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

[Editor's Introduction]
[D'Urfey, Preface to The Campaigners]
[Transcriber's Footnote: "Chaucer"]
[Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's Maxims...]
[ARS Publications]

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

[Introduction]

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.