Work on Ben Jonson has long been dominated by the 11-volume Oxford text of his Works , edited by C.H. Herford, Percy Simpson and Evelyn Simpson (1925-52). In this monumental edition, Jonson seems a remote and forbidding figure, an author of formidable learning and literariness. This collection of essays by twelve leading scholars, editors, historians and bibliographers explores ways in which modern understanding of Jonson's texts has undermined the emphasis of the Oxford edition, and generated a Jonson whose Works and career look quite different. Addressing the competing needs of future readers, teachers and performers, it asks how this reconceptualized Jonson might best be transmitted into the next century. The volume also includes a new Jonson text, The Entertainment at Britain's Burse , written in 1609 to celebrate the royal opening of the Earl of Salisbury's commercial development in the Strand. Discovered in 1996, it is the most significant addition to Jonson's canon this century, and is here printed for the first time.

DAVID BEVINGTON Phyllis Fay Horton Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago
MICHAEL CORDNER Reader in the Department of English and Related Literature, University of York
HUGH CRAIG Department of English, University of Newcastle, N.S.W., Australia
KEVIN DONOVAN Professor of English, Middle Tennessee State University
ROBERT C. EVANS University Alumni Professor, Auburn University, Montgomery
DAVID L. GANTS Lecturer in Literature, University of Georgia
JAMES KNOWLES Lecturer in English, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
JOSEPH LOEWENSTEIN Associate Professor of English, Washington University, St. Louis
HELEN OSTOVICH Associate Professor of English, McMaster University, Canada
LOIS POTTER Ned B. Allen Professor of English, University of Delaware
BLAIR WORDEN Professor of Early Modern History, University of Sussex

List of Plates List of Figures List of Contributors Prefatory Note Introduction: from Workes to Texts; M.Butler Why Re-edit Herford and Simpson?; D.Bevington The Printing, Proofing and Press-correction of Jonson's Folio Workes ; D.L. Gants Forms of Authority in the Early Texts of Every Man Out of His Humour ; K.Donovan 'To Behold the Scene Full': Every Man Out of His Humour ; H.Ostovich Personal Material: Jonson and Book-Burning; J.Loewenstein Jonson's Entertainment at Britain's Burse : J.Knowles Politics in Catiline : Jonson and His Sources; B.Worden Zeal-of-the-Land Busy Restored; M.Cordner The Swan Song of the Stage Historian; L.Potter Jonsonian Chronology and the Styles of A Tale of a Tub ; H.Craig Jonsonian Allusions; R.C. Evans Index