Produced by Louise Hope, David Starner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Series Three: _Essays on the Stage_ No. 4 Thomas D'Urfey, Preface to _The Campaigners_ (1698) and Anonymous, Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's _Maxims and Reflections upon Plays_ (1699) With an Introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch The Augustan Reprint Society March, 1948 Price: $1.00 * * * * * GENERAL EDITORS RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington BENJAMIN BOYCE, University of Nebraska LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, University of Michigan CLEANTH BROOKS, Yale University JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota ERNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES SUTHERLAND, Queen Mary College, London Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author by Edwards Brothers, Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. 1948 * * * * * Introduction The three parts of D'Urfey's "The Comical History of Don Quixote" were performed between 1694 and (probably) the end of 1696. Some of the songs included were conspicuously "smutty"--to use a word which D'Urfey ridiculed--but the fact that the plays were fresh in the public mind was probably the most effective reason for Jeremy Collier's decision to include the not very highly respected author among the still living playwrights to be singled out for attack in "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage", which appeared at Easter time 1698. In July of the same year D'Urfey replied with the preface to his "smutty" play "The Campaigners". It is this preface which is given as the first item of the present reprint.