A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) | Page 4

never wanted great favourers and
loving preservers. Among whom I cannot sufficiently commend your
charitable zeal and scholarly compassion towards him, that have not
only rescued and defended him from the devouring jaws of oblivion,
but vouchsafed also to apparel him in a new suit at your own charges,
wherein he may again more boldly come abroad, and by your
permission return to his old parents, clothed perhaps not in richer or
more costly furniture than it went from them, but in handsomeness and
fashion more answerable to these times, wherein fashions are so often
altered. Let one word suffice for your encouragement herein; namely,
that your commendable pains in disrobing him of his antique curiosity,
and adorning him with the approved guise of our stateliest English
terms (not diminishing, but more augmenting his artificial colours of
absolute poesy, derived from his first parents) cannot but be grateful to
most men's appetites, who upon our experience we know highly to
esteem such lofty measures of sententiously composed tragedies.
How much you shall make me and the rest of your private friends
beholden to you, I list not to discourse: and therefore grounding upon

these alleged reasons; that the suppressing of this tragedy, so worthy
for the press, were no other thing than wilfully to defraud yourself of an
universal thank, your friends of their expectations, and sweet Gismund
of a famous eternity, I will cease to doubt of any other pretence to cloak
your bashfulness, hoping to read it in print (which lately lay neglected
amongst your papers) at our next appointed meeting.
I bid you heartily farewell. From Pyrgo in Essex, August the eighth,
1591.
_Tuus fide & facultate_
GUIL. WEBBE.[3]

To the Worshipful and Learned Society, the GENTLEMEN
STUDENTS of the Inner Temple, with the rest of his singular good
Friends, the GENTLEMEN of the Middle Temple, and to all other
courteous Readers, R.W. wisheth increase of all health, worship, and
learning, with the immortal glory of the graces adorning the same.
Ye may perceive (right Worshipful) in perusing the former epistle sent
to me, how sore I am beset with the importunities of my friends to
publish this pamphlet: truly I am and have been (if there be in me any
soundness of judgment) of this opinion, that whatsoever is committed
to the press is commended to eternity, and it shall stand a lively witness
with our conscience, to our comfort or confusion, in the reckoning of
that great day.
Advisedly, therefore, was that proverb used of our elder philosophers,
_Manum a tabula_: withhold thy hand from the paper, and thy papers
from the print or light of the world: for a lewd word escaped is
irrevocable, but a bad or base discourse published in print is
intolerable.
Hereupon I have endured some conflicts between reason and judgment,
whether it were convenient for the commonwealth, with the indecorum
of my calling (as some think it) that the memory of Tancred's tragedy
should be again by my means revived, which the oftener I read over,
and the more I considered thereon, the sooner I was won to consent
thereunto: calling to mind that neither the thrice reverend and learned
father, M. Beza, was ashamed in his younger years to send abroad, in
his own name, his tragedy of "Abraham,"[4] nor that rare Scot (the
scholar of our age) Buchanan, his most pathetical Jephtha.

Indeed I must willingly confess this work simple, and not worth
comparison to any of theirs: for the writers of them were grave men; of
this, young heads: in them is shown the perfection of their studies; in
this, the imperfection of their wits. Nevertheless herein they all agree,
commending virtue, detesting vice, and lively deciphering their
overthrow that suppress not their unruly affections. These things noted
herein, how simple soever the verse be, I hope the matter will be
acceptable to the wise.
Wherefore I am now bold to present Gismund to your sights, and unto
yours only, for therefore have I conjured her, by the love that hath been
these twenty-four years betwixt us, that she wax not so proud of her
fresh painting, to straggle in her plumes abroad, but to contain herself
within the walls of your house; so am I sure she shall be safe from the
tragedian tyrants of our time, who are not ashamed to affirm that there
can no amorous poem savour of any sharpness of wit, unless it be
seasoned with scurrilous words.
But leaving them to their lewdness, I hope you, and all discreet readers,
will thankfully receive my pains, the fruits of my first harvest: the
rather, perceiving that my purpose in this tragedy tendeth only to the
exaltation of virtue and suppression of vice, with pleasure to profit and
help all men, but to