Thomas Heywood (1574?-1641), a professional English actor and one of the most prolific playwrights of the seventeenth century, is most famous for his plays written about contemporary English life. The Fair Maid of the West recalls typical Elizabethan bourgeois literature, but its primary relationship is with all adventure narratives regardless of their era. This romantic comedy features vivid pictures of English seaport life and travel to exotic locales by English sea captains. The plot is filled with pirate battles, a shipwreck, courageous adventures, and devoted love. If boredom is the perennial disability of men, adventure stories are the perennial therapy, operating as a restorative by encouraging an intermission in the ordinary powers and interests of the mind.

John Payne Collier (1789–1883), one of the most controversial figures in the history of literary scholarship, pursued a double career. A prolific and highly influential writer on the drama, poetry, and popular prose of Shakespeare's age, Collier was at the same time the promulgator of a great body of forgeries and false evidence, seriously affecting the text and biography of Shakespeare and many others. This monumental two-volume work for the first time addresses the whole of Collier's activity, systematically sorting out his genuine achievements from his impostures. Arthur and Janet Freeman reassess the scholar-forger's long life, milieu, and relations with a large circle of associates and rivals while presenting a chronological bibliography of his extensive publications, all fully annotated with regard to their creditability. The authors also survey the broader history of literary forgery in Great Britain and consider why so talented a man not only yielded to its temptations but also persisted in it throughout his life.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.