Catiline his conspiracy Author:Ben Jonson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ment. Gifford is the first to divide the acts into scenes according to place instead of according to speaker, and gives the setting of each scene. All entrances ... more »and exits of characters are noted by him in stage-directions or side- notes. These changes make a play such as Catiline much more intelligible to the general reader. Gifford's text is available in his two editions, those of 1816 and 1846, and in the reprint with 'perfunctory improvements' (the phrase is Dr. Herford's) by Lieut.-Col. Cunningham in 1875, which is still the standard for Jonson's complete works. His alterations of the text are mainly modernizations : ay for the interjection /; them or 'em for 'hem ; have for ha'; the for th', etc. All important variants will be found in the footnotes to the text.1 So far as I have been able to learn, there are no translations of Catiline. B. Date And Stage-history The date of the first acting of Catiline, according to the title-pages of Fi, F2, and Qi, was 1611. As all dates were then reckoned in old style, however, this may well have been 1612; and the absence of a record in the Stationers' Registers leaves us without any definite data. The title-page of Q2 informs us that the play was at that time (1635) 'acted by his MAJESTIES Servants with great Applause,' but I am unable to discover any contemporary notes of its appearance. It was early revived at the Restoration, and was, on the whole, well received. Under date of December n, 1667, Pepys says, ' I met ... Harris, the player, and therewe talked ... particularly of Catiline, which is to be suddenly acted at the King's house; and there all agree that it cannot be well done at that house, there not being good actors enow: and Burt acts Cicero, which they all conclude he will not be able to do well. The King gi...« less