Lot 101: CONGREVE, WILLIAM.

The Old Batchelour, A Comedy. for Peter Buck, 1693

4to, first edition of the author's first play, later straight-grained morocco gilt by Sangorski and Sutcliffe, rebacked preserving parts of original spine, gilt borders on covers, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, lacking half-title, occasional spotting and browning, binding rubbed with minor loss to extremities; together with another edition, 4to, "sixth edition corrected", final leaf of publisher's advertisements, disbound, [Wing C5870], lacking half-title, spotting and browning (2)

Wing C5863; Pforzheimer 208; The London Stage, I, 418-19

Mortimer L. Schiff, booklabel in first volume

The Anglo-Irish poet and dramatist William Congreve (1670-1729) has an unassailable place in the front rank of Restoration playwrights. This is even though his masterpiece, The Way of the World (1700), had a poor initial reception which induced him to abandon drama in the last three decades of his life. His first publication, in 1692, was the novel Incognita, but he had already written his first play, The Old Batchelour, which was successfully produced at Drury Lane in January 1693. Dryden acclaimed it as the first best play he had ever seen, and in subsequent eulogies seriously compared him to Shakespeare. Other successes followed, including Love for Love (1695) and the tragedy The Mourning Bride (1697), although his second comedy, The Double Dealer (1693) was thought by some to be scandalous. Congreve was among those attacked on the grounds of immorality by the reforming Jeremy Collier, with whom he engaged in literary debate, but nevertheless he established a huge contemporary reputation. His eminent circle of admirers included Swift and Pope, as well as Henrietta, second Duchess of Marlborough, who became his mistress and to whom he bequeathed his library.

Congreve's first play, The Old Batchelour, on which he received help from Dryden, Southerne and others, was first acted by the United Company in March 1693, with music by Purcell. Its success, according to The Gentleman's Journal, was "extraordinary" and the subsequent printed edition of the play lost in the perusal nothing of its abundant "Wit" and "Charms...which yield such pleasure in the Representation".