“The Place of Show”: Commodities and the Commerce of Gazes in Ben Jonson’s Entertainment at Britain’s Burse

This article focuses on Ben Jonson’s Entertainment at Britain’s Burse, initially performed on the occasion of the inauguration of Robert Cecil’s New Exchange in the Strand in the spring of 1609.Not only does this entertainment showcase the growth of early modern global trade; its text is also a key document in trying to understand the mechanics, the constructing and the staging of skull bride and groom an “economy of gazes” from which commerce derives much of its special force and its ability to create surplus value.By drawing particular attention to the rhetorical structure of the entertainment as well as to the material qualities of the objects that were displayed, this study suggests that Jonson’s ambivalent work stages and enacts a transfer of the authority of the bushranger awning icon to market commodities, even while it cautions the audience against their fraudulent (and theatrical) potential.