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The Staple of News
This edition offers a modernized text based on a fresh collation of the 1631-1640 folio, together with an account of the play's printing history, a full commentary which sets Jonson's art in its intellectual and social context, and an introduction which seeks to do justice to the play's braod scope and to suggest something of its theatrical potential.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1631
About the author
Ben Jonson
1,439 books192 followersBenjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets. A house in Dulwich College is named after him.
See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson
See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 27, 2023
Typical Jonson. Every one is wicked & faulty but will all be granted happy endings! Would give it about 4.2 stars…
The “numerating the news” scene is particularly difficult.
The “numerating the news” scene is particularly difficult.
March 24, 2021
Oh Ben, Ben. You do go on so.
Ben Jonson was intensely aware of his own status as Poet and playwright, and didn't leave the publication of his work to chance as so many of his friends and contemporaries did. He prepared his own scripts for publication, with added commentaries where he felt them necessary, and almost certainly reinserting sections cut by the performing companies. As a result his plays are looooong, to the extent that we always start half an hour earlier when we read one of his plays!
This was one of his first for the King's Men after a long break, and it's a variant on a City comedy with added levels of confusion and an extraordinarily metatheatrical group of commentators who complain about the play. Jonson's commentary makes it clear he expects us to see these as the ignorant responses of an inadequate audience (box-office failure was never his fault, no sir.) and we should condemn them. Except they mostly draw attention to flaws a rational playwright might have tried to distract them from!
The Staple in question is an attempt to set up a news agency at a time when news sheets were the Hot New Thing. It's financially supported by a young man who has come into a large fortune and uses it to set his barber up as an "emissary", or reporter. There's another plot about attempts to marry a rich young woman who is the inheritrix of various typical Jonson names, like The Duke of Mines. It's all very tangled and you really have to focus to follow the plot. The Alchemist it is not.
Read as part of the REP online reading group reading the King's Men repertoire in chronological, now a full year into Covid lockdown.
Ben Jonson was intensely aware of his own status as Poet and playwright, and didn't leave the publication of his work to chance as so many of his friends and contemporaries did. He prepared his own scripts for publication, with added commentaries where he felt them necessary, and almost certainly reinserting sections cut by the performing companies. As a result his plays are looooong, to the extent that we always start half an hour earlier when we read one of his plays!
This was one of his first for the King's Men after a long break, and it's a variant on a City comedy with added levels of confusion and an extraordinarily metatheatrical group of commentators who complain about the play. Jonson's commentary makes it clear he expects us to see these as the ignorant responses of an inadequate audience (box-office failure was never his fault, no sir.) and we should condemn them. Except they mostly draw attention to flaws a rational playwright might have tried to distract them from!
The Staple in question is an attempt to set up a news agency at a time when news sheets were the Hot New Thing. It's financially supported by a young man who has come into a large fortune and uses it to set his barber up as an "emissary", or reporter. There's another plot about attempts to marry a rich young woman who is the inheritrix of various typical Jonson names, like The Duke of Mines. It's all very tangled and you really have to focus to follow the plot. The Alchemist it is not.
Read as part of the REP online reading group reading the King's Men repertoire in chronological, now a full year into Covid lockdown.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews