The Self-Centred Art is a study of the plays of Ben Jonson and the actors who first performed in them.
Jakub Boguszak shows how the idiosyncrasies of Jonsons comic characters were thrown into relief in actors part-scriptsscrolls containing a single actors lines and cuessome five hundred of which are reconstructed here from Jonsons seventeen extant plays. Reading Jonsons spectating parts, humorous parts, apprentice parts, and plotting parts, Boguszak argues that the kind of self-absorption which defines so many of Jonsons famous comic creations would have come easily to actors relying on these documents. Jonsons actors would have moreover worked on their cues, studied their speeches, and thought about the information excluded from their parts differently, depending on the type they had to play. Boguszak thus shows that Jonson brilliantly adapted his comedies to the way the actors worked, making the actors self-centredness serve his art.
This book addresses Jonsons dealings with the actors as well as the printers of his plays and supplements the discussion of different types of parts with a colourful range of case studies. In doing so, it presents a new way of understanding not just Ben Jonson, but early modern theatre at large.
