THEATER/THEATRE A-C   •   D-K   •   L-Z

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Plays Elegantly Produced for TheirFirst Print Appearance

•  First edition. Francesco and Andrea Zucchi were responsible for the copperplate engraving for this work: The title-page bears a copperplate vignette, with four other copperplate vignettes and one decorated capital present as well as the oversized, folding plate. Giulio Cesare Becelli edited and introduced this collection of Maffei’s plays, providing what Gamba calls “tre erudite prefazioni.” The author was an archeologist and man of letters whose tragedy Merope (present here) achieved enormous popularity in not only his native Italy but also almost every country where translations appeared, including France, England, Germany, and Holland. Click the images for enlargements.

•  Gamba 2323; not in Brunet. Contemporary vellum over paste boards, outer edges yapp, spine with hand-inked title; vellum torn and partially lost over lower edge of front cover, with signs of wear and small spots of staining elsewhere. Ex-library, front pastedown with Italian institutional bookplate; yet volume otherwise free of markings. Title-page verso with affixed scrap of paper. Intermittently occurring light dampstaining in upper margins; otherwise clean.

If you don't mind those Chipped labels . . . QUITE Satisfactory!

•  Five-volume set of collected works by the celebrated 18th-century poet and librettist, with the first three volumes dedicated to his historical plays.

•  Contemporary vellum, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels and gilt-stamped decorative bands; bindings lightly soiled, with spine labels chipped and rubbed, spines with shelving numbers in white. All page edges stained gold. Front pastedowns with institutional bookplates, title-pages with shadows of pencilled numerals. Vol. III lacking half-title. Intermittent light foxing, most pages clean. (14112)

Signed byArthur Miller & Leonard Baskin

Click the images for enlargements.

•  This Limited Editions Club copy (no. 880 of 1500 printed) is signed by both the playwright and the illustrator at the colophon.

The binding is full rusty-brown Nigerian goat, stamped in gold on the spine. The etchings are by Leonard Baskin, a series of five portraits tracing the downward spiral of Willy Loman — a powerful complement to Miller's portrait of a salesman at the end of his career and at the end of his rope! The plates, printed by Bruce Chandler, are each protected by a brown paper tissue guard. The book is designed by Benjamin Schiff, who chose a Bulmer font for the text.

This offering includes the monthly newsletter but not the mailing notice.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 540.   Binding as above. One of the tissue guards is loose but otherwise undamaged. Fine, in the original slipcase. A handsome production of one of the most performed plays in the world!  (21754)

The Death of FAUST

•  First American edition?  Uncommon: OCLC lists 3 copies. Published also in German in 1864, with the title: "Faust's Tod."

•  Quarter library cloth over marbled paper sides, covers pressure-stamped with the name of a now-defunct library, paper shelving label in top right corner of front cover. Small tear to spine cloth, light wear at top and bottom. Front wrapper also bound in. Rubber stamps and library pocket present. Waterstained in top margins. (7396)

Printed by Lydia Bailey — Hannah's Youthful Feminism?

•  In her preface to The Search, More writes, "It has been so hackneyed a practice for Authors to pretend, that imperfect copies of their works had crept abroad, that the Writer of the following Pastoral is almost ashamed to allege this, as the real cause of the present publication." The first authorized edition appeared in 1773 although More (b. 1745) wrote it when she was 15 years old; the Yale Feminist Companion notes that her "improving pastoral play for girls' schools . . . celebrates women writers (760)."

The Search is in verse and Joseph in prose. The frontispiece is an engraving by B. Tanner after Stothard's original. Tanner was one of America's premier early engravers upon steel and copper. A student of Peter Maverick's, he settled in Philadelphia in 1805 and continued in the Quaker City until 1845. In addition to engravings for book illustration, he produced line and stipple portraits, scenes, and views. Here his offering is printed on a lighter weight stock than the rest of the volume and, as in all copies we have seen, is browned.

•  Rosenbach, Early American Children's Books, 442; Shaw & Shoemaker 23434. On Tanner, see: Stauffer, American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, I: 243–45. Beyond the scope of Welch. Publisher's salmon paper over paste boards. Clean with no tears. Frontispiece browned as noted, with two lighter spots. A very good copy.

"To win a man, when all your pains succeed, /
      The Way to Keep Him, is a task indeed."

Murphy, [Arthur].

•  Comedy with a plot that verges on the painful. Three men behave abominably to their wives and other women, for various reasons; in the end they are more or less excused while one woman is blamed for not exercising enough charm after winning a husband, one is chastised for being too quick to believe a seducer’s lies, and one is forced to accept the claim that her husband treated her cruelly purely out of embarrassment over his unfashionable love for her.

