Abstract
Di Ponio examines the connection between the theatre and the plague, a fundamental physical as well as metaphysical relationship for Antonin Artaud, as both have the power to transform through upheaval. The chapter begins by acknowledging Artaud’s own research on the plague and then situating his conclusions through an early modern perspective by examining the connection between the plague and the advent of the public theatre―perfect doubles of one another―in England in the late 1500s. The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker are important primary sources to better grasp the early modern understanding of the plague.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Brian Singleton, Artaud: Le Théâtre et son double, Critical Guides to French Texts, 118 (London: Grant & Cutler, 1998), p. 29.
- 2.
Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–34, ed. by Günther Stühlmann, 7 vols (New York: Swallow Press, 1966–80), i (1966), 189.
- 3.
Thomas Dekker, The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker, ed. by F.P. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925).
- 4.
Jonathan Gil Harris examines images of plague in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in his book Sick Economies: Drama, Mercantilism, and Disease in Shakespeare’s England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) in establishing the link between early modern drama and the healthy body politic; see Chapter 1: The Pathological Drama of National Economy.
- 5.
France suffered from bubonic plague in 1668, but the Great Plague of Marseilles from 1720 to 1722 was by far the most severe.
- 6.
Filippo-Guglielmo Pallavincini, Baron of Saint-Rémys , was Viceroy of Sardinia 1720 to 1724 and again from 1726 to 1728.
- 7.
‘Sous l’action du fléau, les cadres de la société se liquéfient. L’ordre tombe. Il assiste à toutes les déroutes de la morale, à toutes les débâcles de la psychologie, il entend en lui le murmure de ses humeurs, déchirées, en plein défaite, et qui, dans une vertigineuse déperdition de matière, deviennent lourdes et se métamorphosent peu à peu en charbon.’ TD, iv, 19.
- 8.
‘de faire force de voiles hors de la ville, sous peine d’être coulé à coups de canon.’ TD, iv, 20.
- 9.
William Naphy and Andrew Spicer, Plague: Black Death and Pestilence in Europe (first published as The Black Death, 2000; Stroud: Tempus, 2004), p. 26.
- 10.
‘car on ne peut nier qu’entre la peste et lui ne se soit établie une communication pondérable, quoique subtile, et il est trop facile d’accuser dans la communication d’une maladie pareille, la contagion par simple contact.’ TD, iv, 21.
- 11.
Paul Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 314. See also Leslie Bradley, ‘Some Medical Aspects of Plague’, in The Plague Reconsidered: A New Look at its Origins and Effects in 16th and 17th Century England (Matlock: Local Population Studies, 1977), pp. 13–15.
- 12.
Slack, pp. 9–11; p. 345, note 17.
- 13.
J.F.D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 1.
- 14.
A brief summary of the role of the rat and rat-flea in the spread of infection to human beings is in Chapter 1 of Shrewsbury: The rat and its relation to the history of the plague, pp. 7–16.
- 15.
J. Leeds Barroll, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theatre: The Stuart Years (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 81.
- 16.
It is worth noting that during England’s multiple outbreaks of the disease from 1486 to 1604, there were less than two dozen books, treatises, or pamphlets written on the plague. From 1625 to 1627, in just two years, there were 36 books published on the plague (Naphy and Spicer, p. 97).
- 17.
The three consulted for this book are the two pamphlets edited by Bradley, and a third by Richard Mead: Chicoyneau , Verney and Souiller, A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles , Its Symptoms, and the Methods and Medicines used for Curing it, ed. by Richard Bradley, translated from the French by a Physician (London: Printed for S. Buckley in Amen-Corner, and D. Midwinter at the Three Corners in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1721); Richard Bradley, ed., The Plague at Marseilles consider’d, 2nd edn (London: Printed for W. Mears at the Lamb without Temple-Bar, 1721); Richard Mead, A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be Used to Prevent it (London: Printed for Sam. Buckley in Amen-Corner, and Ralph Smith at the Royal-Exchange, 1720).
- 18.
