The Careless Shepherdess

In 1656 the play was first published in quarto by the booksellers Richard Rogers and William Ley. Richards and Ley included with the play text "an Alphabeticall Catalogue of all such Plays that ever were Printed," which listed over 500 titles. In this era, booksellers were only beginning to issue catalogues of their own works; this attempt to catalogue the entire field of contemporary drama publishing was unprecedented. But not unemulated: in the same year The Old Law was published by Edward Archer, with an expanded catalogue listing 651 titles.^[5] In 1661 and 1671 the stationer Francis Kirkman printed his own expanded play lists. At a time when trained scholars at the Universities dismissed stage plays as beneath their notice, the tradesmen booksellers stepped in to make these first efforts to bring a kind of order to the field.

Unfortunately, their efforts were limited by a lack of resources and verifiable information. In these 17th-century playlists, the accuracy of the authorial attributions never rises above 50%. Later generations of scholars and commentators have been vocal in their criticisms as a result.

The 1656 quarto of The Careless Shepherdess also provides a preface, or "Praeludium," for the 1638 revival that may have been written by Richard Brome; it features a conversation among four figures — Spruce, a courtier, Spark, an Inns of Court man, Thrift, a London citizen, and Landlord, a country gentleman. The dialogue casts light on the theatrical conditions of the day, and is often quoted and discussed in the scholarly and critical literature on English Renaissance drama.^[6][7][8]