“The works of our elder dramatists, _as hitherto edited_, are wholly unfit to be placed in the hands of young persons, or of females of any age, or even to be thought of for a moment as furniture for the drawing-room table, and the parlour-window, or to form the solace of a family circle at the fireside. What lady will ever confess that she has read and understood Massinger, or Ford, or even Beaumont and Fletcher? There is hardly a single piece in any of those authors which does not contain more abominable passages than the very worst of modern panders would ever dream of hazarding in print—and there are whole plays in Ford, and in Beaumont and Fletcher, the very essence and substance of which is, from beginning to end, one mass of pollution. The works, therefore, of these immortal men have hitherto been library, not drawing-room books;—and we have not a doubt, that, down to this moment, they have been carefully excluded, _in toto_, from the vast majority of those English houses in which their divine poetry, if stripped of its deforming accompaniments, would have been ministering the most effectually to the instruction and delight of our countrymen, and, above all, of our fair countrywomen. “We welcome, therefore, the appearance of the _Dramatic Series_ of the _Family Library_ with no ordinary feelings of satisfaction. We are now sure that, ere many months elapse, the productions of those distinguished bards—all of them that is worthy of their genius, their taste, and the acceptation of a moral and refined people—will be placed within reach of every circle from which their very names have hitherto been sufficient to exclude them, in a shape such as must command confidence, and richly reward it. The text will be presented pure and correct, wherever it is fit to be presented at all—every word and passage offensive to the modest ear will be omitted; and means adopted, through the notes, of preserving the sense and story entire, in spite of these necessary erasures. If this were all, it would be a great deal—but the editors undertake much more. They will furnish, in their preliminary notices, and in their notes, clear accounts of the origin, structure, and object of every piece, and the substance of all that sound criticism has brought to their illustration, divested, however, of the personal squabbles and controversies which so heavily and offensively load the bottoms of the pages in the best existing editions of our dramatic worthies. Lives of the authors will be given; and if they be all drawn up with the skill and elegance which mark the Life of Massinger, in the first volume, these alone will form a standard addition to our biographical literature.”—_Literary Gazette._