Five Plays

FYI, the plays included in this edition are Every Man in his Humour, Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. While Jonson's language is not as accessible as Shakespeare's, his plays are by no means a waste of time. No one had a sharper ear for the ways in which people in society delude themselves and others. Sejanus is rough going for anyone who isn't an ancient-Roman history buff, but the comedies offer wicked portraits of con artists, hustlers, wannabes, posers, and manglers of language. This edition doesn't offer a lot of help to readers unfamiliar with 17th-century English, but it's a good basic version of these plays, some of which aren't easy to find in cheap editions.