In Bartholomew Fair, Jonson, speaking for the Establishment, debunks the presumptuous “singularity” of extreme Puritans, demonstrating the folly of “authority” which is rooted not in traditional structures of church and state but in excentricity and private fancies. Jonson’s satirical method combines parodic allusion with the reductive method of caricature. As would be moralists, Busy and Overdo are cowed into submission by the plea for a larger humanity which places hypocritical meddlesomeness within the wider context of a social structure embracing both civil order and the stage.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Ferreira-Ross, J., (2025), "Religion and the Law in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Ferreira-Ross, Jeanette. "Religion and the Law in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair." Renaissance and Reformation 30 (2): 2010. 45-66. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v30i2.11491. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.