ENGLISH

HISTORICAL PLAYS

PR 1255

D69

vil

ENGLISH

HISTORICAL PLAYS

BY

SHAKESPEARE, MARLOWE, PEELE,

HEYWOOD, FLETCHER,
AND FORD

ARRANGED FOR ACTING, AS WELL AS FOR READING

BY

THOMAS DONOVAN

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.

1896

All rights reserved

-35

10.9.48

PREFACE

ERRATA

Vol. I., page 257, line 8 from bottom, for I hope, the king read I hope the king

Vol. II., page ro, line 9 from bottom, for out read out:

Donovan's English Historical Plays.

It

thus placed before us a series of plays by our greatest
dramatists, representing the chief incidents of three hundred
years, among the most eventful in English history. These
are not, however, mere reprints of the old plays, but they
are resettings of them in what is thought to be the simplest
and most effective form for dramatic performance.
need hardly be said that all these plays were written to be
acted, and yet fully one half are unknown to the modern
stage, while many of them have not been produced in an
English theatre since the time of the Stuarts; the reason
commonly assigned for this neglect being that, as written,
they cannot be acted. Indeed, in the form in which we