Ben Jonson, John Marston and early modern drama
Subtitle: satire and the audience
By: Rebecca Yearling, Lecturer in English, Keele University, UK
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; Springer
Published: 2016
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9781137563989
Subjects: LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance; Theater; LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama; English drama; PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism; History and criticism; Criticism and interpretation; English Satire; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Theater audiences; History
Description: "This book examines the influence of John Marston, typically seen as a minor figure among early modern dramatists, on his colleague Ben Jonson. While Marston is usually famed more for his very public rivalry with Jonson than for the quality of his plays, this book argues that such a view of Marston seriously underestimates his importance to the theatre of his time. In it, the author contends that Marston's plays represent an experiment in a new kind of satiric drama, with origins in the humanist tradition of serio ludere. His works--deliberately unpredictable, inconsistent and metatheatrical--subvert theatrical conventions and provide confusingly multiple perspectives on the action, forcing their spectators to engage actively with the drama and the moral dilemmas that it presents. The book argues that Marston's work thus anticipates and perhaps influenced the mid-period work of Ben Jonson, in plays such as Sejanus, Volpone and The Alchemist"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Acknowledgements; title: A Note on Editions; title: Introduction: Why does Marston Matter?; title: Prologue: The Problem of the Audience; title: 1. The Playwrights and the Audience; title: 2. Dramatic Satire and the Crisis of Authority; title: 3. John Marston: Provoking the Audience; title: 4. Jonson and Marston: 'I write just in thy vein, I'; title: Conclusion; title: Appendix: The Boy Actors: The Question of Intent; title: Notes; title: Bibliography; title: Index.