University of Virginia Library

A Broadside Prologue by Farquhar
by
Shirley Strum Kenny

A prologue by playwright George Farquhar published as a half-sheet broadside in October 1706 and never yet republished with his works provides an unquestionable addition to the Farquhar canon. The piece is entitled THE | PROLOGUE | Spoken by Mr. WILKS, | At the Opening of the THEATRE in the Hay-Market, | October the 15th, 1706. ∥ Written by Mr. Farquhar. ∥ It bears the imprint of Benjamin Bragg at the Raven in Pater-noster-row, the bookseller who published the first London edition of Farquhar's Stage-Coach in 1705. The one copy of this item that I have been able to find, the copy in the Houghton Library collection, contains on the verso a half-sheet bill printed for the government by Henry Hills in Black-Friars, near the Water-side, on 21 April 1708.[1] The greatest importance of the half-sheet is, of course, the discovery of a new theatrical poem by one of the major playwrights of the period, but the item also adds to the store of information on publication of theatrical literature at the turn of the eighteenth century and provides a footnote on the career of the piratical Henry Hills Jr.

Prologue and epilogues, an important part of the theater bill because audiences loudly demanded them, were published in several ways in Farquhar's day. Most frequently those written for premieres and once in a while later ones were printed with the plays they complemented; some, particularly occasional ones, appeared in miscellanies and literary periodicals; somewhat later they were inserted in newspapers. Farquhar himself was responsible for at least five prologues and epilogues published under his byline in editions of other writers' plays, two occasional ones published in his miscellany Love and Business in 1702, and one reprinted in the Poetical Courant No. 22 on 22 June 1706, not to mention the ones he wrote that were published with his own plays.

Separately published prologues and epilogues were unusual, if one can judge from the number that have survived. Survival is, of course, a some-what unreliable measure of the popularity of this mode of publication, for prologues and epilogues, like broadside ballads, theater tickets, and the big theater bills printed to be posted are the kind of literary artifacts that must have kindled fires more often than they lined libraries; further, those with

political significance would have stood a better chance of survival than those without. So survival figures are inevitably less reliable than they are for printed plays or other "literary" publications. From available evidence, however, Mary E. Knapp believes that prologues and epilogues, particularly occasional ones, were often printed separately in the Restoration, most frequently in the decade between 1678 and 1688 when their political virulence outweighed their literary merit, but separate publication declined after the first two decades of the eighteenth century.[2] Autrey Nell Wiley, in Rare Prologues and Epilogues 1642-1700, lists about seventy prologues and epilogues printed in 1681-1690 (in most cases a prologue and epilogue were printed on the recto and verso of one leaf); about ten for 1691-1700; about thirty for 1701-1710 (Farquhar's prologue is not among those listed); and six prologues and one epilogue for 1711-1720.[3] The most popular format, "the established mode from 1681 to 1700," according to Professor Wiley, was the folio half-sheet with a prologue printed on the recto, an epilogue on the verso, although in earlier years broadsides had been used.[4] In her list, however, she includes eight prologues and one epilogue published singly in 1701-1710, the decade in which Farquhar's broadside prologue appeared.

Separate publication, as opposed to other means of printing, suggests a particular interest in a prologue or epilogue that would make it worth the expense to turn it out; obviously occasional prologues would most often qualify for such treatment. Farquhar's prologue for the opening of the theater, with its theatrical rather than political satire, was most likely printed for immediate sale to play-goers. Perhaps it was ordered by the Haymarket company for distribution inside the playhouse on the night it was spoken; this was later the case with Nicholas Rowe's epilogue for Love for Love, spoken by Mrs. Barry at Thomas Betterton's benefit at the Drury Lane 7 April 1709 and, like Farquhar's piece, printed singly.[5]

