ABSTRACT
Date and publication. ‘To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve, On His COMEDY, call’d The Double-Dealer’ was first printed (sigs. a2r-a3v) in Tonson’s first quarto edition of Congreve’s play, advertised in the London Gazette of 4-7 December 1693, but dated 1694. In a letter to William Walsh of 12 December 1693 (with which a copy of The Double-Dealer was included, fresh from the press), D. wrote that his ‘verses’ had been ‘written before the play was acted’ and that he had ‘neither alterd them’ nor his ‘opinion of the play’ subsequently (Letters 63). The Double-Dealer is mentioned as forthcoming in the Gentleman’s Journal for February 1693, probably went into rehearsal in September, and was probably first performed in early November (see William Congreve, The Double-Dealer, edited by J. C. Ross (1981) xxx). It is referred to as a ‘new play’, along with D.’s poem, in the Gentleman’s Journal of November 1693 (probably published December). D.’s poem was not reprinted in the poet’s lifetime.
