Friday, March 27, 2009

You Are What You Eat

In Act II, Jonson finally introduces us to Ursla, the infamous pig seller as she cries, "Quickly, a bottle of ale to quench me, rascal.  I am all fire and all fat, Nightengale; I shall e'en melt away to the first woman, a rib again, I am afraid.  I do water the ground in knots as I go, like a great garden-pot; you may follow me by the S's I make." (Act II, scene ii, lines 49-53).  This line conjures the image of a great woman, sweating profusely as she ambles about her stand.  However, though literally, the line says that we can follow the marks left on the dirt by herdrops of sweat, the footnote tells us that the "S's" she makes on the ground is a joke that implicates those S's are her own urine.  Indeed, "S's" calls to mind the sound in the word "pissing" as well as the sound urine makes.  Here we have a woman who is not only drenched in her own sweat (sweating like a pig, in fact), but waddling around in her own filth.  Very pig-like, no?  Not even a minute into her first appearance on-stage, Ursla unwittingly admits that she herself has become the very thing she sells and eats: an overweight, dirty, gluttonous swine.  Even the comment that she will melt away to "the first woman, a rib again" can implicate her piggishness... pork ribs are quite a tasty treat!  Ursla seems to have conquered the famous adage, "you are what you eat."  The question is, since many of the characters in the play, including the Puritans set out to the fair to eat Ursla's pigs, are they what they eat, too?  Might Jonson be suggesting we are all gluttonous pigs?

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