Bartholomew Fair
Encyclopedia
Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy is a comedy
in five acts by Ben Jonson
, the last written of his four great comedies. It was first staged on October 31, 1614
at the Hope Theatre
by the Lady Elizabeth's Men
. Written four years after The Alchemist
, five after Epicoene, or the Silent Woman
, and nine after Volpone
, it is in some respects the most experimental of these plays.
The play was first printed in 1631
, as part of a planned second volume of the first 1616
folio collection of Jonson's works, to be published by the bookseller Robert Allot
—though Jonson abandoned the plan when he became dissatisfied with the quality of the typesetting. Copies of the 1631 typecast were circulated, though whether they were sold publicly or distributed privately by Jonson is unclear. The play was published in the second folio
of Jonson's works in 1640–41, published by Richard Meighen
.
, which from 1133 to 1855 was one of London
's preeminent summer fairs. It opened each August 24th at Smithfield
, in the northwestern part of the city. Smithfield, a site of slaughterhouses and public executions, was a fitting place for a fair that was part commerce and part spectacle. At once a trading event for cloth and other goods and a pleasure fair, the four-day event drew crowds from all classes of English society.
Jonson's play uses this fair as the setting for an unusually detailed and diverse panorama of London life in the early seventeenth century. The one day of fair life represented in the play allows Jonson ample opportunity not just to conduct his plot but also to depict the vivid life of the fair, from pickpockets and bullies to justices and slumming gallants. Jonson also uses the characters that he creates as a way to comment on the social, religious and political conflicts of London society in Jacobean England.
; the company's stage-keeper enters, criticizing the play about to be performed because it lacks romantic and fabulous elements. He is then pushed from the stage by the book-keeper, who (serving as prologue) announces a contract between author and audience. The contract appears to itemize Jonson's discontentment with his audiences: Members are not to find political satire where none is intended; they are not to take as oaths such innocuous phrases as "God quit you"; they are not to "censure by contagion," but must exercise their own judgment; moreover, they are allowed to judge only in proportion to the price of their ticket. Perhaps most important, they agree not to expect a throwback to the sword-and-buckler age of Smithfield, for Jonson has given them a picture of the present and unromantic state of the fair.
The play proper begins with a proctor and amateur dramatist Littlewit and his friends, Quarlous and Winwife; they are plotting how to win Dame Purecraft (a widow, and Littlewit's mother-in-law) from Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, a canting, hypocritical Puritan.
This colloquy is interrupted by the entrance of Wasp, the irascible servant of Cokes, a country simpleton who is in town to marry Grace Wellborn. Grace is the ward of Adam Overdo, a Justice of the Peace; Overdo's wife is Cokes's sister. All of these characters are at Littlewit's to get a marriage license; having obtained it, they indulge Cokes's wish to visit the fair.
Littlewit and his friends also plan to go to the fair to see a puppet-show Littlewit wrote. To overcome Busy's likely objections, they pretend that Win (Littlewit's wife) has a pregnant craving for roast pork. The Renaissance audience, familiar with stage satire
of Puritan
s, would not have been surprised that Busy, far from abhorring the fair and its debauchery, is ready to rationalize his presence there as allowable and even godly. The first act ends with both groups, the genteel Overdos and the raffish Littlewits, headed for the fair.
The fair propels these characters through experiences that put their social identities under extreme strain. Justice Overdo, well-read in the "disguised prince" tradition, assumes a disguise to ferret out wrong-doing at the fair; he is beaten by Wasp, falsely accused by Edgeworth, a cut-purse, and put in the stocks
. Quarlous and Winwife engage Edgeworth to steal the marriage license from Wasp; he does so when Wasp is arrested after starting a fight. Wasp, too, is put in the stocks. Winwife has abandoned his plan to marry Dame Purecraft; instead, he and Quarlous fight for Grace's hand. Win Littlewit and her mother are enlisted as prostitutes by the pimp Whit; Zeal-of-the-land Busy is arrested for preaching without license and put into the stocks. Cokes is robbed several times by Edgeworth and other denizens of the fair. All the imprisoned characters escape when Trouble-All, a seeming madman for whom Dame Purecraft has conceived a sudden passion, fights with the guards.
