 | |  |
Notes
Printed in vol. 1 of The Plays of William Shakspeare, ed. S. Johnson and G. Steevens, 2nd. ed., 10 vols. (1778).
Plays 1778, pp. 330-31. The titles include, for example, Valentine and Orson, Ninus and Semiramis, and Cardenio.
David Erskine Baker, Biographia Dramatica, rev. [Isaac Reed], 2 vols. (London: Rivingtons et al., 1782): see Malone's own interleaved, annotated, four-vol. copy (now in the Bodleian Library), vol. 2 (Reed's vol. no., here and in subsequent references to Malone's Biog. Dram. copy), pp. 429 and 431 in the light of Malone's n. opposite p. 428. For Malone as a general contributor to Biog. Dram., see vol. 2, Malone's notes opposite pp. 1 and 428, and p. 439.
See Plays 1778, p. 289, n. e, and p. 306, n. i. Malone might have used George Steevens' extracts from the Register rather than the Register itself.
[William Rufus Chetwood,] The British Theatre (Dublin 1750); see Plays 1778, p. 275, n. f. For examples of other sources used by Malone, see Plays 1778, p. 278, n. l., and p. 285, n. y.
"John Warburton's Lost Plays," SB, 23 (1970), 154-64. The article is chiefly concerned with the credibility of Warburton's list and memorandum.
For the traditional account of Warburton's list and collection, see W. W. Greg, "The Bakings of Betsy," Library, Ser. 3, 2 (1911), 225-59, rpt. with corrections and additional notes in W. W. Greg, Collected Papers, ed. J. C. Maxwell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 48-74.
Bibliotheca Manuscripta Lansdowniana, 2 vols. ([London:] Leigh and S. Sotheby sale catalogue, 1807), under Lot 849.
The Plays of William Shakspeare, [ed. George Steevens (assisted by Reed),] 4th. ed. (1793), I, 615-17.
The Nobleman, The honoured Loves, The Parliament of Love, Nonsuch, Believe as you List, The Tyrant, The Queen of Corsica, The Bugbears, The Second Maid's Tragedy: titles spelled here as in Malone's list.
The St. James's Chronicle, 16-18 May, 1780, p. 2. Steevens was identified as the author by Malone; see below.
Malone's Langbaine—in 4 vols.—is now in the Bodleian Library (call no.: Malone 129 to 132); for the letter, see vol. 4 (Malone's vol. no., here and in subsequent references to Malone's Langbaine), opposite p. 525. (Malone incorrectly dates the letter June 1780: but perhaps this is the date when he clipped out the letter.)
The catalogue was apparently available in Malone's day; it is cited, for e.g., in Censura Literaria, V, 276-77.
Bibliotheca Warburtoniana ([London:] catalogue of books and MSS to be sold by Samuel Paterson, at Essex House, 1759), lots 210-12, under "Miscellaneous Manuscripts," Tuesday 20 November.
It might also be noted that in Biog. Dram. Malone cites Demetrius and Marsina as sold with Warburton's books and MSS about 1759; see Malone's copy, II, 430.
Chetwood, p. 42; Malone cites Chetwood on Believe As You List in a note to his Langbaine, vol. 3, opposite p. 359.
For Malone's apparent Nobleman source, see Freehafer, p. 160, and the Chamber accounts in MS. Rawlinson A 239, printed in Malone Society Collections VI, ed. David Cook assisted by F. P. Wilson (1962), p. 56. The MS accounts do not, however, give an author for the play; and Malone may have found Tourneur's name where he found 3 other of his "Warburton" titles—in notes by the antiquary William Oldys (see below).
Malone's Langbaine, vol. 3, opposite p. 428. Oldys' original note is to be found in his own copy of Langbaine (now in the British Museum, C. 28. g. 1), p. 428: "He [William Rowley] writ The Hond. Loves— The Parliament of Love and Nonsuch, a comedy, but I know not if they were ever printed and the MSS are destroyd." (Oldys knew of Warburton's collection and its destruction—see his Langbaine, pp. 212, 428, 505—but mentions no Warburton plays other than these 3, The Second Maiden's Tragedy, and The Nobleman, and so may not have seen Warburton's list; and he apparently knew about the collection only after its real or supposed loss [see his Langbaine, pp. 428, 505].) Malone added two notes of his own to his Langbaine, following the copied Oldys note: one giving the 1660 Stationers' Register listing of the 3 "Rowley" plays, the second stating that the 3 belonged formerly to Warburton and were destroyed by his servant. Presumably, given the evidence for Malone's ignorance in 1778 of Warburton's list, the second note must be dated 1780 or later.
