Ben Jonson

Bartholmew Fair (eBook, PDF)

Redaktion: Leggatt, Alexander; Hibbard, G. R.

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Early modern London - too foggy and Protestant to have a carnival -
offered its inhabitants commercial events during which to indulge their
need for bodily delights and festival exuberance. The fair of St
Bartholmew, held anually in Smithfield on 24 August, served Jonson as
an opportunity to dissect a wide cross-section of Londoners and their
various reasons for spending a day out among the booths, stalls, smells
and noises of the fair. Unusually magnanimous for a Jonsonian city
comedy, the main thrust of the satire is not against fools, madmen,
fortune-hunters, cuckolds or prostitutes, but against hypocrisy and
bigotry. This edition shows that the play can be read as a
comprehensive refutation of puritanism and the London magistracy, both
of whom were attacking the theatre (and the festive culture of which it
was still part) as idolatrous, seditious and disorderly.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Februar 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781408144671
• Artikelnr.: 40376931

Autorenporträt

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was an English dramatist and poet, whose reputation amongst playwrights of the period is only second only to Shakespeare's. Although Jonson found little success as an actor, his reputation as a dramatist was firmly established in 1598 with Every Man in his Humour. This sucess was followed by Every Man out of his Humour and the classically influenced satire Cynthia's Revels. Jonson wrote all of the major comedies upon which his reputation is now based during the period 1605 to 1614.