Contribution of Jonson's younger contemporaries to development of the English renaissance comedy

Abstract

The starting point of this article lies in the fact that among the later post-Shakespearean dramatists there are no pure comediographers. Like Shakespeare himself, they wrote all kinds of drama, following not so much their inclinations as the changing fashions and the taste of the theatre-going public. This means that in the case of Shakespeare’s successors, under Charles I (1625-1642), the word is of authors whose main work lay in other fields. The paper intends to show that although still plentiful in the first two decades of the seventeenth century, the comedy was declining in quality. Its satire grew more superficial, limited to transitory follies of humours - many were imitating Ben Jonson in this. Intrigue and entertainment were growing more important than character or criticism of life. To be singled out deserve authors of the few good comedies produced in Jonson’s times, with the review of their general characteristics.

Keywords

• comedy
• humours
• satire
• collaboration
• entertainers