[Rarebooks] fa: LINGUA or THE COMBAT OF THE TONGUE & SENSES - A COMEDY 1657

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th- & 18th-century titles, auctions  
ending Sunday, June 5. More details and images can be found at the URL  
below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Thomas Tomkis:] Lingua: or The Combat of the Tongue, and the Five  
Senses for Superiority. A Pleasant Comoedy. London: Printed for Simon  
Miller, at the Starre in St Pauls Church-yard, 1657. Small 8vo (15 cm)  
in period mottled goatskin, recently rebacked with gilt-stamped spine  
label; unpaginated, but 144 pp., signatures A-I⁸; with 4 pp. of  
publisher's adverts at rear. ESTC R23455; Wing T1842...

An allegorical play originally performed some time in the first decade  
of the 17th century and first published in 1607. Oliver Cromwell is  
reputed to have acted, as a young man, the part of Tactus, one of the  
senses, who comes upon the royal emblems and invests his “brows and  
body” with them — which sounds like almost too good a story to be  
true. Alternatively, it's been suggested that as a boy he played the  
bit part of "Small Beer" on the occasion when his uncle, Sir Oliver  
Cromwell, hosted an entertainment for King James I at Hinchinbrook in  
April, 1603. Whatever the case, it was a popular play, going through  
six editions before the Restoration, and is significant for being one  
of the earliest academic plays written in English rather than Latin.  
Though formerly  attributed to Antony Brewer (whose name has been  
added in ink to the title-page by an early owner), the authorship is  
now ascribed to Thomas Tomkis (c. 1580-1634), "arguably one of the  
more cryptic figures of English Renaissance drama" (DNB).