Plays and Masques

by Ben Jonson, Richard L. Harp (Editor)

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.

Genres: Drama, Plays, Classics, Fiction, Literature

203 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1979

About the author

Benjamin Jonson 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. A house in Dulwich College is named after him.

See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson

Reviews

[Randee Baty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read two plays in this collection so that is all I’m commenting on. They were both great. The two were Volpone and Epicoene and I read them for my British Drama class. Again, as with other classics I’ve read, a good professor can make all the difference in the world when you are reading things that may seem a bit foreign to a contemporary audience. My prof made these plays come alive! I would love to see them performed but I think I’ll have to leave my little corner of Kansas for that.

Volpone is set in Venice and is a story of a bunch of greedy people. Volpone is a rich man with no heir and he has a succession of other well-off people trying to insinuate themselves into his will. They constantly bring him gifts, which only makes him richer. None of them seem to have this scam figured out. Volpone has a “parasite,” a servant, who does most of the actual work on this scam. Volpone likes to pretend he is on his deathbed to get everyone’s hopes up and then he pretends to recover. In the end, everyone gets what they deserve. There are twists and turns and I don’t want to give those away but it’s a funny and clever play.

Epicoene takes the art of scamming to the next level. Dauphine is the uncle of a rich man who has no heir but the uncle, Morose, does not want to leave his estate to Dauphine. Morose also cannot stand the sound of anything except his own voice. He wants to marry a silent woman and have a presumably silent heir so that Dauphine will get nothing. Dauphine and his friends want to keep this from happening. The shenanigans they pull and the way they just keep twisting the scam make a hilarious plot and the other characters in the play are great fun. This was thoroughly enjoyable to read.

Ben Jonson is considered to be a technically better playwright than Shakespeare. He doesn’t leave all the memorable quotes and doesn’t have the same brilliance with language but his plays are well plotted, tight and satisfying. He leaves no loose ends. They are works of technical genius. Now, to find out where I can see them performed!

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ben Jonson wrote many plays in which he pointed out the evils and foibles of society. Later on in his career, he had to adapt himself to writing masques, whose main purpose was to flatter and amuse royalty and aristocracy. This explains the writings selected for the present volume.

This collection includes three of Jonson's plays (the best-known of which is Volpone). These are followed by three masques, some contemporary comments and some later literary criticism. Critics seem to be well aware that he isn't as popular or as accessible to average readers as he perhaps deserves to be. But just from reading this smallish sample of his works, I'm not sure I would have caught all of Jonson's genius without the help of the later critics. Sometimes drama which seems drab on the page really comes to life when acted, so you never know what seeing a stage performance would do.

[Isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volpone read 11th Feb 2021 - 4*
The Alchemist read 9th Feb 2021 - 4*

[Tom Mueller]

Norton's New Critical Edition, containing critiques, a short biography and a chronological bibliography of Jonson's life and work.

[Laura]

I read only Volpone.

[Sannie Hald · Rating 2 out of 5]

**** Only The Masque of Blackness!

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

morose ben jonson