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[By MONTAGUE SUMMEES] THE last eighteen months have unfortunately seen but little original scholarship employed upon a period which, too long neglected, is now beginning to be more and more widely recog- http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ nized as of prime interest and importance. The difficulties, indeed, are very many, and research must here necessarily be somewhat laborious and slow. Mr. GosseJ is always happy in his critical essays, but he is seldom happier than when his urbane wit and polished periods are doing justice to some half-forgotten figure of the Restoration world. His study of the neglected Catherine Trotter—(quae repetit uoluitque Palaemonis artem)—is a delightful piece of at Université Laval on June 30, 2015 literature, and she is, indeed, well worth attention, a writer who assuredly should never have been allowed so entirely ' to have slipped between two ages and to have lost her hold on time'. This essay will go far to rehabilitate ' the champion of Locke and Clarke, the correspondent of Leibnitz and Pope, the friend of Congreve, the patroness of Farquhar'.

In his essay The Court Poets * Mr. Charles Whibley mainly deals with Rochester, Sedley, Buckhurst, and Mulgrave, and of these the greater number of pages are devoted to Rochester, which is as it should be. From every point of view, even from that of mere curiosity, this extraordinary and extravagant figure is extremely interesting and calls for a long and detailed study. The legend which makes Rochester something like the black bugbear of Tflngiiah literature ' fort impie et fort ordurier' needs 1 Some Diversions qf a Man of Letters, by Edmand Gosse, C.B. London: William Heinemann, 1919. vii + 344 pp. 7». 6d. net. 1 Literary StudUs, by Charles Whibley. MacmillaTi & Co., Limited, St. Martin's Street, London, 1919. 1 + 360 pp. 7«. 6d. net. THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700 98 to be roughly dispelled; an authoritative and satisfactory study has yet to be written. To Sedley, Mr. Whibley devotes little more than a couple of pages, and in so brief a notice scant idea can be given of the charm and elegant wit of this ' more elegant Tibullus', as Dryden saluted him in the Epistle Dedi- catory to The Assignation. No mention is made of Bettamira; or The Mistress, the best of his comedies, a play of Terentian Downloaded from plot, and of peculiar interest owing to its outspoken satire on the Duchess of Cleveland and Harry Jermyn. Mr. Whible/s estimate of The Old Bachelor in Congreve and some Others hardly errs on the side of enthusiasm, and he surely misses much of the great dramatic power of The Double-Dealer, http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ a quality which is perhaps only wholly to be appreciated at an actual performance of the play upon the stage, and of which in the reading something essentially evaporates. To style The Mourning Bride 'a rash experiment in the later Elizabethan Drama' seems a very dubious classification, and The Way of the World should not without reserve be termed Congreve's master- piece. It was a failure at its first production, and although often revived it has never proved popular, either with audiences or at Université Laval on June 30, 2015 .

In spite of its emphatically expressed claim to originality it can hardly be conceded that Dr. Bernbaum's Tlie Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663-1673,3 which he somewhat boldly terms ' A Missing Chapter in the History of the English Novel', contains anything new. The writer certainly does not seem adequately to recognize the value of the work of Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Edmund Gosse, G. A. Aitken, and other authorities upon the history of English prose fiction. And it is noticeable that when Dr. Bernbaum attempts to go beyond our scholars, many of the assertions which he so confidently makes without any saving hint that they are open to dispute may well be

1 The Mary Carleton Narratives, I663-1673. A Hissing Chapter in the History of the English Novel, hy Ernest Bernbanm, Ph.D., Instructor in English, Harvard University. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1914. v +106 pp. bs. 6d. net 94 THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700 questioned and impugned. His thesis, in truth, is by no means of first-rate importance, and if perhaps it has not been before stated in such detail, it might be that this is the case because no scholar has thought it worth while to enlarge so fully upon it. Historians of literature have always and with perfect justice insisted upon the originality of Defoe, who, although we are well aware he owed much to the popular biographies of criminals Downloaded from and rogues, yet presented these with incomparable skill in narrative form by adding and embroidering, by toning down and omitting, by deftly intermingling false with true for the sake of a continuous and absorbing tale. In fine, although—as is never denied—this was often done before, yet it is still maintained that http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ Defoe was original, essentially original with the supreme originality and master touch of genius. According to Dr. Bern- baum, when Francis Kirkman wrote Tlie Counterfeit Lady Unveiled he worked along precisely the same lines as Defoe used some thirty years later. It is not impossible that, in spite of Dr. Bernbaum's argument, this actual point might be disputed, but even if it be fairly allowed, it by no means impeaches the genius of Defoe, nor does it assign him to a somewhat lower at Université Laval on June 30, 2015 position, as Dr. Bembaum apparently would have it. Neverthe- less, in spite of his failure to substantiate the main theory of his thesis, the writer has done useful work by giving some account of the various pamphlets and pasquils which have Mary Carleton for their subject Most, if not all, which survive are to be found in the British Museum. It were to be wished that Dr. Bernbaum had in several instances given a fuller description of the matter under consideration. The play A Witty Combat: or, The Female Victor, by

