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                   Representative English Comedies
                  FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO SHAKESPEARE




[Illustration]




                        REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH
                               COMEDIES

                  WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS AND NOTES
               AN HISTORICAL VIEW OF OUR EARLIER COMEDY
                        _AND OTHER MONOGRAPHS_
                          BY VARIOUS WRITERS

                    UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF

                 CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY, LITT.D., LL.D.
  _Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University of
                               California_

                          FROM THE BEGINNINGS
                                  TO
                              SHAKESPEARE


                               New York:
                        THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
                     LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
                                 1926

                        _All rights reserved._




                           COPYRIGHT, 1903,
                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

           Set up, electrotyped, and published March, 1903.


                             Norwood Press
               _J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
                        Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._




PREFACE


"'Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more
cakes and ale... nor ginger hot i' the mouth?' Or knowest not that
while man, casting the dice with Fate and Mistress Grundy, imagineth a
new luck, there shall be new comedy? Why, then, reprint these old?"

In part, because the comedies of a nation are for literature as well
as for the footlights, and literature, in most cases, begins after
the footlights are out. In part, because old comedies make good
reading, not only for lovers of fiction and the stage, but for the
student of society and the historian. Until rival forms of literary
art began to usurp their function, comedies were--in England, not to
speak of other and older lands--the recognized and cherished exponent
of the successive phases of contemporary life. For us they still are
living sketches of the social manners, morals, vanities, and ideals
of generations of our ancestors; history "unbeknownst" as written
by contemporaries. Unfortunately, many of these old comedies are
inaccessible to the public; and, therefore, we venture to hope that the
general reader may find such a collection as the present acceptable,
whether he care to enter upon a historical and technical study of the
subject or not.

To the student of literary history, however, this series will, we
trust, justify its existence for quite another reason. For the
aim of this volume and those which will follow is to indicate the
development of a literary type by a selection of its representative
specimens, arranged in the order of their production and accompanied
by critical and historical studies. So little has been scientifically
determined concerning evolution or permutation in literature that
the more specific the field of inquiry, the more trustworthy are the
results attained,--hence the limitation of this research not merely
to a genus like the drama, but to one of its species. What is here
presented to the public differs from histories of the drama in that it
is more restricted in scope and that it substantiates the narrative of
a literary growth by reproducing the data necessary to an induction;
it differs from editions of individual plays and dramatists, on the
other hand, because it attempts to concatenate its texts by a running
commentary upon the characteristics of the species under consideration
as they successively appear. It is an illustrated, if not certified,
history of English comedy.

The plays, in this series called representative, have been chosen
primarily for their importance in the history of comedy, generally also
for their literary quality, and, when possible, for their practical,
dramatic, or histrionic value. Of the studies accompanying them, some
are special, such as those dealing with the several authors and plays;
some general, the monographs upon groups or movements, and the sketch
introductory to the volume. The essay prefatory to a play includes,
when possible, an outline of the dramatist's life, a concise history
of his contribution to comedy, with reference, when appropriate, to
his productions in other fields, an estimate of his output in its
relation to the national, social, literary, and technical development
of the type in question, and to such foreign movements and influences
as may be cognate, and, finally, an exposition and criticism of the
play presented. By the insertion in proper chronological position of
occasional monographs, it is intended to represent minor dramatists
or groups of the same school, period, or movement,--sometimes,
indeed, an author of exceptional