Who am I? 16th Century advertising causing a loss of self.

“What do you lack? What is’t you buy? What do you lack? Rattles, drums, halberts, horses, babies o’ the best? Fiddles of the finest?”


Cokes a character in Ben Johnson's play Bartholomew Fair, 16th Century play, is mesmerised by the power of advertising -  the stalls owners calling out their wares.

As a result of being bombarded with 'advertising', Cokes has his desires awakened and he cannot control his appetites.

In Cokes, Jonson creates an unforgettable portrait of the helpless consumer, caught in the webs of advertising and overwhelmed by the wealth of goods now available in the Renaissance marketplace:

"And...and half a dozen o’ birds, and that drum (I have one drum already) and your smiths (I like that device o’ your smiths very pretty well) and four halberts—and (le’me see) that fine painted great lady, and her three women for state, I’ll hve...yes...I will have...

Here is the new world of capitalism in a nutshell—everything has its price in money and everything is up for sale. To emphasize the point, Jonson makes prostitution an integral part of the fair, and shows how easily decent women are drawn into the world of pimps and whores.

By the time Jonson 
is through, it is difficult to distinguish the business of the fair in general from the business of prostitution. He presents the marketplace as a deeply confused and confusing realm, a topsy-turvy world in which moral values are inverted and characters lose their bearings.


 Cokes ends up completely bewildered and disoriented by his experience at the fair: “By this light, I cannot find my gingerbread-wife nor my hobby-horse man in all the Fair, now, to ha’ my money again. And I do not know the way out on’t, to go home for more. . . . Dost thou know where I dwell?”

Assaulted from all sides by thieves, charlatans, and advertisers, Cokes utterly loses his sense of identity: “Friend, do you know who I am?”


Could one extrapolate from this a similar occurence of the recent housing crisis in the USA.
'So many offers coming in;  so many 100% mortgages, I don't where to turn.'



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