‘Avant tout malaise physique ou psychologique trop caractérisé, des taches rouges parsèment le corps, que le malade ne remarque soudainement que quand elles tournent vers le noir—. Il n’a pas le temps de s’en effrayer, que sa tête se met à bouillir, à devenir gigantesque par son poids, et il tombe. C’est alors qu’une fatigue atroce, la fatigue d’une aspiration magnétique centrale, de ses molécules scindées en deux et tirées vers leur anéantissement, s’empare de lui. Ses humeurs affolées, bousculées, en désordre, lui paraissent galoper à travers son corps. Son estomac se soulève, l’intérieur de son ventre lui semble vouloir jaillir par l’orifice des dents. Son pouls qui tantôt se ralentit jusqu’à devenir une ombre, une virtualité de pouls, et tantôt galope, suit les bouillonnements de sa fièvre interne, le ruisselant égarement de son esprit. Ce pouls qui bat à coups précipités comme son cœur, qui devient intense, plein, bruyant; cet œil rouge, incendié, puis vitreux; cette langue qui halète, énorme et grosse, d’abord blanche, puis rouge, puis noire, et comme charbonneuse et fendillée, tout annonce un orage organique sans précédent.’ TD, iv, 24.
- 19.
‘la peste la plus terrible est celle qui ne divulgue pas ses traits.’ TD, iv, 25.
- 20.
‘Dans certains cas pourtant, les poumons et le cerveau lésés noircissent et se gangrènent. Les poumons ramollis, coupaillés, tombant en copeaux d’on ne sait quelle matière noire, le cerveau fondu, limé, pulvérisé, réduit en poudre, désagrégé en une sorte de poussière de charbon noir.’ TD, iv, 26.
- 21.
‘La peste donc semble manifester sa présence dans les lieux, affectionner tous les lieux du corps, tous les emplacements de l’espace physique, où la volonté humaine, la conscience, la pensée sont proches et en passe de se manifester.’ TD, iv, 26–27.
- 22.
Margaret Healy, Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 52. She mentions Dekker ’s observations of his fellow Londoners’ fears of purchasing new, imported clothing, especially wool, which houses the plague of leprosy; the origins for this view are found in Leviticus, which ‘dwells at some length on the management of the leper’s woollen and linen garments.’
- 23.
‘Pourquoi l’éloignement, la chasteté, la solitude sont sans action contre les atteintes du fléau.’ TD, iv, 27–28.
- 24.
Mary Douglas identifies that the most frequently referenced sermons alluding to plague in the early modern period are found in 2 Samuel 24, Deuteronomy 28—detailing the few blessings for obedience and the myriad curses for disobedience—and Psalm 106: 29–30. Punishment is delivered by way of disaster by the hand of God in the form of plague and/or disease. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 30–31.
- 25.
Thomas Dekker, Newes from Graves-end, in PP, pp. 63–103 (pp. 85–86).
- 26.
Thomas Dekker, The Wonderfull yeare, in PP, pp. 1–61 (p. 30).
- 27.
Thomas Dekker, The Blacke Rod: and the White Rod, in PP, pp. 197–217 (p. 197).
- 28.
Lodge does offer some dangerous instruction for curing the disease, such as the burning of a ‘carbuncle’, bubo, or ‘pustule’ as soon as it appears on the body. More often than not, unfortunately, this painful treatment accelerated the disease and caused the patient to go into shock. Thomas Lodge, A treatise of the plague containing the nature, signes, and accidents of the same, with the certaine and absolute cure of the feuers, botches and carbuncles that raigne in these times: and aboue all things most singular experiments and preseruatiues in the same, gathered by the obseruation of diuers worthy trauailers, and selected out of the writing of the best learned phisitians in this age. By Thomas Lodge, Doctor in Phisicke (London: Printed for Edward White and N. L., 1603), pp. 36–37.
- 29.
Population of London in 1560: 110,000; in 1600: 185,000; in 1640: 355,000. Roger Finlay and Beatrice Shearer, ‘Population Growth and Suburban Expansion’, in The Making of the Metropolis: London 1500–1700, ed. by A.L. Beier and Roger Finlay (London: Longman, 1986), p. 43.
- 30.
Slack, p. 305.
- 31.
F.P. Wilson, The Plague in Shakespeare’s London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), p. 50.
- 32.
Wilson, p. 50. Domestic State Papers of the Reigns of Elizabeth i , vol. 98, Document 38; and The Journals Recording the Proceedings of the London Court of Common Council, xxiii, 131.
