Close Readings
LRB Audio
Podcasts and audiobooks from the London Review of Books.
A multi-series podcast subscription exploring different themes and periods of literature through selections of key works.
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Our six-part series hosted by Andrew O'Hagan: listen to the full series with bonus material, including extended and additional interviews and clips.
Description
What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months of the crackdown, the same satirical tricks Elizabethans had read in verse could be enjoyed in theatres. At the heart of the scene was Ben Jonson, who for many centuries has maintained a reputation as the refined, classical alternative to Shakespeare, with his diligent observance of the rules extracted from Roman comedy. In this episode, Colin and Clare argue that this reputation is almost entirely false, that Jonson was as embroiled in the volatile and unruly energies of late Elizabethan London as any other dramatist, and nowhere is this more on display than in his finest play, Volpone.
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Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.
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