The Swan Theatre plays
3 total works
Renaissance comedy. Complete text, modernized English, critical and explanatory notes and Introduction. From the Yale ben Jonson edition.
The New Inn, or The Light Heart is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy by English playwright and poet Ben Jonson. The New Inn is set in an inn-house in Barnett called the "Light Heart," whose host is Goodstock. Lady Frances Frampul invites some lords and gentlemen to wait on her at the inn. A melancholy gentlemen, Lord Lovel, has been lodged there some days before. In the third act, he is demanded by Lady Frampul what love is and describes so vividly the effects of love that she becomes enamoured of him. Lady Frampul's chambermaid, Prudence, dresses up as queen for the day and presides over a mock "court of love." As part of their theatrical project, Prudence and Lady Frampul decide to dress up the Host's adopted son Franck in a cross-gender attire as Laetitia, a waiting-woman. Lord Beaufort, guest to Lady Frampul, falls in love with Laetitia and marries her in secret, only to be denounced for marrying a boy.
