[Rarebooks] fa:WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT - COMEDIES, TRAGI-COMEDIES, WITH OTHER POEMS - 1651

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William Cartwright: Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, With other Poems, by Mr William Cartwright, late Student of Christ-Church in Oxford, and Proctor of the University. The Ayres and Songs set by Mr Henry Lawes, Servant to His late Majesty in His Publick and Private Musick. London: Printed for [Thomas Robinson and] Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his Shop, at the sign of the Prince’s Arms in St Pauls Church-yard, 1651. FIRST EDITION. Thick 12mo (17.5 cm) bound in early/period calf ruled in blind; [120], 148, [2], 1, [2], 2-306, 301-320 pp.; portrait frontispiece. ESTC R208874; Wing C709; Thomason E.1224[1]; Greg III, pp. 1027-1031; Sabin 11166.
A bibliographically complex book ("the variations in this perplexing volume are too complicated to permit of formal analysis or a complete record of the copies in which they occur" - Greg); but that said, the present copy is apparanetly lacking one leaf of the prefatory matter (*11 or p. [53-54]) and possibly two, as ESTC calls for 62 leaves [i.e., 124 pp.] and there are only 60 leaves [i.e. 120 pp.] here. Otherwise complete, with the frontispiece, the blank leaf f4 (sometimes discarded), and the folded side-note on b2 (often trimmed) all present. This prefatory material consists mostly of verse tributes to Cartwright by dozens of his friends and admirers, including Izaak Walton, Katherine Phillips ("the incomparable Orinda," signed "K.P", her first published poem), John Fell, Henry Lawes, Thomas Vaughan, and Alexander Brome (all present here).

An interesting early binding with remnants of contemporary binder's waste (printed sheets from another work used as binding materials or as endpapers) at the front and back. Also intriguing is the early/original owner's inscription on the front free-endpaper: "Sum [ex] libris Thomas Aldersey…Oxon... 1655." He has also inscribed his signature on the binder's waste endpaper at the rear. Thomas Aldersey (1635-1713) of Aldersey Hall, Cheshire, matriculated Brasenose College, Oxford, 1653, was a lawyer, amateur poet, and a "godly Christian who debated points of doctrine with his son, Rev. Samuel Aldersey (1673-1742)" (Nick Kingsley, "Landed Families of Britain and Ireland"). The Bodleian Library (Oxford) holds Aldersey's papers and notebooks. Binding with modest rubbing and bumping to the corners, 1" split to the leather at the top of the front joint but the board is secure; title-page trimmed a little close touching two commas, mild cockling to the leaves with a few occasional light touches of soiling, but generally very clean, crisp and bright, firmly bound.

William Cartwright (1611-1643), poet, dramatist and churchman. His plays, written in the Jonsonian mode and intended for academic performance, were widely admired at the time. Ben Jonson himself referred to the the young dramatist as "his son Cartwright" and said that he "wrote all like a man." Cartwright's play The Royall Slave was a particular success when it was performed, with designs by Inigo Jones and music by Henry Lawes, for Charles I and Queen Henrietta in 1636. An ardent Royalist, he flew to the king's side during the English Civil War, dying in Oxford in 1643 of "camp fever." King Charles was said to have been so moved by his passing that he dressed himself in mourning on the day of the young man's funeral. But in a sign of changing times, two of the poems here show blank spaces in the text where lines deemed excessively royalist were excised.