INCONSTANT; A COMEDY, IN FIVE ACTS; BY GEORGE FARQUHAR, Esq. AS PERFORMED AT THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY-LANE, PRINTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE MANAGERS FROM THE PROMPT BOOK. WITH REMARKS BY MRS INCHBALD. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1 REMARKS. This comedy, by a favourite writer, had a reception, on the first night of its appearance, far inferior to that of his other productions. It was with difficulty saved from condemnation; and the author, in his preface, has boldly charged some secret enemies with having attempted its destruction. 1 Dramatic authors have fewer enemies at the present period, or they have more humility, than formerly. For now, when their works are hissed from the stage, they acknowledge they have had a fair trial, and deserve their fate. Wherefore should an author seek for remote causes, to account for his failures, when to himself alone he is certain ever to impute all his success? Neither the wit, humour, nor the imitation of nature, in this play, are of that forcible kind, with which the audience had been usually delighted by Farquhar; and, that the moral gave a degree of superiority to this drama, was, in those days, of little consequence: the theatre was ordained, it was thought, for mere pleasure, nor did any one wish it should degenerate into instruction. It may be consolatory to the disappointed authors of the present day, to find how the celebrated author |