Epicoene, or The silent woman, also known as Epicene, is a comedy by Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson. It was originally performed by the Blackfriars Children or Children of the Queen's Revels, a group of boy players, in 1609. It was, by Jonson's admission, a failure on its first presentation; however, John Dryden and others championed it, and after the Restoration it was frequently revived-indeed, a reference by Samuel Pepys to a performance on 6 July 1660 places it among the first plays legally performed after Charles II's ascension. The play takes place in London. Morose, a wealthy old man with an obsessive hatred of noise, has made plans to disinherit his nephew Dauphine by marrying. His bride Epic ne is, he thinks, an exceptionally quiet woman; he does not know that Dauphine has arranged the whole match for purposes of his own. The couple are married despite the well-meaning interference of Dauphine's friend True-wit. Morose soon regrets his wedding day, as his house is invaded by a charivari that comprises Dauphine, True-wit, and Clerimont; a bear warden named Otter and his wife; two stupid knights, La Foole and Daw; and an assortment of "collegiates," vain and scheming women with intellectual pretensions. Worst for Morose, Epic ne quickly reveals herself as a loud, nagging mate."

This authoritative new edition of "Epicene" locates it precisely in the world of Jacobean wit, court, commerce sexual ambiguity and theatrical innovation which are its own subject-matter.

The Oxford English Drama series offers plays from the 16th to the early 20th centuries in selections that make available both rarely printed and canonical works. Each text is freshly edited using modern spelling.

The most comprehensive collection available of Bacon's philosophical and scientific writings, this volume offers Bacon's major works in their entirety, or in generous selections, revised from the classic 19th century editions of Spedding, Ellis and Heath. Selections from Bacon's natural histories round out this edition by showing the types of compilations that he believed would most contribute to the third part of his Great Instauration. In her General Introduction, Rose-Mary Sargent sketches Bacon's early life, education, and legal career, and discusses the major components of his philosophical works, and traces his influence on subsequent natural philosophy.

A timely and comprehensive history of female husbands in Anglo-America from the eighteenth through the turn of the twentieth century.

Bringing together leading Jonson scholars, Ben Jonson and Posterity provides new insights into this remarkable writer's reception and legacy over four centuries. Jonson was recognised as the outstanding English writer of his day and has had a powerful influence on later generations, yet his reputation is one of the most multifaceted and conflicted for any writer of the early modern period. The volume brings together multiple critical perspectives, addressing book history, the practice of reading, theatrical influence and adaptation, the history of performance, cultural representation in portraiture, film, fiction, and anecdotes to interrogate Jonson's 'myth'. The collection will be of great interest to all Jonson scholars, as well as having a wider appeal among early modern literary scholars, theatre historians, and scholars interested in intertextuality and reception from the Renaissance to the present day.

Giovanni Boccaccio devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is this text, the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted to women.