Ben Jonson: Selected Masques

by Ben Jonson

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. Because its flexibility provided a forum for his dramatic imagination, Jonson was able to resolve and transcend the satiric vision that was in many ways the substance of his drama. He instructed as well as applauded his courtly audience and, with the aid of the great theatrical designer Inigo Jones, brought unity to the diverse elements of the masque, infusing them with a moral and poetic life.
In early 1969, Yale University Press published The Complete Masques , the first one-volume edition and the most carefully edited and annotated text available. A modernized version, the 576 page Complete Masques 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. This abridged collection contains the most important of the works included in the large edition, and Mr. Orgel’s introduction which discusses Jonson’s development of the masque in relation to Inigo Jones’s development of the illusionistic stage.
Mr. Orgel is associate professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.

Genres: Plays, Classics

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

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

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

masques don't really make great reading; they really were the ultimate statement in spectacle, costing a fortune for each performance, especially in comparison to the audience, which is basically the monarch, who sits as both central figure of the performance and as receiver of same. a bizarre little genre.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know this book backwards and forwards...