Reviews for The Devil Is an Ass: And Other Plays

The average rating for The Devil Is an Ass: And Other Plays based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-12-31 00:00:00 George Wasilyeff I enjoy reading drama. With the exception of the title play, this collection was fairly painful to get through however. To begin with, unless you have really experienced or lived in a society in which the arts were restricted, many of the plays' central themes will not be very meaningful. Additionally, much of Jonson's wit is lost on the modern American reader. I did, however, enjoy "The Devil Is An Ass" as much for the title of the play as well as the bawdy, biting commentator. Jonson is overt in his characterizations, so there is not much left to the imagination as to his central theme. It is a play that, as opposed to the others, will resonate with modern readers

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-18 00:00:00 Hugh Northern I only read The Devil is an Ass, so I'll stick to discussing that. I found it to be an okay play, but I feel like Jonson's desire to make it seem realistic heavily detracted from my enjoyment. The random asides and discussions of events outside the play add to the verisimilitude, but they make the text too dense for me to really enjoy reading it. I find this sad, because there's certainly the core of a fun and funny play here - it's just buried too deep for me to really like it. Also, the fact that Pug, the devil character, doesn't get much time on stage is disappointing. I'm fine with him not doing that much, but I wish he was there more to at least give his thoughts on what's going on, as the times when he does do this are fairly good. Over all, I wouldn't really recommend reading this play, but I feel like it might be more enjoyable if I were to see it staged. Finally, I wasn't a huge fan of this edition as I feel like it could have used more notes - I think part of my lack of enjoyment may be because it was rather difficult to understand some parts of the dialogue.