University of Virginia Library

I

Steevens' St. James's Chronicle letter, and Malone's response to it, are the two most important indications that Malone in 1778 did not use Warburton's list in compiling his own. Steevens prefaces his (inaccurate) transcription of Warburton's list as follows:

Clearly, then, Steevens—who had edited the 1778 Plays of William Shakspeare to which Malone contributed his "Attempt," and who had co-operated with Malone on the 1780 Supplement [23]—believed the list to have been previously unknown to Malone. And Malone's response to the letter, insofar as we know of it, is also significant; he clipped it out, noted on it that Steevens was the author, and inserted it into his personal, interleaved, annotated copy of Gerard Langbaine's An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford: L. L. for G. West and H. Clements, 1691),[24] correcting and annotating the list itself, and using it as a reference for at least one of his own annotations to Langbaine.[25] It thus seems unlikely that Warburton's list was in fact previously known to Malone.

This conclusion is supported by the existence of two other, obvious, major sources for Malone's knowledge in 1778 of his ten "Warburton" titles: the 1759 sale catalogue of Warburton's books and MSS,[26] and Malone's own annotated copy of Langbaine. The sale catalogue, indeed, provides today the first known recording of the title Demetrius and Marsina, which does not appear on Warburton's list; and though Malone could have used a now-lost source, or simply generally have known about Warburton's collection, the title on Malone's list suggestively appears in the identical form of the title in the catalogue. Malone's use of the catalogue thus becomes likely; and likelihood turns to virtual certainty when we note that the four titles immediately following Demetrius and Marsina on Malone's list are those also immediately following it in the sale catalogue.

• [from Malone's 1778 list][27]
• Demetrius and Marsina, or the imperial Impostor and unhappy Heroine, a tragedy—The Tyrant, a tragedy—The Queen of Corsica—The Bugbears—The Second Maid's Tragedy
• [from the 1759 sale catalogue][28]
• 210 Demetrius and Marsina, or the Imperial Impostor and Unhappy Heroine, a Tragedy, fol.
• 211 The Tyrant, a Tragedy, 4to
• 212 The Queene of Corsica, a Tragedy, written by Fran. Jaques 1642 —The second Mayden's Tragedy, Licens'd by the Duke of Buckingham, 31st Oct. 1611—The Buggbears, a Play, very ancient, fol.

Malone may have used a transcript of this part of the catalogue, or notes made from it, rather than the catalogue itself; note the different order, in the two lists, of The Second Maiden's Tragedy and The Bugbears, the slightly different Second Maiden's Tragedy titles,[29] and the omission by Malone of some of the information included in the catalogue—though this omission could have been due to Malone's haste or carelessness, especially since the three plays not listed identically in the catalogue and in Malone's list are grouped together in the catalogue as one lot (being bound together in one folio volume). Certainly, however, the catalogue appears to have been Malone's direct or indirect source. Coincidence does not seem a plausible explanation of why Malone's last four play-titles named above, if taken from Warburton's list, where they do not appear together, should have appeared on Malone's list with Demetrius and Marsina in a five-title grouping almost identical to that found in the sale catalogue.[30]

Four of Malone's nine "Warburton-list" titles, plus Demetrius and Marsina, can thus easily be accounted for without reference to Warburton's list (or collection itself); what of the remaining five? One, Massinger's Believe As You List, may be from Chetwood's British Theatre (1750);[31] one, The Nobleman, as Freehafer himself points out (p. 160), comes from accounts of court payments, as Malone groups it together with four other, non-Warburton play-titles, all with an acting date of 1613. No performance dates are included in Warburton's list.[32] And the remaining three titles are to be found together in a source very close indeed to Malone: in his own annotated copy of Langbaine, in annotations preceding, in date, Malone's 1778 essay. In 1777 (the date is provided by Malone himself[33]), Malone copied into his interleaved Langbaine previous annotations to the Account made by three other students of the early English drama: the antiquary William Oldys (1696-1761), the editor Thomas Percy (1729-1811), and Malone's then friend (and later, enemy), the Shakespearean editor George Steevens (1736-1800). To each copied note Malone appended the initial of its original author (O, P, or S), signing his own contributions—then and in subsequent years—with an M. And Oldys' notes, as copied by Malone in 1777, refer to the three Malone "Warburton-list" titles so far unaccounted

for (as well as to Tourneur's The Nobleman and to The Second Maiden's Tragedy): the titles of three plays supposedly by William Rowley, which Malone lists together in the 1778 "Attempt" in the very form and order of the titles in Oldys' note. The three plays do not appear together in Warburton's list.

• [from Malone's 1778 list][34]
• The honoured Loves—The Parliament of Love—and Nonsuch, a comedy; all by William Rowley
• [Oldys' note as copied by Malone][35]
• Rowley wrote the Honoured Loves— The Parliament of Love—and Nonsuch a comedy; but I know not if they were ever printed, and the MSS. are destroyed.

Malone's spelling of Rowley's Honourable Loves [36] as Honoured Loves, which Freehafer takes (p. 160) to be Malone's misreading of Warburton's "The Honr. Loves," in which "the superior letter resembles a 'd',"[37] and therefore as a proof of Malone's use of Warburton's list, is thus doubtless a direct copying by Malone of the Honoured Loves of Oldys' note.[38] Elsewhere in the "Attempt" Malone makes explicit his use of Oldys' Langbaine annotations: in, for example, a footnote reference to Oldys' comments on The Second Maiden's Tragedy.[39] And Malone's list may be indebted to Oldys in two other ways as well. Malone's title-form of Second Maid's Tragedy, found both in his list and in his later reference to the play (p. 336, 1778 ed.), is that of Oldys' Langbaine note, which therefore may have caused Malone's departure from the title-form, Second Maiden's Tragedy, of the Warburton sale catalogue.[40] And Oldys probably also provided Malone with Tourneur as author of The Nobleman—even though Malone first took the title itself from elsewhere.[41]

All the "Warburton" plays mentioned by Malone in 1778 can thus be found in sources demonstrably known to Malone in 1778, without reference to Warburton's list, and moreover appear in Malone's list in groups and in title-forms strongly indicating their derivation from these other sources.[42]

And, indeed, it is difficult to believe that if Malone in 1778 had had access to Warburton's list he would not have made use of more titles from it. Freehafer suggests (p. 160) that Malone did not because he had reason to suspect that no other of the Warburton plays had survived in MS; but in fact Malone's 1778 list includes plays for the possible existence of which Malone had only the slimmest evidence, and it thus seems most unlikely that Malone would have rejected over forty titles from Warburton's list, if he had known of them. Nor is Freehafer correct in stating (p. 160) that no Warburton-list plays appear in additions to Malone's list after 1778, and in taking this as an indication that in 1778 Malone had considered the other Warburton titles and rejected them as possible survivals; The Woman's Plot, which appears in Warburton's list, was added to Malone's in the 1780 Supplement.[43]