Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques: Authoritative Texts of Volpone, Epicoene, the Alchemist, the Masque of Blackness, Mercury Vindicated from the ... reconciled (Norton Critical Editions)

Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques: Authoritative Texts of Volpone, Epicoene, the Alchemist, the Masque of Blackness, Mercury Vindicated from the ... reconciled (Norton Critical Editions) by Jonson, Ben. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780393976380.

Also included are three masques: Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemist at Court, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, and—new to the Second Edition—The Masque of Blackness, Jonsons first masque and one that deals with issues of interest to contemporary culture. Each text includes expanded annotations.Jonson on His Work collects statements by the author on plays and on poetry taken from some of the plays, from Discoveries, and from Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden.Contemporary Readers on Jonson includes tributes and poems about the author and his work. A new section—"Backgrounds and Sources"—includes selections from texts that helped shaped the dramatists vision.Criticism includes twelve essays—nine of them new to the Second Edition—by Jonas A. Barish, Robert C. Evans, Anne Barton, John Dryden, Robert Watson, Edward B. Partridge, Ian Donaldson, Richard Harp, D. J. Gordon, Stephen Orgel, John Mulryan, and Leah S. Marcus.