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The Renaissance court masque, traditionally an entertainment of music, dancing, pageantry, and spectacular scenic effects, was transformed by Ben Jonson into a serious mode of literary expression. By using its peculiar viability as a forum for his dramatic imagination, Jonson resolved and transcended the satiric vision that was in many ways the substance of Jonsonian drama. He instructed as well as applauded his courtly audience and, with the aid of the great theatrical designer Indigo Jones, brought unity to the diverse elements of the masque, infusing them with a moral and poetic life. This modernized version of Jonson's masques is the most carefully edited and annotated text available; it is also the first one-volume edition to be published. It includes the faithful reprinting of Jonson's own glosses and notes, translated and annotated, as well as explanatory notes which offer the most detailed critical commentary ever undertaken. In the introduction, itself an important essay about the Renaissance stage, Mr. Orgel discusses Jonson's development of the masque in relation to Inigo Jones' development of the illusionistic stage. ... Read more

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While Ben Jonson's political visions have been well documented, this is the first study to consider how he threaded his views into the various literary genres in which he wrote. For Jonson, these genres were interactive and mutually affirming, necessary for negotiating the tempestuous politics of early modern society, and here some of the most renowned Jonson scholars provide a collection of essays that discuss his use of genre. They present new perspectives on many of Jonson's major works, from his epigrams and epistles, through to his Roman tragedies and satirical plays like Volpone. Other topics examined include Jonson's diverse representations of monarchy, his ambiguous celebrations of European commonwealths, his sexual politics, and his engagement with the issues of republicanism. These essays represent the forefront of critical thinking on Ben Jonson, and offer a timely reassessment of the author's political life in Jacobean and Caroline Britain. ... Read more

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In the early modern period, envy was often represented iconographically in the image of the Medusa, with snaky locks and a poisonous gaze. Ben Jonson and Envy investigates the importance of envy to Jonson's imagination, showing that he perceived spectators and readers as filled with envy, and created strategies to defend his work from their distorting and potentially 'deadly' gaze. Drawing on historical and anthropological studies of evil eye beliefs, this study focuses on the authorial imperative to charm and baffle ritualistically the eye of the implied spectator or reader, in order to protect his works from defacement. Comparing the exchange between authors and readers to social relations, the book illuminates the way in which the literary may be seen to be informed by popular culture. Ben Jonson and Envy tackles a previously overlooked, but vital, aspect of Jonson's poetics. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Ben Jonson's 'Epigrams' and 'The Forest'
Ben Jonson might with some justice be called the forgotten master of 17th century literature. Bearing in mind the degree to which not just English poetry but English culture is saturated in Shakespeare, this is understandable. But ignorance of Jonson does him an injustice, and our poetry a disservice.

Jonson, although remembered as a dramatist, thought of himself as a poet. (The contemporary term for a playwright was "poet". Indeed Jonson may have been the person who invented the word "playwright" -- as a term of scorn for those who made plays with no more art than a wheelwright makes wheels.) Fantastically ambitious, he had the unheard-of audacity to include his plays -- considered a disreputable form of writing -- in a large book of his 'Works' (the very title audaciously claiming for his writing a respect due, in contemporary thought, only to more valued genres).

A modern theatregoer might be surprised to find out that what Jonson introduced as "the ripest of my studies" were not his plays, but a collection of poems called 'Epigrams' (printed along with the plays and 'The Forest' in his 'Works'). If Jonson is the forgotten master, 'Epigrams' could be called his forgotten masterpiece. Saturated with the poetry of Martial, Horace and Catullus ("for a good poet's made as well as born," as he wrote wrote of Shakespeare) Jonson's epigrams self-consciously and stringently set themselves the task of rebuking and praising the age.

'Epigrams' is full of the variety of Elizabethan and Stuart London (Jonson is a thoroughly urban poet): its charlatans, hypocritical creatures, would-be ladies, bad poets, braggarts and moneylenders; but also of its King (James I), genuine poets (two epigrams are addressed to John Donne), and cultured lords and ladies. Both in 'Epigrams' and 'The Forest' (a collection of poems ranging from lyrics to odes to long poems dealing with the "virtuous and noble") Johnson is keenly aware of, and interested in, problems of authorship and readership. His first epigram implores the reader who holds the book "to read it well", and there are a number of poems that warn off readers who misread -- who laugh at the wrong point, out of sheer stupidity, or in an attempt to pretend that the poet's satire doesn't apply to them.

