Not Shakespeare for the fall - Ben Jonson's best, plenty of revenge, and the New Shakespeareans

Time to get back to the Age of Shakespeare, the non-Shakespeare parts.  Please read along if it strikes you.  Last spring’s reading list was a bit of a trip to graduate school; this fall’s syllabus is nothing but masterpieces of one kind or another.

A new king was in London, and a new court, with new tastes, and more importantly for my purposes some new writers, the best of them deeply influenced by William Shakespeare.  The London theater audience had perhaps grown a little tired of the endless revivals of The Spanish Tragedy and had developed a sophisticated sub-audience interested in new voices.

Here is my plan, which I will surely meet occasionally, a new play every other Monday, with some other related topic on the other Mondays:

I have previously read all of these but The Roaring Girl.  Jonson hits his peak, one great, original comedy after another, with one more to come in 1614.  Two great revenge tragedies, the name of the one suggesting that we are at a turning point for the genre.  Chapman’s play is a historical tragedy.  The Knight of the Burning Pestle is another unique comedy, full of surprises, easy to recommend to everyone (Jonson can get a little obscure).  This soon becomes the age of “Beaumont & Fletcher,” the age of tragicomedy.  I picked A Maid’s Tragedy almost arbitrarily, out of many outstanding candidates.

The Shakespeare-influenced new writers are John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster.  Two would collaborate with Shakespeare, and the other hung around Shakespeare’s theater company when he was a dirty street urchin.  I hope to read several more Middleton plays from this period but his peak, by reputation is in the next decade.

Here is a bit of what else was happening in English theater:

All of the years, I should point out, are approximate, but they are likely a lot more accurate than the last time I did this exercise.

The expanded second edition of Francis Bacon’s Essays appeared in 1612.  The best lyric poet of the period, John Donne, published The First Anniversary in 1611, but was otherwise utterly uninterested in publication.  The other best poet, Ben Jonson, would start publishing in a few years, but not quite yet.

Jonson also wrote for the courtly masques of Inigo Jones, the great innovator of spectacle, of pure theater.  I have read a handful of Jonson’s masques, and they are often poetic marvels.  I hope to read many more soon.

Any requests?  I can take requests.  This is exciting set of plays.