THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF RICHARD STEELE.
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES,
By G. A. Aitken.
THE MERMAID SERIES.
THE BEST PLAYS OF THE OLD DRAMATISTS.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1894.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| Richard Steele. | vii |
| The Funeral. | 1 |
| The Lying Lover. | 97 |
| The Tender Husband. | 189 |
| The Conscious Lovers. | 265 |
| The School of Action (A Fragment). | 361 |
| The Gentleman (A Fragment). | 399 |
| Appendix. | 407 |
| Notes. | 453 |
RICHARD STEELE.
I.
It is as an essayist rather than adramatist that men now think ofSteele; and this is rightly so, forhis best work is to be found inthe periodical papers which heedited. There is, however, inhis plays the same wit and humour that is to befound in the Tatler and Spectator, and his fourcomedies occupy an important position in thehistory of the English drama.
In this Introduction it will be sufficient to givea brief sketch of Steele's life, with especialreference to his relations with the theatre, whichwere intimate and varied.[1]
Richard Steele was born in Dublin in 1672;his father was an attorney who married a widownamed Elinor Symes, but both his parents diedwhile he was a child, and Steele passed into thecare of a kind uncle, Henry Gascoigne, privatesecretary to the Duke of Ormond, and by hisinfluence was placed upon the foundation of theCharterhouse in 1684. Two years later JosephAddison, who was only