Folly’s Family, Folly’s Children (La famille, les enfants de la Folie)
Fourteenth Round Table on Tudor Theatre
Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université de Tours
3-4 September, 2015

Following the two preceding Round Tables on Tudor Theatre, which concerned different aspects of folly (including madness) on stage (“Folly and Politics” [September 2011], “The Discourses of Folly” [September 2013]), it is planned to conclude the programmed series of three thematically linked conferences with a study of the associations and (af)filiations of pertinent characters or aspects of the motif itself.

In certain fifteenth-century English moralities, one finds, in the staging of allegorical forms of evil (devils, sins, vices, figures of temptation) groups of figures, more or less hierarchised and more or less suggestive of lineage or family. This is the case, for instance, in The Castle of Perseverance, where the Seven Deadly Sins are grouped according to the three traditional enemies of man (the World, the Flesh and the Devil). In a superficially lighter vein, but still with deadly serious spiritual implications, the character of Mischief in Mankind takes on a quasi-paternal role as head of the band of vices, while behind him looms the very principle of evil in the form of Titivillus.

To the extent that evil in such moralities is regularly characterised as at once comic and non-sensical – contrary to divine reason – there is an obvious link, however variable and tenuous, between such elements and the discourses and behaviours associated with folly in the Tudor and Stuart theatres. That point has often been developed. But it is apparent, as well, that later stagings of folly often likewise foreground groups and affiliations. In the Tudor interludes, the Vice-function is frequently multiplied or seconded (as also in Lyndsay’s Satyre). In the later drama, folly may frankly advertise its different forms and expressions (witness Jaques’ catalogue of different types of melancholy in As You Like It), while the relations among characters who exemplify it may become an instrument of signification in itself. One thinks of the relation implied in many tragedies between the folly of various evil-doers and that of those characters who seek to avenge themselves. In the comedies, too, folly is often plural. Shakespeare shows different sorts of fools (including jesters) together; Ben Jonson gathers incarnations of various “humours”, or indeed juxtaposes exploiters and victims of folly according to an organisation quasi-familial (Volpone, The Alchemist).

This fourteenth Round Table proposes to analyse the associations or groupings which develop around folly in the English theatre from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. The broad objective is to sketch out a chronological typology of the phenomenon which will shed light not only on dramaturgical practices but also on larger questions of genre, culture and ideology.

Proposals (200 words) for thirty-minute papers in English should be directed to Richard Hillman (rhillman@sfr.fr) by 15 September 2014.