temporary evidence. The aim, here, has been to assemble from all available sources whatever criticisms and suggestions are pertinent to the subject. Even in this field, where ground has been broken more effectually than in most fields of Sheridan investigation, it has been possible to add a considerable amount of new material. In The Critic, for example, the elements of Personal Caricature and of Burlesque and Parody of Contemporary Drama have hitherto received infrequent and, at best, casual treatment, while to the study of The Element of Actual History it has been readily possible to contribute original matter from the files of contemporary newspapers. Since the death of Mr. Rae, the scope of this work has been extended to include a considerable part of that collation of manuscripts and printed editions of Sheridan's plays which he had hoped to undertake. Detailed explanation of this textual work is given in the pages immediately preceding the text of each play. For the sake of convenience the references to standard works have been taken from readily accessible editions. Thus the Temple edition of Shakespeare, the Mermaid edition of Restoration dramatists, the two-volume edition of Moore's Life of Sheridan, and the recent editions of Walpole, Byron, and Madame d'Arblay, have been adopted. Except, however, in such obvious cases, original documents. and editions have been the usual, and often the sole possible, standard of reference. There remains the pleasant privilege of acknowledging some of the personal debts incurred in the preparation of this volume to Professor G. L. Kittredge, of Harvard, and to Professor C. T. Winchester, of Wesleyan, the general editors of the Athenæum Series, for the helpful suggestions and annotations which accompanied their acceptance of my manuscript and their inspection of the proofs; to Professors Thomas R. Lounsbury and Wilbur L. Cross, of Yale, for frequent and valuable criticism of my work in its earlier stages; to Professor Franklin B. Dexter and to Mr. Andrew Keogh, of the Yale Library, for courteous and unfailing help in many times of trouble during the past few years; and to Professor Henry A. Beers, of Yale, to whom, though he has read no part of my present work, I owe my first thorough introduction to the appreciative and critical study of Sheridan and the eighteenth-century drama. YALE UNIVERSITY, June 20, 1906. |