•  Disbound, now in Mylar folder. Title-page missing piece from inner margin and now mounted; prologue reinforced.

CYRANO — 1924

•  Theatre program from this production starring Walter Hampden. Cyrano was Hampden's signature role, and he revived the play a number of times throughout his career; this particular go-round comes from the year before the actor took over the management of the Colonial Theatre .The playbill contains a photo spread of Hampden in other "notable characterizations," including Hamlet, Othello, and Sir Giles Overreach. Many of the advertisements feature elegant Jazz Age ladies in bobbed hair.

•  Original printed paper wrappers, in beautiful clean condition. (5910)

Theatrical! Divorce Case
   in a Couple of Senses

•  Title on spine: Forrest Divorce Case. The divorce trial of Catherine N. Forrest vs.Edwin Forrest in the New York Superior Court, lasting from 16 December 1851 to 26 January 1852, received considerable public attention. Mrs. Forrest brought her suit for divorce, which was counter-sued by her husband, a famousPhiladelphia actor. The case was argued by the able attorneys Charles O'Conor, counsel for the defendant, and John van Buren. It was finally decided in favor of Mrs. Forrest who was awarded an annual alimony payment of $3,000 by the jury. Illustrated with engraved portraits of the couple on pages 96 and 97.

Provenance:  Bookplate of Dr. J. Chalmers DaCosta (1833–1963) on front pastedown. In 1885, he graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and became a surgeon. He wrote the standard textbook on surgery, which passed through ten editions. From 1907 to 1933, he headed Jefferson's department of surgery, following in the footsteps of such eminent surgeons as William W. Keen, Samuel Dr. Gross, and Thomas Dent Mutter.

•  Sabin 25110.   Rebound in full black cloth, gilt-stamped title on spine. Pages waterstained, some browning, spots of foxing, and a bit of bug-spotting. Lacks title-page, and pp. 181–87; lots, lots, LOTS! of scandal (and real pain and sadness) yet left.  (7337)

Life Without Pipe Dreams?

•  This edition is limited to 2,000 copies and this copy is signed on the colophon page by the illustrator, Leonard Baskin. Baskin both created the ten full-page drawings of the characters, one of them an original lithograph, and designed the book, choosing a Monotype Janson font, which was composed and bound at the Stinehour Press in Ludenburg, Vermont. Art historian Irma Jaffe analyzes the illustrations and traces the parallels in the art and lives of Baskin and O'Neill in her introductory essay, “O'Neill and Baskin: the iconography of a double exposure.”

The binding is full grey paper–covered boards with printed paper labels on the spine and front cover. It is rather bleak-looking — which is perfectly appropriate given the nihilistic theme of the play.

This offering includes the monthly newsletter.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 525.   Binding as above. Fine, in a fine slipcase.  (21758)

Well-Edited & Well-Produced

•  Edited by Montague Summers. Limited to 1340 sets, this one of 1250 on machine-made paper.

•  McKitterick/Rendall/Dreyfus 38. Quarter light brown publisher's buckram with cream Ingres paper sides. Cream paper label at top of spine. All edges untrimmed. Light dustsoiling. Bookplate on front pastedown of each volume. A rather nice set.

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Comedias  

Click the left or middle image for an enlargement.

•  Collection of early editions of four comedies by composer and playwright Parabosco. Two other plays are cited by Brunet as part of the overall work, but are not present here; Adams and some other sources describe the six pieces as separately issued. The plays included in this volume are L’Hermafrodito, Il Marinaio, Il Viluppo (with a publication line dated 1568), and Il Pellegrino.

•  Adams P238, P239, P246 (1560 ed. only), P243; Brunet, IV, 356. Contemporary vellum-covered boards, spine with inked title; vellum slightly soiled, with spine title faded. All edges stained blue. First title-page mounted and several leaves with outer margins or upper outer corners reinforced, two pages with loss of a few letters at upper outer corners. Second play lacking two preliminary leaves and final register leaf. Two leaves with annotations in an early inked hand, now faded; pages with intermittent mild waterstaining.

Dramatic Romance & Comic Opera
With HOT AIR BALLONS

Each: $450.00

Bifolia. [2] ff.
Each: $1000.00

•  Featured plays include Romeo and Juliet, Douglas, The West Indian, and "a new comic opera" called Robin Hood; or, Sherwood Forest. Secondary attractions range from dances to minor dramatic works to pantomimes, with sheets for consecutive evenings showing how a main attraction might be paired with a comedy one night and a musical entertainment the next.

