 | |  |
George Farquhar's only farce, The Stage-Coach, generally recognized as singularly important in the early development of the afterpiece, has commonly been dated as first performed shortly before 2 February 1704 at Lincoln's Inn Fields, attributed to a collaboration between Farquhar and Peter Anthony Motteux, and reprinted, when at all, from the London 1705 edition. In 1932 W. J. Lawrence proposed a different chronology and theatrical history for the play: according to Lawrence, The Stage-Coach was first acted considerably earlier, before March 1702, and quite possibly appeared as an afterpiece to Farquhar's Sir Harry Wildair at Drury Lane in April 1701. The prologue and epilogue by Samuel Philips or Phillips, which Lawrence found printed in the 1775 edition of the Works edited by "Thomas Wilkes," he attributed to "some later benefit performance" of the ballad opera made from the farce and first performed in Dublin and London in 1730.[1] In his Bibliography of the Restoration Drama (1934), Montague Summers listed The Stage-Coach as opening at Drury Lane in 1701 (p. 20); The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (II, 753) set the opening at Lincoln's Inn Fields, circa the same year. For the most part, however, more recent theatrical historians, unconvinced, have continued to date the premiere shortly before 2 February 1704.[2]
No one has tried to unravel the complex textual problems presented by three distinct and unrelated texts found in the Dublin edition of 1704, the London one of 1705, and the text printed in the Dramatick Works of 1736. Indeed, no one has ever acknowledged that the textual problems beyond the
The intricacy of the problems of dating, authorship, textual authority, and the Phillips pieces, added to the absence of some seemingly essential bits of evidence, might well discourage inquiry. Nevertheless, solutions to at least some of the mysteries of The Stage-Coach indeed exist, shrouded in the cobwebs of theatrical and bibliographical history. In this paper I will show that (1) the play opened at Lincoln's Inn Fields sometime between fall 1700 and late February 1702; (2) the Dublin 1704 edition is most likely Farquhar's text, the London 1705 edition is not his, and the London 1735 edition is most probably taken from the Drury Lane promptbook; (3) Motteux was Farquhar's collaborator, but his contribution beyond the "Stage-Coach Song" and perhaps the translation of the French source is uncertain; (4) the Phillips prologue and epilogue date from a revival in the 1704-1705 season, perhaps on 16 October 1704.
| | |