In The English Wits, Michelle O’Callaghan offers a thought-provoking glimpse into the history of English sociability. The book focuses narrowly on convivial societies within fashionable London taverns that had a base within the Inns of Court. O’Callaghan brings to the fore a previously unexamined pattern of associational life in which gentleman-lawyers—such as John Hoskyns—and authors—including John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Coryate—participated during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. She argues that members of the Inns of Court “reinvigorated humanist traditions of learned play” (front flap), and in so doing they shaped a distinct brand of literary fellowship grounded in the classical literary and rhetorical tradition. Such ludic literary interactions indelibly affected members of the Inns of Court, who often became members of convivial societies that met at fashionable London taverns, including the Little Mermaid, the Mitre, and the Three Cranes.

The English Wits begins at the Inns of Court. In the book's first chapter O’Callaghan demonstrates that members of the Inns of Court subscribed to a “civic ideology that assimilated classical humanist theories of the polis” (11), a notion that formed the philosophical foundation of the Inns. In short, the Inns provided a space for the grooming of virtuous, learned orator-citizens and gentlemen. Such an ideological framework, O’Callaghan suggests, not only allowed the participants to incorporate classically grounded literary play into the Inns’ social fabric and associational praxis, but also brought a sense of the political idealism found in the classics to their friendships. Satire, burlesque, improvisation, and parody figured prominently in the social life and literary culture of the Inns—indeed, they were communal rituals; but the Inns also functioned as spaces for the production of ironic social commentary and demonstrations of learning within traditional discourses and ceremonial forms. The incorporation of learned literary play into the social landscape of the Inns of Court had far-reaching effects, influencing the theater as well as the associational life of fashionable London taverns.

In chapter 2 O’Callaghan explores the relationship between the social practices of the Inns of Court, Jonson's plays, and the theaters in general. Here she argues that Jonson imported some of the humanist traditions of learned play he was exposed to at the Inns to the popular stage. To be sure, much of the dramatic force in Jonson's plays rests within their witty conversation, and many of his characters not only speak like orators, but also employ satire and other modes of learned literary play, such as verbal games, in their speeches. Asper, a character in Every Man Out of His Humour, for example, uses lawyerlike dialogue in the play's induction. O’Callaghan also argues that the so-called wars of the theater (1600–1601) among Jonson, Thomas Dekker, and John Marston strongly resemble “the earlier ‘civil war’ among the satirists at the Inns of Court, and transfer the ritualized aggression of commoning and flyting to the public stage” (42).

From Jonson, O’Callaghan moves to the social environment of fashionable London taverns. For the wits, the taverns became an elite and private place in which friends could discuss affairs of state and religion, for members were often lawyers and/or members of the House of Commons. The taverns were also a place in which the wits could engage in social drinking, collective tavern poetry, learned and cultivated dining, jesting, and buffoonery, all of which have roots in the symposiastic tradition. In particular, collectively authored, mock-encomiastic poems like “Convivium Philosiphicum” and “The Parliament Fart,” which circulated in manuscript, illustrate the wits’ indebtedness to learned verbal play practiced at the Inns of Court and the rhetorical tradition. For the wits, such poems became an outlet for social dissent and political commentary, via satire and burlesque.

In the final two chapters of The English Wits, O’Callaghan turns to “the sociability of print,” focusing narrowly on Coryat's Crudities (1611). She first examines the “Panegyricke Verses,” to which a medley of authors, including John Donne and Sir John Suckling, contributed verses, many of which were in the classically low forms that occurred in the verbal play of the taverns. As many of the contributors were actually members of tavern communities, the book's publication simultaneously opened up the elite space and traditions of the tavern to the public and created a public persona for the tavern communities. But Coryat's Crudities did more than bring the social environment of the tavern to the printed page. It also helped to found the travel genre, for it contains descriptions of Coryate's travels across Europe. As O’Callaghan observes, Coryate's narration reads like a catalog and a sight-seeing manual, rather than a fluid narrative. Thus, the book is structurally innovative—what O’Callaghan calls a “talked-book,” meaning it is not meant to be read silently. Like the “Panegyricke Verses,” the descriptions of France, Venice, and Coryate's other destinations are meant to be lifted from their contexts. Both sections of the book are infused with ludic literary forms, and the various entries are designed to be discussion topics in various social situations, such as dinner and drinks at a tavern, and various other convivial gatherings.

O’Callaghan's examination of the revival of learned literary play at the Inns of Court and its subsequent transition to the printed page not only provides a new lens through which to view the social life and literary culture of the English Wits, but also it invites us to rethink the role of learned literary play across various media. Indeed, her study, which considers an impressive range of media, from play texts and performances to manuscript and to print, brilliantly illuminates the intimate connections between and the influence of diverse media on the social sphere. The English Wits is a lucid, well-written, and important study for scholars of both the history of sociability and early modern literary studies.