The homoerotics of mastery

In the early years of the seventeenth century, playwrights were fond of constructing satiric plots in which a clever “wit” schemed to establish mastery over a foolish “ass.” The mastery takes various forms – financial, erotic, social, or intellectual dominance – but the “wit” typically possesses what Theodore Leinwand describes as a glamorous self-confidence based on his high social status and ability to employ “exemplary ingenuity” against fools and gulls. Obviously, the “wit” is named for the intellectual power that equips him to control himself and master others. Yet what remains to be explored is why the satiric wittiness that exposes the folly of the “ass” so frequently focuses on the ass – an overdetermined part of the body in which sexual, sadistic, and scatological activities converge.

Anality becomes the vehicle for satire in a surprising number of comedies. In Satiromastix (1602) Dekker scorns a rival playwright by having Asinus call Horace (that is, Jonson) a “ningle.” The anal economy of Dekker's play demotes Pithias, Damon's noble friend of legend, to “Pithyasse” (1.2.332). Jonson himself frequently uses anality as a mode of abuse and humiliation. In The Case is Altered (1598) Juniper brands Valentine his “Ingle,” while miserly Jaques buries his gold under horse dung. The Alchemist (1610) is a persistently anal play. “I fart at thee” (1.1.1), Subtle's opening scoff at Face, is only the first of many instances in which a character asserts dominance by evoking the lower body. Kastril likewise threatens Dame Pliant – “Asse, my suster, / Goe kusse him … / I'll thrust a pinne i' your buttocks else” (44.73–75) – and Dapper nearly suffocates in a privy.