Vice-Chamberlain Coke's Theatrical Papers 1705–1714

Extract

Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume are editing the Coke theatre papers from the original MSS at Harvard and elsewhere. Most of the papers concern the introduction of Italian opera into England at the Haymarket theatre, 1705-1714. They include letters, box-office reports, orchestra rosters, protests to the Lord Chamberlain, financial demands, contracts, lists of tradesmen's bills, etc. The collection (once owned by James Winston, and partially transcribed by him in BL Add. 38,607) was dispersed at auction in 1876. Another incomplete nineteenth-century transcription is now in the New York Public Library. From the 1876 Sale Catalogue, however, we know of about a dozen documents of which we lack any copy at all—documents by W. Armstrong, Barton Booth, Dieupart, Thomas Doggett, Motteux, Margarita de l'Epine, Lord Mohun, the Duke of Shrewsbury (Charles Talbot, 1660-1718), and an affadavit of 7 January 1714 signed by Wilks and Cibber.