Transcriber's Note.
A list of the changes made can be found at the end of the book.
Representative English Comedies
FROM THE BEGINNINGS
TO
SHAKESPEARE
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
v"'Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be nomore cakes and ale ... nor ginger hot i' the mouth?' Orknowest not that while man, casting the dice with Fate and MistressGrundy, 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 aswell as for the footlights, and literature, in most cases, begins afterthe footlights are out. In part, because old comedies make goodreading, not only for lovers of fiction and the stage, but for thestudent of society and the historian. Until rival forms of literaryart began to usurp their function, comedies were—in England, notto speak of other and older lands—the recognized and cherishedexponent of the successive phases of contemporary life. For usthey 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 oldcomedies are inaccessible to the public; and, therefore, we ventureto hope that the general reader may find such a collection as thepresent acceptable, whether he care to enter upon a historical andtechnical study of the subject or not.
To the student of literary history, however, this series will, wetrust, justify its existence for quite another reason. For the aimof this volume and those which will follow is to indicate thedevelopment of a literary type by a selection of its representativevispecimens, arranged in the order of their production and accompaniedby critical and historical studies. So little has been scientificallydetermined