The Justice of the Peace and the Puppet: Representations of Order and Chaos in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair

For centuries, Bartholomew Fair was an occasion for trade, entertainment and the mingling of London society. Similarly, Jonson’s comedy depicts life at the fair and its fluctuation between the Pie-powder law and that of the streets. Its stalls and shows provided the opportunity for fates to change and chances to be seized by representing a liminal space where authority is questioned and intricate misunderstandings are entwined and unknotted.
In the “Induction on the stage”, where the Stage-keeper’s well intending yet naïve judgement is discredited by the Book-holder’s contract, the spirit of subversion has already taken hold. From then on, the play shows members of the gentry being drawn into the fair’s “profane” yet fascinating atmosphere and Justice Overdo disguising himself in order to penetrate its hidden plots and publicly address its “enormities”.
The Fair however possesses a subverting quality by which social classes are equalized: the powerful are ridiculed, the unlawful are crafty and the mad are sought out and praised until the final act, where a puppet show becomes a court-like dispute and a stage for the law’s “show” of self-affirmation and undermining.