Volpone: A critical guide: Arden Early Modern Drama Guides

Comprehensive introduction to Ben Jonson's Volpone - introducing its critical history, performance history, the current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play

Matthew Steggle is Reader in English at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He is editor of the ejournal Early Modern Literary Studies, and a Contributing Editor to The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson.

Series Introduction \ Volpone Timeline \ Introduction \ The Critical Backstory Sam Thompson \ Performance History, Rebecca Yearling \ The State of the Art: Robert C. Evans \ New Directions: Jonson's Literary Theater: Volpone in Performance and Print (1606-1607) James P. Bednarz \ New Directions: "Live Free, . . . Rob Churches, . . . Lend me your Dwarf": What's Funny about Volpone? Rick Bowers \ New Directions: Ben Jonson and Imprisonment Frances Teague \ New Directions: Age and Ageing in Volpone Stella Achilleos \ Resources for teaching and studying Volpone Matthew C. Hansen \ Bibliography \ Notes on Contributors \ Index

...offers the most wide-ranging and thought-provoking overview of Jonson's comedy ever assembled. It considers the play both as a literary text and as a performance piece, covering its history on the stage and in critical commentary, and so illuminating the current state of scholarship on this most provocative and ambiguous of plays. The well-balanced essays are not afraid to disagree with each other and repeatedly point us towards exciting new questions about a play which is all too often castrated by being labelled a "classic". It will be of value to scholars, teachers and students alike. Future study of Volpone starts here.
Matthew Steggle's collection of critical essays deals perspicaciously with many of the painful questions that linger about Ben Jonson's most popular play.Steggle's collection confirms the power and wit of Jonson's most enduring stage comedy.