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Dryden's Prologue and Epilogue to Mithridates, Revived

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John Harrington Smith
John Harrington Smith*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles 24
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Extract

Dryden's prologues and epilogues have always been much admired, but, on the whole, rather negligently studied by scholars. The editors of the William Andrews Clark Edition of Dryden's Works, now in preparation, hope that it will provide for these poems, as well as for Dryden's more important works, better texts and notes than those presently available. The possibility that an edition may add substantially to the findings of its predecessors will perhaps appear from the case of the prologue and epilogue to Nathaniel Lee's Mithridates, as revived by the King's Company in 1681.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1953 , pp. 251 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

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References

1 An additional copy of the poems was in existence in the early 1900's. In a letter to me, James M. Osborn points out that Maggs Bros. (50 Berkeley Sq., London W.1) offered a “Prologue and Epilogue to Mithridates. With autograph signature of J. Dryden” in their Catalogue 218, item 503. But Maggs Bros. kindly write me that this was a catalogue of 1906 and that although they have a record that the item was sold they have none as to the purchaser. Thus no judgment is possible as to the signature and unfortunately it cannot even be known whether this was an example of the J. Sturton printing, or other. (I shall subsequently show cause for believing that a version other than the Sturton one was printed at the time.)

2 It is preserved in the Bodleian Library (MS. Thorn-Drury. d. 54), which microfilmed it for me, a favor for which I wish hereby to express my thanks.

3 In his remark on the date it is possible that Ham was influenced by a passage in MS. by John Payne Collier, for in his Otway and Lee (New Haven, 1931), p. 236, n. 2 to Ch. xiii, he writes: “In his MS History of the Restoration Stage (Harvard Library), p. 227, Collier states that he has the original MSS of these pieces which vary from the printed form in making an interval between the closing and opening of the theaters of two instead of four months.” If the prologue had originally read “two months Fast” and before speaking had had to be altered to read “four,” this might be thought to ease the hypothesis of a very late opening for the theatre, even, perhaps, an opening approaching Luttrell's acquisition date. But although Collier's statement is categorical, “the original M.S. of the Prologue and Epilogue delivered on the occasion are before me,” he is of course not the most reliable of witnesses.

4 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i, 124; The Loyal Protestant, and True Domestick Intelligence, No. 55 (13 Sept.).

5 Luttrell, i, 134; Loyal Protestant, No. 64 (15 Oct.).

6 Gardner, in his notes, p. 274, gives Luttrell's word as “witness,” but the plural is clearly correct.

7 Gardner, in his notes, p. 274, seems to understand Luttrell to intend “perk' ” as a substitute for the whole verb “perch't” in S. I read Luttrell's intention differently. The apostrophe, it would seem, would have no meaning unless he intended the “t” in S to stand and be used with what he wrote in the margin.

8 In The Way of the World, v, Mrs. Marwood points out to Lady Wishfort, if her daughter's reputation should come to be aired in court, the humiliation of having “young revellers of the Temple take notes, like 'prentices at a conventicle”; and in the prologue to The Spanish Friar Dryden says that poets can't keep up with the current follies “Unless each Vice in short-hand they indite / Ev'n as notcht Prentices whole Sermons write.” Whether these prentices were functioning merely for the private edification of a master or mistress, as Sir Walter Scott supposed (S.-S. Ed., vi, 412), or were taking down the sermon for publication, it is certain that the printers of the time often used this method of obtaining grist for their presses. The practice is glanced at in a Postscript to An Account of the Proceedings At the Guildhall . . . on Saturday, September 12. 1679: “It cannot be expected that the Speech of this Worthy and Deserving Knight, nor the Lord Mayor's generous Reply thereunto, should be published exactly, since in so great a Concourse it was hardly possible to be taken” (i.e., by shorthand).

An example of what would seem to be the use of shorthand in the theatre is furnished by the operations of a printer named Tebroc who in 1683 published the prologue and epilogue to Lee's Constantine the Great, the epilogue happening to be by Dryden. One line in this (1. 30) came out pure gibberish, as Tebroc's man in the audience proved, it would seem, unable to read his notes. The next year Tonson, who owned the epilogue or at least had a correct version of it, printed “A True Coppy of the Epilogue to Constantine the Great. That which was first Published being false printed and surreptitious. Written by Mr. Dryden.” For the epilogue as printed by Tebroc and the corrected version by Tonson see Autrey Nell Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues (London, 1940), pp. 184-187. (Professor Alan D. McKillop has commented to me, “I suppose there was no printer named Tebroc; this must be a pseudonymous imprint, Corbet spelled backwards.”)

9 Some of the dates are 1 June, 16 November, and 4 December of 1682.