[In the essay below, Van Lennep examines a copy of the 1664 folio edition of Killigrew's plays that contains revisions and annotations made by the author himself.]

Twenty-six years ago Mr. C. H. Wilkinson, writing about the library of Worcester College, Oxford, listed among the recent acquisitions to that library's fine collection of seventeenth-century drama Thomas Killigrew's own copy of the 1664 folio of his plays, containing numerous deletions in his hand.¹ In 1935 Mr. Montague Summers very briefly described this copy in his The Playhouse of Pepys; but he must have examined it rather hastily or relied upon a description of it sent him in 1921 by the late George Thorn-Drury, because he states inaccurately that there are “corrections throughout the volume” and summarizes one of Killigrew's notes carelessly, giving the impression that only three of the plays, two of which he does not identify, were cut.² So far as I am aware, all other writers on the Caroline and Restoration theatre, including Professor Alfred Harbage, Killigrew's biographer, fail to mention the volume.

Killigrew's copy of his Comedies, and Tragedies is bound in old calf and lacks the frontispiece portrait of him, engraved by Faithorne.³ Two of its plays, The Princess and The Prisoners, he has not touched—evidence that after 1663 he planned no production of either. There is no record of a Restoration performance of The Prisoners, but The Princess Killigrew had revived unsuccessfully at the Vere Street Theatre on Nov. 29, 1661, the play lasting but two days.⁴ Of the other six plays, The Parson's Wedding is cut the most, more than one third of its lines being marked for omission. There is scarcely a speech of any length that has escaped this pruning, but the only change in the order of the lines occurs in the second act, where the scene between Captain Buff, Lady Love-all and Jolly (pp. 89-92), cut in half, is placed after the following scene between Wanton and Baud, an alteration of no importance. At the foot of the page containing the dramatis personae Killigrew has written: “I have cut out 855 liens this day—May 2, 1664—Tho: Killigrew. 40 lines is a full side.⁵ 34 full pages is cut out.” And below this: “1594 liens is now cut out. 40 liens is a side—May 5—1664. Thomas Killigrew.”

Next to The Parson's Wedding the second part of Thomaso, or the Wanderer shows the greatest number of excisions—about 950 lines, including five entire scenes⁶ and the greater part of two others.⁷ The second act is altered to begin with Scene 2, and the dialogue between Serulina and her servant which immediately precedes the scene is put after it. Beneath the dramatis personae is a note by Killigrew: “24 sides cut out Nov 1664.” The second part of Thomaso is so loosely constructed and its speeches are so lengthy that such cutting, instead of making nonsense of the play—as one would suppose—actually makes it more suitable for performance.

The deletions in the first part of Thomaso are not great. Cut out is the amusing but irrelevant scene in the fourth act (pp. 360-6) where the mountebank Lopus, with the aid of his wife Celia and her lover Scarramucha, entertains the crowd and finally induces the bawd Helena to try his wonderful youth-restoring powder, a scene that owes many of its lines to Jonson's Volpone.⁸ Some of the long speeches between Angellica and Thomaso in the second act (pp. 337, 338) have been trimmed, and there are also excisions at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth acts (pp. 367-70).

Throughout the play Killigrew has written in new act divisions thus: at Act I, Scene 4 (p. 323)—“The first Act is 10 sides. 2 Act [this in red crayon] Begins hear”; at Act II, Scene 4 (p. 337)—“The 2 Acte endes here and The 2 Actes are 24 sides. 3 Acte [in red crayon] begins heare”; at Act III, Scene 3 (p. 348)—“The 3 Acte endes here and the 3 achts are 34 sides. 4 Acte [in red crayon] begins here”; at Act IV, Scene 2 (p. 359, lower margin)—“Ende of the 4 Acte [in red crayon]. The 4 Actes are 46 sides”; at Act IV, Scene 3 (p. 366)—“5 Acte begins here. The 4 Actes hafe 46 sides.” At the top of the first page of the text he has written “Anno” but has neglected to give the date of revision, undoubtedly November 1664 when he cut the second part.⁹

Killigrew has partially cast the first part of Thomaso. On the page of dramatis personae he has entered the name of an actress to the left of the rôle she was to play: Serulina, “a beauteous Virgin”—“Wevar” (Elizabeth Weaver); Calis, her waiting woman—“Franki” (Frances Davenport?); Angelica Bianca, a beautiful courtesan—“M. Marsh.” (Mrs. Ann Marshall); Anna, her bawd—“Core” (Mrs. Corey); Paulina, a courtesan of the first rank—“Nelle” (Nell Gwyn);¹⁰ Kecka, servant to Lucetta—“Bette” (Elizabeth Hall or Elizabeth Davenport?). And under the last line of type he has added: “Lusetta-Knep” (Mrs. Knepp). Saretta is not cast, and, of course, no names appear beside Helena and Celia, two parts that are deleted. Of the male rôles it would be very interesting to know what actor Killigrew had in mind for Thomaso, a semi-autobiographical character.

