In publishing this tragedy, I do but challenge to1 myself that liberty which other men have ta’en before me. Not that I affect praise by it, for nos haec novimus esse nihil;2 only since it was acted in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and black a theatre,3 that it wanted that which is the only grace and setting out of a tragedy – a full and understanding auditory; and that, since that time, I have noted, most of the people that come to that playhouse resemble those ignorant asses who, visiting stationers’ shops, their use is not to enquire for good books but new books, I present it to the general view with this confidence:
Nec rhoncos metues, maligniorum,
Nec scombris tunicas, dabis molestas.4
If it be objected this is no true dramatic poem, I shall easily confess it; non potes in nugas dicere plura meas ipse ego quam dixi.5 Willingly, and not ignorantly, in this kind have I faulted; for should a man present to such an auditory the most sententious6 tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style and gravity of person, enrich it with the sententious Chorus, and, as it were, ’liven death7 in the passionate and weighty Nuntius,8 yet, after all this divine rapture – O dura messorum ilia1 – the breath that comes from the uncapable multitude is able to poison it, and ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix to every scene, this of Horace:
Haec hodie porcis comedenda relinques.2
To those who report I was a long time in finishing this tragedy,3 I confess I do not write with a goose-quill, winged with two feathers; and if they will needs make it my fault, I must answer them with that of Euripides to Alcestides,4 a tragic writer: Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only in three days composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred: ‘Thou tell’st truth,’ quoth he, ‘but here’s the difference: thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages.’
Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance. For mine own part, I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men’s worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman; the laboured and understanding5 works of Master Jonson; the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher; and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker and Master Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light; protesting that, in the strength of mine own judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of theirs I dare, without flattery, fix that of Martial:
non norunt, haec monumenta mori.6