The City in Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson

• In Event: Representing Cities in Early Modern Literature

Abstract

The English and Continental cites in the plays three leading playwrights in early modern England show a wide array of urban signs—political, religious, commercial and otherwise in the various genres—histories, comedies, tragedies. Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris represents the French capital city as a place of violence and religious and political division whereas Ben Jonson’s Volpone stages the great Italian city state as a place of tricksters, parasites and dupes. Shakespeare makes the Londoners turn their backs on Richard II, shows the underworld of the city in the tavern scenes of I Henry IV while likening the siege of Harfleur in Henry V to that of a woman. Shakespeare also portrays Rome in similar terms in Rape of Lucrece and Coriolanus and the tensions in Venice in Othello to name a few instances. The city, then, becomes Protean and a site for anxieties, pleasures, violence and war.

Author

• Jonathan Hart, Shanghai Jiao Tong University