tion, 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 Relapſe, or Virtue in Danger, being the ſequel to Loves laſt Shift or The Fool in Faſhion, 4 to. Acted at the Theatre Royal, 1697. This Play was received with mighty applauſe, and ſpight of the broken Scenes, which muſt be allowed an irregularity that might have been avoided, has its juſt and uncommon Merits; and I think the Character of my Lord Foppington, if it at all fall ſhort of that Maſterpiece of Sir Fopling Flutter, at leaſt challenges the next place, in preference to all of that kind, for the Stage has been almoſt as Fruitful in Beaux, as the Boxes.
The time when theſe three Plays were written is uncertain; but all appeared in a little time of one another, and this which comes laſt in the Alphabet, was the firſt in the Repreſentation; and as he informs us in the Prologue, was Wrote in ſix Weeks, a ſign of a double Bleſſing, of bringing forth without Pain, and even Children Perfect and Beautiful, without the uſual nine Months Travel.
W
Lewis Wager.
This 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, ſtil’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 Perſons.
Edmund Waller, Eſq;
THis Gentleman was of a good Family, and Eſtate, the laſt uncommon with ſo good a Poet: he was belov’d by all that knew him, for his perſonal Merit and Affability, as well as admir’d for his Poetry. He died about Eight Years ſince.
