About the work
Comedy in five acts by Ben Jonson, first performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch, with William Shakespeare in the role of Knowell. In the revised Folio version of 1616, Jonson moved the setting from Florence to London and adjusted names and local references accordingly.
Plot
The anxious father Knowell tries to keep watch over his son but is thwarted by the wily servant Brainworm. In a parallel plot, the cloth merchant Kitely torments himself with unfounded jealousy over his wife. In the end, the magistrate Clement, in a grand hearing scene, reveals that all the complications rest on misunderstanding, self-delusion or deceit.
Cultural significance
With this play Jonson founded the genre of humours comedy, in which each character is dominated by a single exaggerated trait attributed, by ancient medical theory, to an excess of one bodily humour. The original cast, which included Shakespeare, is among the few documented records of his work as an actor; David Garrick's 1751 adaptation kept the play in the repertoire into the nineteenth century.