This play is a working up of _The Bores_ and _The
Misanthrope_, with two scenes from _The Forced Marriage_, and a
reminiscence from _The Love-Tiff_. It is dedicated to the "Thrice
Noble, High and Puissant Prince William, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of
Newcastle," because all Men, who pretend either to Sword or Pen, ought
"to shelter themselves under Your Grace's Protection." Another reason
Shadwell gives for this dedication is in order "to rescue this (play)
from the bloody Hands of the Criticks, who will not dare to use it
roughly, when they see Your Grace's Name in the beginning." He also
states, that "the first Hint I received was from the Report of a Play of
Moliere's of three Acts, called _Les Fascheux_, upon which I wrote
a great part of this before I read that." He borrowed, after reading it,
the first scene in the second act, and Moliere's story of Piquet, which
he translated into Backgammon, and says, "that he who makes a common
practice of stealing other men's wit, would if he could with the same
safety, steal anything else." Shadwell mentions, however, nothing of
borrowing from _The Misanthrope_ and _The Forced Marriage_.
The preface was, besides political difference, the chief cause of the
quarrel between Shadwell and Dryden; for in it the former defends Ben
Jonson against the latter, and mentions that--"I have known some of late
so insolent to say that Ben Jonson wrote his best playes without wit,
imagining that all the wit playes consisted in bringing two persons upon
the stage to break jest, and to bob one another, which they call
repartie." The original edition of _The Sullen Lovers_ is partly in
blank verse; but, in the first collected edition of Shadwell's works,
published by his son in 1720, it is printed in prose. Stanford, "a
morose, melancholy man, tormented beyond measure with the impertinence
of people, and resolved to leave the world to be quit of them" is a
combination of Alceste in _The Misanthrope_, and Eraste in _The