Produced by David Starner, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net The Augustan Reprint Society JOSEPH HARRIS _The City Bride_ (1696) With an Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing Publication Number 36 Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1952 GENERAL EDITORS H. RICHARD ARCHER, _Clark Memorial Library_ RICHARD C. BOYS, _University of Michigan_ ROBERT S. KINSMAN, _University of California, Los Angeles_ JOHN LOFTIS, _University of California, Los Angeles_ ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_ ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_ BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_ LOUIS BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_ JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_ ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_ EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_ LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_ SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_ ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_ JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_ H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_ CORRESPONDING SECRETARY EDNA C. DAVIS, _Clark Memorial Library_ INTRODUCTION _The City Bride_, by Joseph Harris, is of special interest as the only adaptation from the canon of John Webster to have come upon the stage in the Restoration. Nahum Tate's _Injur'd Love: or, The Cruel Husband_ is an adaptation of _The White Devil_, but it was never acted and was not printed until 1707. _The City Bride_ is taken from _A Cure for a Cuckold_, in which William Rowley and perhaps Thomas Heywood collaborated with Webster. F. L. Lucas, Webster's most recent and most scholarly editor, remarks that _A Cure for a Cuckold_ is one of the better specimens of Post-Elizabethan romantic comedy. In particular, the character of the bride, Annabel (Arabella in Harris's adaptation), has a universal appeal. _The City Bride_, a very close copy of its original, retains its virtues, and has some additional virtues of its own. Not much is known of its author, Joseph Harris. Genest first notices him as playing Bourcher, the companion of a French pirate, in _A Common-Wealth of Women_. Thomas Durfey's alteration of _The Sea Voyage_ from the Beaumont and Fletcher folio, which was produced about September 1685. His subsequent roles were of a similar calibre, but if he never rose to be a star he seems to have become a valued supporting player, for in 1692 he was chosen to join the royal "comedians in ordinary." He did not at first side with Thomas Betterton in his quarrel with the patentees of the theatre in 1694-5, but he withdrew with him to Lincoln's Inn Fields. Genest notices him for the last time as playing Sir Richard Vernon in Betterton's adaptation of _1 Henry IV_, which was produced about April 1700.