Comprehensively revised and updated, this Second Edition of Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques includes three of Jonson's most important plays-Volyoue, Epicoeue, and The Alchemist and three masques--Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, and, new to the Second Edition, The Masque of Blackness, Jonson's first masque and one with particular interest to our own culture. Each work is accompanied by expanded textual annotations.
New to this edition is a section on "Backgrounds and Sources," which gives selections from some of the principal texts that influenced Volpone and The Alchemist, such as those by gilliam Caxton, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Erasmus. Also included is helpful material about the history of alchemy.
Preface
Robert M. Adams·The Staging of Jonson's Plays and Masques
A Note on the Texts
The Texts of the Plays and Masques
Volpone
Epicoene
The Alchemist
The Masque of Blackness
Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court
Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue
Contexts
Jonson on His Work
DISCOURSES ON POETRY
From Every Man in His Humour (first version, 1598)
Prologue to Every Man in His Humour (second version, 1616)
Prologue to Cynthia's Revels
From Poetaster
From "Epistle Dedicatory" to Volpone
JONSON'S SHOPTALK
From Discoveries
From Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden
Contemporary Readers on Jonson
Sidney Godolphin·On Ben Jonson
Edmund Waller·Upon Ben Jonson
Jasper Mayne·From To the Memory of Ben. Jonson
Thomas Carew·To Ben Jonson upon Occasion of
His Note of Defiance Annexed to His Play of The New Inn
Backgrounds and Sources
Volpone
BEAST FABLE
Middle English Bestiary·Natura Wulpis
William Caxton·How Corbant the Crow Made Complaint against the Fox for the Death of his Wife
Geoffrey Chaucer·The Nun's Priest's Tale
La Fontaine·The Crow and the Fox
LEGACY HUNTING
Horace·Satire 2.5
The Alchemist
Erasmus·The Alchemy Swindle
Stanton J. Linden·[Alchemy: Definitions and Background]
Criticism
Jonas A. Barish·The Double Plot in Volpone
Robert C. Evans·Thomas Sutton: Jonson's Volpone?
Anne Barton·[Names in lonson's Comedies]
John Dryden·Examen of The Silent Woman
Robert Watson·Epicoene
Edward B. Partridge·The Alchemist
Ian Donaldson·[Jonson's Magic House]
Richard Harp·Ben Jonson's Comic Apocalypse
D. J. Gordon·[The Imagery of The Masque of Blackness]
Stephen Orgel·[The Masque of Blacknessl
John Mulryan·Mythic Interpretations of Ideas in Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue
Leah S. Marcus·Pleasure and Virtue Reconciled
Ben Jonson: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography
