The prompt

G1&2:
Tag one component of London Merchant which audience’s today have no taste for (in fact, wouldn’t put up with), and one component which persists in successful entertainments (plays, movies, television) now.

As I was reading the play, I had a feeling that there was something familiar about it. The component I am referring to is the character of Maria. Maria portrays the friend who is in love with the leading character. Audiences mostly see this in romantic comedies, where the best friend helps the lead, despite the fact that the person is in love with someone else. Throughout the play, I was wondering why she was helping Barnwell and why she insisted that her father not find out about Barnwell’s theft of the money (III.iii). My suspicion was confirmed when Trueman states, “Whatever you and I have felt and more, if more be possible, she feels for you…..You must remember, for we all observed it” (V.vii.14-18) If the play were a romantic comedy, this would probably be the moment Barnwell realizes that he loves her too. This formula works for romantic comedies because the underdog wins. The boy finally comes to his senses and the two characters live happily. Of course, there is no happily ever after. Since this is a tragedy, Maria’s role serves a different purpose.
I think that this same formulaic structure leads to what some audiences cannot put up with today. It seems as though Maria is only there to bring about even more feelings of remorse from Barnwell. Now, not only is he feeling guilty of stealing, lying, and murder, but Barnwell also believes that not realizing or recognizing her feelings of love is “the bitterness of death” (v. vii. 17). Moreover, he wants her to be happy, and that if she is not “her death [will] be added to [his] crimes” (v.x. 75-76). Some might say that this standard approach of unrequited love is cheesy, but what is worse (at least I think) is how Lillo continues to pile on Barnwell’s guilt. It is as if Lillo wanted to make sure his audience knew that Barnwell was in fact extremely remorseful, so he made Barnwell express feelings of guilt over and over again.

Works Cited:
Lillo, George. The London Merchant. Ed. William H. McBurney. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Print.

What we love to see:

“To hear you talk, though in the cause of vice, to gaze upon your beauty, press your hand, and see your snow-white bosom heave and fall, enflames my wishes. My pulse beats high. My senses all are in a hurry, and I am on the rack of wild desire. Yet, for a moment’s guilty pleasure, shall I lose my innocence, my peace of mind, and hopes of solid happiness?” (Lillo, 24: I.viii.14-20). Yes, Barnwell, yes! Of course you will lose your innocence. What else is it there for? Modern (American?)audiences love, almost more than anything, to see a high-minded and virtuous man compromise--especially when the compromises he makes result in a long fall downwards. And, oh, is this fall a long one. Barnwell, an 18-year-old Merchant’s apprentice who at first glance appears to be headed on the fast track to heaven by way of his deeply rooted Christian moral code, within a few short moments of meeting the older, sexy and much more experienced Milwood, (The Graduate?) not only bends but completely breaks any and all of the rules of engagement that this handsome and “well made stripling” had survived on in his rational life to this point. Within a few short hours, (passion works fast--i.e. Romeo and Juliet) this innocent young thing has sexed, stolen, and slaughtered. And it all starts here, in this moment (I.viii), when the game is just beginning--that the modern audience is completely enraptured. We love the seduction almost as much as the fall.



What we can’t tolerate:

TRUEMAN.
We have not yet embraced, and may be interrupted. Come to my arms!
BARNWELL.
Never, never will I taste such joys on earth; never will I so soothe my just remorse. Are those honest arms and faithful bosom fit to embrace and support a murderer? These iron fetters only shall clasp, and flinty pavements bear me. (Throwing himself on the ground.) Even these too good for such a bloody monster!

(Lillo, 72: V.v.29-36)

I can’t imagine a modern audience believing a word of this scene. When I read it, I laughed. This, surely, was not the intent of Lillo. It isn’t easy to encounter this level of sappiness from something that isn’t on some level satirizing. This moment is lost on us--due, mostly, to the fact that we can’t imagine a person to be so relieved and joyful with his accepted repentance. I think we would be able to handle this scene if Barnwell was losing his mind--but with the validation of Trueman here---short of some sordid love affair of their own, this would not work (with this intent) on a modern stage. We are too cynical and for the most part, not of a blind faith.

