Radical Comedy in Early Modern England

Drawing on the generic and mythic strength of comedy and the theories of Bakhtin Bergson and Hobbes this book identifies the radical nature of early modern English comedy. The satirical comedic actions that shape the Shepherds' Play Thomas Dekker's pamphlets and the comic dramas of Marston Middleton and Jonson are all driven Bowers points out by an ability to criticize authority assert plebeian culture and insist on the complexity and innovation of human discourse. The texts examined (including The Jew of Malta Metamorphosis of Ajax Antonio and Mellida Bartholomew Fair The Alchemist and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside) simultaneously create and employ standard comedic elements. Farce absurdity excess over-the-top characters unremitting irony black humor toilet humor and tricksters of all types - such features and more combine to satirize medical religious and political authority and to implement necessary social change. Written with a narrative ease Radical Comedy in Early Modern England shows how comic interventions both describe and reconfigure prevalent authority in its own time while arguing that through early modern comedy one can observe the changes in social behavior and understandings characteristic of the Renaissance.