【英文原著类】THE DOUBLE-DEALER(两面派).pdf

THE DOUBLE-DEALER--EDY
THE DOUBLE-
DEALER--EDY
by William Congreve

1
THE DOUBLE-DEALER--EDY
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES
MONTAGUE, ONE OF THE LORDS OF THE
TREASURY.
Sir,--I heartily wish this play were as perfect as I intended it, that it
might be more worthy your acceptance, and that my dedication of it to you
might be more ing that honour and esteem which I, with everybody
who is so fortunate as to know you, have for you. It had your
countenance when yet unknown; and now it is made public, it wants your
protection. I would not have anybody imagine that I think this play
without its faults, for I am conscious of several. I confess I designed
(whatever vanity or ambition occasioned that design) to have written a
true and edy, but I found it an undertaking which put me in
mind of SUDET MULTUM, FRUSTRAQUE LABORET AUSUS IDEM.
And now, to make amends for the vanity of such a design, I do confess
both the attempt and the imperfect performance. Yet I must take the
boldness to say I have not miscarried in the whole, for the mechanical part
of it is regular. That I may say with as little vanity as a builder may say
he has built a house according to the model laid down before him, or a
gardener that he has set his flowers in a knot of such or such a figure. I
designed the moral first, and to that moral I invented the fable, and do not
know that I have borrowed one hint of it anywhere. I made the plot as
strong as I could because it was single, and I made it single because I
would avoid confusion, and was resolved to preserve the three unities of
the drama. Sir, this discourse is very impertinent to you, whose judgment
much better can discern the faults than I can excuse them; and whose good
nature, like that of a lover, will find out those hidden beauties (if there are
any such) which it would be great immodesty for me to discover. I think
I don't speak improperly when I call you a LOVER of poetry; for it is very
well known she