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