Drawing on the generic and mythic strength of comedy and the
theories of Bakhtin, Bergson, and Hobbes, this book identifies the
radical nature of early modern English comedy. The satirical
comedic actions that shape the "Shepherds' Play," Thomas Dekker's
pamphlets, and the comic dramas of Marston, Middleton, and Jonson
are all driven, Bowers points out, by an ability to criticize
authority, assert plebeian culture, and insist on the complexity
and innovation of human discourse. The texts examined (including
The Jew of Malta, Metamorphosis of Ajax, Antonio and Mellida,
Bartholomew Fair, The Alchemist, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside)
simultaneously create and employ standard comedic elements. Farce,
absurdity, excess, over-the-top characters, unremitting irony,
black humor, toilet humor, and tricksters of all types - such
features and more combine to satirize medical, religious, and
political authority and to implement necessary social change.
Written with a narrative ease, Radical Comedy in Early Modern
England shows how comic interventions both describe and reconfigure
prevalent authority in its own time while arguing that, through
early modern comedy, one can observe the changes in social behavior
and understandings characteristic of the Renaissance.
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