text:  We learn from it that Dryden had formed the ambitious design of writing on the difference betwixt the plays of his own age and those of his predecessors on the English stage in order to show in what parts of "dramatic poesy we were excelled by Ben Jonson--I mean humour and contrivance of comedy; and _in what we may justly claim precedence of Shakspeare and Fletcher_! namely in heroic plays