=Previous Editions and the Present Text.=--An edition of "A Mery Play between Johan Johan, the Husbande, Tyb, his Wyfe and Syr Jhan, the Preest, attributed to John Heywood 1533,"[227] was printed at the Chiswick Press by C[harles] Whittingham "from an unique copy in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford," some time in the first half of the present century.[228] The anonymous editor prefaces it with the following brief "advertisement":-- "This is one of the six Plays attributed by our dramatic biographers to John Heywood, author of _The Four P's_ (contained in Dodsley's collection), of 'the Spider and Flie,' and of some other poems, an account of which may be found in the Third Volume of Warton's History of English Poetry. No copy of this Mery Play appears to exist except that in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, from which this is a faithful reprint. Exclusive of its antiquity and rarity, it is valuable as affording a specimen of the earliest and rudest form of our Comedy (for the Poem is shorter, & the number of the Dramatis Personæ yet fewer than those of the _Four P's_) & of the liberty with which even the Roman Catholic authors of that age felt themselves authorized to treat the established priesthood." The Ashmolean copy (now in the Bodleian Library) can no longer be reckoned unique, another copy having been discovered in the Pepys collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge. This copy has been used in correcting the Chiswick Press text, and it may be as well to mention that the following changes, besides a good many minor ones, have been made on its authority, and are not surreptitious emendations of the present editor. l. 4, _myche_ for _muche_; l. 27, _Whan_ for _Whyn_; l. 31, _thwak_ for _twak_; l. 89, _enrage_ for _engage_; l. 94, _But_ for _Thou_; l. 121, _thou_ for _you_; l. 129, _lyk_ for _syk_; l. 132, _to go_ for _go_; l. 137, _fare_ for _face_; l. 305, _waxe_ for _ware_; l. 335, _for I_ for _I_; l. 471, _Ye_ for _le_; l. 497, _mych_ for _much_; l. 540, _beyond_ for _beand_; l. 542, _a bevy_ for _bevy_; l. 552, _beyond_ for _beyand_; l. 581, _v_ for _ix_; l. 604, _I am_ for _am I_. In the apportionment of ll. 240-266 between the two speakers, my predecessor, like myself, though not in the same manner, has departed from Rastell's (clearly erroneous) arrangement of the speeches, but his dislike of footnotes has caused him to omit any mention of the fact. The title-page is a representation, not a _facsimile_. There is no running head-line in the original. ALFRED W. POLLARD. FOOTNOTES: [227] See Critical Essay, pp. 10, 14. [228] My own copy has beneath the initials of a former owner the date "March 22, 1833"; that in the British Museum is assigned to 1830. I have seen it stated, but I know not on what authority, that the book appeared in 1819. [Decoration] A mery play