class="tdr">liii

  III. Specific Objects of Satire
liv    1. The Duello liv    2. The Monopoly System lviii    3. Witchcraft lxii
  IV. Personal Satire
lxv     Mrs. Fitzdottrel lxvi     Fitzdottrel lxx     Wittipol lxxi     Justice Eitherside lxxi     Merecraft lxxii     Plutarchus Guilthead lxxiii     The Noble House lxxiv
 D. After-Influence of the Devil is an Ass
lxxiv
   Appendix—Extracts from the Critics
lxxvi
Text
 1
Notes
123
Glossary
213
Bibiliography
237
Index
243

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INTRODUCTION

A. EDITIONS OF THE TEXT

The Devil is an Ass was first printed in 1631, and was probably put into circulation at that time, either as a separate pamphlet or bound with Bartholomew Fair and The Staple of News. Copies of this original edition were, in 1640-1, bound into the second volume of the First Folio of Jonson’s collected works.[1] In 1641 a variant reprint edition of The Devil is an Ass, apparently small, was issued in pamphlet form. The play reappears in all subsequent collected editions. These are: (1) the ‘Third Folio’, 1692; (2) a bookseller’s edition, 1716 [1717]; (3) Whalley’s edition, 1756; (4) John Stockdale’s reprint of Whalley’s edition (together with the works of Beaumont and Fletcher), 1811; (5) Gifford’s edition, 1816; (6) Barry Cornwall’s one-volume edition, 1838; (7) Lieut. Col. Francis Cunningham’s three-volume reissue (with some minor variations) of Gifford’s edition, 1871; (8) another reissue by Cunningham, in nine volumes (with additional notes), 1875. The Catalogue of the British Museum shows that Jonson’s works were printed in two volumes at Dublin in 1729. Of these editions only the first two call for detailed description, and of the others only the first, second, third, fifth, and eighth will be discussed.

1631. Owing to irregularity in contents and arrangement in different copies, the second volume of the First Folio has been much discussed. Gifford speaks of it as the edition of 1631-41.[2] Miss Bates, copying from Lowndes, gives it as belonging to 1631, reprinted in 1640 and in 1641.[3] Ward says substantially the same thing.[4] In 1870, however, Brinsley Nicholson, by a careful collation,[5] arrived at the following results. (1) The so-called editions of the second volume assigned to 1631, 1640, and 1641 form only a single edition. (2) The belief in the existence of ‘the so-called first edition of the second volume in 1631’ is due to the dates prefixed to the opening plays. (3) The belief in the existence