The Power of Fantasy in Middleton's Chaste Maid: A Cost/Benefit Analysis

Summary

TO Penshurst” so perfectly portrays Karl Marx's description of the landed economy that one is tempted to remark how very well-versed Ben Jonson was in his Marx. In his poem, Jonson addresses the estate itself as the instrument of production and praises its bounty. The human community is shown to be continuous with and dependent upon the natural realm that hosts it. In just one example, Jonson exclaims that the copse on the estate, “never fails to serve thee seasoned deer / When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends.” These friends of Penshurst, although arranged hierarchically, from farmer and clown up to lord and lady, are bound together in their shared life on the estate. While there is work in this economic structure, there is no labor—that is to say, there is no work in exchange for money. Jonson's description of fat fishes rendering themselves up to the fisherman and children plucking fruit are among the notable examples of a paradisal portrayal of a money-free economy. In contrast to a monied economy, life on the estate and labor on the estate are not separate but are one and the same, thus forming an idealized feudal system that is portrayed as authorized by nature itself.

But Thomas Middleton has also read his Marx, and in the city comedy, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, he undertakes to redefine the feudal landed economy, embodied in the figure of Sir Walter Whorehound, as a function of the commodified economy.