Event Comment: Dryden to
Walsh, 12 Dec. 1693: Your Critique, by your description of its bulk, will be to large for a preface to my Play, which is now studying; but cannot be acted till after
Christmasse is over. I call it
Love Triumphant; or, Nature will prevaile:...I have remembered you to all your friends; and in particular to
Congreve; who sends you his play, as a present from him selfe, by this conveyance; & much desires the honour of being better known to you. His
Double Dealer is much censured by the greater part of the Town: and is defended onely by the best Judges, who, you know, are commonly the fewest. Yet it gets ground daily, and has already been acted Eight times. The women thinke he has exposd their Bitchery too much; & the Gentlemen, are offended with him; for the discovery of their follyes: & the way of their Intrigues, under the notion of friendship to their Ladyes
Husbands. My verses, which you will find before it, were written before the play was acted, but I neither altered them nor do I alter my opinion of the play (
The Letters of John Dryden, pp. 62-63)