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...."[1] 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 ("Come leave the loathed stage, / And the more loathsome age...").
As part of their theatrical project, Prudence and Lady Frampul decide to dress up the Host's adopted son Franck in a cross-gender attire as Laetitia, a waiting-woman.