Bartholomew Fair: Difference between revisions
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'''''Bartholomew Fair''''' is a comedy written by the English playwright Ben Jonson, first performed by the Lady Elizabeth’s Men at the Hope Theatre in London in 1614. There are just two performances on record from Jonson’s lifetime, the second performance being shown for the court in Whitehall and King James on the night after the first performance. With a text almost twice as long as the average play in this period and a large cast of thirty-six named characters, Bartholomew Fair is “the most ‘occasional’ of Jonson’s plays”, implying the existence of special occasions for its performance and within the story itself. <ref>John Creaser, “Bartholomew Fair: Stage History”.</ref> In fact, the play’s single-column layout and lavish use of ornaments, illumination, scene divisions, and title pages imply that Jonson intended on printing his plays not as “a script for performance, but a literary work mediated through the dignity of print, in keeping with Jonson’s practice of writing plays that were much too long for performance in full and were destined to have an existence independent of the theatre, however well they adapted to the stage.” <ref>John Creaser, “Misprinting Bartholomew Fair: Jonson and 'The Absolute Knave'”.</ref> | '''''Bartholomew Fair''''' is a comedy written by the English playwright Ben Jonson, first performed by the Lady Elizabeth’s Men at the Hope Theatre in London in 1614. | ||
==Stage History== | |||
There are just two performances on record from Jonson’s lifetime, the second performance being shown for the court in Whitehall and King James on the night after the first performance. With a text almost twice as long as the average play in this period and a large cast of thirty-six named characters, Bartholomew Fair is “the most ‘occasional’ of Jonson’s plays”, implying the existence of special occasions for its performance and within the story itself. <ref>John Creaser, “Bartholomew Fair: Stage History”.</ref> In fact, the play’s single-column layout and lavish use of ornaments, illumination, scene divisions, and title pages imply that Jonson intended on printing his plays not as “a script for performance, but a literary work mediated through the dignity of print, in keeping with Jonson’s practice of writing plays that were much too long for performance in full and were destined to have an existence independent of the theatre, however well they adapted to the stage.” <ref>John Creaser, “Misprinting Bartholomew Fair: Jonson and 'The Absolute Knave'”.</ref> | |||
Revision as of 18:14, 13 April 2022
Bartholomew Fair is a comedy written by the English playwright Ben Jonson, first performed by the Lady Elizabeth’s Men at the Hope Theatre in London in 1614.
Stage History
There are just two performances on record from Jonson’s lifetime, the second performance being shown for the court in Whitehall and King James on the night after the first performance. With a text almost twice as long as the average play in this period and a large cast of thirty-six named characters, Bartholomew Fair is “the most ‘occasional’ of Jonson’s plays”, implying the existence of special occasions for its performance and within the story itself. [1] In fact, the play’s single-column layout and lavish use of ornaments, illumination, scene divisions, and title pages imply that Jonson intended on printing his plays not as “a script for performance, but a literary work mediated through the dignity of print, in keeping with Jonson’s practice of writing plays that were much too long for performance in full and were destined to have an existence independent of the theatre, however well they adapted to the stage.” [2]