This collaborative masterpiece of hilarious city comedy was performed
by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars playhouse in 1605. The
story is of an allegorical simplicity that lends itself to satire of
civic mores and traditions as well as to parody of the sentimental,
idealising London comedy presented at the amphitheatres in the suburbs:
Goldsmith Touchstone, an upright London citizen, has one modest and one
ambitious daughter, one righteous and one disreputable apprentice;
virtue is rewarded, ruthlessness comes to grief - and receives a
drenching in the muddy Thames. The introduction to this edition
discusses various methods of establishing authorship and highlights the
irony of the collaborators' comic vision of contemporary London life.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was an English dramatist and poet, whose reputation amongst playwrights of the period is only second only to Shakespeare's. Although Jonson found little success as an actor, his reputation as a dramatist was firmly established in 1598 with Every Man in his Humour. This sucess was followed by Every Man out of his Humour and the classically influenced satire Cynthia's Revels. Jonson wrote all of the major comedies upon which his reputation is now based during the period 1605 to 1614.