Folger Shakespeare Library
CELM

Thomas Southerne

1660–1746

Introduction

Thomas Southerne was a largely successful Restoration dramatist, who has been best known for his dramatic adaptations of two novels by Aphra Behn: The Fatal Marriage (1694) and Oroonoko (1696). But for a few letters, documents and extracts, besides some 18th-century promptbooks, little by Southerne survives in manuscripts.

Abbreviations

  • Jordan & Love — The Works of Thomas Southerne, ed. Robert Jordan and Harold Love, 2 vols (Oxford, 1988).

Dramatic Works

The Fatal Marriage, or, the Innocent Adultery, Act III, scene ii, lines 46-61. Song ('The danger is over, the Battle is past')

First published in London, 1694. Jordan & Love, II, 10-84 (p. 49).

SuT 1

Copy, untitled.

In: A folio formal verse miscellany, comprising c.406 poems, many of them song lyrics, in various neat hands, compiled probably over a period, 8 blank leaves (pp. [i-xvi]) + 10 unnumbered pages of poems (pp. [xvii-xxvi]) + 9 numbered pages (pp. 1-9) + ff. [9v]-151v + 12 leaves at the end blank but for a poem on the penultimate page (f. [11v]), in contemporary calf gilt.

Once erroneously associated with Thomas Killigrew (1612-83), whose hand does not appear in the volume.

Mid-17th century-c.1702

Inscribed (f. [ir]) Sr Robert Killigrew / 1702. Later in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector: Phillipps MS 9070. Sotheby's, 19 May 1897, lot 455.

Discussed, with a facsimile example, in Nancy Cutbirth, Thomas Killigrew's Commonplace Book?, Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, NS No. 13 (1980), 31-8.

University of Texas at Austin (Ms (Killigrew, T) Works B Commonplace book f. 143r) | Catalogue
Money the Mistress

First published in London, 1726. Jordan & Love, II, 355-421.

SuT 2
A printed exemplum of the edition of 1726, marked up as a prompt-book in two hands, including additional dialogue, partly by the prompter John Stede, for the Lincoln's Inn Fields production 19 February 1726, in a composite volume of three promptbooks.
1726

Facsimile of f. 72r in Jordan & Love, I, [356]. Annotations edited in Edward Langhans, Three Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Promptbooks, Modern Philology, 65 (1967), 114-29.

Oroonoko

First published in London, 1696. Jordan & Love, II, 102-80.

SuT 3
A printed exemplum of the edition of 1696 marked up as a promptbook, including additional dialogue not in the printed text, by the prompter John Stede for Drury Lane productions c.1731-3, 10 April 1747 and 1 December 1759.
1731-59

From the collection of promptbooks given by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps to the Morrab Library, Penzance. Sotheby's, 27 May 1964.

University of Texas at Austin (Prompt Books Box 1, No, 200.)

Letters

Letter(s)
SuT 4
Autograph letter signed, to Henry Watkins, 10 November 1710.
1710

Edited in Jordan & Love, II, 441-2.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Ferdinand J. Dreer Autograph Collection, British Poets, [unspecified item])
SuT 5
Autograph letter signed, to Henry Watkins, 8 August 1712.
1712

Edited in Jordan & Love, II, 442.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Ferdinand J. Dreer Autograph Collection, British Poets, [unspecified item])
SuT 6
Autograph letter signed, to Henry Watkins, from Westminster, 10 June 1713.
1713

Edited in Jordan & Love, II, 442-3.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Ferdinand J. Dreer Autograph Collection, British Poets, [unspecified item])
*SuT 7
Autograph
Autograph note requesting E. Grigsby to pay Lancelot Keate the dividend on Southerne's South Sea Stock, 19 February 1713[/14?].
1714

Edited in Jordan & Love, I, p. xxxiii (n 90).

*SuT 8
Autograph
Autograph letter signed, to William Duncombe, from Shanville near Chelmsford, 5 December 1734.
1734

Edited in Jordan & Love, II, 449-50.

*SuT 9
Autograph
Autograph letter signed, to Richard Rawlinson, including a list of his own plays. from London, 17 November 1737.
Bodleian Library, other MSS (MS Top. Oxon. b. 9)

Documents

Will
SuT 10
Thomas Southerne's last will and testament, 6 November 1731, proved 3 June 1746.

Edited in Jordan & Love, II, 432-3.

National Archives, Kew (PROB 1/literary wills)

Contents