Bartholomew Fair

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price

The annual fair for St Bartholomew's Day is a bawdy celebration peopled by tricksters, thieves, prostitutes, pedlars and entertainers. Also drawn to the festivities are a group of ordinary citizens who find their respectable lives turned upside down, and their intolerant attitudes challenged by what they experience.

Ben Jonson's Jacobean comedy was first performed at the Hope Playhouse in London in 1614.

This edition of the play, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is edited and introduced by Colin Counsell.