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PREFACE Like many other works of mine, this playlet is a piece d'occasion. In 1905 it happened that Mr Arnold Daly, who was then playing the part of Napoleon in The Man of Destiny in New York, found that whilst the play was too long to take a secondary place in the evening's performance, it was too short to suffice by itself. I therefore took advantage of four days continuous rain during a... more...

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE The first great English poet was the father of English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse. Chaucer and Spenser were great writers and great men: they shared between them every gift which goes to the making of a poet except the one which alone can make a poet, in the proper sense of the word, great. Neither pathos nor humor nor fancy nor invention will suffice for that:... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ROBERT BROWNING stands, in respect to his origin and his career, in marked contrast to the two aristocratic poets beside whose dramas his "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is here printed. His father was a bank clerk and a dissenter at a time when dissent meant exclusion from Society; the poet went neither to one of the great public schools nor to Oxford or Cambridge; and no... more...

ACT  IV SCENE  I.  London.  Before the Tower [Enter, on one side, QUEEN ELIZABETH, DUCHESS of YORK, and MARQUIS of DORSET; on the other, ANNE DUCHESS of GLOSTER, leading LADY MARGARET PLANTAGENET, CLARENCE's young daughter.]DUCHESSWho meets us here?—my niece Plantagenet,Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloster?Now, for my life, she's wandering to the Tower,On pure heart's love,... more...

ACT I. SCENE I. Mr. ANDREWS's house. Enter MARIA and THOMAS. MARIA. But why these moping, melancholy looks?Each eye observes and marks them now unseemly,Whilst every countenance but your's speaks joy,At the near wedding of our master's daughter.Sure none so well deserv'd this noble prize:And young lord Weston will be bless'd indeed. THOMAS. It has been countermanded. MARIA.... more...

HALL-MARKED The scene is the sitting-room and verandah of HER bungalow. The room is pleasant, and along the back, where the verandahruns, it seems all window, both French and casement. There is adoor right and a door left. The day is bright; the timemorning. [HERSELF, dripping wet, comes running along the verandah,through the French window, with a wet Scotch terrier in herarms. She vanishes through the... more...

THE BIG DRUM   THE FIRST ACT The scene is a room, elegantly decorated, in a flat in South Audley Street. On the right, two windows give a view, through muslin curtains, of the opposite houses. In the wall facing the spectator are two doors, one on the right, the other on the left. The left-hand door opens into the room from a dimly-lighted corridor, the door on the right from the dining-room. Between... more...

ACT I HILLCRIST'S study. A pleasant room, with books in calfbindings, and signs that the HILLCRIST'S have travelled, suchas a large photograph of the Taj Mahal, of Table Mountain, andthe Pyramids of Egypt. A large bureau [stage Right], devotedto the business of a country estate. Two foxes' masks.Flowers in bowls. Deep armchairs. A large French window open[at Back], with a lovely view of... more...

INTRODUCTION. HE author and early date of the present Comedy are ascertained by a quotation in Sir Thomas Wilson’s Rule of Reason of Roister Doister’s letter to Dame Custance. The first edition of the Rule of Reason, 1550-1, is a very scarce work; of which I have been unable to see a copy. The second edition, 1552, 8vo, ‘newely corrected by Thomas Wilson,’ has not the quotation: which... more...

INTRODUCTION THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the... more...