Jonson's classical style -- free of ornament and wilful obscurity -- isn't immediately appealing. (Shakespeare is both, for instance, and Donne has a famous delight in obscurity.) His poetry, perhaps like Goethe's, isn't great because it of brilliance, but because of its strength, something that becomes apparent only when the poetry has been fully absorbed by a reader. The moral weight behind his deliberate and scrupulous art is embodied in the attentiveness of his poetry to words and syntax. (His syntax, by the way, is one of the most enjoyable and sophisticated features of his poetry.) Perhaps what T.S. Eliot wrote of Landor -- another patently classical poet, but much more limited in his ambitions and achievements -- could be, with greater justice, applied to Jonson: "He is ... a poet for those who want poetry and not something else, a stay for their own vanity." ... Read more

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One of the greatest English playwrights of the seventeenth century, Ben Jonson was also a deeply influential lyric poet, whose poetry combined classical ideals with a vigorous interest in contemporary life and colloquial language. The "Complete Poems" contains all the volumes of poetry Jonson published in his lifetime - including "Epigrams", "The Forest and Underwoods" - alongside a wide variety of his other poems collected after his death. Ranging from deeply moving pieces such as "On My First Son" and the elegant love lyric "Song to Celia" to brutally satirical poems such as "On Poet-Ape" and the reflective "An Ode to Himself", it offers a powerful celebration of both one man's life, and of an age. ... Read more

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This collection features three of Jonson's masterpieces: Volpone, Epicoene, and The Alchemist. Also included are three masques: Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemist at Court, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, and—new to the Second Edition—The Masque of Blackness, Jonson's first masque and one that deals with issues of interest to contemporary culture. Each text includes expanded annotations. Jonson on His Work collects statements by the author on plays and on poetry taken from some of the plays, from Discoveries, and from Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden. Contemporary Readers on Jonson includes tributes and poems about the author and his work. A new section—Backgrounds and Sources"—includes selections from texts that helped shaped the dramatist's vision. Criticism includes twelve essays—nine of them new to the Second Edition—by Jonas A. Barish, Robert C. Evans, Anne Barton, John Dryden, Robert Watson, Edward B. Partridge, Ian Donaldson, Richard Harp, D. J. Gordon, Stephen Orgel, John Mulryan, and Leah S. Marcus.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Incredibly useful
This work contains a number of important plays and masques by Ben Jonson and his collaborators, including the best annotated edition of The Alchemist I've found. While it by no means contains all of his works (the man was prolific, but in many ways this title should be "Ben Jonson's Comedies and Masques"), it's a great start if you're looking to build a library of Renaissance plays and performances on a reasonable budget. ... Read more

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This edition brings together Jonson's four great comedies Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. The texts of these plays have all been newly edited for this volume, and are presented with modernized spelling.Stage directions have been added to help actors and directors reconstruct the play the way it would have been performed in the seventeenth century, and the introduction, notes, and glossary further bring to life these timeless comedies for the modern reader. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent farce but rather loose in the seams
Ben Jonson creates in this play a complex atmosphere of constant trespassing of social everyday norms to produce an action- and wit-packed experience in which we could easily drown. All possible means are used : trespassing normal life with funfair folly ; trespassing normal social conditions with cutpurses, ballad singers, funfair-merchants, one puritan, one crazy person, a puppet show, etc. But he also embeds in this action some more pregnant issues. Some weddings, for example, that are supposed to be founded on love and not the buying of a license. The puritan who is a gross hypocrite who always finds the right religious words to condemn the sins of other people and to cover his own gluttony. Some women who want some excitement and try to play the easy ladies they dream of being but do not dare to be except behind a mask. A justice who wants to discover reality and true deep crime by using various disguises. The puppet play that reveals two things : first the violent domination of women by men and the subsequent negation of love ; second the vanity and ridicule of the puritan who wants to prevent the show that he calls immoral and profane and expell the puppets that he considers as idols. The puritan is easily negociated into sounding silly, illogical and vain. The justice sees crimes that are not crimes and does not see other crimes that are real crimes. Then he tries to accuse and convict innocent people. He is ridiculed and silenced by his wife taking off her easy lady's mask end revealing herself in that game to his utmost astonishment. The weddings are the result of a certain amount of freedom on the side of women. But the whole play is loose in its plot and lacks the dynamism of a closely-knit action. The language is very popular at times, if not even gross, with many dialects and a lot of wit, often rather easy and farcesque, but it lacks the density that would make it poetical. The attempt to rewrite the classical theme of the puppet play in modern circumstances in London shows the ambiguous change of taste taking place in England at the time but lacks density and fullness. The play could be a good farce, a good entertainment, but it never reaches the strength of a dramatic comedy. It is a disorderly bawdy funfair of many sparkles but no real light or fireworks.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
... Read more

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Complete text of play first performed in 1603. Modernized English text, explanatory and critical notes, and Introduction. From the Yale Ben Jonson Edition. ... Read more

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From the dean of Shakespeare studies comes a lively, entertaining work of biography that firmly locates Shakespeare within the hectic, exilarating world in which he lived and worked.

