Gold Fever

Abstract

Where tragedy was required to deal with far-away stately and portentous matters in suitably stately language, comedy’s object was to deal with real life presenting, as Cicero expresses it, ‘a copy of life, a mirror of custom, a representation of truth’. In his prologue to the revised version of Every Man in his Humour Jonson rejected plays about larger matters like the Wars of the Roses in favour of such deeds and language as men would actually perform and use, and advocated presenting characters such as comedy would choose

When she would shew an image of the times And sport with human follies, not with crimes.