The occasion was, certainly, an important one for the new Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket. Only eighteen months old, the theater had been conceived and built by John Vanbrugh, the architect not only of the building but of its financial scheme and its theatrical plans. It had opened 9 April 1705 with an opera called The Loves of Ergasto and had for the next season featured opera and "singing and dancing," interspersed with performances by Betterton's company previously housed at Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. In the fall of 1706 Vanbrugh entered an agreement with Owen Swiny, who, with the surprising approval of Christopher Rich, the manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, to whom Swiny owed £200, left the Drury Lane

company to become manager of the new theater, taking with him to join Betterton's troupe most of Rich's best actors, including Robert Wilks, Benjamin Johnson, John Mills, William Bullock, Theophilus Keen, Henry "Jubilee Dicky" Norris, Henry Fairbank, Anne Oldfield, and, after the season opened, Colley Cibber.[6] These were actors with whom Farquhar had close relationships; several—Wilks, Keen, Norris—had played with him when he was an actor at the Smock-Alley Theatre in Dublin; Wilks and Norris had made their reputations in his Constant Couple; Wilks was unquestionably his best friend; and not only had Oldfield apparently been his mistress at one time, but theatrical legend has it that he discovered her acting talents and introduced her to Vanbrugh who brought her to the stage.[7]

Despite its former policy of offering musical entertainment, the Queen's Theatre opened in 1706 determined to present good English plays, not foreign music. The policy must have appealed strongly to the actors who deserted Rich, for they felt that as czar of Drury Lane he had favored and overpaid the dancers, singers, and "exotic entertainers," many of whom were imported from France and Italy, while their own pay had habitually fallen in arrears.[8] In the 1705-1706 season the Drury Lane Company included twenty-seven actors and actresses, but there were twenty-nine singers, musicians, and dancers, including such foreign names as those of singers Joanna Maria and Mrs. de l'Epine, musicians Gasperini and Paisible, and dancers Cherrier, du Ruel and Mrs. du Ruel, Laforest, and Latourdy. By the 1706-1707 season the number of actors dropped to eleven while the number of singers and dancers stood at seventeen and more foreigners were among those employed.[9] The deserting actors had every reason to expect better treatment at the Queen's.

On 14 October and 15 October 1706 the new company advertised in the Daily Courant a performance of Dryden's Spanish Fryar to open the season, defiantly adding "Without Singing or Dancing." It is notable that the advertisement did not mention the new prologue by Farquhar, because it would unquestionably have been an inducement to come to the opening performance. Because prologues were so popular with audiences, the management apparently offered Farquhar, the most popular playwright affiliated with the Drury Lane Theater, a few guineas to contribute one for the occasion.[10] The omission of any reference to it in the advertisements suggests that it was ordered very late, perhaps after the copy was submitted for the 14 October advertisement which was routinely updated and rerun the next

day. All the plans for the opening were made in a hurry; Cibber says the actors' scheme of desertion was concerted and executed in a "very few Days" before the season opened.[11] Farquhar's prologue must have been composed at the eleventh hour; in Love and Business he himself speaks of his ability to write fast: "I have so natural a Propensity to Ease, that I cannot chearfully fix to any Study, which bears not a Pleasure in the Application, which makes me inclineable to Poetry above any thing else. . . . I ought to thank Providence that I can by Three Hours Study live One and Twenty with Satisfaction. . . ."[12] Wilks, not only Farquhar's closest friend but also a man jealous of his prerogatives as a speaker of prologues[13] and an actor noted for his efficiency in studying parts and his excellent memory,[14] was given the new lines to speak. If Farquhar's prologue were not completed until the morning of the 15th, it could have been memorized and printed broadside for that night's performance.[15]

To emphasize the actors' relief at being freed from Rich's tyranny, Farquhar used for his shaping metaphor a comparison of the theatrical battlefield of London with the theater of war in Europe. He likened Rich, the "Dramatick Prince of Drury-Lane," to Louis XIV, the actors fleeing before Rich's musical "Dragoons" to Louis's subjects and more specifically to the Camisars, France's persecuted Calvinists. He compared the subscription of £100 each from thirty "Persons of Quality" to build the theater[16] to the loan issued by the government[17] which enabled Marlborough to campaign in Europe in the spring and summer of 1706 when his forces conquered Turin and Ramillies and then marched triumphantly into Louvain, Belgium, Madrid, and Menin to free Europe from Louis's grasp. He then ended the piece with the traditional praise of Queen Anne.

