Alexander Leggatt revisits the issue of the double plot in Volpone and finds that an emphasis on simple thematic parallels between the two plots distorts the dramatic significance of their relationship. As Kate D. Levin shows, conventional critical approaches have obscured both the structural peculiarities that Jonson's plays share with his masques and his occasional disregard of playhouse pragmatism.

Bringing together leading Jonson scholars, Ben Jonson and Posterity provides new insights into this remarkable writer's reception and legacy over four centuries. Jonson was recognised as the outstanding English writer of his day and has had a powerful influence on later generations, yet his reputation is one of the most multifaceted and conflicted for any writer of the early modern period. The volume brings together multiple critical perspectives, addressing book history, the practice of reading, theatrical influence and adaptation, the history of performance, cultural representation in portraiture, film, fiction, and anecdotes to interrogate Jonson's 'myth'. The collection will be of great interest to all Jonson scholars, as well as having a wider appeal among early modern literary scholars, theatre historians, and scholars interested in intertextuality and reception from the Renaissance to the present day.

This new guide to the English renaissance's most erudite and yet most street-wise dramatist strongly asserts the theatrical brilliance of his greatest plays in performance, then and now.The book integrates all of Jonson's major plays into the milieu of the turbulent years which produced them, and analyses the way each work examines the issues and challenges of those years: money, power, sex, crime, identity, gender, the theatre itself. It offers a lucid guide to the competing critical views of a playwright who is far more than the obverse of his friend and rival William Shakespeare, and it explains in detail how the undoubted power and energy of these plays in modern performance should be the touchstone of their quality to both critic and reader. The plays discussed include the early Comedies, the Roman Tragedies (Sejanus and Catiline), Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair and The Devil is an Ass.

Examines how Renaissance dramatists made the difficult transition from playwrights to published authors.

The eponymous alchemist of Ben Jonson's quick-fire comedy is a fraud: he cannot make gold, but he does make brilliant theatre. The Alchemist is a masterpiece of wit and form about the self-delusions of greed and the theatricality of deception. This guide will be useful to a diverse assembly of students and scholars, offering fresh new ways into this challenging and fascinating play.

One-stop resource offering complete textbook for courses in seventeenth-century literature - progressing from introductory topics through to overviews of current research.

Allison P. Hobgood tells a new story about the emotional experiences of theatregoers in Renaissance England. Through detailed case studies of canonical plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Kyd and Heywood, the reader will discover what it felt like to be part of performances in English theatre and appreciate the key role theatregoers played in the life of early modern drama. How were spectators moved - by delight, fear or shame, for example - and how did their own reactions in turn make an impact on stage performances? Addressing these questions and many more, this book discerns not just how theatregoers were altered by drama's affective encounters, but how they were undeniable influences upon those encounters. Overall, Hobgood reveals a unique collaboration between the English world and stage, one that significantly reshapes the ways we watch, read and understand early modern drama.