SOURCE: "The Satirist in the Theater: Comicall Satyre," in The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance, Yale University Press, 1959, pp. 156-91.
In the following excerpt, Kernan focuses on Jonson's "comicall satyres," showing how the satirical and ironic modes are played out in the theme of alchemy and in the gulf between Renaissance aspiration and human limitation. Jonson, Kernan contends, "set the pattern for comical satire for a generation to come."
