1st Edition

Jacobean City Comedy

By Brian Gibbons Copyright 1980
200 Pages
by Routledge

200 Pages
by Routledge

200 Pages
by Routledge

The first decade of the Jacobean age witnessed a sudden profusion of comedies satirizing city life; among these were comedies by Ben Jonson, John Marston and Thomas Middleton, as well as the bulk of the repertory of the newly-established children’s companies at Blackfriars and Paul’s. The playwrights self-consciously forged a new genre which attracted London audiences with its images of folly and... Read more

Preface to the Second Edition;  Acknowledgements;  1. City comedy as a genre  2. A fountain stirr’d: city comedy in relation to the social and economic background  3. The approaching equinox: politics and city comedy  4. To strip the ragged follies of the time  5. Marston and the Court: folly and corruption  6. Money makes the world go around: the city satirized  7. Conventional plays 1604-7  8. Middleton and Jonson  9. Bartholomew Fair and The Devil Is an Ass: city comedy at the zenith;  Appendix;  Notes;  Select bibliography;  Index

Biography

Brian Gibbons