"Oroonoko"' (1918) cannot be maintained, and Oroonoko is http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ beyond all question largely autobiographical No doubt several incidents are, as is natural, something exaggerated, but none the less the work is essentially founded on the writer's actual experience. The utility of The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663-1673, would have been greatly increased had the book been provided with an index, a necessity in a monograph of this kind. at Université Laval on June 30, 2015 Extremely useful work has been done by Dr. Tanner in his and the Royal Navy.* The author sets out to show thai ' Pepys, familiar to the last generation in the sphere of literature, was also a leading figure in an entirely different world, who rendered inestimable services to naval administration in spite of the peculiar difficulties under which he worked', and a wholly admirable exposition is the result It is to be feared that there are still many who only think of this ' great public servant' as a ' delightful old Diarist 'or a1 garrulous gossip', living in an atmosphere of Bestoration scandals and gaiety, his boon companions the theatrical folk of the day, whilst his sur- prising business activities, his meticulous attention to detail, his technical knowledge and shrewd acumen, are quite lost sight of and forgotten. This false impression is in some measure due,

4 Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy. Lees Knowles Lecture* delivered at Trinity College in Cambridge, 6, 18, 20 and 27 November, 1919, by J. R. Tanner, LittD., Fellow of St. John's College. Cambridge : at the University Press, 1920. 88 pp. 6*. 6d. net 96 THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700 no doubt, to the fact that, as is well known, Lord Braybrooke'a edition of the Diary at first printed scarcely half of the manu- script, and the omitted portions were often the records of Pepys's naval business and negotiations. Even the Rev. Mynors Bright, who in 1875-9 added so much new matter, states in his intro- duction : ' It would have been tedious to the reader if I had copied from the Diary the account of his daily work at the Office'. Downloaded from It was not until Mr. Wheatley gave us his fuller transcript that we were able to get a clear and complete vision of Pepys the man, and by that time (1893-9) the tradition had grown up, an almost mythical figure had been formed. Dr. Tanner's lectures should do much definitely to set Pepys in his rightful place. http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ ' The services', he says, ' rendered by Samuel Pepys to the Navy are incomparable'. It is interesting to note that in the eighteenth century Pepys was remembered as' a man of extraordinary know- ledge in all that related to the business' of the Navy, a man ' of great talents and the most indefatigable industry'; in the nine- teenth century he was popularly pictured as a mere ion viveur, a musician, a dandy, something of a rake, something of a dilettante. Now the time is come to form the just estimate, so far as that is at Université Laval on June 30, 2015 possible to do, and whilst we read of his friendship with Henry Harris and Mrs. Knepp, the pretty actress, of visits to the King's House, to Fox Hall and the Mulberry Garden, we must not for- get that Samuel Pepys 'did more than any one else under a King who hated "the very sight or thoughts of business" to apply business principles to naval administration'.

In Professor Adams's welcome reprint of The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert * there are to be found some interesting Miscellaneous Documents, 1660-70, although the bulk of the volume appertains to the time of Charles I. The material is already accessible in Malone and elsewhere, but is here rearranged and annotated in a scholarly and serviceable way. Among the more important documents with which Professor

• The Dramatic Records of Sir Htnry Heibert, Master of the Revels, 1628-73. Edited by Joieph Quincy Adams, Cornell University. New Haven: Yale University Frets. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Prets, 1917. iiii + 155 pp. THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700 97 Adams has dealt are Herbert's protest against the proposed grant to Killigrew and Davenant; his letters to the Cockpit playere when he attempted to establish his authority over John Rhodes; and the articles of agreement between Herbert and Killigrew. The list of the plays acted at the Red Bull, 1660-62, and at the oblong roofed theatre situated in Bear Yard, Vere Street,

Clare Market, the house opened by Killigrew and the King's Downloaded from company in November 1660, is a most valuable item of theatrical history. The Vere Street theatre was abandoned in April 1668, and on the 7th of May of that year the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, gave its first performance. http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ In a scholarly article The Early Years of the First English Opera House,0 Mr. W. J. Lawrence has traced in erudite detail the 'slow laborious emersion of Italian Opera in England'. With unfaltering "lrill he has disentangled the varying accounts of Downes, Cibber, Dr. Burney, and Miohael Kelly, and after a careful sifting of the evidence marshals the facts in plain and simple order, a welcome contribution, indeed, to our knowledge of this difficult era. at Université Laval on June 30, 2015

