The Alchemist and Other Plays: Volpone, or The Fox; Epicene, or The Silent Woman; The Alchemist; Bartholomew Fair (Oxford World's Classics)

In what can only be seen as a back-handed compliment, John Dryden famously said that he admired Jonson while he loved Shakespeare. But, man, is there a lot to admire. Taking the challenge of Aristotle's unities to its fullest extent, Jonson's ALCHEMIST is a masterpiece of comic invention and timing. It starts in the middle of an argument and watches that argument get resolved inadequately but weirdly perfectly. VOLPONE is a comedy of deceit and control, driven by desire. This is a good collection, fairly inexpensive, with a good overview, though as with all Oxford and Penguin editions I wish they would change their usage of endnotes, and these plays exigently show why: you're constantly having to turn to the back in order to see what things means, and students are seeing these as plays of record rather than records of performance. Critical and Scholarly editions put the footnotes where they're easily available; I wish more accessible editions like this would follow suit.

The book arrived ok and it was not dammaged at all

The paper versions of Oxford World Classics are excellent. They have excellent notes which appear at the end of the book that are keyed to line numbers in the text. The line numbers have been stripped from the Kindle version! This doesn't really matter because the Kindle has no significant hyperlinking. From what I can tell the Kindle screen is excellent but the software is primitive and only good for reading something without any references or footnotes. Amazon has a way to go before I'll buy a Kindle. Does anyone at Oxford know what Amazon has done to their publication? Run away Oxford! Kindle is winning you no friends!

Read Jonson's The Alchemist for class and just absolutely hated it. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Jonson's reputation is well established. My professor loves this play, so I admit that some people think this work is brilliant. I found the nonsense kept me out, rather than drew me in. The plot structure was funny in places, but not enough to make me want to read this work ever again. I also watched the play (twice) and found it equally awful.

The book arrived in excellent condition - my one reservation concerns the binding of the book which seems less sturdy than I would have hoped (which of course is not the fault of the supplier). The text of the plays and is clear and the editor's notes and introduction zre exemplary.

Perfect, as described!

Great little known Jonson.

You can't keep a good man down and this is as good as farces get..if a bit outdated: but good despite the years!A very nice new edition and some help with odd vocabulary.Well done!

I ordered this book as I am going to see the play in the near future, and wanted to know the content beforehand. The language is as I would expect for the period, but I wish that I had also bought a book with notes on the text. This would have saved me going backwards and forwards to look things up. The book arrived promptly and was in excellent condition, As I only wanted one play, it's a bonus that I have several others for the price of the book, which I can read at my leisure and this is good value for money.