince Daw and La Foole that each has been slighted by the other, manipulating Daw and La Foole does not require a great deal of ability, as Dauphine points out: "Tut, flatter 'em both, as Truewit says, and you may take their understandings in a purse-net. They'll believe themselves to be just such men as we make 'em, neither more nor less" (3.3.89-92). Like Morose, Daw and La Foole will believe what they will of themselves, and Dauphine and Clerimont have little to do with it. Truewit later points out that Daw is so gullible he dupes himself: "He will let me do nothing, man, he does all afore me" (4.5.119). Given the type of characters they try to manipulate, then, neither Truewit nor Clerimont, nor Dauphine in this instance, seems an effective manipulator. The important difference between Truewit and Dauphine is that the former is an actor in desperate need of an audience, as Dauphine points out to him: "This is thy extreme vanity now; thou think'st thou wert undone if every jest thou mak'st were not published" (4.5.223-24). Of course, Dauphine does not need an audience because he does not wish to display acting ability; his success depends upon keeping a secret and remaining in the background until the right moment.

While mimesis as role-playing certainly does abound--whether the role--playing is seen through the lenses of gender, culture, or mercantilism--such role--playing is nevertheless almost always clumsy, ineffective, or simply false. That is, usually the feigning of like truth seems second-rate. For example, Daw plays the roles of poet and melancholic knight. As a poet, he is only too eager to recite his own poetry: "Nay, I'll read 'em myself too: an author must recite his own works. It is a madrigal of modesty" (2.3.20-21). Like most of the other characters in the play, then, Daw will not share the spotlight with anyone. When he feels he has been slighted by Epicoene, he changes roles accordingly: 'I'll be very melancholic, i' faith" (2.4.128). Similarly, La Foole seems a character continually playing a role. Clerimont points out that La Foole takes great pains to make his presence known, though you should meet him at church in the midst of prayers. He is one of the Braveries, though he be none o' the Wits. He will salute a judge upon the bench and a bishop in the pulpit, a lawyer when he is pleading at the bar, and a lady when she is dancing in a masque, and put her out. He does give plays and suppers, and invites his guests to 'em aloud out of his window as they ride by in coaches. (1.3.27-34)

La Foole is a talker, though one whose words seem to violate language. As Clerimont later observes about La Foole, "Did you ever hear such a wind-fucker as this?" (1.4.74). Daw and La Foole also play the role of lover as they brag about seducing Epicoene. This is role-playing based on societal expectations, or rather, what the characters perceive society expects.

Mistress Otter, too, plays a role, that of ruler, as she proclaims to her husband, "Must my house, or my roof, be polluted with the scent of bears and bulls, when it is perfumed for great ladies? Is this according to the instrument when I married you? That I would be princess and reign in mine own house, and you would be my subject and obey me?" (3.1.27-31). One's own house is the stage upon which one plays an agreed-upon and expected role, argues Mistress Otter. But Otter believes he, too, must play a certain role in order to fulfill expectations others have of him: "[T]hese things I am known to the courtiers by. It is reported to them for my humour, and they receive it so, and do expect it. Tom Otter's bull, bear, and horse is known all over England, in return natura" (3.1.11-14). Of course, Otter's contention that he must live up to expectations, must protect an "image" is an excuse to carouse--"bull, bear, and horse" being metaphorical for drinking to excess. But like Daw, La Foole, and Mistress Otter, Otter's desire for attention makes him prone to acting of an inferior quality. "Wife! Buzz! Titivilitium" he declares, There's no such thing in nature. I confess, gentlemen, I have a cook, a laundress, a house-drudge, that serves my necessary turns and goes under that title; but he's an ass that will be so uxorious to tie his affections to one circle. Come, the name dulls appetite. Here, replenish again: another bout. Wives are nasty, sluttish animals. (4.2.45-51)

Otter plays the role of dominant husband only when away from his wife. When she confronts him, after eavesdropping on him, he cannot maintain the role.

But Otter has one more opportunity, with Cutbeard at the end of the play, to imitate like truth, though Barish concludes that he also handles this role poorly: [O]ne trouble with the final scene itself is the opaqueness of the verbal disguise of these two. They virtually cease to be Otter and Cutbeard, and become merely a pair of dummies wired for sound, grinding out legal jargon at ear-splitting volume, exchanging no recognition with each other or with the rest and displaying no gleams of their former selves. And this erasure of their personality, while it lightens Truewit's task, robs the scene of the kind of richness that Jonson achieves when disguised characters like Brainworm or Volpone play themselves at the same time that they are posing as begging soldiers or traveling charlatans. (36)

The disguises of Brainworm and Volpone are effective partly because of the audience's awareness of the disguises; no secrets there, but rather mimesis, one might say, to which the audience is privy. Epicoene's disguise may be effective for the same reason: if the audience is aware of what the word epicene means, it may know or suspect that Epicoene is a male. (Of course, in Jonson's time, the audience would know that a male actor was portraying Epicoene.) Jonson does not allow the onstage audience to know that Epicoene is the "gentleman's son" Dauphine has "brought up this half year" (5.4.189-90). The boy actor--who plays the "gentleman's son" who plays Epicoene--must completely submerge himself in the role he plays in order to deceive the audience within the play, which includes everyone onstage except Dauphine. Even the would-be manipulator Truewit is deceived.