- 33.
Wilson, p. 52. The Journals Recording the Proceedings of the London Court of Common Council, xviii, 184.
- 34.
John Stockwood, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse on Barthelmew day, being the 24. of August. 1578 (London: Imprinted by Henry Bynneman for George Byshop, 1578), pp. 134–35.
- 35.
Wilson, p. 52. Sermon (1578), p. 47.
- 36.
See Jonas A. Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 80–96.
- 37.
The Puritans themselves were later reproved by James i, in 1599, referring to them as the ‘verie pestes in the Church’. James i, Basilicon Doron, Political Writings, ed. by Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 26–27.
- 38.
Charles F. Mullett, The Bubonic Plague and England: An Essay in the History of Preventive Medicine (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956), p. 100.
- 39.
Malone Society Collections, ed. by W.W. Greg, 15 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911–93), i (1911), 148.
- 40.
Volume one of the Malone Society Collections reprints those letters found in The Remembrancia which recommend the suspension of public performance from 1580 to 1634 (pp. 43–100).
- 41.
Peter Thomson, Shakespeare’s Theatre (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 7–8.
- 42.
Wilson, p. 55. Malone Society Collections, i, 391.
- 43.
John Twyning, London Dispossessed: Literature and Social Space in the Early Modern City (London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s, 1998), p. 158.
- 44.
‘La peste établie dans une cité, les cadres réguliers s’effondrent, il n’y a plus de voirie, d’armée, de police, de municipalité; des bûchers s’allument pour brûler les morts, au hasard des bras disponibles. Chaque famille veut avoir le sien. Puis le bois, la place et la flamme se raréfiant, il y a des luttes de famille autour des bûchers, bientôt suivies d’une fuite générale, car les cadavres sont trop nombreux. Déjà les morts encombrent les rues, en pyramides croulantes que des bêtes rongent sur les bords. Leur puanteur monte en l’air comme une flamme. Des rues entières sont barrées par des entassements de morts. C’est alors que les maisons s’ouvrent, que des pestiférés délirants, l’esprit chargé d’imaginations affreuses, se répandent en hurlant par les rues. Le mal qui leur travaille les viscères, qui roule dans leur organisme entier, se libère en fusées par l’esprit. D’autres pestiférés qui, sans bubons, sans douleur, sans délire et sans pétéchies, se regardent orgueilleusement dans des glaces, se sentant crever de santé, tombent morts avec dans leurs mains leur plat à barbe, pleins de mépris pour les autres pestiférés.’ TD, iv, 28–29.
- 45.
‘Une vraie pièce de théâtre bouscule le repos des sens, libère l’inconscient comprimé, pousse à une sorte de révolte virtuelle et qui d’ailleurs ne peut avoir tout son prix que si elle demeure virtuelle, impose aux collectivités rassemblées une attitude héroïque et difficile.’ TD, iv, 34.
- 46.
Malone Society Collections, i, 206–10 (p. 206).
- 47.
Wilson, p. 19. The earliest reference to the appointment of surveyors is dated November 1578 in The Journals Recording the Proceedings of the London Court of Common Council, xx, part 2, 450b.
- 48.
William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). All further quotations from Shakespeare’s dramas are from this edition.
- 49.
Thomas Dekker, A Rod for Run-awayes, in PP, pp. 135–71 (p. 148).
- 50.
‘Dans les maisons ouvertes, la lie de la population immunisée, semble-t-il, par sa frénésie cupide, entre et fait main basse sur des richesses dont elle sent bien qu’il est inutile de profiter. Et c’est alors que le théâtre s’installe. Le théâtre, c’est-à-dire la gratuité immédiate qui pousse à des actes inutiles et sans profit pour l’actualité. Les derniers vivants s’exaspèrent, le fils, jusque-là soumis et vertueux, tue son père; le continent sodomise ses proches. Le luxurieux devient pur. L’avare jette son or à poignées par les fenêtres. Le Héros guerrier incendie la ville qu’il s’est autrefois sacrifié pour sauver. L’élégant se pomponne et va se promener sur les charniers.’ TD, iv, 29–30.
- 51.
Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 26.
- 52.
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. by G.H. McWilliam (London: Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 52–53.
- 53.
