Every Man in His Humour, Ben Jonson | Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (essay date 1999)
Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: Summers, Claude J., and Ted-Larry Pebworth. “The Comedies.” In Ben Jonson Revised, pp. 27-44. New York: Twayne, 1999.
[In the following excerpt, Summers and Pebworth offer a thematic and stylistic overview of Every Man in His Humour and assert that the play is not one of Jonson's more successful comedies.]
Ben Jonson is among the premier writers of comic drama in the English language. Energetic and vital, gritty and satiric, Jonson's comedies are the product of a self-conscious artist who took seriously the Horatian maxim that poetry should entertain and instruct. Best known today as the author of Every Man in His Humour, [E. M. I.] Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, Jonson actually wrote many comedies during the course of a career that spanned 40 years. The 14 complete comedies that survive are...
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