After all, it is to be acknowledged, that most of those comedies, which have been lately written, have been allied too much to farce: And this must of necessity fall out, till we forbear the translation of French plays: For their poets, wanting judgment to make or to maintain true characters, strive to cover their defects with ridiculous figures and grimaces. While I say this, I accuse myself as well as others: And this very play would rise up in judgment against me, if I would defend all things I have written to be natural: But I confess I have given too much to the people in it, and am ashamed for them as well as for myself, that I have pleased them at so cheap a rate. Not that there is any thing here which I would not defend to an ill-natured judge; (for I despise their censures, who I am sure would write worse on the same subject:) but, because I love to deal clearly and plainly, and to speak of my own faults with more criticism, than I would of another poet's. Yet I think it no vanity to say, that this comedy has as much of entertainment in it, as many others which have been lately written: And, if I find my own errors in it, I am able, at the same time, to arraign all my contemporaries for greater. As I pretend not that I can write humour, so none of them can reasonably pretend to have written it as they ought. Jonson was the only man, of all ages and nations, who has performed it well; and that but in three or four of his comedies: The rest are but a _crambe bis cocta_; the same humours a little varied and written worse. Neither was it more allowable in him, than it is in our present poets, to represent the follies of particular persons; of which many have accused him. _Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis_, is the rule of plays. And Horace tells you, that the old comedy amongst the Grecians was silenced for the too great liberties of the poets: ----_In vitium libertas excidit et vim Dignam lege regi: Lex est accepta, chorusque Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi._ Of which he gives you the reason in another place: where, having given the precept, _Neve immunda crepent, ignominiosaque dicta,_ He immediately subjoins, _Offenduntur enim quibus est equus, et pater, et res._