Gerard Langbaine

“ The first Catalogue that was printed of any worth, was that Collected by Kirkman, a London Bookseller, whose chief dealing was in Plays; which was published 1671, at the end of Nicomede, a Tragi-comedy, Translated from the French of Monsieur Corneille. This Catalogue was printed Alphabetically, as to the Names of the Plays, but promiscuously as to those of the Authors, (Shakspeare, Fletcher, Johnson, and some others of the most voluminous Authors excepted) each Authors Name being placed over against each Play that he writ, and still repeated with every several Play, till a new Author came on. ”

“ But at the same time I cannot but blame him for taxing others with stealing Characters from him, (as he does Settle in his Notes on Morocco) when he himself does the same, almost in all the Plays he writes; and for arraigning his Predecessours for stealing from the Ancients, as he does Johnson; which tis evident that he himself is guilty of the same. I would therefore desire our Laureat, that he would follow that good Advice which the modest History Professor Mr. Wheare gives to the young Academick in his Antelogium, to shun this, Confidence and Self-love, as the worst of Plagues ”

“ Fifthly, Some plays are ascribed to one Author which were writ by another; as Celum Britanicum, a Masque, is to Sir William Davenant, though it was written by Carew and Jones. Which fault is rather to be imputed to the Publishers of Sir William Davenant's Workes, 1673, in Folio, than to the Compilers of the former [Pg xxiii] Catalogue; who are more excusable than, Mr. Phillips in his Catalogue of Poets, called, Theatrum Poetarum; and his Transcriber Winstanley, who has follow'd him at a venture in his Characters of the Drammatick Writers, even to a word, in his Lives of the English Poets. ”

“ For (says he) wise Poets think it more worthy to seek out truth in the Passions, than to record the truth of Actions; and practise to describe mankind just as we are perswaded or guided by instinct, not particular persons, as they are lifted, or levelled by the force of Fate, it being nobler to contemplate the general History of Nature, than a selected Diary of Fortune. So that we see the busineß of a Poet is to refine upon History ”

“ There are over one hundred and fifteen genre changes, of which at least three-quarters involve tragi-comedy, and of these nearly one half (about forty) represent a shift in description from comedy to tragi-comedy. These changes suggest that Langbaine was reading or re-reading the plays carefully between the end of 1687 and 1691 and perhaps the critical commentary on genre by the Caroline dramatists as well since many of the conversions occur in describing the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, and Shirley. ”

“ Nevertheless, Kirkman argued for the completeness of the second catalogue:
[Pg iv]
I really believe there are no more [plays] , for I have been these twenty years a Collector of them, and have conversed with, and enquired of those that have been Collecting these fifty years. These, I can assure you, are all in Print, for I have seen them all within ten, and now have them all by me within thirty. [11]
Langbaine's first catalogue, An Exact Account, was published anonymously and his authorship of this work has been questioned. ”

“ It seems, however, to have generated much of the energy required to accomplish so assiduously such large tasks. Langbaine's attacks angered some contemporary readers; [39] they seem, ineffectually, to have made no adverse impression on at least one of Dryden's patrons: in the same year that Langbaine dedicated the Account to James, Earl of Abington, the Earl commissioned Dryden to write a commemorative ode to his wife Eleanora. For the modern reader, Langbaine's point of view happily supplies the interest which raises his catalogues from any dullness inherent in their genre. ”

“ By these Remarks the Reader will find The Fond Lady, to be only the Amorous Old Woman, with a new Title, The Eunuch, to be The Fatal Contract, a Play printed above thirty years ago; with many the like.
The Second is an Essay towards a more large Account of the Basis on which each Play is built, whether it be founded on any Story or Passage either in History, Chronicle, Romance, or Novel. By this means the curious Reader may be able to form a Judgment of the Poets ability in working up a Dramma, by comparing his Play with the Original Story. ”

“ Dryden has many Excellencies which far out-weigh his Faults; he is an excellent Critick, and a good Poet, his Stile is smooth and fluent, and he has written well, both in Verse and Prose. I own that I admire him, as much as any man ”

“ The catalogues of Phillips and Winstanley are, as their titles state, not primarily play lists, and their importance to a discussion of dramatic bibliographies resides solely in the use made of them by Langbaine. Two hundred and fifty-two British poets are named in Phillips' Theatrum Poetarum. Of these some one hundred and sixty-nine were authors of plays. The titlepage of Winstanley's Lives advertises an account "of above Two Hundred" poets, but "147 are actually listed in the catalogue, and only 168 are noted throughout." ”

“ But there is a personal side, too (as there may be with Dryden) . Langbaine's father was a friend of Jonson, who presented him with an inscribed copy of Vossius, [38] and Langbaine concludes his article on Jonson with an encomium by his father's friend Anthony Wood.
If Langbaine delights in exposing the antagonisms and contradictions of Dryden's thirty years at the controversial center of London life, he also inadvertently reveals to us a man on a hobby-horse riding at full tilt with a motley pack. His obsession with Dryden, like most obsessions, was, no doubt, a fault. ”

“ But as a correct Play is not so much understood, or at least regarded by the generality of Spectators; and that few of our Poets now-a-days write so much for Honour as Profit: they are therefore content to please at an easier rate. But would some great Man appear here in the defence of Poetry, and for the support of good Poets, as the great Cardinal Richlieu, that Noble Patron of Arts and Sciences, did in France ”

“ Gerard Langbaine's Momus Triumphans, Or the Plagiaries of the English Stage (1687) is significant for a number of reasons. It is, first of all, the most comprehensive catalogue of the English theatre to its time, a list of surprising bibliographical competence and extent for its subject and period and a source study which is still of some use today. ”

