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Also, he demands a very unique knestic style of his actors! Shakespearean actors are all speeches but very few bodily actions. Jonson, on the contrast, has his actors animated on the stage all the time in his comedies, each following a specific "humour". I would never recover from the fact that the man who played King Lear likely played Face in Jonson's the Alchemist, too.

Ben Jonson is so fucking 'misogynic', to the extent that he almost writes "gender is merely a social construction. in that sense anyone can be a woman. so y'all stop fussing over this artificial idea of how a woman should behave!" on every page of his comedies.
(Fondly) Reader, he is such an awful person.

Eh hello, as you can see, this mini-blogger's research interests change and shift in the past year.
Now she focuses on the early modern theatre culture.
If you are working in an adjacent area please come by and say hello!

Every time I went to London I felt like Morose (a Josonian character) who simply could not suffer the overwhelming noise of the city life around him...

In most cases, the early modern conception of the masculine sexuality is very different from that of today: a man's sexual relationship with women would not boost his masculinity, instead, it would diminish his masculinity and made him effeminate...Sexuality was more a feminine thing for early modern English people and it could contaminate a male through a heterosexual relationship. In other words, the idea of sexuality itself is misogynistic...
Of course, there are exceptions...

In a word, oh I love Shakespeare with all my soul and heart.

The hyperbole style of Antony and Cleopatra definitely has a Marlovian influence from Dido by Marlowe and Nashe. Yet it is compatible well with Shakespeare's perceptive observation of humanity——the absurdity of characters' actions in Marlowe and Nashe is transformed into touching affections.

Another essay I read regarded Marston's writing style as "post-modern". Okay. Bye. Now I no longer feel ashamed by being perplexed by his works...

Me: (almost lose it) there is no plot in What You Will, only vibes.
Published scholars:

Scholars have long been debating whether the so-called "War of the Theatre" was indeed a "war" instead of a pompous fraud dispute. In recent years, more and more scholars tend to believe there were really nasty insults exchanged in the so-called "War" between Marston/Dekker and Jonson. However, the stance of any single piece in the "War" remains ambiguous. For Marston's infamous induction of What You Will, who on earth did he criticize? Jonson, Shakespeare, or himself? Who was the "implied author" of What You Will? Jonson, or Marston himself?

Me, after reading Endymion for the first time: what a weird, cosmic play...
Me, after reading several scholarly works on Endymion: what a piece full of weird shit did I read last week?!

To a 21st-century reader's eyes, the Jacobean masques must appear overtly didactic and were filled with presumptuous cheesy praises. However, we should remember, these masques were part of the wider contemporary dialogues in the court. They aimed at teaching the monarchy how to behave as well as praising them. Poets were supposed to accomplish their civil services for the country by writing these works——that was exactly why, Ben Jonson, who wrote dozens of masques to praise the kings, dared to write "that poets were far rarer births than kings".

Jeanne H. McCarthy argues for Queen Elizabeth's patronage of children's companies with a political motive...Quite an interesting idea, isn't it? While the courtiers funded the adult companies or other forms of performance at court in an attempt to persuade Queen to select a consort, she invested in the children's companies to fight back.

Dear Willy Shakes,

How many lines have you copied and pasted from Lyly's Endymion to your Much Ado About Nothing? I swear Benedick is no more than Tophas plus Endymion!

I think the exchange between "Luce" and "Ephesian Dromio" in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors is perhaps also an extraordinary example of such a pattern recognized by Tribble.

Evelyn Tribble, in her article "Marlowe's boy actors", identifies a significant pattern in the cues by adult actors preceding speeches of Marlowe's boy actors. These cues are usually repeated, or contain embedded instruction on the role's subordinate social positions. This pattern is seemingly designed specifically to train young actors.

For early modern writers, Greek and Roman mythology allows an opportunity to explore topics and interests that are otherwise censored. Interestingly, similar things happen in the 20th and the 21st century. E.g. horror games usually use supernatural elements to explore cultural taboos.