''The New Inn, or The Light Heart'' is a
Caroline era stage play, a
comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...
by English playwright and poet
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
.
''The New Inn'' was licensed for performance by Sir
Henry Herbert, the
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was the holder of a position within the English, and later the British, royal household, heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels". The Master of the Revels was an executive officer under the Lord Chamberlain. ...
, on 19 January
1629, and acted later that year by the
King's Men at the
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child acto ...
. The original production was a "catastrophic failure...hissed from the Blackfriars stage...." An intended Court performance never took place, according to Jonson's epilogue to the play in the 1631 edition. Jonson was profoundly affected by the failure, and wrote about the affair in his poetic ''Ode to Himself'' ("Come leave the loathed stage, / And the more loathsome age...").
The play was first published in
octavo
Octavo, a Latin word meaning "in eighth" or "for the eighth time", (abbreviated 8vo, 8º, or In-8) is a technical term describing the format of a book, which refers to the size of leaves produced from folding a full sheet of paper on which multip ...
in
1631, printed by Thomas Harper; only two copies are known to exist. It was not included in the second folio collection of Jonson's works in 1640–41, and was next printed in the third Jonson folio in
1692.
While ''The New Inn'' is not one of the poet's major works, it has, like any Jonson play, attracted its share of critical attention.
[Julie Sanders, "'The Day's Sports Devised in the Inn': Jonson's ''The New Inn'' and Theatrical Politics," ''Modern Language Review'', Vol. 91 No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 545-60.] One curious fact noted by scholars is that Jonson's play contains material that is also found in ''
Love's Pilgrimage'', a play in the
John Fletcher canon that was written around 1616 and published in the
first Beaumont and Fletcher folio in
1647. The common passages are ''Love's Pilgrimage'', I,1,25-63 and 330-411, and ''The New Inn'', II,5,48-73 and III,1,57-93 and 130-68. Scholars and critics have attempted to account for the common material in various ways; the most likely possibility seems to be that an anonymous reviser borrowed Jonsonian work to enrich Fletcher's play during a revision done around 1635.
Synopsis
''The New Inn'' is set in an inn-house in Barnett called the "Light Heart", whose host is Goodstock. Lady Frances Frampul invites some lords and gentlemen to wait on her at the inn. A melancholy gentlemen, Lord Lovel, has been lodged there some days before. In the third act, he is demanded by Lady Frampul what love is and describes so vividly the effects of love that she becomes enamoured of him.
Lady Frampul's chambermaid, Prudence, dresses up as queen for the day and presides over a mock "
court of love
Courtly love ( oc, fin'amor ; french: amour courtois ) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing var ...
". As part of their theatrical project, Prudence and Lady Frampul decide to dress up the Host's adopted son Franck in a cross-gender attire as Laetitia, a waiting-woman. Lord Beaufort, guest to Lady Frampul, falls in love with Laetitia and marries her in secret, only to be denounced for marrying a boy.
But in the end, in a series of far-fetched revelations, Frank turns out to be a woman, Lady Frampul's long-lost sister. The Host proves to be their father, Lord Frampul, in disguise, and Laetitia's Irish nurse turns out to be their mother.
References
External links
''The New Inn'' online.
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Inn, The
Plays by Ben Jonson
English Renaissance plays
1629 plays