ABSTRACT
In the period of dramatic production from the establishment of the commercial theatre in the last quarter of the sixteenth century to the closure in 1642, a very large range of issues came into vogue as a subject of dramatic representation. Changing fashions and national preoccupations gave rise to a variety of not only new ideas on the stage, but developing styles of representation. In the light of this, it is all the more remarkable that the issue of wit and learning remained a perennial topic throughout the period, and that only in certain respects were there changes in the ways it was represented. It crops up in a wide range of plays, a number of playwrights showing a persistent interest in the issue and several others giving it an airing in one or more of their plays. Aside from Ben Jonson, those showing most interest included George Chapman in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and later Richard Brome and James Shirley. It is worth noting that the sort of exhortations to education which were present in Tudor interludes are not to be found significantly in the drama of the commercial stage. Neither is profligacy on the part of heirs particularly related specifically to educational delinquency. Though this may have something to do with changes in the patterns of take-up of educational provision, it is much more likely to reflect the greater social range of commercial theatre audiences. The representation in the London theatres of the relationship between education and social rank took a number of forms and shows some variation both across the period, and in different theatrical contexts. However, a persistent ideal remains of a natural association between educated understanding and superior rank. Even the apparent divergences from this idea, for instance in the representation of lower class intelligence, or in satirical treatments of elite folly or inappropriate pretension to wit, are in some measure predicated on this ideal. The various representational conventions by means of which the commercial stage accommodates the ideal yield some interesting perspectives on the ways that perceptions of rank are inflected in the period.
