If you're a regular reader of my blog, you may recall a time long ago when I deaccessioned some items that would be of interest to other collectors by selling them on eBay.
That time has come again!
This is a great chance for you to add a few titles from Tarquin Tar's Bookcase to your own collection and, in the process, help support the continued growth of Tarquin's Bookcase as well.
The first item up for auction (at a very low starting price and with no reserve or handling fee) is a terrific and rare early (1801) Boston imprint of plays and poetry by a leading figure in the 18th-century English abolitionist movement.
Go check it out and be sure to bid strong and bid often!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Off With His Head! A Broken and Rebound Collection of 18th Century Drama
This week’s book is a fine owner-made collection of seven
plays (six comedies and one historical tragedy) written and staged by the famed
London actor-manager Colley Cibber (1671-1757; right) in the early eighteenth century.
It is evident from the signatures that a previous owner had disbound the plays
from what had been a two-volume collection and then the owner who purchased the
disbound works had them bound together himself into the extant single volume.
The contents in the volume (not including two initial blanks
and two final blanks inserted by the second owner at the time of re-binding)
are as follows:
Love’s Last Shift: or,
The Fool in Fashion. A Comedy. As it is Acted At the Theatre Royal in
Drury-Lane, By His Majesty’s Servants. Written by C. Cibber. Printed in
London, 1721. [Premiered and first published in 1696.] (viii) 74. 4o:
[#]A4-C4(-C4+π1.2) D4(±D4?) E4-L1:
$2. Roman numeral signatures added in the lower margins of the fourth leaf in occasional
gatherings indicate that this play was taken from Volume I of the original
collection. The preliminaries include: title-page; Cibber’s dedication to
Richard Norton, Esq., of Southwick; prologue “By a Friend” and spoken by “Mr.
Verbrughen”; epilogue spoken by “Miss Cross (who sung Cupid)”; full dramatis
personae with character descriptions and the names of the players (Cibber
played Sir Novelty Fashion, “A Coxcomb that loves to be the first in all
Foppery”).
The Lady’s Last Stake,
or, The Wife’s Resentment. A Comedy. As
it is Acted at the Queen’s Theatre in the Hay-Market, By Her Majesty’s Servants.
[Written by Cibber and premiered in 1707.] [viii] 97. 4o: A4-N1: $2.
This play was the first in the second volume and gathering N continues into the
next play in the collection. The preliminaries include: title-page; Cibber’s
dedication to the Marquis of Kent, the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain; prologue;
sparse dramatis personae with the character names and the names of the players
(Cibber played Lord George Brillant [sic]). The play ends with an epilogue,
spoken (and sung) by Cibber.
The Rival Fools: or,
Wit, at Several Weapons. A Comedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal By Her
Majesty’s Servants. [Written by Cibber and premiered in 1709; an adaptation
of John Fletcher’s Wit at Several Weapons
of c. 1609-20]. [iv] 103-184. 4o: N2-4 O4-Z4:
$2. This play was continuous from the previous in Volume II of the original
collection. The preliminaries include the title-page, prologue (ending with the
ridiculous couplet: “But if [our] humble Jests shou’d fail to win ye, / We beg
some Grace for Signior Cibberini.”), and the sparse dramatis personae giving the
actors’ names with their parts (Cibber played Samuel Simple). The play ends
with an epilogue in the form of a comic dialogue between the actors Pinkethman
and Bullock. According to the catchword on Z4v, the next play after this in the
original Volume II was Ximena, a
comic adaptation of Corneille’s tragicomedy The
Cid, written by Cibber in 1712. In the extant collection, however, Ximena is missing.
The Non-Juror. A
Comedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal, By His Majesty’s Servants. [Cibber’s
politicized and heavily anti-Catholic 1717 adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe.] [271]-364. 4o: 2N4-3A2.
The preliminaries include the title-page, a lavish dedication to the new
Hanoverian King George I (in which Cibber alludes to the defeat of the Jacobite
rebels of 1715), a prologue (largely political and anti-Catholic and bearing no
real relevance to Cibber’s play) written by English poet and first editor of
Shakespeare’s plays (in 1709) Nicholas Rowe, and a sparse dramatis personae
with actors’ names (Cibber played Doctor Wolf) and the scene. The play ends
with a rousing rhyming couplet that takes the characters out of the world of
the play to address the royal audience (“Grant us but this, and then of course
you’ll own, / To guard that Freedom, GEORGE must fill the Throne”) and an
epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, that continues in the same vein (“How wild,
how frantick is the vain Essay, / That builds on modern Politicks a Play! /
Methinks to write at all is bold enough, / But in a Play, to stand a Faction,
Buff! / Not Rome’s old Stage presum’d (or Fame’s a Fibber) / And Moderns to
attempt it! well said CIBBER!”). The play that follows this in the original
Volume II is again missing (whatever it was, according to the catchword on 3A2v
it began with “The”).
The Tragical History
of King Richard III. As it is now Acted At the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane.
Alter’d from SHAKESPEAR, by Mr. CIBBER. Printed in London in 1721
[premiered in 1699]. [75]-140. 4o: [L2-4] M4-T2: $2. The
preliminaries are remarkably sparse given that this was probably Cibber’s most
famous play: a single leaf with the title-page on the recto and elegant by
spare dramatis personae list on the verso, with – oddly for Cibber, no actors’ names. Based on markings in
the lower margin this was from the original Volume I of the collection and,
based on the pagination, this was the second play in the book, following Love’s Last Shift. Cibber’s adaptation
of Richard III – participating in the
Restoration and eighteenth-century tradition of “improving” Shakespeare by
adapting his works for the radically different English stage of the period – is
the source of the now famous line, “Off with his head!” (see below).
