rule of Playes besides the making them pleasant, and avoiding of scurrility, might much better be employed in studying how to improve men’s too imperfect knowledge of that ancient English Game which hight long Laurence: And if Comedy should be the picture of ridiculous mankind I wonder anyone should think it such a sturdy task, whilst we are furnish’d with such precious Originals as him I lately told you of; if at least that Character do not dwindle into Farce, and so become too mean an entertainment for those persons who are us’d to think. Reader, I have a complaint or two to make to you and I have done; Know then that this Play was hugely injur’d in the Acting, for ’twas done so imperfectly as never any was 225 before, which did more harm to this than it could have done to any of another sort; the Plot being busie (though I think not intricate) and so requiring a continual attention, which being interrupted by the intolerable negligence of some that acted in it, must needs much spoil the beauty on’t. My Dutch Lover spoke but little of what I intended for him, but supplied it with a great deal of idle stuff, which I was wholly unacquainted with until I had heard it first from him; so that Jack-pudding ever us’d to do: which though I knew before, I gave him yet the Part, because I knew him so acceptable to most o’th’ lighter Periwigs about the Town, and he indeed did vex me so, I could almost be angry: Yet, but Reader, you remember, I suppose, a fusty piece of Latine that has past from hand to hand this thousand years they say (and how much longer I can’t tell) in favour of the dead. I intended him a habit much more notably ridiculous, which if ever it be important was so here, for many of the Scenes in the three last Acts depended upon the mistakes of the Colonel for Haunce, which the ill-favour’d likeness of their Habits is suppos’d to cause. Lastly my Epilogue was promis’d me by a Person who had surely made it good, if any, but he failing of his word, deput’d one, who has made it as you see, and to make out your penyworth you have it here. The Prologue is by misfortune lost. Now, Reader, I have eas’d my mind of all I had to say, and so sans farther complyment, Adieu. 226 DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.