One Hundred and Thirty-Seven Neglected English Play Manuscripts in the British Library (c. 1770–1809), Part II

This article continues and completes the study begun in Part 1, published in the March 2008 issue of The Library. Together, the two parts constitute an attempt to describe, annotate, and analyse the Sheridan–Patmore collection of play manuscripts in the British Library (Add. MSS 25,906–26,036). These manuscripts were among those submitted to Richard Brinsley Sheridan (principal owner and manager of the Drury Lane Theatre) for possible production. In the 1830s they came into the possession of Peter George Patmore, whose son Coventry Patmore presented them to the British Museum in 1864. Unfortunately the British Museum's cataloguers depended heavily on P. G. Patmore's speculative and inaccurate attributions, most of them preserved to this day in the British Library's electronic catalogue. A few of the plays were successes by noted dramatists such as Frederick Reynolds, Elizabeth Inchbald, and James Cobb, but eighty-one are anonymous and some are untitled. Only thirteen are known to have been performed in public, and just ten got published. The collection is important because it shows us what sort of material was offered to Drury Lane, and the kinds of editing and rewriting that Sheridan and his staff carried out in the hopes of making rough material performable.

For reasons entirely unclear Allardyce Nicoll did not explore this collection and did not draw on it in creating his still-standard 'Hand-lists' of English plays.¹ Using both traditional scholarly methods and electronic search techniques, we have attempted to identify the plays (and fragments of plays) in the collection, to correct attributions wherever possible, and to point out features of interest in the plays and in the managerial handling of them. For broader analysis of the history of this collection, the problems of identification, dating, and attribution, and what can be learned from these scripts, the reader should consult the general introduction to Part 1.

The plays at issue fall in an unbroken run from Add. MS 25,906 to Add. MS 26,036. Part II of this study commences with Add. MS 25,946. The sequence is mostly alphabetical by title, though works associated with the same author are sometimes grouped together. Readers may wish to note the following points of policy and editorial practice:

1. 1. In each instance we give the British Library manuscript shelfmark;

2. 2. † means that so far as we can determine the play is not in Nicoll's handlists under any title;

3. 3. § means that Nicoll lists the play either in published form or from a production record (either in London or the provinces), but does not list this manuscript;

4. 4. ‡ means that Nicoll knows the title only from Babcock and does not otherwise identify the manuscript;²

5. 5. If a work is known to have been performed (whether in London or elsewhere), we give details of date and venue and mark the item with an initial asterisk (*);

6. 6. If a Larpent manuscript of the play is known, we give its number;³

7. 7. Entries include author if specified (in square brackets if we have been able to attribute a title lacking authorial ascription); title; the dramatic type (either as specified or our own categorization in brackets); number of acts; number of pages or leaves; date if given or determinable. We give a list of the characters' names (either from a Dramatis Personae in the manuscript or compiled from the text, indicating which) with descriptors as given in the DP if there are any. We give the general setting, if specified (e.g. 'London'). If no general setting is given, we report the setting for the opening of Act I, if any;

8. 8. If a work is known to have been printed, we give the pertinent publication data. We have not systematically collated each text against printed versions, but if we have noted significant differences we report that fact;

9. 9. We have transcribed the speech tag and opening sentence of each play (giving the speaker's name and any stage direction in italics);

10. 10. We transcribe...