_This popular estimate of the drama as literature accounts for the manner in which an English translator of “Mary of Nimmegen” felt free to handle the original. “Here begynneth a lyttell story that was of a trwethe done in the lande of Gelders of a mayde that was named Mary of Nemmegen that was the dyuels paramoure by the space of vij yere longe”, runs the title of this rendering, and its “Amen” is followed by the statement, “Thus endeth this lyttell treatyse Imprynted at Anwarpe by me John Duisbrowghe dwellynge besyde the camer porte.” The story in dialogue as printed by Vorsterman became a “treatyse” in the English version as printed, in probably the same year, by his fellow citizen Jan van Doesborch. Vorsterman left the dialogue of the playwright intact from no scrupulous respect for an author’s work of art. It suited his convenience to print it as it was written, his own prose, or that of the scribbler he employed, being sufficient to justify his labeling the book a “story”. But the translator, who had to re-word the entire dialogue in any case, had no reasons of convenience to make him spare the poet’s creation. He made a fairly literal rendering of the interpolated prose and turned the dramatic dialogue into a clumsily phrased narrative, of which the following extract may serve as a sample_: “_When they were come to Nemmegyn it fortuned on the same that it was the dilycacyon of a chyrche, and when they were within the Towne than sayde Emmekyn to Satan let us goo see howe my aunte dothe, than sayde Satan ye nede nat go to hyr for she is dead more than a yere a goo, than sayd Emmekyn is it trewth, than sayd Satan ye, than sayd Emmekyn to the dyuell what do all yender folks that be yender gathered than sayde the dyuell the play a play that is wont every yere to be played, than sayde Emmekyn good love let us goo here it for I have harde my vnckyll say often tymes that a play were better than a sermant to some folke._” _The Englishman who perpetrated this murder of a good book was not more guilty in intention than Willem Vorsterman, only the result of his labor, due to the different task he undertook, makes him seem the greater sinner of the two._