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Table of Contents

[1] John Loftis, "Introduction," Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, The Augustan Reprint Society Special Publication (Los Angeles, 1971), p. i.

[2] For a bibliographical study of play catalogues, see Carl J. Stratman, Dramatic Play Lists, 1591-1963 (New York, 1966).

[3] William Riley Parker, "Winstanley's Lives: An Appraisal," MLQ, VI (1945), 313.

[4] Parker, pp. 317, 315.

[5] Parker, pp. 317-318.

[6] "Just as Phillips copied all of the source citations from Vossius for the ancients, so he took most of the scholarly references to the moderns from Edward Leigh's Treatise" (Sanford Golding, "The Sources of the Theatrum Poetarum," PMLA, LXXVI [1961], 51).

[7] Parker believed that only Winstanley used Kirkman directly, but Golding shows that Phillips used both Kirkman's 1661 and 1671 lists (Golding, p. 51).

[8] The 1671 Catalogue is bound, bibliographically independent, with John Dancer's Nicomede, which was published by Kirkman. Kirkman's earlier list, A True, Perfect, and Exact Catalogue (London, 1661) contains 685 plays and is bound with Tom Tyler and His Wife.

[9] Specifically, the catalogues of Richard Rogers and William Ley and of Archer, both published in 1656. See Stratman, pp. 7-8.

[10] See, for example, Kirkman, The Stationer to the Reader, in The Thracian Wonder (1661); this and similar advertisements are reprinted in Strickland Gibson, A Bibliography of Francis Kirkman, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, N. S., I (1949), 73.

[11] Gibson, pp. 93-94.

[12] Principally by W. W. Greg, "Additional Notes on Dramatic Bibliographers," The Malone Society, Collections, II. 3 (1931), 235-236. Based on evidence in the Account Greg later corrected his attribution from Kirkman to Langbaine: "Gerard Langbaine the Younger and Nicholas Cox," The Library, N. S., XXV. 1 & 2 (1944), 67-69.

[13] It is, however, impossible that Phillips, published in 1675, was "led into [error] by my Catalogue printed 1680."

[14] John Dryden: Some Biographical Facts and Problems, revised Edition (Gainesville, Fla., 1965), p. 235.

[15] About 30 plays which appear in An Exact Catalogue, usually wrongly attributed, are not brought into Momus. These include such plays as "Cruelty of the Spanish in Peru," "Hieronomo in two parts" and "Gyles Goose-cap." There are several changes in assignment from An Exact Catalogue to Momus, including "Appius and Virginia" from B. R. to John Webster. An Exact Catalogue seems to attribute "Virtuoso" to D'Urfey, but Momus gives it correctly to Shadwell.

[16] This is Osborn's suggestion, p. 235.

[17] Fewer than 25 plays in Momus are missing from the index. Of these Shakespeare's Henry VIII and Sir Robert Howard's Committee are the most significant. The Index lists several plays which are omitted from the main list, most interestingly "Revenger's Tragedy, By C. T."

[18] Osborn, p. 240.

[19] Henry Burnel, Esq.; James Carlile; Sir John Denham; Joseph Harris; Will. Mountford; George Powel; John Stephens; Dr. Robert Wild; R. D.; J. W.

[20] "—Peaps" and "J. Swallow."

[21] Decker, Wonder of the Kingdom; Unknown, Robin Conscience; and Unknown, Woman Will Have Her Will.

[22] Although Langbaine claims to use "the best Edition of each Book" (Preface, [A3v]), one of his eighteenth-century annotators, Bishop Percy, is right in saying that "Langbaine's Work would have been more valuable if he had everywhere set down the First Editions," but "the editions referred to" are "such as he happened to have in his possession." Oldys had earlier expressed the same bibliographical regret more succinctly: "A woeful Chronologist art thou, Gerard Langbaine." These opinions are quoted by Alun Watkin-Jones in his survey of annotated copies of the Account: "Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691)," Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XXI (1936), 77.

[23] For his biography and that of his father, Gerard Langbaine the Elder, see Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Philip Bliss (London, 1813-1820), III, 446-468. There is a note recording an illicit romance for the son in Andrew Clark, The Life and Times of Anthony Wood (Oxford, 1891), I, 237-238.

[24] Wood, III, 446.

[25] Wood, III, 366.

[26] The Advertisement is on the recto of a leaf added after [a4]; "The ERRATA for the Preface" appears on the verso. For an account of Oldham's "A Satyr Against Vertue," published without his consent in 1679, see Wood, IV, 120.

[27] Hugh Macdonald, "The Attacks on Dryden," Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XXI (1936), 67.

[28] The Translators Epistle to the Reader, Amadis de Gaule (1652).

[29] Wood, III, 364.

[30] His father's coat of arms is described in Clark, I, 237. But for a conservative attitude toward use of the address, see Edward Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia: or the Present State of England, the First Part, the Fifteenth Edition (London, 1684), p. 344.

[31] Wood, III, 367.

[32] Clifford makes the same charge of plagiarism in equally virulent language: "And next I will detect your Thefts, letting the World know how great a Plagery you are ..." (Notes upon Mr. Dryden's Poems [London, 1687], P. 3).

[33] Maximillian E. Novak, "Introduction," Settle, Dryden, Shadwell, Crowne, Duffet, The Empress of Morocco and Its Critics, The Augustan Reprint Society Special Series (Los Angeles, 1968), pp. i-xix. Novak also discusses Dryden's quarrels with Howard and the Rota.

[34] Account, p. 140, gives new information, or gossip, about Dryden's pre-Restoration activities.

[35] Loftis, pp. ix-xiii.

[36] This is a focus of Clifford's charges as well: "There is one of your Virtues which I cannot forbear to animadvert upon, which is your excess of Modesty; When you tell us in your Postscript to Granada, That Shakespeare is below the Dullest Writer of Ours, or any precedent Age" (p. 10).

[37] Although Shakespeare's "Learning was not extraordinary," Langbaine "esteem[s] his Plays beyond any that have ever been published in our Language" (Account, pp. 453-454). In both Momus and the Account Langbaine employed the 1685 folio edition of Shakespeare's works which was printed for Herringman and others and dedicated to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery (Wing 2915, 2916, 2917). He catalogues the seven plays added in this edition to those of the earlier collected editions, but contrary to its genre designation in the First Folio and in this edition, Langbaine refers to Merchant of Venice as a tragi-comedy and, in Momus, lists two parts of "John King of England." In the Account he changes the designation of Winter's Tale from comedy to tragi-comedy, and in both catalogues appends "Birth of Merlin," altering his description of its genre from pastoral to tragi-comedy.

[38] Wood, III, 449.

[39] See, for example, a review in the Moderator, no. 3 (23 June 1692); quoted in Wood, III, 367.