II
Malone thus almost certainly did not know, in 1778-80, of
Warburton's list and memorandum.[44]
What, then, of Freehafer's suggestion that Malone contributed to Reed's
Biographia Dramatica its information on Warburton's
list and on the surviving Warburton plays—Freehafer mentions (p.
161)
The Second Maiden's Tragedy and
The
Bugbears—of the volume to which Warburton's list was by
1759
prefixed? The play information could have come only from examination of
the MS volume itself. Freehafer is, of course, assuming that Malone had
seen the list and plays in 1778; but could Malone, after Warburton's list
was brought to his attention in May 1780, have investigated both the list
and the three plays of the volume, and have contributed accordingly to
Reed's edition? It seems not—for although, as Freehafer points out,
Malone was indeed a contributor to
Biographia Dramatica,
another contributor (whom Freehafer mentions but then ignores) was
George Steevens:
[45] the first
transcriber and presenter of Warburton's list, and the man who had actually
examined, by May 1780, not only the list but also the three surviving
Warburton plays of the (present) Lansdowne
807 volume. Steevens displayed his knowledge of these three plays in three
more letters to
The St. James's Chronicle of May 1780,
following his original letter with the transcript of Warburton's list, and gave
considerable detail on the text of
The Second Maiden's
Tragedy
(including extracts from the dialogue).
[46] The
Biographia
Dramatica
information on
The Second Maiden's Tragedy mainly comes
almost verbatim from
The St. James's Chronicle (and has,
until
very recently, been the basis of all our knowledge of the play's sources);
and
Biographia Dramatica entries on
The Queen of
Corsica and
The Bugbears do not
include—apart from
giving the location of the play MSS as the Earl of Shelburne's
library—anything beyond what Steevens wrote in
The St.
James's
Chronicle about those two works, except the provision of an author
for
The Bugbears (inexplicably
not in Steevens' letter on the play, but to be found in Steevens'
transcription of Warburton's list). The conclusion that Steevens was the
provider, directly or indirectly, of at least most of the
Biographia
Dramatica information on Warburton's plays and list is thus
inescapable. Malone does demonstrably provide a few pieces of information
from Warburton's list,
[47] but nothing
more than could have come simply from perusal of Steevens' transcription
of that list.
