PREFACE.
It will be obvious to most readers, that although
the scene be laid in Italy, the hint of the plot of
this Play has been taken from the romantic old
English Tale of Rosamund of Woodstock. The
other incidents are purely imaginary, although
many stories, of a description not very dissimilar,
are to be found scattered through the obscure annals
of the petty Italian principalities.
It was not without some hesitation that the author
ventured to call his performance a Tragedy.
If the rigid modern definition of the term be adopted,
it has little right to the title. “Tragic Play”
would have been less liable to cavil. From modern
canons, however, he would appeal to the practice
of the English dramatists who preceded the period
of the invasion of French criticism, under Charles
the Second. Aware that there never was an actual
course of events, and scarcely ever an instance of
human character of an unmixed description, they
took their cue from nature and experience; and
boldly joining scenes of levity with those of seriousness,
exhibited the “thread of life” of that
“mingled yarn,” of which philosophy has never denied
it to be composed. They did not deal in characters
which are merely personifications of some
single passion; nor deem the excellence of a play
consisted in its being a sort of cabinet of perfect
crystallizations of the hero, the villain, or the
saint. If the merit of their method is to be deduced
from the effects it produced, there can be little
doubt of the result. At all events, it surely must
be conceded, that the system of dramatic writing,
which, pretending to exhibit nature, sets aside her
most pervading law, ought to be supported by logic
of no trifling force. Neither should a deviation from
such a system be stigmatized as a perverse opposition
to some self-evident maxim of universal application.
It has been fashionable of late for writers of tragedies
to deprecate all idea of their being acted. In
the present instance, however, the author may save
himself that trouble. Were his scenes, separately,
as good as even the vanity of authorship could
imagine, its general want of
action would inevitably
condemn the piece. This is perhaps the only
very intelligible disqualification of a dramatic piece
for actual performance, provided it be worth publication
at all. It is, certainly, difficult to conceive
how any thing which can reasonably be styled
“dramatic,” should be written without reference to
the tones, looks, and action of the persons by whom
it is supposed to be spoken, be they mimes or real
personages.
With respect to the unities of time and of place,
the author has been as careless as he could. If, in
the former, he has approached in some degree towards
that improbable probability in which modern
criticism delights, it was by chance rather than by
design that he did so. These liberties, together
with some others, both of language and versification,
he trusts may be forgiven, as they were taken
—freely.
