8 May 1977
eter Barnes's
alteration of the ending of a genuine Jacobean comedy, Jonson's The Devil
is an Ass (Lyttelton),
is more questionable.
Jonson finished with some of his characters coming to their senses, and others behaving with positive decency. This seems to have disappointed Mr Barnes, who puts the whole cast literally at one another's throats and brings on Satan, who should know, to tell us how awful they are. Jonson wrote only one watertight malevolent morality: 'Volpone,' set in Venice. His London plays are looser and, if only by default, more genial.
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