According to La Foole, the Collegiates have come to Morose's house with the expectation of seeing Epicoene: "[T]hey come a' purpose to see the silent gentlewoman, Mistress Epicoene, that honest Sir John Daw has promised to bring thither" (1.4.49-51). Unlike the second prologues advice to the theater audience--rather than "truths," expect "like truths, well feigned"--the audience within the play has specific expectations, as Clerimont points out to Epicoene: "'Slight, you are invited thither o' purpose to be seen and laughed at by the lady of the college and her shadows. This trumpeter [Daw] hath proclaimed you" (2.3.6-8). Though facing a hostile audience, Epicoene acts the role well enough to shatter expectations, witness Centaure's assertion: "Nay, she has found her tongue since she was married" (3.6.33). By playing the role effectively, Epicoene first surprises the audience within the play, then wins them over. Epicoene also initially wins over Morose by playing the role of quiet and submissive woman. Once married, however, she demands freedom of speech and control of the household. So convincing is she in that role, she reduces the talkative Morose to silence and thereby takes center stage through her use of equivocal language. For example, she easily modulates her voice to fit the situation:

Morose: Can you speak, lady?

Epicoene: Judge you forsooth. (She speaks softly)

Morose: What say you, lady? Speak out, I beseech you.

Epicoene: Judge you, forsooth.

Morose: O' my judgment, a divine softness! (2.5.33-37)

And once married, the tone of their conversation changes considerably:

Morose: You can speak then!

Epicoene: Yes, sir.

Morose: Speak out, I mean.

Epicoene: Ay, sir. Why, did you think you had married a statue? or a motion only? one of the French puppets with the eyes turned with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaice-mouth, and look upon you?

Morose: Oh immodesty! A manifest woman! (3.4.31-39)

Playing the role of a woman whose chastity Daw and La Foole have ruined, the actor playing Epicoene must react to their claim of having had "carnaliter" with her: "I am undone, I am undone!" she proclaims (5.4.109). Ironically, the Collegiates, themselves unapologetic proponents of carnaliter, completely sympathize with Epicoene's situation because of the supposed carnaliter:

Mistress Otter: Poor gentlewoman, how she takes it!

Haughty: Be comforted, Morose, I love you the better for 't.

Centaure: So do I, I protest. (5.4.120-22)

All must react to Epicoene's reaction, including Truewit, whose concern with feigning and finished products prevents him from seeing past appearances to the like truth being well feigned. Except for Dauphine, who knows the secret, Epicoene fools all the characters onstage, and the secret has thus been maintained the length of the play. Put another way, like truth has been (effectively) feigned from start to finish.

VI

Though like truth is finally revealed, a question remains: who has the ability, and who lacks it, to communicate effectively? Dauphine cannot communicate with an audience, and therefore he is not very interesting. Yet he knows the most important secret in the play. On the other hand, Truewit is too uninhibited, too carried away with what he perceives as his own verbal skills, and therefore lacks the ability to see past appearances, lacks the ability to understand like truth. Epicoene is able to keep a secret, able to communicate with and win over other characters, as well as the audience. As the epicene partakes of the characteristics of both sexes, Epicoene possesses the knowledge of the nonactor Dauphine as well as the ability to communicate of the overactor Truewit. In the end, however, even the actor portraying Epicoene must capitulate to the producer Dauphine, who removes Epicoene's "peruke" thereby leaving the "gentleman's son" with no more words to speak, nothing more to feign or to keep secret; apparently, when he has lost his disguise, he has also lost his acting ability and, therefore, his claim to like truth.

The ending of the play is troubling; it is a problem, though not uncommon for certain types of comedies of the period. One might recall, for example, Isabella's silence at the end of Measure for Measure, leaving Shakespeare's problem play, like Jonson's, with a troubling conclusion. But each conclusion is, of course, intentionally problematic, and in Jonson's case in keeping with his assertion in Discoveries that one must imitate though not "servilely." Perhaps Jonson felt that the audience should be troubled--not fooled, nor duped, nor even deceived--about the ending of Epicoene, not by the revelation that Epicoene is a boy, but by the absence of an anticipated resolution to a comedy. But then the ending, like the rest of the play, is supposed to be an imitation of like truth. Imitating like truth, after all, is the raison d'etre of the play, and once Dauphine reveals the secret of Epicoene's sex, there is no need for further imitating or feigning, neither for the benefit of the onstage audience nor for the benefit of the theater audience.

California State University Fresno

NOTES

(1) Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 1. As Greene points out, "The imitation of models was a precept and an activity which during that era embraced not only literature but pedagogy, grammar, rhetoric, esthetics, the visual arts, music, historiography, politics, and philosophy. It was central and pervasive. The period when it flourished might be described as an era of imitation, but this description would have value only if the concept and praxis were understood to be repeatedly shifting, repeatedly redefined by the writers and artists who believed themselves to be 'imitating'" (1).

