PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETORS, By A. J. Valpy, Tooke's Court, Chancery Lane. PUBLISHED BY HENRY COLBURN, CONDUIT STREET, HANOVER SQUARE; 1814. Price 10s. 6d. Boards. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. A GREAT majority of the new plays are condemned in the first performance, and many of those which the public consents to tolerate are but little esteemed; it has therefore been thought, that, among the rejected pieces, some might be found not inferior in merit to those preferred by the managers; and that a selection of them would enable the lovers of the drama to appreciate the taste and judgment with which the management of the theatres is conducted, in relation to the refusal and reception of plays, and how far the assertion is correct, that the pantomimic state of the stage is owing to a decline in the dramatic genius of the nation. With a view to supply the desideratum, this work was established; but after the appearance of the first number, the proprietors found several of their friends unwilling to confess that their pieces had been refused: others, who regarded the publication as a convenient vehicle for venting their spleen against the managers, and a still greater number of authors who, never having offered any of their productions to the theatres, would not submit to publish them as rejected. To meet, therefore, the wishes of all parties, the title was altered; and the principle extended to comprehend every description of manuscript plays. Indeed, the original idea of the projector was, to make a publication subservient to the vindication of the modern N. Br. Th. No. I. VOL. I. a 373903 (dramatic literature of England, from a charge of inferiority compared with that of France and Germany :-a charge which is almost universally made on the continent, and which some persons even among ourselves have admitted, without considering the circumstances which gave rise to it. He expected, in the prosecution of the design, that the public would be so convinced of the bad effects of the theatrical monopoly, as to think, at last, of interfering to procure some diminution of a grievance which tended at once to debase their own pleasures, and affect the charac ter of the country, And the work was undertaken in the hope of introducing some degree of reformation into a great department of the national means of instruction. Good taste is so nearly allied to good sense, that it is impossible to corrupt the one without having previously impaired the other. If the public taste be so corrupted, as the apologists for the present state of the English drama assert, it is a painful, an alarming consideration, and more dangerous to the future welfare of the country than all those excrescences in the government, to which theoretical quacks so loudly call attention, and endeavour to exalt themselves by offering to cure. But, as in all other matters the nation never thought more judiciously than it does at present, and as through a long course of political events of the most extraordinary nature, it has acted with an admirable constancy of affection for those institutions and principles which the experience of all ages had demonstrated to be the best, we will not believe that the good sense of England is so far impaired, as the public taste appears to be corrupted, judging from the exhibitions of the stage. For we know that the public has no choice in the exhibitions, that it is not allowed to prefer, but only to condemn ; and |