The Aristotelean theories of tragedy with Ben Jonson's play "Sejanus His Fall"

Content

1. Introduction

2. Influences on Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedies
2.1. Political and philosophical influences
2.2. The medieval world view
2.3. Machiavelli’s Il Principe
2.4. Literary influences

3. Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall
3.1. The basic dualism of good versus evil
3.2. Evil in the play
3.3. The tragic hero

4. Conclusion

Bibliography

1. Introduction

Drama has always fascinated people. Seeing other people’s fates presented on stage has for ages held an incredible attraction for the audience because it not only satisfies human curiosity, but it also functions as a means by which dramatists can take up current and relevant issues of the time and visualize these concerns in a comprehensible as well as literarily graspable way. Witnessing the action on stage and riding on an emotional ‘roller coaster’ during the play can lead to a certain relief at the end of the dramatic built-up, a relief of emotional stress. According to Gelfert, human beings have developed two ways to handle this reduction of tension: laughing and crying^[1]. In literature, one can find these two ‘stress management’ models in the dramatic forms of comedy and tragedy. According to Aristotle, tragedy, in particular, is to evoke pity and fear when seeing the tragic hero fall and make the audience leave the theatre clarified and purified by this experienced catharsis. Aristotle uses this term in a medical sense. For him, fear (phobos) arouses the audience to an emotional climax, pity (eleos) breaks down the bottled-up sensations and leaves the audience pleased and relieved by this ‘controlled working off’^[2]. Gelfert defines tragedy as a ‘societal psychotherapy’^[3].

When we accept this definition of tragedy as an attempt to assimilate social tension in general, the production of tragedies must have had its peak in times of intense political, social, religious and other tensions in particular. Gelfert calls such a place a seismic centre where two ideological plates collide, leading to an eruption in the form of a tragedy^[4]. One of these tragic ruptures took place in the seventeenth century, at the transition from Elizabethan to Jacobean England. Political events as well as social and religious changes caused the people to be captured in between an old and a new order^[5]. Due to ongoing wars as well as inner and outer political issues, the arising Renaissance came to England much later than to continental Europe. Therefore, the medieval conception of the world was still very common and widespread, while the new ideology was moving in. This shift from a vertically structured society to a horizontally structured one meant a breeding-ground for the production of tragedies.

Ben Jonson was one of the authors who was characteristic of his time. His play Sejanus His Fall was written in 1606, three years after Queen Elizabeth’s death and Jacob’s succession to the throne, and is marked by both medieval and Renaissance influences.

This paper shall investigate to what extend Jonson’s Sejanus is a tragedy in the Aristotelian sense, but also how far it can be seen as a play representative of its time as a tragedy written in a time of lasting radical changes. First, there shall be a short glance at the political, social and religious changes that took place in the shift from Elizabethan to Jacobean England, then the altering philosophical background and the manifestations of these transformations in the literary form of the tragedy. Next, the main focus of this paper is on Sejanus His Fall as a paradigm of all these ongoing movements, as an example of a early seventeenth century drama. In addition, the play shall be looked at according to Aristotle’s Poetics ^[6]. With this analysis the author of this paper hopes to show the correlation between historical events and literary manifestations, especially in a time of such radical changes, and illustrate this relation with the example of Sejanus His Fall.

2. Influences on Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedies

2.1. Political and philosophical influences

The time between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century was a period of highly unstable events. Ongoing inner political conflicts and wars such as the Wars of the Roses and the war with Spain were a hindrance to new ideas that had long spread in continental Europe. Therefore, the Renaissance arrived in England much later and led to a analogous existence of both medieval and modern conceptions of the world. People were not only torn between two philosophies, but also had to face political changes. At the end of the sixteenth century it had become clear that Elizabeth I. would die childless and thus the line of succession was an issue that people were highly concerned about. Jacob I. , the son of Mary, Queen of Scotland and a Stuart, became king of England and united it with Scotland. This unification caused an inner political conflict that would last for a century. Both Elizabeth I. and Jacob I. were deeply rooted in the medieval world picture. They both believed in the divine right of the ruler as it was a part of the so-called chain of beings, but Elizabeth was wise enough to deal with this subject cautiously. Jacob, on the other hand, took a different view on this matter. He stated that the king, as the divine representative, be entitled to absolute power over his subjects and have the life and death of any Englishman at his disposal. Even with excesses and criminal acts the king was only answerable to God alone and not be judged by earthly jurisdiction.^[7] Naturally, this absolutist approach to his rule did not give rise to affection for the new monarch. Another factor was the rise of the Gentry and the Aristocracy’s growing loss of power. Thus, the medieval thinking was still very strong in Elizabethan England while at the same time the interest in civil affairs rose to a great extend. As stated above, this dualism of two ideological standpoints formed the ground on which tragedies could grow.

