ABSTRACT
In an oft-cited passage from the last of Ben Jonson’s great city comedies, Bartholomew Fair, two gallants encounter Ursula, “a fine oily pig-woman” (ind.91-92), who has paused outside her booth to cool off after scolding her tapster:1
Quarlous Body o’ the Fair! What’s this? Mother o’ the bawds? KnocKem No, she’s mother o’ the pigs, sir, mother o’ the pigs. WinWife Mother o’ the Furies, I think, by her firebrand. Quarlous Nay, she is too fat to be a Fury! Sure some walking sow of tallow. WinWife An inspired vessel of kitchen-stuff! Quarlous She’ll make excellent gear for the coachmakers here in Smith-
field, to anoint wheels and axel trees with. (2.5.56-62)
The gamesters adopt a familiar satirical pose: an amused distance from the object of their derision. Their scorn marks a number of characters in the play as disgusting, but I am less interested in the branding power of disgust than in its constructive function through a textual technique that lies at the heart of Jonson’s civilizing endeavor. I refer here to allegory, the device that connects the highvelocity transformations of the passage above to the play’s larger exploration of “discretion” (1.5.9).
