Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first book to survey comprehensively the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean citizen comedy. Most studies of the period focus on major authors; this one follows recurring themes and motifs, through a variety of plays by many authors from the moralizing comedies of the boys' companies. Professor Leggatt provides not only a fresh perspective on familiar plays by such figures as Jonson, Middleton, and Dekker, but also a new look at a number of neglected comedies, some by unfamiliar authors, some by major authors working together.
Standard figures – the usurer, the prodigal, and the prostitute – and standard plots – notably intrigues based on money or sex (or both) – are traced to show the changes that occur in apparently stereotyped material at the hands of individual authors. The result is to display the range and internal variety of a genre that too often is seen as all of a piece, and to show the different ways in which social thinking can inte