The climax of the play occurs at the puppet show. Madame Overdo and Win are brought in, masked, as prostitutes; Madame Overdo is drunk. Overdo is still in disguise, and Quarlous has disguised himself as Trouble-All; in this guise, he stole the marriage license from Winwife and made it into a license for himself and Purecraft. The puppet show, a burlesque of Hero and Leander
and Damon and Pythias, proceeds until Busy interrupts, claiming that the play is an abomination because the actors are cross-dressed. The puppets refute him decisively by raising their clothes, revealing that they have no sex. Busy announces himself converted into a "beholder" of plays.
At this point, Justice Overdo reveals himself, intent on uncovering the "enormities" he has witnessed at the fair. He is in the process of punishing all of the various schemers and malefactors when his wife (still veiled) throws up and begins to call for him. Abashed, Overdo takes the advice of Quarlous and forgives all parties; Winwife marries Grace, Quarlous marries Purecraft, and all the characters are invited to Overdo's house for supper.
s Tribulation and Ananais, into a field of satire common in Jacobean drama: satire against Puritans. Various factors combined to make the godly or "precisians" obvious targets of ridicule. Though religious violence was comparatively uncommon in Jacobean England, the memory of such violence was fresh enough to make marginal believers or outsiders potential sources of anxiety or threat. This element of threat was especially notable in the second decade of James's reign, when the tenuous Calvinist
consensus in the English Church began to disintegrate. In this context, stage attacks on the godly may have served to channel and release broader anxieties about social trends.
Playwrights also had a more immediate reason for this animosity; Puritans had opposed the public theater almost from its inception. Hostility to drama was not, of course, limited to separatists or Puritans; preachers of all shades of belief denounced the plays as profane and the theaters as sites of theft, drunkenness, and licentiousness. Correctly or not, playwrights treated Puritans as the main source of these attacks. On stage, the Puritan is a hypocritical, judgmental, and long-winded figure, masking his lusts behind a vocal obsession with trivialities; Busy, for example, announces his intention to eat pork at the fair merely to refute the charges of "Judaism" he claims are leveled at Puritans, and he ends up consuming two whole pigs.
in Bankside
. Entries in the Revels
accounts indicate that the performance was repeated at Whitehall
for James I
the next day. The royal account also lists ten pounds
paid to Nathan Field for acting in the play; in the fifth act, Jonson causes Cokes to ask the puppetmaster, "Which is your best actor now...your Burbage
...your Field?"
There is no further record of performance until 1661, although it was likely to have remained in repertory to some degree until its anti-Puritan sentiments made it unwise to revive it. (William Oldys
reports a traditional view that the inscription on Jonson's tomb ("O rare Ben Jonson") refers to the applause this play received, after the failure of Catiline
, indicating some degree of popularity. Samuel Pepys
records seeing it four times in 1661, twice with the puppet show and twice without (8 June, 27 June, 31 August and 7 September 1661). The play appears to have been revived intermittently through the earlier part of the eighteenth century; after that, in keeping with the waning taste for non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama in general and for Jonson in particular, the play fell into obscurity. It retained a degree of esteem in the study even as it disappeared from the boards; both Isaac Reed
and Horace Walpole praised its wealth of invention in their accounts of Renaissance drama. John Brown
revised the play and offered it to David Garrick
; Garrick refused it, however, and Brown's text is lost.
As with many long-ignored plays, Bartholomew Fair returned to the stage in a production by the Phoenix Society—this one, in 1921
at the New Oxford Theatre. Its first professional revival came in 1949, when George Devine
directed it at the Edinburgh International Festival
; the next year, the same production appeared at the Old Vic
. The puppets in this production were performed by George Speaight
. The Bristol Old Vic
produced the play in 1966. Terry Hands
directed the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company
in 1969; this production included Ben Kingsley
as Winwife and Helen Mirren
as Win Littlewit. The production, which cut the long text and freely mixed period and modern properties, received generally negative reviews.
Richard Eyre
produced the play for the National Theatre
; his first production as head of the theatre, it was performed on the Olivier Stage in mid-Victorian
costume. David Bamber
, David Burke, and Stephen Moore
were among the cast. Of this production, Eyre himself writes, "What felt as though it might have been a true popular success … shows itself to be dismal and underachieved."
