Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England. Rebecca Lemon

      Addiction is, at its root, about pronouncing a sentence. This sentence might be, as its etymology suggests, an expression of an idea: ad + dīcere, “to speak, say.”¹ Or it might be, as in its legal definition, an assignment, such as sentencing someone to prison; following the term’s origin in Roman contract law, an addict was an individual, usually a debtor, who had been sentenced or condemned. Addīctus is thus one assigned by decree, made over, bound, or—in one mode of such commitment—devoted.²

      What, then, does William Prynne mean when he warns against “those who addict themselves to Playes” or cautions readers to avoid those men who strive “earnestly to addict themselves to their trade of acting”?³ For modern readers he seems to view the theater as a drug, lulling its audiences into narcotic passivity. And indeed, the theater does at times stand as a site of addiction, which, Circe-like, has the power to entrap playgoers: plays are drugs, actors are drug peddlers, and audiences are unwitting victims or eager consumers.⁴ Yet this pejorative (even demonic) reading of the word “addict,” while arguably at stake in Prynne’s description, ignores the word’s broader semantic and conceptual history. Eighteenth-century writers deploy the word in its modern signification—“the compulsion and need to continue taking a drug,” a usage appearing in 1779 in the work of Samuel Johnson—but sixteenth-century writers instead drew largely on the concept of addiction from its Latin origins to designate service, debt, and dedication.⁵

      Unearthing this hidden history behind early modern invocations of addiction, this book offers two primary insights. First, and most important, it illuminates a previously buried conception of addiction as a form of devotion at once laudable, difficult, extraordinary, and even heroic. This view has been concealed by the persistent link of addiction to pathology and modernity: current understandings of, and scholarship on, addiction connect it to globalization, medicalization, and capitalism. Surveying sixteenth-century invocations reveals instead that one might be addicted to study, friendship, love, or God. Prynne cautions that one might addict oneself to stage plays, but his warning rings differently if addiction in the sixteenth century signals a form of pledged dedication. Within Prynne’s caution lies the potential for sincere praise for the act of addiction itself. Rather than rebuking a mode of potentially excessive attachment (addiction), he instead cautions audiences against the wrong kind of addiction: to the false idol of the theater, where actors lure spectators into a form of devotion that should belong to God.

      Second, this book uncovers an early modern understanding of addiction as a form of compulsion that resonates with modern scientific definitions. Specifically, the project traces how early modern medical tracts, legal rulings, and religious polemics stress the dangers of addiction to alcohol in terms of disease, compulsion, and enslavement. Early modern debates about tobacco, gambling, and sex also deploy, at times, the language of compulsion and vulnerability that comprises early modern addiction. But this book concentrates on alcohol for two reasons: first, the historical evidence on excessive, habitual drinking is more abundant than for other substances; and second, the scholarship on early modern drinking is well established, providing a critical framework for my own contribution. Certainly, the scholarship on good fellowship and the conviviality of sixteenth-century tavern culture contrasts with an emphasis on the compulsive nature of addicted drinking. Yet a host of early modern writers deploy a language of addiction to describe how the choice and inclination of good fellowship in drinking shifts, through habit and custom, into the necessity of habitual, excessive drunkenness.

      The relationship between these two understandings of addiction is not solely oppositional nor can it be so easily mapped onto historical narratives, such as a shift from sixteenth-century devotion to eighteenth-century compulsion. Both meanings of addiction appear in the early modern period. What unites these apparently opposed discourses is a shared emphasis, both rhetorical and experiential, on addiction as an overthrow of the will. Being open to a form of strong inspiration, often described as ravishment, the addict is indeed breathed into by the spirit. This spirit might be God, it might be love, or it might be alcohol. But in an experience of ravishment, the addict is inhabited by another, be it a person, object, or idea.

      Addiction is, in its spirituous potential, a form of devotion. Early modern lexicographers helped illuminate this relation by using the terms as synonyms. Glossing “addiction,” dictionaries turn to the words