Ben Jonson

The three plays collected in this volume depict the faults, errors and foibles of ordinary people with exuberant humour, savage satire and acute observations. Volpone portrays a rich Venetian who pretends to be dying so that his despised acquaintances will flock to his bedside with extravagant gifts in hope of an inheritance. The Alchemist also deals with greed and gullibility, as a rascally trio of confidence tricksters, claiming to have the legendary Philosopher's Stone, fool a series of victims who are hoping to make some easy money. And in a wonderfully energetic portrait of Jacobean life, Bartholomew Fair shows a diverse group of Londoners sampling the delights and temptations of the Fair - and the traders, prostitutes and cutpurses who set out to exploit them.

Ben Jonson is overshadowed as a dramatist by Shakespeare, his great contemporary. As a poet, however, he stands high. His polished urbanity, direct expression and classicism have been especially valued in modern times. T. S. Eliot says Jonson "incorporated his erudition into his sensibility", creatively assimilating Horace, Martial and Juvenal into his poetry and hence into English literature. Richard Dutton's introduction illuminates the structure and context of Jonson's "Epigrams" and "The Forest". Dutton shows them to be carefully structured poem sequences that display Jonson's command of poetic forms and involve the reader in evaluating a range of shifting perspectives. Jonson's recurrent theme, the nature of truth and virtue, is as pertinent to day as it was in his own time.

'A silent and loving woman is a gift of the lord' This 'excellent comedy of affliction' enjoyed enormous prestige for more than a century after its first performance: for John Dryden it had 'the greatest and most noble construction of any pure unmixed comedy in any language'. Its title signals Jonson's satiric and complex concern with gender: the play asks not only 'what should a man do?', but how should men and women behave, both as fit examples of their sex, and to one another? The characters furnish a cross-section of wrong answers, enabling Jonson to create riotous entertainment out of lack, loss and disharmony, to the point of denying the straightfowardly festive conclusion which audiences at comedies normally expect. Much of the comic vitality arises from a degeneration of language, which Jonson called 'the instrument of society', into empty chatter or furious abuse, and from a plot which is a series of lies and betrayals (the hero lies to everyone and Jonson lies to the audience). The central figure is a man named Morose, who hates noise yet lives in the centre of London, and who, because of his decision to marry a woman he supposes to be silent, exposes himself to a fantastic cacophony of voices, male, female and - epicene. This student edition contains a lengthy Introduction with background on the author, date and sources, theme, critical interpretation and stage history.

The Nick Hern Books RSC Classics - a series of rarely performed plays from the 16th and 17th centuries, published alongside their resurrection by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and the West End. Eastward Ho! is a collaboratively written City Comedy by Ben Jonson, John Marston and George Chapman, which sees true love and virtue triumphing over social-climbing, deception and trickery. Teeming with energy and larger than life characters, Eastward Ho! sees Touchstone, a London goldsmith, preparing to marry off his two daughters. Touchstone's two apprentices lead the wooing until the rakish fop Sir Petronel Flash arrives on the scene. Eastward Ho! was first performed at the Blackfriars Theatre, London, in 1605. This edition of the play is edited with an introduction by Helen Ostovich and preface by Gregory Doran. The plays in the RSC Classics series reflect the diversity of styles, themes and subjects of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and include a 'new' addition to the Shakespeare canon.

Like all of Jonson's city comedies, this play - here given in the 1616 Folio version, in which Jonson rewrote and set it in England, not Italy - is a kind of dramatised Do-It-Yourself kit on how to bluff one's way in Elizabethan London. Although Roman New Comedy, in which a crafty slave helps a wild youngster to marry the girl of his choice against his father's wishes, supplies Jonson with his basic plot, the world that he presents here is thoroughly contemporary and mundane. The characters' 'humours' - their driving obsessions - may vary, but all of them strive to represent something greater, nobler, cleverer than their real selves. The joke of the play, this editor suggests, is 'finally on all of us who unconsciously equate the universe with a story in which we play the hero'.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The annual fair for St Bartholomew's Day is a bawdy celebration peopled by tricksters, thieves, prostitutes, pedlars and entertainers. Also drawn to the festivities are a group of ordinary citizens who find their respectable lives turned upside down, and their intolerant attitudes challenged by what they experience. Ben Jonson's Jacobean comedy was first performed at the Hope Playhouse in London in 1614. This edition of the play, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is edited and introduced by Colin Counsell.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Face, Subtle and Dol Common are three rogues intent on conning the gullible out of their money. Setting up a quack-doctor's practice in Lovewit's house they promise miraculous services that cost their customers dear. Everything goes swimmingly, until Lovewit returns and the three turn against each other. Ben Jonson's classic comedy The Alchemist was first performed by the King's Men in 1610. This edition of the play in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series is edited by Simon Trussler, with an introduction by Colin Counsell.

The Alchemist has been described as 'the greatest farce in the English language'. In this edition, first published in 1995, Ben Jonson's rich play offers intriguing insights into London life of the early seventeenth century. He satirizes and celebrates the confusions and anarchy of a fast-moving city world populated by a fascinating array of diverse and devious characters. Cambridge Literature is a series of study texts which presents writing in the English-speaking world from the sixteenth century up to the present day. The student will find in each volume a helpful introduction and resource notes encouraging active and imaginative study.

This collaborative masterpiece of hilarious city comedy was performed by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars playhouse in 1605. The story is of an allegorical simplicity that lends itself to satire of civic mores and traditions as well as to parody of the sentimental, idealising London comedy presented at the amphitheatres in the suburbs: Goldsmith Touchstone, an upright London citizen, has one modest and one ambitious daughter, one righteous and one disreputable apprentice; virtue is rewarded, ruthlessness comes to grief - and receives a drenching in the muddy Thames. The introduction to this edition discusses various methods of establishing authorship and highlights the irony of the collaborators' comic vision of contemporary London life.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Pug, a junior demon, persuades his master Satan to let him spend a day in London. Taking over the body of a recently hanged thief, Pug becomes servant to a squire from Norfolk, Fitzdottrel, who doesn't believe that Pug is a devil but is happy that he asks no wages. Ben Jonson's comedy The Devil is an Ass was first performed by the King's Men in 1616. This edition of The Devil is an Ass in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series is edited by Peter Happé, and introduced by Simon Trussler.