'Our Scene is London' argues that the strategies of authorial definition that Ben Jonson pursued throughout his career as a poet & playwright were in large part determined by two factors: his complicated relationship with London's physical places, & the challenging commonplace assumptions about Jonson's anti-theatricality.

"Neuer came Reformation in a Flood, / With such a heady currance," exclaims the Archbishop of Canterbury in Shakespeare's Henry V, describing the king's seemingly miraculous conversion from the reprobate prince he had been. This description must have seemed quite apt to Shakespeare's post-Reformation audience. Religious reform in early modern England, whether driven by individual experience or by institutional theology or politics, occurred as more of a deluge than as a clearly defined or steady voyage. And the English stage -- where drama revised, resisted, and reacted against Reformation...