(2) Greene devotes a chapter, "Accommodations of Mobility in the Poetry of Ben Jonson" (264-93), to an analysis of how imitation informs much of Jonson's finest poetry.

(3) Marjorie Swann argues, however, that when we consider imitatio in relation to "commodity relations" in Epicoene, we might recognize that instead of originality, Jonson might very well be guilty of "plagiarism," and therefore commodity production that is suspect: "While Jonson strove to distinguish his legitimate, productive brand of imitatio from plagiarism, the two activities were embarrassingly similar.... [T]he distinction Jonson attempted to establish between literary production and consumption was precarious--the imitative author could be viewed as a plagiarist, while the plagiarist could be esteemed as a producer of literary texts." See Swann, "Refashioning Society in Ben Jonson's Epicoene," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 38 (1998): 305.

(4) Discoveries, in Ben Jonson, ed. Ian Donaldson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 576. All subsequent quotations from Discoveries are from this edition and are referred to parenthetically in my text by page number.

(5) Greene, 277.

(6) The Defense of Poesy, in Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 217. As Thomas O. Sloane suggests, in this famous passage Sidney "conflates" Aristotle's mimesis with Plutarch's belief that the poem is a speaking picture, Horace's belief that poetry teaches and delights, and Cicero's belief that poetry moves the reader. See Sloane, "Rhetoric, 'Logic' and Poetry: The Formal Cause" in The Age of Milton, ed. C. A. Patrides and Raymond B. Waddington (Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1980), 326.

(7) Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1953).

(8) Terence Cave, "The Mimesis of Reading in the Renaissance" in Mimesis: From Mirror to Method, Augustine to Descartes, ed. John D. Lyons and Stephen G. Nichols Jr. (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1982), 155.

(9) Ibid., 156.

(10) John Dryden, An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in Selected Poetry and Prose of John Dryden, ed. Earl Miner (New York: Random House, 1969), 86.

(11) Charles A. Carpenter, "Epicoene Minus Its Secret: Surprise as Expectation" Xavier University Studies 7, no. 3 (1968): 17.

(12) G. R. Hibbard, "Ben Jonson and Human Nature," in A Celebration of Ben Jonson, ed. William Blissett, Julian Patrick, and R. W. Van Fossen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 74-75.

(13) See J. A. Jackson, "'On forfeit of your selves, think nothing true': Self-Deception in Ben Jonson's Epicoene" Early Modern Literary Studies 10, no. 1 (May 2004), par. 1. See also William W. E. Slights, Ben Jonson and the Art of Secrecy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 78-104.

(14) Barry B. Adams, "Jonson's Epicoene and the Complex Plot" Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: An AnnuAL Gathering of Research, Criticism and Reviews 11 (1999): 172-225.

(15) Ibid., 189.

(16) Ibid., 197.

(17) Kate D. Levin, "Unmasquing Epicoene: Jonson's Dramaturgy for the Commercial Theater and Court," in New Perspectives on Ben Jonson, ed. James Hirsh (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), 146.

(18) Ibid., 146-47.

(19) Ibid., 149. Similarly, Slights concludes that the deception may be a manifestation of Jonson's ego (82).

(20) R. V. Holdsworth, introduction to Epicoene, or The Silent Woman, by Ben Jonson, ed. R. V. Holdsworth (London: A & C Black/New Mermaids, 1990), xix-xx.

(21) Cristy Campbell-Furtick, "Deviations from the Norm: The Epicene in Ben Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman," Conference of College Teachers of English Studies 55 (1990): 75.

(22) Ibid., 80.

(23) Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 83-84.

(24) Ibid., 84-85.

(25) Slights, 3-4.

(26) Ben Jonson, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman, ed. R. V. Holdsworth (London: A & C Black/ New Mermaids, 1990), second prologue, 11. 7-10. All subsequent quotations from Epicoene are from this edition and are referred to parenthetically in my text by act, scene, and line.

(27) Ian Donaldson, "A Martyr's Resolution," in Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques, ed. Robert M. Adams (New York: Norton, 1979), 428.

(28) Slights, 9.

(29) John Gordon Sweeney III, Jonson and the Psychology of Public Theater: To Coin the Spirit, Spend the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 110. In a different reading of Truewit's significance, however, Michael Cameron Andrews argues that rather than as a successful satirist, Truewit is presented "ironically and critically" as an ineffective manipulator in Jonson's "sardonic satire" ("Truewit and the Tone of Epicoene," Salzburg Studies in English 95, no. 3 [1983]: 36).

(30) Jonas A. Barish, Ben Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 156.

(31) William Shakespeare, The First Part of Henry the Fourth, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed., ed. G. Blakemore Evans et. al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 2.4.267-273. All quotations from Shakespeare are from this edition and are referred to parenthetically in my text by act, scene, and line.

(32) Barish, 152.

(33) Sweeney, 108-10.

(34) Karen Newman, "City Talk: Women and Commodification, Epicoene (1609)" in Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, ed. David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass (New York: Routledge, 1991), 184.

(35) Ibid., 185.

(36) Barish, 173-74.