Texts and publishers

David Roberts

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139227100.009

8 - Texts and publishers

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014

David Roberts

Show author details

David Roberts: Affiliation:
Birmingham City University

Book contents

Get access

Summary

In 1668 the dramatist Edward Howard observed that

the impression [i.e. printing] of plays is so much the practice of the age, that few or none have been acted, which fail to be displayed in print; where they seem to put on the greater formality of authors.

The phrasing teases: ‘display’ reads like a continuation of ‘acted’, yet it is an act of metamorphosis that produces a new ‘formality’. No one, he implies, would be interested in reading a play that had not made it to the stage. Even so, closet dramas from the period have survived, none more precariously or notoriously than the Earl of Rochester’s Sodom, which some believe was not printed until 1904, for the obvious reason that it was close to unprintable. Its roster of roles (King Bolloxinian, Queen Cuntigratia and the maids of honour Cunticula, Clitoris and Fuckadilla, etc.) is often held to announce a satire on Charles II’s willingness to wield the member of state over any woman he chose. As the title declares, however, it is more obviously obsessed with a pastime Charles that did not favour but that was all the rage in the circle of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Orléans, and aptly captured in the antics of the man Rochester describes as ‘General of the Army’, Buggeranthus.

Type: Chapter
Information: Restoration Plays and Players
An Introduction
, pp. 189 - 216

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139227100.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Howard, Edward, ‘Preface’, The Usurper (London, 1668).Google Scholar

Hodges, John C., The Library of William Congreve (New YorkPublic Library, 1955).Google Scholar

Peters, Julie Stone, Congreve, the Drama and the Printed Word (Stanford University Press, 1990), 36.Google Scholar

Peters, Julie Stone, Theatre of the Book 1480–1880: Print, Text and Performance in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2000), 62.Google Scholar

Kenny, Shirley Strum, ‘The publication of plays’, in Hume, Robert D., ed., The London Theatre World, 1660–1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 309–36.Google Scholar

Langbaine, Gerard’s An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (London, 1691).Google Scholar

Gildon, , An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (London, 1699), 6.Google Scholar

Plomer, H. R., A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725 (Oxford University Press, 1922), 31.Google Scholar

Winn, James A., John Dryden and His World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 97–8.CrossRef Google Scholar

Brooks, Douglas, From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2000);Google Scholar

Butler, Martin, ‘Jonson’s folio and the politics of patronage’, Criticism 35 (1993), 377–90;Google Scholar

Dunn, Kevin, Pretexts of Authority: The Rhetoric of Authorship in the Renaissance Preface (Stanford University Press, 1994);Google Scholar

Erne, Lukas, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge University Press, 2003);Google Scholar

Kastan, David Scott, Shakespeare and the Book (Cambridge University Press, 2001);Google Scholar

Lesser, Zachary, Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (Cambridge University Press, 2004);Google Scholar

Miola, Robert S., ‘Creating the author: Jonson’s Latin epigraphs’, Ben Jonson Journal 6 (1999), 35–48;CrossRef Google Scholar

Wall, Wendy, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

Genette, Gerard, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Lewin, Jane E. (Cambridge University Press, 1997).CrossRef Google Scholar

Marston, John, ‘To the only rewarder…’, The History of Antonio and Mellida (London, 1602);Google Scholar

Congreve, ’s ‘To the Right Honourable Charles Mountague…’, The Double Dealer (London, 1694)Google Scholar

Wycherley, William’s ‘To My Lady B___’, The Plain Dealer (London, 1676).Google Scholar

Crowne, John, ‘Epistle Dedicatory to the Earl of Orrory’, Juliana, or, The Princess of Poland (London, 1671).Google Scholar

Loewenstein, Joseph, Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2002);Google Scholar

Thomas, Max W., ‘Eschewing credit: Heywood, Shakespeare, and plagiariam before copyright’, New Literary History 31 (2000), 277–93;CrossRef Google Scholar

Bergeron, David M., Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006);Google Scholar

Payne, Deborah C., ‘The Restoration dramatic dedication as symbolic capital’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 20 (1990), 27–42.CrossRef Google Scholar

D’Urfey, Thomas, ‘Letter to the Author from Mr Charles Gildon’, The Marriage-Hater Match’d (London, 1692).Google Scholar

Bailey, Abraham, ‘To the Reader’, The Spightful Sister (London, 1667).Google Scholar

Hughes, Derek, English Drama 1660–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 236 n.49.CrossRef Google Scholar

Derrida, Jacques, ‘Circumfession’, in Derrida, and Bennington, Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida (University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar

Stern, Tiffany, ‘Repatching the play’, in Holland, Peter and Orgel, Stephen, eds., From Script to Stage in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 151–77, 170.Google Scholar

Otway, Thomas, ‘To her Royal Highness the Dutchess’, The Orphan (London, 1680)CrossRef Google Scholar

Hodges, J. C., ed., William Congreve: Letters and Documents (London, 1964), 242–3.Google Scholar

McKenzie, D. F., ‘Mea culpa: Voltaire’s retraction of his comments critical of Congreve’, Review of English Studies 49 (1998), 461–5, 462.CrossRef Google Scholar

Dryden, John, ‘To the Right Honourable Philip, Earl of Leicester Etc’, Don Sebastian (London, 1690).Google Scholar

Brown, Laura, English Dramatic Form, 1660–1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981);Google Scholar

Dryden, John, An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (London, 1668).CrossRef Google Scholar

Dryden, John, ‘The Twenty-ninth Ode of the Third Book of Horace’, in Walker, Keith, ed., John Dryden: A Critical Edition of the Major Works (Oxford University Press, 1987), 302–5, 303–4Google Scholar

Dryden, John, ‘Preface’, The Wild Gallant (London, 1669), A2.Google Scholar

Dryden, John, ‘Preface’, Secret Love, or, The Maiden Queen (London, 1668), A2.Google Scholar

Book contents

8 - Texts and publishers

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive