Provides a comprehensive and entertaining account of the vitality and variety of achievement in seventeenth-century English poetry. Revised and up-dated throughout, Dr Parfitt has added new material on poets as varied as Marvell and Traherne. There is also a completely new chapter on women poets of the seventeenth century which considers the significant contributions of writers such as Katherine Philips and Margaret Cavendish. The proven quality and success of Dr Parfitt's survey makes this the essential companion for the teacher and student of seventeenth-century verse.

Provides a comprehensive and entertaining account of the vitality and variety of achievement in seventeenth-century English poetry. Revised and up-dated throughout, Dr Parfitt has added new material on poets as varied as Marvell and Traherne. There is also a completely new chapter on women poets of the seventeenth century which considers the significant contributions of writers such as Katherine Philips and Margaret Cavendish. The proven quality and success of Dr Parfitt's survey makes this the essential companion for the teacher and student of seventeenth-century verse.

This study does not set out to deal with all aspects of Donne's life and work. Rather, it aims to examine selected aspects of the life and work in the context of the times Donne lived in, seeking to emphasise those features which are most alive in our times. Particular emphasis is placed upon the period between Donne's marriage in 1601 and his ordination in 1615. The last period of his life and its main literary product, the sermons, are treated more briefly while the treatment of the early years is limited by the gaps in the surviving evidence. Both his poetry and his prose are seen less in purely aesthetic terms therefore, than as products of a difficult life lived at a difficult time.

The two plays which make up this volume are of different quality. While no one would claim that The Atheist's Tragedy is a masterpiece, it is an important play because in it the exhortation 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord' is acted upon with unusual consistency, and because stringent puritan' moral attitudes are dramatised in the context of traditional revenge themes. The Revenger's Tragedy, on the other hand, is a masterpiece; a satirical tragedy with farce structure and poetic vision focused upon the vice and corruption of the imagined Italy of the Jacobean period. Its bleak view of humanity links the play with the strongly satirical theatre of the early seventeenth century, showing the dramatist's affinity with Jonson and Marston. Although The Atheist's Tragedy and The Revenger's Tragedy are commonly linked in readers' minds, there has 'been much disagreement since the end of the nineteenth century about the authorship of The Revenger's Tragedy. The issue is fully aired in the Introduction to the volume, the editor's view being that the play is best regarded as anonymous; however, the two plays, are printed together here to enable readers to compare them as discussions of the morality of revenge.

Perhaps no seventeenth-century poet apart from Donne has exerted a greater formative influence on English poetry than Ben Jonson. His adoption of classical ideals was combined with a vigorous interest in contemporary life and a strong faith in native idiom. Within the urbane elegance of his verse forms he contrived a directness and energy of statement clearly related to colloquial speech, and this characteristic fusion of restraint and vitality gave to the seventeenth-century lyric its most distinctive quality. As well as the entire body of Jonson's non-dramatic verse, extensively annotated, this edition contains many of the songs from his plays and masques and his translation of 'Horace, of the Art of Poetry'. His 'Conversations with Drummond', which adds much to our sense of the man, appears as an Appendix, as does 'Discoveries'; together they shed valuable light on Jonson's poetic theory and practice.