Jacobean City Comedy

by Brian Gibbons

The first decade of the Jacobean age witnessed a sudden profusion of comedies satirizing city life; among these were comedies by Ben Jonson, John Marston and Thomas Middleton, as well as the bulk of the repertory of the newly-established children’s companies at Blackfriars and Paul’s. The playwrights self-consciously forged a new genre which attracted London audiences with its images of folly and vice in Court and City, and hack-writing dramatists were prompt to cash in on a new theatrical fashion. This study, first published in 1980, examines ways in which the Jacobean city comedy reflect on the self-consciousness of audiences and the concern of the dramatists with Jacobean society. This title will be of interest of students of Renaissance Drama, English Literature and Performance.

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[Elie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really useful resource for a lot of things (although. What I wouldn't give for anything collating the last 40+ years of criticism on the genre) but is slightly maddening that he doesn't get into the marriage plot when it's such a huge part of so many city comedies. But we move!

[Candy Wood]

Even though the interlibrary loan process delivered this book by mistake, I read it with interest. Shakespeare is upstaged here by Marston, Middleton, and Jonson and the genre of City Comedy, plays that are still occasionally performed though not as often as those of Shakespeare (I have seen Volpone and The Alchemist and Women Beware Women but not Michaelmas Term or The Malcontent). Subsequent scholars have confirmed the connections he suggests between Middleton and the style of The Revenger’s Tragedy (once attributed to Cyril Tourneur but now thought to be entirely by Middleton) and parts of Timon of Athens. While Gibbons’s approach is mostly through genre, the kind of reading prevalent in the 1960s, he does explore connections with social and economic conditions in Jacobean England, arguing that the City Comedies dramatize the conflicts rather than just reflecting manners. I’m surprised by the omission of Measure for Measure, which has much in common with the plays he does discuss, especially the Disguised Duke plot and the atmosphere of dark, urban confusion. And there’s no index or bibliography, with references only in footnotes.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as useful as Plotting Early Modern London.