Bartholomew Fair: A Comedy

Ben JonsonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.1

Word count: 219K words
Chapters: 22

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Bartholomew Fair: A Comedy by Ben JonsonAuthor: Jonson, Ben, 1573?-1637,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 16, 2015

Editor's review

Bartholomew Fair is one of the representative comedies of Ben Jonson. Set in London's St. Bartholomew Fair, it gathers characters of different classes and motives into the clamor of a single day, driving the plot through exaggerated dialogue and escalating misunderstandings. Its value lies not only in its boisterous comic effect but in its sharp observation of human weakness, social mores, and moral pretense: Puritan moralizing, the vanity of country gentry, the shrewdness of traders, and the impulsiveness of the young all collide in the temporary world of the fair. As a public-domain ebook, this edition is a suitable entry point for understanding seventeenth-century English drama and Jonson's comic style. It is best read as a play meant for performance, attending to the rhythm of entrances and exits and to the puns and irony in the dialogue. Readers used to modern novelistic narrative will need some patience in the first few acts to enter the context, but once they grasp the character relationships and the rules of the fair, they will find a strong sense of immediacy and satirical pleasure.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in English Renaissance drama who want to expand their knowledge of Jonson's works
Students of English and American literature who need to read representative seventeenth-century comedies
Readers who enjoy bustling ensemble casts, satirical comedy, and strongly theatrical works
Ordinary readers who want low-cost access to classic drama through public-domain ebooks

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer fast-paced modern narrative and are unfamiliar with classical dramatic form
Beginners who need detailed annotations and scholarly introductions to read smoothly
Leisure readers looking only for light romance or a single main plotline

Reading tips

Read the dramatis personae and scene descriptions first, and sort out the relationships among the several groups of characters at the fair before entering the text.
Read in act and scene order; slow down at long monologues and attend to puns and irony in the dialogue.
After each act, reflect on whether the characters' motives have changed, and grasp the escalating rhythm of the comic conflict.
If possible, read alongside a staged performance video or an audio recording to better appreciate the dramatic rhythm.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this a play or a novel?

It is a comic play, organized in acts and scenes, with a dramatis personae, dialogue, and stage directions. Reading it requires imagining the stage performance and the characters' entrances and exits rather than following a novelistic mode of narration.

Can I understand it without a background in English drama?

You can, but it takes some adjustment. It is advisable to learn the basic background of the seventeenth-century London fair and the dramatis personae first, then proceed act by act and scene by scene; slow down where irony and puns are dense, and do not try to grasp every allusion at the outset.

Is this electronic edition suitable for scholarly citation?

This is a public-domain electronic text, suitable for general reading and preliminary acquaintance with the work, but scholarly citation should check authoritative critical editions and page numbers and consult professional annotations and introductions; a public-domain electronic text should not be the sole basis.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Ben Jonson Author · English · 1573–1637

Ben Jonson (1573?–1637) was an English playwright, poet, and actor of the Renaissance, born in London. In 1616 he published a collected edition of his plays on his own initiative, and in 1619 he was named Poet Laureate. He is best known for his satirical comedies, including Volpone Or, The Fox, The Alchemist, Epicoene Or, The Silent Woman, Bartholomew Fair: A Comedy, The Devil is an Ass, and Every Man in His Humour, as well as Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems. Drawing largely on urban life, these works are marked by a cool, witty tone and sharp commentary on human weakness and social manners, and they exerted a lasting influence on seventeenth-century English drama. Twelve of his works are held in this collection; further biographical details are limited in publicly available sources.