nd sin;
This who would strive to lose, or this to win?
Here lives perpetual joy, here burning woe;
Now, husbands, choose on which hand you will go.
Seek virtuous wives, all husbands will be blest;
Fair wives are good, but virtuous wives are best.
They that my fortunes will peruse, shall find
No beauty's like the beauty of the mind.

[_Exeunt_.

THE END.

THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS.

_EDITION.

The Retvrne from Pernassvs: Or, The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely acted
by the Students in Saint Iohns Colledge in Cambridge. At London Printed
by G. Eld, for Iohn Wright, and are to bee sold at his shop at
Christchurch Gate_. 1606. 4to.

[See Hazlitt's "Handbook," p. 470. Almost all the extant copies of this
drama--and no fewer than ten have been examined--appear to vary in
certain literal particulars. Of two copies in the Malone collection, one
presents additions which might bespeak it a later impression than the
other; and yet, on the other hand, has errors (some of a serious kind)
peculiar to itself. The text has now been considerably improved by the
collection of the quartos at Oxford.

It was the intention of my kind acquaintance, the Rev. J.W. Ebsworth,
Vicar of Moldash, by Ashford, Kent, to have reprinted the "Return from
Parnassus" separately; but on learning that I intended to include it in
my series, Mr Ebsworth not only gave way, but obligingly placed the
annotated copy which he had prepared, at my free disposal.

I have also to thank Dr Ingleby, of Valentines, near Ilford, Essex, for
lending me a copy of the play corresponding with one of those in the
Bodleian, as regards its occasionally various readings.

A long account, and very favourable estimate, of this drama will be
found in Hazlitt's "Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," 1820.]

[HAWKINS'S PREFACE.]

We can learn no more of the history of this play than what the
title-page gives us, viz., that it was "publickly acted by the students
in Saint John's College, Cambridge."[25] The merits and characters of
our old poets and actors are censured by the author with great freedom;
and the shameful prostitution of Church preferment, by the selling of
livings to the ignorant and unworthy, laid the foundation of Dr Wild's
"Benefice, a Comedy," 4to, 1689.

[Hawkins himself elsewhere (in his "General Introduction") remarks:--]

As the piece which follows, called "The Return from Pa