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

62 See, for example, More's Prologue to The Fatal Falsehood:

Our modern Poets scarce know how to chuse / A subject worthy of the Tragic Muse; / For Bards so well have glean'd th' Historic field, / That scarce one sheaf th' exhausted ancients yield ... Yet still the wilds of fiction open lie, / A flow'ry prospect, and a boundless sky ... She dares not touch the Drama's nobler strings, / The fate of nations, and the fall of Kings; / The humbler scenes of private life she shews, / A simple story of domestic woes. (sig. A3r)

63 For a survey of the conventions of gothic drama, see the opening chapters of Ranger's "Terror and Pity reign in every Breast."

64 The first to reach the stage was More's Percy, which opened at Covent Garden on 10 December 1777. It was followed by Jephson's Law of Lombardy on 8 February 1779 and More's Fatal Falsehood on 6 May 1779. Cowley's Albina was not premiered at the Haymarket Theater until 31 August 1779. See The London Stage, 1660-1800 part 5, 1: 133, 233, 254, and 268, respectively.

65 Tiffany Stem provides a stimulating account of the process of script revision in eighteenth-century theater in chapters five and six of her Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan.

66 This improvement in earnings was a direct outcome of the change, introduced in 1794-95 at both Drury Lane and Covent Garden, in the system of rewarding playwrights for mainpieces. The author's benefit was abolished. Instead, "the playwright was paid 33 6s 8d per night (amounting to 100 for every three nights) for the first nine nights of the run. If the play survived twenty nights, another 100 would be paid, bringing maximum compensation to 400." Though intended to prevent exorbitant benefits made possible, at least in theory, by the recent enlargement of seating capacity at both houses, the new system was in fact highly advantageous to writers since it set the profit from any play, even a fairly dismal flop, at a reasonable minimum. See Millions and Hume, "Playwrights' Remuneration."

67 See Rose, "The Author as Proprietor: Donaldson v. Becket and the Genealogy of Modern Authorship" and Authors and Owners; Kernan, Printing Technology, Letters and Samuel Johnson; and Saunders, Authorship and Copyright.

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Hans. "The Study of Shakespeare's Sources from Langbaine to Malone." B. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1954.

Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Bate, Walter Jackson. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Beaumont, Francis and John Fletcher. The Works of Mr. Francis Beaumont, and Mr John Fletcher In Ten Volumes. Collated with all the former Editions, and Corrected. With Notes Critical and Explanatory. By The late Mr. Theobald, Mr. Seward of Eyam in Derbyshire, and Mr Sympson of Gainsborough. London, 1750.

Bickerstaffe, Isaac. The Plain Dealer: A comedy ... With Alterations from Wycherley. London, 1766. Doctor Last in his Chariot: A Comedy. London, 1766.