Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton's City Comedies by Herbert Jack Heller (review)

Abstract

176 Reviews ignores the romantic mutuality of her relationship to Touchwood Junior. Neverthe? less, Martin's wide-ranging study is a provocative reconsideration of City Comedy, and although his heavy use of academic jargon is sometimes irritating,his arguments will invite serious engagement even from readers sceptical of his conclusions. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign W. David Kay Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton's City Come? dies. By Herbert Jack Heller. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2000. 223 pp. ?30; $43.50. ISBN o87413 -701-2. This book fills a gap in the criticism of Middleton's city comedies by indicating the religious context of their outwardly secular concerns, offeringto correct critics' representations of Middleton as a poet of material and materialist life. Heller replaces materialist literalism with a rather precarious literalism of a theological kind. Foregroundingthe diagnosisof authorial belief, he argues that Middleton was an orthodox Calvinist. He rightlysees Middleton's espousal of theatre and theatricalityas a central issue for his dramatization of theological themes, and a determining influence on his provisional tolerance towards sins of the theatre. To substantiate Middleton's Calvinism, Heller turns to his biblical commentary The Two Gates of Salvation (1607). He nowhere reinforces or qualifies his case by making reference to Middleton's firstpublished work, The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased (1597), a poem that is at once intense, brooding, and obsessive ifnot manic in its Calvinist inflections. Perhaps these qualities do not serve Heller's argument, for he is a rational writer who urges that Middleton's religion is also rational. Chapter 2 suggests that Middleton's comedies 'usually have some moment when a character receives grace' (p. 33). This notably contradicts the usual readings of Mid? dleton, in which his comedies, in particular, are seen as aggressively secular. Heller argues for 'a binary conception of comedy as divinely and worldly' (p. 41). This inevitably privileges the divine perspective that provides the larger and defining picture. Given the secularity ofthe immediate context and the filterof Middleton's ironic lan? guage, how do we recognize divine grace ifand when it is presented to us ?Heller offers one 'paradigmatic' answer (p. 47) from A Mad World, My Masters, in which Penitent Brothel's name symptomatically changes after he reforms, it is argued, to 'Once-Ill', the name that appears in the stage directions opening iv. 1 and iv. 4. The paradigm, however, is problematic, as 'Once-Ill' does not appear in dialogue. Moreover, it has doubtful relevance to all the characters who do not change their name: the case is unique, and, if allowed, speaks of the ambiguity of all others. Heller's identification of a Calvinist sensibility seems right, but Middleton's antithetical commitment to embracing a materialist world produces a relativistic overall effectthat might better be described as post-Calvinist. Middleton's plays describe worlds in which religious belief often functions as a localized, transitory,and unstable ideology. A second sign of grace is explored in the chapter on 'Marrying the Whore'. If indeed marriage is a sign of salvatory grace, can one still infer grace from the Middletonian trope of marrying a whore? To answer this question affirmatively,Heller adduces the example ofthe prophet Hosea, who acted similarly on the instruction of God. But it is not straightforward to apply this model to cases such as the miserly usurer Hoard's marriage to the witty and relatively moral Courtesan at the end of Trick to Catch theOld One. The characterization of both figures would seem crucially to disable a typological reading that relies wholly on implied similarity. Heller's final chapter seeks to demonstrate that Middleton's attitude to sodomy is MLRy 98.1, 2003 177 tolerant?tolerant, that is, by the standards of his day rather than ours. That Middleton propounds a theological view of sodomy is not obvious. Heller's difficultand challengeable project requires that he is able to identifyparticular characters who have committed the act, and to determine their spiritual destiny. Sodomy as an act could not be presented on the stage, and could be mentioned only elliptically. Middleton insinuates without necessary commitment to narrative specificity,daring the auditor to...