[Rarebooks] fa: THEATRE, PLAYS & PLAYERS + LOVE & SEX in 1692 Athenian Mercury

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 30. 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 for looking,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


The Athenian Mercury. Vol. 6, Numb. 17 [and] Numb 18. London: Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultrey, 1692. Two sheets, folio, (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Light wear and small pinholes to the left edges; one sheet somewhat browned, light toning to the edges of the other.

Two consecutive issues of this popular seventeenth-century English newspaper, the first periodical devoted to answering readers' questions. Both issues feature a question and answer related to the theatre: "What's your Opinion of Reading or seeing Plays, whether Comedy or Tragedy?" merits a rather lengthy and thoughtful response, while "Who is the Best Player now living?" receives a shorter and more glib reply, reading in part: "..we may say in General, every one is the best, for so they'll tell you..."

Additionally, as often in the Athenian, there are a number of questions related to love, marriage, courtship, and — the crux of the matter, really — sex. To wit, Whether Kisses and chast Embraces may be admitted into the Friendship between Sexes? ("Hold, good Mr. Plationique!… are you Marble? Or is your Friend the same substance, or kin to St. Francis's Wife of Snow? If not, Hands off..!")  Or in another example, a gentleman contracted to wed "a Lady of Beauty, Wit, and reputed Virtue" asks whether he is still obliged to honor the contract since, "a little before the time appointed for Marriage, I found her my self in Bed with a Young Fellow, and have little reason to doubt her dishonesty..."

The best-known and longest-lived of all seventeenth-century literary periodicals, The Athenian Mercury was the first advice column and the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format. A widely-read staple of the coffee houses, it is also generally considered the first major popular periodical in England as well as the first miscellaneous periodical, and the first to appeal to both men and women. Published twice weekly from 1691-1697 by the eccentric pamphleteer and prolific publisher John Dunton, the Athenian took its name from Acts 17:21 ("For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing"). Over the course of its 580 numbers, Dunton and his two principal writers, Richard Sault and Samuel Wesley (father of Charles and John Wesley), answered nearly 6000 questions, both weighty and frivolous, on a dizzying array of topics, including theology, philosophy, politics, health, natural history, science, literature, courtship and marriage, sex, etiquette, etc., etc.