Poetaster.

Most of us know Poetaster - if we know it at all - mainly for the vomiting scene, when all of Crispinus' (or Marston's) hard and indigestible words come up in a comically outrageous climax. The rest of Jonson's text survives as a little read and less admired document in a half forgotten literary quarrel - not so much a work of art as a weapon of poetomachia. Tom Cain's excellent new edition, however, offers a clear, precise introduction which calls attention to Jonson's wider concerns beyond the War of the Theatres. If it helps to reclaim this complex and funny play from the peripheries of the scholarly mind, it will have done a valuable job.

The edition itself has many quiet virtues, along with the odd nit for a reviewer to pick. The …