Four Jacobean City Comedies [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The phrase'Jacobean City Comedy', like all such phrases, is no '' more than a convenient label for the editor and critic. It does not i' i' describe so much as point to a body of drama whose main !.,,. features are fairly clear, although its edges are blurred. But, as , ;' applied to this volume, the phrase does have the advantage of f ,, offering us three different ways of looking at the plays, depending ; ; on which of its three components we choose to stress. ; We could, for instance, think of the plays as chiefly Jacobean -that is, as not only very different from anything produced in the Elizabethan period, but also as specifically related to the court of King James and its way of life. (The fact that this relationship is mainly a hostile one makes it stand out in sharper relief.) Of course, nothing comes out of nothing, especially where the drama is concerned, and Jacobean City Comedy has its roots in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign, in the literature of Elizabethan low-life (collected in Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets, Penguin Books), in the satirical verse of Hall, jMarston and others, and more immediately in such plays as Dekker's The Shoemaker''s Holiday and Heywood's Four Prentices of London. But to turn from either of these plays to any in this collection is to become aware of a different world, and the awareness of difference is all the more forcible because outwardly the world is recognizably similar. That world is generally London, or a part of the country temporarily invaded by Londoners bringing with them their own tempo and outlook on life. More particularly it is the world of moneymaking, legitimate, doubtfully legitimate or downright crooked, along with the pursuit of women for purposes legitimate, doubtfully legitimate or downright crooked. But the light in which these activities are presented is altogether sharper and the response which they evoke in us is harsher and less genial. The dramatic objectives of Dekker and Heywood are as . simple and straightforward as the responses they wish to evoke. , 9