Ben Jonson and the Italian neo-classical theorists

Abstract

In the Prologue to Volpone published in 1607 Jonson claims to be following the precepts of the 'best critics' and goes on to explain what kind of critical precepts he has in mind:

(He) so presents quick comedy, refined As best critics have designed, The laws of time, place, persons, he observeth, From no needful rule he swerveth ...

In a recent article for Review of English Studies I have argued that, by naming the unities of time and place as two of the rules he is obeying, he makes it probable that one of the critics he has in mind is Lodovico Castelvetro, in whose Poetica d'Aristotele (1570) the unities of time and place were first fully promulgated. The crucial reference is to a unity of place, which Jonson had first mentioned briefly in his play Every Man Out of His Humour (1599) and which is not to be found in Aristotle, nor any of the earlier commentators. Castelvetro argues that the time and space depicted on stage should be as close as possible to the actual time and space the actors need to depict it:

... la tragedia... conviene havere per soggetto un'attione avenuta in picciolo spatio di luogo, e in picciolo spatio di tempo, cio e in quel luogo, e in quel tempo, dove e quando i rappresentatori dirnorano occupati in operatione...