I Was mov'd to write this Play by many reasons: amongst others, the Commands of some Persons of Honour, for whom I have a most particular respect, were daily sounding in my ears, that it would be of good Example to undertake a Poem of this Nature. Neither was my own inclination wanting to second their desires. I considered that pleasure was not the only end of Poesie; and that even the instructions of Morality were not so whol­ly the business of a Poet, as that the Precepts and Examples of Piety were to be omitted. For to leave that employment altogether to the Clergie, were to forget that Religion was first taught in Verse (which the laziness or dulness of succeeding Priesthood, turned afterwards into Prose:) and it were also to grant, which I never shall, that re­presentations of this kind may not as well be conducing to Holiness, as to good Manners. Yet far be it from me, to compare the use of Dramatique Poesie with that, of Divinity: I only maintain against the Enemies of the Stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, and equally removed from the extremes of superstition and Prophaneness, may be of excellent use to second the Precepts of our Religion. By the Harmony of words we elevate the mind to a sense of Devotion, as our solemn Musick, which is inarticulate Poesie, does in Churches; and by the lively images of piety, adorn­ed by action, through the senses allure the Soul: which while it is charmed in a silent joy of what it sees and hears, is struck at the same time with a secret veneration of things Celestial, and is woond up insensibly into the practice of that which it admires. Now, if, instead of this, we sometimes see on our Theaters, the Examples of Vice rewarded, or at least unpunished; yet it ought not to be an Ar­gument against the Art, any more than the Extravagances and Im­pieties [Page] of the Pulpit in the late times of Rebellion, can be against the Office and Dignity of the Clergie.

But many times it happens, that Poets are wrongfully accused; as it is my own Case in this very Play; where I am charged by some ignorant or malicious persons, with no less Crimes than Prophane­ness and Irreligion.

The part of Maximin, against which these holy Criticks so much declaim, was designed by me to set off the Character of S. Catharine. And those who have read the Roman History, may easily remember, that Maximin was not only a bloody Tyrant, vastus corpore, animo ferus, as Herodian describes him; but also a Persecutor of the Church, against which he raised the sixth Persecution. So that whatsoever he speaks or acts in this Tragedy, is no more than a Re­cord of his life and manners; a picture as near as I could take it, from the Original. If with much pains and some success I have drawn a deformed piece, there is as much of Art, and as near an imitation of Nature, in a Lazare as in a Venus. Maximin was an Heathen, and what he speaks against Religion, is in contempt of that which he professed. He defies the Gods of Rome, which is no more than S. Catharine might with decency have done. If it be urged, that a person of such principles who scoffes at any Religion, ought not to be presented on the Stage; why then are the lives and say­ings of so many wicked and prophane persons, recorded in the Holy Scriptures? I know it will be answered, That a due use may be made of them; that they are remembred with a Brand of Infamy fixt upon them; and set as Sea-marks for those who behold them to avoid. And what other use have I made of Maximin? have I proposed him as a pattern to be imitated, whom even for his im­piety to his false Gods I have so severely punished? Nay, as if I had foreseen this Objection I purposely removed the Scene of the Play which ought to have been at Alexandria in Egypt, (where S. Catharine suffered) and laid it under the Walls of Aquileia in Italy, where Maximin was slain, that the punishment of his Crime might imme­diately succeed its execution.

This, Reader, is what I owed to my just defence, and the due reverence of that Religion which I profess, to which all men, who desire to be esteemed good or honest are obliged: I have neither lei­sure nor occasion to write more largely on this subject, because I am [Page] already justified by the sentence of the best and most discerning Prince in the World, by the suffrage of all unbiass'd Judges; and above all, by the witness of my own Conscience, which abhors the thought of such a Crime; to which I ask leave to add my outward Conversation, which shall never be justly taxed with the Note of A­theism or Prophaneness.

In what else concerns the Play, I shall be brief: for the faults of the writing and contrivance, I leave them to the mercy of the Reader. For I am as little apt to defend my own Errours, as to find those of other Poets. Only I observe, that the great Censors of Wit and Poetry, either produce nothing of their own, or what is more ridiculous than any thing they reprehend. Much of ill Nature, and a very little Judgment, go far in the finding the mistakes of Writers.

I pretend not that any thing of mine can be Correct: This Poem, es­pecially, which was contrived and written in seven weeks, though af­terwards hindred by many accidents from a speedy representation, which would have been its best excuse.

Yet the Scenes are every where unbroken, and the unities of place and time more exactly kept, than perhaps is requisite in a Tragedy; or at least then I have since preserv'd them in the Conquest of Granada.

I have not every where observed the equality of numbers, in my Verse; partly by reason of my haste; but more especially because I would not have my sense a slave to Syllables.

'Tis easie to discover, that I have been very bold in my alteration of the Story, which of it self was too barren for a Play: and, that I have taken from the Church two Martyrs, in the persons of Porphy­rius and the Empress, who suffered for the Christian Faith, under the Tyranny of Maximin.

I have seen a French Play, called the Martyrdom of S. Catharine; but those who have read it, will soon clear me from stealing out of so dull an Author. I have only borrowed a mistake from him, of one Maximin for another: for finding him in the French Poet, called the Son of a Thracian Herds-man, and an Alane Woman, I too easily be­lieved him to have been the same Maximin mentioned in Herodian. Till afterwards consulting Eusebius and Metaphrastes, I found the French-man had betrayed me into an Errour (when it was too late to alter it) by mistaking that first Maximin for a second, the Contem­porary of Constantine the Great, and one of the Vsurpers of the Eastern Empire.

[Page] But neither was the other name of my Play more fortunate: for as some who had heard of a Tragedy of S. Catharine, imagined I had taken my plot from thence; so others, who had heard of another Play called L'Amour Tyrannique, with the same ignorance, accused me to have borrow'd my design from it, because I have accidentally gi­ven my Play the same Title, not having to this day seen it: and knowing only by report, that such a Comedy is extant in French, un­der the name of Monsieur Scudery.

As for what I have said of Astral or AErial Spirits it is no inven­tion of mine, but taken from those who have written on that Subject. Whether there are such Beings or not, it concerns not me; 'tis suffi­cient for my purpose, that many have believed the affirmative: and that these Heroick Representations, which are of the same Nature with the Epick, are not limited, but with the extremest bounds of what is credible.