The extraordinary character of Ben Jonson has only recently been brought into the light. Critics traditionally exalted Shakespeare, at Jonson s expense. In this biography, first published in 1986, the author presents a full and accurate account of Jonson s life in modern times. Rosalind Miles follows Jonson from his obscure beginnings to his burial in Westminster Abbey, as the first Poet Laureate, in 1637. Her Jonson is vivid and vigorous, equally alive in his life and in his work. This title will be of interest to students of history, English literature and Renaissance drama. "

Though he is one of the undisputed giants of English literature, Ben Jonson is known to most people only as the author of one or two masterly plays which regularly appear in the drama repertory. He is much less well-known for his whole "oeuvre, "which encompasses poetry, criticism, masque-making, and a lifetime of linguistic and lexicographical study.

In this book, first published in 1990, the author presents a comprehensive critical study of the whole of Jonson s output from his earliest beginnings through to the final achievement. Looking at every word he ever wrote, in drama, masque,...

The first decade of the Jacobean age witnessed a sudden profusion of comedies satirizing city life; among these were comedies by Ben Jonson, John Marston and Thomas Middleton, as well as the bulk of the repertory of the newly-established children s companies at Blackfriars and Paul s. The playwrights self-consciously forged a new genre which attracted London audiences with its images of folly and vice in Court and City, and hack-writing dramatists were prompt to cash in on a new theatrical fashion.

This study, first published in 1980, examines ways in which the Jacobean city comedy...

The domination of the state over the lives of individuals is, arguably, a problem of the present-day world. In this book, first published in 1971, the author finds essentially the same problem in Jacobean tragedy in the shape it assumed during the rise of the first European nation-states. The English dramatists of the early seventeenth century are seen as giving expression to the ferment of ideas which, only a generation later, precipitated the revolutionary struggles of the sixteen-forties. This title will be of interest to students of History, Literature, Drama and Performance.

The book, first published in 1988, examines the role of magic in Elizabethan and Shakespearean theatre. The author observes how certain plays, including Shakespeare s "A Midsummer Night s Dream "and "The Tempest, "rationalise the unrealism and improbabilities typical of romantic comedy as miracles wrought by specifically magical intervention. The author also explores the ways in which playwrights justify structural discontinuity by the working of magic. This title will be of interest to students of English Literature, Drama and Performance. "

In this scholarly and entertaining book, first published in 1987, the author tells the story of Jacobean private theatre. Most of the best plays written after 1610, including Shakespeare s late plays such as "The Tempest, "were written for the new breed of private playhouses small, roofed and designed for an aristocratic, literary audience, as opposed to the larger, open-air houses such as the Globe and the Red Bull, catering for a popular, lowbrow audience. The author discusses the polarisation of taste and the effect it had on literary criticism and theatre history. This title will be of...

While most critical writing on Jonson concentrates on the plays, poems or masques seen in isolation, this title, first published in 1981, ranges across the genres to explore Jonson s vision as a whole. The author points to the inner connections that make of the rich variety of Jonson s writing a single coherent body of work. We see Jonson exploring the relations between culture and society, the difficulties of ideal virtue in a far from ideal world, and above all the problems of art itself. Combining a wide-ranging discussion of Jonson s interests with a detailed examination of his major...

The work of dramatists such as George Chapman, Thomas Heywood, Cyril Tourneur, John Webster, Thomas Middleton and John Ford can profitably be studied as attempts to construct a new moral order in response to the absence or weakening of the religious sanction. In this study, first published in 1962, the author examines these texts in detail, and throws a great deal of light on the plays as plays. This title will be of interest to students of English Literature, Drama and Performance.

Although not much is known about the three Stuart plays in this edition, which was first published in 1987, we can ascribe them to one of the English universities, and each is indicative of a distinctly different influence on the Renaissance academic drama. Heteroclitanomalonomia is part of a minor subgenre referred to as the academic play. It demonstrates the predominance of language or rhetoric studies in the period and its very subject is of purely academic interest. Gigantomachia displays the continuing interest of the Renaissance in classical mythology. And A Christmas Messe follows a...

In this book, first published in 1991, David Mann argues for more attention to the performer in the study of Elizabethan plays and less concern for their supposed meanings and morals. He concentrates on a collection of extracts from plays which show the Elizabethan actor as a character onstage. He draws from the texts a range of issues concerning performance practice: the nature of iterance; doubling and its implications for presentational acting; the importance of clowning and improvisation; and the effects of audience and venue on the dynamics of performance.

The author suggests...