and.

3. The Earl of Lindsey was general in chief for King Charles I. at the
breaking out of the civil war. As an evil omen of the royal cause,
he was mortally wounded and made prisoner at the battle of
Edgehill, the very first which was fought betwixt the king and
parliament. Clarendon says, "He had very many friends, and very few
enemies, and died generally lamented." His son Montague Bertie,
Earl of Lindsey, was a sufferer in the same cause. Lord Danby was
married to the Lady Bridget, the second daughter of that nobleman.

PREFACE.

The death of Antony and Cleopatra is a subject which has been treated
by the greatest wits of our nation, after Shakespeare; and by all so
variously, that their example has given me the confidence to try
myself in this bow of Ulysses amongst the crowd of shooters; and,
withal, to take my own measures, in aiming at the mark. I doubt not
but the same motive has prevailed with all of us in this attempt; I
mean the excellency of the moral: For the chief persons represented,
were famous patterns of unlawful love; and their end accordingly was
unfortunate. All reasonable men have long since concluded, that the
hero of the poem ought not to be a character of perfect virtue, for
then he could not, without injustice, be made unhappy; nor yet
altogether wicked, because he could not then be pitied. I have
therefore steered the middle course; and have drawn the character of
Antony as favourably as Plutarch, Appian, and Dion Cassius would give
me leave; the like I have observed in Cleopatra. That which is wanting
to work up the pity to a greater heighth, was not afforded me by the
story; for the crimes of love, which they both committed, were not
occasioned by any necessity, or fatal ignorance, but were wholly
voluntary; since our passions are, or ought to be, within our power.
The fabric of the play is regular enough, as to the inferior parts of
it; and the unities of time, place, and action, more exactly observed,
than perhaps the English theatre requires. Particularly, the action is
so much one, that it is the only of the kind without episode, or
underplot; every scene in the tragedy conducing to the main design,
and every act concluding with a turn of it. The greatest error in the
contrivance seems to be in the person of Octavia; for, though I might
use the privilege of a poet, to introduce her into Alexandria, yet I
had not enough con