Published here for the first time, The Gipsy Prince (Haymarket, 24 July 1801), was the collaboration of Thomas Moore who composed the libretto and lyrics and Michael Kelly who provided the musical score. The musical comedy was performed for ten nights, the second longest run of Haymarket's summer season. John Larpent, the Examiner of Plays, who ought to have censored the representation of Irish protest, had not recognized the ploy of introducing the Irish under English rule as Gipsies during the Spanish Inquisition. That artifice was immediately evident in Michael Kelly's Irish brogue in performing the title role. The play could not be revived the following season, but the publisher John Roach supported Moore by publishing, not the play, but the hoaxing "source" from which Moore pretended to have derived his play: The Gipsy Prince; or, The Loves of Don Sebastian de Nurillo, and the Fair Antonia (London: J. Roach. 1801). With an introduction by Frederick Burwick, this edition includes his transcription of the previously unpublished manuscript, the prose narrative ostensibly translated from the Spanish, the sheet music as published by Michael Kelly, recordings of the overture and songs as performed under the musical direction of Stephen Pu, and a variorum of the lyrics to facilitate side-by-side comparisons of all versions of the songs. The edition also provides page-by-page images of the original materials.

Frederick Burwick, Research Professor at UCLA, has taught courses on Romantic drama and directed student performances of a dozen plays. Author and editor of thirty books and over one hundred thirty articles, his research is dedicated to problems of perception, illusion, and delusion in literary representation and theatrical performance. His Illusion and the Drama (Penn State, 1991) analyzes affective theories of the drama from the Enlightenment through the Romantic period. His Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination (Penn State, 1996) won the Barricelli Book of the Year Award of the International Conference on Romanticism. He has been named Distinguished Scholar by both the British Academy (1992) and the Keats-Shelley Association (1998). Recent monographs include Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting (Cambridge UP, 2009) and Playing to the Crowd: London Popular Theatre, 1780-1830 (Palgrave, 2011).

Justin Tonra was Technological Editor on The Gipsy Prince and determined the encoding methodology for the edition. He and Deborah K. Wright TEI-encoded and proofread the edition, with assistance from students at the Inititiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture at Texas A & M University (IDHMC). Laura Mandell, Director of IDHMC, oversaw the encoding of the edition and developed the XSL transformations that transformed the files into HTML. David Rettenmaier and Michael Quilligan, co-site managers at Romantic Circles, did final design and encoding work to conform the files to the style of Romantic Circles. The banners for this edition were designed by Michael Quilligan and feature in the background Jacques Callot's "Gypsies on the Road" (1604).

Claire Connolly (University College Cork), Julia Wright (Dalhousie University), and the late Jane Moody (University of York) have provided advice at various stages in preparing this edition. Thanks are also due to Stephen Pu, Musical Director, and the recording cast: Autumn Burdick, James Burdick, Michael Elliott, Sarah Harrell, Ian Martyn, Leo Martyn, Jenna Pinkham, Yuko Shiina.