Tragicomedy [antikvár]

Preface Full acknowledgment of my many debts to fellow workers at the University of Illinois and elsewhere is impossible, but I must at least thank those who have read and criticized various parts of the typescript as it evolved during the past five years, namely, Professors Harry Caplan, Lane Cooper, James Hutton at Cornell, and my colleagues at Illinois, Professors T. W. Baldwin, Revilo Oliver, and Joseph Smiley. Another colleague. Professor Harris Fletcher, one of the editors oL the Illinois Studies ia Language and Literature, has read the whole typescript and offered a number of helpful suggestions. The staff of the University Library has, as always, provided indispensable aid and encouragement. I am especially indebted to Miss Isabelle Grant, librarian of the Rare Book Room, to her assistant, Miss Mary Marquardt, and to Miss Alma De Jordy, consultant in bibliography. The critical reader may ask why Spanish tragicomedy was omitted from this study. The answer is that Spanish drama, so far as I can discover, and according to such competent scholars as Lancaster and Ristine, exerted little or no inâuence upon the development of tragicomedy in either France or England. By the time dramatists in France and England turned to imitating and adapting Spanish plays, the theory and practice of tragicomedy were already firmly established. A chapter on the origin and development of Spanis'h tragicomedy would be valuable, but I have not felt obliged to consider that chapter here. Urbana, Illinois, 795^ marvin t. herrick