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Our century's edition of Ben Jonson

by
October 2014, no. 365

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson edited by Ian Donaldson et al.

Cambridge University Press, $1,475 hb (7 vols), 5224 pp

Our century's edition of Ben Jonson

by
October 2014, no. 365

Shakespeare’s great contemporary Ben Jonson dressed an actor in armour to open his play Poetaster. The Prologue explained:

If any muse why I salute the stage,
An armèd Prologue, know, ’tis a
dangerous age,
Wherein who writes had need present
his scenes
Forty-fold proof against the conjuring
means
Of base detractors and illiterate apes,
That fill up rooms in fair and formal
shapes.

A dangerous age, and Ben Jonson was not a circumspect man. This new edition of all Ben Jonson’s work brings out the valiant nature of his achievement.

Lisa Gorton reviews 'The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson' edited by Ian Donaldson et al.

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

edited by Ian Donaldson et al.

Cambridge University Press, $1,475 hb (7 vols), 5224 pp

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