It is to be regretted that when _The Fatal Jealousy_ came to the stage
the company had, as Downes says, "plenty of new poets," and so the play
was laid aside after the first run. The performance must have been
brilliant. The greatest of Restoration stage villains, Sandford, played
Jasper. The parts of Caelia, Eugenia, and the Witch were taken by
veteran actors. "Mr. Nath. Leigh" made his second appearance on the
stage in this performance as Captain of the Watch. The lecherous Nurse
to Caelia was played by the famous Nokes whose sobriquet of "Nurse
Nokes" may have come to him with this rôle rather than from the part he
took, seven years later, in Otway's _Caius Marius_.

The text of _The Fatal Jealousy_ presents no special difficulties. Such
slight variations as I have found among the eleven copies I have
examined--chiefly dropped letters and the imperfect impression of some
words--can be accounted for as accidents to be expected in the printing
off of the sheets of a single edition. There seems to be no significance
in the fact that the title-page in some copies shows an ornament placed
between the second rule and the word _London_.

The copy of the play here reproduced is owned by the University of
Michigan, and is reprinted by permission.

WILLARD THORP
Princeton University

* * * * *


The
Fatal Jealousie.