Oliver Goldsmith a Comedy in Three Acts

rincipally authentic and associated in this case with a figure in literary history the building of a play about a man more or less well known in anecdote and biography. Except for the writer engaged in similar work, it cannot have the interest of the task imposed by the other plays. It is largely a scissors and paste-pot undertaking, and is the least difficult and least commendable of a playwrights performances, excepting, perhaps, the dratnatizing of a novel, which it strongly resembles. The finished product, dependent as it is upon research, can never have the value of a play written by equal experience and based on observation, but dramatic literature urould nevertheless be the loser if we eliminated such plays as Richelieu, David Garrick, Edmund Kean, Amy Robsart, Beau Brummell, Nathan Hale, Tom Moore, Disraeli and the like, all made after much the same fashion. It is perhaps pertinent then to repeat the implication of the other prefaces that the series is modestly addressed to workers in the same field. I had already made for Mr. Stuart Robson so 3 4 PREFACE. long and so well known as business associate and fellow artist with Mr. William H. Crane, a dramatization of Mr. Opie Reeds Jucklins and had written for him an original comedy called The Meddler . Both pieces had served their time and purpose and Mr. Robson was in need of a new vehicle. We were old friends of many years intimate acquaintance and I had for Rob a great respect and real affection. In our earlier days I had been haunted with a sense of having known him before that consciousness so common of being constantly reminded of some uncertain other... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.