PLAYS.

AGLAURA.

THE GOBLINS.

BRENNORALT.

THE SAD ONE.

AGLAURA.

Aglaura. Presented at the Private House in Black Fryers by Ilis Majestie's servants. Written by Sir John Suckling.

This and the other dramas are printed in all the old copies with an utter disregard to punctuation, arrangement of lines, and other such details. The edition of 1658 corrects occasionally those of 1646-48, and vice versa.

The neglect of metrical rules is so complete throughout, that a good deal of the dialogue in these productions is incapable of arrangement as verse.

Probably few books of the seventeenth century were more carelessly printed than Suckling's works. English typography was then in its lowest state of degradation.

I'

'VE thought upon 't; and cannot tell which way Ought I can say now should advance the play;

For plays are either good or bad: the good,

If they do beg, beg to be understood;

And, in good faith, that has as bold a sound,
As if a beggar should ask twenty pound.
Men have it not about them:

Then, gentlemen, if rightly understood,

The bad do need less prologue than the good;
For, if it chance the plot be lame or blind,
Ill-clothed, deformed throughout, it needs must find
Compassion. It is a beggar without art,
But it falls out in pennyworths of wit,
As in all bargains else-men ever get
All they can in; will have London measure,
A handful over in their very pleasure.

And now ye have 't, he could not well deny 'e,
And I dare swear he's scarce a saver by ye.

VOL. I.

H