ABSTRACT
By 1610 Jonson could probably feel some paternal –if not proprietorial –pride at the establishment of a new dramatic genre, city comedy. In this chapter, the author hopes to show how city comedy may be seen as a distinct genre with a recognizable form, style and subject-matter. The Morality tradition and intrigue comedy involve basically contradictory attitudes to society; combining them in a typical city comedy generates a dialogue in which high-minded theory confronts low-life experience of the city. City comedy also inevitably owed a debt to non-dramatic literary traditions, chief among which are satire and complaint. The plays of city comedy give the impression of actuality as a result of literary art and dramatic craft, and their selection of material, their point of view, is determined by a critical and satiric mode, not objective or sociological scientific method. City comedy playwrights were interested in money-lending in the first place as a modern manifestation of the sin of avarice.