In 1998, Laurence Boswell directed the play for the RSC at the Swan Theatre
. Featuring Zubin Varla
and Poppy Miller
, the production attempted to update Jonson's cheerfully downscale milieu with "Newcastle United shirts, garish yellow tweed and plenty of atmospheric sleaze" according to The Times
; this review was mildly favorable, as were the others. The production was later revived at the Young Vic.
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival mounted the New World
's first production of the play in 2009, directed by Antoni Cimolino
and featuring original music composed by Steven Page
.
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
in five acts by Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, the last written of his four great comedies. It was first staged on October 31, 1614
1614 in literature
The year 1614 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Sir Francis Bacon's dual role as MP and attorney-general is objected to by Parliament.*Izaak Walton owns an ironmonger's shop in Fleet Street, London.*Lope de Vega becomes a priest....
at the Hope Theatre
Hope Theatre
The Hope Theatre was one of the theatres built in and around London for the presentation of plays in English Renaissance theatre, comparable to the Globe, the Curtain, the Swan, and other famous theatres of the era....
by the Lady Elizabeth's Men
Lady Elizabeth's Men
The Lady Elizabeth's Men, or Princess Elizabeth's Men, was a company of actors in Jacobean London, formed under the patronage of King James I's daughter Princess Elizabeth. From 1618 on, the company was called The Queen of Bohemia's Men, after Elizabeth and her husband the Elector Palatine had...
. Written four years after The Alchemist
The Alchemist (play)
The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. First performed in 1610 by the King's Men, it is generally considered Jonson's best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature...
, five after Epicoene, or the Silent Woman
Epicoene, or the Silent Woman
Epicœne, or The silent woman, also known as The Epicene, is a comedy by Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson. It was originally performed by the Blackfriars Children, a group of boy players, in 1609...
, and nine after Volpone
Volpone
Volpone is a comedy by Ben Jonson first produced in 1606, drawing on elements of city comedy, black comedy and beast fable...
, it is in some respects the most experimental of these plays.
The play was first printed in 1631
1631 in literature
The year 1631 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 9 - Love's Triumph Through Callipolis, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is staged at Whitehall Palace....
, as part of a planned second volume of the first 1616
1616 in literature
The year 1616 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus is placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Roman Catholic Church....
folio collection of Jonson's works, to be published by the bookseller Robert Allot
Robert Allot
Robert Allot was a London bookseller and publisher of the early Caroline era; his shop was at the sign of the black bear in St. Paul's Churchyard...
—though Jonson abandoned the plan when he became dissatisfied with the quality of the typesetting. Copies of the 1631 typecast were circulated, though whether they were sold publicly or distributed privately by Jonson is unclear. The play was published in the second folio
Ben Jonson folios
The folio collections of Ben Jonson's works published in the seventeenth century were crucial developments in the publication of English literature and English Renaissance drama. The first folio collection, issued in 1616, treated stage plays as serious works of literature instead of popular...
of Jonson's works in 1640–41, published by Richard Meighen
Richard Meighen
Richard Meighen was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He is noted for his publications of plays of English Renaissance drama; he published the second Ben Jonson folio of 1640/1, and was a member of the syndicate that issued the Second Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays in...
.
Background
The play is set at Bartholomew FairBartholomew Fair
Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy is a comedy in five acts by Ben Jonson, the last written of his four great comedies. It was first staged on October 31, 1614 at the Hope Theatre by the Lady Elizabeth's Men...
, which from 1133 to 1855 was one of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's preeminent summer fairs. It opened each August 24th at Smithfield
Smithfield, London
Smithfield is an area of the City of London, in the ward of Farringdon Without. It is located in the north-west part of the City, and is mostly known for its centuries-old meat market, today the last surviving historical wholesale market in Central London...
, in the northwestern part of the city. Smithfield, a site of slaughterhouses and public executions, was a fitting place for a fair that was part commerce and part spectacle. At once a trading event for cloth and other goods and a pleasure fair, the four-day event drew crowds from all classes of English society.
