The Works Of Ben Jonson: With Notes Critical And Explanatory, And A Biographical Memoir

by Ben Jonson

The Works Of Ben With Notes Critical And Explanatory, And A Biographical Memoir by Ben Jonson surveys late Jacobean drama as represented in Part 2 of a major edition. It gathers late works and editorial A Tale of a Tub (Acts around III–V, plus epilogue), The Sad Shepherd, and The Case Is Altered, with scholarly commentary on transmission and performance. The Tale of a Tub presents a courtly-and-rural satire of marriage and legal maneuvering; The Sad Shepherd combines pastoral romance with magical mischief and lyric verse; The Case Is Altered, a Milan-set farce, uses disguise and misdirection to explore identity, inheritance, and social order. Interwoven editorial material discusses the texts’ fragmentary state, performance history, and questions of authorship. The Local Summary expands into Jacobean masque entertainments devised for King James I’s London entry and Theobalds entertainments, including The Penates and The Satyr, illustrating theatre as state ceremony and political theatre. The volume emphasizes satire, metatheatricality, and the collaboration of poets, architects, and performers in early 17th-century English theatre.

Paperback

First published January 8, 2010

About the author

Benjamin 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