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The function of the audience in satiric drama¹

A study based on satiric drama in Western Europe during the first half of the 17th century.

Satiric drama is one of the most fascinating literary genres. It fascinates by its aggressiveness, by its outspoken defence of well-defined principles and by the exclusive concern for untarnished ideals which it seems to display. Even when it is unreasonable, as it often is, it does not lose its power of holding the reader in its spell. It appeals to heart and mind by its persuasiveness and its emotionality. It carries the listener along in a flood of arguments and counter-arguments, whether false or true. It does not compromise nor negotiate. It only paints in black and white, disregarding all shades of grey.

When studying satiric drama I have always been struck by the special role played by the audience for which the drama was written. I have set myself the task to discover the precise function of the past or present audience in satiric drama, its contribution to the drama and the extent to which it has determined contents and form. And it seemed to me that research on 17th century plays would lend itself particularly well to the formulation of an answer to that question. For it was especially during that period that society was held in a tight grip by its authoritarian rulers. It was then that absolutism was growing or had already established itself. It was the century in which the governing parties had imposed severe restrictions on freedom of expression, even in the Netherlands, in spite of its newly-won liberty from foreign domination. In such a social climate satire arises almost spontaneously, as a natural and popular means of criticism. But at the same time the presence of censors, of scrutinizers of disapproving political rulers makes itself felt throughout the formation of the drama. The playwright must of necessity be influenced by it. He has to set about the work with great ingenuity and extreme caution. It stands to reason that the complex role of the audience shows itself to greater advantage in these conditions.

In this paper I intend to share my findings on the role of the audience and to discuss some general insights that may be gained from these findings.

Before tackling the main topic of my research we have to devote some time to a determination of the characteristics of satiric drama. What may be reckoned to satiric drama? What may be reckoned to satiric drama? Answering these questions is more difficult than would seem at first.

One might take one's point of departure from a number of 17th century plays of which it is generally accepted that they are satirical. This, however, could easily lead to a petitio principii when further defining the characteristics of the genre. On the other hand, it is even less advisable to commence the other way about by accepting an a priori set of characteristics and to judge the plays accordingly. In fact, we do not possess anything that could be called a classical type of satiric drama. Aristophanes' play The Clouds will be recognized by anyone as a satiric play, but what about the classical comedies of Terence and Plautus? These latter authors too aimed at exposing the vices and idiosyncrasies of their fellow-citizens. Aristotle defines the difference between comedies and satire when stating that it is characteristic of the comedy not to be bent upon

1 Voordracht gehouden op 26 augustus 1970 te Princeton (U.S.A.) bij gelegenheid van het Vierde Internationale Germanistencongres.

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hurting its victim¹. Horace on the other hand seems to deny such a difference between satire and the old comedy, when discussing the social function of satire in a comparative analysis of the satires of Lucilius and the old comedy². Horace stresses the didactic aspects of satire, admitting however several types within the same genre. In the 17th century the same difference of approach is still reflected among literary critics. A good many side with Horace when they contend, like Famiano Strada that the main function of comedy, as well as satire, is to expose human vice and thereby to teach the younger generation how to behave³. Jacobus Pontanus and others follow Aristotle's view⁴.

But for our purpose it will be helpful to take the more generally accepted opinion in our days. We will assume that satiric drama - like satire itself - can be distinguished from comedy by the fact that in it vice and victim are comdemned in an absolute way. Comedy takes a more lenient view of things and judges people by comparison rather than by absolute norms. The satirist does not forgive or forget: Like the public prosecutor he feels the moral obligation to accuse and not to excuse.

In confining the field of our study we will also eliminate the plays with just a satirical flavour, such as the comedies that censure dull-witted farmers and deceitful businessmen, gossiping ladies and scheming mothers-in-law, frolicking husbands and their jealous wives. Neither will we include allegorical, didactic or moralistic plays, that expose various forms of insanity or misconduct. To this latter class may be reckoned Jakob Bidermann's Cenodoxus⁵ and Zacharias Heyn's Deuchden-Schole oft Spieghel der jonge Dochteren⁶. Finally, we will leave out of consideration border-line cases such as De Klucht van Tryn van Hamburg, a play based on the life story of Tryn Peters of Hamburg, a notorious female criminal who ended her sordid life on the gallows⁷.

