The Devil is an Ass

Ben Jonson's *The Devil is an Ass* (performed 1616) is a city comedy in which Pug, an inexperienced devil, is dispatched to London and discovers that human ingenuity in fraud, fashion, and exploitation exceeds anything practiced in Hell. Through the intertwined schemes of the projector-engineer Fitzdottrel, the predatory broker Merecraft, and the satirically resourceful Wittipol, Jonson anatomizes a culture governed by appetite and speculation. Its sharp prose, patterned rhetoric, comic reversals, and allegorical premise place the play within the Jacobean tradition of satiric comedy, while its attention to credit, novelty, and social mobility gives it a distinctly modern economic resonance. Jonson (1572–1637), one of the major dramatists and poets of the English Renaissance, wrote with a classical conception of comedy as a corrective to folly. His experience of London's theatrical, commercial, and political worlds—together with his interest in humoral characterization, learned allusion, and moral satire—shaped this unusually topical drama. Beneath its exuberant farce lies Jonson's skepticism about a society in which sophistication has become indistinguishable from deception. Recommended for readers of Renaissance drama, cultural history, and political satire, *The Devil is an Ass* rewards attention to both its verbal brilliance and its social intelligence. It is especially valuable for those interested in Jonson's critique of early modern capitalism, urban culture, and theatrical representation, offering a darkly comic portrait of a world where the most dangerous devils are human.