Catiline His Conspiracy: ‘The Wide World is Left to Us for Spoil’
Episode 240:
After ‘The Alchemist’ Ben Jonson might have been expected to produce another comedy, hopefully as sparkling as the last one, but Jonson had other things on his mind and instead returned to tragedy and Roman history.
The first production of Jonson’s play and other contemporary versions.
The failure of the play and Jonson’s reaction.
The sources for the play
A brief synopsis of the play
The ghost of Sulla presenting a Senecan tragedy
The chorus
The play as a Senecan closet drama
Tragedy mixed with comedy
The comic nature of the character of Fulvia and others
Possible parallels with the Gunpowder plot
Does the play pose questions about how the right to rule should be defined?
The character of Catiline
The character of Cicero
The presence of Julius Ceasar
Rome as a character in the play
The later performance history of the play
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