These theatrical ephemera are quite scarce: While 19th-century examples are fairly common, a check of ESTC found only a few scattered instances of 18th-century Theatre-Royal playbills, none with more than one holding.

To view the list of PLAYBILLS, click here.

“Bravo, Old Cupid!” . . . I Think I'll Be a
Stockbroker, Myself.”

•  Gossamer, Bonus, Mortimer, and Delville attempt to hoax each other in various romantic schemes.

•  Fair; disbound from a nonce volume. Title-page stamped with shelving number; inked ownership inscription at top of dramatis personae listing with additional annotations reflecting cast changes. One leaf torn in half without loss; others with edge chips or tears.  (1832)

“Very Elaborate & Celebrated Edition”

•  First edition: Schröder’s edition of Seneca’s tragedies, here heavily footnoted, with extensive commentary added to Gronovius’s annotations. Dibdin praised the work highly, using our caption’s phrase to begin his description of it. The engraved frontispiece, an allegorical tableau, was done by F. Ottens and B. Bernarts after L.F. Dubourg. Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

Provenance: Front fly-leaf with inked inscription “Ex libris H.G. van Vryhoff.” The library of Hubert Gregory van Vryhoff, a Dutch scholar, was sold at auction after his death in 1754. Notation “A.G. Crameri” dated 1821 on front free endpaper.

•  Brunet, V, 286; Dibdin, II, 399; Schweiger, II, 941. Contemporary vellum-covered boards, covers framed and panelled in blind with central blind-tooled medallions, spine with gilt-stamped title-label; boards sprung, with front joint starting from top and vellum showing some soiling. On back cover, brown offsetting from a once-neighboring, seriously wet brown leatherbound book (?); some other minor discoloring by water. Front free endpaper separated, with inked owner’s name as above and signs of a now-absent bookplate; fly-leaf with inscription as above. Leaves age-toned, some with offsetting; bottom edges of final index leaves (only) waterstained — actually, given that water once clearly approached this, a surprisingly unblemished interior.

Midsummer Night's Dream *&*
the Shepherd's Wedding!

•  ESTC (electronic, accessed April 2000) T39351.   Modern wrappers; with sewing holes and short tears to inner margin of title-page. Faint waterstains in lower outer corners, impinging a little upon printed portions; a bit of spotting to title-page. Tear to upper right portion of back leaf with loss to part of several lines of Lloyd's text (suppliable). Without the plate in the Shakespeare.  (3628)

To view a small list entirely dedicated
          to SHAKESPEARE — click here.

Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne — Caesar & Cleo

•  This edition (limited to 1500 copies) of Two Plays for Puritans by George Bernard Shaw — the two plays being The Devil's Disciple and Caesar and Cleopatra — bears both a long preface by the author and notes written by him for each play.

George Him both illustrated and designed the book, and also signed the colophon. The book is heavily illustrated with a considerable number of black-and-white line-and-wash drawings and 14 full-page color illustrations which were hand-colored by the pochoir process at the studio of Walter Fischer. These drawings are both beautiful and witty. In one color plate, for example, we see a line of picketing Egyptian soldiers carrying placards reading, “Egypt for the Egyptians,” and “Caesar Go Home,” the latter appearing in “Egyptian Hieroglyphs”; in another plate, we are treated to a breathtaking scene of the library at Alexandria being consumed by fire; in yet another drawing, we see an amusing little rendering of Belzanor's description of a seven-armed wife-eating Roman soldier!

Him chose a monotype Plantin font for the text which was printed in Bloomfield, Connecticut, at the Sign of the Stone Book. The binding is full bright red “vellum book-cloth” stamped on the front with a double-eagle (one American, one Roman) design in gold, and stamped on the spine in black and gold leaf with a design of a Roman legionary standard bearing the title and the author's initials. The endpapers are “nugget-gold” Tweedweave.

This offering does not include the monthly newsletter or the mailing notice.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 381.   A fine copy with the slipcase, which is covered in “nugget-gold” paper and stamped in black and gold. Slipcase showing traces of rubbing at top and bottom. A great treat for a Shaw-lover!   (21756)

THIS TimePay Attention

•  Second edition. Sheridan entered Parliament in 1780, crowning his previous career as a successful playwright and theatre manager with a long and distinguished record of public service. He originally read the main portion of this statement before the House of Commons as part of the debate, after noticing that the gentlemen discussing the two bills in question appeared not to have paid “any very minute degree of attention” (p. 6) to the details of either one.
Single-click lefthand image,
for an enlargement.

