University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

The contest between Pizarro and Almagro, for the possession of Cuzco, forms the historical basis, on which the fictitious events of the following Tragedy are grounded.

Sir Paul Rycaut's version of the Commentaries of Peru, by Garcilasso de la Vega, has supplied my drama with several Spanish chiefs, either slightly noticed, or wholly omitted, in Robertson's History of America. From the same version, also, some remarkable incidents have been inserted, from the conviction, that the intermixture of recorded facts tends to augment the interest of works of imagination. The Peruvian personages are fictitious: but in that of their chief,

Zamorin, I have endeavoured to exemplify my conception of the peculiar character of their Incas.

In some of the unimpassioned parts of the Tragedy, the style of our early dramatists has been slightly imitated.