Robert Dodsley, A Select Collection of Old Plays

Ian Gordon (Anglia Ruskin University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1744 - 1755

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Anthology/ Collection
Play
Play Collection

Resources

Historians and devotees of the English theatre owe Robert Dodsley (1704-64) a considerable debt of gratitude for rescuing and publishing this collection of old English plays. Dodsley, himself a successful dramatist, tells us in the “Preface”, that his “first end was to snatch some of the best pieces of our old dramatic writers from total neglect and oblivion.”They are “old” in the sense that all the dramatists’ plays in the Select Collection were written at least a hundred years before Dodsley published them. His collection, published in ten octavo volumes, in February 1744, with a further two published in March of the following year, contains sixty-one plays, ranging in time of composition from Bishop John Bale�…

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809 words

Citation: Gordon, Ian. "A Select Collection of Old Plays". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 December 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16872, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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