Page images
PDF
EPUB

DRAMATIC WORKS

OF

JOHN FORD.

WITH AN

INTRODUCTION AND EXPLANATORY NOTES,

BY

HENRY WEBER, ESQ.

VOLUME II.

EDINBURGH:

Printed by George Ramsay & Company,

FOR ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, EDINBURGH; AND LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, and Brown,

10

WILLIAM MILLER, AND JOHN MURRAY,

LONDON.

1811.

NEW YORK

[blocks in formation]

The Witch of Edmonton, by Rowley, Dekkar, Ford, &c. 397

Glossarial Index,

499

PERKIN WARBECK.

THE entire title of the old quarto of this historical play is the following: "The Chronicle Historie of Perkin Warbeck. A strange truth. Acted (some times) by the Queenes Majesties Servants at the Phoenix in Drurie-lane. Fide Honor. London, printed by T. P. for Hugh Beeston, and are to be sold at his shop, neere the Castle in Cornehill, 1634." In 1715 it was reprinted in octavo, to serve in the list of antidotes to the rebellion of that year, but was not then acted. In 1745, still greater exertions were made to draw a parallel between the mock Duke of York and the unfortunate Charles Edward. "There are now," says Oldys in his MS. notes to Langbaine, " in December 1745, on occasion of the present rebellion under the Pretender's eldest son, two plays, near finished, on this story of Perkin Warbeck, one by Charles Macklin the player, the other by Mr Joseph Elderton a young attorney; the former for Drury-Lane, the latter at Covent-Garden, but this play of John Ford's has got the start of them at Goodman's Fields. Macklin's was a silly performance, and was soon dismissed, he being twenty pounds out of pocket by acting it, yet got it printed. Elderton's was not finished before it was too late in the season to act it, and when the rebellion was suppressed in the field, it was thought unrea sonable to revive it on the stage. Macklin's was called by the foolish title of King Henry VII., or the Popish Impostor, popery being looked on as no objection in that reign. Elderton's was called, The Pretender." The latter play was never printed, and is not noticed in the Biographia Dramatica. With regard to Macklin's, the author of that work excuses its imperfections by informing us, "that it was the six weeks labour only of au actor, who, even in that short space, was often called from it by his profession; and that the players, for the sake of dispatch, had it to study act by act, just as it was blotted; and that the only revisals it received from the brouillon to the press, were at the rehearsals of it."

Ford's play is founded upon the chronicles of the reign of Henry VII., and particularly upon the history of that monarch by the celebrated Lord Bacon, as appears from the beginning of

« PreviousContinue »