RAVENSCROFT, Edward The English Lawyer, a comedy London: Printed by J. M. for James Vade at the Cock and Sugar-loaf near St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-street. 1678.
Small 4to. Twentieth-century brown morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe for Phillip C. Broughton (initials P.C.B. gilt to upper board), turn-ins ruled in gilt, two raised bands, spine lettered directly in gilt, edges stained red; pp. [iv], 67, [3], bound without final blank K4; inner margin of title subtly reinforced, not affecting printed area, uniform toning, slightly foxed throughout; overall very good; twentieth-century Sotheran’s stamp, Sackville Street, to front pastedown.
Very scarce first edition of Ravenscroft’s adaptation of George Ruggle’s celebrated Latin comedy Ignoramus, first printed in 1630.
Edward Ravenscroft (fl. 1659–1697), playwright, was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1659 and to the Middle Temple in 1667, though there is no evidence that he was called to the bar, and he appears to have devoted his attention mainly to literature. By the early 1670s he had turned to the theatre, becoming one of the period’s more active refashioners of earlier plays for the Restoration stage.
The English Lawyer is Ravenscroft’s English adaptation of Ruggle’s Latin comedy, first printed in 1630. Ravenscroft brings the celebrated university comedy to the public theatre, retaining the biting satirisation of loquacious and avaricious lawyers, but reducing the original five-hour performance to less than three hours. In addition to Ruggle’s original, Ravenscroft’s sources likely include earlier English translations by Fernando Parkhurst in 1660 and Robert Codrington in 1662, both of which represent faithful translations rather than attempts to adapt the play to the commercial stage. The result is a notable revival of one of the most famous academic plays of the Jacobean period, here recast for performance at the Royal Theatre in 1677.
Ravenscroft’s deftly crafted farce of mistaken identity follows the convoluted and ultimately unsuccessful attempts of the English lawyer Ignoramus to marry the Moroccan ward of a Portuguese merchant living in Smyrna, while offering a sharp critique of the jargon of common law. Ignoramus’ fondness for delivering pompous legal maxims in Latin self-consciously evokes the habits and speech of ‘the archetypal English lawyer of the early modern period’, Sir Edward Coke. Although the former Chief Justice had died in 1634, his writings remained the subject of debate throughout the seventeenth century. In the epilogue to The English Lawyer, Ignoramus exactly reproduces phrases drawn from Coke’s Institutes of the Laws of England: ‘Criticks are all free Subjects, and to be debar’d of their Liberty is directly against Magna Charta, the very fundamental Laws of the Realm’ (Raffield, p. 385).
Ravenscroft’s own legal associations give the choice of subject particular interest. His connection with the Inns of Court appears to have been somewhat unsettled: four years prior to the staging of The English Lawyer, on 30 May 1673, Ravenscroft’s chamber was seized for arrears in rent. More broadly, Ravenscroft is remembered as the first critic to posit that Titus Andronicus was not originally the work of Shakespeare, a position now known as the ‘Ravenscroft tradition’.
This copy is the only example of any edition to have appeared at auction since 1993.
ESTC R7262; Wing R2211. See Raffield, ‘A Discredited Priesthood’ (2005).
SKU: 2125024