Ben Jonson, George Chapman, John Marston, Professor Michael Neill (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
This collaborative masterpiece of hilarious city comedy was performedby the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars playhouse in 1605. Thestory is of an allegorical simplicity that lends itself to satire ofcivic mores and traditions as well as to parody of the sentimental, idealising London comedy presented at the amphitheatres in the suburbs: Goldsmith Touchstone, an upright London citizen, has one modest and oneambitious daughter, one righteous and one disreputable apprentice;virtue is rewarded, ruthlessness comes to grief - and receives adrenching in the muddy Thames. The introduction...
This collaborative masterpiece of hilarious city comedy was performedby the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars playhouse in 1605. Thestory i...
"The Magnetic Lady, or Humors Reconciled", a Caroline era stage play, is the final comedy of Ben Jonson. This edition has been reset in an easy to read font. It is not a scan or OCR edition.
"The Magnetic Lady, or Humors Reconciled", a Caroline era stage play, is the final comedy of Ben Jonson. This edition has been reset in an easy to re...
Ben Jonson, Roger Holdsworth (University of Oxford, UK)
'A silent and loving woman is a gift of the lord'
This 'excellent comedy of affliction' enjoyed enormous prestige for more than a century after its first performance: for John Dryden it had 'the greatest and most noble construction of any pure unmixed comedy in any language'. Its title signals Jonson's satiric and complex concern with gender: the play asks not only 'what should a man do?', but how should men and women behave, both as fit examples of their sex, and to one another? The characters furnish a cross-section of wrong answers, enabling Jonson to create riotous entertainment...
'A silent and loving woman is a gift of the lord'
This 'excellent comedy of affliction' enjoyed enormous prestige for more than a century aft...
The Alchemist is a sublimely accomplished satirical farce about dreams of self-refinement: people want to transform themselves into something nobler, richer, more powerful, and more virile just as base metal was touted to be transformed into gold in the alchemical process.
First performed in 1610 and set in the same contemporary London time period, the plot revolves around scheming con artists during their master's absence from the house. Face, Subtle and Doll Common dupe a series of 'customers' whose desire for aggrandizement leads them to believe in the existence of the fabled...
The Alchemist is a sublimely accomplished satirical farce about dreams of self-refinement: people want to transform themselves into something noble...
The Alchemist is set during a plague epidemic in the Liberty of Blackfriars in 1610 and was first performed on tour in 1610 by the company whose London home at Blackfriars was temporarily closed due to a plague epidemic. The play is a sublimely accomplished satirical farce about people's diverse dreams of self-refinement: they all want to transform themselves into something nobler, richer, more powerful, more virile, just as base metal was supposed to be transformed into gold in the alchemical process. During their master's absence from the house, the con-artists Face, Subtle and...
The Alchemist is set during a plague epidemic in the Liberty of Blackfriars in 1610 and was first performed on tour in 1610 by the company w...
Ben Jonson, Robert N. Watson (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
Bringing together four of the most popular and widely studied of Ben Jonson's plays, this anthology focuses on the city comedies for which Jonson is best known today: The Alchemist (edited by Elizabeth Cook), Volpone (edited by Robert N. Watson), Bartholmew Fair (edited by G.R. Hibbard) and Epicoene or The Silent Woman (edited by Roger Holdsworth).
Today Jonson's works are widely considered to be amongst the best produced in his period. The new introduction by Robert N. Watson explores the plays in the context of early modern theatre, culture and...
Bringing together four of the most popular and widely studied of Ben Jonson's plays, this anthology focuses on the city comedies for which Jonson i...
Ben Jonson, Robert N. Watson (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
The sharpest, funniest comedy about money and morals in the 17th century is still the sharpest and funniest about those things in the 21st. The full play text is accompanied by incisive commentary notes which communicate the devastating comic energy of Volpone’s satire. The introduction provides a firm grounding in the play’s social and literary contexts, demonstrates how careful close-reading can expand your enjoyment of the comedy, shows the relevance of Jonson’s critique to our modern economic systems, and provides a clear picture of how the main relationships in the play function...
The sharpest, funniest comedy about money and morals in the 17th century is still the sharpest and funniest about those things in the 21st. The full ...
This edition of Ben Jonson's four middle comedies places the works in the popular history and culture of the times, 1605-1614, and surveys the influences, both classical and contemporary, on Jonson as a playwright. On-the-page annotations recreate the audiences perception of the plays as performances by commenting on the stage-directions, the self-conscious theatricality of characters and scenes, and the vivid colloquialisms of early modern London that give the dialogue a heightened dimension of realism.
Brief introductions to each play discuss the local settings, sources, theatre...
This edition of Ben Jonson's four middle comedies places the works in the popular history and culture of the times, 1605-1614, and surveys the influen...