Love makes a Man: or,
The Fop’s Fortune. A Comedy. As it is now Acted at the Theatre Royal In
Drury-Lane. By His Majesty’s Servants. By Cibber and premiered in 1700;
Cibber made this play by merging two plays by John Fletcher (The Elder Brother and The Custom of the Country). [141]-[220].
4o: [T3-4] U4-2F2: $2(-2F2). The preliminaries
include the title-page, prologue, and dramatis personae list with actors’ names
(Cibber played Clodio, “a pert Coxcomb”); the play ends with an epilogue.
Throughout the entirety, additional marks (asterisks,
daggers, and inverted crosses in the plays taken from Volume I and tiny Arabic
numerals in the plays taken from Volume II) in the lower margin of some sheets
may have been used at the time of printing in order to aid in imposition or
binding.
The printer has used very elegant devices, decorated
majuscules, and ornaments throughout the play. At times the ornamentation –
often constructed by carefully arranging tiny pieces of decorative type into
large patterns – competes with the text of the plays themselves for the eye’s
attention. Only rarely do any devices, ornaments, or majuscules repeat, even
within the two different volumes; this speaks to the elaborate nature of the
printing project and suggests it was expansive enough to merit essentially all
of the attention and equipment of the compositor(s) who were working on it. The
printing was very careful and cleanly done; there are few immediately evident
errors and judicious use of page space makes the text extremely clear and
readable. The printer was also attentive to how his work could illuminate the
plays themselves; for example, he used tiny crown ornaments to separate the end
of Act II in Richard the Third from
the start of Act III – a point in the play where Richard ominously welcomes his
nephew, Prince Edward, to London (see below).
The paper used for both volumes is a typical sturdy laid
stock measuring 22.5cm x 27.5cm, with horizontal chain-lines that vary between
2.5cm and 3cm intervals. In the plays from Volume II, the chain-lines actually
alternate between the two distances; in all the plays from Volume I except for Love’s Last Shift they are largely
consistent at 3cm. (In the blanks added for the rebinding, the chain-lines are
3.5cm.) This suggests that two stocks of paper were used; the first stock was
split between Volumes I and II and the second stock reserved only for Volume
II. This is confirmed by the distribution of watermarks.  |
| A sample of Cibber's writing style. |
No watermarks appear
in Love’s Last Shift or any of the
plays from Volume II. The remaining plays from Volume I, however, bear a
watermark that indicate the use of a side-by-side paper mould; as is typical of
quarto imposition, the mark crosses the middle of the spine fold – meaning that
when the mark appears, it is either the top half or bottom half and it is
within the inner gutter of the page. With only a few exceptions, the mark tends
to follow the conventional quarto format of division across conjugate leaves
(for example, if the top half appears on S4, the bottom half is on S1, or if
the top half is on Q3, the bottom half is on Q2). The mark is virtually
identical to what paper historians describe as the “Strasbourg bend” (Gaskell’s
fig. 30 on p. 68, but without the countermark), consisting of a fleur de lys sitting
atop a shield design bearing a stripe, or “bend”, diagonally across it.
The book that these plays came from was clearly Plays Written by Mr. Cibber, In Two Volumes
published in London in 1721 by a consortium of stationers made up of Jacob
Tonson, Bernard Lintot, William Mears, and William Chetwood (OCLC #228742382).
Tonson’s name was evidently dropped from the imprint of Volume II, which
suggests he pulled out of the project prior to the printing of that part of the
book. It was a subscription publication and a list of subscribers can be found
in most extant copies of Volume I. The OCLC description confirms that this is
the source of the plays in my collection with the following note: “Each play in
vol. 1 has a separate dated title page, but pagination and register are
continuous in each volume.” No indication is given, however, as to whom the
accomplished printer was that produced the project for the stationers.
My copy has been bound into paper-covered boards; the front
and back paper has a feathered marbling that has been subjected to some wear
and damage over time. The spine is a heavily painted brown paper meant to
imitate leather; there are six compartments separated by raised gilded bands. A
red leather label bears the gilded title “Plays”. The hinges, front and back,
are cracked and rather loose from use, but nothing is detached.
The only marginalia in the entire book is an owner’s
inscription in a confident eighteenth-century hand using copperplate ink, on
the front pastedown:
Thomas Beecroft
No 23
Pater Noster Row.
Scouring genealogical records turns up a Thomas Beecroft
born to John and Elizabeth Beecroft of London on January 16, 1754. Pater Noster
Row in London was the city’s principal book trade neighborhood and so my
initial suspicion is that Beecroft was somehow associated with the industry.
Consulting the Exeter Working Papers in Book History, which lists individuals
who were part of the book trade in eighteenth century England, confirms my
suspicions.
Thomas’s father, John Beecroft – son of gentleman John
Beecroft of Norwich – was a wholesale bookseller working and living on Pater
Noster Row since 1740. In 1767 he moved to 23 Pater Noster Row. In 1773 he
became one of the masters of the Stationers’ Company, the guild for printers
and booksellers. He was particularly known for his publication of music and
because he served as a bookselling agent for Cambridge University. In 1779,
however, he died of an apoplectic fit and his twenty-five year-old son, Thomas
Beecroft, who had likely served his apprenticeship under his father, inherited
the shop at 23 Pater Noster Row. He ran the shop for only about two years, from
1780 to 1781; after being elected to a livery in the Stationers’ Company in
1781, he pulled up roots and moved to Walthamstow, Essex. He died on June 1,
1787 in Saxethorpe, Norfolk.
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