Equally interesting and of great value is Mr. Lawrence's article, Doors and Curtains in Restoration Theatres,"1 where, with a wealth of illustration, he convincingly argues, and in truth demonstrates, that in the later seventeenth-century theatre the curtain once up usually remained up until the last word was spoken. Only in the rarest cases, and then for some very special scenic purpose, did it fall between the acts. To suggest, as has indeed of late been done, that in the Restoration period the curtain was used to divide Acts, much as it is employed to-day, shows such a fundamentally mistaken conception of Dryden's theatre, that the result—as has, in fact, proved the

e The Early Tears of the First English Opera House [with two illustra- tion!]. W. J. Lawrence (Dublin). The Musical Quarterly, 0. Q. Sonneck, Editor. VoL vii, No. 1, January 1921. pp. 104-17. G. Schirmer, New York, Boston. Seventy-fire cents a copy. 1 Doors and Curtains in Restoration Theatres. W. J. Lawrence (Dublin). Modern Language Review, October 1920. pp. 414-20. 98 THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700 case—must inevitably be a complete confusion of outlook and ideas. In order to understand and fully appreciate the technique of Restoration dramatists it is essential that we should have a clear picture of the stage for which they wrote, and there is nobody to whom scholars are more indebted in this respect than to Mr. Lawrence for his minute researches and indefatigable enthusiasm which have given us results of such permanent value. Downloaded from

The most important work which has appeared during the past year upon a Restoration play is Dr. Boas's article, Stage Censorship under Charles II.* John Wilson, a notable but much neglected dramatist, had been reprinted in 1874 under http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ the editorship of James Maidment and W. H. Logan. Unfor- tunately this modern issue is rendered practically useless by the commission of every fault of which an editor can be guilty, by carelessness and superficiality, by prolixity and error, in fine by that lack of knowledge and taste which have so notoriously marred the whole series of fourteen volumes entitled Dramatists of the Restoration (1872-9). Wilson has not suffered least at

the hands of incompetence. His capital comedy, The Cheats, is at Université Laval on June 30, 2015 reproduced, with modernized spelling and punctuation, from the fourth quarto, 1698. Fortunately, in a volume of five manuscript plays belonging to Worcester College, Oxford, Dr. Boas dis- covered the author's holograph of The Cheats, and this differs widely from the printed version. A circumstance which makes the provenance of this manuscript of special interest is that the copy has phrases and passages marked for omission in perform- ance by the pen of Herbert, and his autograph licence appears at the end. The Cheats was produced in March 166§, and Abraham Hill in a letter of the 28th of that month says: 'The new play called The Cheats has been attempted on the stage; but it is so scandalous that it is forbidden.' It was a critical moment for Herbert, who was fighting hard to rrm.int.nin his supremacy, not to say his autocracy, as Master of the Revels. But Charles II had already (August 1660) granted Killigrew and Davenant very

• Stage Cenaor$hip under Charles II. Sir Henry Herbert and The Cheats. (By Frederick 8. Boas). The Timu Literary Supplement, 15 and 22 April, 1920, p. 288 and p. 254. THE BESTORATION, 1060-1700 99 wide powers of censorship over any plays, new or old, their com- panies proposed to perform, and the final blow seemB to have been dealt Herbert when, in spite of his previous revision, upon complaint being made of The Cheats, the Bang specially deputed Denham and Waller to examine and report upon Wilson's scenes. Moreover, when the first quarto was printed in 1664 it

bore the imprimatur (5 November, 1663) of Roger L'Estrange, Downloaded from who on the previous 15th August had been appointed ' surveyor of the imprimery'. Dr. Boas has given us many of the passages which are margin- ally marked by Herbert to indicate disapproval; indeed, he examines the whole play in careful detail. Herbert was finical http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ and over-nice, and it is very difficult to understand why in other quarters the comedy met with such violent opposition, and pre- cisely for what reason it was decried and defamed as scandalous and profane. The character of Scruple could only have offended his flock, and they assuredly did not frequent the theatre. A point of particular interest in the manuscript described by Dr. Boas is that we are hence enabled to supply three players

to r6les which the 1693 quarto left blank. The new names are at Université Laval on June 30, 2015 Loveday, Mrs. Marshall, and Mrs. Margaret Hughes. At the conclusion of his article Dr. Boas aptly urges the desirability of a new edition of Wilson, in which The Cheats must be based upon an exact collation of the manuscript and the printed text, and not merely be a replica of a late quarto. Wilson was by no means a voluminous author. Three comedies and one tragedy, all of considerable merit, are the sum of his dramatic work, an edition of which under the care of a capable editor would notably enrich our libraries.

In an article entitled A Bestoratioti Prompt-BooJc9 the present writer gave a detailed account of a copy of Shirley's (8vo, 1653), marked for stage use by Charles Booth, prompter of the Theatre Royal under Killigrew. From internal evidence it was shown that the production for which the copy was thus prepared must have taken place circa 1669-70. No other record

' A Bestoration Prompt-Book, by Montague Summers. The Times Literary Supplement, 24 June, 1920, p. 400. 100 THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700 of a Eestoration revival of The Sisters exists, and this prompt- book, which is the only Restoration prompt-book known, has copious marginal notes and signs of no little interest, and indeed of some real importance. Various famous names occur in the cast, particularly Mrs. Margaret Hughes, Pepys's Mrs. Knepp, and , to whose list of characters we are now able to add the 'breeches part', Pulcheria, who masquerades as Downloaded from Vergerio the page. http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/ at Université Laval on June 30, 2015