It's All for Sale: Market, Theater, and Flesh Trade in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair

萬物皆可售：班強生《巴塞羅姆市集》中之市場、劇場和靈肉交易

10.6184/TKR201706-8

Elyssa Y. Cheng

Ben Jonson ； Bartholomew Fair ； commercial sex ； marital transactions ； anti-theatrical discourses ； 班強生 ； 《巴塞羅姆市集》 ； 商業性行為 ； 婚姻交易 ； 反劇場的言論

Tamkang Review

47卷2期（2017 / 06 / 01）

117 - 132

英文

The main characters in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair go to the fair to taste freshly-roasted pigs. This essay begins with the query of why this is so, investigating the relationships between the sale of festive roast pork, commodified sex, and commercial theater in the emerging capitalist economy. Jonson makes close connections between the Puritan admonition against roast pig eating, the Puritans' anti-theatrical discourses, and male surveillance of women and their chastity in Renaissance England. Past researches of Puritan anti-theatrical discourses reveal that what worried the Puritan elders most was the theater's potential to lure through sexual fantasies and whet erotic desires. They suspected that theater provided a resort for men and women to meet and commit fornication. In Jonson's satire, the Puritan husbands are so occupied with their own businesses that they neglect their wives, who are tempted by elaborate costumes and material delights and even become whores. Moreover, in both the upper-class heiress's and the middle-class widow's choice of husbands, the men's inability to control women's virginity and chastity is displayed. All in all, Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair presents a world of emerging capitalism where everything-including art, women, and even marriage-can be traded. In this world, theatrical productions are harshly attacked and strictly censored due to its possible connections with prostitution, but religious and juridical institutions fail to discipline debauched wives; and most importantly, capitalist values starkly subvert conventional moral boundaries.

班強生《巴塞羅姆市集》裡的主要角色到市集裡去品嚐新鮮的烤豬肉。本論文由這些人物何以要到市集中一啖新鮮烤豬肉的美味出發，探究節慶中烤豬肉的販賣、商業性行為和商用劇場在逐漸形成的資本主義經濟間之關係。班強生認為清教徒對品嚐烤豬肉的訓誡、他們反劇場的言論和文藝復興時期的英國男性對女性及其貞操的監控之間有密切的關係。由過去對清教徒反劇場言論的研究顯示，清教長老對劇場最憂心之處，是劇場提供了男人和女人共同聚會的場域，而戲劇的表演會誘發性幻想和情慾，使得看戲的男女姦淫失貞。在班強生諷刺喜劇中，清教徒的丈夫們因為過度忙於自己的事情，而疏忽了對他們妻子的監控，使得他們的妻子受到華服和物質享樂的誘惑而淪為妓女。而男性無力去管控女性的貞操，也反映在劇中的貴族階級的女繼承人和中產階級的寡婦對夫婿選擇之決定上。總之，班強生《巴塞羅姆市集》反映了一個逐漸形成的資本主義世界，在這個世界中，無論是藝術作品、女人乃至婚姻，萬物皆可售。在這個世界中，劇場藝術被嚴峻地攻擊和嚴格地審查，只因其有可能和嫖妓有所關連，宗教和司法的機制無力去規戒行為放蕩的妻子，而更重要地，資本主義的價值觀正嚴苛地在顛覆傳統的道德疆界。

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