Coming of Age on Stage: Jonson’s Epicoene and the Politics of Childhood in Early Stuart England

By the time King James I took the throne, the actors in London’s children’s theatre companies were rapidly approaching adulthood. This essay uses Ben Jonson’s Epicoene to suggest that the liminal status of these young performers was key to the way the plays explored and represented the vexed status of the Jacobean political subject. At a time when James was countering parliamentary unrest by adopting and expanding the rhetoric of the firm but benevolent father-king, works like Jonson’s asked whether it was possible, or even desirable, to leave childish things behind.