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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...

ACT I The scene is the managing clerk's room, at the offices of Jamesand Walter How, on a July morning. The room is old fashioned,furnished with well-worn mahogany and leather, and lined withtin boxes and estate plans. It has three doors. Two of themare close together in the centre of a wall. One of these twodoors leads to the outer office, which is only divided from themanaging clerk's room... more...

ACT I SCENE I The curtain rises on the BARTHWICK'S dining-room, large,modern, and well furnished; the window curtains drawn.Electric light is burning. On the large round dining-table isset out a tray with whisky, a syphon, and a silvercigarette-box. It is past midnight. A fumbling is heard outside the door. It is opened suddenly;JACK BARTHWICK seems to fall into the room. He stands holdingby the... more...

Scene: A plantation of thin young trees, in a misty and rainy twilight; some woodland blossom showing the patches on the earth between the stems. The Stranger is discovered, a cloaked figure with a pointed hood. His costume might belong to modern or any other time, and the conical hood is so drawn over the head that little can be seen of the face. A distant voice, a woman's, is heard,... more...

INTRODUCTION The City Bride, by Joseph Harris, is of special interest as the only adaptation from the canon of John Webster to have come upon the stage in the Restoration. Nahum Tate’s Injur’d Love: or, The Cruel Husband is an adaptation of The White Devil, but it was never acted and was not printed until 1707. The City Bride is taken from A Cure for a Cuckold, in which William Rowley and perhaps... more...

INTRODUCTION By craftsmen and mean men, these pageants are played,And to commons and countrymen accustomably before:If better men and finer heads now come, what can be said? The pageants of the old English town-guilds, and the other mysteries and interludes that follow, have still an uncommon reality about them if we take them in the spirit in which they were originally acted. Their office as the... more...

ACT I Great George Street, Westminster, is the address of Doyle and Broadbent, civil engineers. On the threshold one reads that the firm consists of Mr Lawrence Doyle and Mr Thomas Broadbent, and that their rooms are on the first floor. Most of their rooms are private; for the partners, being bachelors and bosom friends, live there; and the door marked Private, next the clerks' office, is their... more...

ACT I [Roadside with big stones, etc., on the right; low loose wall at back with gap near centre; at left, ruined doorway of church with bushes beside it. Martin Doul and Mary Doul grope in on left and pass over to stones on right, where they sit.] MARY DOUL. What place are we now, Martin Doul? MARTIN DOUL. Passing the gap. MARY DOUL — [raising her head.] — The length of that! Well, the sun's... 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...

INTRODUCTION During his extraordinarily long career as an actor, Charles Macklin wrote several plays. The earliest is King Henry VII; or, The Popish Imposter, a tragedy based on the Perkin Warbeck story, performed at Drury Lane 18 January 1745/6 and published the same year. As the Preface states, it "was design'd as a Kind of Mirror to the present Rebellion"; and it provided the author... more...