Still reading the Lowe. A couple of points stood out in my reading today. The first, is his discussion of how satire was the way a changing set of values was negotiated in the town. (Negotiated? Maybe created--satire marked a certain set of activities as off-limits or beyond the pale, informed others, described people's activities as motivated in a particular way, and so on.)
I want to think about how this relates to Marston, who is similarly denoting a range of activities that are acceptable--are values up for grabs in this period, too. I get that there's an economic crunch, as the Universities turn out too many people who are not in position to have court positions, but I'm not sure I buy the malecontented stance quite as much as I might should. But, then, I guess it is only writers, rather than other people who are writing satires--still the effort to get other people to write in the way you think is appropriate is interesting.
The figure of Ben Jonson in the satire might be something worth thinking about--and in the satirical play, of course. Another type of satire, Love attributes to arising out of the Elizabethan drama--the satire in which you attribute extreme villainy to a rival of some sort and then narrate his instructions he ties to some lines stolen out of Selimus and attributed to (I believe) Sir Walter Raleigh. The locus classicus, he claims, is the speech of the ghost of Sulla in /Sejanus/--I'll have to look at that passage again. I don't really believe that it's as original as all that. Although, I guess, if the /writers/ are going back to Jonson in particular, it doesn't really matter who Jonson had gone back to. But curiosity makes me wonder.
Over and over again I realize how much I don't know that I need to know before I can do credible scholarship. There's just an /immense/ amount of background that I need to read through--not only on the Civil War, but also even on Elizabeth's reign I'm not nearly familiar enough with either the historiography or the day-to-day changes. I know a few facts about the 1590's, but I don't have a really strong sense of what it is that happens. I don't need to, yet, but it'd still be useful. Particularly if I want to write on "minor" poems. Ahistorical Shakespeare analysis is one thing--frowned upon by some, but allowed. Ahistorical Barnfield scholarship just can't get away with quite as much, if just because fewer people care about Barnfield outside of his role as someone around during the time of Shakespeare.
New Historicists: people who care about Shakespeare in his role as someone around during the lifetime of Shakespeare.
I forgot to look at the clock, so I'm probably writing for too many minutes, but that's probably a good thing. As long as I can keep sentences coming out when I need them.
At some point, I need to develop a reading plan. Switching back and forth among sonnet, satire, and ballad risks leaving me knowing nothing, I'm afraid. Which is fine short-term, but not a great strategy long-term. Maybe I should commit myself to two book clusters--I'll read two books about satire before switching genres and so on. Except, of course, when I'm digging for particular information--like the cost of a ballad.
One more thought--I'm beginning to think of genre in a couple of different ways--each genre arises at a certain moment in time (and changes in time)--1590's sonnets are different from 1580's and 1600's sonnets; sonnets give way to satire, mostly, in the mid-1590's--and transhistorical--what does satire ALWAYS do.
This is worth continuing to think about.
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