The prologue reads:

The Houghton copy, which survived through a fluke of printing history, serves as a rare reminder of how much theatrical literature of Farquhar's period has vanished and how great the gaps in our knowledge of the program of the playhouse and of its writers' canons remain. It is an unsold copy that lay in the printing shop of Henry Hills Jr., when in 1708, with paper costs high and Hills's operation necessarily as inexpensive as possible, he printed on its verso a copy of a government half-sheet broadside, "A LIST of the Names of the Prisoners, English, | Scotch, and Irish taken on Board the Salisbury, by | Her Majesties Ship the Leopard, who were this After-|noon being the 21st of this Instant April, brought to | Newgate, in order to take their Tryals, and receive a | just Reward for their intended Villany. . . ." The imprint reads "LONDON: Printed by Henry Hills, in Black-Friars, near | the Water-side. 1708." The men had been captured on 14 March when, Sir George Byng's forces having chased the French fleet from the Firth of Forth, the men of the Leopard boarded the Salisbury, a ship previously seized from the English by the French, and captured more than 700 officers and men including some British Jacobites. The men were dispatched on board several ships and the nineteen men listed by Hills were brought to London to stand trial on 21 April, as the broadside shows, and committed to Newgate that day.[18] Their names ran in the Daily Courant 23 April, the list tallying with that printed by Hills except for some typographical errors and variant spellings (the Daily Courant printed Cusaac for Busaac, Pendergras for Prendergast, Burket for Burker, Fannon for Fannion, Macarty for Maccarty, etc.). Although I have not found an official document that includes the names, presumably Hills, printing for

the government, would have had the more nearly accurate list.

Hills's half-sheet was obviously ordered by the government to be posted in order to discourage would-be Jacobites; the list is followed by a sermon on the evils of Jacobitism:

Hills's relations with the government prior to his piracies of 1708-1710 which supposedly influenced passage of the Copyright Act of 1710 were distinctly strained.[19] His father Henry Hills Sr., a former Puritan and then Anglican who turned Catholic in the reign of James II, owned a share of the government printing patent which took effect in 1677, but when the old man's will was probated 21 January 1689, his eldest son Henry was turned off with twenty pounds, and the bulk of the estate went to his second wife Elizabeth, another Catholic, and her three children. Administrator of the will was Gilham Hills, Henry's full brother, also a printer, who thereby in effect succeeded to his father's share of the patent as King's Printer, which ran to 1707 and was renewed until 1740. Henry Jr. fought to break the will, petitioning the Crown 13 August 1691 on the grounds that the profits were going to recusants, Elizabeth and her children, and stating further that because Hills Sr. printed papist books the patent was forfeit before he made his will and therefore he could not bequeath it; he asked that a legitimate patent to him replace the illegitimate one inherited by Elizabeth Hills and her children. He petitioned again 9 February 1694, and a third time 9 June 1698, but in vain. Soon after the probate of the father's will, on 25 April 1689, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Hills Jr. on suspicion of high treason for reasons not now known, but he was never convicted. Hills had one other connection with the government: he served as "messenger, appointed to inspect printing presses for the discovery of unlicensed books, pamphlets, and newspapers" according to a warrant issued 2 September 1689 and continued in this function for at least three years.[20] But his relationship with the government between that time and the Copyright Act of 1710 remains a mystery.

The list of prisoners printed in 1708 leaves no doubt that if Hills, who omitted Junior from his imprint after his father's death, never succeeded to the patent, he at least indirectly did government printing. A. F. Johnson mentions that an earlier patentee, Christopher Barker, farmed out his share of the patent to George Sawbridge, Henry Hills Sr., and others.[21] Obviously a later patentee, perhaps Edward Brewster or John Williams but probably not Gilham Hills because of the family rift, farmed out work to Hills. The frequency of Hills's work for the government printing office can not be gauged, since so few bills for posting or comparable items remain extant, but there can be no question that Hills did, under his own imprint, work for the Queen's Printer. He also indulged in cheap piracies, Velz believes perhaps as early as the 1690's;[22] by 1707 he had certainly printed at least a few;[23] and by 1709 he was notorious for cheap pirated editions of poems and sermons. But on 21 April 1708 he worked as a job printer at least indirectly in Queen Anne's employ. His list was tucked away by someone whose interest in the "Unfortunate Gentlemen" of the Salisbury led to the preservation of Farquhar's prologue.