The Misfortunes of Arthur. By Thomas Hughes. With illustrations and notes by J. Payne Collier, Esq.

8vo. f. [1], pp. [2], 83. Signatures: A2 B-F8 G2.

There are two copies in this collection. The present is in original tan printed wrappers, headed ‘No. III’, large paper. It is the only perfect copy known to us. The other is in half morocco, on ordinary paper and was John Mitford’s copy. It lacks the first half title. This could of course have been a re-separated fragment of Five Old Plays, but that seems unlikely (see below).

The third of five plays issued by Prowett as a ‘Supplement to Dodsley,’ a continuation of an anthology of pre-Restoration English drama known as ‘Dodsley’s Old Plays,’ edited by Robert Dodsley (1703-1764) and re-edited by Collier. Each of the ‘Five Old Plays’ were edited for the first time and published in separate fascicles by Prowett in 1828-1829, extending to only five plays before ‘the publisher could not afford to go on’ (see Collier’s note in his own set, now British Library 11775.bbb.5). The sheets were then sold to William Pickering, who canceled the Prowett titles (or not, erratically), added a four-leaf prefatory gathering with a new general title and a half-title designating the book ‘Volume XIII’ [of the Dodsley collection], and reissued the five texts in one volume, on both large and small paper, titled Five Old Plays Forming a Supplement to Dodsley (1833, see Bib# 4117100/Fr# 922 in this collection). In his biographical note, Collier discussed Francis Bacon’s share in ‘The Misfortunes of Arthur.’ See A. & J. Freeman, John Payne Collier. Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, 2004, I, p. 139; II, A13.

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