COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Remorse: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. London: W. Pople. 1813.
8vo. Early 20th-century green Morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, London, gilt triple fillet border to covers with floral cornerpieces, spine gilt-ruled in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, turn-ins roll-tooled in gilt, top edge gilt, other edges uncut; pp. [xii], 72; colour a little faded to spine and edges, hinges cracked but holding firm, minor rubbing to corners; occasional light spotting, otherwise a very good, clean copy.
First edition, with page 3 misnumbered as “6”, of Coleridge’s second play.
Set in sixteenth-century Granada at the height of the persecution against the Moriscos, Remorse, a blank verse tragedy, is an account of the gradual moral corruption of the Spanish nobleman Ordonio and his part in the murder of his own brother.
Coleridge wrote the play in 1797 at the suggestion of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), originally titling it Osorio after its protagonist (later renamed Ordonio). Rejected by Drury Lane Theatre, a manuscript copy remained in Sheridan’s possession and, in Coleridge’s words, “wandered about the town from his house”.
The first thirty lines of Act V, Scene I appeared separately as the poem “The Dungeon” in Lyrical Ballads (1798) and in 1802, part of a song from Act III was published without acknowledgement of Coleridge’s authorship (see Preface).
This revised version of the play, re-titled Remorse, premiered at Drury Lane on 23 January 1813, enjoying commercial success with a run of twenty nights. This 1813 first edition was followed in the same year by two further editions, with much of the original preface omitted.
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