"[A] play, which I presume to call original": Appropriation, creative genius, and eighteenth-century playwriting

Hannah Cowley's search for both fame and profit, though frustrated in her lifetime, was symbolically gratified in a posthumous edition of her works published in 1813-Cowley died in 1809-which figures her as the quintessential literary genius. The preface to The Works of Mrs. Cowley. Dramas and Poems emphasizes her versatility ("In the elegant Liveliness of Comedy, the Humour of Farce, and the thwarted Passions and lofty grandeur of Tragedy, she ... dared the whole range of the Drama"). It also encourages the reader to trace "the history of the progress of the writer's Mind," a process evidenced by the chronological arrangement of her compositions; and extols Cowley's originality ("Her plots ... had their origin only in her own mind"), drawing attention to "the utmost facility and celerity" of "her habits of composition" (Works 1: viii-ix, ix, xii). Unsurprisingly, the original preface to Albina (and any reference to writing for money) has been expunged, the text of the play being proffered to the reader as an unqualified testimony to the creative powers of an author figured as "one of those who may perhaps in future time cause it to be felt-that this too was an Age in which Genius had not deserted the realm" (xxi).

As the eighteenth century drew to a close, the earnings of professional writers in general, and of established playwrights such as Inchbald, Cumberland, and Reynolds in particular, were higher than ever before.bb Yet the effects of this economic prosperity upon the cultural status of drama and playwriting were equivocal. For the widespread practice of script revision, the popularity of musical comedies, burlettas, and farces, and the reductive format of the afterpiece enforced patterns of composition that called for scissors and paste rather than inspiration. With theaters devoting a large proportion of their energies to mounting such entertainments, the quality of plays and the literary pretensions of playwrights inevitably plummeted. Moreover, the dissemination and general acceptance of ideas of originality and creative genius proved incompatible with the commercial ethos of contemporary theater. Rather than stimulating a search for new dramatic forms and subject matter, they produced a sense of inferiority among those who wrote for the stage and led to the increased valorization of old plays-particularly Shakespeare's-at the expense of new offerings. The aspirations to authorial stature of such professed "original" writers as Hannah Cowley were foiled by the material conditions of theater production that prevailed in the period.