e and in spirit it is perfect
Heywood: simple and noble in emotion and conception, primitive and
straightforward in construction and expression; inartistic but not
ineffectual; humble and facile, but not futile or prosaic. It is a
rather more rational and natural piece of work than might have been
expected from its author when equipped after the heroic fashion of
Mallory or Froissart: its date is more or less indistinctly indicated by
occasional rhymes and peculiar conventionalities of diction: and if
Heywood in the panoply of a knight-errant may now and then suggest to
his reader the figure of Sancho Panza in his master's armor, his
pedestrian romance is so genuine, his modest ambition so high-spirited
and high-minded, that it would be juster and more critical to compare
him with Don Quixote masquerading in the accoutrements of his esquire.
Dick Bowyer, whose life and death are mendaciously announced on the
catch-penny title-page, and who (like Tiny Tim in "A Christmas Carol")
"does _not_ die," is a rather rough, thin, and faint sketch of the bluff
British soldier of fortune who appears and reappears to better advantage
in other plays of Heywood and his fellows. That this must be classed
among the earlier if not the earliest of his works we may infer from the
primitive simplicity of a stage direction which recalls another in a
play printed five years before. In the second scene of the third act of
"The Trial of Chivalry" we read as follows: "Enter Forester, missing the
other taken away, speaks anything, and exit." In the penultimate scene
of the second part of "King Edward IV." we find this even quainter
direction, which has been quoted before now as an instance of the stage
conditions or habits of the time: "Jockie is led to whipping over the
stage, speaking some words, but of no importance."

A further and deeper debt of thanks is due to Mr. Bullen for the
recovery of "The Captives; or, The Lost Recovered," after the lapse of
nearly three centuries. The singularly prophetic sub-title of this
classic and romantic tragicomedy has been justified at so late a date by
the beneficence of chance, in favorable conjunction with the happy
devotion and fortunate research of a thorough and a thoroughly able
student, as to awaken in all fellow-lovers of dramatic poetry a sense of
hopeful wonder with regard to the almost illimitable possibilities of
yet further and yet greater treasure to be discovered and recovered from
the keepi