A Short View of the Immorality and Profaness of the English Stage:

The third edition, printed the same year as the first of this attack on immoral practises in theatre, such as obscene language, blasphemy, and sexual innuendo by the nonjuring churchmen Jeremy Collier (1650-1726). An important work giving insight into the reception of English drama in the context of seventeenth-century morals and religiosity.

The main focus of the essay is the dramatists of Collier's own day, particularly John Dryden, as well as William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, and Thomas D'Urfey, but earlier playwrights do not escape his focus, including the Bard: 'As for Shakespeare, he is too guilty to make an Evidence: But I think he gains not much by his Misbehaviour; He has commonly Plautus's Fate, where there is most Smut, there is least Sense'. Ben Johnson on the other hand 'is much more reserve in his Plays, and declares plainly for Modesty in his Discoveries' (p.50).

Although a frontispiece is called for this the third edition by ESTC, the offsetting of the title-page to the front free endpaper verso suggests out copy was bound without this plate. Nor is a frontispiece called for in any of the earlier or later seventeenth-century editions of this work.

Third edition; 8vo (20 x 12.5 cm); bound without frontispiece(?), a little toned, offsetting from title to front free endpaper verso; contemporary panelled calf, contrasting rbown morocco lettering-piece to spine, sprinkled edges, upper joint split but holding, slightly rubbed wit minor loss to corners;

ESTC R13037.