Book Description

Excerpt from Tragedies to Which Are Added a Few Sonnets and Verses In publishing the following Dramas in a cheap and compact form, I have little to express except my thanks for the indulgence which has been extended towards them. If I had felt at liberty to alter them, I should have been tempted to do more than correct some verbal errors, and curtail a few palpable redundancies of language; but I feel that when a work has been once fairly presented to the public, and, to the full extent of the author's hopes, accepted, he is no longer at liberty to treat it as exclusively his own; and, therefore, I have confined my own corrections within the narrow limit I have suggested. In addition to the few sonnets which accompanied the former editions, I have collected a few more which have appeared in periodical works, and added some verses which have not been before printed. Here I might close this preface - as the slender matters which have reference to each Drama have been noticed in the Advertisement prefixed to each - if I did not think that I ought not to allow the present occasion to pass without noticing a misconception of the author of "The Hungarian Daughter," which, although not perhaps calling for a separate protest, and certainly not justifying any hostile remark, should not pass unnoticed in a collected edition which includes the passage on which it is founded. Mr. Stephens - an author endowed with real tragic power, though not perhaps always adapting it to the purposes of theatrical representation - sharing with other Dramatic Poets the strong and natural desire of seeing works designed for the stage presented upon it - seems to have divided the plays of the present day into two classes, "the acted" and the "unacted," as if the distinction implied some essential difference in merit or kind, and not a mere difference of fortune; and to have sought for the latter a great pre-eminence in critical opinion over the former. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.