“A Magazine of all perfection”: Mathematics in the Early Modern Satire Histrio-Mastix – The Genre of Mathematical Satire

Marston’s Histrio-Mastix is rare in that there were very few plays in the Early Modern era that dealt explicitly with mathematics.^[2] The play is even more distinctive in that it has a main character—Chrisoganus—who is a mathematician; it also includes the muses of geometry and arithmetic as supporting characters. According to keyword searches of Berger et al. [1998], in the corpus of characters appearing on stage in printed English plays, a mere nine works of varying sorts featured mathematicians, as was indicated by search terms such as Arithmetic, Compass, Geometry, Pythagoras, Mathematician, and Seven Liberal Arts.^[3]

Even though mathematics was largely absent from Early Modern plays, the few that did include mathematics or mathematicians as characters typically employed them in two distinct ways: either as abstract personifications or as individual persons. In some plays we find mathematics symbolised as muses representing arithmetic and geometry (the two mathematical sciences among the seven liberal arts). These representations of geometry and arithmetic drew on ancient traditions about and views of mathematics (see The Mathematical Muses below). Examples of plays that included the muses of geometry and arithmetic are the two comedies, Technogamia (1618) by Barten Holyday (1593–1661) and The Nuptialls of Peleus and Thetis (1654) by James Howell (ca 1594–1666).

Figure 2. “The Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis,” by Hendrick de Clerck (d. 1630), ca 1600–1630.
The Nuptialls of Peleus and Thetis (1654) by James Howell is one of the few Early Modern plays,
besides Marston’s, that features a mathematician as a character. Wikimedia Commons.

When mathematics was shown as something other than fixed representations of geometry and arithmetic, the characters often became more individual characters (rather than an allegory of a subject). These characters had names (such as the main character Chrisoganus in Histrio-Mastix) but generally remained a more general representation of mathematical thinking. And whereas the muses of the plays always spoke in ways that were in line with their subject (for instance, the muse of geometry was required to talk about triangles), the individual character of the mathematician was not bound by mathematical jargon, but rather had additional characteristics such as cleverness, skill with manipulating numbers (often to his own advantage), or aloofness. Plays that featured individual mathematicians as characters include The Magnetic Lady (1641) by Ben Jonson (1572–1637) and The Sisters (1652) by James Shirley (1596–1666).