2.2. The medieval world view

The medieval world was regulated by divine Providence. A hierarchically ordered universe with its according macro and micro structure, with God as the highest authority, followed by the angels, the human beings, animals and minerals, with each level being subdivided into levels itself, each human being had his or her assigned restricted position within the social ladder. It was not possible to surmount this chain of being which was mirrored in the society, in the family and in the gender ratio, where women were considered inferior to men and closer to the animal passion than to the human reason. This outer structure of the universe was also mirrored in the microcosm of the inner processes of the human soul. Reason was considered the superior motive for any action, followed by the noble passions situated in the heart and the lower passions located in the liver. Passion, considered as low emotion and sinful, must not rule over the virtuous reason because otherwise the divine order of the universe would be disturbed and the cosmos was threatened to break apart. People believed, then, that the cosmic world order was divinely given and had to be accepted as such. Rebellion caused chaos, and thus misfortune and misery were considered strokes of fate. The belief in the wheel of Fortune was wide-spread. The concept of fate being determined by divine Providence from birth and is an aspect of Elizabethan tragedy as well. Through the upcoming Renaissance, the idea of individualism and self-determination, concentrating on the actions of the human being and not on a future already set in advance by a god, would become more prominent, but in peak of Elizabethan tragedy, this old conception of the world was still very much anchored in the minds of the English.

It is important to know that there were two existing world views at the time in order to understand the dividedness that people had to face both politically, religiously, philosophically, socially and culturally. As was said above, tragedy needs this rupture to be able to come to its climax as a means to express the fears and hopes of a people that was unsure about its future. Especially the question of how a monarch should be natured was a predominant issue. Machiavelli’s Il Principe is an important source for a legitimate answer to this question and shall be looked at very shortly due to its immanent relation to Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall.

2.3. Machiavelli’s Il Principe

Machiavelli’s Il Principe, written in 1532, was in important source to understand the problem of the concept of an ‘Ideal Prince’. In his book, Machiavelli gives advice to a monarch how to act and what to consider when being in power. He covers all the important aspects of being a ruler, the different possibilities to obtain power and how to maintain it then. An important factor is the appearance of a ruler n contrast to his inner attitude. There one can find the dualism mentioned above which is a central topic in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus. He, as a characteristic author of the time, was highly influenced by Machiavelli’s work which can be felt throughout Sejanus. Therefore, the most important passages shall be given here:^[8]

Those who solely by good fortune become princes from being private citizens have little trouble in rising, but much in keeping atop [….]. Such stand simply upon the goodwill and the fortune of him who has elevated them – two most inconsistent and unstable things^[9] [….] I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. [….] Therefore a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise [….].Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is distant; but when it approaches they turn against you [….] and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared [….]^[10]. You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. [….] A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. [….] [I]t is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities […], but it is very necessary to appear to have them […]; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite^[11]. [….] The choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince […]. And the first opinion which one form of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him […].But to enable a prince to form an opinion of his servant there is one test which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him […]^[12]. [I]t is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of whom courts are full [….]. Because there is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you; [….] choosing the wise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking the truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires, and of none others […]^[13]

[...]

^[1] See: Gelfert, Hans-Dieter. Die Tragödie. Theorie und Geschichte. Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe 1570. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995. 22f.

^[2] Gelfert, 21.

^[3] Gelfert, 23.

^[4] See: Gelfert, 24.

^[5] This will be dealt with in the following chapters.

^[6] Aristotle. On the Art of Poetry. Translated by Ingram Bywater. With a preface by Gilbert Murray. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1920.

^[7] See: Reinhold, Heinz. Das englische Drama 1580 – 1642. Aspekte zeitgenössischer Aktualität. Sprache und Literatur 118. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1982. 53f.

^[8] Machiavelli, Nicolo. The Prince. Translated with Introduction by W. K. Marriot. Everyman’s Library 280. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1945. All further references to this edition shall be marked [ Prince ].

^[9] Prince, 49.

^[10] Prince, 129ff.

^[11] Prince, 137ff.

^[12] Prince, 181f.

^[13] Prince, 185.