:: :: University of Virginia Library

Research for this article at the William Andrews Clark Library, the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the UCLA University Library, and the Henry E. Huntington Library was supported by a Grant-in-Aid from Auburn University, an NEH Travel to Collections Grant, and a Summer Research Fellowship at the William Andrews Clark Library.

[1]

Most of my discussion concerns the period covered by The London Stage, 1660-1800, Part 2: 1700-1729, ed. Emmett L. Avery, 2 vols. (1960); but some details apply to Part 1: 1660-1700, ed. William Van Lennep, with intro. by Emmett L. Avery and Arthur H. Scouten (1965); and Part 3: 1729-1747, ed. Arthur H. Scouten (1961).

[2]

See Curtis A. Price, "Eight 'Lost' Restoration Plays 'Found' in Musical Sources,"

181

Music and Letters, 58 (1977), 294-303; and William J. Burling, "Four More 'Lost' Restoration Plays 'Found' in Musical Sources," Music and Letters, 65 (1984), 45-47.

[3]

(London, 1728; hereafter Weaver). His chronological list of pantomime attributions appears on pages 45-55 of his text. I have not provided separate page numbers as the list is short and easy to use.

[4]

Thomas Whincop [John Mottley], A List of all the Plays . . . to the Year 1747. Appended to Scanderbeg (London: W. Reeve, 1747); W. Feales, A True and Exact Catalogue of all the Plays . . . ever yet Printed in the English Tongue (London, 1732).

[5]

I have consulted the on-line Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue through the assistance of Judy Adams and Glenn Anderson of the Auburn University Library.

[6]

Edith Schnapper (1957).

[7]

Fiske (1973).

[8]

See Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and other Stage Personnel on the London Stage, 1660-1800, 18 vols. in progress (1973-), V, 94. See also my discussion of Hughes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography volumes on eighteenth-century dramatists, ed. Paula Backsheider (forthcoming, 1989).

[9]

Nicoll, A History of British Drama, 1660-1900, 6 vols., rev. edn. (1952-59), II, 252.

[10]

Cunningham, Peter Anthony Motteux, 1663-1718: A Biographical and Critical Study (1933), p. 203.

[11]

"Three Centuries of English and American Drama, 1500-1830," Readex Microprint Company. Copies of the play may be found in the Henry E. Huntington Library and the Library of Congress.

[12]

See Biographical Dictionary, IX, 262-268.

[13]

Although Edward Young's popular poem series The Love of Fame (1725) is sub-titled The Universal Passion, Young is very likely not the author of the play in question here. The standard life, Harold Forster's Edward Young: The Poet of the Night Thoughts 1683-1765 (Alburgh, Norfolk: Erskine Press, 1986) contains no evidence of any kind which links Young with this comic afterpiece.

[14]

The Dramatick Sessions: or, The Stage Contest (London: A. Moore, 1734), p. 12. This anonymous pamphlet has gone almost unnoticed by scholars.

[15]

Gagey, Ballad Opera (1937; rpt. 1965), p. 120.

[16]

See Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography (1954), pp. 427, 437. Cf., Winton Dean, Handel's Oratorios and Masques (1959), p. 45.

[17]

Lowenberg, Annals of Opera, 1597-1940, 3rd. edn. (1978). For further details, see William J. Burling, "Four Casts for Early Eighteenth-Century Operas," Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, n.s. 2 (1987), 1-5.

[18]

Also see W. J. Lawrence, "The Mystery of 'The Stage Coach,'" Modern Language Review, 27 (1932), 397; and Shirley Strum Kenny, "The Mystery of Farquhar's Stage-Coach Reconsidered," Studies in Bibliography, 32 (1979), 219-236.

[19]

Milhous and Hume, "Dating Play Premieres from Publication Data," Harvard Library Bulletin, 22 (1974), 374-405; especially p. 395. Milhous and Hume do not mention Xerxes (which I discuss herein) in their otherwise comprehensive analysis.

[20]

See William C. Smith, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by John Walsh during the years 1695-1720 (The Bibliographical Society, 1948), p. 18.

[21]

Assistance on this point is due to the courtesy of Ms Laetitia Yeandle of the Folger Library.

[22]

The Playford information may be found in Hook's Introduction to The Rape of Europa by Jupiter and Acis and Galatea, Augustan Reprint Series No. 208 (1981), p. viii.

[23]

For example, for the years 1698, 1699, and 1700, Corye's play would be the only one of those published not to see print within one year of first performance.

[24]

John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, eds. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1987), p. 40 n88.

[25]

The play was performed before Queen Mary on 10 October 1691, for which Mountfort received £10. See Public Records Office, Lord Chamberlain's Papers, 5/150, p. 306; summarized in Nicoll, I, 357.

[26]

Ms Hook reports that the only known copy is located at the Cambridge University Library.

[27]

I wish to thank Mr. Thomas V. Lange of the Huntington Library staff for assistance in resolving this problem.

[28]

Alfred A. Harbage and S. Schoenbaum, Annals of English Drama, 950-1700, 2nd. edn. (1964), p. 200.

[29]

I owe this reference to the courtesy of Professor Constance Clark, New York University.

[30]

See William J. Burling, "New Light on the Colley Cibber Canon: The Bulls and Bears and Damon and Phillida," Philological Quarterly, 67 (1988), 117-123.

[31]

Wright's play is an adaptation of Molière's Les Femmes savantes.

[32]

The London Stage gives Drury Lane as the venue for the premiere, but a notice in the Daily Post for 16 August 1729 clearly states that the performance actually took place at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket.

[33]

The only copy I have been able to locate is at the University of Cincinnati.