Theatre in Shakespeare's day was a growth industry. Everyone knew everyone else, and they all sought to learn, borrow, or steal from one another. Stanley Wells explores the theatre world from behind the scenes, examining how the great actors of the time influenced Shakespeare's work. He writes about the lives and works of the other major writers of the day and discusses Shakespeare's relationships-sometimes collaborative—with each of them. Throughout, Wells shares his vast knowledge of the period, re-creating and celebrating the sheer richness and variety of the social and cultural milieus that gave rise to the greatest writer in our language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Nice supplement to round out Shakespeare reading
The author is the general editor of the Penguin and Oxford editions of Sheakespeare's works and co-editor the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. So he is very steeped in the context in which Shakespeare worked and obviously dedicated to that work.Yet this book is written in a non-pedantic fashion, thankfully.It begins with two chapters about the theatrical scene at the time and the actors who were prominent on the stage.Those were a little slow, for me.Then, the book picked up speed as it began presenting short biographies of other playwrights of the time, often showing connections and shared experiences with Shakespeare, and how their work influenced or was influenced by Shakespeare, although their lives are independently interesting. These men led dicey lives given the political environment, the plague, alcohol and the disreputable image of the theater as a career. The most well known of these men were Marlowe and Ben Jonson, although I appreciated learning about the careers of John Fletcher and Thomas Middleton, with whom Shakespeare collaborated in his later years.The book's discussion of the collaborative efforts included both textual analysis of which co-author was responsible for various passages, and also sketches a rather poignant portrait of Shakespeare in his later years as it prompts speculation as to why the greatest dramatist in history shifted to the collaborative mode - was it declining physical health? Creative exhaustion?A change of public or patrons' tastes? THe book does not directly speak to those issues but definitely provokes thought on them. Also, the book implicitly makes a strong case for Shakespeare himself being the author of his own plays and not a front man for another's, as (a) the childhoods of his contemporaries all bear great similarity to his, undermining the thesis that someone with Shakespeare's background could not have acquired the requisite skills to write his greatest plays and (b) despite all the authors who crossed paths with him and might have had many reasons to reveal or hint at the inauthenticity of Shakespeare's work, there appears no hint of that in this telling.

A Pleasant Summer Read
There isn't much new research in this compact recounting of the lives of the playwrights, but it is a pleasant summer reading experience, nonetheless.

Shakespeare & Co - A fine read
I have greatly enjoyed this book.It is a quick and insightful read full of interesting information about the times in which Shakespeare and his contempories lived.A vivid and thoroughly enjoyable book. ... Read more

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Publisher: London : J.M Dent ... Read more

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Ben Jonson is, in many ways, the figure of greatest centrality to literary study of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. He wrote in virtually every literary genre: in drama, comedy, tragedy and masque; in poetry, epigram, and lyric; in prose, literary criticism and English grammar. This Companion brings together leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic to provide an accessible, up-to-date introduction to Jonson's life and works. It represents an invaluable guide to current critical perspectives, providing generous coverage not only of his plays but also his non dramatic works. ... Read more

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Every Man in His Humor is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Ben Jonson is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Ben Jonson then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Challenging Reading, But Enjoyable - Comes in Two Versions
Every Man in His Humor was one of Ben Jonson's earliest plays. Although it is a somewhat obscure work today, remarkably, when first performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the cast included Shakespeare, Burbage, and Kemp.

The term humor, derived from Latin word for fluid, refers to a Medieval and Renaissance medical theory that a man's health and personality were due to the balance (or imbalance) of four fluids, or humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler), and black bile (melancholy). The Elizabethan audience would have recognized that Jonson's characters were caricatures of various temperaments and personalities.

Jonson later significantly revised this play. The original 1601 quarto had a Florentine setting and Italian names. His revision, the 1616 folio version, substitutes a London setting with English characters. In my discussion below, I have noted the 1616 English characters using parenthesis.

Every Man in His Humour was more challenging than I expected. I was into Act 2 before I began to appreciate the interplay between the characters.For me the turning point occurred when the servant Mosca (weirdly named Brainworm in the London version) disguised himself as a penniless soldier looking for charity. I gradually recognized four intertwined themes:

1) Two young, high-spirited gentlemen, Lorenzo Junior (Edward Kno'well) and Prospero (Wellbred), deliberately encourage the foolish antics of other characters, quietly laughing at them in frequent asides.

