Table Of ContentStudies in Major
Literary Authors
Edited by
William E. Cain
Professor of English
Wellesley College
A Routledge Series
Studies in Major Literary Authors
William E. Cain, General Editor
The End of Learning Milton’s Uncertain Eden
Milton and Education Understanding Place in Paradise Lost
Thomas Festa Andrew Mattison
Reading and Mapping Hardy’s Roads Henry Miller and Religion
Scott Rode Thomas Nesbit
Creating Yoknapatawpha The Magic Lantern
Readers and Writers in Faulkner’s Fiction Representation of the Double in Dickens
Owen Robinson Maria Cristina Paganoni
No Place for Home The Environmental Unconscious in
Spatial Constraint and Character Flight in the the Fiction of Don DeLillo
Novels of Cormac McCarthy Elise A. Martucci
Jay Ellis
James Merrill
The Machine that Sings Knowing Innocence
Modernism, Hart Crane, and the Reena Sastri
Culture of the Body
Yeats and Theosophy
Gordon A. Tapper
Ken Monteith
Influential Ghosts
Pynchon and the Political
A Study of Auden’s Sources
Samuel Thomas
Rachel Wetzsteon
Paul Auster’s Postmodernity
D.H. Lawrence’s Border Crossing
Brendan Martin
Colonialism in His Travel Writings and
“Leadership” Novels
Editing Emily Dickinson
Eunyoung Oh
The Production of an Author
Lena Christensen
Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecology
Kenneth R. Cervelli
Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of
American Exceptionalism
Sports, Narrative, and Nation in the
John Cant
Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jarom Lyle McDonald
Our Scene is London
Ben Jonson’s City and the Space of the Author
Shelley’s Intellectual System and its
James D. Mardock
Epicurean Background
Michael A. Vicario
Modernist Aesthetics and Consumer
Culture in the Writings of Oscar Wilde
Paul L. Fortunato
Our Scene is London
Ben Jonson’s City and the Space of the Author
James D. Mardock
New York London
First published in 2008
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Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication data
Mardock, James D., 1974–
Our scene is London : Ben Jonson’s city and the space of the author / by James D. Mardock.
p. cm. — (Studies in major literary authors)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-97763-0
1. Jonson, Ben, 1573?–1637—Homes and haunts—England—London. 2. Dramatists,
English—Homes and haunts—England—London. 3. Space in literature. 4. London (England)—
Social life and customs—17th century. 5. London (England)—Intellectual life—17th century.
6. London (England)—In literature. 7. Jonson, Ben, 1573?–1637. Bartholomew Fair. 8. James I,
King of England, 1566–1625—In literature. I. Title.
PR2634.M37 2008
822'.3--dc22 2007032596
ISBN 0-203-92851-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-97763-0 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-92851-2 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-97763-0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-92851-6 (ebk)
For Emilie
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Chapter One
Space as Authorial Strategy 6
Chapter Two
Londinium: The 1604 Royal Entry of James I 23
Chapter Three
London on Stage, London as Stage 45
Chapter Four
Jonson’s Plague Year Plays 67
Chapter Five
“Practisers of their madnesse”:
Bartholomew Fair and the Space of the Author 95
Epilogue
Beyond the 1616 Folio 110
Notes 117
Bibliography 147
Index 157
vii
Acknowledgments
Parts of this book originated as a dissertation at the University of Wisconsin
under the directorship of Heather Dubrow, whose unstinting rigor, profes-
sionalism, and energy as a director, mentor, and friend made the project pos-
sible. Various versions of the arguments herein have benefited from the critical
eyes and comments of Alex Block, Justin Gifford, Marissa Greenberg, Adam
Kitzes, David Loewenstein, Eric Rasmussen, Carol Rutter, Aaron Santesso,
Henry Turner, Stanley Wells, Susanne Wofford, and especially Jane Rickard.
Portions of the book have been presented in abbreviated form at
Shakespeare Association of America seminars organized by Jean Howard
and Crystal Bartolovich, Nora Johnson, Martin Butler, and Catherine Rich-
ardson, and I am indebted to the other participants in those seminars for
their insightful responses. Chapter two, in a somewhat different form, was
presented to the Princeton British Studies Seminar, for which opportunity
I am grateful to Peter Lake and Bill Jordan. The book has benefited from
generous grants from the University of Wisconsin, the University of War-
wick, and Ripon College, and I am likewise indebted for support—moral,
emotional, and scholarly—to my friends and colleagues, at Wisconsin (par-
ticularly Alex Block and Jesse Wolfe), at Ripon, at Warwick, and especially
at the University of Nevada, where my own friendly authorial competition
with Chris Coake helped impel the production of these pages.
I would be remiss as an author if I did not acknowledge the role of
place in this book’s production, and so I would also like to thank the Fair
Trade Coffee House in Madison, Seasons Café in Ripon, and the Bibo Cof-
fee Company in Reno, for providing me with tables and caffeine. Finally,
thanks to my family for their unflagging support over the years, and to
Emilie Meyer, whose love, encouragement, and ability to maintain a long-
term perspective have been indispensable. Beggar that I am, I am even poor
in thanks, and yet I thank you.
ix
