In the spring of 1887, Mr. Lowell read, at the Lowell Institute in
Boston, six lectures on the Old English Dramatists. They had been
rapidly written, and in their delivery much was said extemporaneously,
suggested by the passages from the plays selected for illustration of
the discourse. To many of these passages there was no reference in the
manuscript; they were read from the printed book. The lectures were
never revised by Mr. Lowell for publication, but they contain such
admirable and interesting criticism, and are in themselves such genuine
pieces of good literature, that it has seemed to me that they should be
given to the public.[1]