Note 4 — PLAYS BY WEBSTER & TOURNEUR

Readers of this volume who are anxious to obtain more light upon Webster's art, must be referred to Lamb's notes in the Specimens from English Dramatic Poets, to Mr. Swinburne's article on John Webster in The Nineteenth Century for June, 1886, and to my own essay upon Vittoria Accoramboni in Italian By-ways (Smith and Elder, 1883).

The text adopted for Webster's two tragedies is that of Dyce's edition. His arrangement of scenes has been followed, except in the case of the Vittoria Corombona, which Dyce left undivided. The notes, too, are in the main extracted from the same source. With reference to Cyril Tourneur's plays, the text of The Atheist's Tragedy has been modernised from Mr. Churton Collins's edition; that of The Revenger's Tragedy is based upon the modernised version in Hazlitt's edition of Dodsley, collated throughout with Mr. Collins's text. Students of the English drama owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Churton Collins for his scholarly issue of the complete works of Tourneur.