Jonson's play uses this fair as the setting for an unusually detailed and diverse panorama of London life in the early seventeenth century. The one day of fair life represented in the play allows Jonson ample opportunity not just to conduct his plot but also to depict the vivid life of the fair, from pickpockets and bullies to justices and slumming gallants. Jonson also uses the characters that he creates as a way to comment on the social, religious and political conflicts of London society in Jacobean England.
Synopsis
The play begins with an extended bit of metadramaMetafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
; the company's stage-keeper enters, criticizing the play about to be performed because it lacks romantic and fabulous elements. He is then pushed from the stage by the book-keeper, who (serving as prologue) announces a contract between author and audience. The contract appears to itemize Jonson's discontentment with his audiences: Members are not to find political satire where none is intended; they are not to take as oaths such innocuous phrases as "God quit you"; they are not to "censure by contagion," but must exercise their own judgment; moreover, they are allowed to judge only in proportion to the price of their ticket. Perhaps most important, they agree not to expect a throwback to the sword-and-buckler age of Smithfield, for Jonson has given them a picture of the present and unromantic state of the fair.
The play proper begins with a proctor and amateur dramatist Littlewit and his friends, Quarlous and Winwife; they are plotting how to win Dame Purecraft (a widow, and Littlewit's mother-in-law) from Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, a canting, hypocritical Puritan.
This colloquy is interrupted by the entrance of Wasp, the irascible servant of Cokes, a country simpleton who is in town to marry Grace Wellborn. Grace is the ward of Adam Overdo, a Justice of the Peace; Overdo's wife is Cokes's sister. All of these characters are at Littlewit's to get a marriage license; having obtained it, they indulge Cokes's wish to visit the fair.
Littlewit and his friends also plan to go to the fair to see a puppet-show Littlewit wrote. To overcome Busy's likely objections, they pretend that Win (Littlewit's wife) has a pregnant craving for roast pork. The Renaissance audience, familiar with stage satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s, would not have been surprised that Busy, far from abhorring the fair and its debauchery, is ready to rationalize his presence there as allowable and even godly. The first act ends with both groups, the genteel Overdos and the raffish Littlewits, headed for the fair.
The fair propels these characters through experiences that put their social identities under extreme strain. Justice Overdo, well-read in the "disguised prince" tradition, assumes a disguise to ferret out wrong-doing at the fair; he is beaten by Wasp, falsely accused by Edgeworth, a cut-purse, and put in the stocks
Stocks
Stocks are devices used in the medieval and colonial American times as a form of physical punishment involving public humiliation. The stocks partially immobilized its victims and they were often exposed in a public place such as the site of a market to the scorn of those who passed by...
. Quarlous and Winwife engage Edgeworth to steal the marriage license from Wasp; he does so when Wasp is arrested after starting a fight. Wasp, too, is put in the stocks. Winwife has abandoned his plan to marry Dame Purecraft; instead, he and Quarlous fight for Grace's hand. Win Littlewit and her mother are enlisted as prostitutes by the pimp Whit; Zeal-of-the-land Busy is arrested for preaching without license and put into the stocks. Cokes is robbed several times by Edgeworth and other denizens of the fair. All the imprisoned characters escape when Trouble-All, a seeming madman for whom Dame Purecraft has conceived a sudden passion, fights with the guards.
The climax of the play occurs at the puppet show. Madame Overdo and Win are brought in, masked, as prostitutes; Madame Overdo is drunk. Overdo is still in disguise, and Quarlous has disguised himself as Trouble-All; in this guise, he stole the marriage license from Winwife and made it into a license for himself and Purecraft. The puppet show, a burlesque of Hero and Leander
Hero and Leander
Hero and Leander is a Byzantine myth, relating the story of Hērō and like "hero" in English), a priestess of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Dardanelles, and Leander , a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero...
and Damon and Pythias, proceeds until Busy interrupts, claiming that the play is an abomination because the actors are cross-dressed. The puppets refute him decisively by raising their clothes, revealing that they have no sex. Busy announces himself converted into a "beholder" of plays.
