To the right honourable, the Lady Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland.

Many opprobries and aspersions have not long since been cast upon plays in general and it were requisite and expedient that they were vindicated from them, but I refer that task to those whose leisure is greater and learning more transcendent. Yet for my part I cannot perceive wherein they should appear so vile and abominable that they should be so vehemently inveighed against; is it because they are plays? The name it seems somewhat offends them, whereas if they were styled "works", they might have their approbation also. I hope that I have now somewhat pacified that precise sect by reducing all our author’s several plays into one volume and so styled them The Works of Mr. John Marston, who was not inferior unto any in this kind of writing, in those days when these were penned and I am persuaded equal unto the best poets of our times. If the lines be not answerable to my encomium of him, yet herein bear with him, because they were his juvenilia and youthful recreations. Howsoever he is free from all obscene speeches, which is the chief cause that makes plays to be so odious unto most men. He abhor such writers and their works and has professed himself an enemy to all such stuff as their scenes with ribaldry and lard their lines with scurrilous taunts and jests, so that whatsoever even in the spring of his years he has presented upon the private and public theatre, now in his autumn and declining age, he need not be ashamed of; and were it not that he is so far distant from this place, he would have been more careful in revising the former impressions and more circumspect about this than I can. In his absence, noble Lady, I have been emboldened to present these Works unto your Honour’s view and the rather because your honour is well acquainted with the Muses. In brief, fame as given out that your honour is the mirror of your sex, the admiration not only of this island, but of all adjacent countries and dominions, which are acquainted with your rare virtues and endowments. If your Honour shall vouchsafe to accept this work, I with my book am ready pressed and bound to be

Your truly devoted,

William Sheares.