It is now near three years since the Play, which the following sheets present to the public, was represented at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The fate which it underwent, and the decision of the audience, are well known. Notwithstanding that decision, the Editor has, at length, agreeably to his promise made at the time of that representation, again laid it before the public; which, if it exposes it to the test of a more accurate criticism, will give it the opportunity of a more unbiassed and temperate examination.
They who are at all conversant with dramatic concerns, must know that the opinion of large assemblies, promiscuously composed of all orders and classes, must depend on a variety of circumstances, local, temporary, and accidental.
Where no stronger or worse motives interfere, fashion and caprice too often give the direction; but spleen and interest are made more powerful agents; and by their industry and activity, even the master-puppet, be he in sock or buskin, may be gained, and the public may be too easily and unwarily led by premature and precipitate conclusions.
No man who recollects what was said and written in the public prints concerning this piece, on the eve of its representation, and the ludicrous manner in which the principal character was sustained, can deny, that the Editor has a right to complain of the most illiberal and injurious treatment.
Every undue stratagem, and every mean and petty artifice, was resorted to within doors and without, to prejudice the public mind; and one more deeply interested than had then, or has yet appeared, though a professed trader on the subject of Shakspeare, on the day before the representation, under the title of “An Enquiry into the Authenticity of certain miscellaneous Papers, &c. &c.” with this view, and the further expectation of helping off a few copies, sent into the world a volume long before promised, and long since forgotten.
This mass of dulness and self-conceit, consisting of about 430 pages, established nothing; and was built on principles (if it is not an abuse to apply to such trash, a term so respectable) that could not possibly establish any thing. In every one of the instances which, with such a weak and overweening confidence, he so very idly brought forward, he has been exposed; and in some of them has been himself the author and detector of his own childishness, incapacity and ignorance.
Neither the index-lore, or the alphabetical, lexicographical labours of this sagacious discoverer, or his congenial followers or associates, nor any declaration since made from a quarter once domestic to the Editor, through which something like genuine information might naturally have been expected, can induce him to believe that great part of the mass of papers in his possession are the fabrication of any individual, or set of men of the present day.
A fruitless expectation, that time, the discoverer of truth, might ere this have withdrawn that veil of mystery which yet involves this transaction, has alone given occasion to delay this publication. The Editor had been happy to have been able to have penetrated it; and to have assigned to its proper owner each fragment and each whole.
As to the merits or demerits of the Play now before the public, the Editor does not in the smallest degree consider himself responsible any where, or in any way. He sold the piece with “all its imperfections on its head,” after various cool and deliberate readings, and stated candidly all he had been told relative to it; all that, which, from various circumstances, he had at that time no reason to doubt or discredit.
After the Play was contracted for, some alterations were deemed necessary to fit it for representation. It was much too long, and consequently many passages were expunged; and, in one historical fact, (thought too gross for the public ear, viz. the incestuous passion of the king towards his daughter,) it underwent some further alterations; but, excepting these particulars, it stands nearly as in the original.