Abstract
According to Cave, Jonson might have provided the initial comic models, but the success of Field's own plays, particularly in creating female characters, may have influenced Jonson's later writings, particularly Frances Fitzdottrel from Devil Is An Ass (1616). According to Carolyn D. Williams, Aphra Behn was "unimpressed by Jonson" (102) and repelled by his sexual politics (96) but was, nonetheless, a quick study of Jonson's dramaturgy, particularly his ability to construct scenes where characters watch each other (101). When dealing with the lack of specifics, Woolland falls back on a rhetorical pincher movement of retreat and advance: "Although the reported actions of the populace at the end of Act Five of Sejanus are far more horrific than anything that occurs in Sturges's political satires [retreat], the impulse to dramatise the mechanisms of acquiescence to authority is stronger in both Sturges and Jonson than is usually recognized [advance]" (211); or, "The brutality of Epicoene is nowhere matched in Sturges's work [retreat], notwithstanding the critics' almost universal dismissal of Unfaithfully Yours for its unstable mix of slapstick comedy, psychological angst and murderous cruelty [advance]" (214).