도시 희극에 대한 소고(小考): 런던, 음모, 그리고 경계 (A Survey on City Comedy: London, Intrigue, and the Blurring of the Boundaries)

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초록

City comedy, a dominant subgenre on the 1600s and 1610s’ London stage, distinguishes itself from its precedent history and adventure plays or Shakespeare’s comedies of the 1590s by foregrounding London’s specific streets and buildings as well as casting as its main characters London citizens, their wives, and prostitutes, who had hardly been given their distinct voices in the English literary scene before. At the turn of the 17th century, London was in the middle of remarkable expansion fueled by immigrants from the hinterland nationwide, converted from a remote, self-contained and small city on the border of Europe into a metropolis as a center of trade, commerce and banking in the world. London grew not only as an axis of production and trade but as a hub of consumption by attracting the landed gentry from the countryside as consumers. The drastic change of early modern England overwhelmed Londoners with anxiety and fear over how to embrace their changing world and digest new experiences. City comedy is a cultural effort of early modern English people to negotiate their places in a transfigured society.
In city comedies, the London merchants and gentry are pitted against each other, largely around the economic conflict between them. As a result, the plot of city comedy unfolds around intrigue and strategies to exploit each other in sexual or economic relations in which one is either predator or victim. Both types are equally represented with irony. In the city environment, gentlemen are usually in serious economic troubles and are often forced to resort to usury provided by merchants. However, they use their sexual prowess to retaliate against citizens by luring citizens’ wives. On the other hand, merchants are farcically represented as greedy, snobbish and sexually impotent despite their economic accomplishment. In the process, various types of women in the city are involved actively or passively in the battle. They tend to be an easy target of denunciation over their inclination to consumption, which is too readily considered equivalent to their sexual licentiousness. This was a typical instance of early modern Londoners’ tackling their overall anxiety by resorting to the familiar trope of controlling women’s bodies. At the denouement of city comedies, even if the intrigue has been resolved, life just goes on without any achievement of the unity which would be expected at the end by the audiences familiar with Shakespeare’s comedies.

영어초록

City comedy, a dominant subgenre on the 1600s and 1610s’ London stage, distinguishes itself from its precedent history and adventure plays or Shakespeare’s comedies of the 1590s by foregrounding London’s specific streets and buildings as well as casting as its main characters London citizens, their wives, and prostitutes, who had hardly been given their distinct voices in the English literary scene before. At the turn of the 17th century, London was in the middle of remarkable expansion fueled by immigrants from the hinterland nationwide, converted from a remote, self-contained and small city on the border of Europe into a metropolis as a center of trade, commerce and banking in the world. London grew not only as an axis of production and trade but as a hub of consumption by attracting the landed gentry from the countryside as consumers. The drastic change of early modern England overwhelmed Londoners with anxiety and fear over how to embrace their changing world and digest new experiences. City comedy is a cultural effort of early modern English people to negotiate their places in a transfigured society.
In city comedies, the London merchants and gentry are pitted against each other, largely around the economic conflict between them. As a result, the plot of city comedy unfolds around intrigue and strategies to exploit each other in sexual or economic relations in which one is either predator or victim. Both types are equally represented with irony. In the city environment, gentlemen are usually in serious economic troubles and are often forced to resort to usury provided by merchants. However, they use their sexual prowess to retaliate against citizens by luring citizens’ wives. On the other hand, merchants are farcically represented as greedy, snobbish and sexually impotent despite their economic accomplishment. In the process, various types of women in the city are involved actively or passively in the battle. They tend to be an easy target of denunciation over their inclination to consumption, which is too readily considered equivalent to their sexual licentiousness. This was a typical instance of early modern Londoners’ tackling their overall anxiety by resorting to the familiar trope of controlling women’s bodies. At the denouement of city comedies, even if the intrigue has been resolved, life just goes on without any achievement of the unity which would be expected at the end by the audiences familiar with Shakespeare’s comedies.

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