ABSTRACT
From the Prologue to The Careless Lovers: A Comedy (1673) by Edward Ravenscroft (1644–1707) of the Middle Temple, whose comedy The Citizen turn’d Gentleman (1672) had been ridiculed by Dryden in the ‘Epilogue to Secret-Love Spoken by the Women’ (Covent Garden Drolery, 1672) and the Prologue to The Assignation (1673). Ravenscroft says in his ‘Epistle to the Reader’ that his lines were ‘Written in Requital to the Prologue, before the Assignation. … But Devils of Wit are not very dangerous, and so we both sleep in whole Skins.’
