NOTE.
The above scene is not to be considered as essential to the
Drama as it now stands; it was written many years before as a
first scene, when the Author intended to throw the story into the
form of a Masque; in which a part only (and that a small one)
was meant to be set to Music. It is now inserted as a previous
narrative of what is fabled concerning the cause of Phaon's
superior beauty, (see Elian. Var. Hist. B. 12. C. 18,) and therefore
in the closet may be read, by way of what our old Dramatists
called an Induction to the Drama itself, though not a necessary
part of it.
