I had thought, Reader, in this Preface to have written somewhat concerning the difference betwixt the Playes of our Age, and those of our Predecessors on the English Stage: to have shown in what parts of Dramatick Poesie we were excell'd by Ben. Johnson, I mean, humour, and contrivance of Comedy; and in what we may justly claim precedence of Shakespear and Fletcher, namely in Heroick Playes: but this design I have wav'd on second considerations; at least deferr'd it till I publish the Conquest of Granada, where the discourse will be more proper. I had also prepar'd to treat of the improvement of our Language since Fletcher's and Johnson's dayes, and consequently of our refining the Courtship, Raillery, and Conversation of Playes: but as I am willing to decline that envy which I shou'd draw on my self from some old Opinionatre judges of the Stage; so likewise I am prest in time so much that I have not leisure, at present, to go thorough with it.

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[Dryden says he will defend even the purely crowd-pleasing things in his play.]

Yet I think it no vanity to say that this Comedy has as much of entertainment in it as many other which have bin lately written: and, if I find my own errors in it, I am able at the same time to arraign all my Contemporaries for greater. As I pretend not that I can write humour, so none of them can reasonably pretend to have written it as they ought. Johnson was the only man of all Ages and Nations who has perform'd it well, and that but in three or four of his Comedies: the rest are but a Crambe bis cocta;   the same humours a little vary'd and written worse: neither was it more allowable in him, than it is in our present Poets, to represent the follies of particular Persons; of which many have accus'd him. Parcere personis dicere de vitiis   is the rule of Plays. And Horace tells you that the old Comedy amongst the Grecians was silenc'd for the too great liberties of the Poets.

-- In vitium libertas excidit & vim
Dignam lege regi: lex est accepta chorusque
Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi.  

Of which he gives you the reason in another place: where having given the precept.

Neve immunda crepent, ignominiosaque dicta:

He immediately subjoyns,

Offenduntur enim, quibus est equus, & pater, & res.  

But Ben. Johnson is to be admir'd for many excellencies; and can be tax'd with fewer failings than any English Poet. I know I have been accus'd as an enemy of his writings; but without any other reason than that I do not admire him blindly, without looking into his imperfections. For why should he only be exempted from those frailties, from which Homer and Virgil are not free? Or why should there be any ipse dixit   in our Poetry, any more than there is in our Philosophy? I admire and applaud him where I ought: those who do more do but value themselves in their admiration of him: and, by telling you they extoll Ben. Johnson's way, would insinuate to you that they can practice it. For my part I declare that I want judgement to imitate him: and shou'd think it a great impudence in myself to attempt it. To make men appear pleasantly ridiculous on the Stage was, as I have said, his talent: and in this he needed not the acumen of wit, but that of judgement. For the characters and representations of folly are only the effects of observation; and observation is an effect of judgement. Some ingenious men, for whom I have a particular esteem, have thought I have much injur'd Ben. Johnson when I have not allow'd his wit to be extraordinary: but they confound the notion of what is witty with what is pleasant. That Ben Johnson's Playes were pleasant he must want reason who denyes: But that pleasantness was not properly wit, or the sharpness of conceit; but the natural imitation of folly: which I confess to be excellent in it's kind, but not to be of that kind which they pretend. Yet if he will believe Quintilian in his Chapter de Movendo risu,   he gives his opinion of both in these following words. Stulta reprehendere facillimum est; nam per se sunt ridicula: & a derisu non procul abest risus: sed rem urbanum fecit aliqua ex nobis adjectio.  

And some perhaps wou'd be apt to say of Johnson as it was said of Demosthenes; Non displicuisse illi jocos, sed non contigisse,   I will not deny but that I approve most the mixt way of Comedy; that which is neither all wit, nor all humour, but the result of both. Neither so little of humour as Fletcher shews, nor so little of love and wit, as Johnson. Neither all cheat, with which the best playes of the one are fill'd nor all adventure, which is the common practice of the other. I would have the characters well chosen, and kept distant from interfaring with each other; which is more than Fletcher or Shakespear did: but I would have more of the Urbana, venusta, salsa, faceta   and the rest which Quintilian reckons up as the ornaments of wit; and these are extremely wanting in Ben. Johnson. As for repartie in particular; as it is the very soul of conversation, so it is the greatest grace of Comedy, where it is proper to the Characters: there may be much of acuteness in a thing well said; but there is more in a quick reply: sunt, enim, longe venustiora omnia in respondendo quam in provocando.   Of one thing I am sure, that no man will ever decry wit, but he who despairs of it himself, and who has no other quarrel to it but that which the Fox had to the Grapes. Yet, as Mr Cowley, (who had a greater portion of it than any man I know) tells us in his Character of Wit, rather than all wit let there be none.   I think there's no folly so great in any Poet of our Age as the superfluity and wast of wit was in some of our predecessors: particularly we may say of Fletcher and of Shakespear, what was said of Ovid, In omni eius ingenio, facilius quod rejici, quam quod adjici potest, invenies.   The contrary of which was true in Virgil and our incomparable Johnson.

