Performing Mock Encomia in Elizabethan and Jacobean Plays

This essay analyses the paradoxical praises which are staged in a number of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, including Thomas Dekker’s Fortunatus (1600) and Satiromastix (1602), George Chapman’s All Fools (1604), and John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (c. 1604-5). Such mock encomia have often been regarded as rhetorical pieces detached from the dramatic action, mere homages to the early modern enthusiasm for paradoxes. On the contrary, this essay demonstrates that they are fully integrated into the dramatic action and that they perform a number of different functions, from creating a metaperformative moment to making the audience reconsider their own values; from better delineating the speaker’s character to setting the tone and background of a scene within the dramatic structure.