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Notes
For information concerning Restoration prompt-books, see Edward A. Langhans' forthcoming Restoration Promptbooks (Southern Illinois University Press). See also Frederick S. Boas' edition of the manuscript prompt-book of Edward Howard's The Change of Crownes (1949).
John Wilson's The Cheats (1935); Rawlinson A.67.402 (Bodleian). A comparison with the autograph letters reveals that the Bodleian MS., which is a petition by John Wilson to the Council of State, is all in Wilson's hand.
Folger MS. V.b.109. In a letter to me dated 5 July 1977, C. D. Massey, Managing Director of Pickering & Chatto Ltd., stated that many of their early files had been destroyed, but if any information regarding Wilson's Belphegor is still extant, it will be forwarded to me. In The Playhouse of Pepys (1935), p. 226, the Reverend Montague Summers refers to a description of the Belphegor MS. "in a catalogue of Messr. Pickering and Chatto about 1910."
As early as 1935, the Reverend Montague Summers referred to a manuscript of John Wilson's Belphegor as "The author's original MS.," but he provided no evidence for this statement (The Playhouse of Pepys, 1935), p. 226. R. C. Bald, writing in "Shakespeare on the Stage in Restoration Dublin" (PMLA, 56 [1941], 372), not only recognized the copyist and three prompt hands in the manuscript, but also offered the hypothesis that "This manuscript . . . contains corrections in the text as well as a prologue and epilogue in what is apparently the hand of the author." Bald was also the first to connect the copyist hand with that of The Merry Wives fragment in the Smock Alley prompt-book once in the possession of Halliwell-Phillipps and now preserved at the Folger. William S. Clark asserted in The Early Irish Stage (1955), p. 82, that the Folger Belphegor MS. prompt-book has "textual corrections in the hand of the author."
I wish to thank Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Folger, for her assistance in locating Wilson's autograph letters.
Extracts from MS. 2505—Letters of John Wilson, National Library of Ireland, Dublin. The Keeper was unable, however, to trace the letter dated 17 January 1678/79. The photocopies of the letters are folio size and include the addressed envelopes.
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part 7, The Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde, Preserved at the Castle, Kilkenny, vol. 1 (1895), pp. 100-103. All scholars who have cited Wilson's letters have used as their source the printed volumes of the HMC. For example, Milton C. Nahm cites the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1st Series, vol. 1 when he refers to Wilson's letters (p. 21). A collation of the printed version of these letters with the manuscript copies reveals substantial errors in transcription. The HMC editor expanded all abbreviations and contractions, and modernized some of the punctuation and orthography so that the idiosyncracies of Wilson's writing style are significantly transformed. For example, the original spellings "beleive" and "breifly" are changed in the printed version to "believe" and "briefly"; also, the modernized punctuation distorts Wilson's original pattern of a semi-colon followed by a word beginning with a capital letter. Occasionally, even an entire word is changed or omitted.
An History of the Life of James Duke of Ormonde, From His Birth in 1610, to his Death in 1688, 3 vols. (1736), pp. i-ii.
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormonde, K. P., preserved at Kilkenny Castle, New Series, vol. 1 (1902), p. iii; vol. 8 (1920). The New Series includes eight volumes.
Wilson was in Ireland during both of these periods. I tend to agree with Gwynne Blakemore Evans that the 1677-78 season seems most likely and is supported by all the evidence to date (stated in his 1974 letter to Laetitia Yeandle). For the date of the London production, see Emmett L. Avery and Arthur H. Scouten, eds., The London Stage 1660-1800: Part I: 1660-1700 (1965), p. 382.
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