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Ben Jonson’s Bartholmew Fayre, above all, celebrates and symbolizes the spirit of English folk festivals and pastimes. In my view, Jonson, the playwright and artist, re-creates from the popular material of the Smithfield fair his own exemplary model of a festival in order to demonstrate how English pastimes and sports, sanctioned by Royal authority, may contribute to the well-being of the individual as well as the social and political health of the community. Against this interpretation of the play, many contemporary critics argue that Jonson fashioned the fair in Bartholmew Fayre not as a healthy event but as a decadent pastime, reading the play as an overt satire of the times.
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