University of Virginia Library

Scholarship of early eighteenth-century British drama has long been impeded by a lack of basic information: How many original plays or adaptations actually appeared? What were the premiere dates? And who wrote (or might have written) the numerous anonymous plays? The London Stage, 1660-1800 (1960-68) provided substantial information toward resolving at least some of these questions, but I wish to offer major addenda and corrigenda to The London Stage concernings plays definitely or possibly performed in London between ca. 1697 and 1737. I gathered the information through intensive original research and reexamination of existing secondary sources, some of which have never been explored by theatrical scholars.

The results are extensive. Most welcome is the identification of perhaps as many as fifteen plays and one oratorio not recorded by the editors of The London Stage,[1] more than doubling the number of "lost" plays "found" since 1968.[2] Of these plays, I have uncovered six pieces. Nine plays and an

oratorio I have collected from little-known research efforts by others. Further, I have determined that first mentions of twenty plays currently in The London Stage—which usually denotes premieres or first known performances—are not so indicated therein; I have redated twelve plays and have identified or suggested attributions for forty-five plays; and I have verified the publication of eight performed plays hitherto believed to be unpublished. The findings are arranged in five sections: I. Plays hitherto unknown or believed to be unperformed; II. Unnoted First Performances in The London Stage; III. New Dating Evidence; IV. New Attributions; V. Previously Unknown Publications.

The sources employed for this study are diverse and extensive. Eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements supplied many titles, attributions, and datings. Other information appeared in advertisements in the back matter of some of the several hundred published eighteenth-century play texts which I examined. Memoirs and first-hand accounts were also valuable, particularly John Weaver's little-known The History of Mimes and Pantomimes.[3] Weaver, long the dancing master at Drury Lane, was a knowledgeable insider who has proven to be most informative. I have also found data in the standard play lists from the century, especially those by Whincop and Feales.[4] Among modern sources the most valuable has been the on-line Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (hereafter ESTC).[5]

Of considerable interest is the emerging importance of musical sources for the identification of theatrical information, particularly the British Union-Catalogue of Early Printed Music (hereafter BUCEM)[6] and Roger Fiske's English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century.[7] As Curtis Price and I have shown in independent studies and as this article hopes further to indicate, published sheet music can strongly imply or establish the existence of many ephemeral theatrical entertainments which were not published in their own right and which can be known from no other source. And the identities of the singers named often can aid in establishing a tentative date of premiere or performance, due to the superb biographical information now available for cross-reference purposes. Further, each entry is keyed to the appropriate volume and page of The London Stage (hereafter often given as LS).