“The workman, sir! The artificer!”: Artifice, Theater, and Puppets Performing in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair and A Tale of A Tub

Framed by an examination of Ben Jonson’s collaborations with Inigo Jones and the puppet show in Bartholomew Fair, this article examines the shadow puppet masque at the end of A Tale of a Tub (1633). In this puppet-masque, Jonson engages with the problem of the artificiality of the stage and the intrinsic link between art and artifice in performance. Despite his attempts to render a separation between the two, A Tale of a Tub ultimately fails to reconcile Jonson’s artistic vision of a poet separated from the craftsman who builds the spectacle.