Character as Meme

abstract:This essay considers Eastward Ho, the 1605 collaboration between George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston, to explore how the play, and early modern city comedy more broadly, produces dramatic character at the scale of the phrase. Drawing upon meme theory, which tracks cultural replication and transmission, the essay argues that dramatic character operates as a vehicle through which the play sets loose familiar, often proverbial, expressions. Touchstone's signature phrase "work upon that now" coordinates repetition across verbal and visual registers, a concept of character that challenges critics to value familiar, expected, and conventional speech as a site of innovation. Eastward Ho models the theater as recording device for the circulation of textual sound bites, inviting us to consider and revalue how early modern drama activates generic form in the service of dramatic character.