ABSTRACT
Although Bartholomew Fair presents a wide and initially confusing variety of London types for the audience's inspection, they belong to distinct groups and, as individuals, they compose an extensive gallery of representative citizens. The Devil Is an Ass contrasts with Bartholomew Fair by relying on a firm, fast-moving and strongly articulated main action; if the earlier play is the climax to the experiments in Comical Satyre, then The Devil Is an Ass is the terminal point in Jacobean city comedy, the modified, Italianate form developed by the interrelated experiments of Middleton, Marston and Jonson. If Bartholomew Fair absorbs the subject matter and style of Comical Satyre, The Devil Is an Ass clearly enough gives brilliant dramatic life to the main subjects and characters of mature city comedy, conventional in the plays of Middleton, Marston and Jonson from 1602-7.
