Maurice Morgann,
Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff.
London: / Printed for T. Davies. 1777
The 1777 First Edition of the first extended study of a character of Shakespeare’s. Bound very attractively in full late 18th Century tree calf, complete in all respects.
‘Falstaff is the word, but Shakespeare is the theme.’
$475.00
The 1777 First Edition of the first extended study of a character of Shakespeare’s. Bound very attractively in full late 18th Century tree calf, complete in all respects.
‘Falstaff is the word, but Shakespeare is the theme.’
The 1777 First Edition of the first extended study of a character of Shakespeare’s. Bound very attractively in full late 18th Century tree calf, complete in all respects.
‘Falstaff is the word, but Shakespeare is the theme.’
The volume(s) measure about 21.4 cm. by 13.8 cm. by 1.8 cm.
Each leaf measures about 216 mm. by 132 mm.
- Main description
- Condition
- Biography / Bibliography
Main description
The full title reads as follows:
“Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff. / ‘I am not John of Gaunt your Grandfather, but yet no Coward, Hal.’ / First Part of Henry IV / London: / Printed for T. Davies, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden. / MDCCLXXVII [1777].”
The volume is paginated as follows: [4], 8, 185, [3]. Last leaf is a blank.
The volume collates as follows: ( )2, A4 – B8, C – M8, N6
Note: ESTC does not provide signatures, but there is clearly a blank leaf at the end (N6) on identical paper.
Condition
Bound in contemporary 18th century tree-calf, smooth spine, gilt in compartments with oval tools and red morocco label.[i] In very good condition. Its hinges and book-block are strong (the leather upon the hinges is beginning to crack but the hinges themselves hold very firmly by the cords). The original spine label has been retained. The leather upon the boards and spine is unusually fresh and unworn. The corners show minor wear. Internally, the volume is in excellent condition with clean pages, clear print and ample margins throughout.
Please take the time necessary to review the slideshow on our website in order to gain a better understanding of the content and condition of the volume.
[i] “From the 1760’s onward smooth spines became increasingly common at all ends of the market, and that by the 1780’s and 1790’s they had become the norm. Such spines were normally divided up using fillets or rolls to create a compartment effect. The tooled spines of this period are most instantly datable from their late-eighteenth-century neo-classical tool designs – realistic looking foliage, urns and oval shaped tools. Pearson, English Bookbinding Styles, Pg.104
Biography / Bibliography
Of Maurice Morgann
Maurice Morgann was in fact one of the most extraordinary, but also perhaps the most reclusive, of the great personages of English literature and government during the second half of the 18th century. In government circles, he was considered the leading English authority on American affairs, and was made successively an Under-Secretary of State, ‘Secretary of the American Department,’ and Secretary of State during the 1760s in the administration of Lord Shelburne. He was famously liberal and learned, and it was said of Morgann that had his advice been taken, and his desired policies enacted, ‘the temporary and the abiding evils of the American contest would not have existed.’ In 1767, Morgann was sent to the newly-conquered colony of Canada [present-day Quebec and southern Ontario] as ‘the intended legislator of Canada,’ specifically to aid its Governor, Guy Carleton. He was also instrumental in the negotiation of the Peace Treaty to end the American War of Independence in 1783. Concerning Morgann’s writings, Gill states that “It is possible that some of his publications are still unidentified, since he wrote anonymously. Those identified are the Falstaff essay, and pamphlets on a national militia, the slave trade, the prevention of adultery, and the state of France in 1794.”
Morgann is also responsible for two memorable exchanges with Samuel Johnson, the second of which prompted one of Dr. Johnson’s most famous aphorisms. As Gill relates the episodes: “Boswell, who calls the Falstaff essay ‘very ingenious,’ records two particular meetings between Morgan and Dr. Johnson. On the one occasion the pair had a dispute ‘pretty late at night,’ and Johnson ‘would not give up though he was in the wrong,’ but he acknowledged his error next morning at breakfast; on the other, Morgann broke down the doctor’s pretended admiration of a poetaster by provoking him diplomatically to the celebrated admission,
‘Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.’
Morgann’s Essay on The Dramatic Character of Falstaff
William Gill, in his preface to the 1912 edition of Morgann’s ‘Essay,’ writes the following concerning the importance of the work:
“Morgann speaks of his works as ‘a mere experiment … attended by all the difficulties and dangers of Novelty.’ He might claim novelty for it upon two grounds. No previous study of a single character of Shakespeare’s had been carried out on so elaborate a scale, and it seems that by the mere size of his example Morgann stimulated a branch of Shakespearean criticism that was soon to flourish greatly. Second, – and here he has had fewer imitators, – he regarded his subject from a new point of view.
“Writers about Shakespare’s characters appear usually to be prompted by one or more of the following motives: to inquire into human nature itself, the persons in the plays being taken simply as real persons, like those in history; to inquire into Shakespeare’s conception and estimate of human nature; to discover how the dramatist adapts human nature to the forms of his art. Morgann contents – and this is his special point of view – that the third of these enterprises should come first, – that we must begin by ascertaining how far the character is modified by the dramatic medium in which it is presented, before we can hope to learn anything certain from it either about human nature or about Shakespeare’s conception and estimate of human nature.
“The title of the essay carefully indicates the contention when it sets forth the subject as, not simply ‘the character,’ but ‘the dramatic character’ of Falstaff, – that is, an adjusted character, arranged and manipulated by the craftsman for a particular occasion, with some features deliberately blurred or diminished and others deliberately thrown forward …
“The essay is both a study of Falstaff and a study of Shakespeare, and the value of its point of view may be put to a double test. We may first compare it with other appreciations of the Knight which have a different point of view, – with Johnson’s or Hazlitt’s, for instance. These accounts are so much shorter than Morgann’s that the sense of familiarity which comes from abundance of detail cannot be expected of them in the same measure; but the reader who turns from them to our essay may feel in it, apart from this, a deeper kind of intimacy which is due to its method. Morgann, he will perhaps feel, has a passport which enables him to go behind the scenes and to speak with the accent of certainty, where Johnson and Hazlitt, through their indifference to the ‘artificial condition,’ are comparatively superficial and unconvincing. They seem to be fumbling at a lock with keys which do not quite fit it. Morgann received some suggestions, no doubt, from Johnson’s remarks on Falstaff, and the similarity of ideas, so far as it goes, makes the distinction of method all the plainer.
“And then our author’s guiding conception has enabled him to make a singularly penetrating exploration of the mind of the craftsman of the ‘theatric form.’
‘Falstaff is the word, but Shakespeare is the theme,’ says Morgann, about his essay, and the reader will agree with him. He does not concern himself much with Shakespeare as a man, a poet, or a philosopher, but he flashes on us some glimpses so far-reaching into the technique and creative efforts of the dramatist that a reverent spectator might almost feel a little hesitation in taking advantage of them, as if he were trespassing on sacred mysteries.”
In the following year he issued Milton’s Paradise Lost imitated in Rhyme. In the Fourth, Sixth, and Ninth Books: Containing the Primitive Loves. The Battel of the Angels. The Fall of Man. His final work was a collection of love-verses and translations from Ovid,Amasia, or the Works of the Muses … In three volumes, 1700, with a general dedication to Isabella FitzRoy, Duchess of Grafton, and dedications of particular sections to various persons of distinction. There is a derisive notice on Hopkins in A Session of the Poets, 1704–5.
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