However, a judicious reader will find in his original papers, that the characters are strongly drawn, new, spirited, and natural, taken from sensible observations on high and lower life, and from a just indignation at the follies in fashion. All I could gather from him of what he intended in the _catastrophe_, was, that the conduct of his imaginary fine lady had so provoked him, that he designed actually to have made her husband turn her out of his doors. But when his performance came, after his decease, to my hands, I thought such violent measures, however just they might be in real life, were too severe for comedy, and would want the proper surprise, which is due to the end of a play. Therefore with much ado (and 'twas as much as I could do with probability) I preserved the lady's chastity, that the sense of her errors might make a reconciliation not impracticable; and I hope the mitigation of her sentence has been since justified by its success. My inclination to preserve as much as possible of Sir _John_, I soon saw had drawn the whole into an unusual length; the reader will therefore find here a scene or two of the lower humour that were left out, after the first day's presentation. The favour the town has shewn to the higher characters in this play, is a proof, that their taste is not wholly vitiated, by the barbarous entertainments that have been so expensively set off to corrupt it: but, while the repetition of the best old plays is apt to give satiety, and good new ones are so scarce a commodity, we must not wonder, that the poor actors are sometimes forced to trade in trash for a livelihood.