The Rivals

A preface to a playseems generally to be considered as a kind of closet-prologue, in which—ifhis piece has been successful—the author solicits that indulgence from thereader which he had before experienced from the audience: but as the scopeand immediate object of a play is to please a mixed assembly inrepresentation (whose judgment in the theatre at least is decisive,) itsdegree of reputation is usually as determined as public, before it can beprepared for the cooler tribunal of the study. Thus any farther solicitude onthe part of the writer becomes unnecessary at least, if not an intrusion: andif the piece has been condemned in the performance, I fear an address to thecloset, like an appeal to posterity, is constantly regarded as the procrastinationof a suit, from a consciousness of the weakness of the cause. From theseconsiderations, the following comedy would certainly have been submitted tothe reader, without any farther introduction than what it had in therepresentation, but that its success has probably been founded on acircumstance which the author is informed has not before attended atheatrical trial, and which consequently ought not to pass unnoticed.