have received them, most of these plays could not now be produced, the continual shifting of scene, alone, proving too severe a strain on both the patience of the audience and the resources of the manager. It was easy enough in the olden time to portion a play into thirty scenes, when the shifting was done by suggestion, and the scenery sketched in a glory of words by the poet. To the onlooker there was no inherent absurdity in a long rhetorical parley between a general in camp, and the enemy on the lofty walls of a besieged city, so long as no attempt was made to construct the scene pictorially. Nor, indeed, need there have been any hesitation in fighting battles before spectators whose criticism was disarmed in advance by a pleading apology for shortcomings, and upon whose imagination a burden was adroitly cast, that in our more languid age would be scornfully discarded. Shakespeare himself makes the appeal

On your imaginary forces work.

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,

And make imaginary puissance;

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.

And again—

O for pity! we shall much disgrace

With four or five most vile and ragged foils,
Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous,

The name of Agincourt.

To-day, however, realism rules in the drama. The best of plays will have no hearing unless the stage is filled with pictures closely resembling nature; while the painter shares with actor and author the plaudits of every audience. Any attempt, therefore, to restore these plays to the theatre must be attended by an effort to bring them in line with the altered conditions of the stage. The result of such an effort is now put forward, not without long and careful thought, in the hope that these superb historical plays will be at length rescued from the semi-oblivion of our libraries, to be assigned, once for all, an honoured place on our national stage. The principal changes made in adapting these plays are as follows:

(1) By a new division of acts and scenes, nearly all the battles are now fought between the Acts, and therefore out of sight.

(2) Chiefly by the elision of redundant and unimportant scenes, nearly one hundred changes of scene have been suppressed in fourteen plays.

(3) For some of the plays a more effective ending has been found, either by transposing a scene, or by omitting an anti-climax.

Many passages have also been omitted as being either gross, tedious, trivial, obscure or unintelligible, and such omissions should not be regretted by the reader, whose way is thereby rendered all the more pleasant. While the general aim has been to give to each play the form best suited for dramatic effect, and although there is not a scene in excess, it will yet be necessary, in some cases, to

further condense scenes for the stage, in order to quicken the action and to reduce the time occupied in performance. Literary beauty has in no case been sacrificed merely to shorten a scene. The following are the plays which exhibit the greatest novelty in structure.

Peele's Edward I. is put together with fragments of his long but sadly mutilated play; all previous efforts of editors having failed to make any considerable portion of the play intelligible. It is not pretended that this play has conspicuous merit; its main interest arising from its being the oldest of the series.

Marlowe's Edward II. is given almost unabridged. The author's own melodious song of the "Passionate Shepherd" has been introduced, in order to eke out a somewhat meagre scene.

Shakespeare's Henry IV. is now presented as one long play in five acts.

The three parts of Henry VI. have been re-cast, the first play now ending with Margaret's marriage, the second with the death of York, and the third with the murder of Margaret's son.

Edward IV. is condensed from two plays by Heywood. Its delightful comic scenes serve to break the monotone of death-cries heard through the reigns of Henry VI. and Richard III.

The play of Henry VIII. ends with Queen Katharine's death, its true dramatic climax.

Some verbal emendations, and a few fresh readings will be found, but there is neither wish nor occasion to defend

them here; the main object of this work being to render the plays popular. These chronicle plays are a peculiar glory of our own literature, and they may well be the envy of all others; but our appreciation of their value has greatly fallen since they have ceased to be acted. We have ample evidence that, at one time, by means of these plays, the English people learned their country's history: it can hardly be maintained that they no longer need such instruction. Heywood informs us that in his time "Plays have made the ignorant more apprehensive, taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of all our English chronicles; and what man have you now of that weak capacity that cannot discourse of any notable thing recorded even from William the Conqueror, nay, from the landing of Brute until this day?" Again, in more recent times such famous men as the first Marlborough, Chatham, and Southey are said to have acknowledged their debt to Shakespeare for the foundations of their knowledge of English history while Coleridge, having adduced proof that formerly the people were familiar with these plays, maintained that "it would be a fine national custom to act such a series of dramatic histories in orderly succession." If the work now submitted to the public will contribute to the growth of so wholesome and patriotic a custom, its end will be happily accomplished.