Volpone: A critical guide

This is a comprehensive introduction to Ben Jonson's Volpone - introducing its critical history, performance history, current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play. As perhaps the best-known and most-studied work in the canon of Shakespeare's leading contemporary rival, Ben Jonson's Volpone (1606) is a particularly important play for thinking about early modern drama as a whole. This guide offers students an introduction to its critical and performance history, including recent versions on stage and screen. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays presenting contrasting critical approaches focusing on literary intertextuality
performance studies
political history
and broader social history. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research.