Ben Jonson

Volpone, The Alchemist, and Other Plays (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Benjamin Jonson was a Renaissance dramatist, poet, and actor, known best for his satirical plays and lyric poems. Jonson focused on creating works that implemented elements of the realistic as well as the absurd. Jonson's most performed play, and the one that sparked a period of great success for the playwright, is "Volpone, or The Fox". Volpone, a Venetian con artist, is feigning to be on his death bed, pitting several aspirant heirs against one another. The dark comedy is as much serious as it is amusing, exposing the audience to greedy, corrupt characters that at first seem absurdly fictional, but who ultimately reveal a number of societal flaws. Also included in the is collection are "The Alchemist", a comedy which relates the fraudulent enterprise of a butler when left in charge of his master's house who has fled to the country during an outbreak of the plague; "The Epicoene", which concerns the farcical scheme of Dauphine to get his inheritance from his uncle; and "Bartholomew Fair", the comedic tale of a plot to win the widow Dame Purecraft from the hypocritical Puritan Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. All together this collection presents Jonson's most admired and often performed works. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Neeland Media LLC
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. März 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781420967586
• Artikelnr.: 58851187

Autorenporträt

Jonson was a classically educated, well-read, and cultured English Renaissance man with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual), and his cultural influence was unparalleled on the playwrights and poets of the Jacobean and Caroline eras (1603-1625 and 1625-1642, respectively). In midlife, Jonson stated that his paternal grandfather, who "served King Henry 8 and was a gentleman," was a member of the extended Johnston family of Annandale in Dumfries and Galloway, a genealogy supported by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family coat of arms, one of which is a diamond-shaped heraldic device used by the Johnston family. Jonson's father lost his property, was imprisoned, and, as a Protestant, faced forfeiture under Queen Mary. He became a clergyman after his release and died a month before his son was born. His widow married a master bricklayer two years later. Jonson attended school in St Martin's Lane, London. Later, a family friend paid for his education at Westminster School, where he studied under William Camden (1551-1623), an antiquarian, historian, topographer, and officer of arms.