Ben Jonson, ‘On the Famous Voyage’, in Poems, ed. by Ian Donaldson (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 77–84 (lines 59–60).
- 54.
Wilson, p. 31. The Journals Recording the Proceedings of the London Court of Common Council, xviii, 123b, and xxvi, 115b.
- 55.
‘L’état du pestiféré qui meurt sans destruction de matière, avec en lui tous les stigmates d’un mal absolu et presque abstrait, est identique à l’état de l’acteur que ses sentiments sondent intégralement et bouleversent sans profit pour la réalité.’ TD, iv, 30.
- 56.
‘Si l’on veut bien admettre maintenant cette image spirituelle de la peste, on considérera les humeurs troublées du pesteux comme la face solidifiée et matérielle d’un désordre qui, sur d’autres plans, équivaut aux conflits, aux luttes, aux cataclysmes et aux débâcles que nous apportent les événements. Et de même qu’il n’est pas impossible que le désespoir inutilisé et les cris d’un aliéné dans un asile, ne soient cause de peste, par une sorte de réversibilité de sentiments et d’images, de même on peut bien admettre que les événements extérieurs, les conflits politiques, les cataclysmes naturels, l’ordre de la révolution et le désordre de la guerre, en passant sur le plan du théâtre se déchargent dans la sensibilité de qui les regarde avec la force d’une épidemié.’ TD, iv, 31–32.
- 57.
Avant-garde director Jerzy Grotowski (1933–99), considered one of Artaud’s successors, but no less than an innovator of the Theatre of Cruelty, wished to turn entertainment into ritual through theatre with his work on Paratheatre (1969–78). Grotowski would invite a few spectators to engage with the actors, both during and after performances, thus becoming participants. The result was the innovation of the unmediated, participatory theatrical experience. See his Towards a Poor Theatre , ed. by Eugenio Barba (Denmark: Odin Teatret Forlag, 1968; repr. New York: Routledge, 2002). For a comprehensive critical overview of Grotowski’s various forays into theatrical revolution see The Grotowski Sourcebook, ed. by Lisa Wolford and Richard Schechner (London: Routledge, 1997).
- 58.
René Girard, ‘The Plague in Literature and Myth’, in “To double business bound”: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology (London: Athlone Press, 1978), pp. 136–54 (p. 138).
- 59.
Thomas Nashe, A Pleasant Comedie, called Summers Last Will and Testament, in The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. by Ronald B. McKerrow, 5 vols (London: A.H. Bullen, 1904–08; repr. Sidgewick & Jackson, 1960), iii (1960), 231–95 (lines 1574–1615).
- 60.
Neill, p. 27.
- 61.
Artaud references the outbreak of plague in Mékao, Japan in 600 B.C. ‘on the occasion of a mere change of government’ (Richards, p. 18); ‘à l’occasion d’un simple changement de gouvernement.’ TD, iv, 23.
Bibliography
Artaud, Antonin, ‘Le Théâtre et son double’, in Œuvres Complètes d’Antonin Artaud, ed. by Paule Thévenin 26 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1956–; rev. edn. 1976–), iv (1964), 9–171
Artaud, Antonin, The Theater and Its Double, trans. by Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958)
Barish, Jonas A., The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981
Barroll, J. Leeds, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theatre: The Stuart Years (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)
Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron, trans. by G.H. McWilliam (London: Penguin Books, 1972)
Bradley, Leslie, ‘Some Medical Aspects of Plague’, in The Plague Reconsidered: A New Look at its Origins and Effects in 16th and 17th Century England (Matlock: Local Population Studies, 1977), pp. 13–15
Bradley, Richard, ed., The Plague at Marseilles consider’d: With Remarks upon the Plague in General, shewing its Cause and Nature of Infection, with necessary Precautions to prevent the spreading of that Direful Distemper: Publish’d for the Preservation of the People of Great Britain. Also some Observations taken from an Original Manuscript of a Graduate Physician, who resided in London during the whole Time of the late Plague, Anno 1665, 2nd edn (London: Printed for W. Mears at the Lamb without Temple-Bar, 1721)
Chicoyneau, Verney, and Souiller, A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles, Its Symptoms, and the Methods and Medicines used for Curing it. Drawn Up and presented to the Governor and Magistrates of Marseilles, by M. Chicoyneau, Verney and Souiller, the Physicians who were sent thither from Paris by the Duke Regent of France, to prescribe to the Sick in the Hospitals, and other Parts of that Town, during the Progress of that Calamity, ed. by Richard Bradley, translated from the French by a Physician (London: Printed for S. Buckley in Amen-Corner, and D. Midwinter at the Three Corners in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1721)