After these preliminaries it should be easy to list the satirical dramas of the 17th century that are known to us. We may mention as outstanding examples: Vondel's Palamedes⁸ and Maria Stuart, Gryphius's Carolus Stuardus⁹, Krul's Hellevaert van Rodomond¹⁰ and Ben Johnson's The Poetaster¹¹. However, could there be less obvious satires that escape our attention? It is a well-established fact that in the 17th century itself many people believed that certain plays were satires in disguise, such as Vondel's Lucifer, Faëton and Salmoneus. This opinion was based on popular rumours, on an interpretation given by the audiences attending the original performances. In Dutch literature alone I could give some twenty or more plays of which it was said that they were satirical. Though I would be slow to accept a satirical purpose in many of these

1 Aristoteles, Poetika, 5e hoofdstuk.

2 Horatius, Satiren, Boek I, 4e Satire.

3 Famiano Strada, Prolusiones Academicae, Romae, 1617.

4 Jacobus Pontanus, Poeticarum Institutionum, Libri III, Ingolstadt, 1594.

5 Jakob Bidermann, Cenodoxus, Latijn 1602, Duits 1625.

6 Zacharias Heyns, Deuchden-Schole oft Spieghel der jonge Dochteren, 1625.

7 De Klucht van Tryn van Hamburg werd gespeeld in de Oude Kamer te Amsterdam in 1617.

8 Eerste uitgave 1625; eerste opvoering te Rotterdam door de spelers van J.B. van Fornenburgh; eerste opvoering te Amrterdam in 1665.

9 Eerste uitgave 1649; omwerking in 1660/1661, gedrukt 1663.

10 Geschreven in 1644, gedrukt in 1645.

11 1602.

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plays, I cannot help considering this popular interpretation a significant sociological fact which surely indicates that more plays were meant to be satiric than we may recognize today and that audiences were in the habit of searching for satirical allusions.

Allow me to illustrate this with an example. Krul's Hellevaert of Rodomond has not been recognized as satire for a long time. Surprised that the play scored a far greater success than its plot could possibly justify, I read it several times and only then stumbled on its double meaning as a satire. The playwright Krul, it should be known, was the spokesman of a group of authors who contended that they were the true defenders of ‘poesy’. Krul and his associates had found a bitter opponent in W.D. Hooft, one of the directors of the Amsterdam Theatre. The whole drama gets a new dimension once we understand what Krul has in mind when he announces in the preface to the drama that he will show on the stage the haters of true poetry. The bragging and aggressive Rodomond, borrowed from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, is no one else but his antagonist W.D. Hooft himself! Small wonder that the people thronged to the theatre to hear his lines.

In all these satirical dramas we find the common trait that they aim at unmasking certain objectionable persons, whether political, religious or otherwise. At times it takes the form of criticizing recent events or prevailing conditions. The playwright appeals to the audience for understanding and support. He assumes that the spectators are all in the know of the evil he is exposing and he takes for granted that they agree with his views on the matter. At the same time the playwright knows that his public criticism of powerful persons could be perilous to himself. In the 17th century this aspect added a new dimension to satiric drama. Playwrights were running a risk when ridiculing rivals as Krul did in Rodomond, Jonson in The Poetaster or Dekker in Satirimastix¹. It was much more dangerous, however, to censure political rulers, such as was done by Vondel in Palamedes. We will miss the dynamics of satiric drama if we overlook the playwright's dilemma between the encouragement given by an enthusiastic audience and the threat posed by powerful opponents.

In fact, it need not surprise that magistrates and influential hobnobs felt they could not afford being criticized in public, least of all in the theatre. They had understood that satiric drama aimed at the total annihilation of the opponent through an act of collective ridicule and expulsion. They knew that such drama had the force of exciting strong feelings of disapproval, rejection and hate, yes even feelings of anticipated triumph when the image of the victim was destroyed in an atmosphere of contempt, mockery and scorn. If the audience truly responded to the purpose of the drama, the victim of the satire had undergone a real loss of face and authority.

The purpose of satiric drama is only achieved if the spectators respond. It is worth our while to consider the precise nature of this response. The playwright does not speak in a vacuum: he speaks in a closed room of initiated persons with the immediate audience as his soundboard. It should be noted that calling forth a resonance on the part of the audience is much easier in drama than in poetry. In the 17th century satiric poems were printed on handbills and sold from door to door. In this way an author could hope to influence a considerable number of people and, perhaps, evoke strong

1 1602.

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reactions. Drama, however, disposes of greater possibilities. The performance of a satiric drama became a happening, a collectively shared experience, often a kind of demonstration of protest or even an outburst of mass-hysterics. A performance could easily become an event of greater sociological than literary significance.

One can hardly overestimate the reality of what happened on the stage. Opponents, strongly feared, envied or hated, who had become virtually invulnerable through their position of strength, were now exposed ‘in effigy’ to a mass mockery, to the verdict of a popular tribunal in which the actors on the stage had no greater share than the audience in the hall. Feelings shared by everyone which no one normally dared openly express, were given public utterance by what was brazenly said and done in the limelight. The actors were aware of the fact that they were speaking on behalf of their audience. Shouts, laughter and applause were a continuous stimulant to the actors which helped them use to full advantage the satirist's weapons of hyperbole, charge and melodramatics. But there was more. The performance eventually led to a collectively experienced katharsis, to a purification and deliverance, but one totally different from that experienced in a normal tragedy. Katharsis, in the general sense of the word, purifies man's psychological system from harmful tensions. After the strain has been intensified and has reached a climax, the accumulated feelings of stress are suddenly released which causes a relief. In a normal tragedy the audience shares the kathartic feelings of the hero, sympathizing with him when he recognizes that failure and catastrophe were due to his own error. In spite of that error the tragic hero does not deserve his downfall, a circumstance calling for and justifying our sympathy.

The victim of satire on the other hand does not deserve our sympathy: on the contrary, it is made clear that his fate, even his social position, should be entirely different from what it actually is. His injustice or hypocrisy, his pride or extreme stupidity are exhibited as a menace to society. Unlike tragedy satiric drama does not evoke fear for a higher authority. Instead it aims at instilling a keen awareness of an impending threat, a threat personified by the victim. The group seeks to overcome the threat by indignation and contempt which are followed by satisfaction and triumph when the mask has been torn off, when the invulnerable opponent has been humiliated, when justice has been done to him. Derision often is a social means of defence on the part of a group that feels threatened or suppressed. Through the satire the victim has been isolated, has been thrown back upon himself, has been declared an outcast and therefore less harmful. At least in the eyes of the spectators. It cannot be doubted that in bringing satiric drama to its kathartic resolution, the audience has an important part to play.

Perhaps we may even go one step further. Satire, especially when dramatized in a public performance, often has traces of an ancient religious sanction imposed by the community. The public expulsion of the victim resembles a magic ritual, a curse effective beyond time and space that will inevitably strike down upon the wretch¹. In the figure of Rodomonte Krul's opponent Willem D. Hooft is doomed to cross the river Lethe and thereby to enter utter oblivion: the worst fate a writer can endure!

And Krul and his adherents never doubt the effectiveness of their curse. Another

1 Zie hierover uitvoerig: Robert G. Elliott, The Power of Satire: magic, ritual, art, Princeton, New Jersey, 1960.

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example: after Vondel's devastating criticism of Oldenbarnevelt's judges in the magic opening sonnet of Palamedes, those vile wretches have never enjoyed a moment's joy or peace of mind. This aftereffect of Vondel's play is not accidental: it flows forth from the very nature of its being a satire.

Does the playwright dispose of any special expedients to bring about a successful interaction of actors and spectators? One such expedient, I believe, is the configuration of characters in the plot, in which good and bad are painted in sharp colours as absolute contraries. If we call the good character(s) the first component of the plot and the bad the second component, we must distinguish two types of configuration: the ‘hero’ of the play, the principal figure in the plot can be either the first or the second component.

The first type may be called a tragedy. The hero of the drama is portrayed as the innocent victim of a mean conspiracy. He is the spotless example of virtue, presented to us in all his moral greatness. He does not waver. He scorns all attempts to make him deviate from his principles. We see him reject those attempts in an almost theatrical way. The hero's enemy is just the opposite in every respect. He enters the scene as the intolerable tyrant, the waylayer of innocence, the brute, brimfull of malice and capable of any crime. Such a configuration of characters is found in Palamedes and in Carolus Stuardus. It is a scheme of black and white, obviously one-sided and lacking objectivity, almost a caricature by its wilful misinterpretation of reality, by its hyperboles and exaggerations. In fact, satiric drama of this type approaches allegorical and symbolic plays in which the hero is the personification of virtue and the villain the incarnation of evil.

