A scholarly edition of poetry and prose by John Gay. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This volume contains Dryden's 1688 translation of Dominiques Bouhours "The Life of St. Francis Xavier," a sixteenth century Jesuit and missionary to the Far East.

Dryden's last three years of published works begin with "Alexander's Feast "and end with "Fables, "his largest miscellany of poetical translations. "Alexander's Feast, "like the earlier "Song for St. Cecilia's Day "("Works, III"), was commissioned by the Musical Society for performance at its annual tribute to sacred music. The "Fables "included selections from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. Extensive and detailed notes to these translations show readers how well Dryden succeeded in transmitting the styles and the very sounds of his originals. "Volume VII "ends with a section of miscellaneous pieces published at other times, including Dryden's only known Latin work. The presentation of the writings in this volume, like that of the entire twenty-volume series, is a tribute not only to Dryden but also to the editors who have guided it through five decades.

Volumes V and VI concern Dryden's most involved labor: the complete translation of Virgil into English. Volume V contains The Pastorals and The Georgics in their entirety; the first six books of The Aeneid is contained as well.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

In the last decade of Dryden's life, he brought four new works before the theatre-going public: a dramatic opera, a tragedy, a tragicomedy, and a number of appendages to an old comedy by John Fletcher, which was revived partly so that Dryden might have the author's third-night profits. He died that night, but his family received the money. The dramatic opera, "King Arthur," benefited from a fine score by Henry Purcell and has remained in the operatic repertoire to this day. "Cleomenes," the tragedy, was banned until Dryden was able to convince Queen Mary that it did not reflect any seditious sympathy with the exiled James II, after which it was successful. The fate of "Love Triumphant," the tragicomedy, was different; possibly because of a growing swell of moral reform, the play was universally damned, even though its themes of incest and miscellaneous fornication had never brought rejection to Dryden in the past. "The Secular Masque," Dryden's principal contribution to "The Pilgrim" by Fletcher, had undistinguished music, but its lively verse and broad review of the previous century kept the piece on the stage for the next fifty years, and in anthologies up to the present.

The three plays in this volume, composed between 1672 or 1673 and 1675, demonstrate Dryden's versatility and inventiveness as a dramatist. "Amboyna," a tragedy written to stir the English to prosecute the Third Dutch War, describes the destruction by the Dutch of English trading posts on two Indonesian islands. Regarded in its time as sensationalist, it is really a dignified drama that decries violence. "The State of Innocence, " termed an opera, is a rhymed version of Milton's "Paradise Lost." Though never performed or set to music, it became one of Dryden's most widely read dramas. "Aureng-Zebe," the last and generally considered the best of Dryden's rhymed heroic plays, portrays the rise to power of Mogul emperor Aureng-Zebe (1618-1707).

Volume XI contains three of Dryden's Plays, along with accompanying scholarly appartus: The Conquest of Granada, Marriage A-la-Mode, and The Assignation.

This volume contains the poems of Dryden extending from1685 to 1692. Along with the poems of Dryden and associated extensive commentaries and textual notes from the editors, this volume contains the dramatic prologues and epilogues Dryden wrote for the plays of other writers from this period of time.