ABSTRACT
Frequently in Jonson’s plays we find instances of multiple action within the playing space which require an acute sense of ensemble amongst the cast if the audience’s attention is to be directed at any given moment to a necessary point within the constantly shifting centre of interest that makes up the larger stagepicture. They must register the significance of the individual parts the better to understand Jonson’s purpose in uniting these into a carefully structured whole. To take an example from Bartholomew Fair: in the sequence where Cokes gets his purse stolen while listening to Nightingale’s ballad, the gull and his property are the main centre of comic interest, and yet at this moment the stage is crowded with an audience of fairgoers delighting in the ballad-singer’s performance. We have to be aware of Ezekiel’s every movement about the crowd, his several approaches to Cokes, his initial failure to seize the purse, his eventual success and the trick whereby he cunningly passes the hot property to Nightingale. However,
those movements have to be so choreographed that they can plausibly be interpreted by Overdo in his guise as Mad Arthur as proof of his belief that Ezekiel is an honest youth of some promise, while Overdo’s concentration on Ezekiel’s proximity to Cokes must be such that it in its turn can plausibly be assumed later to be proof that Overdo is himself the actual thief. Meanwhile Quarlous, Winwife and Grace are coming into ever more intimate relations. Mistress Overdo is ostensibly there as Grace’s chaperone and as protector of the naive Cokes but she becomes so taken up in her enjoyment of the song that she fails adequately to see what is happening to either of her charges. Grace’s intimacy with the two men is strengthened into a kind of bond by their amused detachment from the rest of the crowd, by their precise observation of how Cokes is robbed and by their complicity in relishing his discomfiture. Eight actors in independent groupings within the crowd must be shrewdly observed by the audience not only in respect of the immediate comedy but also in preparation for future developments in the plot. Yet to suggest that their attention is demanded by plot interests alone is to risk losing an awareness of how important the scene is in developing the characterisation of all eight roles. This sequence asks for ensemble acting of a very high order.
