Essays by a dozen friends, colleagues, and former students of Brian Gibbons explore the concept of Jacobean city comedy that Gibbons established in his seminal study Jacobean City Comedy: A Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton (1968). The essays take up some of city comedy's traditional characteristics in order to re-examine them in the light of historical contexts that have more recently been brought to the foreground—such as early modern capitalism, urban culture, the Protestant Reformation, and playhouse politics. The essays explore a range of play texts written between the 1590s and the 1630s. The three editors are academics specializing in English, literature, and British studies at German universities. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR