초록·
키워드
오류제보하기
This study aims at exploring how Ben Jonson adapted the emblem to his masques, especially in his Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue. The emblem, which consists of three parts, that is, the motto, the picture, and the epigram, teaches and delights the reader, whereas the masque is comprised of the final dances called revels, moving scenes such as revolving and turning scenes, and the masquers’ speeches. In spite of the different constituents of the emblem and the masque, both are characterized by the “dual function of description and representation or explanation and interpretation,” a term Albrecht Schöne coined as a distinguishing feature of the emblem.
In light of Schöne’s idea, what is described or explained represents or interprets something beyond itself. In his Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, which is equivalent to an emblem book containing a frontispiece and several emblems, Ben Jonson delivers the possible reconciliation between seemingly different ideas, that is, pleasure and virtue. Jonson’s idea is based on Marsilio Ficino, who claims that soul can reach the symposium, the banquet of Love, by climbing the ladder of senses from the grosser ones such as touch, taste, and smell to the purified ones, that is, hearing and sight. Jonson especially underlines the aesthetic pleasure of painting and music, which heightens and edifies human soul.
Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue consists of four emblematic scenes. In the first emblematic scene Comus and the bowl bearer for Hercules assert sensual pleasure. The following anti masque represents the Banquet of Sense. The first emblematic scene clarifies that sensual pleasure is incompatible with virtue. In the second scene Hercules, the symbol of virtue, banishes the pygmies, moralizing the victory of virtue over vice. In the third emblematic scene Mercury enters first, and he leads the masquers to the adventure of love. In his three songs, Daedalus, the mythological founder of painting and sculpture, prompts the masquers to attempt the labyrinth of love, which I interpret as aesthetic pleasure they gain from dancing. In the fourth and last emblematic scene Mercury presents the reinforced and edified soul of the masquers, which has control over fortune.
In Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue Jonson experimented with the new medium of the masque as a powerful means of teaching and pleasing the audience. In the English Renaissance the emblem, a two-dimensional static art, is transformed to a multi-media art form, the masque. Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue is a good example of how the emblem is adapted to the masque.