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Antiquarian Interest in Elizabethan Drama Before Lamb

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert D. Williams
Robert D. Williams*
Affiliation:
Superior State Teachers College
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Extract

Charles Lamb, in the whimsical autobiographical sketch which he wrote in 1827, boasted that he “was the first to draw the public attention to the old English Dramatists, in a work called ‘Specimens of English Dramatic Writers,‘ who lived about the time of Shakespeare.” Lamb's first biographer, Talfourd, pictures the Specimens as slowly and almost imperceptibly working out “the genial purpose of the editor in renewing a taste for the great contemporaries of Shakespeare.” Ainger describes Lamb as a dispeller of ignorance and remarks of the Specimens:

The very idea of the collection was a bold one… . With the one exception of Shakspeare, the dramatists of the period, between “the middle of Elizabeth's reign and the close of the reign of Charles I,” were unknown to the general reader of the year 1808?

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1938 , pp. 434 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

1 New Monthly Magazine, xliii (1835, 1st Pt.), 499.

2 Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, The Works of Charles Lamb (London, 1852), p. 85.

3 Alfred Ainger, Charles Lamb (London, 1888), p. 71.

4 Ibid., p. 86.

5 Ibid., p. 90.

6 Athenaeum, No. 3487 (Aug. 25, 1894), p. 265.

7 Quoted by E. V. Lucas, The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (London, 1904), iv, 601, 602.

8 John Churton Collins, Plays and Poems of Cyril Tourneur, i (London, 1878), xi.

9 Lucas, op. cit., iv, 599, note.

10 Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb, 3rd ed. (London, 1906), i, 291.

11 George Saintsbury, History of Criticism, 3rd ed. (London, 1917), iii, 240.

12 W. C. Hazlitt, Four Generations of a Literary Family (London, 1897), i, 116, 117.

13 Robert W. Babcock, The Genesis of Shakespeare Idolatry (University of North Carolina Press, 1931); R. Gale Noyes, Ben Jonson on the English Stage 1660–1776, Harv. Stud. in English, xvii (1937); C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Reputation of Christopher Marlowe, in Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (New Haven, 1922), xxv, 347–408; Maurice Chelli, Le Drame de Massinger (Lyon, 1923).

14 Octavius Gilchrist, A Letter to William Gifford, Esq. (London, 1811), p. 15.

15 Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Bibliomania (new ed., London, 1876), pp. 387–403.

16 William Oldys, “Notes on London Libraries,” N & Q, 2nd ser., xi, 123, 423

17 William Oldys, “Autobiographical Fragments,” N & Q, 1st ser., v, 529.

18 Oldys, “Diary,” N & Q, 2nd ser., xi, 102, 103, 142.

19 British Muse (London, 1738), i, xx, xxi, xxii.

20 Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry, ed. Hazlitt (London, 1871), iv, 209, note.

21 In two instances there is not the slightest variation except in punctuation: compare Lamb's Specimens (London, 1808), pp. 217, 196 with British Muse in, 149; i, 63. In three instances Lamb's quotations differ only in having more particular headings: compare Specimens, pp. 95, 65, 266 with British Muse ii, 33, 107, 175. In three instances Lamb's quotations are shorter: compare Specimens, pp. 91, 63, 157 with British Muse ii, 24; iii, 13; 11, 222.

22 The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. by Peter Cunningham (London, 1854), ii, 58.

23 Ibid., i, 377.

24 The edition, first published by William Dell in 1759, was likewise inscribed to Garrick. See Gifford, ed., Plays of Philip Massinger (London, 1805), i, lxv, lxvii.—The Massinger was the only fruit of Coxeter's lifelong interest in the old drama, and even it was published after his death. See Gentleman's Magazine li, 173, 174.

25 Specifically Colman recommended to Garrick only Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, and Jonson, but throughout he uses large phrases which suggest that Shakespeare's merits were shared by many more of the dramatists of his day.

26 Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, iii (Warrington, 1790), 123–158.

27 Johnson's announcement was reprinted by Malone in the preface to his 1790 edition of Shakespeare, pp. vii, viii.

28 George Steevens, ed., Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare (London, 1766), i, 10.

29 Richard Farmer, Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare (new ed., Basil, 1800), p. 88.

30 Johnson and Steevens, ed., The Plays of William Shakespeare (London, 1773), i, sig. E4.

31 Ibid., x, sig. O02.

32 The Monthly Review, xlix, 419–424. The Critical Review, xlvii, 129.

33 The third volume of Capell's Notes and Various Readings, the School (first announced in 1767 but not published until 1783) is a peculiar combination of stage dictionary, illustrated glossary, source book, and miscellany.

34 A Select Collection of Old Plays, 2nd ed. (London, 1780), I, xii, xiii.

35 Brooke's Mustapha is the only conspicuous member of this group.

36 First Part of Jeronymo, Second Part of Honest Whore, All Fools, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, Ram Alley, The Roaring Girl, The Four Prentises of London, The Jew of Malta, and Chivevache and Bycorne.

37 The Plays and Poems of Williams Shakespeare (London, 1790), i, lvi.

38 For a taste of the general attitude toward Malone's methods from 1790 to 1840 see Charles W. Moulton, The Library of Literary Criticism (Buffalo, 1902), iv, 578, 579. See also T. J. Mathias, Pursuits of Literature, 5th ed. (London, 1796) ii, 227, 228.

39 William Beloe, Annecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, i (London, 1807), 277–426.

40 Censuria Literaria, vii, 205.