"The Mouth of 'hem All": Ben Jonson, Authorship, and the Performing Object
Scott Cutler Shershow
Many recent theorists and scholars have explored how the concept of authorship a system for transmission literary authority was constructed in early modern England.' Ben Jonson is commonly considered central figure this complex cultural development: poet who, as David Riggs puts it his biography, waged an extraordinary campaign to secure authorial prerogatives.2 Scholars also described detail how, related process, London stage at end sixteenth century adapted transformed whole spectrum earlier dramatic forms.3 Indeed, construction had particular urgency theatre, mode culture whose emergence from these popular roots went hand with relentless process self-definition. In essay, I will focus on form performance largely neglected by scholarship period: puppet or performing object. argue that contemporaries appropriated puppet-as metaphor, metadramatic device, marker subordination-in formulating their particular, culturally conditioned model theatrical authorship.
Theatre Journal