2) Meanwhile,Lorenzo Senior (Kno'well) worries that his son is mixing with less reputable acquaintances.

3) Mosca (Brainworm) independently embarks on several zany ventures, all involving disguises, to assure that Lorenzo Junior (Edward Kno'well) is beholden to him.

4) And lastly, the merchant Thorello (Thomas Kitely) mistakenly convinces himself that his wife Biancha (Dame Kitely) and his sister Hesperida (Mistress Budget) are being wooed by the foolish mix of characters that has descended upon his home. (Shakespeare may have derived the name Othello from Jonson's jealous Thorello.)

I had difficulty keeping track of the numerous characters that wandered on and off the stage, reminding me of my first reading of Bartholomew Fair, a Jonson play with an even larger cast. The dialogue rangesfrom scholarly quotes in Latin to lower class slang. I found the footnotes to be helpful.

Both the original 1601 play and Jonson's revised 1616 version make good reading. I had the good fortune to find a copy of a parallel text edition (Regents Renaissance Drama series by University of Nebraska Press) of the 1601 quarto and the 1616 folio of Every Man In His Humour.

One last comment: Is it Humor or Humour?It makes a difference when conducting a title search. ... Read more

Product Description
Nine works by Ben Jonson with an active table of contents are included in this collection.

Works include:
The Alchemist
Cynthia's Revels
Discoveries and Some Poems
Epicoene: Or, The Silent Woman
Every Man in His Humor
Every Man Out Of His Humour
The Poetaster
Sejanus: His Fall
Volpone; Or, The Fox ... Read more

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This Kindle book includes: The Alchemist, Cynthia's Revels, Epicoene, Every Man in His Humour, Every Man Out of His Humour, The Poetaster, Sejanus, and Volpone.It also includes Felix Schelling's introduction to the Complete Plays of Ben Jonson.According to Schelling, Jonson is "the greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire,and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters:such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age." According to Wikipedia: "Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets."

Responding to customer feedback, I improved the formatting on 7/3/2009.If you bought a copy before then, you should be able to download the new version at no additional cost. Feedback always welcome. seltzer@samizdat.com ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great plays
The publisher says above that he fixed a formatting problem, and I assume that he did so because the plays look fine to me. There's a space of 2 lines between each character which is unnecessary, but other than that I don't see any formatting problems.

Great content; lousy formatting-- worthless, but still only a buck!
Okay, I've bought several "classic" items for my Kindle; I have bought stuff from the company that produced this that I was happy with, but this is horrible.I can maybe understand not having notations between scene changes, but there are no divisions in Volpone between the Acts!Now, Jonson is great, and the content is excellent, but the only reason I'm not going to shout for my money back was that I only paid a dollar for this.

Probably the first title I'm going to delete altogether off my Kindle; and I'll be making sure I try the samples for any other plays I buy for my Kindle. ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Each version and edition reveals new facets
I came upon this play and Ben Jonson by the back door. I was watching a movie titled "The Honey Pot" with Rex Harrison. His character Cecil Fox after observing this play used the outline for his own purposes. So naturally I have to read the play to see what the movie is mimicking.

I have several copies of "Valpone" (the fox) to compare information on Ben. This is a review of the "New Mermaids Series" I have several of their series. They give you all the background information and any annotation needed. They make the information interesting enough that you feel that Ben Jonson is in the room with you. I am sure some people would not want to be in the same room. I was surprised to find that William Shakespeare acted in some of Ben's plays.

The play is well written and has many levels to it. If it did not have so many footnotes I would be in trouble. It reads like an English play yet has parts that would make Stephen King blush.

Scathing comedy
The title play of this collection, 'Volpone' is Jonson's most famous play. It is fierce exploration of human greed. Volpone is a great miser who plans to make a bundle by pretending that he is dying , and receiving gifts from his friends who he promises to bequeath his legacy to. His fellow collaborator is his servant Mosca( The fly) who in the end turns against Volpone and tries to , after allegedly inheriting Volpone's wealth, keep him dead. The result of his action is disaster for all parties concerned.
Jonson's strength is in making us laugh at human folly. However his language is difficult and his jaundiced view of character gives, for me anyway , less than full satisfaction. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Great Introduction to Ben Jonson's Comedies
I recently read the early 17th century comedy "Volpone", my first introduction to Ben Jonson.I was surprised by how well Jonson's humor had traveled through 400 years of cultural change. I did have difficulty with Jonson's dedication (several pages), the introductory argument, and the prologue as well as a "Pythagorean literary satire" in Act One, Scene One. But thereafter I found the humor to be natural and enjoyable. I even found myself somewhat sympathetic for the unscrupulous Volpone, Mosca, Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino.I immediately hunted around on my dustier bookshelves for other works of Ben Jonson.

