ترسیم لندن اوایل مدرن: مقالات جدید در کمدی شهری جاکوبی (مطالعات در اجرا و درام اوایل مدرن)

With the publication of Brian Gibbons's Jacobean City Comedy thirty-five years ago, the urban satires by Ben Jonson, John Marston and Thomas Middleton attained their 'official status as a Renaissance subgenre' that was distinct, by its farcical humour and ironic tone, from 'citizen comedy' or 'London drama' more generally. This retrospective genre-building has proved immensely fruitful in the study of early modern English drama; and although city comedies may not yet rival Shakespeare's plays in the amount of editorial work and critical acclaim they receive, both the theatrical contexts and the dramatic complexity of the genre itself, and its interrelations with Shakespearean drama justly command an increasing level of attention. Looking at a broad range of plays written between the 1590s and the 1630s - master-pieces of the genre like Eastward Ho, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Dutch Courtesan and The Devil is an Ass, blends of romance and satire like The Shoemaker's Holiday and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and bourgeois oddities in the Shakespearean manner like The London Prodigal - the twelve essays in this volume re-examine city comedy in the light of recently foregrounded historical contexts such as early modern capitalism, urban culture, the Protestant Reformation, and playhouse politics. Further, they explore the interrelations between city comedy and Shakespearean comedy both from the perspective of author rivalry and in terms of modern adaptations: the twenty-first-century concept of 'popular Shakespeare' (above all in the movie sector) seems to realign the comparatively time- and placeless Shakespearean drama with the gritty, noisy and bustling urban scene that has been city comedy's traditional preserve. Essays by a dozen friends, colleagues, and former students of Brian Gibbons explore the concept of Jacobean city comedy that Gibbons established in his seminal study Jacobean City Comedy: A Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton (1968). The essays take up some of city comedy's traditional characteristics in order to re-examine them in the light of historical contexts that have more recently been brought to the foreground—such as early modern capitalism, urban culture, the Protestant Reformation, and playhouse politics. The essays explore a range of play texts written between the 1590s and the 1630s. The three editors are academics specializing in English, literature, and British studies at German universities. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR The essays in this volume, written by friends, colleagues and former students of Brian Gibbons, explore further the concept of Jacobean city comedy established in Gibbons' seminal study 'Jacobean City Comedy: a Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton', originally published in 1968 This is Jacobean comedy at its documentary best: a salty, vivid report on the eternal clash between the puritan ethic and spendthrift snobbery. ix, 236 pages ; 23 cm Includes bibliographical references (p. [217]-228) and indexes