FRANCIS BEAUMONT

Born 1584
Died 1616

JOHN FLETCHER

Born 1579
Died 1625

THE ELDER BROTHER

THE SPANISH CURATE

WIT WITHOUT MONEY

BEGGARS BUSH

THE HUMOUROUS LIEUTENANT

THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS

THE TEXT EDITED BY

ARNOLD GLOVER, M.A.

OF TRINITY COLLEGE AND THE INNER TEMPLE

AND

A.R. WALLER, M.A.

OF PETERHOUSE

CAMBRIDGE: at the University Press 1906

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
C.F. CLAY, MANAGER.
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
Glasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET.
Leipzig: F.A. BROCKHAUS.
New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

NOTE:

The text of the present volume was passed for press by Arnold Glover andsome progress had been made in his lifetime in the collection of thematerial given in the Appendix. Mrs. Glover's help has again been mostvaluable in the completion of the work.

The Elder Brother is printed entirely in prose in the Second Folio, andI have therefore printed in the Appendix the play in verse, as it appearedin the First Quarto. The case is an interesting one, and readers will beglad, I think, to have both forms in the same volume.

I have not concerned myself with passages in the Second Folio in prosewhich have since been printed as verse. On the whole I agree with a recentcritic who characterises as 'vexatious' the 'later practice of printingmuch manifest prose as verse, each post-seventeenth century editorapparently making it a point of honour to discover metre where no one hadfound it before, and where no one with an ear can find it now.'

I am glad to have had the opportunity of seeing the 1625 manuscript ofDemetrius and Enanthe, the play first printed in a somewhat mutilatedform in the First Folio of 1647, where it is called The HumorousLieutenant. It is stated in the Dictionary of National Biography (Vol.XIX, p. 306) that this MS. is preserved in the Dyce Library but thestatement is incorrect. The MS. has never been a part of the Dycecollection. It was printed by Dyce in 1830 and after that date it restedfor many years in obscurity. To Mrs. Glover is due the credit for havingtraced it to its present home. For help in this search our thanks are dueto Lord Stanley of Alderley, to W.R.M. Wynne, Esq., of Peniarth, Towyn,Merioneth (whose father owned the MS. and left a note in his copy ofDyce's reprint that he had given the MS. to his "old friend the late W.Ormsby Gore, Esq., M.P. for North Shropshire") and to Lord Harlech, thegrandson of Mr. Ormsby Gore. Lord Harlech re-discovered the MS. in hislibrary at Brogyntyn, Oswestry, and he has very kindly permitted athorough examination of it. Dyce's 1830 publication is described as areprint "verbatim et literatim," but it has little claim to be so called.The punctuation is altered throughout, the spelling is altered in scoresof words and though the actual verbal differences between the original MS.and Dyce's reprint of it are not very many, yet t

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