No More Learning

Old or archaic spellings have been preserved.
In the text of the actual play, lowercase "s" has been replaced by
the "long s", "? ". The capital letter "W" is often replaced with
"VV", the letter "v" and the letter "u" are used interchangeably,
and the letters "i" and "j" are also used interchangeably.
Many of the characters names in the play have various spellings,
e. g. , MERE-CRAFT and MERECRAFT, MEERECRAFT
EVER-ILL and EVERILL
FITZ-DOTTEREL and FITZDOTTEREL
PIT_FAL and PITFALL
DIVEL and DIVELL.
The footnotes in the actual play were added by the author as part of
his thesis. The references for these footnotes are the line numbers.
Since each scene begins the line numbers over at 1, these footnotes
have been collected at the end of each scene, and refer to the
appropriate line in the preceding scene.




YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH
ALBERT S. COOK, EDITOR

XXIX

THE DEVIL IS AN ASS

BY BEN JONSON

Edited with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary

BY WILLIAM SAVAGE JOHNSON, Ph. D.
_Instructor in English in Yale University_

A Thesis presented to
the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1905

Copyright by William Savage Johnson, 1905

PRESS OF THE TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR COMPANY

TO MY MOTHER




PREFACE


In _The Devil is an Ass_ Jonson may be studied, first, as a student;
secondly, as an observer. Separated by only two years from the
preceding play, _Bartholomew Fair_, and by nine from the following,
_The Staple of News_, the present play marks the close of an epoch in
the poet's life, the period of his vigorous maturity.
Its relations
with the plays of his earlier periods are therefore of especial
interest.

The results of the present editor's study of these and other
literary connections are presented, partly in the Notes, and partly
in the Introduction to this book. After the discussion of the
purely technical problems in Sections A and B, the larger features
are taken up in Section C, I and II. These involve a study of the
author's indebtedness to English, Italian, and classical sources, and
especially to the early English drama; as well as of his own dramatic
methods in previous plays. The more minute relations to contemporary
dramatists and to his own former work, especially in regard to
current words and phrases, are dealt with in the Notes.

As an observer, Jonson appears as a student of London, and a satirist
of its manners and vices; and, in a broader way, as a critic of
contemporary England. The life and aspect of London are treated, for
the most part, in the Notes; the issues of state involved in Jonson's
satire are presented in historical discussions in Section C, III.
Personal satire is treated in the division following.

I desire to express my sincere thanks to Professor Albert S. Cook
for advice in matters of form and for inspiration in the work; to
Professor Henry A. Beers for painstaking discussion of difficult
questions; to Dr. De Winter for help and criticism; to Dr. John M.
Berdan for the privilege of consulting his copy of the Folio; to
Mr. Andrew Keogh and to Mr. Henry A.