~D. Jester

You know your favorite movies, the ones that you can watch over and over again, and every time its on TV you feel compelled to drop whatever you’re doing so you can watch it despite the multiple commercial breaks? Well I am not ashamed to admit that mine is Pretty Woman. I love that Julia Roberts is a hooker and in the end she is not only reformed, but captures the heart of Richard Gere. In fact, upon further reflection, I have discovered that I am a fan of prostitutes. Mind you I don’t go around picking them up off streets corners, but in reviewing the movies that I have enjoyed over time, the list definitely includes Risky Business, with Rebecca De Morney, Milk Money with Melanie Griffith, and more recently Easy A, with Emma Stone, and Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz. What I feel that I like, which is what so many other viewers enjoy, is the redemption component in the ending. These fallen women are turned around, finding their morality which was originally lost. It’s the happy ending that the mass public loves.

However, Lillo’s The London Merchant lacks this. I read and read, hoping for Millwood’s moment of clarity, her shining morality to be exposed beneath her hardened veneer. But alas it never happened. The beginning is enjoyable when she is plotting against the innocent and naïve Barnwell. She states in Act 1, scene iii, when speaking to Lucy, “therefore we can take advantage only of the young and innocent part of the sex, who, having never injured women, apprehend no injury from them.” She confounds Barnwell, exposing him to something he has no knowledge of. And he is no match for her. She keeps him in a whirl for the entire drama. And yet the moment that I was waiting for, her moment of contrition, never came. In the final act, Act V, scene I, Blunt recounts his last meeting with Millwood saying that she, “when called upon to answer, loudly insisted upon her innocence, and made an artful and a bold defense; but, finding all in vain, the impartial jury and the learned bench concurring to find her guilty, how did she curse herself, poor Barnwell. Us, her judges, all mankind! But what could that avail? She was condemned, and is this day to suffer with him.” This particular dialogue reveals that Millwood’s character makes no change from the beginning to the end. The woman is condemned because of her lost sense of morality which she isn’t able to regain, therefore making her disagreeable to modern audiences, unlike Julia, Rebecca, Melanie, Emma, and Cameron.

I struggled to identify a single component of The London Merchant that modern audiences might reject. In fact, I found myself straining to finish the play, as I reacted, perhaps a bit violently, to the shameless moralizing of the characters, endless invoking of Macbeth, and unbelievable equivocating of Barnwell. I found this last aspect of the play most frustrating, and I must therefore conclude that like-minded modern theatergoers would react to Barnwell’s endless oscillating with comparable disdain. While Lillo invokes the figure of Macbeth with great frequency—one need only examine Barnwell’s soliloquy in III.v to track the parallels—gone are the nuances of morality and subtle characterization that make Shakespeare’s tragic hero equally fascinating and abhorrent. Instead, Barnwell’s transgressions inspire pathetic self-loathing mediated by two incompatible concerns—his fear of damnation and his inability to expunge fully his sinful desires. Immediately after he renounces his desires for Millwood—“I give her up! The struggle’s over and virtue has prevailed” (Lillo II.vii.3-4)—he steals from Thorowgood for her, upon which he cries, “What have I done!” (Lillo II.xiv.1). While Macbeth’s equivocations famously plague him, ultimately resulting in his downfall, Barnwell seems unable to find any moral grounding on which to stand.

The characters I find most intriguing and that I think would resonate most with a modern audience are Lucy and Blunt. Their role as servants provides them with a unique perspective on Millwood’s manipulations, and I find their ability to transcend the corruption of their mistress fascinating. Given the makeup of the audience in 1731, it is not surprising that Lillo portrays the two outsiders as the most insightful, astute, and morally superior of all the characters. One of the strongest truths of the play comes from Lucy, who observes the following of Barnwell and Millwood:


Here, Lillo endears himself to the members of his audience, who identify through shared class status with Lucy and Blunt. In the modern era, we, too, feel validated when the heroes of film and stage are “everymen,” whether they impart great wisdom or exhibit great courage. After all, nobody wants to be Superman; we all want to be Spiderman.



Work Cited:
Lillo, George. The London Merchant. Ed. William H. McBurney. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Print.