“ The Preface. If it be true, what Aristotle [40] that great Philosopher, and Father of Criticism, has own'd, that the Stage might instruct Mankind better than Philosophy it self. If Homer was thought by Horace [41] to exceed Crantor and Chrystippus in the Precepts of Morality; and if Sophocles and Euripides, obtained the title of Wise, for their Dramatich Writing, certainly it can be no discredit for any man to own himself a lover of that sort of Poetry, which has been stiled, The School of Vertue and good Manners? ”

“ But for the most part we are treated far otherwise; not with sound Roman Wit, as in Ben's time, but with empty French Kickshaws, which yet our Poetical Hosts serve up to us for Regales of their own Cookery; and yet they themselves undervalue that very Nation to whom they are oblig'd for the best share of their Treat. Thus our Laureat himself runs down the French Wit in his Marriage a la Mode, and steals from Molliere in his Mock Astrologer ”

“ Secondly, it serves as the strong and carefully articulated skeleton for Langbaine's elaborately expanded Account of the English Dramatick Poets published some three years later in 1691, and itself a catalogue which remains "a major work of literary scholarship that is immune from obsolescence." [1] Thirdly, and more privately, Momus stands as both a partial record and efficient cause of a quarrel whose claim to our attention is its connection with Dryden. It is a quarrel minor in itself and of which few details are known. ”

“ Langbaine was entitled to style himself a gentleman [30] as he does in A New Catalogue (but not in the Account) ; ironically, Langbaine came to the address of esquire by his elections in 1690 and 1691 as inferior and then superior beadle of arts of Oxford University "in consideration of his ingenuity and loss of part of his estate." [31]
Langbaine's reactions to the trick served to intensify his source studies (though this was already promised in the Preface) and to increase his attention and antagonism to Dryden. ”

“ A large [Pg vii] number of the source references in Momus, especially those not transferred to the Account, are general in nature, to national histories or to the compilations of Eusebius and Heylin.
In addition to a history of previous catalogues, his abhorrence of plagiarism and his attack on Dryden, the Preface contains statements of Langbaine's own literary interests and critical principles. He had an obvious "relish of the Dramma" (A2r) which probably dated from the time he was "bound an Apprentice to a Bookseller called Nevil Simmons living in S. Paul's Church Yard in London." ”

“ For this reason I have observ'd what Thefts I have met with throughout the Catalogue, and have endeavour'd a restitution to their right Owners, and a prevention of the Readers being impos'd on by the Plagiary, as the Patrons of several [Pg xxvii] of our Plays have been by our Modern Poets. But none certainly has attempted it with greater confidence, than he that stiles himself the Author of The Country Innocence, or The Chambermaid turn'd Quaker: a Play which was acted and printed in the year 1677, but first publish'd many years before by its genuine Author Ant. ”

“ Macdonald believes this account is fictive and that Langbaine invented the story to cover an initial immodesty, [27] but Langbaine's style has nothing of the biting playfulness of tone of the spurious title. He is often righteous and sarcastic, but he is not given to direct immodesty or to the burlesque, and he does not consider plagiarism his principal subject. Further, there is evidence in the Preface ( [A3r] ) that "New Catalogue" was at least his working title. ”

“ Langbaine's animadversions on "crafty Booksellers" ( [A4r] ) as well as his attacks on Dryden may have caused an embarrassing bibliographical trick to be played on him. Wood reports that Momus was published in November, 1687, and five hundred copies sold before Langbaine "caused another title to be put to the rest of the copies (with an advertisement against the first) ." [25] This new titlepage, added early in December, reads as follows:
A New Catalogue of English Plays, Containing All The Comedies, Tragedies, Tragi-Comedies, Operas, Masques, Pastorals, Interludes, Farces, &c. ”

“ For bibliographical detail Momus is not entirely superseded by the Account since over sixteen descriptions of format [22] and thirty of genre are not incorporated in the later catalogue. Furthermore, about thirty-eight plays are given sources in Momus which are not carried over into the Account. ”

“ Langbaine is a writer one now appreciates not simply for the extensive [Pg xiii] accuracy of his theatrical recording, but as a man whose attitudes (and many of his inaccuracies) arise passionately out of his interests and prejudices. To paraphrase Mirabell, quite out of context, we admire him "with all his faults, nay like him for his faults."
University of California,
Los Angeles ”

“ Shadwell, Flecknoe and Mac Flecknoe; the Ancients versus the Moderns; Rymer; and Dryden's attitudes toward the classics, the French, and the English dramatists of the earlier part of the century. The reiterations of these attacks come from Langbaine at a time when Dryden was vulnerable to political and religious charges, and Langbaine does not fail to include those. [34] Langbaine's wholesale attacks seem, however, to have two centers. ”

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“ Four hundred and sixty-seven plays by sixty authors are included. From Phillips' collection Winstanley omits the thirty-three Scottish poets and sixty-eight English poets. William Riley Parker believes that most of Winstanley's omissions were deliberate and that his "endeavor, unlike Phillips', was to give a chronological survey of English poetry from Robert of Gloucester down to Sir Roger L'Estrange." [4] Parker defines the differing contributions of the two men in the following manner:
[Pg iii]
Phillips is more the bibliographer and cataloguer, collecting names and titles ”

“ This is a truth so generally known, that I need not bring instances to prove, that in the humour of our Comedies, and in the characters of our Tragedies, we do not yeild to any other Nation. 'Tis true the unities of Time, Place, and Action, which are generally allowed to be the Beauties of a Play, and which the French are so careful to observe, add all lusture to their Plays ”