Dekker, Thomas, The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker, ed. by F.P. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925)
Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1996)
Finlay, Roger, and Beatrice Shearer, ‘Population Growth and Suburban Expansion’, in The Making of the Metropolis: London 1500–1700, ed. by A.L. Beier and Roger Finlay (London: Longman, 1986)
Girard, René, A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)
Girard, René, ‘The Plague in Literature and Myth’, in “To double business bound”: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology (London: Athlone Press, 1978), pp. 136–54
Greg, W.W., ed., Malone Society Collections, 15 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911–93), i (1911)
Greg, W.W., ed., The Remembrancia, in Malone Society Collections, 15 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911–93), i (1911), pp. 43–100
Grotowski, Jerzy, Towards a Poor Theatre, ed. by Eugenio Barba (Denmark: Odin Teatret Forlag, 1968; repr. New York: Routledge, 2002)
Harris, Jonathan Gil, Sick Economics: Drama, Mercantilism, and Disease in Shakespeare’s England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
Healy, Margaret, Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001)
James i, Basilicon Doron, Political Writings, ed. by Johann P. Sommerville, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Jonson, Ben, ‘On the Famous Voyage’, in Poems, ed. by Ian Donaldson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 77–84
Lodge, Thomas, A treatise of the plague containing the nature, signes, and accidents of the same, with the certaine and absolute cure of the feuers, botches and carbuncles that raigne in these times: and aboue all things most singular experiments and preseruatiues in the same, gathered by the obseruation of diuers worthy trauailers, and selected out of the writing of the best learned phisitians in this age. By Thomas Lodge, Doctor in Phisicke (London: Printed for Edward White and N. L., 1603)
Mead, Richard, A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be Used to Prevent it (London: Printed for Sam. Buckley in Amen-Corner, and Ralph Smith at the Royal-Exchange, 1720)
Mullett, Charles F., The Bubonic Plague and England: An Essay in the History of Preventive Medicine (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956)
Naphy, William, and Andrew Spicer, Plague: Black Death and Pestilence in Europe (first published as The Black Death, 2000; Stroud: Tempus, 2004)
Naphy, William, and Penny Roberts, eds, Fear in Early Modern Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997)
Nashe, Thomas, A Pleasant Comedie, called Summers Last Will and Testament, in The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. by Ronald B. McKerrow, 5 vols (London: Bullen, 1904–08; repr. Sidgewick & Jackson, 1960), iii (1960), 231–95
Neill, Michael, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
Nin, Anaïs, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–34, ed. by Günther Stühlmann, 7 vols (New York: Swallow Press, 1966–80), i (1966)
Shakespeare, William, The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
Shrewsbury, J.F.D., A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)
Singleton, Brian, Artaud: Le Théâtre et son double, Critical Guides to French Texts, 118 (London: Grant & Cutler, 1998)
Slack, Paul, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985)
Slack, Paul, and others, The Plague Reconsidered: A New Look at its Origins and Effects in 16th and 17th Century England (Matlock: Local Population Studies, 1977)
Stockwood, John, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse on Barthelmew Day, being the 24. Of August. 1578 (London: Imprinted by Henry Bynneman for George Byshop, 1578)
Thomson, Peter, Shakespeare’s Theatre (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983)
Thomson, Peter, and Jane Milling, eds, The Cambridge History of British Theatre: Volume i – Origins to 1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Twyning, John, London Dispossessed: Literature and Social Space in the Early Modern City (London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s, 1998)
Wilson, F.P., The Plague in Shakespeare’s London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927)
Wolford, Lisa, and Richard Schechner, eds, The Grotowski Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1997)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Di Ponio, A. (2018). Theatre and Plague: The Doubly Potent Spectacles of Early Modern Culture. In: The Early Modern Theatre of Cruelty and its Doubles. Avant-Gardes in Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92249-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92249-2_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92248-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92249-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)