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Bartholmew Fair
Contributor(s): Jonson, Ben (Author), Hibbard, G. R. (Editor), Leggatt, Alexander (Editor)
ISBN: 071367427X     ISBN-13: 9780713674279
Publisher: Methuen Drama
OUR PRICE:   $18.95  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: April 2007
Qty:
Annotation: This edition has been updated with a new introduction that examines Bartholomew Fair as a reading text, as a text for performance, and as a play that questions theater itself. There is a lively and comprehensively researched account of the play's historical, social, and theatrical context. Professor Leggatt has also updated the commentary and further reading section.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Drama | European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Dewey: 822.3
Series: New Mermaids
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.1" W x 7.7" (0.40 lbs) 224 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - British Isles
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Early modern London - too foggy and Protestant to have a carnival -
offered its inhabitants commercial events during which to indulge their
need for bodily delights and festival exuberance. The fair of St
Bartholmew, held anually in Smithfield on 24 August, served Jonson as
an opportunity to dissect a wide cross-section of Londoners and their
various reasons for spending a day out among the booths, stalls, smells
and noises of the fair. Unusually magnanimous for a Jonsonian city
comedy, the main thrust of the satire is not against fools, madmen,
fortune-hunters, cuckolds or prostitutes, but against hypocrisy and
bigotry. This edition shows that the play can be read as a
comprehensive refutation of puritanism and the London magistracy, both
of whom were attacking the theatre (and the festive culture of which it
was still part) as idolatrous, seditious and disorderly.

Contributor Bio(s): Jonson, Ben: -

Ben Jonson contributed to Every Man Out of His Humour; Bartholomew Fair; The Staple of News; Volpone; and Sejanus, His Fall; all from Manchester University Press.