Chapter 7 - History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Politic picklocks: interpreting topically
Ben Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair (1614) begins with a prologue scene, in which the audience is drawn into a legal bond with the play, its actors and author, and the obligations of each party are drawn out in wonderful mock-legalese. Here's an example:
the foresaid hearers and spectators […] neither in themselves conceal, nor suffer by them to be concealed, any state-decipherer, or politic picklock of the scene, so solemnly ridiculous as to search out who was meant by the Gingerbread-woman, who by the Hobby-horse man, who by the Costermonger, nay, who by their wares; or that will pretend to affirm, on his own inspired ignorance, what Mirror of Magistrates is meant by the Justice, what great lady by the Pig-woman, what concealed statesman by the Seller of Mousetraps, and so of the rest.
Don't overinterpret, this part of the ‘contract’ tells the audience (although presumably the injunction not to find real-life parallels for the characters in the play is designed to prompt exactly that speculation). Don't be a ‘state-decipherer’ or a ‘politic picklock’. Your job is to enjoy the play for what it is. Sometimes a Gingerbread-woman is just a Gingerbread-woman.
Unlike Jonson, Shakespeare doesn't include explicit commentary on his own dramatic art: he doesn't give us any prologues on his didactic aims, or address his audience in so direct a way.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare , pp. 134 - 156Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007