Renaissance Self-Fashioning: ''Epicoene'' by Ben Jonson

We [may] know what we are, but know not what we may be (Shakespeare)

I have analyzed the way Jonson created “Epicoene” as a highlighted example of the doubleness of each human being while mirroring the Jacobean society which he himself was part of. In that society of increasing complexity and social fluidity this play is a plain evidence of the new emerging consciousness of the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable artful process in Renaissance England.
This chapter analyzes Ben Jonson’s satirical Renaissance legacy and his modernity both as a man and playwright by beginning with reflections about his personal attitude towards life which is mirrored in his works. Then, I briefly discuss how the Protestant identities resulted from the Reformation developed in the New World and how the American dream of freedom and the sense of class distinction within English society still survives today.
Jonson fashioned his characters as stereotypical people of London who are paraded as performances. Their social selves are exposed by the author as constructions while highlighting different levels of skills they needed to master at the game of good manners from excess to incompetence. More significantly, he presents the external fragmentation of his society as a result of the discrepancies of every character’s inner being through the display of appearances which are as deceptive as the truth itself and the opposition of normal and deviated behavior which is seen as questionable. This aspect of reality is not just a problem of social disease, i.e. a pathology, which has been pointed out by contemporary ethnographers as a distinctive factor of “Englishness” even today. Rather, these discrepancies are stressed by Jonson as the result of each individual’s integrity and this is Jonson’s moral message.
Even though the play claims to be a comedy, it actually inverts all the traditionally accepted features of the romantic comedies of the time such as a happy ending and it is also filled with deep philosophical questions. The apparent comical superficiality of the plot is only devised to superficially please people and it is compromised by the unusual, puzzling ending and the seriousness of the arguments it presents.
This is a point bound up with Jonson’s personality and the choices he made which are worth exploring to better appreciate the unexpected, surprising modernity of this complex Renaissance writer and to highlight the unpredictable consequences on individuals and society of the changes which happened at that time. [...]