Face Painting in Ben Jonson’s Epicene

Jonson's painted creatures have many fellows in other plays of the period,but no playwright uses cosmetics so extensively as Jonson.This paper explores the face painting in one of his plays Epicene,or the Silent Woman from the perspective of New Historicism.It analyzes the early modern canon of beauty and how women in Epicene follow the canon to beautify themselves,from Jonson’s description the general ideas of his attitudes on face-painting are given.The essay integrates the historical context of the seventeenth century with Jonson’s text to provide new insight into Jonson’s sarcasm,humour and seventeenth century’s cosmetic culture.