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

30 "Some Account of the Life of Mr. George Lillo," The Works of George Lillo 1: xxvii. That collection was preceded by a nonce collection of The Works Of the Late Mr George Lillo (London, 1740) issued by John Gray.

31 Dedication addressed by Davies to David Garrick in Lillo's Works 1: iii.

32 Preface to The Works of Arthur Murphy 1: vii. Murphy also included "A List of the Several Pieces

Contained in this Edition, In order of Time as they were written and acted."

33 More's "prophane" dramas-her pastoral play The Search after Happiness, and her tragedies Percy and The Inflexible Captive-were set forth in The Works of Miss Hannah More in Prose and Verse (Cork, 1778), which was prepared for the press by the author.

34 See Sherbo, The Birth of Shakespeare Studies and Shakespeare's Midwives; Jarvis, Scholars and Gentlemen; and Grazia, Shakespeare Verbatim. There is no comprehensive study of eighteenth-century editions of Renaissance playwrights other than Shakespeare.

35 For a survey of eighteenth-century dramatic anthologies, see chapter four of Russell's "Dramatists and the Printed Page."

36 However, Russell points out that dramatic anthologies, which had been conceived as cheap alternatives to author-centered collected editions and to singly printed plays, became more lavish and elaborate by the end of the century, thus matching their rivals in price. See "Dramatists and the Printed Page."

37 For an overview, see Gray, Theatrical Criticism.

38 See, for example, The Playhouse Pocket-Companion: "We have, in the foregoing chapters, seen the progress of the English stage, through the several epochas of its history; we shall now hazard a few reflections on these epochas, and conclude with some strictures on the cause of the present acknowledged declining state of dramatic poetry in England" (36). This sorry state of affairs was due primarily to the entrenchment of the theatrical monopoly following the passage of the Licensing Act, for:

it is not ... for the interest of the managers to bring on any [new pieces]; and whilst the present act continues in force ... they will continue to exercise their capricious power of rejecting all that are offered, to the utter extinction of the national dramatic taste ... especially since they can vamp up, and revive stale pieces, whose authors, long since peaceful inhabitants of the shades of Elysium, shall put in no claim for third nights. (41-42)

Cf. Guthrie, An Essay upon English Tragedy: "We shall now proceed to the period, (a mighty blank it is,) to the accession of George the second from that of King William, from whence we may date the decay of tragic genius in poetry" (17).

39 For an account of the dramatists' growing earnings, see Milhous and Hume, "Playwrights' Remuneration in Eighteenth-Century London."

40 Milhous and Hume survey the forms of payment for afterpieces, including not only cash fees but also sporadic benefits, in "Playwrights' Remuneration."

41 Toward the end of the century, theaters occasionally put on mini-shows before the mainpiece. As F. G. Waldron explains in the Advertisement to The Prodigal, "it has been thought necessary, of late years, at the Hay-Market Theatre, to perform a short piece previous to that which is meant as the principal attraction." Accordingly, Colman the Younger commissioned him to supply one that he proposed to derive from Joseph Mitchell's The Fatal Extravagance (see The Prodigal 3).