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Originally published by Robert Dodsley in the Year 1744.
1874-1876
The Conflict of Conscience
The rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune
The three Ladies of London
The three Ladies and three Lords of London
A Knack to know a Knave
[These five dramas were originally edited for the Roxburghe Club in 1851by Mr J. Payne Collier, and are now incorporated with the presentCollection precisely as they stand in the Roxburghe Club volume, with MrCollier's kind permission, his general introduction included. The onlydifference is that the notes, instead of occurring at the end of eachPlay, are placed at the foot of the page.]
Four of the five ensuing Plays belong to a peculiar class of our earlydramatic performances never yet especially noticed, nor sufficientlyillustrated.
Many specimens have of late years been printed, and reprinted, ofMiracle-plays, of Moral-plays, and of productions written in the mostmatured period of our dramatic literature; but little or nothing hasbeen done to afford information respecting a species ofstage-representation which constitutes a link between Moral-plays on theone hand, and Tragedy and Comedy on the other, as Tragedy and Comedyexisted at the period when Shakespeare and his contemporaries werewriters for various theatres in the metropolis. This deficiency it hasbeen our main object to supply.
The four pieces to which we refer are neither plays which enforce amoral lesson by means of abstract impersonations only, nor are theydramas which profess to consist merely of scenes drawn from life,represented by real characters: they may be said to form a class bythemselves, where characters both abstract and individual are employedin the same performance. The most remarkable drama of this intermediatekind, and the only one to which particular attention has been directedin modern times, is called "The Tragical Comedy of Appius and Virginia,"which originally came out in 1575, and is reprinted in the [former andpresent] edition of "Dodsley's Old Plays" from the sole existingcopy.[1] In it an important historical event is commemorated, and thehero, heroine, and some other principal agents are known characters; butthey are mixed up with allegorical abstractions, and the representativesof moral qualities, while the Vice of the older stage is introduced, forthe sake of diversifying the representation, and amusing popularaudiences. The plot of this production has no religious application, andit was not written with any avowed moral purpose. In this respect, aswell as in some other peculiarities, it is unlike the drama which standsfirst in the following sheets. Still, the general character is the samein both: in both we have a mixture of fact and fable, of reality andallegory, of individuality and abstraction, with the addition, in thelatter case, of the enforcement of a lesson, for the instruction ofthose to whom it was addressed.
"The Conflict of Conscience," by Nathaniel Woodes, "Minister inNorwich," was originally pri