Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Secrets of the Selden Map
Ever inventive, endlessly ambitious and always short of cash, Ben Jonson rose to
the pinnacle of public fame by abandoning serious writing for the seduction of
spectacle. James I and his court paid handsomely for his masques, and in 1620 he
dutifully churned out yet another Cirque-du-Soleil extravaganza. The plot of
News
from the New World Discovered in the Moon
is meagre, little more than an excuse
to amuse his self-regarding king with a lot of dancing and singing. Still, there had
to be a story to pique the court's interest, so Jonson has two heralds come out on
stage early in the show to announce that - surprise! - moon people are about to
arrive in England.
Displaying strange people from abroad gave Jonson a choice. He could fashion
them into figures exotically strange, even barbarous, for which the Americas sup-
plied examples for his art. Or he could make them like his audience, civilised,
though perhaps touched with the mildest difference. Chinese, for example: they
were civilised. The dancers in the masque being from the moon, Jonson could do
anything he wanted. He chose to make them civilised. The heralds proclaim that
the moon has been 'new found to be an earth inhabited, with navigable seas and
rivers,varietyofnations,policies,laws';inotherwords,justlikeEurope-'butdif-
fering from ours', they add. Difference is important, or rather its degree. Entirely
the same, and the company of moon dancers about to appear would have nothing
exotic about them. A little difference was essential to create a bit of excitement on
stage; at least their costumes should be outlandish, perhaps their language gibber-
ish. Utterly different, though, and the moon people would have to act out the threat
theaudienceperceivedinthem,producingaverydifferenttheatricalmood:abattle
rather than a comedy.
Eight years earlier, in 1612, William Shakespeare handled the dynamic of in-
tercultural encounter differently when he staged
The Tempest
at court. Instead of
civilised moon people coming to civilised England, civilised Europeans arrive on
asavage island. 'Uninhabitable, andalmost inaccessible' is howoneofthe charac-
ters describes what he sees around him. This is a land utterly without the 'nations,
policies, laws' that Jonson imputed to the moon. The island's sole native inhabit-
ant is Caliban, 'a freckled whelp hag-born - not honour'd with a human shape'.
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