Regents Renaissance drama series

In this autobiography, BBC foreign news editor, John Simpson reflects on his career. His experiences range from being punched in the stomach by Harold Wilson, posing as a mercenary in Zaire, escaping summary execution in Beirut, to tangling with the cocaine barons of Colombia.

"A popular and influential play from its first performance in 1611 until the early eighteenth century, A King and No King helped establish Beaumont and Fletcher as leading playwrights of the day, and tragicomedy as the seventeenth century's favoured dramatic genre." "Accompanying this newly edited text, an introduction explores the play's sources, both literary and dramatic, and offers a thorough reconsideration of it social and political context. Lee Bliss finds the entertaining, wish-fulfilment tragicomic form not incompatible with a serious critical engagement with contemporary issues of royal absolutism, good governance, and the political role of the aristocracy. In addition, this edition provides the fullest available account of A King and No King's stage history, tracing the shifts in cultural mores that eroded its popularity and ultimately consigned it to the study rather than the stage."--BOOK JACKET.

Ben Jonson's play of the agreeable versus disagreeable behaviors of men and women begins by situating, at the center of the plot, a boy disguised as a woman whose name is Epicoene. A misanthrope, Morose, has hopes of marrying "her." Morose hates the noise of society and dreams of living in total silence. Epicoene, also called the Silent Woman, is compliant and meek. When she passes all of Morose's derogatory interrogation with flying colors and they are married, she suddenly begins scolding him loudly and infringing on his peaceful surroundings by bringing in her raucous friends. Morose's greedy nephew, Dauphine, promises to find a way to end this marriage as long as he receives a sumptuous allowance for his effort. After the divorce papers are finally signed, Dauphine removes Epicoene's wig to show that "she" is a male actor trained for the part. Jonson's divergence from Elizabethan comedy's usual direction from sadness to joy instead begins with high spirits and ends in loss and discouragement. This play is menacing, funny, and finds fault at almost every social level. It is all about selfishness and hypocrisy and how seemingly playful cosmetic concealment only produces corruption and deception. Please Note: This book has been reformatted to be easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.