The Devil is an Ass: And Other Plays

by Ben Jonson

A quintesstential selection of the dramatic work of Ben Jonson, this edition features the plays Poetaster, Sejanus, The Devil is an Ass, and New Inn. Jonson's work is renowned for its wit and biting religions and social commentary these four plays are no exception. The plays featured in this edition have been freshly edited from the earliest printed texts. The introduction focuses on the interaction between poet and state authority, and the need for new productions of these rarely performed classics from our dramatic heritage.

Genres: Plays, Classics

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

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

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetaster shows exactly why Ben Jonson is so good, and also why he's not: every single line in this is brilliant: there's a consistent quality to this play that is phenomenal. It also has the first known version of the "Take My Wife..." joke that I have come across.

But: it seems to be two (or three) plays jammed together, and Act Five seems to be his revenge on two of his colleagues (and it's more than somewhat unsubtle): yes, it's funny, and Demetrius' defence of why he was attacking Horace (basically, lots of other people like his stuff, so it was time to get nasty on his ass) reminds me of an internet troll (human nature doesn't really change, only the means by which we make our insults of each other).

But there's the story of Ovid and his ill-fated affair with the Emperor's daughter, which ends up like a version of Romeo and Juliet; there's Crispinus' attempt to seduce the married Chloe, and outwit her (frankly dim) husband; there's Tucca's attempt to do the same thing. All three of these plots are finished by the end of Act Four, without really resolving, and Act Five has two new plots: the praise of Virgil by the other poets, and Crispinus' and Demetrius' attempts to get Horace arrested which backfires on them and on Tucca, neither of which are dramatically as interesting.

This play would have benefited from someone in 1601 blue-penciling it, and saying: let's deal with these plots: they're really good. The last Act is pretty much a different play (beautifully written and everything, but....) Knowing what Ben Jonson was like, I am sure that wouldn't be a job anyone would have taken on willingly, but it would probably have made for a better play (Volpone, Epicene, Bartholomew Fair, Alchemist) rather than this beauifully written misfire.

And it's a lot better without the original epilogue, which is essentially Jonson having a whinge.

Sejanus: Apparently booed off the stage on its first performance (with one William Shakespeare playing the Emperor Tiberius), this is Jonson's go at Senecan poetic tragedy, and, while there are some great bits, it feels a bit lacking in something. Whereas one kind of gets behind Marlowe's antiheroes, and finds Shakespeare's Vices and evildoers strangely sexy, Sejanus is a tad bland as a baddie, as if Jonson had written a Putin His Fall, or a tragedy of Rex Tillotson: apart from the power, and the cruelty, there's not much to him.

Sure, he's very Machiavellian (one gets the impression Jonson knew enough Italian to read The Prince); and his fall in Act Five seems very Boris Johnson (all those people publicly supporting him strongly suddenly turn against him and say they had no idea what he was doing - though one does hope that what happened to Sejanus' children doesn't happen to Johnson's), but it's the incidental details, and the metaphors used by characters who know they're being watched, that make this play clever.

Tiberius, dodgy as hell, not quite accused of being a paedo in this play but very clearly so accused in Jonson's sources, subtle and manipulative while appearing senile and pervy, is brilliantly written, and some of the verbose goodies are superbly done (though one is surprised they lived as long as they did).

This play is, though, a clear reminder that the Elizabethans lived in a Stasi-like police state, where everything they said (and lots of things they didn't) could put them in prison or get them tortured. Was Jonson making reference to older playwrights such as Marlowe or Kyd? Or did he not need to?

The Devil is an Ass is a total dog's breakfast of a play: I have a suspicion that if played at enormous speed, with no time for actors, characters or audience to think, it would probably be great fun to watch, but as literature, it is overstuffed: is it a pisstake of Dr Faustus? a reworking of The Alchemist? a city comedy with a dumb husband and an abused wife? a moral story that says we don't need a devil; there's enough tricksters and Machiavels (and their greedy dupes) in London anyway? a mockery of fake-possessions?

It's probably all of those things, which means there's just too much going on. Whereas other playwrights of the time you can see what their point is, this is scattershot in it targets and purposes, and comes out as a bit meaningless as a result.

I have seen The Alchemist done too slowly, and it doesn't work: this needs, likewise, to be done at the max. But whether it works as a text to read? jury's out.

By the time he was writing The New Inn, Ben Jonson was not at the top of his game: he'd had a stroke, since the death of King James the royal family weren't taking his calls (despite him being officially still Poet Laureate), and he was short of cash. So he ended up writing this rather strange play which he thought would restore his finances, but probably only made one performance. He blames the audience (in a very snarky afterpoem) for preferring revivals of Pericles to his work of genius, but actually this just isn't one of his best.

Spoiler alert:
the play has a Cymbeline type ending, which moves the play closer to the romance-tragicomedy form that Jonson spent much of his life railing against.
There are two scenes where the hero (?) Lovel has long speeches praising first Love, then Valour, from a Platonic perspective (I am afraid my eyes glazed over a lot in these bits, so I may be misjudging them), and the lady falls in love with him. The Oxford Edition suggests we're not supposed to take these at face value, but I'm not sure. I am prepared to concede that, live, with superb actors, these scenes may have real tension, power and comedy: on the page, they are flat.

There is a theory that artists enter their maturity in their late work, but this is (how shall I put it) a bit too mature for my tastes. I don't think it really works.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy reading drama. With the exception of the title play, this collection was fairly painful to get through however. To begin with, unless you have really experienced or lived in a society in which the arts were restricted, many of the plays' central themes will not be very meaningful. Additionally, much of Jonson's wit is lost on the modern American reader.
I did, however, enjoy "The Devil Is An Ass" as much for the title of the play as well as the bawdy, biting commentator. Jonson is overt in his characterizations, so there is not much left to the imagination as to his central theme. It is a play that, as opposed to the others, will resonate with modern readers

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read The Devil is an Ass, so I'll stick to discussing that. I found it to be an okay play, but I feel like Jonson's desire to make it seem realistic heavily detracted from my enjoyment. The random asides and discussions of events outside the play add to the verisimilitude, but they make the text too dense for me to really enjoy reading it. I find this sad, because there's certainly the core of a fun and funny play here - it's just buried too deep for me to really like it. Also, the fact that Pug, the devil character, doesn't get much time on stage is disappointing. I'm fine with him not doing that much, but I wish he was there more to at least give his thoughts on what's going on, as the times when he does do this are fairly good. Over all, I wouldn't really recommend reading this play, but I feel like it might be more enjoyable if I were to see it staged. Finally, I wasn't a huge fan of this edition as I feel like it could have used more notes - I think part of my lack of enjoyment may be because it was rather difficult to understand some parts of the dialogue.

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

late jonson is difficult, what dryden termed 'jonson's dotages.' there's some gems there, but perhaps not so much as the period of the alchemist and epicoene, say.