The Pilgrimage to Parnassus With the Two Parts of the Return from Parnassus: Three Comedies Performed in St. John's College, Cambridge, MDXCVII-MDCI (Classic Reprint)

I cnown to have once existed, has lain perdu to the world from the time of its composition, except with regard to the third part. That third part was twice printed in 1606, rather more than four years after the date of its first representation; was reprinted in the last century; was included a few years ago in Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt sedition of Dodsley s Select Plays; and in 1879 obtained a place in Prof. Arber s English Scholar s Library. But why this third part should alone have been published by its author does not clearly appear; it was described by its eighteenth-century editor, Thos. Hawkins, in somewhat exaggerated terms, as being perhaps the most singular composition in our language, but its singularity of design and character is shared equally by the earlier parts, which display also as much humour and are fuller of illustrations of the academic life of the period. They have, unhappily, as much too of that coarseness which is such a blot on the popular literature of the time, but they have no such pages of repulsive rant as are assigned at the close of the third part to the extravagant characters Furor Poeticus and Phantasma. Probably the secret of the greater popularity of the third part may be found in the personal satire expressed in the character of the Recorder.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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