To Her Royal Highness, the princess.

Madam,

That high station, which by your birth you hold above the people, exacts from everyone, as a duty, whatever honours they are capable of paying to Your Royal Highness. But that more exalted place to which your virtues have raised you, above the rest of princes, makes the tribute of our admiration and praise rather a choice more immediately preventing that duty.

The public gratitude is ever founded on a public benefit and what is universally blessed is always a universal blessing. Thus, from yourself, we derive the offerings which we bring and that incense which arises to your name only returns to its original and but naturally requires the parent of its being.

From hence it is that this poem, constituted on a moral whose end is to recommend and to encourage virtue, of consequence has recourse to Your Royal Highness’s patronage, aspiring to cast itself beneath your feet and declining approbation, till you shall condescend to own it and vouchsafe to shine upon it as on a creature of your influence.

It is from the example of princes that virtue becomes a fashion in the people, for even they who are averse to instruction, will yet be fond of imitation. But there are multitudes, who never can have means, nor opportunities of so near an access, as to partake of the benefit of such examples. And to these, tragedy, which distinguishes itself from the vulgar poetry, by the dignity of its characters, may be of use and information. For they who are at that distance from original greatness, as to be deprived of the happiness of contemplating the perfections and real excellencies of your Royal Highness’s person in your court, may yet behold some small sketches and imaginings of the virtues of your mind, abstracted and represented in the theatre.

Thus, poets are instructed and instruct, not alone by precepts which persuade, but also by examples which illustrate. Thus is delight interwoven with instruction, when not only virtue is prescribed, but also represented.

But if we are delighted with the liveliness of a feigned representation of great and good persons and their actions, how must we be charmed with beholding the persons themselves? If one or two excelling qualities, barely touched in the single action and small compass of a play, can warm an audience, with a concern and regard even for the seeming success and prosperity of the actor, with what zeal must the hearts of all be filled for the continued and increasing happiness of those who are the true and living instances of elevated and persisting virtue? Even the vicious themselves must have a secret veneration for those peculiar graces and endowments, which are daily so eminently conspicuous in Your Royal Highness and, though repining, feel a pleasure which in spite of envy they perforce approve.

If in this piece, humbly offered to Your Royal Highness, there shall appear the resemblance of any one of those many excellencies which you so promiscuously possess, to be drawn so as to merit your least approbation, it has the end and accomplishment of its design. And however imperfect it may be in the whole, through the inexperience or incapacity of the author, yet, if there is so much as to convince Your Royal Highness that a play may be with industry so disposed, in spite of the licentious practice of the modern theatre, as to become sometimes an innocent and not unprofitable entertainment, it will abundantly gratify the ambition and recompense the endeavours of

Your Royal Highness’s most obedient and most humbly devoted servant,

William Congreve.