Your silence and attention, worthy friends, That your free spirits may with more pleasing sense Relish the life of this our active scene: To which intent, to calm this murmuring breath, We ring this round with our invoking spells; If that your listning ears be yet prepard To entertain the subject of our play, Lend us your patience. Tis Peter Fabell, a renowned Scholler, Whose fame hath still been hitherto forgot By all the writers of this latter age. In Middle-sex his birth and his abode, Not full seven mile from this great famous City, That, for his fame in sleights and magicke won, Was calde the merry Friend of Emonton. If any here make doubt of such a name, In Edmonton yet fresh unto this day, Fixt in the wall of that old antient Church, His monument remayneth to be seen; His memory yet in the mouths of men, That whilst he lived he could deceive the Devill. Imagine now that whilst he is retirde From Cambridge back unto his native home, Suppose the silent, sable visagde night Casts her black curtain over all the World; And whilst he sleeps within his silent bed, Toiled with the studies of the passed day, The very time and hour wherein that spirit That many years attended his command, And often times twixt Cambridge and that town Had in a minute borne him through the air, By composition twixt the fiend and him, Comes now to claim the Scholler for his due.

The Merry Devil of Edmonton lay unperformed from the early seventeenth century until the 1980s. Dating from around 1604, it was first published in 1608 and was performed at the Globe Theatre by the King's Men. With its scenes of magic, deer poaching, and abduction from a nunnery, The Merry Devil of Edmonton combines romance and comedy in a highly entertaining way, and was a favorite production on the seventeenth century stage.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Reproduction of the original.

*This Book is annotated (it contains a detailed biography of the author). *An active Table of Contents has been added by the publisher for a better customer experience. *This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors. The Merry Devil of Edmonton is an Elizabethan-era stage play; a comedy about a magician, Peter Fabell, nicknamed the Merry Devil. It was at one point attributed to William Shakespeare, but is now considered part of the Shakespeare Apocrypha.