by Massinger and Fletcher, and a lively comedy (also quite unknown)
by James Shirley. The recovery of these two pieces should be of
considerable interest to all students of dramatic literature.

The Editor hopes to give in Vol. III. an unpublished play of Thomas
Heywood. In the fourth volume there will be a reprint of the _Arden of
Feversham_, from the excessively rare quarto of 1592.






INTRODUCTION TO THE _TRAGEDY OF NERO_.


Of the many irreparable losses sustained by classical literature few are
more to be deplored than the loss of the closing chapters of Tacitus'
_Annals_. Nero, it is true, is a far less complex character than
Tiberius; and there can be no question that Tacitus' sketch of Nero is
less elaborate than his study of the elder tyrant. Indeed, no historical
figure stands out for all time with features of such hideous vividness
as Tacitus' portrait of Tiberius; nowhere do we find emphasised with
such terrible earnestness, the stoical poet's anathema against tyrants
"Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta." Other writers would have
turned back sickened from the task of following Tiberius through mazes
of cruelty and craft. But Tacitus pursues his victim with the patience
of a sleuth-hound; he seems to find a ruthless satisfaction in stripping
the soul of its coverings; he treads the floor of hell and watches with
equanimity the writhings of the damned. The reader is at once strangely