It stands to reason that in plays as these the playwright must renounce real dialogue, because the different points of view are fixed right from the start. Any development of thought is excluded from the beginning. Even when it looks as if some approach between the opposing viewpoints can be discerned, we may be sure that the author applies a dramatic trick to enliven his plot. Hero and tyrant remain static till the end. Indeed, such drama is not only non-dialectical, it is also non-tragical. The hero falls a prey to evil; yet, at the same time, he triumphs over his assailants because they proved to be incapable of alluring him from the path of virtue. Besides, the audience always has the christian certainty of his being glorified in heaven. Identification with the hero is excluded. It is even undesirable. The only identification the satirist is aiming at is the identification with himself. That is why he seizes every opportunity to explicitate his own opinion of the conflict through the minor characters. In Palamedes and Maria Stuart this is done in the choruses. The minor characters in satiric drama play the part of the satirist in classical satire, a name given by Alvin Kernan to a character not¹ to be confused with the author, because it is only one of his masks.

The second type of satiric drama is a comedy, because the principal character is not the victim of an intrigue or conspiracy but rather the victim of the satire itself. In Dutch literature I know of no better example than Jan H. Krul's Hellevaert van Rodomond. As I mentioned above, the bragging brute Rodomonte, borrowed from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, a work wellknown in Krul's days, personified his opponent in the ‘Oude Kamer’ and afterwards in the Amsterdam theatre. The second component is

1 Alvin Kernan, The cankered muse, New York, 1959.

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constituted by Bradamante, the personification of Krul's beloved ‘In Liefde Bloeyende’, and Rogier, in whom we should see no one else but Krul himself.

The English War of the Theatres provided examples of satirical practices comparable to those in vogue in the Netherlands. In the ‘Poetaster’ Ben Jonson vents his disgust on his spiteful rivals Dekker and Marston, those ‘illiterate apes’ by bringing them on the stage in the parts of Demetrius Fabius and Crispinus. The author makes Demetrius choke in his unnatural and nauseating language. The character of Horace ‘the learned and liberal soul’ of the play, represents Jonson himself. In Satiromastix by Thomas Dekker the tables are turned: we find the same characters as in The Poetaster, but now Horace is ridiculed as a silly old man who is scraping together his rhymes for an Epithalamium. In the end he is given a crown of stinging nettles. It should be noted that the first and second components as described here are characteristic both of satiric tragedy and of satiric comedy.

There is another trait by which satiric drama distinguishes itself from other genres, though not from all, and again it is a trait in which the audience plays a major part. Satiric drama exists by the grace of topicality; it cannot do without a strong response of a number of persons in the ‘Ursprungsfeld’ of the play, as Adolf Beiss so aptly calls it¹. Some scholars, and among them my countryman Bomhoff, are of the opinion that the literary category of topicality cannot function as the antipole of ‘depth’, profoundness, universality². Bomhoff asserts that the topicality of a play, the ‘foreground’, ensures the author of a temporary success and that it may impress his contemporaries. The universal application of the work, its ‘background’, in which consists its true value, shows itself only gradually. I have to disagree with this opinion. Depth as a literary category may be defined as the proper term for that expression of human values, which are not only understood and appresiated by people in the ‘Ursprungsfeld’, but in many other ‘Wirkungsfelder’, both in the time when the work was created and in later periods³.

It seems to me that ‘depth’ could hardly be used as the sole norm for the evaluation of a literary work. In other words, I fail to see how a work could be judged to be of high quality simply because it possesses profoundness or universality, or that it should be deemed better than another because it has more ‘depth’.

In my opinion both ‘depth’ and topicality⁴ should be seen as qualities inherent in drama; we may use both terms to characterize plays, much in the same way as we use other terms which refer to the contents of the dramas. Depth and topicality do not exclude one another: a drama may be topical to a high degree and universal at the same time.

Topicality depends largely on a strong response in the ‘Ursprungsfeld’, a response which can only spring from a complete understanding of the irony and the satiric allusions in the text. Related to one another in ethical standards, sharing the same

1 Adolf Beiss, Das Drama als soziologisches Phänomen, Braunschweig, 1954.

2 G. Bomhoff, Diepte als literaire categorie, Amsterdam, 1957.

3 Adolf Beiss, Das Drama als soziologisches Phänomen, p. 8, hfdst. 1, van deel I.

4 Prof. Leonard Forster van Cambridge (Eng.) suggereerde deze term te gebruiken in plaats van ‘actuality’, een term waaraan door Amerikaanse literatuur-theoretici de voorkeur werd gegeven.

