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Notes
Approximately two-thirds of the known extant copies of O1 are of the 1721 issue. I have examined the Bodleian, Cambridge, and BM copies of O1 (1721), as well as Xerox and microfilm copies obtained from the Texas, Pennsylvania, Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Princeton, Huntington, Folger Shakespeare, and Newberry libraries. I have examined only a single copy (belonging to the John Rylands library) of the rarer 1722 issue, but the Newberry, Wisconsin, Yale, Chicago, and Northwestern libraries kindly provided bibliographic descriptions of their copies.
The Post-Boy, November 9-11, 11-14, 14-16, and December 16-19; also The Daily Courant, November 10, 13, 15, 17, and December 18, 20.
I have collated thirteen copies of O1 (listed in note 3), and eight copies of Q1 (BM, Bodleian, Cambridge, Leicester, Rutgers, Pennsylvania State, Kentucky, and Stanford).
In John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (1812), I, 217, the 1721 Plays are described as "beautifully printed."
London Stage, Part 2, 1700-1729, ed. Emmett L. Avery (1960), p. 608. The play was apparently never published: see William H. Irving, John Gay, Favorite of the Wits (1940), p. 189.
Probably by John Mottley, the List was appended to Thomas Whincop's Scanderbeg (1747). Mottley's testimony is not entirely correct: though Cibber's Refusal is, like Thomas Wright's Female Vertuoso's (1693), an adaptation of Molière's Les Femmes Sçavantes, it is not "partly taken" from Wright's play, but rather derives independently from the common Molière source. Mottley's word on the question of Gay's authorship, however, has been generally accepted. D. E. Baker (The Companion to the Playhouse [1764], I, s. v., No Fools Like Wits) also gives the play to Gay, and agrees it was acted "in Opposition to Mr. Cibber's Refusal." These details are followed by the revised Biographia Dramatica (1812), III, 86; Irving (op. cit., p. 188) also accepts the attribution, though he argues that Gay's version must have contained more original material than the Biographia Dramatica seems to imply.
The Daily Post for January 16 announced a subscription for "Two Volumes of PLAYS, Written by Mr. Cibber . . . Vol. II containing . . . V. The Refusal; or, The Ladies Philosophy; a new Comedy now in Rehearsal."
Gay and Cibber had long been enemies: for the background to their quarrel, and for Cibber's satire in The Refusal on Gay and his friends, see my note, "The Scriblerians and the South Sea Bubble: a Hit by Cibber," R.E.S., 24, No. 96 (1973), 452-458.
Mottley's List, p. 197. The playhouse disturbances were probably connected with politics: cf. Baker, op. cit., I, s. v., The Refusal; John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 (1832), III, 49; and Cibber's Apology, ed. R. W. Lowe (1889), II, 189.
John Dennis was to continue his attack on The Refusal in The Causes of the Decay and Defects of Dramatic Poetry (1725?): see The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward Niles Hooker (1943), II, 281.
If indeed there was a "first edition" of this work it is apparently not extant. According to Ralph Straus (The Unspeakable Curll: Being some Account of Edmund Curll, Bookseller; to which is added a full List of his Books [1927], p. 245) Curll had reprinted Wright's play in 1717, entitling it The Female Virtuosoes, or Witty Ladies. Straus comments vaguely, "I am not sure of the date of this first (Curll) edition. I am not even certain that the title is correct. Breval seems to have had something to do with it." I have been unable to locate a copy of this work.
See The Post-Boy for February 23-25, and March 9-11; The Daily Post for April 28, May 5; The Daily Courant, May 10, 17.
The cost of a subscription to the Plays was not advertised, but later the two-volume set retailed for the large sum of "1 l. 15 s." (see The Daily Post, February 2, 1722). The lushness of the edition, "Gold besmear'd / In Quarto Royal," with "fair vermillion'd Leaves" was ridiculed in The Weekly Journal or Saturday's Post for March 3, 1722.
Curll here alludes either to his jailing in 1716, ordered by Westminster after he printed an unauthorized version of Winton's state trial, or to the drubbing given him in the same year by the boys of Westminster School (he had printed without permission an oration by the School's Captain on the death of Dr. Robert South). See Straus, op. cit., pp. 65-76.
Though his letter was not published in Mist's Journal until November 25. Mist apologized for the delay in a prefatory note to Cibber's letter and Curll's rejoinder (both apparently sent in to Mist by Curll): "I heartily beg Pardon of my good Friend Mr. C—rll, for delaying the Publication of two little Epistles he was so kind as to send me, to adorn my Journal with; assuring him, this Misfortune is owing entirely to an Excess of Care, in laying up these Letters so safely that I have not been able to find them again, till after a Month's strict Search; and not to any Negligence in obeying his Commands, which I shall always receive with Pleasure."
According to Nichols (Literary Anecdotes, III, 249n.), "The Rule in general observed among Printers is, that when a Book happens not to be ready for publication before November, the date of the ensuing year is used." It is observable that some printers followed this practice at the time the octavo Refusal was issued; for example, S. Briscoe's edition of Sedley's Works, advertised as "This Day is publish'd" in The Post-Boy for December 2-5, 1721, bears the date 1722 on its title-page (BM copy).
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