'The most Pirandellish thing that ever existed' or else 'a wild farrago of reasonless absurdity': James Agate was unable to decide. But 'The Knight of The Burning Pestle' is both. It is a carnival celebration of London life and London theatre in which Francis Beaumont's comic genius is given free rein. A grocer, his wife and their two apprentices attending the theatre in holiday mood interrupt and finally replace a fatuous love comedy with their own heart's desire: exotic spectacle and sound English sentiment. This edition presents an accurate modern-spelling text, the first since 1908 to...

That Island.

What we write are shadows of recollections, fictions growing out of other fictions. But these words grow out of memory failing, as where and when blanch slowly to perhaps. The two who sheltered from the sudden downpour, hugging close, or woke to each other in the dark, or quarreled hatefullyuwere they snatches of old stories, or were you once my wife? Death veils you in the features of passers-by, and age makes yellow secrets of our letters, until the past is unalloyed with circumstance, and becomes pure moments of unearned deserving.