ABSTRACT
Staging Jonson now is a particular challenge because his own texts were so securely of his age, and not for all time. He lacks the midwifery of the education syllabus that has made Shakespeare so much for our time. Adapting Volpone for the modern stage is manageable, if only because cupidity is still so much with us, but the more localised games that Jonson played in plays like Poetaster, Bartholomew Fair and The Staple of News with his characters and his time are more of a problem. My question about Lovewit offers a small challenge about how we might cope with just one element in the problem of modernising Jonson’s plays for the stage. As an exemplar of the general difficulty of staging Jonson today, it may help to clarify a few of the particular challenges they face us with, even if it offers no easy answer.
