An Analysis Of Ben Jonson's 1625 Script "News Wholesale Store"

In the early 1600s,the pass-away of Queen Elizabeth I and the succession of James I brought the ending of "Golden era" and the beginning of House of Stuart.Under the reign of Elizabeth,the national pride of British has been inspired through classical ideals,international expansion,and naval triumph over Spain,and economically,the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade and persistent theft of Spanish treasure.All of this caused that England was economically more expansive and more optimistic under than at any time in a thousand years.The modern civilization was brought to Britain by the development capitalism,the booming of global trade and the popular of printing,and promoted the rise of periodical news publications which made the word "news" common among British.Furthermore,the demand for news had boomed up,due to the stimulation of "thirty years’ war",which caused that a new style of printed news called coranto emerged and gradually occupied the news market of early modern England.Coranto brought a new face to the news production but the rapid development also caused some problems such as the rumors and anecdotes,which some readers believed that this is real.The rising developing news business had affected the public opinion which lead the elites like Ben Jonson feel anxious because the comment on the politics were seen as the privilege of elites.The poetry and drama,in the view of them,were the main-stream aesthetic but news printing changed and influenced the government control to the public opinion so that Jonson completed a comic play—the Staple of News—to satirize the news-mongering.This thesis take the Staple ofN ews as the subject of study,combing with the British history on the aspects of politics,economy,culture,etc.,and the personal experience of Jonson under the present study of the domestic and abroad.On the one hand,this thesis analyzes plots,figures,and the style of the script,finding the phenomenon and idea of news behind it.On the other hand,this thesis uses the theory of Textuality of History and Historicity of Texts,and shows a bit of episode about the news culture of early modern England in two dimensions:the history in the text and the author’s will in the text.This thesis found that there are amount of international news and court news in the news publications during the early 1600s,and the earliest news syndicate of Britain was occurred.However,the description of British news business in the script shows a subjective tendency due to the James I’s control and the class Jonson belonged to.