Transcriber's Note: Underscores before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_ in the original text. Equal signs before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold= in the original text. Caret symbols indicate superscript text. Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPITALS. Old or archaic spellings have been preserved. In the text of the actual play, lowercase “s” has been replaced by the “long s”, “ſ”. The capital letter “W” is often replaced with “VV”, the letter “v” and the letter “u” are used interchangeably, and the letters "i" and "j" are also used interchangeably. Many of the characters names in the play have various spellings, e.g., MERE-CRAFT and MERECRAFT, MEERECRAFT EVER-ILL and EVERILL FITZ-DOTTEREL and FITZDOTTEREL PIT_FAL and PITFALL DIVEL and DIVELL. The footnotes in the actual play were added by the author as part of his thesis. The references for these footnotes are the line numbers. Since each scene begins the line numbers over at 1, these footnotes have been collected at the end of each scene, and refer to the appropriate line in the preceding scene. YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH ALBERT S. COOK, EDITOR XXIX THE DEVIL IS AN ASS BY BEN JONSON Edited with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary BY WILLIAM SAVAGE JOHNSON, Ph.D. _Instructor in English in Yale University_ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy [Illustration] NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1905 Copyright by William Savage Johnson, 1905 PRESS OF THE TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR COMPANY TO MY MOTHER PREFACE In _The Devil is an Ass_ Jonson may be studied, first, as a student; secondly, as an observer. Separated by only two years from the preceding play, _Bartholomew Fair_, and by nine from the following, _The Staple of News_, the present play marks the close of an epoch in the poet’s life, the period of his vigorous maturity. Its relations with the plays of his earlier periods are therefore of especial interest.