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“The Second Chronicler”: A Tentative Identification of the Unknown Hand in The MS. Diaries of the Drury Lane Theatre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Extract
Among the important collections of memorabilia concerning eighteenth-century London playhouses is that known as The Ms. Diaries of the Drury Lane Theatre, thirteen manuscript notebooks or theatrical calendars of quarto size among the holdings of The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. While there is a gap of two seasons, 1760–1762, and another of four seasons, 1764–1768, these documents are valued for their chronological record of theatrical seasons at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, throughout the management of David Garrick and his partner James Lacy, 1747–1776. Each night's reckoning is set down with the plays and entertainments produced, the box office receipts in round numbers, the numerical position of the performance in the particular season, and very often the prompter's notations concerning anything unusual about production, performers, the temper of the audience, or merely “the way things went” on a particular evening. Together with Course of Plays, 1740–1742, a similar calendar of the 1740–1741 season at Covent Garden Theatre and the 1741–1742 season at Drury Lane attributed to Richard Cross, these diaries have become known popularly as The Cross-Hopkins Diaries, after the two Drury Lane prompters, Richard Cross and William Hopkins, acknowledged compilers of the greater part of the series.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1964
References
NOTES
1 Rylands English Ms. IIII, edited as Course of Plays 1740–1742, by Pedicord, Harry William, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol. 40, No. 2, March 1958, pp. 432–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Stein, Elizabeth P., David Garrick, Dramatist (New York, 1938), pp. viii–xii.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., p. xi.
4 After diligent search for specimens of Brownsmith's handwriting—indeed many others who might have been compilers—there exists at present no means of proof by way of handwriting.
5 1776–1777.
6 Ibid., p. xi.
7 Memoirs of Tate Wilkinson, 4 vols. (York, 1790), Vol. II, p. 84. The main play that night was Othello, followed by The Diversions of the Morning. Professor George Winchester Stone, Jr., says of the prompter's duties, “…He has under him two assistants to whom he delegated some of these tasks, and to whom, in the run of a new play, he assigned his duties after the play had established itself.” [The London Stage 1660–1800, edited with critical introductions by William Van Lennep, Emmett L. Avery, Arthur H. Scouten, George Winchester Stone, Jr., and Charles Beecher Hogan, Illinois, 1960–; Part 4: 1747–1776, Vol. 1, p. clxxviii.]
8 Fitzgerald, Percy, Samuel Foote (London, 1910), p. 254.Google Scholar
9 Printed for Paul Vaillant, 1753, pp. 34–35.
10 Dibdin, Thomas, Reminiscences (2 vols. in 1) (London, 1828), Vol. II, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 10–11.
12 December 22, 23, 1757; January 7, 9, 12, 20; February 7, 1758.
13 May 17,1758.
14 January 2, March 15,1759.
15 January 17, 1759.
16 May 21, 1759.
17 May 4, 1761.
18 May 7, 1762.
19 December 14, 1763.
20 May 22, 1765.
21 The Kemble-Devonshire Collection of Drury Lane Playbills in the Huntington Library. The collection covers the years 1751 through 1782 with several important gaps in the seasons 1756–1758 and the summer season of 1761.
22 MacMillan, Dougald, Drury Lane Calendar 1747–1776 (Oxford, 1938), p. 77.Google Scholar
23 Printed for J. Willams (London, 1757).