Not Shakespeare for the fall - Ben Jonson's best, plenty of revenge, and the New Shakespeareans

Time to get back to the Age of Shakespeare, the non-Shakespeare parts. Please read along if it strikes you. Last spring’s reading list was a bit of a trip to graduate school; this fall’s syllabus is nothing but masterpieces of one kind or another. A new king was in London, and a new court, with new tastes, and more importantly for my purposes some new writers, the best of them deeply influenced by William Shakespeare. The London theater audience had perhaps grown a little tired of the endless revivals of The Spanish Tragedy and had developed a sophisticated sub-audience interested in new voices. Here is my plan, which I will surely meet occasionally, a new play every other Monday, with some other related topic on the other Mondays: I have previously read all of these but The Roaring Girl. Jonson hits his peak, one great, original comedy after another, with one more to come in 1614. Two great revenge tragedies, the name of the one suggesting that we are at a turning point for the…