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III. Authorship

Scholars have generally believed The Stage-Coach was a collaborative effort between Farquhar and Motteux, although they have usually attributed most of the work to Farquhar. Although three editions of the farce were published without Farquhar's byline (Q2, 1709a, 1709b), Motteux's name never appeared in an edition. The first reference to Motteux as collaborator appeared in a memoir published with the sixth edition of Farquhar's works in London in 1728 and reprinted in the next three editions of the Works (1736, 1742, 1760) and the sixth Dublin edition of the Poems, Letters, and Essays. This memoir claims Farquhar "assisted Mr. Motteux" in the composition. Thomas Whincop says Farquhar wrote "a great Part" of it, Motteux the rest.[20] The Biographia Dramatica says he was assisted in it by Motteux.[21] The first reference to the collaboration, then, occurred more than a quarter of a century after the premiere, twenty-one years after Farquhar died, and ten years after Motteux was murdered.

Barring reliable contemporary evidence of collaboration, one must look toward internal evidence and bibliographical clues of a collaborative effort. Some scholars have suggested that Motteux was responsible for the original translation from La Chapelle's Les Carrosses d'Orléans; Rothstein points out that he was a Frenchman noted for his talents at translation, and he was living in France in 1681 when La Chapelle's farce opened.[22] A translation by Motteux seems a likely possibility although Farquhar probably would not

have needed a translator, and he did not follow the original very closely anyway. The finished product owed relatively little to Les Carrosses d'Orléans other than the concept of farce via stage-coach travel plus the usual love triangle. Even the passengers are different, and, from the first, lines are loosely translated, double entendre supplied, etc. Both plot and dialogue are very far from La Chapelle's original; the play is an English farce, not merely a translation.

The "Stage-Coach Song" provides stronger grounds for tapping Motteux as a collaborator: the song's short lines, jingling rhythms, and feminine rhymes are entirely consistent with his style in other songs:

For example, the "Mountebank Song" is similar in form: Farquhar never wrote songs of this sort; "The Trifle" is instead witty and satirical, and he also wrote love songs and a few humorous ones such as drinking songs. But such jogging tunes were a kind of trademark of the indefatigable Frenchman.

Other details characteristic of Motteux also suggest he may well have participated. For example, at the bottom of the page of Dramatis Personae is noted "the Time of Action the same with that of Representation." Notations of the duration of a play's action occur in none of Farquhar's other plays, and they are not usual practice. However, they occur in the same place in five of Motteux's plays and operas.[23] Q2 has the flavor of the French scenic structure: nineteen of the twenty-five entrances begin a new page of the text, as the French divide plays into scenes according to entrances, even though the placement makes for oddly sized pages and no continuity in foremat, as a result. For example, page 10, with seven lines of dialogue, is followed by page 11, with twenty-three; page 32, with twenty-four lines of dialogue, is followed by page 33 with fifteen.

These mechanical peculiarities, like the biographical facts and publication

history, strongly suggest that Motteux was involved, but except for the song, nothing in the play suggests to which author it should be attributed. Farquhar's humorous suffering in Love and Business ("now I'm a dead Man, and the Stage-Coach may most properly be call'd my Herse, . . . .") suggests he was the major author. Rothstein's belief that Motteux was translator and songwriter is altogether plausible, but the exact nature and extent of the collaboration remains a mystery.