This article investigates satire as a cultural and artistic tool in English Renaissance comedy, moving beyond the traditional Jonson-focused narrative. Through a comparative analysis of plays by Shakespeare, Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, Beaumont, Lyly, Chapman, Haughton, and Marston, it identifies how dramatists used irony, parody, caricature, inversion, and allegory to critique class mobility, gender roles, economic practices, and national identity. The study employs a qualitative literary analysis, combined with historical and contextual reading, to demonstrate that satire often functioned as controlled subversion, enabling playwrights to address sensitive issues under censorship and within commercial theatre systems. Findings reveal distinct variations across subgenres: citizen comedy employed biting caricature, romantic comedy favored playful irony, while meta-theatrical works engaged in bold parody. By situating satire within the wider theatrical community, the research argues that Renaissance comedy was not mere entertainment but an adaptive form of civic discourse, reflecting and negotiating the social anxieties of early modern London.

Satire, social critique, English Renaissance

Barton, A. (1984). Ben Jonson, Dramatist. Cambridge University Press.

Bentley, G. E. (1966). The Jacobean and Caroline stage: Dramatic companies and players (Vol. 1). Clarendon Press.

Bevington, D. (Ed.). (2004). The Complete Works of Shakespeare (5th ed.). Pearson Longman.

Billington, M. (2014, December 19). The Shoemaker’s Holiday review – cobblers drama gets a first-rate revival. The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/dec/19/the-shoemakers-holiday-review-rsc-stratford

Dutton, R. (2000). Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England: Buggeswords. Palgrave Macmillan.

Dutton, R. (2016). Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama. Macmillan.

Frassinelli, P. (2003). Realism, Desire and Reification: Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Early Modern Literary Studies, 8(3). http://purl.oclc.org/emls/08-3/fraschas.htm

Frye, N. (2000). Anatomy of criticism: Four essays (15th printing, with a Foreword by Harold Bloom). Princeton University Press.

https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Frye_Northrop_Anatomy_of_Criticism_Four_Essays_2000.pdf

Frye, N. (2010). Northrop Frye’s writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (T. Y. Grande & G. Sherbert, Eds.; Vol. 28). University of Toronto Press.

Gibbons, B. (1980). Jacobean City Comedy: A Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton. Methuen.

Griffin, D. (1995). Satire: A critical reintroduction. The University Press of Kentucky.

Key, D. L. (2021). From medieval morality play to Jacobean city comedy: The afterlives of the seven deadly sins (Doctoral dissertation, University College London). UCL Discovery. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10142328

Lake, P. (2016). How Shakespeare put politics on the stage: Power and succession in the history plays. Yale University Press.

Leggatt, A. (Ed.). (2004). The Cambridge companion to Shakespearean comedy. Cambridge University Press.

Leggatt, A. (2017). Citizen comedy in the age of Shakespeare. University of Toronto Press.

Logan, T. P., & Smith, D. S. (Eds.). (1978). The later Jacobean and Caroline dramatists: A survey and bibliography of recent studies in English Renaissance drama. University of Nebraska Press. https://archive.org/details/laterjacobeancar0000loga/page/n9/mode/2up

Manley, L. (1997). Literature and culture in early modern London. Cambridge University Press.

McEvoy, S. (2008). Ben Jonson, Renaissance Dramatist. Edinburgh University Press.

McMillin, S., & MacLean, S.-B. (1998). The Queen’s Men and their plays. Cambridge University Press

Nemesio, A. (1999). The Comparative Method and Study of Literature. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 1(1), 1–4.