Honourable is the word found in the title's Stationers' Register entry of 29 June 1660, and in Warburton's list; see A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers; from 1640-1708 A.D., [ed. G. E. B. Eyre,] 3 vols. (1913-14), II, 271 [honob e], and "Bakings of Betsy," p. 230 [Honr.].
It is true, however, that Warburton's superior letter is misleading; Steevens, for e.g., in his St. James's Chronicle transcription of Warburton's list, reads it as a 'd'.
Plays 1778, p. 336 and n. p. Oldys' original note is to be found in his Langbaine, p. 212, and is copied into Malone's Langbaine, vol. 2, between pp. 212 and 213. For other explicit 1778 uses by Malone of Oldys' notes to Langbaine, see Plays 1778, p. 294, n. p, and p. 321, n. z.
The Stationers' Register entry of what is probably The Second Maiden's Tragedy, on 9 Sept. 1653, reads "The Maids Tragedie, 2d part." (Eyre, I, 429), and Warburton's list, "2d. pt. Maidens Trag̃." ("Bakings of Betsy," p. 232).
By 1803 Malone had bought the surviving MS of The Parliament of Love (see Kathleen Marguerite Lea, ed., The Parliament of Love (1929), pp. v-viii); by at least 1790 he apparently knew of its existence (see his 1790 Shakespeare ed., I, pt. 2, 227; but see also below, n. 44, on Malone's 1778 reference to The Second Maiden's Tragedy as extant). Freehafer assumes (p. 160) that Malone owned the MS by 1778; but this cannot be assumed. Certainly Malone did not list it, in 1778, as definitely extant—though consistency is not one of the chief virtues of the "Attempt" in any of its editions. (Cf. Malone's reference in 1780 to his ownership of The Telltale: Supplement, I, 78, n.)
The matter of Malone's ignorance in 1778 of Warburton's list may seem to be complicated by his inconsistency in references to The Second Maiden's Tragedy (one of the plays in the vol. to which Warburton's list was prefixed). Though in his 1778 listing of unpublished plays, pp. 330-31, he implies that SMT is not known to be extant, on p. 336 he refers to SMT as extant. Had he therefore heard after all, by 1778, about the survival of the SMT MS, or seen the play (and thus also Warburton's list)? Probably not; more likely he is on p. 336 simply working from the existence of the SMT MS in Oldys' time, since here he is explicitly using Oldys' lengthy SMT note. Certainly he does not seem to have seen the MS (and its vol.) himself, for he says nothing about the play which cannot be found in Oldys. It might also be mentioned that in the 1785 Plays (see n. 8, above) Malone's "Attempt" was tidied up by the placement of SMT with Timon and Sir Thomas More, in Malone's list of unpublished plays (I, 341-42), as a MS still extant—but the other two Warburton plays of Lansdowne 807 (though written about by Steevens in 1780) were still not included there, nor were they included as extant in the "Attempt" of Malone's 1790 ed. of Shakespeare's works (I, pt. 2, 366). Reed explicitly corrects this omission in his 1793 ed. of the Plays (I, 615-16).
For Steevens' contributions, see, for e.g., Malone's notes to his Biog. Dram. copy, vol. 1, opposite p. 404, and vol. 2, opposite p. 118.
St. James's Chronicle, 1780: 18-20 May, p. 2 (Second Maiden's Tragedy); 20-23 May, p. 4 (Queen of Corsica); 23-25 May, p. 2 (Bugbears). These letters, like the one of 16-18 May, are unsigned; but the author is that of the 16-18 May letter, and Malone in fact identifies Steevens as author of the 18-20 May letter on the copy of this letter which he inserts into his Langbaine, vol. 2, between pp. 212 and 213. (Malone quotes from this letter in his later "An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage," included in his 1790 ed. of Shakespeare's works [I, pt. 2 (letter quoted pp. 71-72)] and in later eds. of the Plays.)
See Malone's Biog. Dram. copy, II, 431, 433, 442, with reference to Malone's note opposite p. 428.
During this article's printing, I learned from Mr. Robert Nikirk of The Grolier Club Library that that Library's copy of the Warburton sale catalogue contains the auctioneer's invoice to Philip Carteret Webb for items purchased by Webb from the Warburton collection, and that the list of items includes the catalogue's lot 212—the present B. M. MS. Lansdowne 807. The manuscript volume thus passed from Warburton to Webb, and presumably was one of the manuscripts on paper sold by Webb's widow to Shelburne after Webb's death in 1771 (see the Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (1921-22), XX, 1019), as it does not appear in the 1771 Webb sale catalogue.
| | |