Critical Responses
Both as part of the Poetomachia and as a work by Jonson, Cynthia's Revels has received a good measure of attention from scholars and critics. The play, however, has not been judged as one of the playwright's successes. Critics have called the play "paralyzed," "repugnant," and "stupefyingly dull." A more generous critic has classified Cynthia's Revels, along with Jonson's other early comedies, as learning exercises for the comic masterpieces that would follow, Volpone and The Alchemist. (And new approaches to the play have been essayed, as in Sarah Annes Brown's "Arachne's Web: Intertextual Mythography and The Renaissance Actaeon.")
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