plays would tend is that D’Avenant, who seems all through the Commonwealth period to have been eager to recommence dramatic performances, together with Beeston, who during the period of theatre suppression made himself proprietor of the Salisbury Court playhouse in anticipation of happier days to come, secured the possession of a number of prompt-books belonging originally to the King’s men, and by virtue of the possession of these the former contrived to get a royal warrant in 1660, declaring that he might have those dramas as the property of his company. The only definite item of proof against this theory of which I am aware is that the 1678 quarto of The Duchess of Malfi is but a modernised reprint of the quarto of 1640; but even this does not necessarily establish the non-existence of an original prompt-text in D’Avenant’s hands. It is, at all events, possible that the printer here used for convenience a printed text instead of utilising a theatre copy, no doubt presenting matter much more difficult to set up satisfactorily.[1]
The warrants of 1660, 1668, and 1669 are thus seen to have a very definite interest as proving the continuity of Elizabethan ideas concerning the ownership of plays, and, if the conclusion set forth above be in any way accepted, they serve to put more of intrinsic importance on those late quarto texts which critics in the past have been inclined to regard rather as literary curiosities than as possible sources of information in a determination of the true text of Shakespeare.
- ↑ It is noticeable that while The Tempest was published by Cademan, Hamlet by Martyn and Herringman, and Macbeth by Herringman, The Duchess of Malfi was described as printed by D. N. and T. C., and sold by Simon Neale. It is probably that the publication of the last was not authorised by the actors.
