TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have beencorrected after careful comparison with other occurrences withinthe text and consultation of external sources.
More detail can be found at the end of the book.
Note.—Three Hundred copies of this Edition printed on fine deckle-edgeRoyal 8vo paper. The fifty Portraits are given in duplicate, oneon Japanese and the other on plate paper, as India proofs.
Each of these copies is numbered.
No. ........
"Their Majesties' Servants"
Dr. DORAN, F.S.A.
VOLUME THE FIRST
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
"THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS"
ANNALS
OF
THE ENGLISH STAGE
FROM
THOMAS BETTERTON TO EDMUND KEAN
BY
Dr. DORAN, F.S.A.
EDITED AND REVISED BY ROBERT W. LOWE
With Fifty Copperplate Portraits and Eighty Wood Engravings
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOLUME THE FIRST
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
MDCCCLXXXVIII
PREFACE.
It is unnecessary to apologise for a new edition ofDr. Doran's Annals of the Stage. The two editionsalready published have been for many years out ofprint, and the first is so rare that copies of it bring ahigh price whenever they occur for sale. And thisdemand is not a mere bibliographical accident, forthe book has held for many years a recognised positionas the standard popular history of the Englishstage. The admirable work of Genest, indispensableas it is to every writer on theatrical history, and toevery serious student of the stage, is in no sense apopular work, and is, indeed, rather a collection offacts towards a history than a history itself.
In preparing this new edition every effort hasbeen made to add to its interest by the introductionof portraits and other illustrations, and to itsauthority as a book of reference, by correctingthose errors which are scarcely to be avoided by[vi]a writer working among the confused, inaccurate,and contradictory documents of theatrical history.No one who has not ventured into this maze canconceive the difficulty of keeping the true path, andI can imagine nothing better calculated to sap one'sself-confidence than the task of noting the falseturnings made by such a writer as Dr. Doran. Ican hardly hope that my own work, light as it isin comparison with his, will be found free fromsins of omission, and