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Excerpt from Mary, Queen of Scots: A Drama in Verse, in Two Periods; Eight Scenes IT is unlikely that Schiller's Mary Stuart, with which, in numerous versions and adaptations, the names of Rachel, Ristori, Janauschek, and Modjeska have been linked, will ever be transcended; this, despite the accu sations that have been brought against it by the hyper critical. One of these is that the work is historically inaccurate, notably in the great garden scene. This, however, evokes the question as to what historical play is historically accurate? In the making of the present work, numerous docu ments, diaries, plays, and other literary treatments of the story of the unfortunate Mary Stuart have been examined, including the memoirs of James Melvil (ccv ering his service as Secretary to Mary, in France, while she was still Dauphine and, afterward, while she reigned there), and Lord Bacon's guarded summing up of her rival's character in his I n F clicam Memoriam Elizabethae. Their testimony, and that of Brant6me, and others, is that of living witnesses. The result of reading it in the present author's mind has been in creasing reverence for the accuracy of the German poet's drama. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.