"Epicene" was less easy to digest, but was worth the effort. There is a surprising twist in the final scene and I suggest that the reader avoid any literary criticism or introductions to "Epicene" until after your first reading. I had less empathy for the characters in "Epicene" and it was difficult to identify any "good guys". The characters were not terribly disagreeable, but simply dilettantes that had little concern for morality or ethics. The dialogue is more obscure (and more bawdy) than in "Volpone". I found it helpful to first read the footnotes for a scene before actually reading the scene itself.

"The Alchemist" is more like "Volpone".The main characters are unscrupulous con-men; their targets are gullible, greedy individuals. I learned quite a bit about alchemy, at least alchemy as practiced by 17th century con-men. As with "Volpone" and "Epicene", I was unable to predict how Ben Jonson would bring the play to a satisfactory conclusion. I enjoyed "The Alchemist" and I expect that I will read it again. I don't know if it is performed very often, but it would probably be quite entertaining.

"Bartholomew Fair" introduces a large, motley collection of characters that largely converse in lower class colloquialisms that require some effort to master. The comedy was intended in part to be a satire on Puritans and thereby please King James, but it was equally an introduction to the varied individuals that might be encountered at an annual fair.It was not easy to keep track of the many characters and I continually referred to the cast listing to reorient myself.

There are a number of collections of Ben Jonson's plays. I recommend an inexpensive collection, "The Alchemist and Other Plays", publish by Oxford University Press as a World's Classic. The introduction, glossary, and explanatory footnotes by Gordon Campbell are quite good. Begin with either "Volpone" or "The Alchemist" if you are new to Jonson. I hope you are as surprised and pleased as I was.

Worth the effort
Ben Jonson, although modern audiences find him difficult to read, played an important role in the development of the English comedic play.Volpone is a dark comedy that explores the twisted world of a con artist and histoady.The play demonstrates Jonson's awareness of the hypocrisy of socialsituations.Similarly, Bartholomew Fair takes the reader on a tour of theseamier side of seventeenth century London life.Zeal of the Land Busy, areligious hypocrite, still speaks to our generation when questions ofreligious expression still plague us.Epicene is a gender-bender in whichthe ideal silent woman turns out to be a man.The Alchemist, although themost difficult of the plays to read, is worth the effort, as it exploresthe questions of knowledge, ownership of knowledge, and abuse common intoday's world.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Alchemist By Paulo Coelh

Jonson's The Alchemist - hilarious Renaissance drama!
This is a very very funny play.I highly recommend it.If you think Renaissance drama means "only Shakespeare", you need to try some of his contemporaries, like the Poet Laureate Ben Jonson.=smile=Of thethree Jonson comedies I've yet read, this one is great fun!Be warned thatsome of the "alchemical" language may be seem too specialized,unless you know this time period; since it's supposed to be patter to trickthe marks, that's not the detraction it seems to be.

_The_Alchemist_ hasa legion of characters, most of whom are the marks.They deserve what theyget--but because this is Jonson, the ones running the confidence games maynot end up as you expect. His type of comedy is atypical of his period inthat respect.If you aren't familiar with the Renaissance speech, then Irecommend the excellent New Mermaids text.The extensive footnotes aremostly a glossary, which is extremely helpful![Yes, it makes some of theperiod jokes make sense then.]

Since the characters are drawn broadly,you will be surprised at how easily you will understand them, whether theyare greedy or lusty or foolish. The smooth way one con fits into workingthe next ongoing one is priceless!

Much like _Volpone_ [also byJonson], this is a play about greed, about con games, and about how peoplecan allow avarice, lust and money to corrupt them.Call this satire,parody or farce--no matter, the humor is biting and witty and wild.Forcomparative humor in the same period, this is somewhat comparable toMarlowe's _The Jew of Malta_.

I love the way the characters work with andagainst each other.Subtle may dazzle or mystify with his language, andDol Common may keep them from destroying their three-way partnership, butFace is my favorite of the trio.He is the trickiest of them all.I likehow he fares in the ending too, which leads me to believe Face is like acat.=grin=To me he's likable in the same outrageous way! ... Read more

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Publisher: London : J.M Dent ... Read more