The Staple of News

The Staple of News is an early Caroline era play, a satire by Ben Jonson. The play was first performed in late 1625 by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre, and first published in 1631.

The Staple of News was entered into the Stationers' Register in Feb. 1626, but was not published till five years later. Like The Devil is an Ass, The Staple of News was intended to be part of the second folio collection of Jonson's works that was being readied for publication in 1630, as a follow-up to the first collection in 1616. The project was abandoned, apparently because Jonson grew dissatisfied with the quality of the printing (done by John Beale). The Staple of News, again like Devil is an Ass, was published separately in 1631 in folio format from the existing typecast, by the bookseller Robert Allot – though it is unclear whether this was ever a commercial publication, or whether Jonson privately distributed copies of the play among friends, acquaintances, and admirers. The play next appeared in print in 1640, in the Volume 2 of the second folio of Jonson's works.

Among the late comedies that some critics have dismissed as Jonson's "dotages," The Staple of News has often been regarded as "the most admirable of Jonson's later works." It has attracted scholarly attention for its satire on the newspaper and news agency business that was a recent and rapidly evolving innovation in Jonson's era. The first semi-regular news serials in English (then called "corantos"), printed in the Netherlands, had appeared in 1620 in response to the start of the Thirty Years' War; over the next year London publication of English translations of foreign-news pamphlets increased; and in 1622 Nathaniel Butter formed syndicate for supplying and printing news serials in English. In Jonson's play, the News Staple is a parody of these developments. Jonson may have had a political motive for his satire: the new business in news concentrated on war news from Europe, which fed the popular urge for England's involvement on the Protestant side of the conflict. Jonson is thought to have sympathised with King James's strong reluctance to become involved in a European war.

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