The texts of both bills are present here, along with Sheridan’s analysis of how each would address “the question of right between the public and the [East India] Company” (p. 39).

•  ESTC T30944; Goldsmiths’-Kress no. 13610. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title label and spine with gilt-stamped leather author label. Half-title and several other pages stamped by a now-defunct institution. Pages with edges untrimmed and a few small spots of staining; mostly, clean.

For more ENGLISH POLITICS,  click here.

“The Grammarian Must Either Associate with,
    or Submit Himself to, theMusician”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Second, “amended and enlarged” edition of Steele’s treatise on the rhythm and accent patterns of English speech, comparing spoken language to music. Steele’s innovative, complex system of recording qualities of speech drew much attention in its time: Garrick, who had a snippet of one performance immortalized herein, was among the curious regarding the potential practical uses of Steele’s work in theatre, rhetoric, and other areas. The volume is illustrated with a number of in-text depictions of markings and symbols, as well as brief sections of music.

•  ESTC T46009; Lowndes, Bibliographer’s Manual, 2505; Deakin, Musical Bibliography, 48; Allibone, Critical Dictionary, 2232. 19th-century half textured cloth with paper-covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and inked call number; binding worn and breaking, with text block starting to pull away from spine and sewing loosening at inner margins; several signatures separated. Title-page and dedication leaf institutionally pressure-stamped. Untrimmed page edges now brittle and starting to chip, with margins dustsoiled; first and last few leaves lightly foxed. Dried plant matter laid in between two leaves and newspaper clippings between two others, with offsetting in both cases. Not a pretty copy, but a usable and fascinating book.

Wharton as Translator

•  First edition, translated from the German by Edith Wharton: Sudermann’s play is about love, politics, and morality. It is not difficult to imagine Wharton’s attraction to this piece, in which one of the final lines uttered by the intelligent, sensitive, unhappily married heroine is “We are all expected to sacrifice our personal happiness to the welfare of the race!”

•  Garrison A7.1.a. Publisher’s olive paper–covered boards, front cover and spine stamped in gold; lacking the now seldom-seen dustwrapper, spine very slightly darkened, extremities showing touches of wear. Top edge gilt. Front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription dated 1903. Pages clean. A good-looking copy.

English/Latin Edition — Roman Comedy

Click the interior images for enlargements.

•  Third edition of Richard Bernard's translation of Terence, the first in English, with the Latin text preceding it before every scene; present here are the complete six comedies. The first edition was 1598.

•  Schweiger, II, 1079; ESTC S118348.   Contemporary calf, recently rebacked; spine with raised bands, gilt-stamped title and gilt date at base. Covers crudely blind-tooled in concentric compartments; clearly a provincial binding. Bits of leather lost at at edges and corners of covers; offsetting from leather along margins of endpapers and final page of text. Title-page mounted, with chips at corners, costing the first letter of title and a portion of three additional letters. Pages age-toned, with occasional soiling, some heavy soiling on title-page, and some mild foxing or the odd spot. A handful of leaves (including title-page) with extensive ownership signatures or penmanship trials in early inked hands, extending sometimes over type. Closely trimmed, in some cases into tops of letters of heading; chip at outer margin of pp. 175–76 without costing any text. Complete, despite irregular pagination.  (23771)

“Pretty Gitana tell us,
         What the Fates decree?”

•  Spoken lines and song lyrics for this romantic musical trifle, set in Spain and involving a pretty gypsy. The back and inside covers bear advertisements for Knabe & Co., manufacturer of grand, square, and upright piano fortes.

•  Good in printed paper wrappers, front cover and some page edges chipped.  (1003)

Still theSole Collected Edition

Wycherley, William.

•  Nonesuch Press limited-edition production of the only collected edition of Wycherley. 975 sets were produced, this example being number 99 of 900 on mould-made paper with the Nonesuch watermark. Present here are Wycherley’s letters and miscellaneous poems, as well as his cynical and often-licentious plays.

Provenance: With laid-in invoice from the Davenant Bookshop in Oxford, dated 1924.

•  McKittrick/Rendall/Dreyfus 17. Publisher’s quarter brown buckram over tan paper- covered sides, spines with printed paper labels; gently worn, two labels chipped, one volume with cloth of a darker shade and noticeable rippling thereto. Two volumes with hinges slightly tender. Page edges untrimmed, some signatures uncut. It should be remarked that, by some unexpected trick of the camera, our righthand picture above makes this set look a bit smarter than it is; that said, though — it is rightly priced for its real condition and still worthy of purchase.

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