Bartholomew Fair (play)

For the summer fair in West Smithfield, see Bartholomew Fair.

Title page of Bartholomew Fair: A Comedy.

Bartholomew Fair is a Jacobean comedy in five acts by Ben Jonson. It was first staged on 31 October 1614 at the Hope Theatre by the Lady Elizabeth's Men company.[1] Written four years after The Alchemist, five after Epicœne, or the Silent Woman, and nine after Volpone, it is in some respects the most experimental of these plays.[2]

The play was first printed in 1631, as part of a planned second volume of the first 1616 folio collection of Jonson's works, to be published by the bookseller Robert Allot; however, Jonson abandoned the plan when he became dissatisfied with the quality of the typesetting. Copies of the 1631 typecast were circulated, though whether they were sold publicly or distributed privately by Jonson is unclear. The play was published in the second folio of Jonson's works in 1640–41, published by Richard Meighen.[3]

  1. ^ Gurr (1992, 233).
  2. ^ Hibbard, p. xiv.
  3. ^ Jonson's original 1616 folio collection of his works was reprinted in 1640, a volume sometimes called the second edition of the first folio. Meighen's 1641 volume contained later Jonson pieces, including Bartholomew Fair.