'A silent and loving woman is a gift of the lord'
This 'excellent comedy of affliction' enjoyed enormous prestige
for more than a century after its first performance: for John
Dryden it had 'the greatest and most noble construction of any pure
unmixed comedy in any language'. Its title signals Jonson's satiric
and complex concern with gender: the play asks not only 'what
should a man do?', but how should men and women behave, both as fit
examples of their sex, and to one another? The characters furnish a
cross-section of wrong answers, enabling Jonson to create riotous
entertainment out of lack, loss and disharmony, to the point of
denying the straightfowardly festive conclusion which audiences at
comedies normally expect. Much of the comic vitality arises from a
degeneration of language, which Jonson called 'the instrument of
society', into empty chatter or furious abuse, and from a plot
which is a series of lies and betrayals (the hero lies to everyone
and Jonson lies to the audience). The central figure is a man named
Morose, who hates noise yet lives in the centre of London, and who,
because of his decision to marry a woman he supposes to be silent,
exposes himself to a fantastic cacophony of voices, male, female
and - epicene.
This student edition contains a lengthy Introduction with
background on the author, date and sources, theme, critical
interpretation and stage history.
General
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