At this point, Justice Overdo reveals himself, intent on uncovering the "enormities" he has witnessed at the fair. He is in the process of punishing all of the various schemers and malefactors when his wife (still veiled) throws up and begins to call for him. Abashed, Overdo takes the advice of Quarlous and forgives all parties; Winwife marries Grace, Quarlous marries Purecraft, and all the characters are invited to Overdo's house for supper.
Puritans
Zeal-of-the-land Busy is Jonson's second foray, after The AlchemistThe Alchemist (play)
The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. First performed in 1610 by the King's Men, it is generally considered Jonson's best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature...
s Tribulation and Ananais, into a field of satire common in Jacobean drama: satire against Puritans. Various factors combined to make the godly or "precisians" obvious targets of ridicule. Though religious violence was comparatively uncommon in Jacobean England, the memory of such violence was fresh enough to make marginal believers or outsiders potential sources of anxiety or threat. This element of threat was especially notable in the second decade of James's reign, when the tenuous Calvinist
Calvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
consensus in the English Church began to disintegrate. In this context, stage attacks on the godly may have served to channel and release broader anxieties about social trends.
Playwrights also had a more immediate reason for this animosity; Puritans had opposed the public theater almost from its inception. Hostility to drama was not, of course, limited to separatists or Puritans; preachers of all shades of belief denounced the plays as profane and the theaters as sites of theft, drunkenness, and licentiousness. Correctly or not, playwrights treated Puritans as the main source of these attacks. On stage, the Puritan is a hypocritical, judgmental, and long-winded figure, masking his lusts behind a vocal obsession with trivialities; Busy, for example, announces his intention to eat pork at the fair merely to refute the charges of "Judaism" he claims are leveled at Puritans, and he ends up consuming two whole pigs.
Performance History
The induction allows for a more specific date of performance than is usual for Renaissance plays; the première took place on October 31, 1614, at the Hope TheatreHope Theatre
The Hope Theatre was one of the theatres built in and around London for the presentation of plays in English Renaissance theatre, comparable to the Globe, the Curtain, the Swan, and other famous theatres of the era....
in Bankside
Bankside
Bankside is a district of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Southwark. Bankside is located on the southern bank of the River Thames, east of Charing Cross, running from a little west of Blackfriars Bridge to just a short distance before London Bridge at St Mary Overie Dock to...
. Entries in the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
accounts indicate that the performance was repeated at Whitehall
Palace of Whitehall
The Palace of Whitehall was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698 when all except Inigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House was destroyed by fire...
for James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
the next day. The royal account also lists ten pounds
Pound (currency)
The pound is a unit of currency in some nations. The term originated in England as the value of a pound of silver.The word pound is the English translation of the Latin word libra, which was the unit of account of the Roman Empire...
paid to Nathan Field for acting in the play; in the fifth act, Jonson causes Cokes to ask the puppetmaster, "Which is your best actor now...your Burbage
Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage was an English actor and theatre owner. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama....
...your Field?"
There is no further record of performance until 1661, although it was likely to have remained in repertory to some degree until its anti-Puritan sentiments made it unwise to revive it. (William Oldys
William Oldys
William Oldys was an English antiquarian and bibliographer.The illegitimate son of Dr William Oldys, chancellor of Lincoln, London was probably his place of birth. His father had held the office of advocate of the admiralty, but lost it in 1693 because he would not prosecute as traitors and...
reports a traditional view that the inscription on Jonson's tomb ("O rare Ben Jonson") refers to the applause this play received, after the failure of Catiline
Catiline
Lucius Sergius Catilina , known in English as Catiline, was a Roman politician of the 1st century BC who is best known for the Catiline conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic, and in particular the power of the aristocratic Senate.-Family background:Catiline was born in 108 BC to...
