ABSTRACT
Eight years separate Sejanus and Catiline. The line which stretches from Cynthia’s Revels to the later tragedy needs to be seen alongside a different trajectory pursued in parallel, a route taking in the great comedies of Jonson’s middle years and cementing his place in popular estimation in a way that the political drama of his two extant tragedies could not manage. This route includes a detour to the Venice evoked in Volpone; but otherwise it navigates a path through the various interlocking social and symbolic circuits in which Jonson and his audience lived, the restless buzz and hum of early modern London.