The two parts of Cicilia and Clorinda Killigrew has left as they are printed, but that he contemplated a production of this romantic tragi-comedy in 1667 is shown by a note at the top of the first page of the text:

Miss Hancoke pray write both theis partes of Cissillia and Clorinda intiere as thay ar in this booke in to parts for they are short anufe with out cutting being in all but 92 sides in the hoell and the first part but 49 sides and the seconde but 43 sides. Tho: Killigrew / White Hall. Feb. / 14.1666 [1666/67].

Miss Hancock was evidently copyist for the Theatre Royal and a relative of Thomas Hancock, a minor actor there.

In The Pilgrim the entire comic underplot of the ferryman Trevallin and his wife, almost 300 lines, is eliminated, and in the fourth act Killigrew has deleted Ferdinando's 40-line speech on page 202 and nearly all of his two long speeches on the following page. In the outer margin of page 157 he has written: “as tis alltrd this 25 of May 1668.”

Neither the revision of Claracilla nor that of the two parts of Bellamira her Dream is dated. The cutting in Claracilla is not great—a few lines here, a few lines there, altogether less than 250. In the last act Killigrew has added to the stage directions, particularly a direction on the use of the galley that he has introduced into Scene 8; and at the end of the play, where all “go singing off the stage,” is a note: “Theare must be a shorte songe—4 liens is anuffe.”

In both parts of Bellamira new act divisions are indicated, and the excisions are numerous but evenly distributed throughout. On page 466 beneath the description of the costumes Killigrew has written: “Cut out of the furst part of Bellamira 544 liens,” and on page 576 after Pollidor's curtain speech occurs another note: “442 Liens are cut out of this second part.”

Finally, on the first blank leaf before the general title-page are instructions, evidently for Miss Hancock, the copyist:

Alle that you finde cut out and markt with this marke in red [here Killigrew has drawn with red crayon a trefoil in the outer margin] you must writ out [leave out of?] everey play or part—Write over the Parssuns Wedding the Pillgrim and both partes of Tomasso. and write them as they are in speiches with the names of the speakers. T Killigrew.

It is unfortunate that Killigrew has not dated these instructions, which are hard to read and not clear.¹¹ Presumably, since they mention The Pilgrim, they were penned after May 25, 1668, the date that this tragedy was altered for production. Nowhere, however, are the red trefoils to signalize deletions, although the new scene divisions in the two parts of Thomaso are in red crayon. Perhaps the trefoils, which would have been placed, I imagine, along the edge of the outer margins, were trimmed away when the folio was rebound, since it was no doubt originally in a special binding, a presentation binding from Herringman, the publisher, or an admirer.

Whatever the reason for the missing trefoils, it is evident that at Killigrew's order the copyist prepared in or about 1668 manuscripts of The Parson's Wedding, the two parts of Thomaso, and The Pilgrim, omitting the deletions and incorporating the other changes he had made in them. It is also evident from the note to Miss Hancock at the beginning of Cicilia and Clorinda that in February 1667 she transcribed the two parts of this play. These manuscripts became the playhouse copies and would have been turned over to the book-keeper and prompter of the Theatre Royal, Charles Booth.¹²

We cannot be sure that all these plays achieved production at the Theatre Royal, but it is likely that all were performed. The only one of the four that has any stage history is The Parson's Wedding. Played entirely by women, it was first produced, probably with the huge cuts that Killigrew made in it in May 1664, at the Bridges Street Theatre on October 5th or 6th of that year,¹³ and it was still being acted by the women of the King's Company in 1672.¹⁴Thomaso was much admired by Aphra Behn, who, seeing its great possibilities for the stage, made an alteration of it that was given with applause by the Duke's Company in 1677.¹⁵ In its wit and coarseness it is another Parson's Wedding. The success of the latter would have encouraged Killigrew to trim Thomaso—its long speeches were not written with a production in mind¹⁶—and bring it out at the Theatre Royal, perhaps early in 1665.

The Pilgrim is probably the best of Killigrew's plays. Genest calls it a good tragedy that “with judicious alterations … might have been made fit for representation.”¹⁷ Its well-constructed plot is weakened by the unmotivated and uncomical comic subplot of Trevallin and his wife. By eliminating this secondary plot, Killigrew certainly made the play “fit for representation,” and he almost certainly presented it at the Bridges Street Theatre in 1668 or 1669.

Of the remaining two plays that he altered for acting, Claricilla and Bellamira her Dream, Pepys records three performances of the former by the King's Company—two before 1664, the third on Mar. 9, 1669; and there were no doubt others.¹⁸ It is difficult to believe that the long romantic drama or dramatic romance, Bellamira her Dream, was ever placed in rehearsal, despite the fact that Killigrew vigorously pruned its “strange jumbles.”¹⁹ But in view of the stage history of Claricilla, a piece similar in atmosphere and plot, and in face of the evidence that Killigrew contemplated producing not only Bellamira but also Cicilia and Clorinda, its kin of better character, it may well have been acted. For Thomas Killigrew as Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles II and unofficial court jester was a person of influence in Restoration England; and, what is more to the point, as royal patentee and manager of the King's Company of Players he could have produced a play of ten acts and forty-three scenes,²⁰ had he wished to do so.

Notes

1. C. H. Wilkinson, “The Library of Worcester College,” Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings & Papers, i (1926), 276.

2. See The Playhouse of Pepys (1935), pp. 80, 137, n. 61.

3. On one of the pages is the name of a former owner, “Owen Brigstocke Esq^r 1734.”

4. See Pepys’ diary for that date and Professor Leslie Hotson's The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (1928), pp. 246, 247.

5. To my knowledge, this is the earliest mention of an actor's side and the number of lines it contained. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a side was 42 lines. Today it runs from 15 to 18 lines.

6. Act III, Scene viii (p. 424); III, ix (pp. 424-6); III, xi (pp. 427, 428); IV, i (pp. 428-31); IV, vi (p. 436).

7. Of IV, ix (pp. 438, 439), all but 12 lines are cut out, and in IV, xi (pp. 440-2) everything before the line, “Sir, Calis is at the door,” is deleted.

8. First noted by Gerard Langbaine in his Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691), pp. 313, 314.

9. The two parts form one long play with a single denouement at the end.

10. Nell Gwyn is said to have made her first appearance on the stage as Cydaria in Dryden's The Indian Emperour, given at the Theatre Royal in the spring of 1665. Here, however, we have Killigrew casting her in November 1664, at the age of thirteen years, as a courtesan “of the first rank”! Prophetic insight!

11. According to the epilogue to The Parson's Wedding (p. 154), Killigrew had trouble reading his own hand. He was an uneducated man, and his spelling, as is evident, was most uncertain.

12. This was not the usual practice when a printed play, of which there was no playhouse copy, was down for revival. See Montague Summer's Essays in Petto for an account of the Theatre Royal prompt copy of The Sisters in the Zion College octavo of Shirley's Six new playes, and P.M.L.A., lvi (1941), 369-78, for an article by Professor R. C. Bald on the Smock Alley third folio of Shakespeare, parts of which are now in the Folger Shakespeare Library.

13. See Pepys’ diary, Oct. 4 and 11, 1664. Pepys refers to it as a new play, and as a new play it was licensed for acting sometime between November 1663 and November 1664 (Joseph Quincy Adams, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, 1917, p. 138).

14. The prologue and epilogue for this revival at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the former spoken by Ann Marshall in man's attire, were printed in Covent Garden Drollery, published late in 1672.

15. Mrs. Behn's adaptation, entitled The Rover; or, The Banish’t Cavaliers, held the stage up to the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1680 her Second Part of the Rover, also based upon Thomaso, was produced by the Duke's Company, but it did not succeed.

16. Except for The Prisoners, Claricilla, and The Princess, which date before 1641, all of Killigrew's plays were written abroad during the time that the theatres were closed. Professor Harbage places the composition of Thomaso at Paris in the spring of 1654 (Thomas Killigrew, Cavalier Dramatist, 1930, pp. 218, 219).

17. John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, 1660-1830 (1832), i, 391.

18. Still another performance by the King's Company took place at the Vere Street Theatre, Dec. 1, 1660 (Adams, op. cit., p. 117). Moreover, Claricilla was one of the stock plays of the Red Bull actors in 1660, before the formation of the King's Company.

19. So Genest describes the plots of Cicilia and Clorinda and The Princess, a description that applies equally well to Bellamira.

20. I refer to Cicilia and Clorinda. Without the 980 odd lines of Killigrew's deletions, Bellamira would not have been quite as long.