One element of The London Merchant that audiences of today would not stand for is its clunky manipulation of time, through both plot and pacing. With dizzying speed, Barnwell falls into the fell clutch of Millwood. We don’t lay eyes on Barnwell until well after we have met all the other players (master, friend, admirer)and overheard his character diagnosed as “young, innocent and bashful” by the wicked Millwood to Lucy. So when he appears at Millwood’s house, befuddled and confused but clearly “Good“ and in almost a blink agrees to “lose my innocence, my peace of mind, and hopes of solid happiness” by stealing from his Master for Millwood, it is hard to swallow. We’ve just met him and he is already lost! That any audience would buy his faint protests as a genuine expression of conscience is difficult to believe. Perhaps because most original audiences would have known the ballad on which Lillo based the play, Barnwell is already in the scenes, anticipated, like the story of Oedipus was for the Greeks. But a modern audience does not have that background story, therefore we do not believe his quick fall into sin.

On the "boy, this really drags" end, the length of many of the character’s lines slows pacing of scenes to a crawl. Thorowgood is particularly windy with pages of eight, ten or more lines of dialogue at a time. In addition, the unevenness of the language itself creates pacing issues. Some lines reword Shakespeare. When Millwood says “When on my eyes you gazed with such delight, as if desire increased by being fed”, Lillo steals from Hamlet, “She would hang on him/as if increase of appetite had grown/by what it fed on.” Other speeches are pumped full of blowsy prose, as when Thorowgood laments:

When we consider the frail condition of humanity it may raise our pity, not our wonder, that youth should go astray when reason, weak at the best when opposed to inclination, scarce formed and wholly unassisted by experience, faintly contends or willingly becomes the slave of sense.

This linguistic schism is named by Pope who identifies “a few places, where he had unawares led himself into a poetical luxuriancy, affecting to be too elevated for the simplicity of the subject.” Amen, brother. The bumpy terrain of this language would challenge the best modern performers and have audiences checking their watches.

I think what contemporary audiences would “get” is the very modern moment when Trueman lies down with Barnwell in the prison. It is the most unusual action in the play, and clearly demonstrates his love for his friend without sermonizing. It is one moment that shows and doesn’t tell.

Maria. Act III, scene ii.

'How forcible is truth! The weakest mind, inspired with love of that, fixed and collected in itsel, with indifferene beholds the united force of earth and Hell opposing. Such souls are raised above the sense of pain or so supported that they regard it not. The martyr cheaply purchases his Heaven...'

Really Maria? Really? You have this on your own virtuous, sanctimonious, goody two shoes good faith? Or you spoke to Joan of Arc herself about it?

Barf. That's what Maria makes me do. She's too sweet. She's too generous. And she makes me want to embrace Millwood by the end of the story for at least being somewhat multi-dimensional. Maria is, to me, the greatest example of why this play doesn't last. None of these characters are anything below the surface, even Millwood. They serve the purpose of allegory, a one-dimensional cautionary tale at best. Yawn.

Give me a heroine that doesn't simper. Or at least a hero who doesn't. Geez.

In the Beggar’s Opera, I was fascinated by the opening of the play, something that was not quite prologue but also not not a prologue, a ploy that worked perfectly with what Gay accomplished structurally. In the dedication to Lillo’s play, there is considerable attention paid to the author’s perceived reaction to the play and there manifests something approaching an apology for slightly altering traditional approach to tragedy. This serves as a method of involving the audience more intimately in the plot structure and also places power in their hands. As we have seen in both the introduction to Shakespeare’s Henry V and Beggar’s Opera, the playwright places his faith in the audience’s appreciation of the art unfolding in front of them.

In terms of a broad connection to contemporary culture, that faith seems absent from many current entertainment mediums. Although this may be somewhat tangential, trailers for movies have become abbreviated versions of the movies, displaying key moments from the end of the film. I recently saw an advertisement for “The Fighter” that showed snippets of the entire plot structure, including the key moment of reconciliation to which the film builds throughout. Television shows preview what will come later as they go to commercial, seemingly terrified that if they don’t show a dramatic moment, they will lose the interest of their viewers. If I think I want to watch a movie for which I see a trailer, I close my eyes and ears. I also dive for the remote so I don’t see the “teaser” for the following week at the end of a show, as they will most likely deliver key information that takes away from the entertainment.

Lillo’s dedication also makes the case for considering tragedy as something that impacts more than the great men and women:
“If princes, &c., were alone liable to misfortunes arising from vice or weakness in themselves or others, there would be good reason for confining the characters in tragedy to those of superior rank; but since the contrary is evident, nothing can be more reasonable than to proportion the remedy to the disease.”
The concept here approaches Arthur Miller’s “Tragedy and the Common Man,” in which he makes the case that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings.”