[Rarebooks] fa: THEOPHILUS CIBBER - TWO DISSERTATIONS ON THE THEATRE 1757 (w/ interesting theatrical provenance)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 17. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/kqrbxkk

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Theophilus Cibber: Cibber’s Two Dissertations on the  Theatres. With an Appendix, in Three Parts. The Whole containing a general View of the Stage, from the earliest Times, to the Present: With many curious Anecdotes relative to the English Theatres, never before published; And Remarks on the Laws concerning the Theatres. London: Printed for the Author, and are to be had of Mr. Griffiths (the publisher) in Pater-noster Row, [1757]. First edition thus. Full period calf, 8vo; [8],76,[2],47,[1],32,17-113,[1] pp. (text and register of the third section are continuous and complete despite the erratic pagination); engraved frontispiece, woodcut decorations and initials. ESTC T99986.

An uncommon title in any case, this copy has the added appeal of having belonged to a theatrical contemporary and acquaintance of the author: the front paste-down bears the armorial bookplate of West Digges, Esq., an eighteenth-century English actor most celebrated for his work in tragic roles. According to the DNB, "Theophilus Cibber, on his visit to Dublin [1749], introduced Digges to Sheridan, manager of the Smock Alley Theatre [i.e., Thomas Sheridan, father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan]," thus launching Digges's theatrical career. West Digges (1720-1786), debuted in Dublin, 1749, as Jaffer in Venice Preserv'd; he originated the role of Young Norval in John Homes's Douglas, Edinburgh, 1756; his London debut was in 1777 in the title role of Cato; he afterwards performed Lear, Macbeth, Shylock and Wolsey, before retiring in 1785. "Extravagant in gesture and quaint in elocution," as one critic described him, Digges never achieved the first ranks of London tragedians (he quit the metropolis in 1781 to return to Dublin), but to give him his due, his Cato was much admired at the time, and another critic described him as "the best Macheath he ever saw."

A re-issue of Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects...by Mr. Cibber, London, 1756, with a new title-page and the addition of a frontispiece and dedication leaf. The title-page of the original edition is bound in after the dedication leaf. Binding worn and rubbed, joints cracked but boards are secure, rear board stained and bowed from damp, loss to the leather at the spine head; moisture-cockling to the first and last few leaves with intermittent light staining and rippling to the top edges of the others, corners of front blank endpaper torn off, later 18th-century signature to the title-page; otherwise quite clean and sound, securely bound.

Theophilus Cibber (1703-1758), actor and playwright, was the rather unsteady and disreputable son of the celebrated poet, playwright, and actor-manager Colley Cibber, one of the leading figures of the early eighteenth-century English theatrical world. Though Theophilus was not especially gifted as either actor or dramatist, he is at least writing here from experience, as he spent most of his life from an early age in and around the theatre. In addition to the two "dissertations," the extensive "appendix" includes: An Epistle to David Garrick; An Address and Memorial to the Nobility and Gentry of the Club at Mr. Arthur's; The Case of the two Companies of Comedians of the Theatres Royal, of Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden, in Relation to the Bill now depending in Parliament, for the Restraining the Number of Houses for Playing of Interludes; assorted verses, petitions, memorials [i.e. testimonials], etc.; and a peculiar advertisement for "Cibber and Company, Snuff-Merchants."