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Introduction

The three parts of D'Urfey's "The Comical History of Don Quixote" were
performed between 1694 and (probably) the end of 1696. Some of the
songs included were conspicuously "smutty"--to use a word which D'Urfey
ridiculed--but the fact that the plays were fresh in the public mind
was probably the most effective reason for Jeremy Collier's decision
to include the not very highly respected author among the still living
playwrights to be singled out for attack in "A Short View of the
Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage", which appeared at
Easter time 1698. In July of the same year D'Urfey replied with the
preface to his "smutty" play "The Campaigners". It is this preface
which is given as the first item of the present reprint.

Pope's contemptuous prologue, written many years later and apparently
for a benefit performance of one of D'Urfey's plays, is sufficient
evidence that the playwright was not highly regarded; but he was reputed
to be a good natured man and, by the standards of the time, his twitting
of Collier--whom he accused of having a better nose for smut than a
clergyman should have--is not conspicuously vituperative. Even his
attack on the political character of the notorious Non-Juror is bitter
without being really scurrilous. But like his betters Congreve and
Vanbrugh, D'Urfey both missed the opportunity to grapple with the real
issues of the controversy and misjudged the temper of the public. Had
that public been, as all the playwrights seem to have assumed, ready to
side with them against Collier, there might have been some justification
in resting content as he and Congreve did with the scoring of a few