, indicating some degree of popularity. Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
records seeing it four times in 1661, twice with the puppet show and twice without (8 June, 27 June, 31 August and 7 September 1661). The play appears to have been revived intermittently through the earlier part of the eighteenth century; after that, in keeping with the waning taste for non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama in general and for Jonson in particular, the play fell into obscurity. It retained a degree of esteem in the study even as it disappeared from the boards; both Isaac Reed
Isaac Reed
Isaac Reed was an English Shakespearean editor.-Life:The son of a baker, he was born in London. He was articled to a solicitor, and eventually set up as a conveyancer at Staple Inn, where he had a large practice.-Works:...
and Horace Walpole praised its wealth of invention in their accounts of Renaissance drama. John Brown
John Brown (essayist)
John Brown was an English divine and author.His father, a descendant of the Browns of Coalston, near Haddington, became Vicar of Wigton in that year...
revised the play and offered it to David Garrick
David Garrick
David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
; Garrick refused it, however, and Brown's text is lost.
As with many long-ignored plays, Bartholomew Fair returned to the stage in a production by the Phoenix Society—this one, in 1921
1921 in literature
The year 1921 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan the Terrible*James Branch Cabell – Figures of Earth*Hall Caine – The Master of Man*Willa Cather – Alexander's Bridge...
at the New Oxford Theatre. Its first professional revival came in 1949, when George Devine
George Devine
George Alexander Cassady Devine CBE was an extremely influential theatrical manager, director, teacher and actor in London from the late 1940s until his death. He also worked in the media of TV and film.-Biography:...
directed it at the Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
; the next year, the same production appeared at the Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
. The puppets in this production were performed by George Speaight
George Speaight
George Victor Speaight was a theatre historian and the leading authority on 19th-century toy theatre.One of his brothers was the Shakespearean actor Robert Speaight, who paid for some of George's education at Haileybury....
. The Bristol Old Vic
Bristol Old Vic
The Bristol Old Vic is a theatre company based at the Theatre Royal, King Street, in Bristol, England. The theatre complex includes the 1766 Theatre Royal, which claims to be the oldest continually-operating theatre in England, along with a 1970s studio theatre , offices and backstage facilities...
produced the play in 1966. Terry Hands
Terry Hands
Terence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...
directed the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
in 1969; this production included Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE is a British actor. He has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
as Winwife and Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...
as Win Littlewit. The production, which cut the long text and freely mixed period and modern properties, received generally negative reviews.
Richard Eyre
Richard Eyre
Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...
produced the play for the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
; his first production as head of the theatre, it was performed on the Olivier Stage in mid-Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
costume. David Bamber
David Bamber
David James Bamber is an English actor, known for his television and theatre work. He is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.-Early years:...
, David Burke, and Stephen Moore
Stephen Moore (actor)
Stephen Moore is an English actor, known for his work on British television since the 1980s. He is known for his appearances in Rock Follies and other TV series such as The Last Place on Earth, the children's series The Queen's Nose and the drama Mersey Beat and the British TV comedy series Solo,...
were among the cast. Of this production, Eyre himself writes, "What felt as though it might have been a true popular success … shows itself to be dismal and underachieved."
In 1998, Laurence Boswell directed the play for the RSC at the Swan Theatre
Swan Theatre (Stratford)
The Swan Theatre is a theatre belonging to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is built on to the side of the larger Royal Shakespeare Theatre, occupying the Victorian Gothic structure that formerly housed the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that preceded the RST but was...
. Featuring Zubin Varla
Zubin Varla
Zubin Varla is a British actor and singer. He played the role of Judas in the 1996 West End revival of Jesus Christ Superstar, alongside Steve Balsamo , Joanna Ampil , and David Burt...
and Poppy Miller
Poppy Miller
Poppy Miller is a British actress. Miller was born in Norwich, UK and studied philosophy and English at Cambridge University and later attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. She is mostly known for her role as DI Carol Browning in the British detective series The Commander...
, the production attempted to update Jonson's cheerfully downscale milieu with "Newcastle United shirts, garish yellow tweed and plenty of atmospheric sleaze" according to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
; this review was mildly favorable, as were the others. The production was later revived at the Young Vic.
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival mounted the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
's first production of the play in 2009, directed by Antoni Cimolino
Antoni Cimolino
Antoni Cimolino is a Canadian actor and director. He is currently the General Director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario....
and featuring original music composed by Steven Page
Steven Page
Steven Jay Page , is a Canadian musician. Along with Ed Robertson, he was a founding member, lead singer, guitarist, and a primary songwriter of the music group Barenaked Ladies ; he left the band in 2009 to pursue a solo career....
.