The fourth and final volume of this Collection of Old Plays ought to
have been issued many months ago. I dare not attempt to offer any
excuses for the wholly unwarrantable delay.

In the preface to the third volume I stated that I hoped to be able to
procure a transcript of an unpublished play (preserved in Eg. MS. 1,994)
of Thomas Heywood. It affords me no slight pleasure to include this play
in the present volume. Mr. JEAVES, of the Manuscript Department of the
British Museum, undertook the labour of transcription and persevered to
the end. As I have elsewhere stated, the play is written in a detestable
hand; and few can appreciate the immense trouble that it cost Mr. JEAVES
to make his transcript. Where Mr. JEAVES' labours ended mine began; I
spent many days in minutely comparing the transcript with the original.
There are still left passages that neither of us could decipher, but
they are not numerous.

I may be pardoned for regarding the Collection with some pride. Six of
the sixteen plays are absolutely new, printed for the first time; and I
am speaking within bounds when I declare that no addition so substantial
has been made to the Jacobean drama since the days of Humphrey Moseley
and Francis Kirkman. _Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt_ has been styled by
Mr. Swinburne a "noble poem." Professor Delius urged that it should be
translated into German; and I understand that an accomplished scholar,
Dr. Gelbeke of St. Petersburg, has just completed an admirable
translation. Meanwhile the English edition[1] has been reproduced in
Holland.

In the original announcement of this Collection I promised a reprint of
_Arden of Feversham_ from the quarto of 1592; I also proposed to include
plays by Davenport, William Rowley, and Nabbes. After I had transcribed