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XXIII

PLAYWRIGHTS


[Bibliographical Note.—The abundant literature of the drama is more satisfactorily treated in the appendices to F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama (1908), and vols. v and vi (1910) of the Cambridge History of English Literature, than in R. W. Lowe, Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature (1888), K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, English Drama: a Working Basis (1896), or W. D. Adams, Dictionary of the Drama (1904). There is an American pamphlet on Materials for the Study of the English Drama, excluding Shakespeare (1912, Newbery Library, Chicago), which I have not seen. Periodical lists of new books are published in the Modern Language Review, the Beiblatt to Anglia, and the Bulletin of the English Association, and annual bibliographies by the Modern Humanities Research Association (from 1921) and in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch. The bibliography by H. R. Tedder in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.) s.v. Shakespeare, A. C. Shaw, Index to the Shakespeare Memorial Library (1900-3), and W. Jaggard, Shakespeare Bibliography (1911), on which, however, cf. C. S. Northup in J. G. P. xi. 218, are also useful.

W. W. Greg, Notes on Dramatic Bibliographers (1911, M. S. C. i. 324), traces from the publishers' advertisements of the Restoration a catena of play-lists in E. Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum (1675), W. Winstanley, Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687), G. Langbaine, Momus Triumphans (1688) and Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691), C. Gildon, Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets (1698), W. R. Chetwood, The British Theatre (1750), E. Capell, Notitia Dramatica (1783), and the various editions of the Biographica Dramatica from 1764 to 1812. More recent are J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Dictionary of Old English Plays (1860), and W. C. Hazlitt, Manual of Old English Plays (1892); but all are largely superseded by W. W. Greg, A List of English Plays (1900) and A List of Masques, Pageants, &c. (1902). His account of Warburton's collection in The Bakings of Betsy (Library, 1911) serves as a supplement. A few plays discovered later than 1900 appeared in an Irish sale of 1906 (cf. Jahrbuch, xliii. 310) and in the Mostyn sale of 1919 (cf. t.p. facsimiles in Sotheby's sale-catalogue). For the problems of the early prints, the Bibliographical Note to ch. xxii should be consulted.

I ought to add that the notices of the early prints of plays in this and the following chapter lay no claim to minute bibliographical erudition, and that all deficiencies in this respect are likely to be corrected when the full results of Dr. Greg's researches on the subject are published.

The fundamental works on the history of the drama are A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature (1875, 1899), F. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (1891), F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama (1908), the Cambridge History of English Literature, vols. v and vi (1910), and W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, vols. iv, v (1909, 1916). These and others, with the relevant periodicals, are set out in the General Bibliographical Note (vol. i); and to them may be added F. S. Boas, Shakspere and his Predecessors (1896), B. Matthews, The Development of the Drama (1904), F. E. Schelling, English Drama (1914), A. Wynne, The Growth of English Drama (1914). Less systematic collections of studies