The New Inn

Blurb

The New Inn, or The Light Heart is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy by English playwright and poet Ben Jonson.
The New Inn was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 19 January 1629, and acted later that year by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. The original production was a "catastrophic failure...hissed from the Blackfriars stage...." An intended Court performance never took place, according to Jonson's epilogue to the play in the 1631 edition. Jonson was profoundly affected by the failure, and wrote about the affair in his poetic Ode to Himself.
The play was first published in octavo in 1631, printed by Thomas Harper; only two copies are known to exist. It was not included in the second folio collection of Jonson's works in 1640–41, and was next printed in the third Jonson folio in 1692.
While The New Inn is not one of the poet's major works, it has, like any Jonson play, attracted its share of critical attention.