Abstract

  김영아  도시희극 속의 탕아들: "어떻게 저를 모르실 수가 2부"와 "동쪽으로" 169 ~ 193   Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Volume 25 No. 2 (2017)
        [Kim Yeung Ah  Prodigals in Jacobean City Comedy: If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody Part II and Eastward Ho

The story of the prodigal son is one of the most popular comic plots on the English Renaissance stage, appearing as the main or subplot in almost forty plays. Though interpretations of the prodigal parable are common throughout the medieval period, they win popularity in the early modern period, widely adapted and circulated in verbal as well as in visual forms. In evaluating the cultural significance of this literary trend, recent critics have focused on exploring the economic contours of the prodigal story, especially in Jacobean city comedies. As O’Conner says, prodigals in Jacobean city comedies are the sons of London tradesmen and merchants, mostly apprentices, not the Elizabethan gentlemen prodigals. While the Elizabethan prodigals waste their good humanist education in literary activities, the Jacobean prodigals waste the wherewithal of their father’s or their master’s in economically fruitless activities such as drinking, gambling, whoring or risk-taking adventuring. Thus, prodigality becomes a significant tool in defining and judging the economic worth of young men in the city, and prodigal stories in Jacobean city comedies reflect Londoners’ pervasive worry about maintaining financial security which is accompanied and heightened by the vast expansion of credit relations in 16th and 17th century English society. The prodigal plot is conservatory in its social implication, in that it assumes the revolting son should return to what he originally rejects, and it is utilized to teach thrift as a way of surviving in the insecure market. However, city comedies “on the present day” disrupt and transform the narrative and its ruptures and variations show the commercial change and its attendant cultural change of economic values. This paper aims to examine how variations of the prodigal plot in city comedies reflect these changes and make them intelligible by reading two popular city comedies, Thomas Heywood’ If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody Part II and Eastward Ho, co-authored by Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman.

Keywords

탕아, 도시희극, 상인상, 런던, 근검절약, 위험감수, "어떻게 저를 모르실 수가 2부", "동쪽으로"
Prodigals, City Comedy, London, Merchants, Thrift, Hazard, If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody Part II, Eastward Ho.