Essays on the Stage / Preface to the Campaigners (1689) and Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's Maxims and Reflections on Plays (1699)

Transcriber's Note: A few typographical errors have been corrected. They have been marked with popups . Conjectural readings have been underlined. Both original texts labeled the recto (odd) pages of the first leaves of each signature. These will appear in the right margin as A, A2, A3...
Series Three: Essays on the Stage No. 4 Thomas D'Urfey, Preface to The Campaigners (1698) and Anonymous, Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's Maxims and Reflections upon Plays (1699) With an Introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch The Augustan Reprint Society March, 1948 Price : $1.00
GENERAL EDITORS Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan Edward Niles Hooker, University of California, Los Angeles H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles ASSISTANT EDITOR W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan ADVISORY EDITORS Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington Benjamin Boyce, University of Nebraska Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan Cleanth Brooks, Yale University James L. Clifford, Columbia University Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Ernest Mossner, University of Texas James Sutherland, Queen Mary College, London Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author by Edwards Brothers, Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. 1948
The three parts of D'Urfey's The Comical History of Don Quixote were performed between 1694 and (probably) the end of 1696. Some of the songs included were conspicuously smutty --to use a word which D'Urfey ridiculed--but the fact that the plays were fresh in the public mind was probably the most effective reason for Jeremy Collier's decision to include the not very highly respected author among the still living playwrights to be singled out for attack in A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage , which appeared at Easter time 1698. In July of the same year D'Urfey replied with the preface to his smutty play The Campaigners . It is this preface which is given as the first item of the present reprint.