and not found in any other part of the volume. There
can be no doubt that whoever transcribed _Calisto_ transcribed also _The
Captives_. But from internal evidence alone--putting aside the testimony
afforded by the handwriting, and ignoring the entry in Sir Henry
Herbert's Office-Book--any competent reader could plainly perceive that
the play is Heywood's. In the very first scene--in the conversation
between Treadway and Raphael--we feel at once the charm of that hearty
"Christianism" which is never absent from Heywood's work. There is no
affectation in Heywood; he is always natural and simple, though
occasionally the writing sprawls.

Everybody knows the droll description in Heywood's _English Traveller_
of the "Shipwreck by Drink,"[45]--how some unthrift youths, carousing
deeply, chanced to turn their talk on ships and storms at sea; whereupon
one giddy member of the company suddenly conceived that the room was a
pinnace, that the sounds of revelry were the bawlings of sailors, and
that his unsteady footing was due to the wildness of the tempest; the
illusion spread among his companions, and a scene of whimsical confusion
followed. In _The Captives_, ii. 2, we have a similar conceit
suggested:--

_Scrib_. Such was the grace heaven sent us, who from perill,
Danger of lyfe, the extreamest of all extreames
Hathe brought us to the happy patronage
Of this most reverent abbott.

_Clowne_. What dangers? what extreames?

_Scrib_. From the sea's fury, drowneing; for last night
Our shipp was splitt, wee cast upon these rocks.

_Clowne_. Sayd in a jest, in deede! Shipwreck by land! I perceive
you tooke the woodden waggen for a ship and the violent rayne for
the sea, and by cause some one of the wheels broake and you cast
into some water plashe, you thought the shipp had splitt and you
had bene in danger of drowneinge.

The main story of _The Captives_ is borrowed from Plautus's _Rudens_,
many passages being translated almost word for word. It will be
remembered that in the _English Traveller_ Heywood was indebted to
another of Plautus's plays--the _Mostellaria_. I have not been able to
discover the source of the very curious underplot of _The Captives_.

The MS. from which the play is printed bears every appearance of being a
play-house copy. Numerous passages have been cancelled, seemingly (for
the most part) by the hand of some reviser. In most instances I have
restored