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[General Bibliographical Note. The few books here named are mainly those whose range is sufficiently wide to cover the greater part of my own ground. Others, more limited in their scope, are reserved for mention in the preliminary notes to the chapters upon whose subject-matter they directly bear; and in particular the bibliography of the drama, as distinct from the stage, receives full treatment in Book V. The scanty Restoration notices of the pre-Restoration stage are to be found in R. Flecknoe, A Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664), the anonymous Historia Histrionica (1699) ascribed to James Wright, and J. Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (1708). W. R. Chetwood's General History of the Stage (1749) is of no value, and its honesty is suspect. The first scholar to attempt a systematic history was E. Malone, in his Account of our Ancient Theatres (1790) and Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage (1790), of which a revised version, with much fresh matter, was included by J. Boswell in the Third Variorum Shakespeare (1821). Something was added by G. Chalmers in the Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage which forms part of his Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers (1797), and in an enlarged shape of his Supplemental Apology (1799). The first edition of J. P. Collier's History of English Dramatic Poetry and Annals of the Stage appeared in 1831. Thereafter Collier made many further contributions to the subject, in the publications of the Shakespeare Society, and in his New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare (1835), New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare (1836), and Farther Particulars regarding Shakespeare and his Works (1839). These abound in forgeries, of which some are analysed in C. M. Ingleby, A Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy (1861), and which have not all been excluded from the current edition of the History (1879). Some new ground was broken by F. G. Fleay, who gave real stimulus to investigation by the series of hasty generalizations and unstable hypotheses contained in his On the Actor Lists, 1578-1642 (R. H. Soc. Trans. ix. 44), On the History of Theatres in London, 1576-1642 (R. H. Soc. Trans. x. 114), Shakespeare Manual (1876, 1878), Introduction to Shakespearian Study (1877), Life and Work of Shakespeare (1886), Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890), and Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama