been seized upon by the King’s men.[1] The list of plays “appropried” includes some forty-four dramas, mostly the legacies of then defunct companies. For comparison with this there is, happily, another list dated August 7, 1641, detailing sixty comedies and tragedies which were the sole property of the King’s men.[2] Here the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson are not included, and their omission may be taken as indicating that the dramas detailed in the list are only those which so far had not found their way into print.
When acting was re-started in 1660 there seems to have been still some vague sense of proprietary ownership of the older plays; and this vague sense was crystallised by warrants issuing from the Lord Chamberlain’s office, defining with greater or less accuracy the dramas authorised to be performed by the several companies. On December 12, 1660, a short list of plays allotted to D’Avenant was issued; on August 20, 1668, there was provided a lengthier enumeration of his dramas; and about January 12, 1668–9, was drawn up “A Catalogue of part of His Mates Servants Playes as they were formerly acted at the Blackfryers & now allowed of to his Mates Servants at ye New Theatre.”[3] The last of these three documents enumerates no less than 108 plays in all, but among them are to be found many of the works of Jonson and Shakespeare. Of the former, there is included Every Man in his Humour, Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia’s Revels, Sejanus, The Fox, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, Catiline, Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News, The Devil is an Ass, The Magnetic Lady, The Tale of a Tub, and The New Inn—fourteen in all; of the latter, The Winter’s Tale, King John, Richard II., The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well that Ends Well, Henry IV. (both parts), Richard III., Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Julius Cæsar, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline—twenty-one
- ↑ This list is to be found in the Public Record Office, L.C. 5/134, p. 337. For the suggestion regarding Monsieur Thomas, see Mr. E. K. Chambers’ article on Plays of the King’s Men in 1641 (Malone Society Collections, i. 4 and 5, p. 364) and his Elizabethan Stage, iii. 228.
- ↑ Public Record Office, L.C .5/96; printed in Malone Society Collections, i. 4 and 5, pp. 367–369.
- ↑ These three lists are all in the Public Record Office; L.C. 5/137, p. 343; L.C. 5/139, p. 375, and L.C. 5/12, p. 202. They have been printed in the present writer’s History of Restoration Drama, pp. 314–316.
