ENGLISH DRAMA PURIFIED: BEING A SPECIMEN OF SELECT PLAYS, IN WHICH ALL THE PASSAGES THAT HAVE APPEARED TO THE EDITOR TO BE OBJECTIONABLE IN POINT OF MORALITY, WITH PREFACES AND NOTES. BY JAMES PLUMPTRE, B. D. ! FELLOW OF CLARE-HALL, CAMBRIDGE. It is very possible, that Plays might be so framed, and governed by such rules, as not only to be innocently diverting, but instructing and useful, to put See Archbp. Tillotson's Sermon on The Evil of Corrupt Communication. VOL. I. CONTAINING THE GAMESTER. GEORGE BARNWELL. DOUGLAS. 1 CAMBRIDGE, PRINTED BY F. MODSON: J NICHOLSON AND Son, CiNE. Dedication. то His Royal HIGHNESS WILLIAM FREDERICK, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, &c. &c. AND CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, SIR, I had not considered the following Work as being of great literary and moral importance, I should not have presumed to request for it the patronage of the bighest Officer in one of the first Universities in the world. But so extensive and important is the influence of The Stage, that I conceive the due regulation of it to be an object worthy the attention of the most enlightened and the most religious. That your Royal Highness does. in some degree consider it in this light,-though you may not as yet, perhaps, have contemplated it in its full extent, and in all its bearings,—is , I trust, the case from |