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cultural patterns of thought, speaking the same contemporary language, playwright, actors and audience work together in voicing the realities of the ‘Ursprungsfeld’. It stands to reason that the author's wit and imagination must be equalled by that of the audience. In fact, the extent to which an author can make use of irony and allusion is determined by the audience, the spectators he has in mind from the very first line of his play. Here again we meet another aspect of the function of the audience. However there is more to it.

The playwright is not always in a position to entrust to paper every dig at his opponent that comes in his mind. In the 17th century, at any rate, he could not forget the censure of the ruling parties. Many statements might have been wittier and might have been expressed with more transparency, were it not that the 17th century author had to take into account another force in the opposite direction, a force related to the actual situation, but emerging from another group in the ‘Ursprungsfeld’: the authorities. Audacity or a feeling of superiority shown by audience and author was sure to arouse in that group the contrary feelings of uneasiness, irritation or resentment. Criticism that was too outspoken might lead to retaliation. All this was foreseen by the playwright. In some instances a satiric drama may have served as a testcase, the author consciously or unconsciously trying how far he could go. In my opinion Vondel's Palamedes is a good example of this. In such a case the function of the audience, though latent, is thereby of no less influence.

Returning to the literary category of ‘depth’ we may observe that universality was one of the principal aims of renaissance writers, who professed to follow Aristotle's principles as laid down in his chapter about the difference between history and poetry¹. Aristotle had proclaimed that poetry, and literature in general, should present a mirror to the reader in the shape of an allegory or an emblema. His 17th century admirers provide us with many applications of this principle. Satire is no exception to this rule and so we may easily understand why Vondel and Krul adopted a myth or a legend or a part of a legend as a suitable dress for satire. Yet we should not forget that they used the same myth or legend as a cover against the magistrates, thus offering these authorities an excuse to refrain from severe measures or to let things pass. At the same time the elements of the myth, taken as they are and more or less isolated from their reference to actual conditions, form a structure with a universal application which is capable of attracting the attention of readers or an audience of a later period. When this takes effect, we have a new proof of the fact that there is a sociological variable in the play: the stress laid on topicality by an audience in the ‘Ursprungsfeld’ has shifted to a general application in later times.

I must return to topicality. As I take it, it is the determinant factor of a satirical play. When we find it missing in a drama of which the composition is built upon polarity, the play is undoubtedly a martyr-drama, like Gryphius' Katharina von Georgien or Vondels Peter en Pauwels.

But Vondels Maria Stuart is no real martyr-drama. It is interesting to see how Vondel realised the topicality in this play, written in 1646, almost 60 years after the decapitation of its title-hero. Vondel does not introduce Elisabeth of England herself in the play, perhaps because she was very popular in the Netherlands on account of

1 Aristoteles, Poetika, 9e hoofdstuk.

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her help against Spain. Nevertheless he clearly implies that she has committed a judicial murder. He describes her as an ambitious and bloodthirsty woman in words as these:

Elizabeth, nu drinck uit deze oprechte borst,
Mariaes bloet, en lesch dien ongeleschten dorst... (1638/39)

He even compares her to Herodias, a comparison that could not fail to make a deep impression on the 17th century audience, which was so well-read in Scripture. But Vondel aimed at a further, or rather a closer target. By putting the Anglicans on a par with the Puritans, he directed the assault against his archenemies, the contra-remonstrant ministers¹.

Time forces me to come to a conclusion, much earlier than I would have wished: I think I have shown the functions of the audience in satiric drama of the 17th century, functions which could be deduced from the text. These data would seem the more interesting as they originate in that part of the ‘Ursprungsfeld’ that we might call the section of the three A's, viz. the field of the tension between the author, the audience and the authorities.

It stands to reason that we cannot but regret that so few data are available concerning the size of the audiences and their actual response. However, this makes us only the more grateful for the data provided by the study of the texts.

Nijmegen, Van Schaeck Mathonsingel 121

n. wijngaards

1 Vgl. W.A.P. Smit, Van Pascha tot Noah, dl. I, Zwolle, 1956, p. 416.