Lately published, with a Portrait, 58. each Vol. DRAMATIC SERIES, Nos. I. & II. BEING THE WORKS OF PHILIP MASSINGER, ILLUSTRATED WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES; AND ADAPTED TO FAMILY READING AND THE USE OF YOUNG PERSONS, BY THE OMISSION OF EXCEPTIONABLE PASSAGES. "The early British Drama forms so important a portion of our literature, that a Family Library' would be incomplete without it. A formidable obstacle to the publication of our early plays, however, consists in the occasional impurity of their dialogue. The Editors of the Family Library have, therefore, judiciously determined on publishing a selection of old Plays, omitting all such passages as are inconsistent with modern delicacy. The task of separation requires great skill and discretion, but these qualities we have no apprehension of not finding, in the fullest degree requisite, in the Editors, who, by this purifying process, will perform a service both to the public and to the authors, whom they will thereby draw forth from unmerited obscurity."—Asiatic Journal. "The Dramatic Series of the Family Library has been planned in such a manner as to promise to make it one of the most important features of that admirable collection. Hitherto there has been scarcely any attempt, certainly no successful one, at opening the immense source of poetical treasure which is to be found in the works of those dramatists who flourished contemporaneously with the mightiest of them all. The Editor of this series is liberal of explanation and elucidation too, where they are called for by any obvious difficulty in the text. Cases of obvious necessity alone, however, obtain his interference; he supplies the requisite assistance without obtruding it; sometimes from his own resources, at others from unobjectionable authorities."-Monthly Review. "The first number of the Dramatic Series' of this work commences with the Plays of MASSINGER; and the lovers of poetry and the drama may now, for the first time, possess the works of all the distinguished writers of the renowned Elizabethan age, at a cost which most pockets can bear even in this day of taxation; in a form and style too, which would recommend them to the most tasteful book collector. A Portrait of Massinger adorns this volume, well engraved by Mr. Finden; and what is little known of the dramatist is given in a short account of his life."-Examiner. |