[BRYCE] A:RARE FIND IN THE CANADIAN ARCHIVES 
Qt 
to write a prologue to the performance, but the prologue, spoken by 
Theophilus Cibber, was a satire throughout and must have hurt poor 
Dennis had he not been too old to comprehend its spirit. The closing 
lines show its nature, 
“Tf there’s a critic of distinguished rage, 
If there’s a senior who contemns this age, 
Let him to-night his just assistance lend 
And be the eritic’s, Briton’s, old man’s friend.” 
Antony Henley to whom Dennis dedicated the drama, Liberty 
Asserted, was a graduate of Oxford and a friend of Lord Dorset and 
Lord Sunderland. He was a politician and sat in Parliament for 
Andover from 1698 to 1700, and later for Weymouth and Melcombe 
Regis. He was one of the literary circle who welcomed Swift when he 
came from Ireland to London. 
A musician, Henley played on several instruments with skill and 
was regarded as an authority on music. He was a patron of the Purcells 
and to him the younger Purcell dedicated his work, “Brutus Alba.” 
Dennis says in his dedication to Henley, “The play owes its birth 
and its very being to you, for it was you, Sir, who gave the happy hint 
upon which the poem was founded.” 
The tragedy, Liberty Asserted, was played successfully in the 
New Theatre, Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in 1704. This theatre was 
opened under the management of Betterton, the tragedian, in 1695, 
with a brilliant galaxy of actors and actresses. The personnel of this 
company was nearly the same as that which enacted Liberty Asserted 
in 1704. 
Dennis says in his preface, that he owed much to Betterton and 
to Southerne, the dramatist, for advice in the construction of the drama 
and preparing it for the stage. 
The tragedy had its historical setting in the wars between the 
English and the Iroquois on the one hand and the French and Hurons 
on the other. 
The Dramatis Persone were as follows:— 
Frontenac, Governor of New France. 
Miramont, kinsman to Frontenac. 
Beaufort, General of the English who came to the assistance of the 
Iroquois. 
Ulamar, General of the Five Nations. 
Zephario, Head of the Angians, one of the Five Nations. 
Arimat, an angian 
Two Ambassabors. 
Officers, Guards, Messengers. 
Sakia, Mother of Ulamar. 
Irene, Daughter of Zephario. 
Okima, Confidant to Sakia. 
