A critical old-spelling edition of Thomas Middleton’s Honorable entertainments (1621) and An invention (1622)

• Main Author: Hill, Brian H. W.
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/19467

The aim of this edition is to bring together the surviving examples of civic interludes in such a format and manner as to make them accessible to a reader familiar with Renaissance language and printing conventions. It is a conservative edition which preserves, as far as possible, the original spelling and punctuation which reflect the eccentricities of Middleton's MS habits. At the same time it seeks to sort out problems such as the song in Entertainment Seven, and to present the material with some consistency of form. The first ten entertainments of this edition are from a unique printed volume in the Huntington Library and the final entertainment is from a MS preserved amongst the Conway Papers at the Public Record Office. Together these provide the only surviving examples of civic interludes for this period. The introductory material attempts first to define civic pageantry and then to set the edited entertainments within an artistic and historical tradition, At the same time it tries to explore the more topical themes represented in them. Primarily, the value of this edition lies in that it presents material hitherto not available in one edition. === Arts, Faculty of === English, Department of === Graduate