Page:The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets.djvu/165

Rh, which wou’d often prevent the Ruin of Families, which generally begins with the Husbands Faults. I know of no Thefts in this Play, or indeed any of this Gentlemans, but what he has own’d in his Preface.

The Relape, or Virtue in Danger, being the equel to Loves lat Shift or The Fool in Fahion, 4 to. Acted at the Theatre Royal, 1697. This Play was received with mighty applaue, and pight of the broken Scenes, which mut be allowed an irregularity that might have been avoided, has its jut and uncommon Merits; and I think the Character of my Lord Foppington, if it at all fall hort of that Materpiece of Sir Fopling Flutter, at leat challenges the next place, in preference to all of that kind, for the Stage has been almot as Fruitful in Beaux, as the Boxes.

The time when thee three Plays were written is uncertain; but all appeared in a little time of one another, and this which comes lat in the Alphabet, was the firt in the Repreentation; and as he informs us in the Prologue, was Wrote in ix Weeks, a ign of a double Bleing, of bringing forth without Pain, and even Children Perfect and Beautiful, without the uual nine Months Travel.

HIS Author (who was a Clerk in Queen Elizabeth’s time) was then accounted a Man of great Learning. He writ in the beginning of her Reign an Interlude, til’d,

Mary Magdalen, her Life and Repentance, 4 to. 1567. This was printed in an old Black Letter, it may be acted by four or five Perons. His Gentleman was of a good Family, and Etate, the lat uncommon with o good a Poet: he was belov’d by all that knew him, for his peronal Merit and Affability, as well as admir’d for his Poetry. He died about Eight Years ince. The