A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 11

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY ROBERT DODSLEY IN THE YEAR 1744.
FOURTH EDITION . NOW FIRST CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED, REVISED AND ENLARGED WITH THE NOTES OF ALL THE COMMENTATORS, AND NEW NOTES
BY W. CAREW HAZLITT.
BENJAMIN BLOM, INC.
New York

Amends for Ladies will be found, on the whole, a superior performance to A Woman is a Weathercock, and if the order of merit only had been consulted, it ought to have been first reprinted in this collection.

N. F.

Reader, the saleman swears you'll take it very ill, if I say not something to you too. In troth, you are a stranger to me: why should I write to you? you never writ to me, nor I think will not answer my epistle. I send a comedy to you here, as good as I could then make; nor slight my presentation, because it is a play; for I tell thee, reader, if thou be'st ignorant, a play is not so idle a thing as thou art, but a mirror of men's lives and actions; nor, be it perfect or imperfect, true or false, is the vice or virtue of the maker. This is yet, as well as I can, qualis ego vel Cluvienus . Thou must needs have some other language than thy mother-tongue, for thou think'st it impossible for me to write a play, that did not use a word of Latin, though he had enough in him. I have been vexed with vile plays myself a great while, hearing many; now I thought to be even with some, and they should hear mine too. Fare thee well: if thou hast anything to say to me, thou know'st where to hear of me for a year or two, and no more, I assure thee.
N. F.