Some enemies of Repartie have observ'd to us, that there is a great latitude in their Characters, which are made to speak it: And that it is easier to write wit than humour; because in the characters of humour, the Poet is confin'd to make the person speak what is only proper to it. Whereas all kind of wit is proper in the Character of a witty person. But, by their favour, there are as different characters in wit as in folly. Neither is all kind of wit proper in the mouth of every ingenious person. A witty Coward and a witty Brave must speak differently. Falstaffe and the Lyar   speak not like Don John in the Chances , and Valentine in Wit without Money . And Johnson's Truwit in the Silent Woman , is a Character different from all of them. Yet it appears that this one Character of Wit was more difficult to the Author, than all his images of humour in the Play; For those he could describe and manage from his observation of men; this he has taken, at least a part of it, from books: witness the Speeches in the first Act, translated verbatim out of Ovid de Arte Amandi. To omit what afterwards he borrowed from the sixth Satyre of Juvenal against Women.

However, if I should grant, that there were a greater latitude in Characters of Wit, than in those of Humour; yet that latitude would be of small advantage to such Poets who have too narrow an imagination to write it. And to entertain an Audience perpetually with Humour, is to carry them from the conversation of Gentlemen, and treat thern with the follies and extravagances of Bedlam.

I find I have launch'd out farther than I intended in the beginning of this Preface. And that in the heat of writing, I have touch'd at something, which I ought to have avoided. 'Tis time now to draw homeward: and to think rather of defending myself, than assaulting others. I have already acknowledg'd that this Play is far from perfect: but I do not think my self oblig'd to discover the imperfections of it to my Adversaries, any more than a guilty person is bound to accuse himself before his judges. 'Tis charg'd upon me that I make debauch'd persons (such as they say my Astrologer and Gamester are) my Protagonists, or the chief persons of the Drama; and that I make them happy in the conclusion of my Play; against the Law of Comedy, which is to reward virtue and punish vice. I answer first, that I know no such law to have been constantly observ'd in Comedy, either by the Ancient or Modern Poets. Chœrea is made happy in the Eunuch, after having deflour'd a Virgin: and Terence generally does the same through all his Plays, where you perpetually see, not only debauch'd young men enjoy their Mistresses, but even the Courtezans themselves rewarded and honour'd in the Catastrophe. The same may be observ'd in Plautus almost every where. Ben. Johnson himself, after whom I may be proud to erre, has given me more than once the example of it. That in the Alchemist is notorious, where Face, after having contriv'd and carried on the great cozenage of the Play, and continued in it without repentance to the last, is not only forgiven by his Master, but inrich'd by his consent, with the spoiles of those whom he had cheated. And, which is more, his Master himself, a grave man, and a Widower, is introduc'd taking his Man's counsel, debauching the Widow first, in hope to marry her afterward. In the Silent Woman , Dauphine, (who with the other two Gentlemen, is of the same character with my Celadon in the Maiden Queen , and with Wildblood in this) professes himself in love with all the Collegiate Ladies: and they likewise are all of the same Character with each other, excepting only Madam Otter, who has something singular:) yet this naughty Dauphine is crown'd in the end with the possession of his Uncles Estate, and with the hopes of enjoying all his Mistresses. And his friend Mr Truwit (the best Character of a Gentleman which Ben. Johnson ever made) is not asham'd to pimp for him. As for Beaumont and Fletcher, I need not alledge examples out of them; for that were to quote almost all their Comedies.

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[Dryden defends himself from the charge of having stolen the plots for his plays.]

Most of Shakespear's Playes, I mean the Stories of them, are to be found in the Hecatomouthi , or hundred Novels of Cinthio. I have, myself, read in his Italian, that of Romeo and Juliet, the Moor of Venice, and many others of them. Beaumont and Fletcher had most of theirs from Spanish Novels:witness the Chances , the Spanish Curate, Rule a Wife and have a Wife , the Little French Lawyer, and so many others of them as compose the greatest part of their Volume in folio. Ben. Johnson, indeed, has design'd his Plots himself; but no man has borrow'd so much from the Ancients as he has done: And he did well in it, for he has thereby beautifi'd our language.

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