Excerpt from The Dramatic Works of Sir William D'avenant, Vol. 1: With Prefatory Memoir and Notes Sir William D'Avenant, although popular as a poet during the times in which Milton, Dryden, and many other men of note also lived - so much so, that he was deemed a fitting successor to Ben Jonson in the Laureateship, - has, for upwards of two hundred years, been suffered to pass unregarded, except in so far as his very vigorous Poem of Gondibert and some minor pieces have from time to time courted notice through the medium of several collected editions of the works of British Poets, under the editorship of Dr Anderson (1795), Chalmers (1810), Sandford (1819), &c.; and by the introduction of his Comedy called "The Wits" into Dodsley's collection of Old Plays, (1744 and 1825). This Comedy, Sir Walter Scott also reprinted in his Ancient Drama (1810). The cause of such neglect of a man, whose plays (nearly thirty in number) are ably constructed, and redolent of innumerable flashes of wit and high poetic imagery, - in every way comparable with most of the recognized best poets since the days of Shakespeare, - may, there is every reason to believe, be ascribed to the careless and garbled manner in which the Editor has dealt with the collected edition of his works, published in folio in 1673, five years after his decease. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.

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