Fourth Folio Period Drama and Printers 1680 - 1700

John Dryden The first [second, third, fourth] volume of the Works London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1695   Bequest of Mollie Harris Samuels

William Shakespeare [Naham Tate] The History of King Lear. Acted at the Duke’s Theatre. Reviv’d with Alterations. By N. Tate London: Printed for E. Flesher, and are to be sold by R. Bentley, and M. Magnes, 1681 Nahum Tate was by all accounts a modest man in temperment and talent. His own writings, including The Loyal General, his last attempt at writing an “original” play, were not successful. But his work as an adaptor of the writings of others, most notably Shakespeare, were highly successful in their day. He was made poet laureate in 1692 and held the position until his death in 1715. In turning to Shakespeare, Tate began with King Lear. It would be his most successful, as well as most notorious adaptation, being the version of Lear that held the London stage for more than 150 years. Other Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet and Othello had been revived without major changes, but King Lear had not been popular after the Restoration. Tate’s adaptation restores Lear to the throne and allows him to settle the succession on Cordelia and Edgar, thereby superimposing a Royalist fable on Shakespeare’s play. Edgar’s often ridiculed closing lines: “Our drooping Country now erects her Head ... That Truth and Vertue shall at last succeed,” provided the kind of entertainment that pre-20th century audiences wanted to hear. Recent critics have argued that if Tate’s version had not been so successful and if Shakespeare’s Lear was less revered, Tate’s King Lear would be as relatively unknown today as his other plays. Bequest of Mollie Harris Samuels

Aphra Behn Abdelazer, Or, The Moor’s Revenge. A Tragedy London: Printed for J. Magnes and R. Bentley, 1677 Aphra Behn was the first English woman to make her living as a writer, becoming one of the most successful writers of 17th century English drama. Abdelazer, first produced in 1676, is a bloody revenge tragedy well suited to the tastes of the day. In contrast to the sanguine plot, the play opens with what has been called her best lyric, “Love in fantastick Triumph sat.” This is its first printing. Bequest of Mollie Harris Samuels

William Congreve The Way of the World, a Comedy London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1700 Congreve’s Way of the World has come to be seen as the apex of Restoration comedy and the so-called “comedy of manners.” But this work, and Congreve’s work as a whole, rises far above this measure, raising serious questions through the medium of comedy. Indeed, Congreve pointed this out on the title page of The Double Dealer, printed in 1694, by including the following motto from Horace’s Ars Poetica: “sometimes however even comedy raises its voice.” Bequest of Mollie Harris Samuels

William Shakespeare Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies London: Printed for H. Herringman, and are to be sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, 1685 The fourth folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, appearing in 1685, was the last to be reprinted from its predecessor. It was a reprint of the second issue of the third folio, including the additional seven plays not found in the first and second folios. Each folio edition, however, had been corrected and in some cases the language had been “modernized.” Each edition had also brought new errors in turn, compounding the problem. In the first “edited” edition, Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 octavo edition in seven volumes, Rowe used the fourth folio as the basis for the text, instead of going back to the more reliable first folio. His intent was “to redeem [Shakespeare] from the Injuries of former Impressions.” Gift of Solton & Julia Engel

John Banks The unhappy favorite; or, The Earl of Essex. A tragedy London: Printed for R. Bentley and M. Magnes, 1685 John Banks set out to win the hearts of the women in his audience by writing what Allardyce Nicoll has named the “she-tragedy,” a pathetic tragedy taken from English history featuring a female protagonist. The Unhappy Favorite, his most successful play, is dedicated, as he states in the Prologue: “To all the shining Sex this Play’s addresst,” adding, “It you are pleas’d, we will be bold to say, / This modest Poem is the Ladies Play.” First printed in 1682, it was here reprinted by the same publisher three years later. Banks continued to use historic subjects for his plays. However, his later plays, on Mary Queen of Scots and on Lady Jane Gray were prohibited from being performed, but allowed to be printed.