This collection features three of Jonson's masterpieces: Volpone, Epicoene, and The Alchemist.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together an extensive collection of Bacon's writing - the major prose in full, together with sixteen other pieces not otherwise available - togive the essence of his work and thinking.Although he had a distinguished career as a lawyer and statesman, Francis Bacon's lifelong goal was to improve and extend human knowledge. In The Advancement of Learning (1605) he made a brilliant critique of the deficiencies of previous systems of thought and proposed improvements to knowledge inevery area of human life. He conceived the Essays (1597, much enlarged in 1625) as a study of the formative influences on human behaviour, psychological and social. In The New Atlantis (1626) he outlined his plan for a scientific research institute in the form of a Utopian fable. In addition tothese major English works this edition includes 'Of Tribute', an important early work here printed complete for the first time, and a revealing selection of his legal and political writings, together with his poetry.A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions, and glosses his vocabulary.

The Renaissance court masque, traditionally an entertainment of music, dancing, pageantry, and spectacular scenic effects was transformed by Ben Jonson into a serious mode of literary expression. Because its flexibility provided a forum for his dramatic imagination, Jonson was able to resolve and transcend the satiric vision that was in many ways the substance of his drama. He instructed as well as applauded his courtly audience and, with the aid of the great theatrical designer Inigo Jones, brought unity to the diverse elements of the masque, infusing them with a moral and poetic life. In early 1969, Yale University Press published The Complete Masques, the first one-volume edition and the most carefully edited and annotated text available. A modernized version, the 576 page Complete Masques includes the faithful reprinting of Jonson’s own glosses and notes, translated and annotated, as well as explanatory notes which offer the most detailed critical commentary ever undertaken. This abridged collection contains the most important of the works included in the large edition, and Mr. Orgel’s introduction which discusses Jonson’s development of the masque in relation to Inigo Jones’s development of the illusionistic stage. Mr. Orgel is associate professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.

This volume brings together examples of English verse satire written during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, interpreting satire widely to include reflective poems modelled on Horace, 'aggressive' poems modelled on Juvenal, and poems in the native or medieval tradition. There are substantial extracts from the anonymous Cock Lorell's Boat, Skelton's Colin Clout and Spenser's Mother Hubberd's Tale, but most poems are given complete. Among other poets represented are Wyatt, Donne, Marston and Jonson and a number of pieces have been included by writers whose work is today not readily accessible, such as Gascoigne, Lodge, Rowlands and Guilpin. The nature and development of verse satire as a literary genre is discussed in the introduction.

To tickle the humor of today's audiences, Volpone has been moved from 17th century Venice to turn of the century San Francisco. Volpone is now called Foxwell J. Sly and he is the same scheming, rapacious miser bent on extracting fortunes from a trio of rich, greedy opportunists. Sly, pretending to be on his death bed, says he will name each of the three as his sole heir. The extent that the trio will go to acquire Sly's fortune knows no bounds. One goes so far as to disinherit his only son; another offers up his wife to the lecherous Sly. Sly is aided and abetted by his conniving servant in grabbing the other men's gold.