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

51 Arthur Murphy writing in the Gray's Inn Journal.

52 An Essay on Original Genius 129. Cf. 130-3 In.: "Were we to admit the invention of surprising incidents, as the most distinguishing criterion of ORIGINALITY, we should be under a necessity of assigning the superiority in this respect to ARIOSTO, over HOMER and SHAKESPEAR ... a preference

surely, which neither the dictates of impartial Reason, nor the laws of sound Criticism, could ever justify."

53 Duff, Critical Observations 128. Duff's valorization of "the invention, and just exhibition of supernatural characters in particular" echoes Joseph Warton's stress on Shakespeare's creation of imaginary beings such as Ariel and the fairies in The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, respectively (An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope 227-9).

54 In fact, Shakespeare's canonical status proved far more of a bugbear for the English Romantics, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley, whose quasi-historical dramas abound in phrases and lines gleaned from the Bard's works. See Steiner, The Death of Tragedy 146ff, and Bate, Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination.

55 The best account of the variety of historical sources used by eighteenth-century playwrights remains Lynch's Box, Pit, and Gallery.

56Prologue (By a Friend), in Busiris, King of Egypt. A Tragedy (London, 1719), sig. A7v.

57 Zingis. A Tragedy (London, 1769), Advertisement, sig. A2r. Cf. Dow's Sethona, which is set in historic Memphis.

58 Advertisement to Alzuma, sig. A2r.

59 The edition of Dow's play includes an elaborate advertisement of this translation: This Day is Published,

In Two Volumes Quarto, with a new and accurate Map, and Frontispiece to each Volume. Price 11. 10 s. in boards.

The History of Hindustan, from the earliest Account of Time, to the Death of Akbar. Translated from the Persian of Mahummud Casim Ferishta of Delhi. Together with a Dissertation concerning the Religion and Philosophy of the Brahims; with an Appendix containing the History of the Mogul Empire, from its decline in the Reign of Mahummud Shaw, to the present Times. By ALEXANDER Dow, Esq. (sig. A2v)

60 See the preface to Sotheby's The Siege of Cuzco (v).

61 An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope 276. And further:

We have been too long attached to Grecian and Roman stories. In truth, the Domestica Facta, are more interesting as well as more useful: more interesting, because we all think ourselves concerned in the actions and fates of our countrymen; more useful, because the characters and manners, bid the fairest to be true and natural, when they are drawn from models with which we are exactly acquainted. The Turks, the Persians, and Americans, of our poets, are in reality distinguished from Englishmen, only by their turbans and feathers; and think, and act, as if they were born and educated within the bills of mortality. The historical plays of Shakespeare, are always particularly grateful to the spectator, who loves to see and hear our own Harrys and Edwards, better than all the Achilles's or Brutus's that ever existed. (276-7)