III. FROM DODSLEY'S SELECT COLLECTION OF OLD 

 PLAYS (1744) TO THE PRESENT 



The history of the rediscovery of Marlowe may well be begun 

 with the publication of Edward II in the original edition of 

 Dodsley's Old Plays in 1744. This was the first genuine work 

 of the poet to be printed for over a century; i. c, since the 1637 

 edition of Hero and Lcandcr.^^ The Jczv of Malta was added in 

 the second edition of Dodsley (1780). Doctor Faustus was pub- 

 lished in C. W. Dilke's Old EugUsh Plays (1814) and the Old 

 Plays of 1816; Edzvard II and The Jezv of Malta'"" in The 

 Ancient British Drama of 1810; Hero and Leander in Sir E. 

 Brydges' Restituta (T815). Chappie's Old English Poets (1820), 

 and Singer's Select English Poets (1821) ; Dido in Hurst, Robin- 

 son & Co.'s Old English Drama (1825). Tamburlaine had been 

 printed, we are told, in 1818, under the editorship of James 

 Broughton; but this work was not published. ^''^ In 1818, W. 

 Oxberry, comedian and printer, brought out separate texts, with 

 slender prefatory remarks and a few footnotes, of the Jew of 

 Malta, Edivard the Second, Doctor Faustus, Lust's DominioH, 

 and The Massacre at Paris. To these he added in 1820 the two 

 parts of Tamburlaine. In 1827 these were all bound together, 

 along with an undated edition of Dido, in a single volume entitled 

 The Dramatic Works of Christopher Marlowe, With Prefatory 

 Remarks, Notes, Critical and Explanatory, by W. Oxberry, 

 Comedian. Prefixed are two brief sets of 'Remarks' signed 

 H. M. M(aitland?). 



The first collected edition of Marlowe had, however, already 

 appeared during the preceding year (1826) in three handsome, 



^Lust's Dominion (1657, 1661), the corrupt 1663 Faustus, Mountford's 

 farce, and Walton's version of the Passionate Shepherd are all that had 

 appeared in the interval. 



^"^ Two other editions of Tlie Jezv of Malta were printed in 1810. 



"^ I am not aware that any copy of this edition is now in existence. 

 Marlowe's Lucan was included in the collection of Poems in Blank Verse 

 (not Dramatique) prior to Milton's Paradise Lost by Percy and Steevens, 

 1807. The only copy of this that I have seen is in the British Museum and 

 contains a MS. note by Parks: 'Received from Mr. John Nichols, at the 

 desire of Bp. Percy in November, 1807 ; and in February following the 

 whole impression was swept away in the calamitous fire which consumed 

 the ofifices and warehouse of the worthy printer. Four other copies are 

 believed to have been preserved.' 



