ABSTRACT
By about 1605 the genre becomes established with such plays as Jonson's Volpone, Marston's Dutch Courtezan and Middleton's Michaelmas Term. It is at that point that repertory hack-writers begin to try to cash in on the new fashion for city comedy, and their derivative work provokes the parody Eastward Ho. As Phoenix moves in disguise through the city he witnesses or becomes an agent in a series of exemplary episodes satirizing a criminal justice, lawyers, a cynical captain who hates marriage, an adulterous citizen's wife, a profligate knight, courtiers and nobility. The Italian air in the ingenious and fast-moving trickery is reinforced by the solid, traditional, Northern, moral preoccupations of dramatic satire. The clarity with which the components of city comedy declare themselves in this play is remarkable. One remarkable and influential convention in city comedy shaped by Middleton is the lyrical outburst of the villain of the piece, full of eloquent high-spirited vitality yet presented with implicit irony.
