Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England by Rebecca Lemon

Abstract

Reviewed by: Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England by Rebecca Lemon Alani Hicks-Bartlett Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England. By Rebecca Lemon. (Haney Foundation Series). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. pp. 280. $65.00 cloth. Rebecca Lemon's Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England offers a masterful study of a crucial area of early modern studies often neglected or misunderstood: the frequent portrayal of and preoccupation with "addictive states" in early modern drama. Lemon begins by directly addressing this critical neglect, which has inaccurately established the contours of most extant scholarship on the topic, and highlights two key concerns. The first is the misapplication of modern pathologized understandings of addiction to the early modern period, which is partly borne out of the misprision that addiction is an exclusively modern concept. The second is the terminological capaciousness of "addiction." Given the proliferation of historical documents, literary representations, and scholarly work on "the compulsive nature of addicted drinking" (x), the substance of predilection around which Lemon centers her argument is alcohol. As [End Page 178] Lemon explains in her preface and introduction, when taken more broadly (and thus, more accurately), addiction, as both vice and virtue, also encompasses other early modern forms of addiction informed by vows, pledges, and devotional and amorous bonds (1). A particularly useful aspect of the book is the attention Lemon gives to terminology and syntax, which furthers previous scholarship on the language of bondage and oaths by considering how addiction, disease, and inspiration are implicated in the relinquishing of self. Lemon's analysis of the etymological, semantic, and conceptual scope of addiction focuses particularly on the relationship of addiction and devotion, as evidenced by dramatic characters' commitment to study, love, fellowship, and God. Lemon also shows how early modern conceptualizations of addiction were relevant to stagecraft. Like the "doubleness of the addict," the "doubleness" required of actors troubled the divide between, on the one hand, inspiration, devotion, and transformation and, on the other, commitment, subjugation, and disease (xiii). Reading the space of the theatre as a "site of addiction" itself (ix, xiii), Lemon understands both the audience's captivation and the actors' commitment to roles as fully bound up in the oppositional dance between self-sovereignty and self-enmeshment that the addictive qualities of performance facilitate. The book consists of five chapters, each underscoring the varied nature of addiction and its repetitive, object-oriented fixations. Chapter 1, "Scholarly Addiction in Doctor Faustus," uses classical literary and theological discussions of addiction as beneficial frameworks for Renaissance understandings of addiction as commitment, dedication, and application, particularly in regard to study. Lemon proposes that readers reconsider the problematic of election versus determinism that the play stages. Rather than adhering to Calvinist interpretations of addiction as a force that wholly subjugates believers, for example, Marlowe's portrayal of his protagonist's "scholastic devotion," inconstancy, and ultimate failure, exposes the difficulties of consecration, suggesting that Faustus grapples not so much with the exercise of free will but with the management of commitment. A trio of chapters centered on Shakespeare follows. Focusing on secular love, chapter 2, "Addicted Love in Twelfth Night," probes the distance between appetitive and humoral desire, which inform the desire to drink, and "the vulnerability and release of devotion" (51). While drunkenness might seem to be the "more obviously addictive practice in the play" (20), it develops alongside addictive love, which causes a similar loss of self in an external, intoxicating object. Offering an insightful aperçu of the melancholic Petrarchan lover, this chapter reframes the play's final couplings around "addictive love," which again [End Page 179] aligns addiction to devotion through the necessary shattering and relinquishment of the enamored self to another. Chapter 3, "Addicted Fellowship in Henry IV" foregrounds Falstaff's problems with attachment, considered both in the sense of his addiction to drink and his ultimately damaging addiction to companionship. Falstaff's commitment to addictive practices exposes his relational existence: despite his various transformations throughout the play, rather than possessing the rigid self-containment and self-possession demonstrated by the play's regents, he is fully addicted to fellowship, always seeking to forge relationships through friendship or drink. Although the...