Hierarchomachia is a seventeenth-century English play, long thought to have been lost, that satirizes many prominent figures in the English Catholic community. This edition contains a facsimile of the manuscript, a fully edited text, and textual and historical notes.

The newsletters printed in this volume were written by Catholics who had access to the Court of Charles I and Henrietta Maria during the 1630s. The letters' principal concern was the factional strife among English Catholics, particularly over the issue of whether they should be subject to the authority of a Catholic bishop appointed by the papacy to live and rule over them in England. But these letters also contain Court news and gossip, information about foreign policy issues, and comment on the contemporary Church-of-England controversies over theology and clerical conformity. They are an important source for the study of the ideological tone of the Caroline Court, and of the ambition of certain sections of the Catholic community to secure a form of legal tolerance from the crown.

The Great Chain of Being has been recognized for fifty years as the masterpiece of the History of Ideas movement in America. Lovejoy's work stimulated deeper research into our heritage, which has demonstrated that the idea of the chain of being has not lost its vitality. However, Lovejoy would probably be surprised that hierarchy is now defended in philosophy of science, in ontology and metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in philosophical anthropology. This volume presents concepts of hierarchy and the great chain of being from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, medieval and Renaissance thinkers, Hindu philosophy, and authors of the twentieth century. This volume represents the ideas of twenty scholars, among whom are Dominic O'Meara, Ronald Hathaway, Ewert Cousins, John Sommerfeldt, Lewis Ford, David Blumenthal, and Marion and Paul Kuntz. The editors have compiled a bibliography of four hundred and fifty items and an index of names, places, and concepts which allow the reader immediate access to the variety as well as the unity of ideas.

This book gives a comprehensive account of recent scholarship on English plays and playwrights, exclusive of Shakespeare. It includes plays and playwrights of both popular and private theaters for the time period from 1616 to 1642. -- from Book Jacket.