in a single day.) Pug appeals to Satan to take him back to Hell with whatever punishment the lord of the underworld chooses—for nothing in hell compares "to a lady of fashion." Satan, triumphant in his prediction that 1616 London was more than Pug could handle, arrives to spirit Pug away, blasting a wall out of Newgate in the process, and leaving the thief's body behind. And the jailers realise, belatedly, that the man they'd arrested in the afternoon was the same man they'd hanged in the morning. Meercraft's trial before Sir Paul is warming up, with Fitzdottrel giving a bravura performance as a bewitched victim. But word arrives of the satanic doings at Newgate; and Fitzdottrel, realising that Pug, "Deville," had been a devil after all, is so beside himself that he abandons the pretense of bewitchment and spills the beans. In the end, the con men are themselves conned, the witty enjoy the fruits of their wit, and virtue is preserved. Metatheatre When Fitzdottrel intends to see a play in Act I, the play in question is The Devil Is an Ass. When Meercraft and Ingine are looking for someone to play the "Spanish woman," they mention Richard Robinson, a real actor with the King's Men; Robinson played female parts as a boy, and had acted in the company's production of Jonson's Catiline in 1611. Wittipol, the character in the play who does masquerade as the "Spanish woman," was most likely played by Robinson, creating another of the loops of self-reference that Jonson liked to generate in his plays. See also 1616 in literature Notes References Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923. Evans, Robert C. Jonson and the Context of His Time. Lewisburg, PA, Bucknell University Press, 1994. Johnson, William Savage, ed. The Devil is an Ass. New York, Henry Holt, 1905. Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977. External links The Devil Is an Ass online 1616 plays Plays by Ben Jonson