Jonson is said to have prepared the plays for the press, himself, and one or two matters of editing, which seem unusually careful when compared with other folio collections, certainly appear to show the author's hand. At the end of each play, for instance, is a statement telling when it was first acted, and by whom, whether the king's or the queen's servants. The names of the actors are also given, as well as the "allowance". The volume embraces nine plays, and _Epigrammes_, _The Forest_, _Entertaynements_, _Panegyre_, _Maſques_ and _Barriers_. There is no introductory note by the printer, and we are not told how Stansby came into the right to print those plays which had been previously issued by other printers or publishers. In some copies all of the plays have separate printed titles, while in others there are one, two, or more wood-cut borders showing a lion and a unicorn, a lily, rose and thistle, and a grape-vine twined around columns at the side. All of the works not included in the first were intended for a second volume, which, however, did not appear until after Jonson's death, in 1640, when it was printed for Richard Meighen, the bookseller, by Bernard Alsop and Thomas Fawcet. The title reads: _The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The second Volume Containing These Playes, Viz._ _1 Bartholomew Fayre. 2 The Staple of Newes. 3 The Divell is an Asse_.... This title, it will be seen, mentions only three plays, which are thought to have been issued somewhat earlier than 1640, perhaps as a supplement to the first volume. The book, as it is usually bound, however, contains three more plays and a fragment of a fourth. There are variations in the imprint of the first volume, some reading, _London, Printed by William Stansby_, and again others, _London printed by W. Stansby, and are to be ſould by Rich: Meighen_. The imprints of the large paper copies in the British Museum and Huth libraries both read like that of the copy facsimiled. The large paper copies, it should be noted, are on whiter and finer paper of an entirely different water-mark. The copies with Meighen's name show traces of the erasure of our form; a fact leading to the supposition that they are later in issue. This matter is complicated, however, by certain striking variations in the text itself. The last two pages of Meighen's copies, containing _The Golden Age_, show a transposition of parts affecting the whole literary value of the ending of the masque. Mr. Walter Wilson Greg, in his _List of English Plays_, 1900, gives the Stansby-Meighen copies the place of the first issue, calling the Stansby copies a reissue, with the imprint reëngraved.